Examples of DVDKiosk Commercials and Advertising

Hi Mike,

I will be sending you pictures of a sample of Attractions, a brochure that VPD is selling for .10c each. I found it on page 93 of Closeups magazine we get. I think it's a great idea. I usually set up a flyer every few weeks to put in my "take one" holder on the machine and pass around to Laundromats and other businesses. I have to change the movie art, print them, cut them. A real pain. $10.00 for every hundred, I think it's worth it. You can even put store and contact info along the bottom with a stamp or label. They come out once a month. I ordered 500 for Feb to do an advertising campain to distribute them around appartment complexes in the area.



Thank you Joe Fusco EZ DVD Po Box 1554 Smithtown, NY 11787 www.myezdvd.com 631-680-3464



Joe Fusco's Advertising:

Art Work that Joe Fusco has on one of his Kiosks. Great Stuff! Just Click on Image!

Donnie Harris from Northshore Texaco in Knoxville, TN sent us this!




Donnie Harris's Kiosk and Light box art, from Northshore Texaco in Knoxville, TN

DVDNow Crew 2009 and more recent Pics

This is the most recent picture that I received from DVDNow. This was taken in July of 2010. They just moved offices. The company has grown and is definitely world wide now.

This is the older Picture of the Crew, below you'll find the newer picture.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Mark Rudolph recently sent me this picture of the gang. Quite a few more folks now. The company has been growing to accommodate all of you Kiosk Owners. I'll have to see who is who in this picture. Hopefully Mark will send me some names... It's nice to see who you are doing business with.

Marks Comments:

From Left to Right:Tania (intern from Germany), Kendall Rush, Mary Smith, Carla Cromwell, Ron Eggler, Dale Gercken, Mike Risdon, Yurika Koroki, Julie Krol, Benita Huggins, Scott McInnes, Kerry Turtle, Brent Johnson

Sincerely,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com/

DVDNow WebArt, etc..Kiosk Art

Mark Rudolph from DVDNow has been gracious enough to send me all kinds of DVDKiosk Art. I thought it would be appropriate to add it to this blog so that all of you can load it and use it. As always, Mark is there for all of us Kiosk Owners. Many of you maybe don't know who he is, but he's been instrumental in our business. DVDNow is very lucky to have this guy. Anyway, that's my two cents... Here's the ART.

Sincerely,

Mike Weiland

http://readydvd.com

DVDNow Case Sticker

DVDNow RFID TAG'S WITH WARNING

DVDNow KIOSK WITHOUT LARGE SCREEN ON TOP

SLOT INSERT AT READYDVD

Inside of our case on the left side

Game Questions for DVDKiosks

Another new thread that we haven't touched yet. I don't rent out games because there are just too many games out there. The cost, the game type and age appropriateness. There are so many factors to look over in the game rental business that I'd love to know who is renting the games successfully. Diane also has a great question for someone that's renting them.

diane said...
HI, I have the opportunity to put a kiosk in a mall but with DVD games not movies. Anyone got any comments regarding whether this is a good idea or not?
October 27, 2008 5:25 PM

Ingram Video or VPD Questions

chuck said...

My name is Chuck Newton and the name of our company is DVD Rentals, LLC. We have eight machines currently in operation with six more to deploy. Our machines are located in WI, IL and VA. The machines are located in a large grocery store chain in WI and IL and in a convenience store chain in VA. We use Ingram to purchase the DVDs as they are less expensive than VPD. Also, they are going to begin putting on the RFID tags and load stickers for us. I would love any pearls of wisdom you have regarding advertising as we are struggling with that part.

October 2, 2008 1:29 PM

Mike at ReadyDVD said...

Chuck, about how much money are you saving on DVD's from Ingram. Also, how much would you be paying them for their RFID tags? Are they going to be charging for them to be put on the DVD's for you? Do you have access to a newsletter that you can set up for your customers? We have also recently received a contract with Universal Studios that they want us to sign. Did you get that?

Great stuff Chuck,

Sincerely,

Mike
http://readydvd.com

Mike and Chris,

Ok, have just gotten the approval to announce the following:

-- Ingram is ready, willing and able to put the RFID and load stickers on DVDs purchased from them for $0.29 cents per DVD. You need to provide the RFIDs and Load Stickers.

-- The pricing they have me loaded at is "Margin plus 5%". As an example, pre-order for Dark Knight was $18.92, Hancock was $19.26 and Wall-E was $18.94.

-- You can call Bill Watson, Ingram Sales Manager at 301 490-1166 and he will refer you to your local Ingram rep or if you already know who your local rep is have them mirror my account set up (DVD Rentals, LLC). They are going to treat us a buying group.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Chuck Newton

October 11, 2008 8:19 PM

chuck newton said...

Mike,

Sorry for the delayed response but I wanted to make sure it was ok to talk about my deal with Ingram. Anyway, the pricing is not significantly less although every little bit helps. With VPD we were paying an average of $19.07 and with Ingram we are paying an average of $18.50 or so. Since we have machines in WI and IL, the biggest savings for us is having Ingram put on the RFID tags and load stickers. They are charging approx $0.30 per DVD but we are saving $60.00 per week in shipping costs. If you order more than $25.00 per week, Ingram waives the shipping charges and since they are now shipping the DVD direct to the WI and IL locations, we do not incur the additional shipping charges. So for us, it makes sense. Ingram does not currently have a newsletter but I have mentioned it to them and they are looking into it. Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Chuck Newton

October 11, 2008 8:24 PM

Mike at ReadyDVD said...

Hi Chuck,
Where can we get in touch with them? I like the free shipping. That's getting pretty expensive with VPD. Also, do they have all the movies that VPD does? How much do they charge for the RFID tag on the movie?

Sincerely,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com

October 20, 2008 7:52 PM

Chris and Jerrae said...

The pricing I got from Ingram was pretty high. Can't remember exactly but it was significantly higher than VPD. Not sure if it's my volume of business vs. that of others.

My name is Chris and my wife and I are putting in kiosk in the Gilbert area of Arizona. Our company is DVD Express and we've had success with getting signed up to advertise on the kiosk before they go into a location.

Does anyone have any input on the types of TV's that work best on the kiosks?

October 23, 2008 7:47 AM

chuck newton said...

Mike and Chris,

Ok, have just gotten the approval to announce the following:

-- Ingram is ready, willing and able to put the RFID and load stickers on DVDs purchased from them for $0.29 cents per DVD. You need to provide the RFIDs and Load Stickers.

-- The pricing they have me loaded at is "Margin plus 5%". As an example, pre-order for Dark Knight was $18.92, Hancock was $19.26 and Wall-E was $18.94.

-- You can call Bill Watson, Ingram Sales Manager at 301 490-1166 and he will refer you to your local Ingram rep or if you already know who your local rep is have them mirror my account set up (DVD Rentals, LLC). They are going to treat us a buying group.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Chuck Newton

Getting Started in the Business Questions

Since there have been a few "getting started in the business" questions, I guess it's time to add a section just for that. In the DVDKiosk business, there are several things that we all want to know before we get into this business. One thing that is going to be impossible to answer is "How much money do you make in this business". Please remember, that I can tell you that I personally make more money than I put into the machines and overall costs. It varies from month to month though. I can't just give you a figure. Remember, takes effort on your end to determine how much you are going to make. There's nobody out there that can give you an exact dollar amount. Also, remember, DVDNow can't give you a dollar amount either. It's actually not legal for them to give you that information. I wouldn't want someone digging into my kiosks giving out information to others either. With that being said, here is the latest e-mail.

Sincerely,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com

lbaker2 said...

Hi Mike, Michelle and to all those of the "brotherhood" of the DVD rental business - my name is Laurie. I am located in a small town on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. (population - approx 15k) Have been doing extensive research, crunching numbers, and spending endless hours during the middle of the night contemplating if the DVD Kiosk rental business is a good fit for me without totally exhausting my children's college fund :) I am close to taking that big "leap" but have a few questions if anyone could help give me a better insight -
1) Return on Investment - could anyone give me an approximation of how long it took before they actually started seeing a profit?
1 yr - 18 months - 2 yrs ?

2)On an "average" -how many movies are rented out a night? (30? 40? 50) as I have no clue what to expect - we have only one grocer in town (Pauls IGA) and one video store (Movie Gallery) --currently no competition with another DVD Kiosk Business model - Pauls probably sees a minimum of 300 customers a day.

3)Are there possibly any hidden fees that I have not accounted for? (accounted for Distributor Cost, cases, tags, liablity insurance, Merchant Account fee, Web service fee, and 10% percent of walk up revenue to grocer. (what about State Business Licensing) - any State or Federal registrations required -any annual fees anyone can think of?

Thank you so much for your time in helping answer a few of the many, many questions that I think of throughout the day. Look forward to future blogging with everyone on site.
Laurie B

October 21, 2008 11:29 PM

Vendors worth Looking Into.

Funny how everyone has been finding this site and getting in touch with us about other sources of marketing. I guess, in my opinion, I'll post anyone that will make all of our businesses grow. If you are one of those people, go ahead and submit your information and we'll take a look at it. If it's something we think will work, we'll post it!

Sincerely,

Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com

Can I Compete with Redox?

I have recently had several folks call me and e-mail me and ask about competing with Redbox. Although I compete with them on a limited scale, I still do. I have not been affected by them whatsoever. I also look for areas where there really isn't any competition. In Montana, things are quite different than some of the areas in the country. Some of you will probably end up competing with them more than I have to. In Great Falls , MT there are several Redbox stores but they aren't that close to my machines. Also, overall, the price is only off by 99 cents. Big deal, who wants to drive for 99 cents. Anyway, I asked Scott McInnes about DVDNow machine owners and their results with going head to head with Redbox. Very interesting comments coming from the top.. See Below

Oh, by the way, Scott is the top dog at DVDNow... Some of you may have even had the opportunity to speak with him. I very much appreciate his time in answering this question for all of us

Sincerely,
http://readydvd.com


Hi Mike,

I know that you recommend that our owners not try to compete with
Redbox. I know that you've had success by not going head to head with
them. But, some of our other owners do really well when they do go up
against them. Some of our top machines are right in the middle of
Redbox territory. In my opinion, it is possible to go head to head
with Redbox but to do so you need to have aggressive pricing. I was
speaking with one of our owners in Salt Lake City and he does $.99 for
the first night and $1.49 for additional nights. He does very well.
There are positives and negatives to Redbox but in my opinion the
positives outweigh the negative.

The most compelling evidence we see is how much quicker kiosks get up
to a decent revenue level in Redbox areas vs. non-Redbox. Few of our
kiosks in Canada, South Africa, etc... do as well as the kiosks in the
United States. Redbox has done a great job of increasing people's
awareness of the benefits of renting from a kiosk. Now they're popular
to the point where the lineups to use their kiosks are causing people
to seek alternatives to Redbox.

I agree with you that if you're across the street from a Redbox you
can't charge the same as what you could if there was nothing else in
town. But, with the right strategy there is definitely an opportunity
to be successful on Redbox's turf.

YOUR PAY and How to Ban a Problem customer

If you run into any problems with certain customers that try to mess with the system of renting, it's very easy to ban them. Your machine is capable of keeping those problem folks from runing your rental business. I recently received a question regarding this (Thanks Deion). I think this will help all of you that use "yourpay"as your gateway.

Here's how to ban the "problematic customer"
As some of you know, my wife Michelle does most of this stuff for me. She's the brains behind the operation...

Hi Deion,
I will try and write how to list a card as fraudulent in Your Pay. I’m going be mostly memory here, but I will try and get it as close as possible to the real thing:

1) After logging into Your Pay, go to ADMIN on the top menu bar
2) Under Fraud Settings choose ADD/Change Credit Card Number to Block
3) It will bring up a screen : Fraud: Block Credit Card
4) Here you will input the entire credit card number, click the Add Arrows, and then it will drop into box on the right.
5) Then hit “Next”. That will take you to Fraud: Block Name
6) Enter the card holder’s name and “click” it over. I usually enter the name the way it appears in our kiosk software. I also enter it other ways, i.e. if it is listed as Weiland Mike, I will enter it as ‘Weiland Mike’ and also as ‘Mike Weiland’. I don’t know why some people’s names are last/first and some are first/last, so I enter it both ways. ALSO: If the name shows up as ‘Mike A Weiland’, I will enter it in Fraud as ‘Mike A Weiland’ and also as ‘Mike Weiland’. I think there is a help screen you can access for additional pointers. If you do the name, you can hopefully stop the guy from renting if he uses a card different than the one(s) you have already seen.

If you don’t know how to get the entire credit card number (our Connections software doesn’t show the entire number), you will need to find the Order Number of the transaction (either in Your Pay or Connections will have it if the sale is declined) and copy/paste it into YourPay’s “Ticket Only” option that is under POS. We won’t do anything with it here, but if you paste the Order Number there and hit Retrieve Order (or Next, I don’t remember what is says exactly), YourPay will retrieve the order and the entire card number will show there. That is where you can copy the card number and paste it into the Block Card Number when you go back into Fraud Settings.

Give it a try and feel free to email me if you encounter any problems.

Michelle

DVD Kiosk Slot Art for November 2008

Click on any of the images and then save them to one of your folders on your desktop. If you click on them to print after you've saved them, you should be able to tell your printer to print on a 5x7 Format. I use Microsoft Picture Editor to print them out. These are ReadyDVD's selections for the month of November. They did the best at the box office and should be excellent rentals for the month.

QUICK TIPS AND MAINTENANCE OF YOUR MACHINE - CLICK HERE

Sincerely,

Mike Weiland

http://readydvd.com/

IF YOU WANT A KIOSK IN YOUR AREA LET US KNOW

In the last couple of weeks, I've had 3 calls asking for Kiosks in stores. If you are someone that would like a Kiosk, or information on purchasing a Kiosk, please enter your information in this section. I do not want to get involved with selling used Kiosks on this site though. I don't want any hard feeling over it, but I don't want to be the source of bad blood if you get what I mean. I see that Gordon Atwell was on the blog the other day, you can call him about purchasing one. On the other hand, if you list your place below and you just want a kiosk in your business, just let everyone know the kind of business and the foot traffic your place of business has. Explain it a little and chances are that someone in your area may call you.

Sincerely,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com

Location Questions for DVDKiosk Machines

Location Questions: Ask your location Questions Here:

Miscellaneous Questions (anything you can think of)

Got any questions that don't have topics? Just drop it here and if it's something to start a new thread, I'll do it. I've had some questions that I've been answering within our e-mail contact but I am getting the questions several times now. Just drop it in guys and let's see who else responds.

Thanks,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com

Box Art and DVDKiosk Slot Inserts

Here's your chance to get ideas on Box Art and DVDKiosk side pannel inserts. I always get my Box art from VPD or the other links that I have posted on the lower right hand corner. Also, as you've probably noticed, I add all of my slot art to this blog so you can download it and use it for yourself. I always use Photoshop to drop in the release dates.

Better Merchant Account Pricing from Roy Neese at First Data

So many of you have asked me about merchant accounts and gateways. I've been doing a little bit of homework and so far, I am happy to tell you that I haven't found anyone that's been able to beat Roy Neese in Billings, MT. Yes, Billings... My hometown. I at one time I used a guy by the name of Chris Vayas from Global. This was someone that was recommended to me and after using them for several months, I was paying way too much for charges etc.. I was paying roughly 20% of my revenue to this merchant account. As all of you would have done, I went out on a searching spree to find the ultimate package to save our company the most money.

Over the course of about 2 months, we finally came up with First Data on the national level and our banks request that we check out Roy Neese from First Data on the local level too. It was awesome when we put the national guys plan together and compared it to Roy Neese's plan. It came down to where I asked the guy at the national level if he could beat Roy. He told me "no" and that he can't figure out how he's able to charge what he does. He asked his manager and they could beat Roy and he told him "no".

I am happy to say that I have been with Roy ever since. He's saved me money with his company's plan and I couldn't be happier. Again, I asked him if he could be available to all of you that have a concern on your charges. He's available to run the same plan to you that he has with me and several others that have now converted over to him. Since Roy still represents First Data, you can use them but you need to call Roy and use "FIRSTDATAMT" as your merchant account and choose who you want to use as your gateway. If you like 3C's, use them, If you like "Your Pay", use them. USE THE CODE "FIRSTDATAMT" as the Code for the Kiosk charging system that Roy uses for us.

For those of you that are just getting started, call Roy before you sign anything. He'll analyze it for you and explain these plans to you. Sometimes it's hard finding someone you can trust. I'm happy to tell you that he's very reliable and someone you can call if you ever need anything.

Sincerely,
Mike Weiland
http://readydvd.com