Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

If you’re a serious Camtasia user, you know that there are many options for publishing or producing your videos. With so many options, which ones do you choose? Does it really matter? This article is going to cover a few basic uses and hopefully give you some simple tips for publishing your videos.

There are two things that you need to be aware of when producing any video. The first is quality and the second is ease of viewing or portability. Unfortunately, as I am sure you’ve discovered, you usually sacrifice one for the other. For example, if you want your video to be of really high quality, that usually means that the video size is going to be quite large. That ultimately means that many potential viewers of your video can’t view it properly or it takes them forever to do so. Make the video smaller and in many cases, the quality suffers greatly. Yeah, it’s a real pain in the backside.

Sure, there are some video experts out there who can optimize your video for you and still have it looking good. Problem is, these services will also charge you an arm and a leg. For the average video marketer who is making quite a few videos, this is simply not an option. Therefore, they have to make do with what they have. That’s where this article comes in.

After beating my head against the Camtasia wall for months now, I have come up with the optimum way to pump out videos where the quality is decent enough and the size isn’t so that you’re restricting the average Internet user. The key is to produce the video in FLV format. This will give you the smallest size while at the same time producing decent enough quality. A frame rate of 5, max bit rate of 300, and 50% quality will be more than good enough for Powerpoint type presentations. For live action videos, increase the quality to 70% and you should be just fine.

No, these videos will not look like they were produced in a TV studio, but they will do the job and you won’t have prospects screaming at you because they can’t view your production.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

The age of plain boring text is over. If you want your Internet marketing career to make it to the next level, you’re going to need to incorporate video into your promotional strategy. This article is going to explain why and also give you some ways to do this. After reading, you should be ready to enter the age of video marketing.

One of the main reasons that video is so important today is because Google says it is. In case you haven’t noticed, Google just recently bought out YouTube. As a result, when you do a search for something, YouTube is one of the first things you’ll find when it comes to search results. What does this have to do with video? Everything! YouTube just happens to be the top video site on the Internet. So bringing video into your campaigns is going to give you a big boost.

Okay, how do we do this? Well, the first way is to actually incorporate video into our sales pitch. I’m not suggesting that you do away with text on your sales page altogether, but it certainly can’t hurt to include a brief video presentation that people can view as well. This will greatly increase the effectiveness of your sales message.

Another thing you can do is actually submit videos to YouTube yourself. These can be humorous, instructive or whatever. Just having a video presence itself will help. The more entertaining the video, the better your chances will be of getting people to your site, which you will include a URL to at the end of your video. This is a great way of getting people to your site.

One thing that people don’t think about when it comes to video is proof of income. With the advances in technology, it is very easy to fake screen prints of income. However, by creating a Camtasia video showing people you actually logging into your online accounts, there can be no question that you are making the money that you say you’re making. Video income proof is the most powerful proof you can provide for people. Don’t pass up this opportunity.

There is no arguing that video is the present. It isn’t hard to incorporate into your promotions. If you can’t afford Camtasia, there are free alternatives such as Cam Studio. It isn’t quite as good as far as video quality but in most cases it should be sufficient for your needs until you can afford to spring for a really good video processor. The bottom line is simple. If you want to bring your marketing into the present, video is a part of it that can’t be ignored.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

Have you seen the Matt Damon video? How about the Ben Afleck one? You know the ones I’m talking about. Funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. Well, I made a spoof of these videos that you’re going to be seeing real soon. I guarantee you that it’s going to bring a few extra people to my websites. How about you? Are you on the cutting edge of promotion or are you still doing the same drippy things that marketers have been doing for years? Afraid to take chances? Afraid to be different? Then you’re afraid of success, plain and simple.

The world has gotten very politically correct in many areas, but marketing is not on of them. Just watch any Super Bowl in the last five years and you’ll see some of the funniest ads that have ever been put on TV. These are people who aren’t afraid to take chances. Did all these ads succeed. No, but they didn’t worry about being too off the wall. They took chances. They threw caution to the wind and let the chips fall wherever. Are YOU that secure with your promotions?

With the advent of video, it is easy to get out there and do something crazy. If you have a well thought out strategy, write a good script, practice real hard in front of the camera and don’t worry about being different, you can actually make an impact on the world you’re trying to reach…whatever your product may be. A really good video can bring in a boat load of money.

And the beauty of it all is that you can do this on the cheap. Don’t have $300 to spend on Camtasia? Not a problem. There are video capture programs out there that are actually dirt cheap if not free. The quality isn’t quite as good, but it will be more than enough for your purposes. The key to the video is not the quality of the image but the quality of the message. The main thing is not to be afraid to be different.

The marketing world is very competitive. Those who are bland and boring get lost in the soup. If you don’t stand out, you don’t get noticed. That’s all there is to it. So if your sales are not what you’d like them to be, maybe it’s because you’re a drip. There, I said it. So stop being a drip, like I used to be, and get out there and do something wild and crazy.

It might just mean some extra greenbacks in your wallet.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

There is no question that video marketing is huge today. Just go to YouTube and take a look at all the Internet marketing related videos that are out there. I have 40 of my own and that’s a drop in the bucket next to what exists. So yes, video is huge. However, video marketing isn’t going to do a darn thing for your business if you don’t do it correctly. In this article, I’m going to give you a few tips to get the most out of your video marketing efforts.

Tip number 1 – Be yourself. I can’t even begin to tell you the marketers out there who try to be the next John Reese or Frank Kern. Trust me, it doesn’t fly. Prospects are going to see right through you if you try to be something that you’re not. When I do my videos, I make them very simple. I’m sitting in my video room, talking directly to the camera and I talk plainly. I give it to people straight and I don’t put on a theatrical show. My prospects and customers appreciate me for who I am and what I stand for. Be yourself.

Tip number 2 – Be professional. That doesn’t mean you have to be straight laced and can’t have some fun. Look at some of Frank Kern’s videos. He has a lot of fun in them, but they are always well polished and professionally done. My friend Kevin Riley is another one. He has a lot of fun in his videos, but they are always done professionally. I’ve even done videos of me doing a skit with my dummy. They’re funny, but they are also professionally done with a script written beforehand. Okay, be professional.

Tip number 3 – Focus on the prospect and what you can do for them. The video should NOT be about you or about impressing people with your cars or boats or whatever. Trust me, people are NOT impressed by that stuff. They want to know what YOU can do for them. So focus on the prospect. Let them know how YOU can help them.

If you do these three simple things when making your videos, you’ll find that they are a lot more effective in making you sales.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

Video marketing is great. But a video with music is even greater. Problem is, syncing music to a video sequence, whether it be slides or a live video, is not always an easy task. In this article, I’m going to give you a few tips to make sure that your music and video are synced perfectly.

The first thing you want to do is make sure you have good software. Syncing is not something that should be left to cheap stuff. Also, you better have a computer with a lot of processing power because music and video takes a lot of juice to get just right. Without the proper software and computer processing power, you’re fighting a losing battle before you even begin. Those are the cold hard facts.

After your software and PC are squared away, the next step is to make sure that you have the video portion done to perfection. Prepare the video as if you weren’t using music. Make it ready for release. Most good software will allow you to add music later on, such as Camtasia. When the video is completed, the next thing you need to do is map out the timeline of each segment where music is going to be added. If you’re adding just one musical track, this isn’t too hard, but if you’re adding several tracks, this takes some skill.

Let’s say you have a five minute video and the first 15 seconds are the opening screen credits and you want to add 15 seconds of music to the credits. First thing you have to do is find the 15 seconds of music that you want to add, from whatever source you’re using, and isolate it and import it into the video at the starting point of the opening credits. You want to make sure the music cuts off exactly at 15 seconds. With good software, you should be able to do this to a hundredth of a second with no problem.

Now, let’s say the next piece of music is going to be for the end credits which are starting at 4:30. That means that you’re going to have 4:15 of silence between the end of the first piece of music and the start of your end credits. Most good software will allow you to insert a musical clip at any point on the audio timeline, which is separate from the main timeline. To make this really simple, just play back the video and stop it at the point where the end credits begin. Then, at that point, insert your second audio piece. Even if you’re not perfect, it shouldn’t be off by more than a tenth of a second. Again, most good software will allow you to place items that precisely. And, if you’re PC is up to the task, there should be no lags in the playback.

As you can see, a lot of making this process work smoothly is in the software and hardware of your PC. So don’t scrimp there, or your video making process is going to turn into one very big headache.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

The Talking Heads. Remember them? They had some really great tunes. My personal favorite was “Wild Wild Life.” If you saw the video, you would have noticed that John Goodman was in it. Anyway, the talking head that I’m talking about in this article is the style of video that most people create for their marketing. You know, where they get up in front of the camera and, well, talk. Some of them are darn boring to say the least. Well, if your talking head marketing video is dull, here are some ways to liven them up.

I really need to thank my friend Kevin Riley, who is so great with videos, for this first one. I was watching one of this talking head videos and noticed how he alternated between one view and another so as to break things up a bit. When I spoke to him, what he told me was that he simply shot the video from two different angles with two different cameras. He then went into his editor and pieced together parts from each angle. This did wonders for breaking up the monotony.

Another thing you can do is alternate between the talking head and a graph, kind of like a Powerpoint slide. You can speak about one topic in your video and then part way through the presentation, show a slide with statistics relevant to what you’re talking about. This will give the viewer a little break from your face for a while. It’s probably a good idea to sprinkle in these slides every few minutes or so. I don’t recommend talking for any longer than five minutes at a clip.

Then of course you can simply shoot each part of the video itself from different locations. You can start out from your home and then maybe after a few minutes, work your way to outside your home. Maybe have yourself being filmed in your car after that. By mixing up the locations, you also break up the monotony and keep the person interested in what you’re talking about.

You don’t have to be the greatest speaker in the world. Sometimes, just by giving somebody something different to look at every five minutes or so, you can greatly break up the boredom in your video and keep the viewer glued to your every word.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

I’ve gotten to know quite a few people online in the five years that I have been marketing, but very few portray the kind of marketer I admire like Kevin Riley. He is warm, funny, outgoing, sincere and makes more in a month than I make in a year, and I’m no slouch. But Kevin is just a total class act and his recipe for success is rivaled by very few. Okay, so just what IS Kevin Riley’s recipe for success? Well, this article is going to take a close look at it.

For starters, go to Youtube and just look up the name Kevin Riley. You’ll see quite a few videos that he’s created. Notice something about them? They’re darn good, aren’t they. Yeah, this guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to video. And you know what the kicker is? These videos are NOT professionally made. As a matter of fact, his costs are close to nothing. I’ll touch more on that later because this is really a big key to Kevin’s success.

Aside from the video stuff, Kevin also has a radio show that he does on Monday mornings. Well, actually, Sunday evenings for those of us in the US. See, Kevin lives in Japan. Originally from Canada, he and his wife live in Japan and they couldn’t be happier. If you can’t see how happy Kevin is just by watching his show, you need glasses. Oh, about the show. Solid information on Internet marketing. He gives away for free what many people charge for. This guy is the master of giving away quality content.

Kevin is also a great writer. I know he probably doesn’t think of himself as a great writer, but he is. Just go to the Warrior Forum and read some of his posts. He’s cut a cutting wit that will leave you in stitches. Just recently he made a post about what’s so great about DLGuard that was just hysterical. The guy puts a lot of professional writers to shame with how he can pen a word or two.

Back to the videos. These are a major key to his success and Kevin shows you in one of his products how you can make these same kind of videos for next to nothing. I know because I make my own videos as well. I’m not quite as good as Kevin, but I’m getting there. Anyway, in my signature, you can read a review of one of his masterful products.

Kevin Riley’s recipe for success is simple.

Just be good at what you do and be yourself.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like Kevin and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out http://www.stevewagenheim.com/kevinriley.php

Video marketing can be very effective for many niches. One question many marketers have is how outrageous they should get with their videos. Well, the answer to that question depends on what niche they’re in and what kind of message they’re trying to get across. In this article, I’m going to explore a few examples to show you how each niche is going to have its own “best” way of getting the message out there.

Let’s take, for example, the niche of medical problems. It really doesn’t matter whether it’s something as minor as acne or as serious as cancer. When you’re dealing with people’s medical problems, you don’t want to make light of the situation. Take a look at all the commercials on the tube for medical conditions. They’re all very tastefully done and very serious in tone. I don’t think having a clown jumping out of a cake is going to go over big for somebody battling lung cancer.

On the other hand, videos associated with entertainment better be very, well, entertaining. In this case, the crazier the better. You want the video to stand out. Think of some of the most insane videos you’ve ever seen related to entertainment. Some of them are downright hilarious. Some even border good taste, but good taste or not, they’re memorable. People are not likely to forget that clown jumping out of a cake and getting bombed by a flock of seagulls.

But what about the in between niches? What about something like real estate? I can definitely see crazy commercials and videos going over big in real estate. For example, say you’re selling a book on how to sell your home during an economic crisis. You might come out with a video where the seller is being mobbed by all kinds of people just dying to buy his home. And the camera turns to him and he says something like, “Until I found XYZ Sell Your Home Yourself, I couldn’t get anybody interested in my house. Now, I have to beat them off with a stick.” And then you show the guy actually beating the people off with a big stick.

Visuals are hard to forget…especially if they’re outrageous. So look at the niche you’re in and see if outrageous videos fit in with it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html