This product creation volume has actually been therapeutic for me. It’s forced me to concentrate on all the various aspects of product creation. There are so many things that we take for granted when we see a finished product…things that we don’t see as far as the process itself.

Take for example a product that contains step by step instructions that involve using software. When creating video products I use Camtasia and when creating audio products I use Audacity. If you’ve been using these for a while, you take their operation for granted, but if these are pieces of software that you’ve never seen before, well, then some detailed explanation is required. You really have to think about each step and what you’re doing.

That’s where screen prints can take away so much of the work for you. You know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words. Well, in many cases, it’s true. This product I’m putting together wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without all the screen prints. This way, the reader can see the process step by step, rather than just read about it.

I found out a quirk about Audacity and screen prints, at least with the software that I’m using. It kind of glitzes in the top left hand corner unless you start the screen print from the bottom right hand corner and work your way from right to left. If you’re doing complete screen capture it’s not a big deal, but if you just want a part of the screen, that’s where my software kind of frizzes out.

You find out things like this as you do more of this stuff. Product creation in itself is an experience. You may know the steps inside and out (because you’ve been doing them so long) but communicating these steps to others is a whole other ball game. That’s why it’s a good idea to review what you just wrote, if it’s a how-to book, and go through the steps as you have them laid out and make sure you can do them yourself. If not, you have a problem and you need to figure out what you omitted from the process.

Anyway, I finished audio creation tonight and tomorrow I’m going to start on creating membership sites. I’ll go through the whole model from thought to design to getting trial members to the finished product. Membership sites can be a lot of work but they can also give you a nice residual income for a very long time.

I’ll try to update this blog again either tomorrow or Saturday. I still have a lot of work to do on this project but there’s no rush.

In the meantime…enjoy the ride.

It’s going to be a fun one.

Sincerely,

Steven Wagenheim

PDF products are very easy to create. With a word processor (Open Office) that’s all you really need. But products become more valuable when you create them in multiple formats, such as video and audio.

Today, I wrote the chapter on Video. It’s 20 pages alone and it really only goes over the basics. A book on video creation could easily be 100 pages. But I think this will be a good primer for somebody who wants to create a video product.

I covered planning your video, scripting it, equipment needed for recording it, depending on whether you go with live video or slide presentations, software for editing, focusing primarily on Camtasia with a pretty good walkthrough of the product, and finally producing the video.

I then went into making your video portable by recommending several file compression utilities. I try to focus on free things so that somebody starting out isn’t running into as big expense. It’s not hard to do really. There are a lot of free utilities out there that are quite good.

There are tons of screen prints so it’s very easy to follow the process. Everything is in my usual step by step format so nobody should have a problem with this section of the product, which is now up to 140 pages as I have entered volume 2.

I plan on tackling audio products next. When that’s done, I’m going to move on from product creation to membership site creation, which is a whole different animal. It’s more involved but it also brings a better return because of the residual income each month.

The thing I love most about this project is that there are many examples in it from real life that people can learn from. As a matter of fact, in the membership site creation section, I’ll be taking everybody through a guided tour of exactly how I created my Hot Trends membership.

My goal is to make this the most complete home business instruction course that has ever come out…before I ride off into the sunset and tackle other niches in 2009. IM has been fun, but it’s time to let it go.

See you in a day or two with more stuff.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim