Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Video Player FAQs and Online Video
I’ve had several questions recently about getting videos online on your wbsite, and for free video player recommendations.
Video Player Recommendations
Some video playes are built into decent WordPress themes – such as OptimizePress and MarketerCMS. I use both, and with them I can create a video squeeze page (optin page, landing page, name capture page) in about 30 seconds. If you have WordPress already, they are themes you can buy from about $99.
So then you wouldn’t have to get an additional player.
No Player!
Also – and many people don’t realise this – you can actually post videos straight from Amazon S3 to your site – no player required! Your client’s internet browser will recognise it’s a video and play it just fine.
Just post the S3 url of your video (mp4, mov, wmv or whatever) on your site.
Why Have a Video Player, Then?
So given this, why do you need a video player?
For the added features and convenience.
Easy Video Player, for example, allows different sized players, different style players, auto-play, redirect to a url after completion, display of (say) a payment button part way through the video, stats on the number of plays etc.
Other paid players that work with Amazon S3 are EZS3 and FlowPlayer.
FlowPlayer has a free version (it has ads), but you can use it even on commercial websites: http://flowplayer.org/download/index.html
Video Rendering
Your problem (if you still have it) may not be related to the player you’re using, it may be due to the rendering (or lack of).
If your video plays OK from your hard drive but doesn’t from Amazon S3, it’s a good bet it isn’t rendered.
To play on a website it needs to be sufficiently compact. Rendering reduces the size of the video so that online streaming is possible.
For more information on video, check out my teleseminar replay:
http://askalunaboutvideo.com/
For a free teleseminar about succeeding with video!
Technorati Tags: video, online video, video players, Amazon S3
It’s Not Your Fault…
It’s Not Your Fault
You’ve tried hard…but still can’t make a go of it… it’s not Your fault.
You’ve been mislead maybe even lied to! The common practices you followed were wrong. The people who taught you didn’t know any better.
No one was trying to mislead you…it’s just that the common practices have been wrong.
THAT’S ALL ABOUT TO CHANGE…
International Internet Marketing Expert, Armand Morin, has just created a FREE 50-page PDF Report that bares all the false practices and steps that prevent You from achieving the success that’s rightfully Yours.
This FREE report explains each step, what’s wrong with it and why it doesn’t work.
If you’re serious about your business, you NEED this report NOW!!!
It’s not Your fault…up to now…but if you pass up on this FREE report and still don’t achieve success…it WILL be your fault…
It’s absolutely FREE…Click here NOW to get your copy…
Sincerely,
Alun Richards
P.S. Take Action Now…This Report will only be available for a limited time.
http://www.internetdots.com
[NOTE: I am a compensated affiliate of the Armand Morin Network]
How To Create High-Value Audio Products!
You’re a coach.
And you know how for many coaches, they have no automated way of bringing in customer revenue?
This means that they have to struggle to bring in every individual customer payment.
This means low revenue, and often little or no profit.
Worse than that, – it means worrying when the next customer payment will come in.
Fear that you’ll have to go back to employment to make ends meet.
Well on Thursday 19th May, I’ll share with you my step-by-step, proven system to create high value audio products.
Which means an automated stream of coaching income for you – while you sleep.
This is what I will cover:
-
The 7 killer audio mistakes you MUST avoid!
-
What essential audio equipment you must have
-
- and the best places to get it!
-
ALL the software you need
-
- and exactly where to get it for free!
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/127950246
Title: Audio Secrets Masterclass
Date: Thursday, May 19, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM BST
After registering you will receive a
confirmation email containing information about
joining the Webinar.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7,
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer
To your online success!
Alun.
ps click here to book:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/127950246
pps make sure you attend live – I will have a VERY special offer ONLY available on the webinar…
Technorati Tags: audio webinar, product creation
How to Promote Your Book
“I don’t need to promote my book – I have a book contract with a big publishing house.”
It often comes as a surprise to many that books do not promote themselves. And don’t expect your conventional publisher to do that for you either.
The cold had truth is you have to promote it yourself.
And while that may be a shock at first, you are by far and away the best person on this planet to promote your book.
Just follow this list to build the elements of your book promotion strategy.
What is book promotion?
It’s raising the profile of your book in your target audience’s eyes. You have to first identify clearly what niche your book satisfies. And then you have to bring it to their attention.
Specifically the aim of book promotion is to take your book from being unheard of through to being a must-buy.
Here is a list of media that you should consider when creating a book promotion strategy.
• Press Releases
• Book Exhibitions
• Media interviews – radio and TV
• Getting influential reviewers to review it
• Promotional video
• Internet marketing
• Social media
• Product Launches
• Conventional advertising in conventional media
Press Releases
You write a announcement that is released to the press that gives details of your book. Assuming this is of interest to their readers, the release may get published verbatim, or lightly edited.
Press releases follow a fairly standard format, and adhering to this makes it more likely yours will be adopted.
As many journalists rely on online pr sites for their material, being present on these sites makes it very likely that your release will be picked up.
The material does need to be newsworthy, of course.
Book Exhibitions
The advantage of these exhibitions is that those attending are typically interested in publishing or promoting your book. Don’t expect those attending to be your target market. These are recommenders, and your job is to find those recommenders that are relevant to your market and your book.
Media interviews – radio and TV
For certain books with fairly wide appeal this can be a great way of getting your message out. It’s a good idea to get some media coaching so that you know what to expect, and are able to get your points across succinctly in what can be a very short interview!
Getting influential reviewers to review it
If influential people in your industry review your book positively, it can be a great boost to your book’s profile. Approach these people in plenty of time, and send them a copy of your book, asking what you want.
Getting to be able to reach these people of influence can be a project in itself which requires tenacity and creativity. Always be respectful of their time and only approach them if they would be interested in reviewing your book.
Internet marketing
In internet marketing, I include email marketing, teleseminars, webinars and podcasts. One of the most neglected means of book promotion is that pioneered by Alex Mandossian – the webinar series. With this, you are interviewed in one or a series of teleseminars, in which you reveal the content of the book in answer to your interviewer’s questions.
These can either be free or can be chargeable – especially for a teleseminar series. You may consider giving the book away in the package charge for your teleseminar series.
Needless to say, you should promote your book to your online list, and consider joint ventures with those people who are likely to already have your prospects on your list.
What applies to teleseminars also applies to podcasts – both yours and those of others.
Social Media
Social media can help create a buzz around your book launch and can also feed into other promotional channels. They social media where you must have a presence for your book are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and your blog.
Consider setting up a Facebook Fan Page dedicated to your book, together with a YouTube Channel. Create a WordPress blog dedicated to promote your book where you can easily post blog entries, short videos and audios to help with your promotion.
Product Launches
Of course conventional publishers do launch books. But although they do this for J K Rowling, don’t expect them to put much effort into launching your book unless you have agreed a specific book launch budget and what it will contain.
If you follow the guidelines laid out for internet marketing product launches pioneered by Jeff Walker, however, you can get a great deal of the effect while safeguarding your launch budget.
Conventional advertising in conventional media
Very much bottom of the pile is conventional advertising, and the challenge for this is the relevance of your advert in a mass-market medium like a newspaper or a magazine. While more targeted periodicals are a better bet, there is still the fact that conventional adverts are a scatter-gun approach where you really need a sniper’s rifle. Conventional adverts are expensive and have a horribly low response rate.
Using direct marketing techniques can be much more effective.
Pulling it all together
I’ve covered all the elements that are considered by conventional publishers for promoting your book. And I’ve added a number of others that are not well addressed by them.
Your book promotion strategy needs to be comprehensive – to be successful it must contain most of these elements. It also needs to be planned and co-ordinated to ensure that you reach your target market and find them receptive.
Alun Richards
http://facebook.com/PublishOnKindle
Technorati Tags: book promotion, book marketing, selling your book, book promtion strategies
Creating your First Video? Understand These Key Issues First
Far too often, people start creating a screencast video for their business only to abandon it because it wasn’t what they had envisioned it to be. One of the most common complaints is, that the software is too difficult to get up to speed quickly and the video is taking up a lot more time than they have to give.
If you have not created a video and are wondering if it is a wise move, then take a look at the issues below and understand them so that you enter this venture with your eyes wide open.
You Should Always Use a Good Screen Recording Tool
This should be rather obvious, yet many people start creating videos with an open source tool or even a web based screen recorder. Bad move.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with playing around with them. However, if you do, please compare the quality you get when using a nicer tool such as Camtasia. You can download a free trial to see if you like the features.
Use “PLR Video” Sparingly
Just because there are PLR videos that claim to be able to fill your blog with content doesn’t mean you should use them. Some PLR is great stuff, but if it is the only thing you’ll ever publish on your website, you might as well not build it.
You can use some PLR. Just don’t lay it on so thick. People like blogs that have personality and great content so that human element has to come through which is pretty hard to achieve with only PLR. Update the blog with original, quality videos, promote them and take time to associate with your readers. There is work involved in creating original videos, but on the other hand it can also pay back many times over.
Have A Focus to Your Videos
Whatever the topic of your video is, there should be a purpose and a theme. You can even record a little personal news on occasion (sometimes an off topic video is a welcome break), particularly if you can connect into the overall message of your site. The problem arises when you consistently record things that are all over the map. It is not a compelling reason for anyone to follow your videos. Consider the focus, your theme and the reason for your video. A broad theme is OK as long as people know what you’re all about. This also helps you in the long run to develop content that satisfies your readers.
You Will Need to Promote It
The fact of the matter is, you have to submit your videos to the video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Metacafe. You are more likely to get someone to click and visit you when they find your video on those sites and you offer them valuable information which brings them back to your website. By promoting with video content, you are warming up your prospects to your products.
There’s No Need To Stress Yourself Out Doing It Alone
By this time, you may be wondering if this video screencasting business is worth your time. It sure sounds like a ton of work in addition to your existing obligations. I’m not going to lie to you. It can be, but the good news is – there are ways to make the work a lot easier with good templates, training videos and coaching from experienced professionals.
Every project has challenges. Small business owners like you realize that owning our business can seem like a giant obstacle course. Yet, we would not trade it for anything. Creating videos is a lot like that. If you understand and accept these facts and still look forward to getting started, you should know there is plenty of help out there. Learning on your own is good but bumping around in the dark too much means you will end up with a lot of bruises which is no fun either.
Free Using Camtasia To Produce Your Videos Webinar
My friends Lon Naylor and Michelle Schoen are delivering a free webinar this Friday, 1am January 14th GMT (Thursday, January 13th at 8 pm ET) to help you get up to speed quickly creating marketing and training videos.
To attend just visit http://bit.ly/fDgbNn
Technorati Tags: video, camtasia, lon naylor, alun richards, webinar
Why Should You Have A Website?
Why should you have a website? Really, why should you?
The world has changed in the last ten years.
Communication is effectively free in this information age, and distribution of your products is either low cost or free.
Putting up a website has become easy, quick and cost-effective.
Today’s’ website is yesterday’s shop in the high street. Plus it’s the advert in the paper, magazine and TV. And the postman and courier, fax machine and phone.
But it’s even more than that.
In short, your website now replaces the entire value chain of services starting from your product being available and ending in distribution to your customer.
Your website today should therefore:
- Give you greater exposure to your prospects
- Build a relationship with your prospects
- Effectively promote your products & services
- Sell your products & services via a platform that your target market can use
- Convert your prospects to customers
- Manage the distribution of your products.
But it shouldn’t stop there…
It should reassure and actively retain your clients once they have bought something from you. It should continue to serve your customers the whole time you have a relationship with them. It should allow you to sell different products and services to your customers again and again.
And it should allow you to stand out from your competitors in your customers’ eyes. It should look different and allow you to differentiate yourself.
Conclusion
Websites are the prime way business in now performed. It is where people think to go first to do business with you.
Your website should therefore be your way of doing business.
It should promote your services, collect new leads, convert leads to customers, deepen the relationship with your customers and serve them the whole time they have a business relationship with you.
Your Website Requirements
To be your prime way of doing business, your website must be cost-effective to setup and operate and it must be easy to change to reflect new products and services. Adding and changing pages should be accomplished quickly and easily.
Changing the look and feel of your site should be easy to accomplish without programming.
It should also be easy to update and adding website additional functionality should be feasible by you.
If you too believe our philosophy, go to http://WorkYourWeb.com and watch our video to discover more.
Technorati Tags: work your web, website, WordPress, alun richards, george kedourie, learn wordpress
Test from iPhone
Here’s a test to see whether this post from my iPhone will work.
What do you most want to know about Twitter?
I’m conducting a quick survey to see what you most want to know about Twitter. Both the poll and its current results are displayed below.
Adding The EzineArticles Widget To Your WordPress Blog
Sign in to your Ezine Articles account – http://www.ezinearticles.com and go to Create a Widget, which is under the Author Tools drop-down menu.
Select your choice of Widget Content from the tab of the same name, and click on Widget Theme, where you can change the colour, width, height and number of articles.
To fit my Kubrick theme, I needed a width of 195 and I selected the light blue theme. You can also customise your theme’s colours by using the Custom Theme tab.
Then just click on the link to get your html code for your website.
If you’re using WordPress, add a new Text widget in the Design/Widgets menu. Paste in the html code, save, and your EzineArticles widget should appear!
Getting The Twitter Widget To Work With WordPress
If you, like me, use WordPress, there’s a nice little widget that fits (just) into the standard Kubrick sidebar. You can see an example on the right there.
It’s an official Twitter-produced piece of code, and works via Flash.
I had (in fact, still have) the WordPress TwitterTools plugin, but after a while I found all the short Twitter messages cluttering up my blog was a pain.
But this widget is rather good, as it keeps all your Tweets in a sidebar widget. So people can read them if they want, scroll down for more, or ignore them if they don’t.
You can get the code here: http://twitter.com/widgets . Or just click on the link in my widget on the right there.
The same site allows you to create specific widgets for Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and Typepad, or even a normal webpage.
If you’re using WordPress, like me, you click on “Other“. Then follow the menu, ensuring you actually click on “Flash Widget” and then click again on “Interactive Widget“.
Once you copy the code, you’ll need to use the WordPress Widget editor on your WordPress blog (easy to use) that’s under the “Design” menu, and paste the code into a “Text” widget that you need to add. And I had to reduce the width parameters in the code to make it fit (196 pixels in my case).
But it works very well, I think. Have a look at my recent Tweets over on the right.