Great idea, have you determined the pricing structure for videos and pictures?
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mcrthomas77
Right now $10/image and $25/race video for personal use to own (burn a DVD, school use for sports banquet, file on computer). $50/video if planning to upload online to share (youtube, facebook, etc.). Its not cost nor time effective for me to actually make DVD's or photo prints and then mail them out, so giving people at least the raw original files to do what they want with them is a lot easier for me.
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MileStat
As the owner of the media, you have the right to charge what you feel the market will support. To put things into perspective, AAU & USATF National Championships charge $20 (+ $5 S&H) for a DVD of an event. As a parent that is thinking about putting together a highlight DVD for college recruitment, I am looking several hundred bucks to access single use licensure of your race footage. Will the videos be the truncated version posted on Milestat or realtime clips that colege coaches can gleam splits from? Again, I think this is a great idea to make the videos and pictures available, and provide you with rightfully deserved finacial reward for your hard work.
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mcrthomas77
The videos that you see online is the footage that I have. I don't edit down the race footage. I just separate the clips based on races and only have to delete/edit video if I accidentally left record on or remove profanity/inappropriate comments from athletes, comments and spectators that the camera might catch. I don't shoot track around most of the time at meets because I'm trying to shoot most of the kids instead of just the leaders and in the infield area especially indoors obstructs the view. You can see from Ron Bayton's state meet video footage the pros and cons of shooting track around....you end up only getting video of the leaders for the most part and don't see the races for places happening behind them.
Again its all about this being time/cost effective for me...I'm not going to spend several hours of my day (or multiple days) trying to make a DVD or edit together a bunch of different races for one specific kid, buy DVD's, DVD burning software equipment, and make trips to the post office for only $25 or less. If someone wanted me to spend all that time for $20 to make a DVD of an entire meet or put together a DVD of all the races I have of a particular athlete, I'd say forget about it...not worth my time. I could be spending my time better working on the site's content and coverage and get a handful of subscriptions during that time to support the site. So basically I'm just going to be uploading the raw footage I have where the parent can download the footage and then they can go and make the DVD if they like or just keep it saved on the computer to view. Same goes with photos and prints.
Also want to set the price high enough to not discourage people from not subscribing to the view the video or photos either, but I'll tinker with the price and see what people are willing to pay for the raw footage or photos. Like to use the proceeds to help pay for the site's current photographers and potentially videographers besides me which I'm struggling to pay for because of subscription sharing abuse.
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MileStat
Excellent reply that clarifies what you are offering and why. Thanks for all you offer on the site.