One that I think has a lot of potential is making promotional videos for local businesses, then uploading them to YouTube and other video sharing sites.
I know it's not an original idea. But I don't think many people are doing it here in Perth.
There are different ways to approach this. There's the high end, for example. That's when you use the best equipment and lighting, and sometimes hire attractive performers to sing the company's praises. These videos are slickly edited and sometimes even have their own unique soundtracks.
Clearly, if you were to offer this kind of product you'd have to be well trained, highly skilled and have access to a team of technicians and performers. You could charge top dollar, but it would be very involved and probably quite stressful work.
There'd certainly be some demand for such a service in a busy city such as Perth. After all, promotional videos can be powerful -- particularly if you're a growing business that wants to project a slick, branded image.
But if you're a potential advertiser you should remember that if you fork out for this kind of promotion, you still have to get the video found and shared. That's a challenge all in itself. And if it's purely promotional, and not educational or instructive, then people are much less likely to share it on social media.
It's long been established that the most shareable online content is entertaining, useful or instructive. And that can be made extremely inexpensively. You just have to look at YouTube and see what is popular. There seems to be little correlation between the high production values and number of views. A blurry hand held 30 second grab of a singing dog can garner countless views, while a five minute mini-movie costing several thousand dollars can be almost completely ignored.
That's why I think offering a much more basic video production service could be a good move for budding local entrepreneurs. You could charge a comparatively low fee while still making it worth your while. And the client could get excellent value for money.
You could offer a package deal that included a couple of purely promotional videos. And others that were more instructive or informational. (Say you were doing it for a restaurant. As well as a little montage of happy customers enjoying the venue's food and atmosphere, you could also include an interview with the chef showing how they make their signature meals.)
This could be interesting content, as well as humanizing the business. It would be a great way to build authority online.
Even something as basic as Microsoft Movie Maker would be adequate to give the video a presentable look with a title and credits etc. You certainly wouldn't need to be Steven Spielberg make the clips presentable!
Not only would such videos draw many local views over time; they would also be helpful for the business website's SEO.