In this world, you have to give to get back. So when I started getting about 10 emails a day asking me how I make my web videos, I had two options.

1. Create a guide about how I do it and sell it for profit. Or…
2. Create a guide about how I do it and just give the darn thing away, for free.

I choose the free route. Introducing, OnlineVideoToolkit.com. A free video guide that shows you everything I know about making web videos using inexpensive equipment. I produced about 10 videos showing you all my secrets about lighting, set design, cameras to buy, clothing tips, sound, etc… It’s all there, with more to come.

I even have a contest for the launch. Want to win my Flip camera? Watch the video below. Note: The dates have been extended on this video, you have plenty of time to enter, don’t worry about it.

I hope you enjoy it!

Blogs that use images have better readability. Personally, I use an image in every blog post, no matter what. I’ve forced myself to do this a long time ago. It’s not that hard to do. Here’s a great tool that can help you.

Ever wonder how other bloggers get those amazing screen grabs and images with arrows and pointers and all that fun stuff in their blog entries? Well, so did I. I have always used Photoshop to do that manually, which is a big pain in the butt.

Until recently, a co-worker turned me onto a program called FastStone Capture. Oh yeah, it’s free too!

FastStone Capture is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It has innovative features such as a floating Capture Panel, hotkeys, resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing, e-mailing, screen magnifier and many more.

Features include…

* A small floating Capture Panel that can be dragged anywhere or minimized to the Windows tray area
* Resource friendly – uses a very small amount of memory, especially when minimized to the Windows tray area
* Global hotkeys to activate the program’s capture capabilities anytime, anywhere
* Efficient tools to capture windows, objects, full screen, rectangle/freehand-selected regions and scrolling areas
* Capture web pages in Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera
* Option to specify destination (internal editor, clipboard, file or printer) where the captured image will be sent
* Text/Arrowed line/Highlight/Watermark annotation
* Drop-shadow, torn-edge and fade-edge effects
* Add caption
* Resize, crop, zoom in/out
* Undo/Redo
* Support external editors, which allows you to add virtually unlimited editing capabilities to the program
* Save as BMP, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, GIF, TIFF, TGA and PDF
* Send e-mails
* Screen magnifier
* Screen color picker
* Support multiple monitors
* Option to run when Windows starts
* And many more …

Normally you won’t hear me talking much about “guru” type programs. Why? Because I think that a lot of them are suspect. However, I do know that there are high-quality gurus and the like out there that actually do deliver on what they promise.

Let’s throw that aside for a second and instead talk about why these gurus succeed. You know why?

Because they’re creative, and they move fast… and most importantly, they take chances.

Joel Comm has busted his butt to get where he is today. The guy has money now, he could retire. He’s already had success with websites, books, etc… But he doesn’t stop creating and taking chances and pushing… which is why he is successful.

Look at his latest marketing campaign called the Next Internet Millionaire.com.

You know why Joel Comm is successful online? Because he takes opportunity. He doesn’t wait for it to come to him.

Do you take chances? Do you take opportunity?

There are no mistakes now, everyone is experimenting. Just do something today. There is no failure at the moment.

I’ve been talking a lot lately about being successful online. While I don’t think you MUST be an entrepreneur to be successful online, I do think that possessing a few, if not all, of the successful habits that entrepreneurs have is very helpful. (In not just success at work either, in life too).

The Webpreneur.com highlights 10 of those habits in a blog entry called The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs. A must read if you’re someone who is searching for success in any capacity.

So, how do you stack up to the 10 habits listed below?

Passion for Life
A Smile on Their Face
A Dynamic Team
A Willingness to Help Others
Habitual Goal Setting
Ability to Remember Names
Empowered by Failure
Confidence
Proactive Attitude
Determination and Motivation

I would note, that nowhere in that list is “making money”. Again, focusing your success on making money is the wrong approach. Focus on helping people solve problems, and the money will come.

You all know how much I love BUMPzee! Well, I love it even more now that I was chosen as one of the select few to manage my very own community while it’s still in beta. So what community did I make?

Introducing the ‘How To Be Successful Online’ BUMPzee Community

Bookmark this: http://www.bumpzee.com/onlinesuccess/

What is the community all about?

The How To Be Successful Online community is for anyone who is interested in learning how to be successful on the Internet. The blogs and members of this community will focus on and discuss the world of Internet marketing, professional blogging and making money online. Join today for free, or submit your related blog for free as well.

That description you just read is really what JimKukral.com is all about, and many, many others like it that I read every day. Like those blogs, I don’t write about one topic like affiliate marketing only, but rather, I focus on writing about all types of online marketing, with the specific goal of trying to help businesses, brands and individuals be successful online.

Do you fit that mold? Are you someone who’s looking for more information about how to be successful online? Join the community for free!

Do you have a blog that talks about ways to be successful online? Submit your blog to the community for free!

FYI. I’ve preloaded the community with about 14 blogs, listed below (in no particular order & if I missed your blog, I’m sorry, just go add it).

If your blog is on the list below, go sign up and claim your blog, and most importantly, add the bump widget to your entries and sidebar. If your blog isn’t in the list below, what are you waiting for, submit it!

Not sure about BUMPzee yet. Read this.

Super Affiliate Marketing Blog
Earners Blog
Revenews
WaynePorter.com
Shoe Money
CostPerNews
Graywolf’s SEO Blog
Copyblogger
Andy Wibbels
Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com
The Blog Herald
Ask the Blogger!
901am
ProBlogger Blog Tips
Jim Kukral Online Marketing Ideas

Oh yeah, and make sure to check out the other new beta BUMPzee community managed by CostPerNews’s Sam Harrelson.

Called “Next Gen Marketing”. In a nutshell, this community on BUMPzee will serve as an aggregator of blogs and insights focusing on developing trends and emerging tactics to address the rising tide of social media, attention economies and “web2.0″ platforms. It should be fun to see the discussions which arise there.

There’s also some new interface changes at BUMPzee too, so check it out!

My nightly Techmeme roundup found me learning about how Google ranks blogs in its blog search engine. I always thought it worked just like Technorati defaults, which is by “most current, relevancy”. But I was wrong.

According to Search Engine Roundtable…

What positive factors contribute to a blog ranking well in Google Blog Search?
How many RSS subscriptions there are to the blog,
How often people click on a link to the post in search results,
How many blogrolls the blog is in,
How many “high quality” blogrolls the blog is in,
If the blog offers visitors the chance to tag posts, whether people are tagging them,
References to the blog by sources other than blogs,
Pagerank, and;
Others.

What negatives factors contribute to a blog not ranking well in Google Blog Search?
If new posts appear in short bursts or at predictable intervals,
If the content of the posts doesn’t match the content of feeds from the posts,
If the content includes a lot of spam related keywords,
If a lot of content is duplicated in multiple posts from a blog,
Whether posts are the same size, or roughly the same size,
Link distribution of the blog,
If posts primarily link to one page or site, and;
Others.

Bottom line, again, build good content and you’ll be fine. However, a few things stand out, like adding the chance to tag posts and how many rss subscribers you have. Get those subscription buttons up high and push them!

Anyone know how Icerocket does it? I’m pretty sure it’s just like Technorati? It sure seems that way.

On another topic, what are these guys waiting for (Technorati & Icerocket)? Honestly, Google is about to kick their butts, and they’re sitting around doing pretty much nothing. Consider me perplexed.

Graywolf teased us a bit in his video entry here, and below about a technique that can set your YouTube thumbnail image. Here’s his video.

So, does it work? I tested it out, after trying the math in my head. I’m probably wrong, but we’ll see.

It worked! See the black video overlay with the message?

This post from Crunchnotes, and the comments, are postulating that it is the center/middle of the video. That’s what I did above. However, YouTube says here that it’s not possible.

How do I change the default thumbnail for my video?
While we may add this feature in the future, there is currently no way to change the screen shot that we capture from your videos for thumbnails.

The other theory is that you can set something called a “poster frame” in your video editing tool. I did not try that, and a quick look around in my Sony Vegas DVD software package tutorial and I can’t find anything about how to do that.

20,000 points to anyone who can solve this mystery?

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