Walden Media has had a habit of producing movies based on award winning children's books. Research indicates that in many cases this company will spend around 30 million dollars to make some of their movies (more for a select group of titles). Many will look at Walden Media and see successes like Chronicles of Narnia or Bridge to Terabithia and judge their other titles to be of little success.



In a world dominated by blockbuster titles it would seem some of Walden Media's titles are small potatoes in comparison, but I think Walden Media's strategies can shed some light on solid strategies for moneymaking ideas.

Some movies take big risks and pay big bucks and then make it back quickly over a short period of time. For instance Iron Man had a budget of around 130 million dollars and made close to 150 million in its first two weeks out. On the other side of the ledger there are big budget movies that lost a lot of money for their makers because while the expenses were high the movie failed to meet the expectations of viewers and bad consumer reviews effectively killed the film.

Walden Media has been content with accepting movie releases with a profit margin of 25% or more. Of course when you are talking about millions of dollars that's not bad. However they don't stop there. Because Walden Media has a commitment to bring time-honored books to life they are finding inroads into schools with related educational products. In essence the success of the movies is only part of the overall equation for Walden. They want the movies to have an impact on future generations with the ability to impact those children in the context of education.

Walden Media seems to be taking a long-term strategy as it relates to their offerings. The wild successes of movies like the Chronicles of Narnia series allow the company to pursue other projects that may have a slimmer profit margin.

For schools that may be used to less than Hollywood production values for materials viewed in classrooms this strategy could place Walden as one of the most sought after educational media sources for schools.

Now that's a long-term strategy.

OK, now to the practical application side of the ledger. If you can factor in a long-term strategy for your product you might be able to accept a staggered profit acceptance allowing your product multiple levels of opportunity.

In keeping with the Walden Media example, can you allow a standard retail price to let you to sell your products to educational or non-profit organizations at a reduced price?

Can you structure your company to provide a mechanism to help someone else? Some may call this corporate giving or corporate responsibility, but it may all come down to exceptional management skills.

If you can find ways to make your marketing work on many different levels you have the greatest potential of creating opportunities and developing related products.

Grow your moneymaking idea through diversity and multi-level execution. In other words learn to do more than one thing with your product and find multiple markets for it in order to assure the greatest success.