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Danny is an awesome video creator… He teaches you stuff and it’s fun to watch!

Have you seen Microsoft’s new (revamped) search engine “Bing” yet?

Pretty cool.

Every day, there’s a different picture when you start out, and when you rest your mouse on different parts of the picture, you can see little tags of information. Today, it’s Denali National Park, home to Mt. McKinley. If you want to see where it is, there’s a link to the map. If you want to know about dog sledding (because it’s how rangers patrol the park in winter), there’s a link for that. Pretty interesting, I think. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be tomorrow. That’s totally non-Google, eh? Nice!

When you do an actual search, it’s simplified. I did a search for “eye glasses” just because it was on top of my mind. I need new ones, and I got the usual results. Eyeglasses.com came up first. But over to the left-hand side, I get “Women, Men, Babies, Kids…” This engine gives you categories to make searching easier.

The usual tabs are at the top… “Web, Video, Images, News, Maps, More…” And the suggested searches, rather than being at the bottom of the page, like they are at Google, are in a left-hand sidebar.

I’m not sure that Bing will overtake Google anytime soon, but that remains to be seen. It’s just fun to play around with because it’s not the same old thang… ya know?

Here’s a video I hope you enjoy. We posted it to YouTube a while back, but I’m telling you… if you’re marketing online and you’re NOT writing articles, you totally need to start, and here’s why…

Want more? Lots of stuff on our channel… Check it out: ListBuilding Club Videos

Remember a long time ago, I told you about a product that I created with Tellman, called Spider Language? Well, we’ve been working on it and tweaking it and making things all come together. It’s been a long five months as we went back and forth with the format and the set up and whatever…

We tried it a few weeks ago with a smaller list, and things have been going well, so we launched it to the whole list this weekend! I can’t tell you how excited I am that so many folks decided to take us up on the trial. (You can see what’s happening at http://SpiderLanguage.com)

I want to teach everyone that SEO isn’t as hard as they think. Oh sure, there are some very technical aspects that you can get into that are difficult to learn, but if you’re a webmaster and not a professional SEO that spends 24/7 on optimizing for the search engines, you really need the basics and you need them presented to you in a way that’s easy to grasp and retain. I think we’ve done that.

The course is presented in weekly installments with a video or two to back up the written learning. There are checklists that you can use to just fly through this stuff when you’re ready to pursue a task. And there’s homework. You need to learn this stuff with a hands-on mentality. I never learn something entirely until I do it myself, so I think that’s a very important component.

The other thing I want to teach folks is that SEO should permeate every single activity you do online–blogging, articles, press releases, videos, even Twitter… everything!

And so we’ll be talking about each of those areas, too, as the weeks roll on.

I’m really excited about this, and hope that everyone who signs up will be, too. SEO is something I totally love, and I don’t want folks to fear it because it’s too hard to learn. Come with me… I’ll make it easy for you, and you’ll be amazed at how you can really put this to work and get some of that free, targeted traffic that people are always talking about.  Isn’t that what you really want? I’ll show you how it’s done.

If you have studied copywriting at any level, you’ll have heard the term “swipe file” often. That’s just a collection of headlines or really good sales copy that can be modeled. It can’t be used verbatim, of course, because that would be plagiarism, but you can rewrite what you find, and even the best copywriters do this all the time.

The constant pace of blogging can be demanding. When you’re first starting a blog, it’s important to write in that blog seven days a week. Then, once you have a following, you can cut back to five days and then three, and still maintain an audience. But the reality is, the more you post, the bigger your audience will grow, unless you’re a total moron and posting crap all the time. Hopefully, you have some cool stuff to mention about your niche to keep your audience engaged, but you must be consistent.

Sporadic blogging is very bad. It just shows that you’re lackadaisical, that you’re not really passionate about your topic, and it might indicate to the people you’re trying to impress that you’re a slacker. Not good.

However, potential bloggers are often aghast at the idea of writing every day!

You have to realize that blogging isn’t ALL about writing. It can be about video. You can make them yourself or just snatch them from YouTube. You can make audio recordings. You can add pictures with captions. There are lots of ways to be blogging.

You don’t have to be tied to your computer, either. WordPress allows you to write now and publish later. You only need click the “edit” link next to “Publish immediately” in the right-hand side of the “Add New Post” page and set your posting date and time. So, you can add 5 posts at the same time, and schedule them to go out 5 days in a row.

This is great for people who like to write Looooong posts. They shouldn’t be more than 500 words, so break them down over two or three days, if that’s the case. A good length is really about 350 words.

A good way to get ideas is by keeping a blogger’s “swipe file.” During the day, as I’m working on other projects, I see sites I may want to blog about later, so I just bookmark them and add them to my blogging ideas file. Then, later in the day, I can go back and write about what I found. These files can include Twitter remarks, websites, even emails that I get. All of them go into the hopper.

It sure makes writing a lot easier. Instead of sitting here at the keyboard trying to come up with something at the end of the day when I’m exhausted, I just go to my file, check around for something I can write about and then, I’m here pounding the keys or posting something to amaze and delight.

Well.. at least I hope so.

Click Here to Learn More about Writing from a Professional Writer

We have a premium level of The ListBuilding Club called “ListBuilding 411,” where members can ask a question each day and one of the Overcome Everything team answers it on video within 24 hours. It’s an awesome service, and I wish it had been available when I was learning. It could have shaved years off my learning curve.

Anyway, today, one of our clients asked how he could get 4 spreadsheets with multiple pages online so that he could collaborate with others. I was amazed that he’d never heard of Google Docs! And then, I’m thinking… Wait.  People know how to search with Google, but most folks don’t really get the power of Google!

Google Docs is a great way to store information online. It not only gives you the ability to get to it anytime you need to as long as you have an Internet connection, it gives you the ability to share with other folks and to keep it all private. Google Docs is great!

Of course, it’s not without limitations and irritations. Like sometimes, it won’t let you paste stuff in where you want it to go, or you can’t export or well… it’s just NOT as adaptable as MS Office applications, but it’s still worth the effort to get in there and try it. Why not? It’s free.

Google has given us a whole bunch of stuff that’s free and very helpful.

Google Calendar can help you plan your schedule.

Google Maps is more accurate than MapQuest, in my opinion, and with Google Earth, we can see our own street or what’s going on in London at 2 a..m. Why not?

Whatever would we do without GMail, and Picasa? Email and photos are all that some people do online, right?

Lest we forget, there’s Google Video and Shopping and blogs at Blogger.  And now, they’re even putting books online for us! There’s Google Alerts, so we can see what people are saying about any topic, Google Translate, and Google for our mobile phones.

But did you know that you can also create 3-D images at Google Sketchup, create your own keyboard shortcuts, let you see You Tube videos or Picassa images right in your Gmail messages, and a whole lot more through Google Labs.

Google is getting to be a very powerful resource (as though it wasn’t powerful enough already). Try some of the “hidden” perks of Google, and you might find a whole new world of stuff to help you or waste your time and not have to pay a single dime. Amazing.

I just had to… This one really cracked me up!

I have spent the past couple of years touting the coolness of the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. This one lets you add a title and description to every post you make, which is super important for SEO. As I’ve mentioned here before, the title and description are the most important parts of any web page, and the benefit of being able to add these to every post you make is HUGE!

Then today, I was reading an article in SiteProNews, “Blogs, WordPress and Google,” by Scott Van Achte and I was curious. So… I headed over to Urban Giraffe, and watched the video:

So, I’m thinking I’ll give it a try. I installed it and then went in to tweak the settings. Wow! You can give a title and description to every KIND of page in your blog: categories, tags, about, even 404. Making each one individual is a great help for your SEO advantage.

And, as you see in the video, it will suggest tags and keywords for you from the post. Pretty cool, I’d say.

I’m going to try it for a few days and see how I like it. If it’s as good as it looks, it could be my new recommendation. So far, I like it!

After you make a post, you go down to the HeadSpace area, and click on Page Title. Your title automatically populates. It creates a description for you that you can easily edit. AND, it suggests tags from what you’ve written, too.

I think I’m in love.

Go to http://SeesMic.com and open a free account!

Keep in mind that the quality of my webcam isn’t that great. If you have a better one, your mileage may vary.

Search for PatMarcello, and be my friend. I have about 70 videos in there now that answer various questions about Internet marketing.

Be my friend, and I’ll check out your videos, too!

Thanks to Brian Edmondson, who makes all the videos for Overcome Everything’s ListBuilding Club, I found a new flash player for my EasyBlogTricks.com blog. I need to do an overhaul there because of the changes to WordPress 2.7, but haven’t had the time. Still, this new player will really make things easier for me. I’ve had lots of trouble keeping the videos (especially the video on the front door) working.

I think I have a solution!

The site is LongTail Video at: http://www.longtailvideo.com/

There are complete installation instructions, and you can download the player free, as long as you’re not using it for commercial gain. Since EasyBlogTricks.com is just an information site, I can use it with the non-commercial license. But if it works as well as I think it will, I’ll definitely buy a commercial license for only 39 Euros, which translates to about $50. You may think that’s a lot for a video player, but this one is very customizable. It rocks!

There are plugins for things like:

• Running rolling ads in the player. Stick one into your blog’s sidebar.
• WordTube converts your site to a “YouTube” type environment in a WordPress blog. Neat.
• Viral allows you to have a share function and will allow viewers to see other videos you have created

There are different skins you can choose from, as well, from simple to insane.

The add-ons are quite interesting, too. Here’s one made just for my specific purpose:

“The Simple Flash Video Plugin builds on the plugins that already allow easy posting of .flv or .mp4 files on the popular Wordpress platform. It also enables advanced stats tracking of your viewership via Simple Stats.”

Sweet! Tracking stats and a cool player, too!

If you’re into video, and you should be, this is a site you should definitely check out. I’m learning more about video and all the cool things you can do with it every day, and it’s becoming the medium of choice online. Think of these things:

• People are used to watching TV. It’s only natural that since the speed of our connections continues to improve that video will become more and more popular with the Internet audience. Just look at YouTube and how fast it’s grown over the past 3 years.
• Creating video is often easier than writing. Many people hate to write, and video is a perfect solution. Video products will become the norm, rather than the exception.
• Video is fun to create and to edit. Making short films and editing them to show to an audience is getter easier and more fun to do all the time.

So, it’s time you jumped into video. If you’re already there, trust me… you need to check out LongTail and their very cool product.

Do you love all things Web 2.0 like I do?

Well…

Do you love video?

I have a great place for you: Seesmic.com

You can go there and post really short videos and get to know people on the site. They respond to your posts by making return video comments and such, and it’s a whole lot of fun. Kind of like the old bulletin board days, but with moving pictures, rather than text entries. It rocks!

You will need a webcam, though. The Flip Video just doesn’t seem to work with Seesmic. They don’t accept the .avi format that Flip Vid uses, so you have to convert your video to .flv or .mp4. I tried that and it still didn’t work for me, but oh well… I’m not a video genius. If anyone can help with that, it would rock. Flip Vid is far superior to what I’m using.

I have this crappy web cam that I got free with something I bought. It’s really old and makes fuzzy pictures, but nobody cares. Everyone is there having fun and communicating with the rest of the world.

Check it out: http://seesmic.com

It’s a blast!

Are you using video successfully? Have you even started to include video in your traffic routines? Here’s the thing: People want it!  The demand for video is rising, and according to eMarketer.com, by 2012, which is only 3 short years away, 88% of all Internet users will be

watching video, and 80.9% of us will be using it in our marketing campaigns. That’s huge!

So, what do you put in a video?

If you’re in a niche, you’re obviously an expert in that niche. You know things that other people don’ t know. So, give them an interesting factoid about your niche, or teach them something they need to know.

The trick is to make the video interesting. If you don’t, no one will watch it. To make it interesting, it shouldn’t just be you on the camera droning away about  something. A great blog is http://DearTellman.com where you can watch Tellman answer questions. Notice how he does it. He’s animated; he’s on fire! Plus, he gives stuff away, everyone adds comments and video comments, and it’s really cool.

If you just suck at making videos, pay someone else to do it for you. Just be sure that you’re getting your URL into every frame. Make a watermark or a callout and be sure that people are seeing information about  how to get to your website.

Keep the video short, too. You know that most of us have environmental ADD, right? I mean, anyone under about 40 grew up with Sesame Street. They gave things in short bursts to keep kids attention.

Well, Internet viewers are kind of like those Sesame Street kids, who are all grown up now. If you don’t give them something quick and clean, you won’t keep their attention. Videos should be 5 minutes, which is ideal, but probably less than 10 minutes. If you have a very long story to tell, think about chunking the information down in a series of videos, rather than making one long one.

Get a Flip Vid, too, as I’ve mentioned before. They totally rock. I can’t wait to take mine to JVAlert next month! You’ll be getting some cool stuff from there, for sure!

You realize, of course, that video is taking over the Web, right?  I mean, with all the video sites online, it’s become so easy to just watch instead of read. We’ve been trained to watch since birth. Yes, even people my age grew up with television.  But the Internet brought us back to the written word. The connections just weren’t fast enough to make video viable.

I remember way back in the  late 90’s when I was amazed that someone could actually watch a video on a 56K modem, and was pissed because mine was only 28K. I had to upgrade!

Well…

How things have changed in a little more than a decade. Now, the Internet is full of site, sound and moving pictures. It’s awesome!

There are several ways that you can get online with your own personal movie. You can use a web cam, which is pretty inexpensive, or perhaps you have one of those newer laptops with the web cam built right in. Sweet.  Yet, there are drawbacks to web cams. You can’t leave the computer.

In steps the Flip Video from Pure Digital Technologies. I have the Mino. No, not the HD version. Got mine before that was available. But as my husband says, I don’t need you folks seeing every line on my face. It’s bad enough, already.

But I love it. You turn it on, point, and record. That’s it! It even has it’s own USB connector, and you just open it up and transfer the film into your computer.  It comes with software built right in, as well. You can’t do much editing with it, so you’ll still need Camtasia, Cam Studio, Windows Movie Maker, Sony Vegas, or another editing software to make the films A-#1, the Duke, but it’s fun.

Yesterday, Tellman turned me onto Seesmic.com, where you can post a question and start a conversation on video. I answered a couple of his, but I’m going to start posting questions of my own soon enough. It’s a blast! Only problem there is that I can’t seem to upload from the Flip Vid to Seesmic. I was able to make videos with my crappy web cam and post them, so before I really get into the swing there, I need a better web cam.

Anyway, if you aren’t into video yet, get into it! It’s an awesome SEO tool, as well. When you post to multiple directories, and use the proper keywords and descriptions, you’ll see traffic to your site. And now that Google has universal search going, your videos will actually show up in the SERPs. (Search engine results pages.) Cool, non?

So, I opened this free site last week called EasyBlogTricks.com, right? It’s all about the tech stuff when it comes to blog. Just simple stuff, like installing a blog on your own server, using plugins, changing your theme and stuff like that. Easy for me, but hard for people who aren’t experienced, and so…

Everything was working until I got an email from one of my site members saying that the video wouldn’t play. I’m like, “Sure it does. Just let it load.” Mea culpa. I didn’t check the site in Internet Explorer, a HUGE duh on my part, and something I never remember to do.

So, then, the trial became how do I do this so that the videos play in Internet Explorer, right?

Grr…

It is very difficult to find out how to do that online, and so I thought I’d give you the simple, down and dirty.

Down at the bottom of your HTML page for the video, there is a <–comment–> that says:

“<!– Users looking for simple object / embed tags can copy and paste the needed tags below.”

and it makes this block of code all comment because it ends with –>

So, I’m thinking, OK (and while we’re at it, let’s just say I’m a very good PHP guesser. I haven’t a clue how to write it. I understand what it says, and over time, I’m sure I’ll be clicking away writing code, too. Don’t know why, but I just think it’s a good skill to have.

Anyway, I copied this whole block of comment, and added it into the HTML Write window of WordPress, it didn’t work. So, I looked at the code, and realized that I needed to add the full path to my video, so it’s like this:

<div id=”media”>

<object id=”csSWF” classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”400″ height=”318″ codebase=”http://active.macromedia.com/flash7/cabs/ swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0″>

<param name=”src” value=”ping.mp4″/>

<param name=”bgcolor” value=”#1a1a1a”/>

<param name=”quality” value=”best”/>

<param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”/>

<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/>

<param name=”scale” value=”showall”/>

<param name=”flashVars” value=”autostart=false”/>

<embed name=”csSWF” src=”ping.mp4″ width=”400″ height=”318″ bgcolor=”#1a1a1a” quality=”best” allowScriptAccess=”always” allowFullScreen=”true” scale=”showall” flashVars=”autostart=false&color=0×1A1A1A,0×1A1A1A” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash”></embed>

</object>

</div>

But here’s what I did wrong…

All I needed to use was what’s inside the <embed></embed> tags, and center them. Then, put <div></div> tags around it, so make it look like this:

<div>
<center><embed name=”csSWF” src=”http://yourdomain.com/video/video.mp4” width=”400″ height=”318″ bgcolor=”#1a1a1a” quality=”best” allowScriptAccess=”always” allowFullScreen=”true” scale=”showall” flashVars=”autostart=false&color=0×1A1A1A,0×1A1A1A” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash”></embed></center>

</div>

Notice the path to the video. Just tell the browser where the video lives, give it the URL.

And voila! It worked. I should have saved the page that, just in passing, mentioned that you only use the portion that says <embed>.  Argh! I mean, it was obscure information. Why should it be so hard?

I’ll bet you that there are programmers having a good laugh.

But you know, being stupid about a subject is great! You get to learn every single day. I learn by doing, so the more I do, the more I take chances and mess around with this stuff, the more proficient I become. It’s great! Learning things is what really turns me on. Love to learn.

What’s that Nike used to say?

“Just do it!”

So, I installed a blog for Tellman and company a week or two ago called “Dear Tellman.” It’s pretty cool because you can go over there and ask Tellman any question you want, and every day he picks one and answers it on video.

Well… today’s was just too good not to share:

Gotta love it! Jim Morrison, one of our tech guys did all the cool backgrounds. How abou the roller coaster? That was awesome! And Torger. Is he adorable or what? I haven’t seen him for 18 months. Wow! He’s a big guy now.

Had to share. Go over to http://DearTellman.com and ask a question now! I can’t wait for the next video.

I don’t know about you, but I make a lot of videos. I make training videos for work, videos for my website, and videos that I just throw up on the Web, like the one I uploaded to this site yesterday. I love making videos, and I really like them to come out professionally done. Let’s just say that I’m getting much better at that.

If you want to see some cool videos I made for Overcome Everything, just go to YouTube and search for OEVideos1 and you’ll see a bunch of them. Mine are the pretty PowerPoint ones. I mean, there are some crazy Tellman videos and some that Brian made, but you’ll notice mine right off.

Anyway, do you know how I get those videos delivered to 30 video sites, the audio portion to podcast sites, to a couple of blogs, and have them all social bookmarked at the same time?!?!?!

Traffic Geyser. It rocks.

In honor of their second birthday (and I was on the phone with Mike Koenigs when he was getting ready to launch the site at OE, as I recall), Mike has made some KILLER videos. Just cool info. You can watch the first one at:

http://easyseotricks.com/tgeyser1

and the second at

http://easyseotricks.com/tgeyser2

And then, you’ll be notified of the others. I think there are 5 in all, and they’re sweet!

Anyway, Traffic Geyser totally sings, and if you aren’t a member, but are used to making videos or want to make them, let me tell you what a freakin’ time saver Traffic Geyser is! I mean, uploading videos takes a long time, if you’re on DSL like I am. If I had to upload to 30 sites, that would take more than a day.

With Traffic Geyser, all I have to do is upload it once, and their software does the rest. You can even make video squeeze pages and choose a cool player there, too. Nice, eh?

Anyway, the site is owned by Mike Koenigs, Rocket Helstrom, and Frank Sousa, who I have been lucky enough to meet at the JVAlert seminars. Frank has never missed one! He’s a really nice guy, too.

So, check out the videos at least… Trust me; they’re totally worth the short time that it takes to watch them.

And enjoy!

Over the past year or so, I’ve become quite enamored of video. I’ve been making lots of short films for my blogging business, for Overcome Everything, and for a special project I’ve been working on for more than a year. If you want to get into a sci-fi video novel, this is my client’s site: http://CugelsCastle.com

Anyway, these are all different types of videos… screen capture, talking head, and Power Point. The first thing I did was buy Camtasia. Why not, right? Everyone uses Camtasia.

OK… Works great for most stuff, but when I started working with the video novel, I bought Sony Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop. Wow! I mean it’s so much more powerful! It’s very easy to add rolling credits, a watermark, and to edit. I totally love it. I know I’m only scratching the surface with the software, so I plan to learn tons more about that.

Cameras were a problem, too, believe it or not. We bought a digital camcorder last year and though that would do the best job for the talking head videos. Wrong. When it came time to render them, it was a total hassle. I had to reformat them, and then the sound didn’t always meet the facial expression. I worked that out with Vegas, but there were just a ton of glitchy things that happened.

Well…

Brian Edmondson, our resident video guy at Overcome Everything, told me to get the Mino Flip Video Camera. It’s like $150 less than we paid for the other camera we bought, so I didn’t think too much about it. Then, Brian made some videos with it for The LIst Building Club, and the picture and sound were so clear that I went out the same night that I had seen Brian’s videos and bought one for less than $200.

Wow!

If you’re doing video or contemplating it, the Flip Cam is the easiest way to go. I LOVE that thing! Plus, you can take it anywhere because it’s so slim and small. (Yeah, I was lucky enough to have waited until the slimmer version came out.) It’s just the best.

So, if you’re hesitating about doing video, don’t. It’s becoming more and more important online.  And, I have some great advice for you, which can save you tons of aggravation and time:

1) Get a Flip Cam

by Douglas Spotted Eagle

2) Get the free version of Sony Vegas and work with it until you feel you’re ready to upgrade. Then, work with it for a while. Try not to get too frustrated. But if you do, there’s a book you ca buy: Sony Vegas Pro 8 by Douglas Spotted Eagle. I haven’t had to look much up, but it sure comes in handy when you’re scratching your head.

3) If you’re lucky enough to be in Stomper Net, watch the Stomper Vision videos by Mike Stewart. Awesome! If you aren’t in Stomper, buy the course. It’s totally worth it and helped me to understand Vegas a whole lot better.

And then, shoot some video! It’s a blast!

In my travels, I’ve become involved with tons and tons of video. I mean, we use video in The ListBuilding Club. I use video in my own site, Blogging4Boomers.com and with various other projects. I really enjoy it and we just bought a Mino Flip Cam. It totally rocks! It’s so simple that anyone can use it. Point and make a video.

Where I find issue is with distribution. I mean I like Tube Mogul a lot. It’s a free distribution service, but it only sends out videos, no podcasts, and no social bookmarks, either. But it has better stats than other services.

We’ve been using Traffic Geyser and when I say “we” I mean, me personally and Overcome Everything. We use it for all of the videos we send out (and that’s a LOT of videos). It’s a great way to submit not just the video but the podcast, a blog entry, and the social bookmarking is included. It’s $97 a month, but you can get a $1 trial.

However, I’m finding that some of my descriptions aren’t getting through, so no option is perfect.

But…

My friend, Cyndi Parker, has just opened a site called Easy Push Button Traffic. It’s the same price as Traffic Geyser, and it not only distributes video and podcasts, it also distributes articles and press releases. How cool is that?

If the software works as well as the affiliate manager does, it’s sweet! It’s probably the best affiliate area I’ve seen. Lots of tools, all well organized, and I know Cyndi. She’s a very cool lady.

Anyway, it’s an alternative to Traffic Geyser, which I also enjoy. I encourage you to check them both out and see which one is right for you.

I remember when Traffic Geyser first opened. Tellman had Mike Koenigs on a call with us and we were all like, cool. Sounds like it can be a useful site. That was almost 2 years ago.

If you don’t know what Traffic Geyser is all about, it’s a video distribution site. You upload your video one time and Traffic Geyser does the rest for you. You can upload it to like 30 video sites now, the audio to like 16 podcasting sites, and bookmark it in 10 social bookmarking sites at the same time. How cool is that?

Wasn’t that big when they started out, and why I said it keeps getting better.

Plus, when you upload the video, you get to add tags, a good SEO title and a description which goes along with it to whatever site you submit it to via TG.

The biggest downside is that you have to go and join all the video sites, podcasting sites, etc. Still, it’s a small price to pay for getting the tool to work for you. Very powerful stuff.

Oh, and I forgot. It will distribute to blogs, too. You can choose from some of the hosted solutions or even customize and have it sent to your stand-alone WordPress blog. Kewl?

If you’re using video and not using Traffic Geyser, you’re wasting a WHOLE lot of time.

I don’t know about you but I’m a huge fan of Brad Fallon’s Free Line Report. Actually, whatever Brad does is always stellar, and I always read his SEO blog, even before StomperNet, but this video short is something you can watch in a couple of minutes and get some really awesome stuff!

Yesterday, for example, Brad turned readers (watchers… it’s a video and written blog) on to several free video sites that rock. I’m trying out Jumpcut right now to see how it does with video editing. But he mentioned five totally great resources for photo and video bugs. They were each interesting and awesome in their ways.

Today, we got stuff about Firefox 3.01, which I didn’t know was out. (Thanks, Brad. You made it easy to jump on over and get the update.) But he also gave us stuff about ClipMarks (OK, I knew about that one, and BTW, your link is broken.), a tab solution, and one very interesting plugin that keeps you abreast of the competition called Niche Watch. Only problem there is that it’s for older versions of Firefox, and I totally love SEOQuake, even if it’s not working so hot with Google searches right now.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Brad Fallon gives great content every week day and I just love it. In fact, if you follow Brad on Twitter, you can see the minute the report comes out. Pretty sweet.

I’m getting to be a real whiz with Camtasia. I guess when you make enough videos, that happens. Well, if you go through Camtasia’s course, which I plan to do someday, you know all this stuff up front. But I’m the kind of chick who likes to learn by doing, you know. I just jump right in and only look for help when I want to do something that I think is cool, but don’t know how to do. I’m terrible that way. I never read directions, either.

Anyway, today, I was making a pretty simple video, and I didn’t like the beginning. But… I thought. [see the little light bulb go on over Pat's head] Well… hmm… a PowerPoint could spice this up a bit.

But the trouble was: How the heck do I get the video and the PowerPoint to live together in one short film?

huh.

Well, when I thought about it, it was pretty simple actually.

• Record a video for both the PowerPoint and the screen capture. (I did the screen capture first, which was smart because then, I knew what I had to say when recording the PowerPoint. I left pauses where I wanted the video to kick in, you know? You can edit those out, which is pretty cool.)

• Then, on the storyline, put the PowerPoint in first, then split it where you want the video to come in.

• Plug in the screen capture video at that point

• You can split the video where you want the PowerPoint to come back. If it’s the end, that’s really easy because the end of the PowerPoint will still be there. But if you want PowerPoint and video to alternate, you can just continue splitting and alternating.

You may think it makes things jerky, and it probably will if you do it too much. Yet, Camtasia does a good job of making smooth transitions. You can always add transition screens to make it look even cooler, too.

This is probably soup simple for the video tech heads, but it’s an adventure for moi.

I’m really getting into this video creation stuff. It’s not just fun, it’s important! I really think it’s the way of the Web, folks. If you’re not at least exploring the possibilities of video, you’re behind the curve. I’m learning a lot working with Brian Edmondson, who’s doing some kick butt stuff for Overcome Everything, too. Brian is da video guy and he rocks.

But… I’ve also been watching Andy Jenkins’ videos about making videos over at StomperNet. Whoa.

Nothing like learning from a pro. I feel blessed. And thanks, Andy! You rock — out loud.

My site on blogging is all step-by-step video, so this is making it better all the time. Love it!

If you aren’t into making video for your website, your blog, or a membership site or whatever, you probably don’t know about the “Chipmunk Issue.” How did Alvin and his friends get into all those videos online?

It was an upgrade for Adobe Flash that did it. That new version of Flash wasn’t compatible with any Camtasia made before version 5.0.2. The new upgrade, and how most videos online are rendered, gave all those videos the effect of garbling in the audio, but only intermittently. It was weird.

There is a fix for it, but don’t bother. It doesn’t work.

The only solution that I’ve found is that you have to re-render all the videos in Camtasia 5.0.2 . Lots of incentive for upgrading, eh?

And it’s a total pain in the butt. It takes a while to render videos, but to re-upload them if you have a lot of them takes like… forever.

I had someone berate me for this in my membership site and ask for a refund. Argh! People can be very unforgiving, especially when they’re paying for something. So… beware.

If you have videos made before Camtasia 5.0.2, get busy. It should only take, like…

For.ever

Grrr…

So, I wrote about JVAlert yesterday and here come some great people I met making comments, like Paul Easton, who I got to spend some time with and really, really enjoyed, and Stuart Tan, who totally rocks, but I got to spend hardly any time with at all. That’s my mission next time, Stuart.

But at the end of all that came the traditional comments from people in the audience and whatnot, right? People were standing up making these awesome statements about what they’d learned and how the conference had affected them. Jeff Wellman was totally inspiring. (And he’s a pretty funny guy, totally.)

But then came this sweet dark-haired girl who for some reason, I’d missed. I had just about met everyone in the room. She started by telling us about her site, which helps you to make video squeeze pages, which to me, is ultra cool. And then, she mentioned that she was about to lose her home to foreclosure. And she started crying.

Oh… my… god…

She asked for JV partners to promote for her, so I like, totally rushed up to the front of the room to give her my business card along with about 20 other people, at least. It was just an extremely moving moment. One of those that makes you see how “family” JVAlertLive can be.

So, I promoted for her yesterday. Tons of people signed up for her site! Was I happy? Of course. I mean, I don’t even know this woman really, but it just felt really, really good to help. Oh, and I made some money along the way, which wasn’t too bad, either.

If you want to check out her site, it’s at http://easyseotricks.com/VOP

She did an awesome job with it and she’s got a really good product. Heck, I bought it!

Check it out, if nothing else. I’m sure it will improve your list size by leaps and bounds.

Kathleen, you rock!

This is hilarious. Brian Edmondson sent it to me from Ken McCarthy’s blog. Have a laugh!