Behind the scenes peek at how a product becomes a TV hit

CLEVELAND - Billy Mays was the king of infomercials. His name will always be synonymous with products like Oxi Clean and Ding King.

What makes products like those endorsed by Mays so popular? We went behind the scenes at Media Enterprises to find out.

"He wouldn't do a product unless he tried it and loved it," said Bill McAlister, Media Enterprises President of Direct Response & Product Sourcing.

McAlister runs an As Seen On TV business and worked with the TV pitchman before his sudden death in 2009. In an industry where only one out of every 40 TV ads works, Mays made it happen.

"Almost everything we put him on, except for one or two commercials, worked," McAlister said.

So, what makes a product a hot selling As Seen On TV item?

"A product has to be demonstrable. It has to be different. It has to be unique," McAlister said.

Inventor Brian Fried knows it takes a lot of pitches to get someone to buy into your product. His suitcase has everything from pots and pans to a product made from pantyhose.

"You can take a vacuum hose and put it in here. You put your hand through and the hose is connected up, and now you can clean between a crevice or space," Fried said, demonstrating an invention called the Vacuum Mit.

"I would never use that name. The name is too boring," McAlister said. A catchy name, crazy claim and over the top commercial are keys to selling an As Seen On TV product.

"It has the strength to pull this 80,000-pound fully loaded tractor trailer. Now, that's the power of Mighty Putty," Billy Mays said, in a Mighty Putty commercial.

The demonstration makes the putty seem strong, but McAlister wanted something bigger and better.

"I wanted it to pull a jet, but we couldn't get on there because of security reasons so we wound up pulling an 80,000-pound tractor trailer," McAlister said.

Reporter Jenn Strathman at our news partner in Cleveland asked, "Do you ever have to do some TV magic? Do some creative editing to make it work?"

"No. You can't. In the old days, I heard stories of a lot of people who tried to fudge it, but now the Federal Trade Commission is there waiting and that's good," McAlister said.

Product claims are tested at outside labs, but sometimes products fail during testing and even filming. McAlister this recently happened with an iPhone case that protects your phone if you drop it.

"We dropped it from 10 stories and it broke," McAlister said.

Strathman asked, "So what are you going to do?"

McAlister answered, "Well they are prototypes so they didn't put enough iGel in them or something, but those are things you have to make sure it does so we stopped the commercial and shooting it."

Consumers are used to commercials making everything look easy, but in real life our testers sometimes can't duplicate the results.

"Almost every time they don't read the directions," McAlister said. While McAlister admits his company gets consumer complaints, he said ask yourself when you last complimented a company for a good product.

Sales are the driving force behind the success of the products. There are some products that simply flop like a product that eliminates the need for laundry detergent.

We also asked about those pesky shipping and handling fees that often double the price of an item. He said it's all economics. The price point for many items dropped with the downturn in the economy. Shipping and handling costs help cover the difference and get the average price point up.