Building eCommerce

By Stephen Campbell

Using streaming video in order to have video on a webpage is one of the easiest ways to create a product for sale on the Internet, and it can be a very profitable business. Even though it’s easier to publish a book than ever before, it’s possible to create a video product and use online video in a fraction of the time required to create a book as streaming video is one of the hottest trends in internet marketing today.

When you consider the amount of time it takes for a book by a new author to be accepted by a publisher, edited, manufactured, distributed, and marketed, several years can go by before authors see any revenue for all their hard work. Self-publishing is a good alternative for authors to consider, but the production and marketing costs can be very high. The creation of streaming video products for sale on the Internet is a much easier way to generate a revenue stream. Yes having video on a webpage will set you apart from the competition as online video is hot right now.

The art of streaming video publishing
If you’re already convinced that the creation of video products is a powerful Internet marketing tool to drive traffic and sales, here are some important questions to consider before you jump into the production process:

Are you a good communicator? Can you tell a story? Can you explain how to do something in simple terms? Do you have specialized knowledge that can be turned into a product that gives value to customers? If you answered “yes” to these questions, you have all the knowledge and experience you need to create a video product and use streaming video that can generate a nice revenue stream. It takes experienced authors from six months to a year to write a book, but even first-time internet marketing video producers can plan, script, film, and edit a professional-quality video product in six weeks and have online video for all to see.

Who will shoot your online video ? If you have a webcam with a built-in microphone, you already have experience shooting home videos. If you don’t have a webcam, you can probably partner with someone who has a lot of experience and have video on a webpage in no time at all.

Who will edit your streaming video ? Even a 15-minute video can take several hours to edit professionally. If you’ve been practicing with home videos, now is the time to show your skills on the Internet. If you’ve never edited before, you can find someone to look at your raw footage and teach you how to do some simple editing, which will improve the quality of the finished video product enormously. Video companies generally charge from $50 to $100 an hour, depending on the effects you want edited into your product.

The power of streaming video products on the Worldwide Web
Video podcasting and vlogging are tools that offer unlimited potential for increasing traffic within your internet marketing strategies for your web site or blog and for creating revenue streams through the sale of video products or sale of other products by having streaming audio and video broadcasting. Individual video content producers can create revenues streams from successful videos that last for years. Some video publishers tend to produce almost 30 videos that have given the producer a monthly income between $8,000 and $10,000 dollars for over four years. This video publisher reports that most of these videos in his internet marketing campaigns are still selling-and not one has lost money. This gives further weight to the trend of using streaming video on your website.

About The Author

Stephen C Campbell (MBA, MSc, MCIM) is a business consultant who has conducted business throughout Europe, Far East & U.S. He specialises in helping businesses use the new technologies as a part of their business strategies.
http://www.affordablewebsitevideo.com

By Matthew Glanfield

This morning my Manager of Member Services came in, quite disgusted at something that I had done.

The night before I had sent out an email with a link to a squeeze page that I had created, and she was completely repulsed by how ugly it was! She told me that with the fabulous graphic designer that we have available in-house, I could have had a much better looking squeeze page created for the campaign I was doing.

She even went on to say that my web designer was hurt because I had created such an abomination! (It turns out he wasn’t hurt, he was actually happy to see me create such a piece of dirt as it secures his job further)

I patiently listened to her continue on about how I need to provide better quality websites for the experience of my readers. After she was done and had gone to work, I looked at the stats that the squeeze page had produced overnight:

66.22% conversion rate!

Why on earth would this ugly squeeze page get a whopping 66.22% conversion rate when well designed pages struggle to get 20%? Well, I’ll let you in on the secret. The visitors were “sold” before they even got to the squeeze page!

You see, I was emailing my own readers about an affiliate program that was happening within the next few days. In my email I explained all the benefits of using this program, and told them that if they wanted to learn more then they needed to sign up at that squeeze page.

When people went to the squeeze page they already knew they wanted to sign up. Obviously some backed out (33.78% to be exact), but that could have been for various reasons, one maybe being how ugly my page was!

So what can we learn from this interesting experience?

1. Relationship building is key

If you don’t have a great relationship with your readers then selling will be VERY difficult.

2. Pre-selling is king

As my good friend Todd Gross says, pre-selling is key to making a ton of cash through affiliate marketing (or through selling your own products).

Where do you pre-sell? Everywhere! In particular your emails, your videos, your blog posts, your articles, and anywhere else before the visitor is asked to purchase.

Because the visitors to the ugly squeeze page were pre-sold, they didn’t care how poorly written and ill conceived the page was - they already knew they wanted it.

3. Prettiness is not always important

In fact, I have found that the more “good looking” a website is, the lower it performs.

Maybe this is due to the fact that the graphics are distracting, or perhaps it is because little (or no) time is put into delivering a useful, consistent, valuable message. Whatever the reason, I suggest you try removing the header graphics, fancy animated gifs, and other “pretty-factors” from your squeeze and sales pages and see what happens.

You may be rather surprised.

About The Author

Matthew Glanfield helps people start their own online Internet marketing businesses. Get answers to your questions by visiting his squeeze page blog at http://www.bboinstitute.com