Darren Webb has produced a fantastic new course showing you how to create and use videos in all of your internet marketing efforts; it’s called Global Video Secrets.

Darren is without doubt one of THE rising-stars in internet marketing.  What makes him stand-out from the crowd is his integrity.  He absolutely delivers what he says he will and the quality of his work is first-rate.

In the course, he shows you how to create and distribute videos to effectively increase the number of visitors to your website.  He has this uncanny ability to TEACH; he really DOES know how to teach and it’s something that obviously comes very naturally to him.  Most people can know a subject inside and out and STILL not be able to teach it.  Darren not only knows his subject intimately, but he knows how to show others these skills.  He gives reasons WHY you should do the things he teaches.  If you know the “why” you have the motivation to DO IT!

Global Video Secrets includes six modules, each one dedicated to a particular subject.  These are:

1. What equipment and software you need (Darren also shows you which great FREE software to use).

2. How to create a video with sound in under 10 minutes.

3. How to make your video go viral (so that other people will promote it for you).

4. How to effectively do keyword research so that the search-engines like Google will find your video.

5. How to create expensive-looking presentations for pennies.

6. How to get ranked highly in the search engines.

He has also created a very lucrative affiliate program, so that you too can profit from this superb course. He also includes some nice bonuses in the form of completely royalty-free music clips for use in your own videos, and some really good graphics to help you create your own opt-in pages (these are easily modified, allowing you to add your own wording).

This is easily the best course on video-marketing I’ve seen, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  In fact I’m so impressed with Darren’s course that I’ve included it permanently in my ‘Recommended’ section on the right, just below the ‘Archives’ section.

Here’s the link again: Global Video Secrets.

Luke.

No, G-Trends isn’t an X-rated movie, it’s a new tool that WordTracker has added to it’s already excellent free keyword-research site (WordTracker Free Tool).

What’s different about G-Trends is that it ESTIMATES the volume of searches made for a particular search-term (keyword). This gives you a TREND, a general idea of whether the keyword is going to be searched for MORE or LESS in the coming months.  VERY clever if I may say so.

Here is the formula they use to estimate daily search volume for any given keyword:

Number of searches for a keyword in their database, divided by the total number of searches in their database, TIMES the total number of daily searches on ALL search engines. This equals the estimated daily volume of searches for that particular keyword (search-term).

In average, tey collect about 2.0 million search terms from Dogpile.com and Metacrawler.com (accounts for 0.63% of searches from of the all engines). By combining these figures, they estimate that the total daily searches across all engines is 296.0 million searches.

So if a keyword that has been searched for 9,000 times in WordTracker’s database, this is the number of daily searches that they predict for that keyword:

9,000 divided by 296 million (total daily searches on all search-engines) TIMES by 469,8 million, equals    14, 286 predicted searches DAILY.

This is a great new tool, so use it now………………while it’s still FREE.

Here’s the link to it again: G-Trends by WordTracker.

Luke.

Writing doesn’t come easily to many people which is why there are so many article-directories out there.  The few who can write well are willing to provide content for your website so long as you give credit to the author and put a link on your site.  This is a very equitable arrangement as YOU don’t have to write, and THEY get links to their website.  Definitely a win-win situation.

That’s ONE thing you can do with articles written by other people.  Another great way to use other people’s content is to put several articles together into a compendium-book.  You still have to give each author FULL credit for his or her work and you still need to include links in the book to the authors’ websites, but given that caveat, you can produce and ebook in one day very easily.

Firstly you need a subject matter.  Once you’ve decided what you want the book to be about, go to article sites like Go Articles, Article City, Idea Marketers and Ezine-Articles and use their search-boxes to find articles related to your subject.

READ THEM!  Yep, make sure that each article is well-written and that it does make sense.  Collect enough articles for about 50 pages, which will be about 25 articles or so.  Leave them EXACTLY as they are!  Don’t change a word, even a spelling error.

Now, write a few lines introducing your book and making it clear that it is a compendium of ideas from several different authors.  Put the articles in some order, and then write an index page with the title for each article along with the author’s name and ad the correct page number.

If you don’t have a decent word-processing package, one of the best is OpenOffice, which is totally FREE and very impressive in what it can do.  OpenOffice also has several other office utilities, but the one you want right now is OpenOffice ‘writer’, (though you may as well download all of the other utilities as you may want them and as I said, it’s FREE!).

The other great thing about this software (how much better can it get?) is that it has a built-in pdf printer, which is also one of the best pdf printers out there.  It’s one of the best because you can write ANY text you want and then hyperlink the text to ANY website.  Many pdf printers don’t let you do this.  Use this feature to put links to YOUR websites in your introductory page.

Make the fonts of your ebook look interesting.  Don’t just use the default Times New Roman.  Change some font colors too.

So, now that you’ve compiled your book using this software, click ‘File’ then click ‘Export As PDF’.  Save it somewhere you can find it, like your desktop, then click ‘Save’.

Let the software do it’s magic, and then once it’s finished processing, you have a nice new ebook.  You can the book away as a bonus or you can give it to people who sign-up to your mailing list.  By the way, if you aren’t creating a mailing-list, you MUST do this.  Go to GetResponse to get an autoresponder account set-up.

Luke.

Here are some tips for you to help you get your videos found by the search engines.

1. Consider adding a transcript of your video when submitting the site that contains your video to the search-engines.  This can’t be done on the likes of YouTube of course.

2. Always allow comments when posting your video to YouTube (and Blip.tv etc.).  This encourages interaction.

3. Allow ratings also.  The more people who like and rank your video, the more people will view it.  Who would want to view a video with only a 1 star rating vs a 5 star rating?

4. Use keywords in your videos description.  This will make it far easier to get the search-engines to find you.  Remember that you aren’t bidding on these keywords as you would if you were having to pay for a Pay-Per-Click ad campaign, so you can use the very best keywords that are DIRECTLY RELATED to your target audience.

5. When putting the video on your own website, keep only one video per page and create an index page so that it’s easy for the search-engines and visitors to find all of your vidoes.

6. Because potential visitors to your video will often use the word “video” in their search, so use the word “video” in your description and tags.

7. Use the most attractive thumbnail.  People are more likely to click on a nice looking image rather than a black screen, or just some text.  A pretty woman maybe or a dollar sign?

8. If you don’t use an image for the thumnail, use the word “FREE” or “MONEY” or something similar.

9. If hosting the video on your own site, put it in a folder and name the folder with keywords.  e.g. lukehawthorne.com/videos/free-ebook-fire-your-boss

10. Create links to your videos in other peoples blogs, forums etc.  and submit the links to some social bookmarking sites.

Using these techniques WILL help you get your videos found, so you use them EACH and EVERY time you create a new video.

Luke.

An online business with a high search-engine ranking is considered to have more credibility; these are often called “authority sites”.  These are sites that have LOTS of links to them.  YOU want YOUR website to become an authority site!  Video marketing is great way to do this.

Video CAN go viral, which means OTHER people will take the “embed code” from the likes of YouTube (don’t forget all the other sites will you!?) and put them onto THEIR site, giving you more exposure.

How easy is it to get started marketing your site with videos?  DEAD easy!  Below is a link to some free software called CamStudio.  It records what’s on your screen AND your voice (if you choose to do so), so you don’t have to buy a video camera and worry about how dorky you might look with a friend filming you. You can do demonstrations on your computer and simply send the resulting video to YouTube etc.

Of course, you may really enjoy being in front of a camera, and if this is the case, then by all means have somebody film you.  Video cameras are VERY inexpensive now and far superior to the ones made just a few years ago. However, if you can’t afford one, you can use a webcam that cost about $15, but nowadays most laptops have them built-in anyway.  A colleague of mine actually films himself walking around town, and then turn his laptop around to face things he wants people to see in his demonstrations.

Of course, don’t forget to add a text link to your website so that people know how to find you.  AND make sure the title and tags you use for each video include keywords that the video is about.  Make it educational and or fun and people WILL come to your site to check it out.

The benefits of video marketing far outweigh any negatives, not that that are many anyway.  Here’s the great FREE piece of software (you know just how much I LOVE FREE STUFF!) from Cam Studio.

Of course, you shouldn’t JUST market with videos.  This should still be considered a supplement to your article-writing and posts on forums and other people’s RELATED blogs.  Keep using the best traffic-building techniques found in Traffic Tactics and other great products, and you’ll have a well-rounded advertising and marketing campaign system working for you, even while you sleep.

Luke.

If you’re keen to be seen on the internet to market your products and websites (unlike me),
then there a few things you should consider before making your first movie.  After all, you
don’t want your video appearing on YouTube or Viddler and frightening people AWAY from you
site! The name of the game is ATTRACTING visitors to your website, right? Without traffic to your site, you simply don’t have a business.

There are several common mistakes that people new to video marketing make and they can
easily be costly AND lose you web traffic.  For example, make sure you have the right
camera.  Sounds trite I know, but if you don’t use a camera with a high-enough resolution,
you’ll fail from the outset.  Don’t do what a lot of people do and use your cell-phone to
shoot footage.

Don’t use the wrong person (like me for example) in the movie.  I don’t have a great voice
I’m going bald and I COULD do with losing a few pounds.  You think it doesn’t matter?  Well
people are NATURALLY drawn to good-looking and nice-sounding people. This is one of those
sad facts of life.  If you don’t fit the bill, get one of your friends to be in the movie.

If you don’t know if you look and sound good enough, film yourself and let your friends (who won’t be truthful because they won’t want to hurt your feelings) show the movie to THEIR friends (who WILL tell the truth).

Market the video properly.  Write a catchy title (’How To’ titles are always good) and make
sure that you use keywords that you KNOW are being searched for.

Edit the footage.  You think you can make one shoot and it’ll be perfect?  This almost never
happens.  When editing you can add music during the introduction and ad text where needed
(you could add some text showing your website address).

Choose a good location.  If outside, shoot on a sunny day, unless you’re trying to make apoint about how miserable something might be, in which case make sure it’s gray and rainy.
If filming inside, use a white background or something like a comfortable looking sitting-
room.  Don’t use your garage or wash-room!

Write a script ahead of time and PRACTICE.  Don’t just wing it.  Very few people can just
get on camera and do a good job.  These are the TV anchor types who are paid VERY well to do
this, and even THEY practice.

Oh, and NEVER pick your nose!

Luke.

I know I’ve already discussed some aspects of writing articles to get people to visit your website, but there are a few things that I’ve been thinking about that I’d like to share with you.

In traditional writing, your headline determines a huge degree of the success of a book or magazine article. This statistic takes into consideration what makes the book title successful, that being whether or not a human purchases it.

Article marketing success on the internet must take into consideration how the article is FOUND by reader.

Don’t believe the lie that most people will read your articles because they came to a website and started browsing just like they do if they were at a local book store; that’s NOT how it works.

People search the Internet using one of the major search engines like Google or Yahoo. They will type several keywords that are related to the topic of the article or information they are trying to locate, then search engine will then deliver results that are most appropriate to that person’s interest.

Your aim of course, is to have your articles by the people using the search engines for the keywords and topics that are most relevant to the CONTENT of your article. Most search engines give more weight to the first 3-5 keywords and a lower priority to the rest.

These first few  words of your title determine the success of your article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate back to your site. Create keyword-rich article titles that match the most commonly searched keywords for your topic.  BUT,write in a normal, easy-for-humans-to-read, style.  Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is making this ever more important.

You can increase the effectiveness of your article marketing strategy by understanding keyword research and creating KEYWORD-rich, article titles. You can create massive amounts of traffic to your articles and website thanks to the search engines who love smart, keyword-rich titles.

GOOGLE KEYWORDS tool is a good place to start your research.  Though this tool is designed to help Google make more money with Advertisers using Adwords, it’s a truly excellent tool for doing the kind of KEYWORD research that you will need to help you write properly formatted articles.

Luke

Search engines are becoming smarter, at least, the algorithms that are programed into them are better and the spider/crawler programs are faster.  Using LSI and no doubt some techniques that I don’t know about yet, they are becoming far better at finding websites that deliver the kind of content that you are actually looking for, rather than the Adsense-Optimized websites that you really don’t want to find.

There are several very excellent programs also available, from IBP to SEO Elite, but making money online shouldn’t always mean you have to BUY software every time you want to try some new method of finding potential readers of your blog.

There are two excellent free programs (no ads…………really free), that work extremely well, and they are both very small, so don’t take up valuable resources on your computer.

The first is called KeywordPad.  It is a software for managing large keyword lists used in your Internet marketing campaigns (organic search engine optimization, Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns, etc). Currently it works on Windows systems only, but this may change of course.

The second program is GoodKeywords.  This piece of software is great for finding the common words people usually search for.

For example if you type ‘fishing’ the Overture/GoTo search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘fishing’ was searched 452349 (examples only) times at Overture.Com. Similarly ‘deep sea fishing’ was searched 304407 times. Given one word only, it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word (again this is based on ACTUAL searches made by people).

If the word you typed in not a common search term you will not get any results. It simply means that very few people actually searched for that word during the last month.

Give them a try.  I use them and they’ve both worked well for me.

Luke

You already KNOW how much I like free stuff, well, I’ve found an excellent piece of SEO software which is totally free.  It’s real downloadable software, not a web-based application which is only accessible while you’re online.  It’s called WebCEO and you can get it here.

There IS an upgrade available, and the reason you can have the free version is that they are hoping you’ll like it so much that you’ll decide the extra options in the pro-version are worth the price.

The free version is an excellent start if you’re not accustomed to using Search Engine Optimization software, but if you decide to buy one of the pro-versions (there are two) go with the Small Business version, as it’s almost as fully featured at the Professional Edition, but a lot less money.

It’s great for finding your niche-market, promoting your website, analyzing your site so you can make sure that the search-engines will find it, and it helps you maintain your site too.

It doesn’t work easily with Mac computers, but you CAN make it work.   Here are their notes on it:

“Mac OS X users with Intel-based systems can run Web CEO as a Windows application with the help of virtual machine software (e.g. VMware Fusion). Another option for Intel-based Mac users is to use dual booting, i.e. Mac OS X and Windows (Boot Camp utility assists in installing Windows XP or Windows Vista on Intel-based Macintosh computers).

Note: Web CEO 7.xx version does not support PowerPC-based Macs.”

Go for the free version, and only upgrade whey you’ve started to make some good money online.

Here’s to making money online and NOT spending too much in the process1

Luke.

What the heck is a Vlog?  And what’s could Vlogging possibly be?????  Simply put, Vlogging is Video Blogging or Video Weblogging!  Some people just don’t like to write, so they simply make the world aware of  their ideas and opinions by using thier webcams to tell their story.  It’s gained more popularity recently because of two things; easily available cameras and websites that cater to people WITH video cameras.

YouTube is, of course, a great way to do this.  But there are sites very similar to YouTube and others are springing up all the time.

Here’s a list of the current ones that I’m aware of:

Yahoo:
MySpace:
MetaCafe:
Revver:
Break:
DailyMotion:
Blip.tv:
Veoh:
BrightCove:
Crackle:
Stupid Videos:
Sclipo:
Viddler:
Howcast:
5min:
Vimeo:
Graspr:

So, if you’re Vlogging 4-5 days a weeks, do you have the TIME to get your video-blogs uploaded to all of these sites. Nope, me neither.  However, there IS a way you can upload to all of these sites in the same time it takes to do just one.  It’s called TubeMogul.

You WILL need to set up accounts for each site first, but this is a one time deal.  Once this is done, which will take you about an hour, you’re ready to go.

Check it out at TubeMogul.com.

Luke