HandBrake

Don't use HandBrake to compress the video for your DVD. Handbrake optimizes for web viewing - not viewing on a TV.

Instead, if using DVD Architect, use the 'fit to disc' option and it will automatically compress the video so it fits the disc and looks good on TV.

#1  Use Twitter for your business account. Social media accounts are ideal for website lead generation. Use a lead capture strategy or giving Twitter-only deals, free content or a free trial, if the user clicks a Twitter link and signs up for an account. Earn money by contacting these leads through emails with product offers targeted to their interests.

#2  Get experience in marketing. In order to monetize yourself, you should understand concepts, such as Internet marketing plans, lead generation and affiliate marketing. You should have a website or resume that shows your marketing and Twitter experience to websites who are looking to outsource their Twitter account.

#3  Use your blog and your Twitter account to become an affiliate marketer. Find products that people who read your blog would be interested in, and then contact the company to get an affiliate link to put on your website. Every 10 to 50 tweets, include the affiliate link in a Tweet, with a high recommendation.

• Affiliate marketing allows people who advertise their products on a website to get the portion of a product's sales. The producers of the product gain valuable advertising, while the affiliate marketer can expect a monthly check for a percentage of sales, if the marketing is done well.

#4  Promote products through Kwer.do. Kwerdo has a list of campaigns from various companies who are trying to promote their products online. Sign up to as many campaigns as you like that relate to your twitter followers (location and interests). Share the shortened URL that you're given on your twitter page with an interesting description of the product. Each time you generate a valid page view on Kwerdo you earn money. Earnings are sent directly to your Paypal account with a click of a button.

#5  Research sponsored tweets via Internet search engines. Many companies are looking for popular Twitter accounts to occasionally post about their products. Contact the company, make a monetary agreement and begin your pay-per-tweet arrangement.

• Make sure you have a written agreement with the company and proof of your tweets that you can submit to them. Also, make sure you choose an interval of sponsored tweeting that does not annoy your followers. If you lose followers, you lose potential sales and your sponsored ad contract may be canceled.

#6  Sign up for sponsored tweeting through one of the new sponsored tweeting businesses, such as Ad.ly, Magpie, TwitPub or Twittad. These sites aggregate the companies that need to have sponsored ads and make them available to willing Twitter users. Sign up for an account, tweet an ad at the interval of your choice, and usually you will be paid by PayPal.

#7  There are also some companies out there like SponsoredTweets which will tweet for you.]]

#8  Sell your own products. Many people use Twitter to promote eBay auctions and etsy.com crafts. You can simply post a shortened link on your Twitter account, and with a personal touch, you are likely to get more bids.

#9  Sell your services on Twitter. Many professionals use Twitter as a way to stay in touch with other people in their industry. This new kind of networking allows you to develop relationships, develop partnerships and sell yourself to do work.

• If you feel embarrassed promoting yourself from your professional account, understand it is a common practice. A little self promotion can quickly lead to a job.

#10 Sign up to write for Bukisa.com [This does not look like a good ROI of time]. This online publisher contracts people to write interesting articles, and then makes money off the advertisements in the side columns. You work your way up a tiered program based on the quality and clicks you get from your articles or videos. Share the articles on your Twitter account to get more readers.

CAUTION:  Don't change your Twitter account to be only a money-making operation. Twitter is focused on community. If you stop tweeting funny, interesting or engaging things, you will lose followers, lose interesting chances for professional development, and, ultimately, lose the chance to make more money through Twitter.

from WikiHow  

Continue reading . . . . 

Most important category at Twitter Analytics.  

What you're asking is "Is it worth it to spend $5,000 [or more] on high-end video equipment?"  Best answer?  That depends on what or who you're producing it for.

That sample you posted was interesting, but I thought that more than the video equipment that the editing was what made the video.  Tastefully done.

Based on what I can tell and what I've read, YouTube is THE marketplace for any returns on video production.  There are other platforms, but to make money YouTube is THE place.  The next question is what kind of video?  Ah, again, that depends.  You would be surprised if not downright shocked to learn what passes for popular or viral videos.  For a video to go viral requires close to a million or more views within a week, according to Wikipedia [http://bit.ly/22fccwR].  I've heard such varying reports on that, that I cannot say for certain that Wikipedia knows what they're talking about on this.  Also, to make money, you certainly do not need a million or even half a million. People make money with tens of thousands or a couple hundred thousand views.  On your YT channel you must have your videos set .  SocialBlade does have a calculator [http://socialblade.com/youtube/youtube-money-calculator].

Next question is what is YouTube's pay-out formula?  I don't know.  I do know that you have to monetize your videos to get paid through ads on the video.  This is how people make money through YouTube.  So if you're too aesthetically pure to accept ads on your YouTube videos, then don't expect much of a payout.

I've seen videos of a squirrel walking off with a guy's GoPro camera. [http://bit.ly/1ysYYMC] Camera caught the whole action.  It was not a "How-to" video.  Nothing instructional.  Nothing about the Revolutionary War.  Nothing about how to unclog sinks.  A video of a squirrel.  It went viral.

If you're looking for a market, see what is offered at SocialBlade [http://socialblade.com].  There you can find

To identify that ROI, seems like the first order of business would be to find the niche that pays the highest for video production.  Given the competition

You're asking for insights on production. That might be difficult to convey since so many decisions go into it. How many hours does it take to produce a good or viral video? Hard to tell. I've seen some viral videos made from a dash cam. Talk about low production. But it works. And it sells. Meaning it gets tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of views. 

Completely by accident!!!

Your question is a hard one to answer for no other reason than no one person can really know . . . know for you, your niche, your interest. Taking the bull by the horns and dedicating yourself to the time and effort to produce a score of professionally-done videos might be the only way to answer with any honesty. 

The ROI seems difficult to calculate. Unless you're already in possession of the skill and you're selling professionally-made videos on a series of products. There are a bunch of questions to ask on the price of videos. For local businesses, making good quality videos with narration on the product, say, automobiles or RVs or boats would definitely be a great service. Obviously a dealer is not going to want to pay sight unseen, so you've got to produce good quality video. Again, the effort needs to be dedicated. For these customers, you're not looking for a lottery-like success with a viral video. You're looking to maximize the value of their product to sell the cars, RVs, or boats. My explanation here sounds regrettably condescending but I don't mean it to sound that way. I feel like I am only being redundant with what you already know. I am sorry.

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Wi-Fi on the Road

Here's how to get internet on your laptop when free wifi is not available

As I've mentioned in previous articles, I often travel and camp in my motorhome.

My favorite places to camp are those far off the beaten path. Like the Everglades of south Florida or the Treasure coast beaches on Florida's east coast.

Usually these remote sites have little or no amenities and almost never offer internet access. That can be a problem since my business requires I be able to connect to the internet several times a day.

Yes, I can connect to the internet using my smartphone but I find the tiny screen and keyboard not really suitable to writing articles or doing the other kinds of work I need to do on the web.

To get around this, I use free software to tether my laptop computer to my cell phone, allowing the laptop to access the internet through the cell phone's data plan.

With this software, you simply connect your cellphone USB charger cable to a USB port on your laptop, set the cellphone USB port to diagnostic mode, and it opens up the internet on your laptop.

Do that and you can access the internet using the full size keyboard and screen on the laptop, the same as if you were connected to the internet via wifi.

To make this work, you download free PDAnet software on your laptop before you leave home, and also add the free PDAnet app to your phone (the app works with Android, iPhone and Blackberry). Find it athttp://junefabrics.com/index.php

Then when you want to connect to the net, you connect the phone's USB charging cable to your laptop, start pdanet on both the phone and laptop and connect to the internet.

Your phone company treats this as a phone call and not data usage, so there isn't any extra charge to do this.

Note: The free version of PdaNet gives full access to the internet for 21 days. After that, the free edition blocks secure web sites and you'll have to upgrade to the paid version if you want to gain access to secure sites.

I use PDAnet everytime I'm on the road and am very surprised and pleased with how well it works.

CHECKLIST for WEBSITES

For web design checklists, for everything from header to SEO, see this list.  If you want specifics, like how to tinker to improve traffic and generate income, see this list.   It costs $7.95 a month to host a website at Hostgator, and you can use their one button install 
to install a wordpress site in about 10 minutes.

So if the client pays you $2,000 a year to do that, then it is a good business model - especially if you can get 50 additional clients.

On the other hand, if the client expects you to spend ten hours a week working on their site, you'll end up spending at least 500 hours a year working for them, and that works out to earning $2.00 an hour.

Personally, I'd choose a business model where you spend 40 hours or less doing something, then are able to sell the thing you created in that 40 hours to hundreds or thousands of clients world-wide. 

Bill's Affiliate Program

1. Create sales page and run it past people whose opinion you trust.
2. Make sure membership material can't be accessed by people sharing direct links to it.

CHECKLIST for VIDEOS

Start . . . by giving the viewer a reason to watch the rest of the video.

Basically, you should answer the "what's in it for me" question at the beginning of the video. Don't make viewers go through the entire video to learn what's in it for them.  Most will leave long before the video ends if you don't.

That's why in my videos I always start out by saying, 'In this video I'm going to show you how to . . ."

That way, the viewer learns right up front how they'll benefit from watching the video.

For example, it it were a weight watching video, I'd start by saying 'Want to lose ten pounds in the next seven days? In this video I'm going to show you how.'

The idea is to give viewers a reason to watch the rest of the video.

SELLING T-SHIRTS ON OTHER PLATFORMS

Just wondering whether any of you also sell your shirts on other platforms like:
- Fabrily
- TeeChip
- Teezily
- GearBubble
- SunFrog
- Represent
- Design4T
- Booster
- Threadmeup
- TeeGear
- RedBubble
- TeeCon

Shop strategically

I started this strategy back in about 2011 on a whim, now we live by it - I started by using sites like ebates.com and fatwallet.com. You earn cash back for purchases you are already making - it is a way to have you money go a little further.

As of now, 2015, between the 2 site our family has earned approx. $700 in cash back between the 2 sites. They are both free to sign up for - if you refer people you can earn money by referring others - family and friends, etc.

So let's use Best Buy as an example - some stores are on both cash back sites, (meaning on fw.com and ebates.com) - some are not - If you know you will be purchasing a needed item - router, TV, or monitor - for example - go to fatwallet.com and check the cash back for the item there - and check ebates.com as well. One site may show 1.5% cash back on what you purchase and the other site may have 3% cash back.

We are in the habit now of checking both sites - we make these purchases by thinking forward and now our dollars go a little further as a result of these 2 sites and other sites and strategies as well.

Another gem of a site we found recently is giftcardgranny.com. It is an aggregate site for gift cards that you can buy at a discounted rate. I got a $100 staples egift card for $85 back in Oct. or so. We were purchasing a backup hard drive via Staples - I saved $15 there and then made my purchase via ebates or fatwallet and earned additional cash back (3 or 4% for that item) for my purchase.

Ebates and fatwallet pay out quarterly - I recommend that you track your purchases to be sure you get credit for your cash back - ebates I find is better w/tracking than FW - but you can always open a support ticket on either site if there are any issues. Both sites are good with looking up and resolving issues.

GCG (gift card granny) also has discounted gas cards, grocery cards (they sell out quick so you have to be on the alert for those). Also with GCG be careful to choose 'egift card' - unless you want a physical gift card (but you have to wait longer for that to be delivered) that option is on the left side of the page of the main page of the GCG site you can uncheck the box for 'physical gift card' - that will be delivered via email - and make sure you can use the egift card at the store online or in the store as well. Sometimes there are restrictions - read the fine print.

I am not sure if you have an Aldi's grocery store in your area - we have one here in NC - we save 30 - 50% on groceries shopping there. Shop sales - make a list and stick to it - buy what you need and get out - emotional buys can be expensive.

FYI - Fatwallet.com has a great forum - very active with members and lots of good tips for saving money and good buys, etc - GCG recently started a forums page on their website too - from what I have seen it looks pretty good.

http://www.garynorth.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=7&ThreadID=213270#214262

This guy is pretty hopeful about making money online.  Though just yesterday Bill Myers admitted how difficult it is to earn money from create and do-nothing sites.  People could make money on those sites 5 or 10 years ago, but he admitted that those days are gone.

I don't know where to find reliable sites or reliable information on how to brings a site up to par so that it is making $800 a month.