Landing Page Relevancy: Why Is This So Important?

You may wonder why I feel landing page relevancy is so important. Well, today I saw an article and clicked through a link that interested me. It was about a new line of video tripods that are designed for lightweight cameras, particularly the digital SLRs, of which I am a new owner. I was definitely interested in the product and might have even been a customer.

Except … Click here to continue reading

Canon T2i Review: Best Still And Video Camera For The Money

What I like best about the Canon T2i is just the plain fact that it’s the both a still and video camera. Why is that great? I don’t have to take two cameras with me!

I just finished a two-camera video shoot at a Renaissance Festival last weekend. Although it was a simple shoot, it required several C-stands, reflectors, grip arms, french flag, two cameras, shotgun mic, tripods, etc. I had a still photographer on the set to take photos of both the talent and the production crew of three people. It was a lot of work just carrying and setting up that equipment, and we were far from inconspicuous.

Next week I’m taking a vacation and I’m just taking along my new Canon T2i. I’m still getting used to the fact that this lightweight, small, well engineered camera is both a very competent still camera and an outstanding high definition video camera. I’m amazed at the fact that this one camera does it all…and at a price well below $1000. I’m really looking forward to learning more about it which I’ll share with you in future posts.

Forum Marketing Secrets: How To Post On Forums To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Posting on forums, discussion groups, message boards, ning networks, Yahoo groups, etc. is a smart, very economical way to market and get yourself known in your niche. But you have to approach your forum postings in the right way or it could backfire on you.

First and foremost, these groups are developed for sharing within a community and many were not created with the specific purpose of business promotion. They aren’t designed as a business advertising directory.

When signing up for a forum, Click here to continue reading

Canon T2i Review: One Cool Feature You’ll Love

Canon T2i Review

One of the coolest features about the Canon T2i is the large and bright LCD screen. Not only that, it’s so easy to navigate. I find everything about it intuitive and easy to figure out. There’s one REALLY cool feature I just love (you will too!) and I talk about it in this short video. This is going to change the way I shoot.

3 Audio Recording Tips From An Award-Winning Soundman

A few weeks ago, we spent two long days shooting demo videos for a client. We had an actor drive up from LA to do on-camera and voice-over narration. For jobs such as these where it’s a larger set up, we always like to work with our friend and associate, David Weisman. David is our “go to” guy for professional audio on a shoot. While on the set, I was able to ask him if he had any good advice to pass on to our readers when working with on-camera talent. Here are 3 audio recording tips he shared. Click here to continue reading

Looking For A Still Camera That Shoots HD Video? Meet The Canon Rebel EOS T2i Digital SLR

I’ve been intently following all the buzz about using a digital SLR to shoot video, but have held off on purchasing one until now. We just jumped in and bought the Canon Rebel EOS T2i digital SLR camera and I couldn’t be happier as you see in this video. For $850 (my local photo store still honored my $50 rebate), this is a fantastic option for Click here to continue reading

Will The “Oprah Effect” Make You Rich?

I recently received an email from a client who hired me to produce a series of videos she’s now selling. She excitedly reported that she had submitted a query to do an article for a national magazine. She quipped, “I figure that if I get an article in there, we sell about 400,000 [videos] and we’ll all live happily ever after!” Well, I wish it was as easy as that! If it were, I would be retired right now, sipping Pina Coladas on a beach somewhere.

She wrote that tongue in check of course, but too many people sincerely believe that such an event is the key to successfully selling their videos. Like many feel that the only way a regular Joe can become a millionaire is to win the lottery. True, getting national exposure is a powerful thing, and publicity is really important to your business, but that’s no guarantee of overnight success. And even if it does give you a sudden bump of sales, you need to take that exposure and build on it to even make a good income.

You’ve probably heard about the Oprah effect and how a simple endorsement from her will have you making millions in no time. The reality is that even with a public endorsement by Oprah, it’s up to you carry the ball and make your success happen.

Granted, getting an article in a big magazine does increase your exposure to tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, there’s no denying that. But there is no guarantee that you’ll magically trigger your own Oprah effect and “sell 400,000 and live happily ever after.” Ask the  local cafe owner in our town who was on the brink of closing a few years ago when Oprah discovered her sandwich and proclaimed it her favorite. The restaurant was saved but within a year the owner was still running it herself, feeling even more overwhelmed by the increased business and ended up selling the cafe anyway. She did make some money but by no means became rich by selling her sandwiches.

Now the new cafe owners take advantage of the Oprah effect, use it in their marketing and have a steady business. A few years ago, they opened another cafe. They are on track to success because they have kept up the momentum of the exposure.

So, is it possible to produce a video, get the right exposure and make millions? Yes, just look at Julie Clark with her Baby Einstein videos. Is it likely to happen to you? Honestly, probably not. However, success WILL happen if you discover your target market, figure out what they need, produce it in the right format, and then consistently market to them so they are aware of your product and how it will benefit them.

Back to my friend. Well, she hasn’t heard word from the magazine. So should she give up? Of course not; she just needs to be realistic in how she goes about it. We reminded her that she had at her disposal the ability to reach a much larger audience, in fact a worldwide audience, through consistently writing articles, capturing her readers contact information in her marketing funnel (autoresponder) and steadily marketing to them through her blog. The same is true for you.

No, it isn’t as exciting as landing an article in ‘O’ magazine, it requires more time and work but your chance of success is much higher. Slow and steady wins the race and is the best way we’ve found to make money selling your videos.

In next week’s post, I’ll talk about the type of exposure you want. Not all exposure is equally beneficial to your video sales.

Copyright Infringement: How To Protect Yourself

You’re starting to see steady sales of your videos then one day, you happen trip across a listing on eBay or another site and see your video title…being sold by someone else! How can this be?

When you start seeing some success in selling your videos, you may find that your website, marketing copy, articles, videos and your other intellectual property have been copied without your permission. This is especially true in the online world, but it can happen in the offline world as well. Even if you use software to protect your DVDs, a determined person can crack and copy them. Click here to continue reading

What Are You Doing To Take Your Business To The Next Level?

Enough is enough! I’ve been “making do” with my basement video studio for the last 10 years. I keep pushing the boxes, storage racks, tents, chairs, Christmas decorations and assorted possessions back into the far corners, but like tacks to magnets, this stuff keeps coming back into my precious little production area.

Maybe you “make do” too if you’ve set up an area where you shoot. Or maybe it’s your office that doesn’t seem to be large enough.

As instructional videos and quick video messages become a bigger part of what we do, I want a studio where I can walk in, flip on a couple of lights and be ready to tape a video, and I want to be able to comfortably seat multiple people as necessary, such as last weekend when I had two Catholic priests, a producer, production assistant and myself in my cramped little shooting area. I had three large tripods (camera, teleprompter and monitor) along with lights and microphone stands, reflectors, chairs… you couldn’t move without bumping into something. That was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Are you getting to that point too?

Since I recently invested in new cameras and a very cool teleprompter so that Kim and I can be more efficient in our productions, I figured I’m “in for a penny, in for a pound,” so it was time to INVEST in my business and enlarge the space, and that’s what I did this week.

Now I’ll have a clear working area that is about 18 feet wide by 20 feet deep, plenty for most projects. This will be especially efficient because I’m also having a separate storage area made so that none of the previous stuff will be coming back onto my “stage” area. I’m going to add soundproofing and maybe a painted greenscreen backdrop instead of the cloth one I now use, and I’ll be a happy man. None of this would be possible without my wife and partner in the business, Kim, believing in our ability to make it all profitable. She and I feel, as should you, that if you don’t start seeing and treating your business as a business, why would your customers or clients?

Please understand, I’m not suggesting that this set up is necessary for everyone; in fact, far from it. Your needs may be different from mine and you don’t have to build a studio in order to make a successfully selling video.

But there’s something about really committing to something, financially and otherwise, that makes it real. If you are always feeling like you are “making do” and “getting by” and “putting off,” I don’t think you are really investing yourself into your business, both emotionally and professionally. And once you step into the deeper end of the pool, you are much more likely to be motivated to keep moving further toward your goals in that business. We saw that happen in our business this last year.

We’re staunch boot strappers and have steered clear of borrowing huge amounts of money to fund our business ideas that may or may not fly. However, when we look back at every large investment we’ve made in equipment, advertising, marketing, we found we more than made our money back within a month or two and then made more than we could have before we invested. For example, we plunked down $2500 for a DVD duplication system. To date, that investment has made us close to $35,000. We splurged $1200 on a direct mail campaign last November. We made that money back in 2 weeks and doubled our sales – and the size of our email list – in just over 6 weeks.

Last summer we bit the bullet and invested approximately $4000 in training in marketing, business building, advertising practices…and our sales are up 85% over last year. Do I need to remind you that this was during the Great Recession when every night on the news you hear how people aren’t buying? Why did our business increase when so many others struggled to stay afloat? I sincerely believe it was because we not only followed what we were taught and learned how to do things smarter and better (we’re still doing that), we were motivated to take ACTION because we invested so much in our business. (Do you notice how I say “invest” and not “spent money?”)

So why not take some time and think about how committed you really are to your dream business. Will you do anything to make it work? Do you have the means and motivation to stay with it during lean times? What steps do you need to take to move it to the next level? How can we help you make that happen?

The great thing, like we learned, is that you don’t have to do this alone. If producing and selling your own videos (what we do also works really well for selling other products – not just video) is how you want to go, we’ve set up this site specifically for you. In fact, as we hear from more of you and become clearer in how we can help, we’re going to be expanding it into a huge community of like-minded people helping each other live the dream. Right now we are diligently working on producing more programs for you.

Soon we are going to launch (we’ve given ourselves a July deadline) a 5 week course that will take you from not having any website to selling your first product. You will learn all the steps from how to pick your URL to accepting payments. Along the way you’ll learn how to set up a website, what you need to say on your website, how to capture customer’s emails on that site, how to accept payments, and so much more of the nuts and bolts of this type of business. We like to provide motivation, but if you’re like me you also just want to know specifically what steps to take to get up and running.

Our free starter kit is a foundation so if you haven’t signed up for that yet, take a look at it. But there is a lot we aren’t able to go into there and that is what we want to give you next. We offer more information in our DVD, Make Money Selling Your Own Videos to give you a good starting point, as well.

So are you ready to commit to your dream? Once you burn the boats, you can’t go back. Do you need a match?

Good Audio Is Key To Quality Video Production

It’s the little things that will get you–Part 3

Here’s my third post in a series of short video production tips about how to increase the quality of your production.

Be sure to add these 3 to your shooting checklist.

Use an external microphone

Audio is half the picture so getting good audio is just as important as good video and will instantly increase the production value of your video. If your camera accepts external mikes, great! If you haven’t invested in a camera yet, I highly recommend getting one with the ability to plug in an external microphone. The Kodak Z18 is a nice, very inexpensive camera for around $150 (I’ve seen them on Amazon refurbished for $130) and you can plug in a mic.

You can get a lavalier mic (wired or wireless) which you can clip on. They really give a sense of presence and will make a 200% improvement in the sound of the person speaking over a built-in mic. You can buy a simple lavalier mic at Radio Shack for $26.49 online. You can also find more professional mics in the $200-$500 range. B&H Photo Video sells our favorite mics from Sennheiser and Audio Technica for under $300.

Shotgun mics are another option to use and although you can spend thousands of dollars on a top end professional model, perfectly good quality mics can be found in the $255 – $500 range. Shotgun mics are good in situations where you don’t have the time or ability to clip a lavalier mic onto a person. You can use them on a boom or on-camera. Contrary to popular belief, they do not “suck in” the sound from a distant source; they reduce the sound coming from other directions. The closer you can get, the better the sound.

Another resource is AllProSound.com* where you can save up to 60% off on used and demo gear.

Use headphones

How do you know if you are getting good sound if you can’t hear it?

To make sure you are getting good audio, always use your headphones. Even though they may be uncomfortable and a bit of a pain and mess up your hair, they are essential to making sure that you are getting quality audio.  The only way to know your sound is distorted or if you are receiving interference is to listen through quality headphones. If digital audio levels peak, they “flat line” and the sound becomes distorted and there is no way you can fix that.

You can get headphones priced from $40 to $100. I love the Sony 7506 model, which sells for about $90. In a pinch, you can use earbuds but they do not work as well. Quality headphones are one of the best investments you can make.

Watch your audio levels

If your camera displays audio levels, it is important to pay attention to them…especially if you aren’t using headphones. I still recommend wearing headphones rather than just relying on the level meters because your ears can hear buzzing and other interference you may be getting while the levels would just be registering this as sound.

For more tips on producing videos for sale, order my DVD, My Secrets Of Producing Successful Special Interest Videos.

*We’re an affiliate of this company so if you go through this link and purchase, we will get a small commission. You can bypass the link and go to them directly if you prefer. Either way, we only recommend and are affiliates of companies we use, trust and believe in.

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