Information Sells

Video Conquers All

When you think “search,” you probably think of Google. Then maybe Yahoo or MSN or… what?

Well, according to what I read in Bill Myers’ Tip of the Week today, the Number 2 search engine in the world is … You Tube.

Bill writes:

According to ComScore’s August 2008 search engine rankings, YouTube is now the number two search engine in the world, used by more people to search the web than all other search engines except Google.

This means if information about your site, your product, and your services can’t be found with a YouTube search, you are invisible to the 2.6 billion people who search YouTube each month.

And that’s a lot of people to be missing.

2.6 billiion searches on YouTube each month!

It’s time to get serious about using video to promote yourself and your products. You don’t need a great camcorder or expensive software to get started. Most digital cameras - and even cell phones - have a movie mode. The quality won’t be super-great, but it will certainly be better than having nothing at all on You Tube. And the simple-to-use Flip Camcorder costs only around $150.00, sometimes less, depending on the size and model.

Video Conquers The Internet

Back in the paleolithic era of the internet, all web pages were static.

In time, animated GIFs appeared, proliferated, then faded away. Banners flashed, hamsters danced, babies burbled. Some of these innovations were amusing, some annoying - but all were constrained by the limited download speeds of the average user’s modem and the immense size of video files.

Quicktime and Real Audio/Video sought ways to stream the rich media content web users craved, but the results were still choppy. Old timers remember the brain-numbing routine of watching a few seconds of action… pause…. watch… pause and on and on. It’s never easy to be a pioneer.

The growing adoption of broadband marked the beginning of the end for this stage. The explosive growth of You Tube ushered in today’s interactive internet. Full motion video is no more noteworthy than full color photographs. Your viewers, readers, and buyers expect it. If you aren’t using video today, you will be using it tomorrow - or you’ll be losing business.

Embedding Is Easier Than It Sounds

The fastest, cheapest, easiest way to add video to your site is to simply embed a video from You Tube. Amazingly, you don’t even need a You Tube account to embed You Tube videos. The embed code is displayed right beside every video on the site. Everyone is allowed - indeed encouraged - to borrow it.

Embed Code on You Tube

Find the embed code, copy it, and paste it into the HTML on your web site or blog. Presto - instant video. At one time, this process was more difficult for WordPress users, but now, even if you have a WordPress blog, it’s just a question of copy and paste. But note: you must paste the code into the HTML of your site, not into the visual editor. The same process works with Vimeo and other video hosting sites.

If you don’t have video of your own, but you’ve found a You Tube clip that perfectly illustrates your point, use it!

In the next installment we’ll talk about the pros and cons of bypassing You Tube and hosting your own videos.

The Flip Tips CD Ready To Order

The secret to better Flip Videos is already on your computer - and you may not even know it!

Chances are you already own everything you need to make professional Flip videos. Windows Movie Maker, a powerful yet easy to use video editing program, is included with every copy of Windows XP and Windows Vista. Most people don’t realize this sophisticated editor is already installed on their PC. And even fewer people have discovered how easy it is to master this versatile tool.

In addition to allowing you to edit, splice, and rearrange your Flip videos, Windows Movie Maker can add opening titles, scrolling end credits, professional transitions, and a sound track. Does this sound like something you want to learn more about?

Last month, Cindy Shebley, author of Easy Auction Photography, invited me to participate in an online class she was offering exclusively to people who purchased their Flip camcorders from her. Fully half of the class was devoted to an in depth demonstration of Windows Movie Maker.

Cindy also shared her secrets to shooting crisp, in focus videos; how and when to use the zoom and - more importantly - when to avoid it; how to shoot the first few seconds of your video so that the thumbnails are a help rather than a hindrance when you go to edit; and how to get great interviews using a Flip.

We had so much positive feedback, and so many requests for an additional class that Ghost Leg Media decided to release the webinar on CD.

This class is one hour long. The sound was recorded with a high quality cardioid microphone (not over the phone) - so it doesn’t have the annoying, tinny sound of many live webinars.

The CD also contains four short Bonus Demonstrations of concepts we discuss in the class and a free (ebook) copy of the Ghost Leg Guide to The Language of Video.

And - as a special only for readers of this blog, you can order a copy of this CD for only $14.99 and receive Free Shipping. But you must order by clicking on the links in this post. All other buyers will be charged shipping and handling.

Let me repeat - this is a special offer, only for readers of this blog. Everyone else pays $3.00 shipping & handling. The CD left the pressing facility yesterday, and we expect to start shipping it out on Monday, Sept. 22. If you order within the next week, you can get this extraordinary class, plus the bonus items, PLUS FREE SHIPPING.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention this. Once the Flip Tips CD goes on sale to the general public, the price will be $19.99 plus $3.00 S&H. So you save $8.00 - or almost 35% by ordering now.

What do you need to sell information products online? The list changes constantly. Some of the services I couldn’t do without might be meaningless to you. Even so, here’s the beginning of a list of essential web sites, tools, applications, and services that no online entrepreneur should be without.

WEB SERVICES AND ACCOUNTS

Email Accounts

You absolutely must have an email account for your business. No mybiz@comcast.net or mystore@aol.com. That’s just not good enough. If you haven’t done it already, register your business domain name and set up a POP 3 email account.

You’ll probably want an online account as well. Right or wrong, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL all still carry a stigma. If you want the convenience of web mail with almost limitless storage and good SPAM protection, get a free GMail account. Just don’t confuse personal and business accounts.

Blog Readers

Please don’t waste time constantly checking your favorite blogs for updates. Get a good online RSS aggregator. That’s the fancy name for a blog reader. Google Reader and Bloglines are free, convenient, and easy to use. Pick one.

Web Site

Web 2.0 hasn’t made the conventional web site obsolete yet. In fact, depending on what you sell and who your clients are, you may find that relying too heavily on your blog will cost you business. You’re going to register your domain anyway, and you need an email plan - so get a web site and put up at least few simple pages. Let your clients know who you are, what you can do for them, and why they should choose you over your competitors.

You may not envision a multi-site empire, but why get a single domain plan when Blue Host offers unlimited domains for the same price? I’ve used Blue Host for over three years without a complaint. Set your site up on Blue Host and you’ll be ready to grow.

Blog

You need one. Stop procrastinating. If you absolutely cannot bear to deal with the technical details, get a free blog at either Blogspot or Wordpress. Just do it!

Photo Sharing

If you sell on eBay, you’ve probably set up an account with PhotoBucket or Auctiva to host your listing photos. But you also need a way to share your other photos with the world, not just with eBay buyers.

Social media is a real phenonenon. Your competitors are not standing still. The game has changed and if you refuse to participate, you’ll soon be left behind. Even if all you do is embed a Flickr photo in your blog, you’ll need a Flickr account. Start with the free account. If you find the 100 MB per month limit too restrictive, you can sign up for a Pro account. It’s only about $25.00 annually.

You Tube

Video is probably the single biggest sales tool at your disposal. If you don’t already have a You Tube account, you are throwing money away. This is not a fad or a trend or a flash in the pan. This is not even tomorrow. Video is already mandatory. Don’t be left behind.

TOOLS

Flip Video Camcorder

The little Flip has taken over the world. If you make DVDs or shoot professional video, the Flip will never replace your 3CC camcorder. But it will certainly supplement it. Professional videographers carry Flips in their gadget bags. Teleseminar hosts keep them in their briefcases next to the cell phone. Bloggers make room in the backpack, right next to the iPhone.

There is nothing that can compete with the Flip for value and ease of use. If you don’t have one yet, you probably dismiss all the oooing and aaaahhhhing as fan-boy silliness. Once you get one, you won’t be able to believe you conducted business without it. Like the cell phone, the Flip became an instant must have business tool.

Embeddable FLV Player

Sure, you’ll probably stream most of your videos from You Tube or Vimeo. But for crystal clear Camtasia tutorials, nothing beats the JW Media Player hosted on your own site. It’s free for non-commercial use. And the Set-Up Wizard makes installation a snap.

Screen Capture Application

Is it possible to offer any sort of training without using screen caps? Sure - some people still do it, but those people are what their rivals call “dog meat.” Come on - this is 2008! Screen caps have been a fact of life since at least 1993.

There are dozens of screen capture tools on the market. Many are free. But none of them beat Snag-It. It is dirt cheap at $49.99 and there is nothing it can’t do.

If you want to add a little more pizzaz to your instructions, download TechSmith’s Jing. It’s a free, lightweight screen recorder from the makers of Camtasia. Save yourself several hours a week in training and support calls. Build up a small Jing library that answers your most Frequently Asked Questions and email a Jing videos when someone needs help. Your clients will love you.

Holy smoke - that barely scratches the surface. There are many, many more amazing and empowering tools out there for anyone who takes the time to look. And the most amazing part is - things that you would have spent thousands of dollars on not that long ago are now free. Jing, Flickr, Blogger, GMail, unlimited hosting - the list keeps growing. These are hgh quality products just waiting to make you money. Are you using them?

Finding the right music for your You Tube video just got a little easier. You Tube has introduced a new feature called Audio Swap. They have licensed music in a variety of genres, which you can overlay on your videos audio track.

The new You Tube music will replace any exisitng audio - so this feature is only for videos with no spoken narration. The selection is limited, but it is certainly an improvement over having your work yanked because of a copyright violation claim.

I made a short (under 3 minutes) video demonstration how it works. Click on the play button below:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

If you are going to be a successful internet retailer, whether you are selling general merchandise or your own products, you need to know what shoppers are looking for. If you can find people who are actively searching for items to purchase, half of your job (the hard half) is already done.

How do you find out what’s hot? Here are seven free tools that will get you started:

1. Google Trends - track searches over time. Has the peak market for your product already passed?
2. Google Suggest - discover what words people use to search for products
3. eBay Pulse - what are the most sought after items on eBay
4. Keyword Tracker - find out what the most common keywords are on Google, Yahoo, and MSN
5. Amazon Best Seller Lists - what is your niche audience reading
6. Technorati Most Popular - what is the blogosphere talking about
7. You Tube Most Popular - which videos are the hottest today? this week? ever?

Why kill yourself selling something no one wants? The internet has made it easier than ever before to do in depth research.

Bonus Benefit! Browsing through any of these sites is almost guaranteed to give you ideas for new products and projects.

Once you achieve Viral Nirvana on You Tube (or even the lesser popularity of appearing fleetingly on the front page), your comments will be filled with SPAM. It is inevitable - and there is almost nothing you can do about it.

Look at today’s statistics for the Christian the Lion video:

Ratings and Comments

Almost 16,000 people took the time to rate the video (and it appears that they all loved it) and almost 11,5000 took the time to comment. But if you take a few seconds to scroll through the responses, you’ll notice a trend: the more popular the video becomes, the dumber the comments are.

At first, the comments actually spoke to the story. Then small skirmishes broke out between commenters. Finally, riding the coattails of the video’s popularity, the scammers, spammers, and porn distibutors moved in.

What Can You Do?

It is impossible to moderate over 10,000 comments. Of course, you can refuse to allow comments at all - but the price will be a drastic loss of viewers. You Tube promotes videos in part based on ratings and comments. Community participation is part of the Web 2.0 ethos. If you won’t allow the community to be engaged with your work, it will never be recommended, embedded, or blogged.

If you are truly trying to run a viral campaign, hoping to achieve over 100,000 hits - you must accept comments, allow ratings, live with the back and forth of viewers bickering with each other, and even accept the negative, nasty, and naughty behavior of some viewers.

Maybe You Don’t Need To Be So Popular

But if you are hoping to use the video to promote your business to a smaller audience, you don’t have to allow anomymous, foul mouthed spammers to damage your reputaion.

When you upload a video to You Tube, you have several options under “Broadcasting and Sharing.”

Broadcast & Sharing Options

It is a good practice to monitor the comments and ratings on your videos. After all, you want to know how your work is being received. As long as you are taking the time to check in on your You Tube channel, make time to also review and approve individual comments.

You set this option by clicking on the “Allow all comments with approval only” radio button in the Comments section of the Broadcast & Sharing Options.

If the options are hidden, click on the small arrow icon next to “Comments” to expand the options.

Under Video Responses, choose “Yes allow responses after I approve them”

Finally, select “Yes, allow this video to be rated by others.”

These changes to You Tube’s default settings should keep the scammers away while still respecting the mores of the You Tube community.

Reunion with Christian

It seems like everyone on earth has heard about Chrisitan the Lion by now - and has watched the You Tube video at least twice. Look at those numbers! 10,500,000 views. Dozens of people have uploaded their own versions of the video, with almost 20 million more views.  That is going viral in a big way.

If you haven’t heard the story, two young men, Ace and Robert, in the 1960’s discovered a lion cub for sale at Harrod’s in London. They hated to see him caged, and so they bought him, took him home, and named him Christian. Eventually, Christian outgrew the London flat where all three lived, and the men decided to re-patriate him to Africa, with the help of George Adamson (of Born Free fame). Chrisitian quickly adapted to the wild, where he formed a pride of his own. Ace and Robert wanted to visit him one last time and were told that, as Christian was now a totally wild lion, that was impossible. They went anyway. Watch the video to see the result.

A short time ago, Barbara Walters showed this clip on The View. The story, now over 30 years old, became an overnight sensation. It has been written about in newspapers, picked up by local TV newscasts, embedded in countless web sites, and re-run endlessly on You Tube. And, on top of that, it has sparked sales of the full story of Christian, available on DVD, and engendered a wave of donations to the George Adamson African Wildlife Preservation Trust.

According to You Tube, the original video is now:

#1 - Top Rated (All Time) - Global
#1 - Top Rated (All Time) - Pets & Animals - Global

Why Has This Video Gotten 10 Million Hits?

So what accounts for this spectacular result? Why has a 35 year old story caused such a storm?

• The video is short, so any one can make time to watch it.
• The narrative is easy to follow
• The main character (lion) overcomes a challenge (captivity)
• The suppporting characters (Robert & Ace) follow their hearts
• Goodness is rewarded
• Love endures
• The sound track perfectly compliments the subject matter

You can probably add other elements for success to that list - but the formula is simple and as old as the hills: love conquers all.

What Can You Learn From Christian The Lion?

• Tell a story that involves your audience, that has a strong emotional appeal.
• Use music to reinforce the emotional impact.

Christian’s reunion with Ace and Robert reaches its emotional climax just as the song reaches its crescendo. If you play this video with the sound off, you lose at least half of the impact. Is there a better illustration of the dictum that video is 60% audio? You may not be able to license Whitney Houston for your next You Tube video, but you can certainly find something that matches the mood of your production.

One discussion forum that I read regularly recently had a thread about how to get thousands of You Tube hits almost instantly. The poster had gone to an Apple store on the first day that the new iPhone was released and had videoed people waiting in line. That was it - no narration, no titles, no call to action, no reference to a web site. But the keywords “iPhone 3G” were super hot.

And I thought, “What’s the point?”

Did Steve Jobs and Apple really need this fellow’s video to feed the iPhone frenzy? Certainly not. Could the videographer have used the massive publicity buzz Apple had generated to promote his own product? Maybe - but there is no way to know for sure, since we never learned what his product is!

When you make a video, always keep your goal in mind. Are you promoting your products and services - or someone else’s?

Always include your web site URL and a way for viewers to learn more about - and eventually purchase - your product.

When video first burst on the scene, the quality of the video wasn’t as important as the watchability of the video. You Tube’s genius was to stream flash videos with a smooth, uninterrupted playback that almost anyone could watch, without downloading new software or waiting for long periods for the files to be buffered. The combination of faster connections and flash made the video revolution possible.

A year or so later, and viewers and producers are both restless. You Tube’s quality never matches the original - and “compression” is no longer a good enough excuse. Rival services like Vimeo offer better quality, while remaining broadly accessible. In fact, Vimeo will stream High Definition videos from its own site (although you cannot embed HD yet)

You Tube is not standing still. They have begun to offer different versions of individual videos depending on the viewer’s connection speed. (all embedded videos remain standard quality).

Look at these three pictures for a quick comparison. The original video was shot with a Canon HV20 in High Definition, then downsampled to SD and produced as WMV for viewing on the internet. The clips are all taken from the same video, in roughly the same spot. Because the talent is moving and talking, the person in the screen cap is slightly blurred. Look at the still portions of the video - the bag or the caption, for instance - for a quick video clarity reference point. (If you click on the pictures, you will be taken to You Tube or Vimeo, where you can view and compare the actual videos.) The first picture is from Standard You Tube quality:

Standard You Tube Quality

Notice the option, directly below the Views counter, to switch to High Quality. If you click on that link, You Tube will start the video over. The high quality version will have been rendered with a newer, better codec that may require a more recent version of the flash player and a higher connection speed. The difference, however, is immediately apparent. Here’s a screencap of the High Quality version:

You Tube High Quality

Notice that the link under the Views counter now offers you the choice to switch back to Standard quality.

Finally, here is the same video, in Standard Quality, on Vimeo:

Standard Quality on Vimeo

I didn’t produce the video in a High Def version, so there is no way to show the truy superior results available in that format. But the lesson is clear: standard quality on Vimeo matches or exceeds high quality on You Tube.

You Tube still has twice as many visitors as all other video sites combined. You must upload your videos to You Tube if you want them to be seen by the widest possible audience. But if you are embedding the videos in your own site or blog or auction listing - upload the video to Vimeo as well, and embed the video from there.

Video Quality, although it may be hard for the average internet user to define, can be seen by the naked eye. You don’t need benchmarks to know what looks better. And better looking will almost always translate into better selling.

Here’s an example of a quick Flip Video posted to You Tube. Cindy is planning to blog and video blog about the process of writing her next book (the first with a major New York publisher). She was looking for a fast way to do the videos - and the Flip is exactly the right answer. I did drop title cards and a music track onto the video before uploading (because I can never leave anything alone) - but the process is 100 times simpler than dragging out the camcorder and lights - and that’s just the beginning of the traditional shoot.

Hooray for the Flip

Are you using video yet in your eBay auctions or other online offerings?

If not - what’s holding you back? Most people I talk to cite two reasons for not jumping into the video revolution:

1. It’s too expensive
2. It’s too complicated

Well - that’s no longer true. The Flip video camcorder has made it super simple to shoot, edit, and upload video to You Tube. Check out the video posted on April 17 to see how simple it truly is. You can go from shooting, to uploading to your computer, to editing, to You Tube in under 5 minutes!

Cindy Shebley has prepared a special bundle for members of OSI Rock Stars - and she’s agreed to give readers of this blog a chance to get in on this early bird special offer as well.

Several months ago, Ghost Leg Media hosted a four hour seminar that covered everything you need to know about shooting, editing, and posting video online. These classes were not just theory - they were designed for online sellers, with the goal of boosting your profits. The series was extremely popular - and is now available on 4 CDs.

Cindy has combined the Flip Camcorder and the 4 CD set into a super bundle. Not only will you be shooting video immediately, but you’ll have the tools you’ll need in the future to expand your business.

You can pre-order this amazing bundle directly from Cindy. She’s even offering a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. You won’t find a better deal.

The Flip Video camcorder is amazingly easy to use - and it takes pretty good video. For online use, it’s hard to beat.

Here’s a short demo that will give you an idea of exactly how effortless it really is.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Here’s a quick tutorial that demonstrates how to use Quick 3D Cover and Photoshop Elements to create eye catching title cards for your You Tube videos. Click on the Play button below to start the video.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I finally broke down and ordered a Flip Camcorder Ultra. UPS says it should arrive on April 1.

I recently read that the Flip is the #1 selling camcorder in the US - and I’m not surprised. Although you can buy a “real” camcorder for about the same amount of money, it’s hard to beat the Flip’s simplicity and ease of use.