How to Create a DVD without Spending a Dime

Several marketing studies have shown that the packaging of a product can have a dramatic impact on sales.  For example, margarine was a tough sell decades ago.  It’s been said that margarine was originally developed to feed chickens but even the chickens wouldn’t eat it so it was repackaged and marketed to humans.  Whether that’s really true or not, I’m not sure…but just stick with me here.

Butter was stiff competition for margarine so many things were done to make the packaging more attractive.  First, the margarine was colored yellow to look more like butter.  In the case of Imperial margarine, it was wrapped in aluminum which gave it a higher perceived quality than something wrapped in paper.  And finally a crown was used on the box to give it a royal or regal appearance.  With all these packaging changes, Imperial margarine went on to become a best seller.

So what does this have to do with DVDs?  Plenty.  You’ll have to test to be sure, but the packaging of your DVD information product can have the same dramatic impact on sales.  Personally I use Kunaki.  They provide a great service and they even provide hundreds of covers you can use for your CDs and DVDs.  But I find these covers lacking.  I’ve learned to create covers that look better to my eye.  I can also customize the covers with my name, website URL, testimonials, etc.

I’m no graphic designer but in only a few hours of messing around with a 10 year old Adobe product (Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.1) I was able to make attractive CD & DVD covers.  It’s really not very difficult.  You can use your own photos or you can use stock photos.  Some sites offer stock photos for free while others charge a nominal fee for the use of the photos.  I don’t recall paying more than $2 for a photo and usually only $1.

So if you’re an expert with photo editing software then I encourage you to use it to create DVD covers.  If you’re not an expert you could always hire someone to create a cover for you.  Another option is to purchase a DVD information product that shows you to do it step-by-step.  I doubt you’ll be surprised that I created just such a DVD using a screen-capture software to record me as I created attractive CD & DVD covers .