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How to Produce an Expert Video When You’re Not an Expert

By Paul Lawrence

A few years ago, I suffered from terrible back pain. It was so bad that I was taking steroid injections and trying every other pain-relieving method I could find. Looking online, I discovered that millions of others were going through the same ordeal. That’s when I had a brainstorm: If I could find a way to rid myself of my own back pain… maybe I could create a little side business by helping other people get relief at the same time.

How was I going to do that? I had no idea.

Then one night I was talking to an acquaintance, Jamie K., about my back. It turned out that Jamie was a certified physical trainer - and she had some stretching techniques that she was sure would help me. She taught me a few of her stretches on the spot, and it felt good. After performing those stretches for just a few weeks, I felt noticeably better. And after a few months, I felt better than I had in years.

A light bulb went off in my head. I would produce an instructional video to help people use stretching to ease their back pain!

I’d already produced a successful ballroom dance instruction video, so I had experience doing it. And that video was pretty easy for me to make. After all, I’d been a dance teacher for years, so I was qualified to teach the material myself. I was totally unqualified to teach others how to do stretching exercises - but Jamie was the perfect person to do it.

That was the first instructional video where I hired an outside expert to be on camera. It turned out to be a bonanza that profited me over $5,000 within 48 hours of putting out my first ad. Three years later, I still regularly fill orders for that video.

Realizing I could use outside experts in my instructional videos opened up a whole new world of opportunity. I no longer had to stick with skills I was personally adept at.

My next video featured a very fit senior who had created his own exercise program for middle-aged and older men. That video brought in over $30,000 in 30 days.

Now you might think it costs an arm and a leg to hire an expert to star in your videos. Sure, if you asked Tiger Woods to star in a golfing video for you, you’d need to shell out big-time. But it can be surprisingly inexpensive. For instance, I paid Jamie only $100 to do the back-stretching video.

The instructional video business is an easy and fun way to make extra income. There’s a demand for how-to videos in just about every area of interest. So the opportunity to make money is practically unlimited - especially when you realize you don’t have to star in your videos yourself.

Here are some guidelines to help you…

Choose a subject that you believe will fill a need in the marketplace.

Like I said, there’s a demand for videos in almost every area of interest. Just be sure the market isn’t too obscure. Let’s say you want to produce a video teaching people how to do magic tricks. Based on the fact that there are plenty of books and videos on the subject, you could guess that the market would be large enough for you to earn a reasonable profit. On the other hand, a video that teaches people how to identify the nest of the North American Spotted Owl would appeal to too small a market. You might find a handful of customers, but not enough to make the venture worthwhile.

Figure out what you’re going to pay your expert.

When I was working with Jamie, she was employed by a spa where she made $15 an hour. I offered her $25 an hour for the time it took to shoot the video, which made her quite happy. But if, for example, you wanted to hire a lawyer to be your expert, you’d probably need to pay quite a bit more.
You can also go the royalty route by offering your expert a low upfront payment as well as a percentage of the video’s sales. This is often the better deal for both sides. It keeps your out-of-pocket costs down, and eases any worries he may have that he’ll get a piddling amount for his time… and then your video will wind up selling 100,000 copies.

I’ve found that offering a royalty of something like $1 per sale is usually well received. Even if your video ends up selling only 500 or 1,000 copies, your expert would still be getting a pretty good deal for a few hours’ work.

Recruit your expert.

I’ve had a good deal of success advertising on Craig’s List for a variety of different experts. Those who responded to my ads were all well-qualified and willing to work for a reasonable fee.

You can also find experts in special-interest chat rooms on the Internet, via local newspaper classifieds, or sometimes through simple word of mouth.
Get an agreement in writing.

I’m not an attorney, so I’m not able to offer you legal advice. But I can tell you that having a contract in writing is a good way to protect yourself and your experts. In my contracts, I always spell out very clearly what the compensation will be. In fact, I write in big, bold letters that this is the only compensation the expert will be getting and that no other promises have been made. My agreements also include a statement that says I own the full rights to the video, and can do whatever I please with it. And I include a clause that says I’m allowed to use the expert’s image, name, and material in any way I choose to promote the video.

You can find templates for contracts in the library or online that you can adapt to your purposes. But if you want to be sure you are fully covered, you should consider having an attorney write up a contract for you. Yes, this may cost a pretty penny. But you can use the same basic contract for every expert, so the cost won’t be that great in the long run.

Producing specialty videos is one of the best low-capital businesses you can get into. And by using outside experts, there is almost no limit to the number of subjects or markets you can appeal to.

[This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]

The Worst Self-Marketing Strategy Ever Devised… and Why It Fails So Spectacularly

By Bob Bly

Many years ago, I taught a class at the Learning Annex in New York City on how to make a six-figure income as a freelancer. One student, JR, wanted to break into writing TV commercials for Madison Avenue, and he had devised what was (according to him) a brilliant self-marketing strategy for getting hired.

In actuality, it was the second-worst self-marketing idea I’d ever heard in my life.
JR told the class that he had written some “brilliant” TV commercials.

The Super Bowl was only a few weeks away at the time. JR’s strategy was to show up at the offices of Madison Avenue’s biggest ad agency and show the copy for his commercials to the creative director.

The creative director, he reasoned, was under tremendous pressure to produce great Super Bowl commercials for the agency’s clients. By bringing those great commercials with him, JR would save the day - and be hired at an enormous salary.

This was a terrible idea for all the obvious reasons:
All the commercials for the Super Bowl had been written and shot months earlier.
The creative director had never heard of JR. She didn’t know who JR was or whether he had any qualifications or talent. So the chances of her agreeing to see him were miniscule to none.
JR had no idea which of the agency’s clients were going to be running Super Bowl spots. Even if he did know, he hadn’t been briefed on the product positioning or the campaign strategy… so how could he possibly write commercials that achieved the clients’ marketing objectives?
I gently told JR - and the rest of the class - that doing work on spec for a client who hasn’t asked you to do so is an absolute waste of time. However, stupid as it is, there is a self-marketing strategy that’s even worse: giving an unsolicited critique of something a potential client has done - a new product design, an ad campaign, a website - in the hopes of being hired to fix it.

Why is giving an unsolicited critique even worse than doing unsolicited work on spec? Well, think about it.

You send a letter to a business telling them their website stinks… or their customer service people are idiots… or their product is lousy. There’s a good chance that the recipient of your letter is the person responsible for approving that website, training the customer service staff, or designing the product.

So right away, you have begun the relationship by insulting them - saying, in effect, “You don’t know what you are doing.”

They probably don’t agree that they’ve done a bad job… or else they wouldn’t have produced the site, training, or product in the first place. You come along and give a contrary opinion - highly critical and negative. They think, “Who the heck are YOU, bub? Why should I listen to what YOU say?”

As they see it, your opinion is self-serving: You are a vendor, so your objective in reaching out to them is to get them to hire you. Worse, here you are, spending your time reviewing websites, calling companies that aren’t your clients, and telling them how bad their sites are - without being paid to do so.

This causes them to think that if you were really any good at what you do, you’d be swamped with projects - and not cold calling strangers trying to rustle up work.
I’ve frequently been on the receiving end of this “You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it” strategy - especially from Web designers. And speaking as a prospect, I can tell you it not only doesn’t work with me, it’s also annoying and offensive.

Just last week, I got yet another such call from a Web designer.

“I was looking at your site and it really is poorly designed,” TN, the Web designer, told me. “I would love to help you improve its performance.”

“Do you know my marketing objective for my website?” I asked TN.

“Uh, no,” he admitted.

“Well, TN,” I said. “If you don’t know what I want the site to do for my business… and you don’t know its current performance metrics… how can you possibly know that you can improve it?”

I let him stutter and stammer for a few seconds, before politely ending the call.

My friend RA, who once ran a mail-order business selling information products for gamblers, was also a victim of the “You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it” gambit.

SH, a newbie freelance copywriter, wrote RA an unsolicited two-page critique of his latest direct-marketing package. SH closed his letter by suggesting to RA that his marketing results would be greatly improved by letting a “professional copywriter” (like SA) work his magic on it.
RA and I both had a good laugh over this… because RA is universally acknowledged (except by SH, who didn’t recognize his name) as one of today’s top direct-response copywriters.

Irritated, RA sent SH a testy letter pointing out this fact… and noting that the package SH thought was so terrible was, in fact, a blockbuster control. Which made SH look stupid and silly.

Conclusion: Doing a critique OR work on spec for a potential client who has not asked for it seems, on the surface, a sensible approach to marketing your professional or technical services. But it is not.

My advice:

• Never give unsolicited advice or criticism.
• Don’t offer solutions until you really know what the problem is - and the only way you can really understand the problem is for the potential client to tell you.
• If you want to show the potential client how smart you are, stop pontificating. Instead, ask intelligent questions and listen to the answers.

[Ed Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition program.   Sign up for Bob’s free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]

The Hook

The hook is the first thing you say about your company. It’s the first thing you put on your marketing message. The best hook is a company name that, sorry, HOOKS people. A hard-c sound – carrot, cucumber – is not bad advice.

Zeer-ROCKS. Klee-NECKS. These hard-c sounds affect us. It’s been tested. They are remembered. When your hook is sharp and specific, there’s nothing left for your audience to do but take the action you offer. One hook. One action. That’s the best a marketing message can cause.

Marketing messages are not advertisements. Advertisements can explain and persuade. They often make the sale. Marketing messages, on the other hand, don’t make the sale. They don’t close the deal. They inspire one action. They fit on billboards or the sides of a bus. They have one headline. It is visceral and compelling.

“Death of a Salesman” opened in the 1940s. Many people warned Arthur Miller, the playwright, that death would not sell in a title. But it did not keep people away. The power of the product did the work, obviously, compelling people to recommend the play to their friends, but the title now seems powerful and profound. In our hyper-hype culture, bottom line hooks are startling and refreshing. We trust candor. It can seem so rare.

Say it like it is. Then tell them what to do. Knee-JERK. (There’s that hard-c again.) That would be quite an effective marketing event. You knee. They jerk.

The best hook is someone’s name. You’re trying to hook some particular person, aren’t you? Or category of people. A specific word, idea, or question makes a great hook. “Where’s the beef?” Remember that cranky old grandma? The 80s weren’t that long ago. But we are more spread out now. We all don’t watch the same channels or networks. Companies used to be able to reach their markets. Now our markets search for us.

Which is why the best hook is a keyword that people are searching on the internet. The traffic is out there. We must not only stand in it. We must hold up a sign that they’re looking for.

“Just do it.” You know the company. One simple phrase and, perhaps, some athlete doing something – doing one specific thing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, why not one picture with the fewest words possible? “Brevity is the soul of wit.” In the loud avalanche of marketing messages, your specific and almost silent message is perhaps best heard. Think strategic. (Another hard-c.) What grabs your attention? On stage it is said “Less is more.” Less from you gives room for more from them, your audience. More thought. More feeling. More response. More action.

And that, I assume, is what you want to cause with your marketing. So be clear and concise. Sharpen your hook and offer them only one action. Test and measure and improve. Adapt. Soon you’ll have a relationship with your customers. Remember to always hook them with every message. Good communication is a skill you can practice. You don’t have communication until you get a response.

Internet Marketing - It’s All In The Keywords

Though you may think that choosing a killer domain, a great web host, and getting your Internet marketing site up and running is step number one. But here’s the thing… choosing the right keywords might even trump that. Of course, you can always go back and change your page later on, but you really need to be thinking about keywords in the copy of your page as well as in the META tags. The better your keyword usage, the easier it will be for search engines to find you and the more traffic your Internet marketing business will get over time.

We used to run to Overture’s keyword suggestion tool when trying to decide on keywords. It was just convenient and simple. But sad to say, it’s heyday has passed. We heard it was closing and the evidence is in that the site hasn’t updated since January 2007. It’s just not doing the job anymore. We need a new go-to site for keyword discovery.

What would you say, if I told you here’s another site that works just as well, if not better? SEOBook.com’s keyword suggestion tool is very comprehensive. It not only comes back with search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, it includes information on traffic estimation, trends, and it will even link you into Word Tracker, the paid professional search tool, providing you’re a member. The drawback with SEOBook is that it’s become very popular, and like Overture used to seize up when it was overused, SEOBook’s tool does the same thing. If you put in a general term and you get 0 results, it probably means that the tool is just too busy.

Begin by using a very general term, though, for whatever niche you’re in. Let’s say it’s birds. You sell bird cages, exotic birds, and special bird foods. So, you go over to SEOBook and plug in “birds.” The top word comes back “bird” with 829,227 searches for the month. That’s competitive! So, you probably want to go for a less competitive term, especially if you’re just starting out and your page has no page rank from Google. If you move down the list a bit, you’ll find “bird supply,” with a search volume of 23,611. That’s a term you can compete for. Keep moving down the list and find words that apply to your niche with a search volume of 10,000 or more and you’ll probably have some pretty good keywords for your Internet marketing business. Use them in everything you do.

Keywords are extremely important in Internet marketing, and if you want free search engine traffic, you should choose them wisely. Find keywords that are relevant to your niche and the products you’re selling and stick with the lower search volumes, until your Internet marketing business has some search engine traction. Though search engine optimization isn’t something that works right away, over time, you’ll see the free traffic pick up and make a huge difference in how your Internet marketing business performs.

Source: isname.com

Internet Marketing - Finding A Niche

One hurdle people find difficult to overcome is choosing their first niche. What they’re suffering is that old “paralysis by analysis” feeling. They’re thinking so hard about what will make money via Internet marketing, that they’re totally ignoring one very important rule of business: Do what you love. If you aren’t having fun every day. What’s the point?

So, what can you do? Here are some ways that you can jog yourself into a great Internet marketing niche:

Decide what has fascinated you over the past 10 years. Maybe it’s comic books. I like comic books. Is it a good niche? Perhaps. But you might be into fishing or gardening, or even kite boarding. But whatever it is, it has to excite you. You have to have a desire to want to learn more about the subject or you already have to be very knowledgeable, but you have to enjoy whatever your niche is.

Go to the library and walk up and down the nonfiction aisles, while looking at the book titles. The first book you’re interested enough in to pick up might be a good choice of Internet marketing niche. But maybe not. Keep walking until you find something you can become engrossed in from antiques to zoology, you’ll certainly find something that draws you in.

But if that doesn’t work. Try giving yourself a sleep suggestion. When you close your eyes at night, ask yourself, what should my Internet marketing niche be? In the morning, you’ll probably come up with an answer. No one is sure how this works, but it does. And, it works for solving just about any problem. Your subconscious has the information. You just need to access it.

Don’t just settle on one Internet marketing niche, though. Try to come up with a list of about 5 that might be workable. Then, go over to the keyword selection tool at SEOBook.com and plug your niches in, one at a time. See what kind of traffic the main keyword for your niche is getting. Go to AdWords and see what kind of traffic words are getting. For example, if I plug fishing into the “Google Traffic Estimator” I see that the competition is high, the cost per click for AdWords is $0.69 - $1.01 and that the term gets 8,000 - 10,000 clicks on AdWords ads per day. That’s a great niche to be in! On the other hand, if I plug in “basketweaving,” it’s at the other end of the spectrum. There’s little competition, and there’s only 1 click per day. Not too good. So, go through your list, until you find a term for which people are actively searching for and buying products.

Finding your Internet marketing niche shouldn’t be that hard. Don’t go nuts trying to decide what it is because it will probably change with time. You’re learning, so much of what you do at the start will be changed and modified as you learn more and progress. Just don’t’ freeze up. You’ll accomplish exactly zero, if you don’t start somewhere.

Source: iSnare.com

Online Internet Marketing – 3 Top Tools And Services For An Effective Internet Marketing Solution

Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.

SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 75% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.

In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords should be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.

In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or “handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.

Link Exchanges

Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. Google uses an algorithm to determine a page’s rank, which is determined by the number of other sites linking to it; and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link from them will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.

There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange. If they agree, you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run; as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.

One back link from a PR8 site is worth hundreds of back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site. Each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.

A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites linking to THAT page. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!

Blogs

As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.

The major blogs are updated on a daily basis, which is very important to Google’s algorithm, which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as http://EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog in the resource section of the article.

As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number of sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site; generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.

In Summary

These are just a few of the more effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, EZine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.

Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a lifetime customer.

• Recent Posts

  • How to Produce an Expert Video When You’re Not an Expert
  • The Worst Self-Marketing Strategy Ever Devised… and Why It Fails So Spectacularly
  • The Hook
  • Internet Marketing - It’s All In The Keywords
  • Internet Marketing - Finding A Niche

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