New ideas about a dip in the middle of your product lifecycle

Seth's now created two separate bell curves with a dip in the middle. Convenient for him, he has a book called "The Dip" that's been out for awhile. While this tends to explain his world-view, it may not be correct for all circumstances/situations.

I've earlier covered about the Product Life Cycle (which is explained various places), adding that such a marketing cycle (bottom is against time, not attitudes) can be restarted.

With Godin's double curve, he assumes a time function at the bottom as well. So he then has your product moving through the first, into the dip, and then into the second.

In both Bell Curves, your mainstream is at the top. Mainstream passionate, and mainstream pop. For both cases, your supply/demand then peaks (with least profit) at that point - for that set of public.

For many product life cycles, the early adopters are those "dweebs" on the "cutting edge". Gladwell talks about this in "Tipping Point". Artsy Greenwich Villagers who liked Hush Puppies started a new product life cycle trend (which lasted years), but then got out of that trend when it went mainstream.

Jeans, on the other hand, have been eternally popular - having ups and downs, but mostly making Levi-Strauss tons of dough meanwhile. I love the mainstream part of this, as now I can get really cheap jeans (which last no longer than the expensive ones) and be comfortable in the humid Missouri summers wearing nothing but cotton. (As well as being able to keep my dress slacks in the closet because I work outside with cattle and fences and greasy farm equipment during the days.)

Jeans were a necessary point early on of those passionate about gold-mining in California. Later, other trades found that durable work pants fit their operation as well - that niche was expanded. When they became a fashion statement during the hippy '70's, they became mainstream - and all sorts of people started branding their own. And extensions to this, such as Dockers and what not, gave the same durable easy wear some status as they could pass for corporate wear as well.

The original niche expanded, went mainstream, and then subdivided into smaller niches again. (One particular niche is the ultra-durable versions. Overpriced Carhart's with their trademark brown is one example.)

While you could have a dip in the middle, you could also simply have the early adopters being the passionate and the pop-cycle taking up the slack (and probably causing the slack) in the passionate demand.

You could even have several dips, as different niches find their use for that item. Jeans' sales above has had several dips in sales. In every case, it was where a certain niche-client-type was using their product heavily and then another niche found them. (Of course, a rather slack marketing approach can cause dips, as well as poor transition into mass-production.)

Dips are also seasonal, sandals don't sell well in winter - but also, high gas prices could keep more off the beach - or more going to the beach. A dip for one area would be a peak for another.

Charles Haanel's "Master Key System", Wallace Wattle's "Science of Getting Rich", and Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" - these continue to sell well, helped by Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" DVD, and a host of lecturers who discovered people still bought these books and wanted more information about them. But look through eBay and you'll see that these books are being bought regularly for decent prices as more and more re-discover them and then want more data. Sure, they were in their hay-day during the 20'2 and 30's - but have gone on to sell way more copies than they ever did to begin with. But don't think they had that much of an extreme dip in between - the 50's had a lot of self-help going on (Nightingale-Conant developed during that time and the early 60's). This particular dip would be due to generational differences.

The passionate are not always the first bell curve in the sequence. Specialized niches can "discover" a product and start using the hell out of it way after it's fallen off the "pop" radar. Velcro has tons of uses, but has never replaced buttons or any other fastener - except in certain niche products.

- - - -

Now, that Bell Curve isn't really just 2D-flat. It's actually more of a bump, with niches and passions on every side. And that bump wouldn't necessarily be smooth - as you might have mini-dips as your product transitions from one niche to another, going out of style over here while ramping up as popular over there - and there.

Against time, you might find that a certain passion-niche remains steady for demand of an item (like farmers and their jeans - they've become consumers of the cheap and durable) - so you have a tunnel-effect throughout the overall life-cycle. Demands for gold-miners peaked years ago, and there certainly aren't as many farmers as their used to be, but people have gardens and like to go outdoors and so need durable pants-type clothing.

A 3D graph colored by niche would show all sorts of amazing interactions. But no one goes this way, so we'll leave that be.

Your takeaways today?

• Passion and Pop are just different niches.
• One's contraction is another's expansion, dip or no dip.
• Don't figure that the passionate are always first.
• But there is always early adopters for every niche, as well as late adopters.
• And, as always, product life cycles can be re-started through brilliant marketing - which is, again, creating a market for a product.

Seth's Blog: Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf:

"The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither."

Postgrad SEO - using Web 2.0 instead of article marketing to promote your book

Just too good an idea to pass up.

Health keeps coming up as some outrageously searched-for keyword. Helps that 'Boomers are getting older (and Europe/Japan have worse problems than ours) and so they are all interested in extending their health and lives.

Check out this Google Trend search for "health, life, nutrition, diet, fitness". See what I mean? The things that would save their health and improve their lives (good food and exercise) are lower ranked than the goals themselves - which makes sense once you think about it. (But if you want to check for a sheep mentality, look up "life insurance" or "health insurance" - which are completely solutions for the after-the-fact-problem of losing your health or losing your life.) Health and Life are re-active scenes - the people who are proactive are more the minority.

But - searching various keyword programs for "life health" gives low response. Few people search for this combination.

So you wouldn't use that combination as anything on your pages or link text. (I can think of some catchy book titles with these two, however...)

However, your mini-web could use various versions of these above in the page titles in order to capture those niche Google-search positions...

And I have a ton of PLR articles which are useless for article marketing, but prime for ebooks.

Of course, this is all old-hat stuff.

Enter Web 2.0

The test is if videos can replace articles. Now, I don't have a great deal of video sites like YouTube. Frankly, like my tests in article marketing, it doesn't much pay to submit to very many to get the key effects you want, which is people finding and buying your book.

Now, the recent research (and it worked for me, too) is that videos and social bookmarking, as well as blogging, get to the top of Google faster.

With TTS, and these short PLR articles, I could conceivably produce a video a day, based on the content of that ebook. You'd then become some sort of expert on health-related stuff. Sort of. Just like article marketing - on steroids.

Sequence is to create the ebook first - post to Lulu. (My clickbank is bugged, this would be preferable, since you could sell the book via affiliates and increase your sales.)

Take the text articles, add audio headers and footers - create the TTS audio (save in own directory).

Build your master mini-web, using your main keyword phrase you selected. This promotes the book. FTP that up and getting running.

Take time here and set up your opt-in page for that subject. Plug in some articles to your autoresponder sequence.

For each MP3 audio, make a video using clipart and stock photos. (Camtasia...)

Post the videos on YouTube and the MP3's on Internet Archives.

As you post each video, create a new mini-web which links to the first one (and gives it all the pagerank). Each media file links to your Lulu product, but has individual keyword niches (where most of your geek time will be spent, other than making the videos.) Each mini-web also invites people to opt-in for more information on the subject.

Social bookmark each video and MP3 and mini-web index page as you post them.

Blog each video and link to the MP3 and mini-web. Social bookmark that blog-entry.

What you are doing is creating a buzz for each of these inter-related keyword niches. You rise to the top in each of these niches - which in turn give their pagerank over to your main mini-web, which promotes the book (as do all the sub-webs on your mini-net).

And all that should add up to a nice set of Google Page Rank which plops viewers to your main mini-net page and sells books. Plus it should give you a number of subscribers to your list, where you can interest them in other related products.

Just to add frosting to the cake, sign up with some affiliate programs which pay you per lead for insurance policies. Put these links prominently on your site and rake in some extra income.

Test of video's and article marketing

This is a test to see if you can get faster response than the months it takes to get some volume out of article marketing. Certainly you wind up at the top of Google faster - but does it translate to sales? Sure, there are lots of factors present. And TTS is a cheesy way (perhaps) of making soundtracks for videos.

But it would be an interesting concept. Definately worth a test drive...

- - - -

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SEO - Finding top keywords using Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool

Funny, but Google can tell you a lot about its own keywords.

The following approach gives you some rough data, but some valuable results:

1. You type the keywords you want to know more about, one (phrase) per line, into Google's Keyword tool.
2. Sort the result by average search volume.
3. Grab the 2 text files you get and put them in a text editor.
4. Take the top 10 or 15 words in each list (regular and "additional keywords to consider")
5. Put these back into the Keyword Tool and check the results.
6. Repeat by taking the top 10 or 15 words from the two lists several times - until you start seeing a pattern show up and the top words quit changing so much.
7. Now, take these 20 or 30 top words and put them five at a time into Google Trends.
8. Eliminate the ones which are separate from the others at the bottom. You want them bunched up if you can - but don't take off the top ones. (If you get "free", or some other oddball word that makes the others all go to the bottom, set it aside and just test the others for now.)

You'll wind up with 5 or 10 words which are searched for all the time - which are "short head" terms. (Different from the "long tail" niches you're looking for.) And you'll start seeing what people are looking for in general - so you can subdivide these into niches.

Differences between Services and Products

Look out for what you get, though.

I did a couple of tests yesterday (and you can/should do your own test of this idea) - one which started out "money, health, power"; the other starting with "free" ( a classic top keyword which outshines even "sex").

The first gave me back an interesting set: "jobs, business, health, power, job" - the second gave me back a different set: "free, games, hotel, dvd, game"

Now, note what you have there. Throw out "free" and you have services in the first one, products in the second. If I'd kept the top ten, I'd probably have "money" back in there, but you can see that we have intangibles in the first set and tangibles in the latter.

And if you look on those keyword trends, you'd see that the top ones are searched consistently through the year and the second are seasonal. Hotels dip in January and peak in September. DVD's peak around Christmas, as does "game" - though not so much.

The SEO guru's I've been listening to about long-tail niche marketing say that your better profits are in the tangibles - the products. People will buy a concrete, actual thing faster than they do an intellectual item. Even though it costs way more.

I'm in the intangibles category, myself, since I deal with personal development and self help books. So I'm interested in what people are looking as benefits for the information products they buy.

So there's two approaches and two sets of results.

They may cross - "free money" would be interesting, but you could never deliver it - and would look like a cheap huckster. "Health DVD" would give you a good line of products you could sell. "Health video" would be a good way to promote that DVD.

Watch for crossover keywords

I went out on left field when I started researching "personal" and "self" - because personal also means "personals" - a classified ad. And what people are looking for in the personal ads section are varied and mostly are all products. So it gave me nothing of worth as I was looking for what benefits people were looking for - not what products. That research dead-ended for me.

The key point is that you start seeing the biggest reasons people are looking for things - be they benefits or products.

With a few such tests, you'll be able to then start finding some very "searched for" niches which are then very under-represented. With those keywords in your text links,

Another oddity - synonyms

I've run into keywords that are so similar that they run tightly in the same range. Consider this Google trend "meat, beef, protein". All run in the same tight trend - except for protein dropping a bit, they show the same consistent demand. (A good thing for farmers.) When you add in "grassfed, organic", you see no real change.

Does this mean that these search terms are basically synonymous? I frankly don't know - there's probably others who have spent more research hours on this.

But my "Competition Finder" (iBizResearch.com) tells me Google has:

• 138M pages for meat,
• 133M pages for protein,
• 72M pages for beef,
• 121M pages for organic, but only
• 73.5K pages for grassfed.

So we can start to see that there aren't many pages for grassfed anything, but about the same demand as meat/beef/protein. Google Trends won't help us break this down, as it's below their radar currently.

The next tool would be to plug those key phrases back into Google Keyword Tool so we can get an estimate of what traffic is there. And you'll get more related words as additional ideas - as well as being able to "theme" your pages.

But as you have pages on "meat", you'll have a similar demand for "beef", and "protein". From the above, you can see that chasing up long tail niches for "beef" would probably be the most profitable niche to start with. Once you have your pagerank going, then expanding over to "meat" and "protein" would be simple. ("Cooking natural beef recipes" would go over to "cooking natural meat recipes" quite easily - you could almost copy/paste the pages to another mini-web...)

- - - -

There's a lot more to do in this area - but as I was toying around with some interesting research last night, I thought to give you a heads-up on this area.

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Article Directories and Submitters - making money and getting fame one article at a time..

I promised long ago (on another blog) that I'd some day do a review of article submitter programs. But I had so many and I was acid testing them at the time. Plus I got into other fascinating research about optimizing web pages and then the wonderful world of Web 2.0 and video.

Today, however, I went back into that strange world of article marketing.

Right off, there are many, many programs out there. And they all do more or less what you pay for. Some are much better than others. I'll tell you what I've ran into and what I've tested.

Now the articles I had submitted were to some very interesting article directories. These directories tended to shrink after awhile from a few hundred down to around 80 and then - after an upgrade - back beyond three hundred. And that's just for one submitter I used the most. (The reason they shrunk was that there was a natural shake-up in directories. Many had flawed scripts and wouldn't accept my articles or didn't pay for enough bandwidth. Another problem was that many had never secured their site, so some unscrupulous hacker got into them and not only changed their directory around, but also set them up to spread his little trojan around - you see, this submitter, like most of them, is IE based and so is inherently insecure. Only my anti-virus and firewall saved me, but I still had to manually run some clean up programs. But that program's administrators were on top of it and gave me a good explanation.)

And so the first program I'll recommend: www.submitsuite.com's "Article Submitter".

Now I think that is is based on the code of another program, also called "Article Submitter", which is a freebie and also gives away the source code. (Some day, I'll make this available through an opt-in list, but right now, I can't take the time...) Anyone can tailor-make this program with their own graphics and links and what not. I've even seen another free version of it that has rotating banners...

And that last one was the second program I'd recommend.

Here's why for both of these:

They are built on Article Dashboard's free script and so are able to simply enter your articles almost automatically - at least SubmitSuite's. Once you have registered at all the article directories (you have to do this for each one, though their program help speed the process quite a bit), then unless that directory takes you off their list or quits performing, it will generally just take your article and submit it right through. This is because of the scripts they have to handle the submission to Article Dashboard's script.

The second program, the freeware Article Submitter (found for free download in many places), does it on a semi-automatic basis - supposedly you only have to select the category you want to submit it to. The best point of this one is that you can add new directories. (If you don't like the hundred plus it came with, you can delete them - but never get them back without manually adding them.) No other directory submitter program I've used does that. They all have some sort of central clearing-house or approval process.

And that's why I use that second, clunky program.

None of the programs I have can access the most popular and probably the most effective article directories - ezinearticles.com - so I have to add it.

That's the theory and practice of my submissions - all articles to a few, and the best few to hundreds. Those few are the top-rated, top 10 article directories. Those hundreds are all those that I can use with a mostly-automatic submitter.

Mostly-automatic - lets look at that: with SubmitSuite's article submitter, you have to keep it open on its own screen to see when it when it hangs. Then you simply write down the address of that hung article directory site. Then go to the next site. Oh - and watch out for the pop-ups and web rings. These can also stop the program.

Another glitch - it does keep track of the articles you submit, but no data besides the title. So you have to keep track of these in a text editor. You can live with that as long as your hard-drive is fairly organized - and backed-up. I presume this program does this to keep its speed. Too bad it doesn't keep a simple address on your hard-drive. But I can wait for the update.

One other caveat - use a spam-magnet email address. These article directories are also being used to accumulate email addresses. I use gmail, myself, since while they want you to accept their (spam) emails as part of your agreement, you can set up a filter for each email which simply trashes them before you have to see them. Otherwise, your email gets deluged with junk.

Now, I've tried other article submitter programs and even high-priced ones. Don't go this route. And that doesn't mean you can't - but I've done enough research for my end of it and have some working tools.

(There's another "Article Submitter" clone - a "Pro" version, which has over 1,000 article directories, but is very, very backward on use. My little free one is still faster, despite its drawbacks.)

How to use that little free one: Keep your text editor open. While the program logs you in, you're going to have to select your category, as I've said. While you're there, correct it's other little nasty, that is gives you a very small bio to use. (If I wanted to load in my old Visual Basic, I could probably fix that...) Just cut and paste in your new, improved variety of bio.

Now this other problem it has is that it will only put in one article at a time. You actually have to delete the other one to get your new one to be used.

As for other free programs - you get what you pay for. But by the same token, I don't think you have to pay hundreds to get a program that simply works. I'm happy with SubmitSuite's product and their customer service. Others are more based on their marketing pitch, which includes inflated prices.

About those article directories:

1. The best fit no mold. They are so uniquely tailored that no program can automatically access them. And factually, those directories probably don't want them to (spam).

2. The best have features like wysiwig editors for the articles. And I could simply live in Ezinearticles, because it is more like a blog interface than an article directory. These guys to a helluva lot to keep improving their services.

3. Low-end intro article directories "might" be useful in terms of getting you some pagerank - but it is going to take a lot of these to do any good. I don't see that your spending a great deal of time with PR0 sites will get you anywhere. These sites will grow in stature as they improve the service they provide. Then they will become valuable.

4. However, that said, using a semi-automatic submitter like above, can help both of you. And so the theory of using a simple submitter to keep your access to the top sites available, while you pick the best articles out of those many to submit to the vast amount of others that play nice with those programs.

Best of luck with all these articles of yours...

New points on top rankings with through Google keywords

Some notes on the new ideas I've been having on the business of search engine optimization.

I've been messing around with videos, as I've told you earlier. And here is my latest, an overview of all my books I've been writing/editing/publishing lately.



Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? (Ok, then leave a comment...)

These videos continue to improve as I go, which is usual as you practice and study anything.

- - - -

Now, what I've discovered lately is the international aspect of keywords. (No, Duh?) But we in the U.S. are all too tied up in our own ethno-centricities (or eccentricities) and often forget that our sales can be better in niches "overseas" than here. Looking up my server logs showed that one site was more popular in Europe, another in Africa.

So I saw discrepancies when looking up "personal development, self improvement, self-help" on Google Trends. When I ran those up on Google Keyword External, the rankings didn't add up. While the world has a higher and longer use for "personal development", we in the US prefer self-help or self improvement - and the rest of the world doesn't. So I looked around on the page and found that my results were English-US only. When I searched for English in all pages, I came back with much different choices - and much wider ones.

While Google Keyword Tool gave "life coaching" as top position, this was as it ranks by advertising competition by default. Clicking on average searches gave me new top terms - which are closer to what people are actually looking for, as opposed to what people are making money at. "Book, business, dating, health, love" were top terms. Plugging these into Google Trends again gave me a new comparison for these terms, since how people search for them isn't necessarily what advertisers are looking at.

Just out of that, you could see that a "book about business health" should get a lot of hits. No, it's such a niche that Google trends doesn't even have it. But business book is number one in India and Singapore. "Love book" takes over in the U.S. and other leading countries. And "business book" is the only thing that shows up (out of "business book, health book, love book, fitness book, dating book" - the top 5 out of 8 terms from that first above search) in news search.

So press releases on just about anything with "business book _____" would give a substantial ranking.

And you can see that books about the other top items are also high in demand.

The point here is that this gives you additional tools. I started out looking for the broad field of personal development and found that there are five popular items which would be created and marketed as niches within that field. But the buyers would vary according to the product. "Love books" would sell better in the U.S. and "business books" would do better in India, Singapore, etc. A little more searching would show how to sell your "fitness books, health books, and dating books" to whom and on what continent - all from online research.

Just ensure you don't rely on your own fixed ideas when you are marketing. Niches are all over the place - remember, there are as many or more buyers on the Long Tail than there are at the Short Head.

Tags and Keywords determine YouTube video findability - SEO strategies

On some sign-up in the last few days, I got a free pdf from Jeremy Burns, entitled ViralYouTubeTraffic. (If I knew where I'd got it from, I'd link it... and bless it's soul, it's all over Google.)

Here's a boil-down of what I see as vital (italics are direct quotes):

1. How do you gauge a video's popularity?

The popularity of a video can be gauged by looking at the views count and it is important to see that there are two ways that videos results are returned: By the title of the video and the ‘tags’ used to describe the video. By all appearances, the ‘tags’ are the most important keyword reference to optimize... In fact, these are probably the 2 most important optimization tools (other than making a great video) that you can use to get your video viewed many, many times. Fortunately, most YouTube users are not experts at keyword optimization and only tag their videos with a few related keywords. With a little thought and brainstorming, you can make your videos ‘findable’.

Means that keywords, like the rest of the Internet, are only used by the savvy - and that is where the money/viewers/leads are.

2. Channels, Groups, Playlists

Search Tools:
Channels: Basically, channels allow you to search for videos uploaded by a specific user. You can create your own channel
Groups: This feature allows you to search by groups using a keyword. This is important for advanced search because groups attract passionate people.
Playlists: This feature allows you to find playlists or groups of videos organized by a common theme.

...

After you’ve created a YouTube account and uploaded some videos, take the time to create a custom profile and your own custom channel information. You should also create at least one group, and you may want to create a playlist if you have more than 1 video.

This will give you a big advantage when people sort for ‘Channels’, ‘Groups’, and ‘Playlists’.

If YouTube users are so unsophisticated now that they can barely pick more than 2 or 3 decent keywords to tag their videos with, there is little doubt that few to none are actually taking the time to make customized channels, play lists and groups.

Idea here is the same as keywords. You want to make your video findable. These three are social networking tools within YouTube that facilitate people finding your video when it is associated with words they are looking for. That is really all keywords do - search shortcuts people use within search engines. (If you want a good cross-section of Internet culture, just look at Google's hot trends...) People use common terms to find stuff - and you just have to find what those terms are, plus tag your video and include those terms in your title and descriptions.

3. Characteristics of successful videos

Well, I have found that there are certain characteristics that can help make a video successful, and I’ve listed them below... Funny, Weird, Gross, Shocking, Interesting, Sexy, Inspiring, Demonstrates, Instructional, Personal

For the use of someone trying to develop a trusting relationship with a public that will opt-in to a mailing list and then continue to buy, let's narrow down to these few:

Funny, Interesting, Inspiring, Demonstrates, Instructional, Personal

Anything else is a flash in the pan. What you want is a classic that will be around (and searched for, referred) over and over.

5. Case Studies - Burns does four very clear case studies showing why each was a success as marketing tools. (Get the PDF, which has links to these videos.)

His summary says it all:

4 Important Observations About The Videos In The Case Studies

1. A video does not have to get very many views to be an absolutely amazing financial success. In the case of high-ticket items like real estate, a very simple and amateur video which got only a few hundred hits sold a house. The return on investment was awesome.

2. Video length is very important to note of. Keep in mind that people on the internet have extremely short attention spans, and there maybe much better videos waiting for them to view if your video is boring for even 5 or 10 seconds. Unless you have a very strong professionally produced, or extremely funny or engaging video, there isn’t much reason the video has to be over 2 minutes. Videos as short as 20 seconds that take 10 minutes to produce may be as powerful a professionally created video that is 5 minutes long and cost $5,000 to produce.

3. We also learn that even the most basic demonstrations of a product using YouTube can help to sell a product (unless you are showing a competitor’s product in a bad light). Keep in mind that even if a demonstrational video that doesn’t get many views from people searching YouTube, it can still be a useful marketing device --Just embed the demonstrational video in your website to help convert visitors into buyers. ...

4. If possible, put people in the videos...those people will show their friends those videos and those friends may show other friends and so on. Just be sure that if an actors release is required ... that you have one.

Length, as sales page writers have found, has more to do with maintaining interest than attention span. Trailers are short in movie theaters to take advantage of that short, emotional attention span. Marketers are saying, "Plug this into your subconscious right now and REMEMBER IT." When the video gets longer, you are engaging their analytical side as well.

For real marketing, you can't practically emotionalize trust without also delivering some goods for the Analyzer in us all. Emotional appeal only lasts so long - ask any President's PR person. While approval ratings usually go up after they left office, they are mostly in the gutter when they left (I think Truman still beats Bush at this point...). Approval ratings go up when they only have their fond memories left (and the press quits bashing them every day, on the hour, half-hour, and in-between.)

You want a viral affect that lasts. So length is optimal against how good your copy is and how well your production carries the viewer.

6. Movie Quality

Burns goes into a great deal about how to make videos. Suffice to say, the tools are cheap, plentiful, and have short learning curves. I made my first one in an afternoon when I installed the program.

But there are these recommendations:

What's the best format to upload for high quality? YouTube recommends the following settings: * MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format * 320x240 resolution * MP3 audio * 30 frames per second

Movie Length And File Size: Movies must be under 10 minutes, under 100 megabytes in file size. This should not be a problem, as most effective promotional videos are short.

When uploading your videos, it is important to remember that this is the time to optimize your video profile to get the most visitors from YouTube searchers. Here are some screen-shots to explain the basic functions of uploading your videos. After you have created your free YouTube Account, login and go to your account page and find the button that says ‘Upload New Video’.

This step is the most important step so take your time and make sure you get this right.
In the title box, put your best keyword, and make your title exciting if possible. Something that generates curiosity will help. You may also consider putting your website URL in the title (but not absolutely necessary).

In the description box, describe your video and BE SURE to put your website URL! You may want to put some keywords in the description.

The ‘Tags’ box is critical. Here is where you want to put all of the best keywords that you found from your research. These are the keywords that will help YouTube surfers find your videos.

Another key point he covers is to have your web address visible at all times. Like a banner behind your video action if you are recording, part of your template if you are working from a PowerPoint presentation, or as a watermark if some combination of things. The idea is that you get the person to see your web address so they can go there for more information.

As well, make sure you have a final page to that video which has your address - and is the last (and probably also the first) thing they see. "As sponsored by gothunkyourself.com" or something.

7. List Building

Now we'll see how this then ties into what we've already covered in List Building through An Online Millionaire Plan:

How To Build Your List By Offering Free Videos:

List building is a very important part of doing business online. There are a few ways you can build your list using YouTube. The first is to put up videos, and at the end of the video, instruct the users to visit your website. At your website, be sure to have an email sign up form to collect as many subscribers as you can to market to them over an over again. You may also want to use videos as incentives for people to sign up.

For example, in exchange for a name and email address, you can send your subscribers a link to 2 sample videos which offer a sample of your product or some type of demonstration. This is especially effective if you have an information product and you can show one or two techniques to pique the prospects interest. Be sure to describe the videos and the benefits they’ll receive from watching them and you’ll likely increase your email list.

Trust Building: If you have an email list already, you may want to create a few videos of yourself and your product to help build a personal relationship with your subscribers. This may not be appropriate for all types of businesses, but there is always some way you can increase trust with video that shows your subscribers more about what you can offer them.

Educational Videos Educational videos also fall under the category of trust building. Educational videos can be useful if they tell potential buyers more about your product or service. For example, if you were selling a series of cooking videos on DVD, you might find it useful to do a short series of YouTube videos demonstrating a few recipes and then direct watchers to your website where they could purchase complete DVDs. You might also have the educational videos embedded in your website to help show what you do to people who find your site in the search engines.

It helps to build trust when people see a sample and see that what you are offering is good.

Here's where the rubber meets the road. If you are going to generate leads/traffic from videos, you have to generate trust. So sexy, gross (or sexy and gross) videos won't do - unless you are selling porn, but these usually get banned from YouTube quickly.

Simple educational videos, as Burns mentions, will build trust.

As well, the idea that you give away something for people who give you their email address is standard for this industry.

With videos, this can be simply an address to a page with a video that's not commonly available - or a .zip file they can download where that video is embedded into a web page as a Flash file. Or you could simply give away a PDF ebook which has video links in it. (I haven't yet worked with embedding video into PDF's, although I'm sure some one has - stay tuned...)

8. Where to from here...

Now that you have them on your list, realize that this is a visual-oriented, Web 2.0-savvy subscriber. They may not be satisfied with simple emails and PDF ebooks. So you should make special list-only videos from time to time and embed them on your blog.

And of course, all these videos you make can then build into your own funnel products, since videos make great course material. Particularly if you are making educational and how-to videos from the beginning.

Courses built with audio and video, in addition to PDF's, will give a lot greater value than a simple text or HTML-based course. Of course, you want them to buy your hardcopy version that comes with a CD or DVD.

Lulu and others enable you to create CD's and DVD's that the person can buy directly (or you could burn and print them yourself, for a little investment of personal time and money).

You can make access to these projects "direct access only", such that unless you give out the exact address, they would never be able to find it on their own. Perfect for special offers (like the pre-release paperback version of a book - or that link above on List Building where you can get a section of a larger book for a fraction of what the final book costs. But only where the author gives you the exact address - and none of the others can be searched for, since they are all given exact numbers, which are impossible to get sequentially and guess...

And... there is great crossover potential. I've mentioned embedding these in blogs. They also embed well in sales pages (though KISS still applies) and also can be linked from your articles - which will boost your credibility enormously. They also can be enabled through your RSS feed, meaning people should be able to "podcatch" them if you set it up right (More on this later as I research it).

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As a review, Jeremy Burns gives great value in this PDF, and has made it available for many to either sell or give away (as you can see on Google).

It's a great start.

But as I've been blogging lately, this is the way our modern Internet culture is heading. Burns points out that, as usual, really optimizing your videos (as people still don't do with their web pages) is how you can generate quite a bit of traffic and credibility for yourself.

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