DVD Business

There are many types of businesses you can start up that won't cost you an arm and a leg. A DVD Business is one of them. Almost everyone in America rents DVDs and will continue to do so for a long time to come. That means your potential for profit for the long haul is more secure than with other businesses. You can also start the business up fairly quickly if you know what to do.

Decide on a location and how much are willing to spend. If you have a section of your house you can turn in to a DVD rental store you would have no costs out of your pocket except for a license. If you want your store to be else where you are also going to have to consider the amount of rent you are going to have to shell out. That would eat away some of your profits. Decide how many videos you need to get the store running and create a budget. This together with any store rental costs will give you an idea of your start up costs.

Get a loan from your bank if you do not have the savings to start up your DVD business. If you are starting the business out of your home you may have enough money on your own to get started. The first place to get a loan would be the bank you currently do business with. If your accounts are in good standing with them, they should approve your loan. Get your DVDs. There are plenty of ways to get DVDs at a cheaper price. You can look up wholesalers, spend some time buying DVDs on eBay, go to yard sales and pick up DVDs, and ask your friends to donate any DVDs they aren't using any more. Take a month to do this and see how many movies you can collect at a cheap rate. For new releases of course you may have to pay a higher price, but you want to have a good selection of movies besides the new rentals which is why yard sales and eBay come in so handy. Yard sales sell DVD's for $.50-$2.00 per movie and this is certainly affordable for getting started.

Set up your store. The best way to set up your store is to have a section for new releases and then put the rest in alphabetical order. This makes it extremely easy for people to find what you are looking for and keeps your costs down on creating a numbering system etc. Make sure that all shelves are reachable by the average person. Once you have enough DVDs you can advertise your store. This too can be done cheaply. Create your own fliers and print them out on your computer. Pay some little kids $5-$10 each to distribute them on car windows in big parking lots in your area. The word will spread quickly from there. You may even want to advertise a grand opening in a couple of local papers.

Offer to buy used DVDs from your customers to keep the costs down. Decide on a price like $5 if the DVD is in great condition and still plays well. You will have to take the time to check them out before you give the money over to the customer so have them fill out a slip of what DVDs they are asking you to buy and what their home information is. Once you review the tapes you can call them with your offer. Check first to make sure you don't already have that DVD. Create coupon cards like every 10th rental is free. Then have a hole puncher handy to punch out a hole on the card for each DVD rented. Then when the 10th one is rented it is free and you can throw away the card. This is a great way to get customers coming back for more.

Pick your DVD rental prices. What are you going to charge people to rent new releases and what are you going to charge them to rent older movies. The best thing to do is see what other stores are charging and charge $1 less. If Blockbuster is renting DVD's for $4.79 than you rent them for $3.79. This is a great way to get customers to start coming to your store. Start off with a small candy rack and have popcorn. You can buy popcorn packets in bulk and have a microwave handy.

Buy a 6 pack of popcorn for $4 and sell each bag for $2. That gives you an $8 profit. It doesn't sound like much, but people will come back when they see extras like this available. Make sure you have some type of accounting system. Bring your computer in to the store or part of your house that you are using to rent the DVDs from. Buy some software that is capable of keeping track of customers and accounts. This isn't as expensive as it use to be and you can even get a system off of eBay. Have your opening day and start earning money.