Marilyn has baseball knowledge, presentation skills, and she attracts men. Combine all three: make videos with her analysis of baseball and make money through advertising, sponsorships, and endorsements.

Once the product is established, we would produce a video about a baseball topic she analyzed. Examples include an important game, a trade, player development, the draft, trends on a particular team, and trends in baseball. Videos would tend to be around 3.5 minutes long, and they would tend to analyze only one topic. Marilyn’s website would include all of the videos and make it easy to find videos based on topic, team, player, or other criteria that we identify as useful.

Optional: at the end of the video, Marilyn would have a public service announcement promoting a charity, volunteer opportunity, or issue that she is interested in. We would reuse these announcements.

Advertisements would generate the most money. Each video will have a “Sponsored by” company logo. The sponsorship would be displayed during the majority of the video. The video would also have a 10-30 second advertisement for the sponsor. The YouTube page and website would also link to the sponsor. Finally, the website would have banner ads and offer all of the sophisticated targeting possible with online ads.

Starting up

Borrow a camera. Rental cameras are available when necessary. During the off-season, do team profiles: where they are at, where they are going, spring training information, etc. Make videos about major changes. Do not start the website, just post videos to YouTube. For Chicago-related videos, it may be possible to find a local sponsor that does not pay well but it will get the revenue ball rolling.

Potential topics

1. In general:
   1. People are searching for this topic
   2. People will forward this topic
   3. Either current news or something people will view for a long time. Can some videos be both?
2. How to videos, especially featuring a baseball player. e.g., How to throw a curveball—with Roger Clemens.
3. Spring training
   1. Stadiums
   2. Kitschy stuff: best hot dogs
   3. Pictures of Marilyn eating hot dogs
4. Charity involvement
5. Interviews, especially new players on teams so the fans can get to know them
6. New stadium profiles
7. Have a contest/project with the viewers to use Google modeler to model all of the stadiums
8. On this day one hundred years ago.
9. World Baseball Classic in March
10. Hall of Fame induction
11. Fans booing their own team
12. Marilyn hates the wave
13. Legal issues

Costs

1. Camera
2. Lighting
3. Computer
4. Internet connection
5. Domain name
6. Web hosting/email
7. Email listserv
8. Travel
9. Makeup and hair
10. Wardrobe

Notes

Put studio or camera in Marilyn’s apartment so she can record any time she wants.

It is important to make videos that people will watch for years. A video about baseball strategy will eventually get more views than a video about a playoff game. The long-term money is in making videos that get two-million views. On the other hand, by regularly producing videos about current events, we will build a regular audience. The regular audience will automatically generate thousands of views for every video.

Marilyn thinks Rachel Maddow is “very informative yet totally un-boring and un-stuffy.”