Hello everybody

Forget about your equipment for now. Start with finding something to sell and a market to sell it to. Everything follows from that.

So what you're saying is actually find work first then practice from there? I've drawn, designed things, and posted blogs. The one thing I haven't done online is make a video of me speaking to an audience.

I think you should utilize Instagram Facebook twitter linked if you can and focus on sharing your expertise about graphics design since that is what you are knowledgeable of .

So yes use what you have make the adjustments and focus on productivity. As time goes on you will learn and eventually be in a position to purchase more advanced equipment .Don't overthink the process though.

I am not a digital marketer - I am an online retailer. But the two have commonalities.

Usable photography lights can be had on eBay for around £35 a pair. I paid half of that because I always try to get a bargain. That's 300w of light with diffusers. More or less what you would see pro photographers use. Would suit most video needs I imagine. Could use as household lighting too if you can afford the electric. A good enough used bridge camera is £70 and up and a usable tripod a tenner.


I use proprietary software to design DVD disks and packaging for printing on a Cannon disc printer. You don't need the printer but the software (or something similar) can be used for designing all elements that go into a DVD packaging. But you don't need DVD packaging either. Bear with me:

If I were selling, say, information/instructional products I would actually consider publishing to hard copies. This is because as crazy as it may seem some people like a hard copy. But forget that also unless you wish to know more about it.

People also like representations of hard copies. A digital product/course/learning pack can be designed as a complete DVD package - one like you'd buy in the shops as it needs to look as authentic as possible with copyrights, barcodes and serial numbers and manufacturer and whatnot. Once you have the images you take them and put them into a design program which will do things like allow you to display different shots of how a DVD package would look - could be the DVD case with disk placed in front reflecting from a shiny surface. Could show the case open with inserts showing. Could have one photo of disk alone. It may sound like the program (I'll find out what it was if you need to know) is a bit lame and that it doesn't do much. It doesn't, as similar tools to make digital items look like books and such are nothing unusual. It's basically the reflection that makes the image superb. You can adjust it. We're talking something that looks like a professional photographer came along and did the job and if it does that it's good. Anything along those lines may be even better. Any advertising you do you can try and squeeze in some nice shots but be certain to make clear it's not an actual DVD you are selling. But if you did have a hard copy to sell then no problem as you do stock it. I know someone who sold DVDs on eBay without cases but showed a case in the main photo. This was wrong - it wasn't the item and breaks the rules. Even if you say below that it's only the disk that is being sold. Bad sales are worse than no sales IMO.

One way to think of it is: how does Netflix display its products? What if they also sold DVDs? Do you think they might display the DVD packaging in a similar or better way? Or would they just copy the screenshots of the material on their app? I think it might be different and perhaps show how an actual DVD and case and insert would look. Probably not but they have something great to show already whereas you may need to do a bit more work to make things look as great as they can.


Just quickly BTW - you may have thought that you don't want to be printing DVD packages as a reason not to even consider it but you should know that it's a piece of cake to upload your oven-ready files to a DVD publication and distribution service who will send any quantity of items direct to your customers globally for not much money. They'll give you a free sales/order page too and pass on the money they collect every month if you like.

A solid and highly underrated tool is a good group of mentors that have been through the journey.