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Okay, now we get to the actual tools you're going to use to create your videos. Believe it or not, you can do this at absolutely no cost.

How?

Well, imagine the Photoshop Tutorial niche.

You're not going to need a camcorder taking a video of yourself, right? All you're going to need to do is find a way to record actions on your PC...

It is almost as powerful as Camtasia, the paid solution, and will easily do screen capture videos.

If you can afford Camtasia...get it. It is very powerful and will offer you many features that Camstudio does not.

Now, if you DO want to do things like guitar lessons, then yes, you are going to have to invest in a camcorder of some kind. There is just no way around this.

But most people today own some kind of camcorder already, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Before you actually create your video, you want to script the whole thing out. Few people can do things off the cuff. So you want to make sure that everything you say is written beforehand.

If you're shy in front of the camera, screen capture recordings are your best bet. And you don't have to create the whole thing in one shot. With editing, you can do your video in bits and pieces.

In fact, if you watch the slide guitar video, you will notice that there were edits in it.

Don't be afraid to edit. Nobody is going to crucify you for it.

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This is one of the most common forms of site dependency where another site is promoting your product as an affiliate and thus sending a link back to YOUR site, sales page or wherever.

Okay, so what problems can you run into when depending on other sites to promote your site for you?

One of the most common problems is when the site promoting your product has itself been hit by Panda. In other words, the site itself has violated one or more of the points I've outlined in this document.

How does this hurt you?

To explain this in brief, Google is on to the tactic of ONE site owner setting up multiple sites all linking to the main site in order to generate relevant backlinks.

When they figure this out OR suspect this, they penalize the main site.

But how do they figure this out or at least suspect it?

Well, it comes down to site design and layout. What many site owners do is generate automated cookie cutter sites that all look the same. This carpet bomb tactic is easily spotted.

The next step is to determine what kind of link it sent back to the main site. If they're all affiliate links, it's a good bet that this is an automated process.

Do they sometimes get it wrong? Sure. Plenty of legit site owners have been penalized because the sites that are promoting their product ALL look the same.

But how? How can all these sites look the same?

Well, another service that many marketers provide is just that...a cookie cutter site creation service. So all these marketers come to this service, get a cookie cutter site designed for a specific product, put it up, link to the main site, and in the process, end up not only screwing the main site but their own site.

There is so much irony in the above, I don't even know where to start.

It's the reason why the early MFA sites bit the dust overnight. Eventually, we're all going to have to go to closed affiliate programs where we approve the pitch page prior to allowing the affiliate to promote us.

And unfortunately, that's the answer. If you're going to run an affiliate program and don't want to take a chance that a bunch of cookie cutter sites are going to promote you, you might want to consider avoiding places like Clickbank and going with a closed affiliate program.

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Now we get down to the meat of this document…marketing our button.

Marketing a button is a little different from marketing anything else for one simple reason…mindset of the prospective customer.

Somebody who is looking for a button or what we call a “push button solution” has expectations that are a little different from everybody else. They’re not necessarily more demanding but they are more exacting.

For example, if a regular Joe was to go into an electronics store looking for a CD changer, he’d be pretty much happy with just about anything that could handle a good number of CDs…the more the better.

But somebody looking for a push button or automated solution is going to be more exacting. It won’t be sufficient that the changer can handle 16 CDs at a clip. Can it be run totally by remote control? Can it be made to run infinitely without any human intervention other than the initial load?

The push button fanatic is going to be more specs conscious than anybody else…which actually goes against the normal copywriting mantra…”Facts tell, stories sell.”

For the push button fanatic, you want to give him all the specs that you can so that he understands HOW this is a push button solution. He wants to see what it does in actuality.

In the case of Carbonite, they specifically advertise that the backups are done automatically without you having to do anything but just install the software.

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This battle has been going on since HTML emails became a reality. You're going to hear all kinds of arguments for and against each kind of email. I'm not going to get into the battles. All I'm going to do is give you my personal experience from 5 plus years of email marketing. Ultimately, YOU have to decide which direction you're going to go in. I strongly suggest, before using either HTML or text, that you test each out and see what works better for you.

HTML emails look great, if you're a good designer. There is no question about that. I have seen some HTML emails that literally blew my socks off. Professional doesn't even begin to describe them.

I knew I couldn't make HTML emails that were going to be sharp looking enough to do the job that they were supposed to do, so I did something I don't normally do...I had a pro design some for me.

I then sent them out to selected lists and also to some safelists that allowed HTML emails. Now, there is one thing you DO need to know. Not every email client has the capability to read HTML emails. In addition to that, some people turn off the HTML reading capability in their email readers. For example, if you use Horde, you can turn off the ability to read HTML emails. My account by default had this option turned off. Point is, the nature of HTML emails means that fewer people are going to be able to read them. How fewer? That's the question that I needed answered by doing my split testing.

My results in extensive testing showed that my open rate for text emails was 17.2% while the open rate for my HTML emails was only 12.7%. That's a 4.5% difference. That's more than 4 less emails opened for every 100 sent. So if you have a list of 10,000 people, that's 400 fewer emails opened for a mailing. If you're converting at 1%, that's 4 fewer sales. If each sale is $47, that's $168 lost.

But, supposedly HTML emails convert better. So okay, how much better did they convert for me? Remember, these figures will probably be better for some niches than for others, so like I said, test this out on your own niche.

My stats, after testing, showed that the text emails converted at 2.27% while the HTML emails converted at 2.36%. That is not much of a difference. So, the increased conversions were not worth the lost emails that didn't get read or delivered.

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As with anything in life, there are things about JV Giveaways that you need to be aware of. Nothing is without its pitfalls and if you're not careful, these can bite you on the backside really bad. So here they are.

Rights - Make sure whatever you giveaway comes with FULL RIGHTS. That means you want to make sure you can modify the product AND give it away. The last thing you want to find out is that the product can ONLY be sold. That puts a big kibosh on your giveaway.

Promotion - Make sure you promote the event. If you don't, your gift could be deleted from the giveaway without warning. Now, I know what you're thinking and are going to ask...what if I don't have a list to begin with. We're going to get to that in another chapter.

Email Account - Use a brand new email account exclusively for this event. You're are going to get a lot of email, some of it very important that you will need to respond to. If it gets mixed in with your regular email you might miss something critical that could end up causing you LOTS of problems.

Clarity - Make sure that the description on the download page is crystal clear as to what is being given away and how to download it. Include any important info such as if the file is zipped, a PDF, video or whatever. You want the person downloading to know what they're going to need to open and/or view it BEFORE they download it.

Other Contributors - Make sure you check out the other contributors' offers BEFORE you follow through on your end. If there are ANY offers which look shady or require somebody to do more than just opt into a list, back out of the giveaway. Marketers have lost payment processing accounts because of shady giveaway offers. Be very careful with this one.

Support - Make sure you setup some kind of support system. You ARE going to have people who will have some kind of problem with the download or a question about the product itself. Make sure you provide a way to be contacted an answer all inquiries in a timely manner. Think about it. If you don't provide support on the giveaway, why should these people buy anything from you in the future? Good customer service is a great way to earn their trust.

AR Service - This is critical. These giveaway events can generate a HUGE amount of leads. Make sure your autoresponder service can handle 5 to 10 thousand leads or more. You WILL get them. Also make sure that their pricing per lead is reasonable. You don't want to generate 10,000 leads and find out you have to pay hundreds of dollars a month for them, not that it's the end of the world if you do. With a list that size, you should make 10 times the AR fee if you market correctly.

These are the most common JV Giveaway pitfalls to avoid. If you're aware of these and do what you can to avoid them, you should do just fine. Number 5 is absolutely a deal breaker if you don't want to wreck your reputation in a flash.

Okay, we're now going to get into how to pre-build your list BEFORE the actual event. It doesn't have to be big. It just has to exist. This is easy to do and I'll show you how.

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This is a huge area which thousands of people struggle with daily; staying motivated to lose weight. It is so easy to start your diet or healthy lifestyle change on a Monday but your desire to stay with it can fluctuate so quickly.

Instead of concentrating on the big end picture and nothing else in between. Let’s put things in perspective and start by taking smaller steps.

Write out your big end goal: this may be to lose 50 or 100 pounds or to reduce your intake of sugar or alcohol. Then place your goal in a place that you can see it each and every day. Your bathroom mirror is a good place. Now that you are serious this time around announce to your friends, family and co-workers that you are making some lifestyle changes. Actually saying these words out loud can really help keep you motivated, it is just like making a promise to a friend. Instead you are promising yourself that this time you are really serious.

The key to losing weight and keeping it off is to take small positive steps each day and to always move ahead on a consistent basis.

Each day you always want to feel good about yourself, don’t just consider your size, focus on one thing each day that makes you feel good. This might be your shiny hair, the color of your eyes or something that you do that others like about you.

Whether consciously or subconsciously everyone has a role model in mind when they lose weight and while there is nothing wrong with this you must have a realistic role model in mind. So if you are a large framed woman who wants to look like Barbie this may never be possible due to your genetics. Change your role model and your motivation and drive will change too.

Be honest with yourself and take the time to discover why you overeat, you didn’t put on the weight for no reason. This is a huge part of your motivation for losing weight. When you fully understand the cause of your problem you can take appropriate steps to deal with it. Remember the cause of losing weight is different to the symptoms – which is overeating.

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Google AdWords works on a model known as pay-per-click. When someone clicks on an AdWords ad, the advertiser of that ad has to pay Google a certain amount. It’s easy to track and fully automated.

We say “certain amount” because that amount is different all the time and is subject to market forces – in this case, bidding.

Something has to determine the placement of those ads, and what determines it is how much the advertiser offers to pay per click. When you submit this kind of ad to Google, you submit it with a bid – which is compared to other bids for similar keywords. It’s an auction style process.

The position of the AdWords ads is based on the bidding amount of keywords of an ad. Obviously, the higher the bid, the higher the position the bid buys you. For instance, if the highest bid for the keywords “Internet marketing” is 80 cents per click, you can get top position by bidding 90 cents.

Then every time someone clicks on your ad, Google would charge you 90 cents, and you would retain the top position until someone else bids more for the same search word placement.

Google AdSense, as stated earlier, is an extension of Google AdWords.

It takes the AdWords concept and moves it off of Google’s search page and onto thousands of other web pages. The ads that are displayed on the websites are Google AdWords ads.

It’s good for the advertiser, who gets more and broader displays, for Google, who charge more for this program, for you, who will make money from the clickthroughs on your pages, and also for the consumer, who will see cool ads for stuff they are probably interested in!

So how exactly are you making money from all this? You earn a share of the pay-per-click amount, every time a visitor clicks on the ad. So you just need to get ads on your site…

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Impressing the Hiring Manager

Let me say this upfront: You’re going to find plenty of competition for these writing jobs. This is especially true of the higher-paying writing jobs.

So, you won’t land every job that you apply for. That’s why you’ll want to use the following steps to impress the hiring manager…

Step 1: Bring Value to the Table

Blog owners who’re posting low-paying jobs either don’t value you their writer’s time and expertise, or they’re just looking for low-value content to fill their blogs.

Sometimes you can spot these jobs because the employer wants you to include a whole bunch of keywords in the content that it makes it virtually impossible for you to write coherently and include all the necessary keywords. If these folks don’t hire you, then they’ll just use an article spinner.

Point is, these types of bloggers aren’t really looking for quality, and they’re certainly not willing to pay for it.

However, if you’re applying for the higher-paying jobs, then your prospective employers are going to be looking at what kind of value you can bring to their blog. And they’re going to looking at why they should hire you versus the other applicants.

That is, what makes YOU stand out from the other writers?

Below you’ll find ways to make yourself stand out and bring value.

Keep in mind, you may not have very many (or any!) of these assets working in your benefit today. However, you’re now going to be aware of these assets, so you can start building them…

Your Area of Expertise

True, some employers are basically looking for a ghostwriter – someone who can research and write about a wide variety of topics. However, many employers are looking for people who have a certain area of expertise.

You can prove your area of expertise in various ways, including:

Focusing your writing on your area of specialty. As your portfolio grows, you’ll be able to show a wide variety of content that you created in one specialized niche. So even if you don’t have much experience writing in the niche today, over time your experience will grow as you do more research and writing for this particular niche.

Demonstrating real-life experience in the niche. Maybe you haven’t written anything in your prospective area of specialization. That won’t matter as much if you have real-life experience and credentials to demonstrate that you’re well-versed in the field.

Example: Maybe you’re a nurse in the offline world, which makes you uniquely qualified to write about health topics. Or perhaps you’re a published author, so you can easily blog about writing and publishing topics.

Showing a college degree in the niche. Even if you don’t have direct experience in the niche, you can demonstrate your proficiency by showing that you have a related degree.

Example: Maybe you never pursued a career in psychology, yet you hold a bachelor’s degree in the field. That means that you can write intelligently about mental health issues such as depression, autism and more.

Other Special Qualifications

Another way to set yourself apart is to show your writing credentials and expertise. Here are some ideas of how to do it:

Let prospective employers know if you have a related degree. For example, were you an English or journalism major? If so, these are degrees that can set you apart from other applicants.

Refer to relevant writing experience. Have you ever had your own column in the local newspaper? Have you published a book? Have you ever taught a writing class or workshop? Have you won any writing-related awards? Do you have any other types of experiences which bolster your claims that you’re a professional writer?