The market has become saturated with infomercials about everything from exercise bikes to acne medicine. But are they effective? Just look at the number of Paid Programming blocks on your station guide in the morning or late in the evening and you’ll see that must be working for someone. Every station runs them continuously for hours in these time blocks.

Forget the infomercial route unless you’ve come up with a surefire invention or product that no one else represents or is marketing. Test the concept locally before shelling out any money for a full-fledged infomercial because these half-hour sales programs are expensive to produce.

There are, however, companies in nearly every major metropolitan market that are willing to produce infomercials on spec in exchange for a cut of the profits. Call local production companies to see if they can direct you to one that will look at spec infomercial projects.

Remember, for every infomercial that makes money, 20 never recoup the cost of product development, let alone marketing, production costs and the media buys required to place the commercials on the air. Not everyone can be a Don Dupree, Ron Popeil or Carlton Sheets.