Baby Boomers Building Businesses
I found a fun site this afternoon and I made my first cartoon.
That’s right … a cartoon!
I saw a cool video on Facebook today and then I had to checked out how they had made it. My research led me to this awesome site that allows us to create our own cartoons.
Best thing, its free for videos under 2 minutes and there are a variety of templates to choose from. The dialogue, however, is what we enter as text.
It was so simple.
First, you choose the “setting” from some templates of a kitchen, an office, a restaurant, and many more.
Next, you choose the characters you want, male or female, young or old.
Lastly, you enter the text you want the people to speak. That’s it.
Told you it was simple to make a fun cartoon.
Let’s take a look at my first attempt:
So did you like it? Create your own fun videos at GoAnimate.com. I think I created this in about 20 minutes and then I had to open an account – for free – so I could save it. That’s right, this site even hosts the videos for us.
I think I’ll play with this for a while as I can see lots of uses for this. For now, it’s OK to start with a limit of 2 minutes, I don’t think I’m quite ready to start writing “movie scripts”. I’m not sure if there’s a limit as to how many we can create, but I’m sure I’ll get a warning if there is. Then I might just have to upgrade.
I see lots of fun videos ahead, don’t you.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think and then be sure to share the videos you create.
It tomorrow really already May? What happened to April?
I realized I haven’t been here for a while, not that I haven’t had things to say. It’s just the past few weeks have been so hectic that this update and journaling sort of ended at the bottom of the priority list.
I feel bad about that as it’s been a challenging month as I’ve journeyed into videos.
IMAGE ACTION
I’ve been studying even more .. and focusing all my energy into figuring out how to create video.
Actually, I’ve made several videos for a friend to use as a promo for their program. I’m not sure how long he’ll use it, but it was fun learning how to make the video. I made it using a PowerPoint presentation and an audio file. I lost track of how many different software programs I tried to make this into a video.
You see, I have PowerPoint on my computer and I’ve been using the free Audacity for just as many years to record calls and webinars – but I didn’t have any software that converted the two parts into a video. And I need something either free or very low cost so it fit my budget.
I tried lots
I finally found one called Wondershare and I loved it. I tried the free trial version first and then paid the really low cost to have the advertising be gone. It was verily easy to use and it made wonderful videos. I did a 5 minute video as a intro and invite and then after the person signed up for the complete package (part of the list building process) the site would take them to a complete 25 minute presentation.
I learned how to set this up as a webinar – so the person thought they were attending a live webinar, but in reality, it was a video play inside the webinar settings of a Word Press Theme called List Machine Pro. The Auto Webinar portion of this WP theme is amazing.
Some days the technical processes really challenged me. Video, PowerPoint, email campaigns, capture forms, Auto Webinars ... all steps to completing a project like this. Many different formats of copy writing. Lots of graphics to create and perfect.
Then in the middle of April I was introduced to email videos – so that added a new learning process. I made several live videos as I wanted to use them in a project at church. Our pastor was in Africa for 5 weeks, and I had volunteered to co-ordinate the prayer support for her. Members signed up to pray certain days, actually we had two on the list each day was we were reminded that Moses had two people support him when he was meeting with God… so we chose to do the same.
Once we had the list, it was my job to remind everyone the day before it was there turn and let them know what pastor would be doing or share specific requests. I decided to do this using the email format. I’d make a video and then each day send it to whoever was on the list for the next day.
The response has been amazing! People actually opened and read their emails – well – I should say listened to the emails from me. Last Sunday everyone raved about how impressed they were with my talents and how that email really reminded them of the importance of their prayer for pastor. Just the results I was hoping for.
Next week our youth group is having a fund raiser and I’ve already decided to sent everyone on email on Friday reminding them to come on Sunday prepared to participate and donate. I’m working on the PowerPoint already.
So you can see I’ve been busy – and enjoying life. Video has been my main focus and it’s consumed a lot of time but oh so worth it! I’ve also had to spend a lot of time working with my coach and I’ll report more on that next time. She has me creating a new website and I’m very much still in the planning mode. And yes, I’m planning to use video on the site.
Since it’s the beginning of May, I thought I should also take note of how my social media accounts are progressing. This is end of month 4 of the project.
I haven’t spent any time in the last month to find new follower, but I have tweeted on each account:
Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think of my progress.
So many things to learn!
So many things to consider!
So many things to spend money on!
It really can be overwhelming.
So here’s where I’m at – I have a site up – several actually; I have some things to promote; several actually - some as a product or service as well as some affiliate products. I even have my list / email software ready to go.
Now I just need people to get on my list and find my products so they can consider buying them.
That means my next step is getting traffic to my sites so I started doing some research. I discovered that most sites tell you to buy traffic and pay for advertising.
Well, I can’t go that route basically because I can’t really afford it. So I was chatting with some associates on Facebook (we are friends there aren’t we, if not, just click on this sentence).
My friend Ely overseas told me he has had great success building his list using Give Away events. He even offered to give me some products I can use to be my gifts.
I know in the past I’ve been so some of these and I have a download folder to proof it. I look at all the downloads I have to find one that’s related to my niche of list building as I want to use a gift that I can edit to include links to my sites.
So I’ve decided to give this a try. I am going to learn to drive traffic to my sites and my offers using a Give Away. So I’ve signed up for my first GiveAway and now I need to figure out what I’m going to offer.
I already know this – if I’m going to go throught the effort of promoting something, it’s going to promote me and no some guru who already has a big following. So MRR or PLR products are what I need, and I have started looking over the variety of the ones I’ve bought over the past year.
It’s getting late for today, but I have the product ready. Tomorrow’s project will be to create the new list in my simple to use it’s just a few clicks and it’s done for me system – if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to click here!
I’m still doing my Twitter promotion and quite a few of them are following me on Facebook. GiveAways are a free list building tool so I’m going to get it all in place and use that as well. In fact, I think I might actually do a bit more research and then write an article about it and used it as a blog post on PricelessPotential.com
If you’ve used GiveAways, please leave a comment and share your results and ideas.
I was so focused on recording my progress on the Twitter challenge that I never really mentioned some of the other things I been researching last week.
Other than my regular mastermind coaching session with Maria and Art where we learned about trends, I also was in two other webinars last week as a way to research. Both of them I was only able to attend because I made the decision to stay home during the snow storm.
My video class on Saturday was all about using the “guru” or “celebrity” status of marketers that have already “made it” to add to your own credibilty. I can do this by setting up an interview with someone who is an expert in a certain area and them making a video of that interview. So let’s say I am able to set up an interview with Jonathn Budd.
The idea behind all of this is two fold:
By using this technique, people will find me when they find my video. Just the fact that I was able to actually get an interview with Jonathan Budd almost automatically gives me instant credibility as he is particular about who he associates with, as are more gurus.
I think it’s a great concept. Now I just need to learn to use my video camera properly and then find someone who will let me interview them.
The second webinar was all about joint ventures. It really wasn’t at all what I excpected, but then that not really fair because I never should have set any expectaions. I knew nothing about joint ventures so how sould I know what to expect.
Now I know quite abit about joint ventures, what they are and how to go about setting them up. Although at the end of the time I realized that it was really a webinar about how to become a jv broker, I didn’t consider it a waste of my time.
I now have a clear concept that a joint venture is an arrangement of mutual benefit between two or more people or businesses who have complimentary resources. These resources can range from products, services, business assets or customer lists that have a relationship with the list owner and all or any of these resources can be leveraged for minimal cost.
I may not have enough value in my list or products to arrange a joint venture with, say Jonathan Budd, The Getting Traffic Guru, today, but the idea of joint venturing with other marketers that are still building their lists and are newer to this online arena would be a great way for both of us to create more exposure for our businesses.
So, if you want to be interviewed, or you want to joint venture with me, sent me a message… or even just leave a comment below. I’ll get the message and get back to you.
It’s catch up day in my office. With all the craziness of the past week, I had a very full inbox this morning and several projects on my to do list.
So I decided before I started a new project, I needed to finish a few old ones. Done for now!
That’s great because I want to get started in my new course.
Yes, I did … I signed up for a new challenge. Same mentor, Maria and Art, so I know what the quality of stuff I’m going to be learning.
In early December, they offered us in their 90 day challenge an entire year of mentoring about affiliate marketing. Since that’s the route I’m taking in building my business, I opted to learn from the best.
One step at a time .. one week at a time.
And of course, the timing was such that I got the email about Week 1′s lesson on Dec 15. I glanced at the email but never even looked at the lesson.
The next lesson came Dec 22. I never even looked at the email. I wasn’t on the computer much last week.
This morning as I plowed through my email inbox, I realized I should be getting lesson 3 any time so I’d better find the time to go back to lesson one.
That’s where I’m off to now. I have some fresh coffee, a clear desk, and some time before Tina’s webinar of social media this evening. I’m going to open Lesson One and find out how much homework Art is giving us.
Maybe I’ve already learned the basics through this challenge. I almost hope so as I really want to be caught up on all the lessons before the next one hits my Inbox.
