Not all video-sharing sites are created equal.
You can host your precious video on websites which use different techniques to display video. Some are streaming in glorious high quality, while other sites may not be equipped to handle your next viral sensation. Features for sharing abound, but they do little for you if the video quality is poor. Videomaker.com has done a round-up of the best online video sites, and they recommend:
Videomaker.com reviews the Clickfree Transformer Automatic Backup Device:
Even with current hard-drive technology, there is still a chance of the drive going bad. Sometimes a drive will last years while some fail within the first week. It is essential to keep a backup of important files. Losing your important data can result in many hours of work. There are many backup solutions out there, the most popular being a RAID or an external hard drive. The Clickfree Transformer is for those who use an external hard drive and don’t want the hassles of dealing with a complicated backup program.
Are you intimidated by the idea of marketing your business? You’re not alone.
Many small business people think they don’t like marketing, or that they are not good at marketing.
But in fact, marketing is very simple. What is marketing?
John Jansch, author of Duct Tape Marketing defines marketing as “getting people to know, like and trust you.”
Marketing is simply building relationships with people so that if the time ever comes that they need to buy something that you sell – you are the person or company they think of.
And why do they think of you? Because they have a relationship with you. They already know and trust you.
Don’t think of it as marketing
So don’t think of it as “marketing with a capital M”; think of it as building relationships.
And the good news? You already know how to do that!
Building relationships happens when you greet people with a smile on your face and in your voice. When you offer a refund cheerfully. When you recommend a resource, even if that recommendation doesn’t directly help you. When you respect people’s time. When you write an article that solves a problem. When you are authentic.
If you do these things, you are getting people to know, like and trust you. And that’s the essence of marketing.
I’m starting to write some Squidoo pages on topics such as What is a life coach?, life coaching courses, and life coach jobs. I’m interested to see what kind of traffic I generate to www.CompassVIP.com using Squidoo.
Dave Kaminski from Web Video University provides
a video lesson on how to use the free video creator called Animoto.
Dave shows how he clicks a few buttons to quickly put together a
gorgeous video using nothing but some old photos that were sitting on
his hard drive.
Watch the video, but then read further for some important caveats about Animoto.
Things to be aware of with Animoto
One thing that Dave doesn’t talk about is what you can and cannot do with your Animoto videos. It’s very important to read the Terms of Service (TOS) for Animoto. Here are some things I learned when I looked into it:
1) you cannot use the free version for anything commercial – such as promoting your website or services
2) if you subscribe to the commercial version for $249 a year, you can make videos promoting your own services but you cannot use it to make videos for clients
3) if your yearly subscription lapses, you are no longer allowed to show the videos that you made while under license. That strikes me as overly restrictive. Can you imagine having to remove all those videos from video sharing sites? What an administrative nightmare.
So basically, if you want to use Animoto just to make personal videos that serve no commerical purpose – then you can use the free version. If you want to make videos that promote your business, you must purchase the commercial licence. If you want to make videos for clients, you are out of luck (I suppose you could do it if each client purchased a commercial licence).
What’s the difference between the free and paid Animoto?
In addition to the ability to make videos that promote your own business, there are some other differences between the consumer (free) and the commercial (paid) Animoto accounts:
For the commercial package, Animoto obtained a special license that allows commercial account users to use the tracks offered in the package as the soundtrack to their business videos. Traditionally, getting this sort of music licensing is very difficult to obtain, even sometimes for large companies that are producing commercials for TV.
The Animoto-branding is much less blatant (especially toward the end of the video). To see an example, play the main video on this page (the video with the chef’s image).
There are no watermark logos in the bottom-right and no link-back buttons to the Animoto site (but rather a more subtle “Powered by Animoto” logo off to the bottom right).
Commercial account holders get an unlimited amount of DVD-quality download (normally $5 a download for consumers).
Commercial users can slow down videos to half the speed at which they normally render (or twice as fast).
Commercial account holders get to put “call back” buttons at the end of the video, linking the viewer to your company’s website.
My conclusion about Animoto
I think Animoto is a very cool service, but their terms of service are too restrictive for my purposes. If you want to make videos that promote your business, you must
purchase the commercial licence. And you must renew your licence each year to continue using your already-created videos. You can’t use your licence to make videos for resale or for
clients.
A subdomain (aka add-on domain) would be new.mywebsite.com.
A subdirectory (aka subfolder) would be mywebsite.com/new.
For purposes of SEO (search engine optimization), Google treats a subdomain as a separate entity. So if mywebsite.com is just doing great – lots of page rank, backlinks, authority, etc., none of that will be of any help to new.mywebsite.com.
Subdirectories will benefit [...]
Do you know someone who wants to start their own home based business? Maybe you’re thinking of this yourself?
If so, I’m very excited to share some fantastic news with you. Today, I announced a new partnership with Compass.
What is Compass? It’s is a personal development company committed to improving the lives of women through [...]
Recently I wrote to 1ShoppingCart (which is the service I use to manage my subscriptions and payments) to ask whether I could disable the discount/coupon feature when a client is using an affiliate link.
The scenario that brought this up for me is this: I wanted to offer some partners the ability to send customers through [...]
[
LovelyCharts.com ](http://lovelycharts.com)is a new entrant into the free flowchart software arena. You can create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floorplans, user interface designs and other drawings online.
I like LovelyCharts’ simplicity and intuitive drag and drop drawing mechanism. Like other free flow chart applications such as [SmartDraw](http://smartdraw.com) and [Gliffy](http://gliffy.com), you don’t have to draw boxes and [...]
Many people dream of becoming an entrepreneur, but they’re not sure exactly what’s involved and whether they would be able to do it. One of the quickest and most low-cost ways to become a successful entrepreneur is by starting a home-based business.
Are you suited to be an entrepreneur?
Running a home based or online business [...]
