Sweet & simple this time:

Here is Video #4:

To get my bonus:

1. Clear your browser cookies
2. Click THIS LINK
3. Email me a copy of your receipt to admin (at) learncamtasia.com

I really appreciate your time and I still have a few more goodies to come.

If you would like details on the LearnCamtasia Coaching Course which is part of my bonus, go to: LearnCamtasia.com

Lon

Be sure you are watching the AffiliateDotCom Launch Video Series by clicking HERE.

If you haven’t seen the first 2 installments, you can catch up on all the content & commentary HERE: Video Case Studies

I’m splitting out some of the content here with one video focused on just the video “reverse engineering” tips and another on the Strategy and Marketing take-aways I have so far.

Video 1: Custom Images and PowerPoint Tips

Oh…if you liked the PPT template I gave you last time, you’ll LOVE what I’ll create FOR you just for leaving a comment – check out the video:

And here’s a really quick ‘n’ dirty list of KEY elements to think about no matter what kind of video you want to make…

Video Strategy Lessons Not To Miss

1. Of course, the audio quality rocks from start to finish. You gotta have good mics picking up the sound close to the actors and any kind of built-in camera mic will NOT cut it…
2. I’d wager a fair amount of cash that this is completely scripted from start to finish…every word. There is NO real winging it here because that has NO place in a professional production.

   And the bigger reason this is done is because, the message is king!

   Yes, this is a sweet, slick video n all but the video is just the delivery vehicle for a very carefully crafted set of messages!

   Think of this script as the sales copy because it absolutely is…

   What Mike and Chris say…how they say and when they say it is all critical to this video series ending up doing its actual job. Converting viewers into customers.

   A script = sales copy.

3. Notice how the videos switch back and forth between camera footage and screen capture clips…

   I think the one big takeaway here is to understand that these videos are created using “scenes” just like you would expect from a high end production.

   I bring this point up because lots of folks, especially Camtasia users, tend to think that the way you should record is…fire up the recorder…start recording…record, record, record…all the way to the bitter end of your content and then stop.

   That’s certainly one way to do it…but it won’t often yield professional results…

   It’s OK to have more than one recording file in your clip bin! If you’re capturing more than one thing with Camtasia, say a website, then demoing an application, a LOT of times it’s much easier to focus…on one thing at a time, get a good clean source recording and then move on to the next scene…

   Of course, this isn’t ALWAYS necessary…you can switch from one thing to the next while recording or use the pause key and jump around but…

   I just want to point out that a complex project like this is likely done in small manageable chunks because it actually cuts way down on the amount of editing to be done in the long run.

Thanks everyone for all the great comments! It really kinda makes everything worthwhile, ya know what I mean?

To “incent” you to participate, I’ve got a deal for you:

I will create a custom Computer Monitor image – like Andy uses in the Video Tips clip above – just for YOU with YOUR web page in it.

Here’s how to get yours:

1. Leave a comment and be SURE to include a web address of any page you want to appear “in” the computer monitor image. I will take a screenshot of that page…pop it into the image and post a link to it here for everyone who does so!

2. Not mandatory but…if you could Tweet, Facebook, or use your favorite Share method to spread the word about this post…it would be kindly appreciated.

That’s it!

A sweet, custom image for you to use as my thank you for being so awesome…

Thanks

Lon

——–> Click HERE TO FOLLOW THESE LAUNCH VIDEOS with me <———

If you missed Video #1 in my Case Study Series, here it is:

Case Study Video 1

First, I’d have to say that if you’re NOT watching these, I think you’re missing out on some really valuable information!

There have been several pretty sweet tactics that have been covered and I’ll be talking about those but these big launches and this “sideways sales process” are completely based on delivering exceptional content and this one is no exception.

I whole-heartedly recommend that you opt-in with THIS LINK and watch these…you can opt-out anytime so it’s no big deal…I’m finding the content to be solid advice and…actionable.

Here are links to the resources mentioned in the video:

• PowerPoint Template v1
• Clean 3D Blue Icon Set
• PresenterMedia.com
• GraphicRiver.net
• Microsoft Office Eval (PowerPoint)
• Get PowerPoint 2010

Here is my swipe process for studying these launches:

Before I even opt-into a launch, I start with creating a folder in my email program to collect all the emails relating to the launch.

The video content is the primary focus of this little series I’m creating but it’s the emails that get viewers to watch. And as far as swipe material goes, this is golden stuff because a lot of times, talent, and money goes into crafting these messages specifically.

It’s a critical part of the process, so I make sure I snag it.

I also want to collect the emails from other JV’s that I see flying around because…same deal there…see what they’re doing…how they approach promoting, if they have an interesting angle, a killer bonus, or…maybe they just send out the canned copy.

So, then, I head to the opt-in or landing page.

Before I do anything else, I take a screen shot. I use SnagIt for this job because you can do a “Scrolling window” image capture…

This means I get a complete image of the entire page and I save that to a directory I create in my SWIPE directory.

You can use whatever organizational thing you want but the bottom line is:

I’m collecting emails, images, and content

At the end of the day, I’ll have all the data I need, including an audio transcript, to go back and study not only the launch process itself but also take advantage of the typically killer content delivered in these launches.

Mike & Chris use an interesting opt-in form…a cool audio message…and an exit pop if someone leaves…I’ll probably go back and look at these in more detail later but let’s get to the main stuff.

The first of which is the site layout.

This whole process is designed to create buzz and anticipation for the opening of the shopping cart by providing several high value content videos over multiple days.

Jeff Walker calls this a “sideways sales letter”.

We’ll be looking at those in some detail but just a couple of notes to start.

I love this format and I have a great tip for you later but here’s the basic layout:

The video content, a section for comments, and a sidebar that has links to the other video segments as they come online.

Now, most of the previous big launches have used a new, yet to be released system from Andy Jenkins and crew called Kajabi to do this.

It looks like Mike & Chris have had one made but the basics look pretty much the same.

I’ll head over to the first video and I’ll grab another screen shot…

And I like to do this mostly because of the comments…

You can learn a lot about something by seeing what people are saying about it. In fact, I’ll usually go through and grab screens of all the pages of comments…unless there are thousands as in this case!

This is part of the buzz and there are also Twitter and Facebook components here…nice.

Swiping the Videos:

In some launches, the product creators provide a download link for the video itself…but not for this one so…

I’m gonna need to capture it…of course, I’ll use Camtasia for that.

I set the capture rate to 1 to maybe 5 frames per second…I don’t really care too much about the actual video quality…I just want to get the major movements and concepts.

And at even 1 frame per second the audio is going to be fine…

Make sure the audio source is my computer sound…what I hear from the speakers and just capture the whole thing…

Save that to the swipe directory with an appropriate name.

Stay Tuned:

OK…I think that’s a bunch for one post! LOL…I’ve got a BUNCH more so stay tuned.

I’ve created a Category called case studies so you can see all posts for this series as they come online.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Lon

CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW ALONG

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you probably know that I’m a big fan of big product launches.

Mostly because of the power of high quality video content! So…I study these things.

In the coming days we’ll all see, whether we like it or not, the latest round of in the monster product launch category, something called AffiliateDotCom from Mike Filsaime and Chris Farrell.

This post is the first in a series I’ll be doing to follow the process from a video marketing and Camtasia perspective. I’ll have a LOT of great tips and techniques to share!

Here’s a link to the I5 Gold Call I mentioned.

And, if you haven’t seen the Google Search Story video, HERE it is.

I also did a tutorial that explains it HERE.

I’m interested in hearing any questions you might have about how the videos in this launch are created by Andy so leave them as comments along with any other feedback or ideas you have!

Thanks,

Lon

Continuing with our guest blogging series, today we are going to talk about two WordPress plugins that can enhance your site for showcasing your videos, graphics and media.

WordPress plugins not only enhance your site’s functionality, they can also enhance your ability to build relationships online. There are thousands upon thousands of plugins to choose from in the WordPress directory. Take care as you don’t want to use too many plugins as they can slow down your site and in some cases even interfere with your blog being displayed properly.

EmbedIt Plugin

If you have ever tried to pop audio or video code into the html section of your video post, only to find that your video either doesn’t show up or that it disappears after one viewing, you will want to know about the EmbedIt plugin for WordPress.

This is a simple plugin that allows you to embed any audio or video code into a post or a page. What you do is paste the code into the “custom field” section, down the page below your post. In the "Custom" field, assign (type in)any key from HTML1 through HTML9 to your audio or video code.

Then scroll back up to your post and type in the corresponding key (example – , into your post in the location where you want your video to be displayed. You can post up to nine audios and/or videos per page or post. Just take care to assign each audio or video its own code, placing each code snippet into a different custom field.

If you want your video to be centered, simply enter “<center>” (without the quotes) before the audio or video code and “</center>” (without the quotes) at the end of the video code. Have fun with this plugin and enjoy the ease with which you can now add audio and video to your blog.

To download the plugin – visit the following site. Scroll down and provide them with an email address where you’d like them to send the download link to the plugin. They will not add you to a list and they don’t send out any email aside from this. Enjoy!

http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/

J Query Colorbox

One way to strengthen relationships and keep people on your site longer is to set up a light box for your images that share more about who you are, what your interests are and what services you are offering to others.

I’ve been researching light box plugins for close to a year, this one is "my new best friend" and is "stupid simple". Simply install and activate the plugin. When uploading images, leave the url to the image intact. Then, when someone clicks on any of your images, they will pop out in a gorgeous light box.

What Colorbox Offers:

• A beautiful light box experience for individual photos
• A slideshow of any images displayed on a specific post or page

· 10 themes to chose from

· Works out-of-the-box with WordPress galleries

· Images are grouped as galleries when linked in the same post or page. Groups can be displayed in an automatic slideshow.

For a live example, visit this post and click on the image:
http://powerfulplugins.com/jquery-colorbox-lightbox-plugin

Powerful Plugins

I am a raving fan of WordPress and of WordPress plugins and love discovering new and amazing powerful plugins. Do you have a favorite WordPress plugin that you use and highly recommend? Are you looking for a WordPress plugin to accomplish a specific task? Share your comments below and let’s learn from one another.

Please note that as part of the Blog Tour, there is a Commenting and Tweeting contest. You get points for each comment and each tweet about this post – using the hashtag – #blogworldtour . Visit the Blog Tour site (link below) for full contest details.

Thanks again Lon for having me as a Guest Blogger on your site!

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

Using video in blogs is, of course, and great strategy! Here is her article.

Video Blogging

I’d like to thank Lon for having me as a guest blogger on his site. My name is D’vorah Lansky and I am known as the “Relationship Marketing Wizard”. I’m a huge fan of and very involved in blogging and in designing WordPress blogs. I’ve been a student of Lon’s for some time now and we had the opportunity of meeting one another in person at Bob Jenkins’ Internet Marketing event in North Carolina this past spring. Lon will also be blogging on my site the same week that I am here. (www.RelationshipMarketingCafe.com).

Video Blogging

Adding video to your WordPress blog will add another dimension to your content, keep people on your site longer and have them coming back often to see what new videos you’ve created. Video blogging is quite simple and there are many things that you can video blog about. You can take your written blog posts, create a PowerPoint presentation with key points listed as bullet points, and read your article aloud. Alternatively, you can have just a topic title or sentence or two at the beginning of your blog post and add a video on that topic. Being that Lon is the world renowned expert in screen capture video, you can view his work to get an unlimited number of ideas.

Video captivates people and keeps them on your site longer. Setting up a video on your blog is very easy in WordPress. There are several different options for where to host your video. One of the most popular is to create your video, then upload it to YouTube. Once your video processes you will be able to copy the embed code to your blog in order to make the video play on the selected spot on your site. When you are in the post-editing mode on your WordPress blog, you’ll see that there is a place to put the code. Note that there is an HTML tab. Click on that tab and paste the video code into the HTML section and publish your post. When you do that you will have a video on your site.

Once you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you can select the “embed” tab and decide what settings you’d like for your video. It is recommended that you uncheck the box that asks where you want to “show related videos” after your video is done playing. You cannot control which videos will show up and often times these related videos are inappropriate for all viewing audiences (if you catch my drift). The other setting you’ll want to make note of is the video size. Choose the proportions that will best fit in your blog post.

The downside to hosting a YouTube video is, when someone clicks on the video player on your site, they will be taken to YouTube.com

An alternative method involves setting up an account at Amazon S3 (http://aws.amazon.com). They do charge you for the bandwidth but it is ridiculously affordable. This way you keep your viewers on your site and prevent them from clicking off to YouTube. You will need to have a way to incorporate a video player with the AmazonS3 code. The premier Amazon S3 video player is called Easy Video Player. I found out about this player from Lon and absolutely love it. I can complete an Internet Radio Interview and within three minutes can have the video up on my site. One of the beauties of using Amazon S3 and Easy Video Player for your video hosting is that you decide where the viewer will go at the end of the video you are also able to decide if you want your video (or audio) to be downloadable.

Another of the benefits of video blogging is that you can put a link to your video posts in your e-mail newsletter and say something like: “Click here for this week’s video.” This is a great way to get a lot of traffic coming to your blog and Google is going to pay attention. This will increase your search engine rankings, which will get you more traffic.

To ensure that you have an ongoing source of new video content, consider scheduling a time each week to produce a few videos. This way you will have reserve content in case you want to take a vacation or you get busy with other projects. Create videos and you will be creating a powerful way to share your knowledge and your presence, while building relationships with your audience.

I welcome your thoughts regarding video blogging and encourage you to scroll down and leave a comment.

As part of the Blog Tour that Lon and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour.

—————-

If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best,
Dvorah

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

This stuff is awesome!

Here’s the scoop:

• 5 New, original, fresh, pro quality royalty-free music tracks each month
• $2 a pop for these 60 tracks…instead of upwards of $30 for other sites
• Ya…10 bucks a month for studio pro work for your library
• Additional options like a jumpstart library (100 tracks for $100)
• Check out samples

One thing I REALLY love about this music resource is that, unlike most providers, Mike understands that people don’t just need the music content…they need help in how to use it.

So, he also provides:

• A member forum for questions and music requests
• Video tutorials every month on how to use your music tracks

And you can get 2 full tracks with a no obligation trial membership for…a buck. Sweet!

Mike is a master at creating and using audio content for all kinds of creative things besides just video too. Some great ideas to be had from a complete pro.

Check it out at:

$1 Dollar Trial Membership

This is one of the best deals on royalty-free music tracks that I’ll actually use. No crappy sounding stuff…top notch. Highly recommended.

Lon

The old saying “Watch and learn…” is completely applicable here!

I watched, learned, and marveled as Andy Jenkins rolled out the Video Boss and commented on the interesting process employed by Frank Kern for List Control…

Today, one of the only other experts in my very small circle of influence (read that as people I follow and listen to) is finishing up yet another sweet example of of what happens when you couple video with a targeted market and tell a compelling story.

Over the last week, Mike Keonigs of Traffic Geyser layed out a pre-launch series of 5 videos decidedly worth watching:

Click to Watch      

You will have to opt-in the watch all the videos and, yes, that’s my affiliate link. To be very clear: Promoting the product is NOT my goal here (but I’m not stupid either!)

Watch And Learn

My only recommendation is to watch what the best-of-the-best do. When you’re done, heck, unsubscribe!

I also suggest that you take advantage of the download links for these videos and save them to your hard drive for future review. That’s what I’ve done…

Here are a few of my observations on this series:

1. While Mike has the advantage of a pretty killer studio and some great video editors and talent behind him, the bulk of the content is delivered as…you guessed it…screen capture video and presentation graphics captured to video.

2. The “flow” of the messages smacks of world-class copy…the Hook, a big promise, social proof, pattern interrupts, etc. – truly a thing of beauty and worth taking notes on.

3. I love the visuals, builds, and transitions! Probably ultimately done on a Mac in a high-level editor like Final Cut but…I’m pretty jazzed about the new PowerPoint 2010 in beta right now and a whole bunch of this kind of work can be done with a little creativity and attention to detail. Lots of great ideas!

4. They are streaming the videos from Ooyala.com where the hosting fees start at $500 a month! Yikes! Pretty serious stuff…

What do you think? What jumped out at you and what did you learn?

Lon

P.S.

Oh ya…there is a product offered here. Clearly, not for everyone but if this model floats yer boat and ‘cause momma didn’t raise no dummy…I’ll throw out a nice bonus for you if it fits your needs:

1. Full access to my new $397 Camtasia Training at LearnCamtasia.com including the current Camtasia v6 content AND the new Camtasia version 7 training in early May.

2. A cool custom-made Splash video clip: http://www.screencastprofits.com/splash

3. Two full hours of online, screen sharing consulting from me to answer any questions you have about making your Camtasia videos, demonstrated, recorded, whatever you need ($175 per/hr).

4. Oh and how about this? If you haven’t upgraded to Camtasia 7 I’ll buy it for ya! Or…if you have upgraded…a copy of PowerPoint 2010 when it ships?

Just clear your browser cookies, be sure to use the link above so I get credit, and email me a copy of your receipt (admin (at) screencastprofits.com)  as usual…

In version 6, to add custom images to your videos, you had to add something called a Custom Callout (in a somewhat complicated procedure) before you could add them to your timeline.

In Camtasia 7…it’s sublimely simple!! Check it out:

I totally love this new feature!!

Seriously, this could be worth the price of upgrading alone.

Oh…and this is a very small taste of the kind of content in my new, soon-to-be-released Camtasia 7 Training Course. Stay tuned!

Lon

Today, Techsmith has released Camtasia version 7 and these are my initial impressions after having been testing out the software for a couple of weeks with a pre-launch evaluation copy from Betsy Weber.

I’ll keep this short for now and give you some highlights. Of course, I’ll have more in-depth tutorials on the way!

Here’s a little preview video I did using the Search Story concept to show off a few of the features:

What’s New in Camtasia 7?

1. A New Look

The first thing you’ll notice is a sporty new look in Camtasia Studio.

I’ll be honest with ya…it does take a little getting used to if you’re a seasoned Camtasia user. It is, after all, a major interface change.

That being said, I’m finding it to be a well layed out structure as I work with it more & more. Especially as it incorporates some of the new features and how you access them.

Thumbs Up

2. Camtasia Library

One of the most useful things is a new Library feature that let’s you store all of your video elements (music, custom callouts, sound effects, video backgrounds, etc.) in one place! Nice…

One click access to all this stuff is useful enough but it gets even better…

You can also highlight any content on the timeline and right-click to ADD it to your library making it ready for future use! This is especially handy for Title clips & Splash Intros or anything else you might want to “re-use” in future projects with a simple drag-n-drop.

I like the fact that they have include some royalty free music tracks to use and some wicked cool new animated backgrounds, Title clips, and lower third “sets’” from folks like Digital Juice that you can use!

And also, you can share libraries with others.

Techsmith is providing some Library additions that you can grab:

Camtasia Studio Library Assets

Two Thumbs Up!

3. New Callouts

Camtasia 7 has some upgrades & additions to it’s Callouts. The legacy ones are all there but a new batch of shapes have a much nicer, less cheezy look and Effects like transparency, new Styles with greater control over how they look.

A few new “specialty” Callouts are also available:

Sketch Motion Callouts

I love these! They are animated callouts that you can use that “draw” themselves!

It’s like you have a pen (your choice of color, thickness, etc.) and you can have a circle or oval, square or rectangle, or arrows drawn in the video in real-time to highlight an area. I also like the “scribble it out” one.

Keystroke Callouts

These let you show viewers exactly what keystrokes you used and when you used them. I haven’t played with this one enough to decide if it’s useful but you can also just insert a “Control-C, or “ALT-D”, etc. image to indicate keystrokes for your viewer.

Two Thumbs Up!

4. Cursor Effects

This I find to be wicked interesting. In previous versions, you could add a little highlight, or rings when clicked, etc. to your cursor when recording.

Now, as long as you save your recording as a CAMREC file, you can add or modify all those attention-drawing items (and more) at editing time!

Included are also the long awaited “spotlight” & “magnify” effects and a cool new “warp” effect. You can also just make your cursor bigger!

No more having these effects burned directly into your recording. Add or change them while you edit. Nice!

Two Thumbs Up!

5. Audio Enhancements

OK…I’ve always had extremely mixed feelings about Camtasia’s “Audio Enhancements” like Noise Removal, Volume-Leveling, etc. More on that in a minute…

New to this version is the ability to get some nice control over fading in and fading out and volume levels for an audio track.

If you are adding intro / outro music or want a music track playing throughout your video but still be talking over it? This is awesome!

That’s the good news…

 Three Thumbs Up!

Now…the BAD news:

The other audio enhancements like noise removal and volume level?

Still mess with EVERY AUDIO TRACK!?!? OMG!!! Ouch…

How can I use this neat feature to get my intro music just right…and then have it basically destroyed if I need to level the volume of my narration??? FAIL.

The workaround is to do  noise & volume stuff first, render out to AVI and the pull it back into Camtasia…ugly.

Ya…oh well.

6. Widescreen Presets

As you saw in the video above, there are now more presets available including new widescreen dimension settings. This is becoming increasingly important for certain viewing devices and for uploading to YouTube.

7. YouTube Integration

This feature is now improved from previous versions. Basically, you can now connect directly to YouTube at production time. It works as a preset so…you can’t really change any of the quality settings.

I don’t know…not very useful in my opinion but for those looking for “easy” I guess it’s OK.

No Thumb Opinion…yet.

8. Improved Recording Engine

This is really kinda sweet. Under the covers, Camtasia now records your content much better and faster. On XP machines you’ll notice a significant difference in the speed at which it captures and records motion on your screen.

Vista and Windows 7 users will see upwards of a 40-50% improvement in capture frame rate.

If you are recording videos playing in your browser, Flash animations, full screen motion, stuff like that…this is a big enhancement!

Worth the Upgrade?

The pricing for Camtasia Studio 7 is the same as previous versions and the upgrade bill is still $149.

When you look at the performance improvement, new features and gadgets I think an upgrade is a reasonable consideration.

I think most users will have to weigh in the factor of a bit of a learning curve since there is a new interface (I’m still getting used to how you “select” with the new Timleline Playhead…) and my feeling is that…

As with Camtasia 6 when it first came out…lots of users will take a wait-and-see stance.

You can download the 30-day free trial and check it out for yourself:

Camtasia 30-day Free Trial

This is a fully functioning trial. You can install it and run version 7 right along with any previous versions you have installed…it doesn’t write over your current installations.

Love to hear what YOU think!

Lon