How To Create Clickable Image Ads In Craigslist

Here are some interesting notes.

All the photos I've seen on CL listings have been acceptable! The MAIN THING about placing "Video Tours" on CL is.....NO ONE ELSE IS DOING IT! So....your Video Tour stands out.

NOW....in the "Real Estate" section of CL are 4 columns. The 1st being "List View". 2nd is "PIC VIEW"!

And if you go down the line of photos (in PIC View) one thing you...as a Marketing guy should notice something:

"NOTHING..... CAUSES ANY PHOTO TO BE CLICKED ON! They are ALL the Same!

However....I've included a Photo that WILL cause "House Hunters" to CLICK ON!

It's a photo of a Real Estate Agent with the "triangular Symbol" of a VIDEO in the middle! This means there appears to be a "Video" behind the photo. There is! And....in other photos I've made a "SIGN" that says; "CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO TOUR!"

Now....knowing that Videos are very popular nowadays....THIS photo stands out like a "sore thumb" and....GETS LOTS OF CLICKS!

If you have some time....YOU could make a bundle offering "Clickable Links" to Videos of products or services offered.

Consumers LOVE Videos!

Below....I've placed a link to a video that tells how to place a Clickable Link on a Craig's List Photo.

I just took a look at the real estate listings for Portland, Oregon. I clicked on "Real Estate", then "By Broker" then "Image Box" and in the PIC View column were HUNDREDS of photos with NONE that stood out or gave a "Reason" to click on.

You place the Triangular Symbol (indicating there's a Video behind the photo" and....THAT PHOTO will get MOST OF THE CLICKS!

Now....if YOU provided this "Clickable Link service" so CL advertisers would get more clicks....you would NOT have to ever again be concerned where your income is coming from!!!

Want to Remove a Watermark?

Need to remove watermark from pics?

And there's Bookscanning.

 Adding a Watermark using Camtasia.  Very easy, so says Bill Myers.

Marekkis Watermark.

 

SONY Vegas Tutorial

SONY Vegas Tutorial.  This guy is pretty good.  This video is really just for beginners.

Media Players

VLC Media Player is Video LAN Client (vlc).

Windows Media Player (wmp.).

 PotPlayer | KMPlayer | VLC Media Player |SMPlayer |JetAudio Basic |SPlayer |UMPlayer | Kantaris Media Player | GOM Player | Media Player Classic Home Cinema | Splash Lite | Toolwiz Player

Video

Main article: Container format (digital)

• AAF – mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence
• 3GP – the most common video format for cell phones
• GIF – Animated GIF (simple animation; until recently often avoided because of patent problems)
• ASF – container (enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common; video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
• AVCHD – Advanced Video Codec High Definition
• AVI – container (a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used)
• CAM – aMSN webcam log file
• DAT – video standard data file (automatically created when we attempted to burn as video file on the CD)
• DSH
• FLV – Flash video (encoded to run in a flash animation)
• M1V MPEG-1 – Video
• M2V MPEG-2 – Video
• FLA – Macromedia Flash (for producing)
• FLR – (text file which contains scripts extracted from SWF by a free ActionScript decompiler named FLARE)
• SOL – Adobe Flash shared object ("Flash cookie")
• M4V – (file format for videos for iPods and PlayStation Portables developed by Apple)
• Matroska (*.mkv) – Matroska is a container format, which enables any video format such as MPEG-4 ASP or AVC to be used along with other content such as subtitles and detailed meta information
• WRAP – MediaForge (*.wrap)
• MNG – mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF
• QuickTime (.mov) – container which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common; QTCH is the filetype for cached video and audio streams
• MPEG (.mpeg, .mpg, .mpe)

• MPEG-4 Part 14, shortened "MP4" – multimedia container (most often used for Sony's PlayStation Portable and Apple's iPod)

• MXF – Material Exchange Format (standardized wrapper format for audio/visual material developed by SMPTE)
• ROQ – used by Quake 3
• NSV – Nullsoft Streaming Video (media container designed for streaming video content over the Internet)
• Ogg – container, multimedia
• RM – RealMedia
• SVI – Samsung video format for portable players
• SMI – SAMI Caption file (HTML like subtitle for movie files)
• SWF – Macromedia Flash (for viewing)
• WMV – Windows Media Video (See ASF)

The 5 formats reviewed in the above video are JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, and EPS.

Sites From Which to Buy Laptops

• http://www.techbargains.com - my favorite
• http://www.dealnews.com
• http://www.fatwallet.com/
• http://www.dealcatcher.com
• http://www.slickdeals.net
• http://www.totaldeals.com
• http://www.spoofee.com

Embedding YouTube Video On Craigstlist

Here is an excellent tip from Bill Myers.  I definitely recommend that you join his site.

Even though Craigslist doesn't support embedded videos within their listings, there is an easy way to include a video. I show how in this short article.

Recent studies have shown that including a video with an ad posting on eBay increases the number of bids by almost 100%. For that reason, it makes sense to include videos in your Craigslist ads as well.

Unfortunately, at this time, Craigslist doesn't support embedded videos. But there is an easy way around that.

HERE'S HOW TO DO IT:

Step 1:  Create your video and upload to YouTube

Step 2:  Using a screen capture program, create a screen capture of the video at YouTube. It should look something like:
   
Step 3:  After you create the screen capture, upload it to somewhere on the web. Either your own site, or on image sharing sites.

    Optional: Create a sales page on your web site. Embed the YouTube video on that page

    When you create your Craigslist ad, include the following html:

    <a href="http://www.YourYoutubeLink.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">
    <img border="0" src="http://www.YourImageLink.jpg" width="480" height="295"</a>

    In the above code, change as follows:

    YourYouTubeLink - should be the URL of either your video on YouTube or the URL of the optional sales page you created in step 3 above.

    YourImageLink - should be the url of the screen capture image from step 2.

The net result of doing the above will be what appears to be a video player within your Craigslist Ad. When it is clicked on, the player will take the visitor to either YouTube or to the sales page you create that has the video on it.

Handbrake

Use handbrake to optimize the video for the web.  Handbrake allows you to reduce the size of the video file for storage.  Very helpful, for video takes up a lot of memory.

Digital Copiers Record Everything

Skype Apps

Here is a short list of applications one can use to  make the Skype experience a little more interesting.


SuperTinTin is an excellent app for doing this. There's a free version that's fully functional but only records up to 5 minutes. If you want to record longer, you have to buy it for $29.95.

Evaer for $20 is another good option. There's a trial version.

Pamela for Skype is also popular - price is $33.

Look at VodBurner if you want post-production features such as trimming, cutting, audio leveling, transitions, adding background music, adding external images or videos, ability to create "show" templates for a consistent podcast "look", etc. It's $99 for the full version but free to try for 14 days. After the 14 days, you can only use it free for calls to other VodBurner users, and I believe some of the advanced features are disabled.