Irene

Wealthy Affiliate is Worth Trying

March 28, 2020 By Irene Leave a Comment

Wealthy Affiliate, Popular Online Training

for Affiliate Marketers

Why would I say Wealthy Affiliate, the most popular online training for affiliate marketers, is worth trying? The site has established trust with online marketers who took advantage of the opportunity to study with their Open University System. This has led to several hundreds of daily sign ups and retention of members. Their flexible system of teaching and learning is in the form of tutorials, videos, and discussions.

Video Creation Landscape and Video Creation Tools Revealed

November 1, 2019 By Irene Leave a Comment

Video landscape and Video Creation Tools Revealed

What is a video creation landscape? In modern times, there’s the availability of several video creation tools, on phones and iPad or tablets. Such common free video creation tools are used to transform pictures into a video, and enhancements are made to photos that are shared with friends on social media. Some examples are

Imovie
Microsoft photos
Shotcut
Animoto

With the plethora of such free video making tools, it is possible to get the type of video you want for your purpose. Videos presentations vary depending on the subject and audience.

Different types of video identified are:

Documentary
Adverts
Tutorial
Scripted presentations
Gifs
Cartoon
Welcome videos
Quotes
Product demos

Video Creation Software

The video creation landscape reveals several video making software that can be divided into the

following categories:

• tools for 15-minute videos
• 30 secs – 1-minute video tools used for social media information
• Tools with drag and drop feature for transforming an image like putting/adding text and animation, change of contrast and cropping features to send to friends on social media
• Tools with watermark of the producers that can make 5-15 minute long videos with the free option, like Biteable, Screencastomatic, Adobe spark, etc
• Immediate live recording tools or sites like Facebook, YouTube, etc
• Tutorial creation tools like Teachable, Thinkific and their alternatives
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Techsmith tools like Camtasia, Snagit, etc
• Digital Cameras

There are also tools that take care of a single aspect of multimedia namely sound or audio enhancing tools like Audacity
Obviously the simple everyday tools do not or may not do these tasks in great detail.

Download this post as a PDF to read later

5 Things to consider for producing a good video

• Quality of audio and visuals [use quality camera or screencast tool]
• Length [longer videos to be divided into a series]
• Video software that can edit and format for different devices
• Interactivity with an audience, e.g call to action [should not distract from goals]
• Distribution and display channels e.g social media and mobile devices should work well

The best video creation tools, which are paid, takes care of all aspects of video making namely editing parts of it like:

• Cutting,
• Re-positioning
• Adding clips
• Merging video and audio
• Inserting one clip into another
• Adding movement to still objects
• Balancing voice-overs or sound i.e audio or music
• Adding text at appropriate places
• Creating folders for storage of various aspects of a video with appropriate labels for easy retrieval in the future.

Online content creators and those in online teaching business make their tutorial videos using experts or tools with features for 1 on 1 coaching, and provide a secure membership site. Such tools incorporate secure downloads for members, through sales pages, and check out features.

Some of such tools both paid and free are

• Teachable
. Thinkific
• Wondershare Filmora
• Podia
• Udemy
. YouTube
• Screencastomatic
. Google slides
. PowerPoint
. Camtasia
. Adobe creative cloud tools

Just like image download and edit sites, the following are video edit and download sites.
• Wevideo
• Moviemaker online
• Video toolbox
• Clipchamp

When using free tools, you may have to use several of them to complete one task, as the features are limited. It is necessary to try hands-on more of such tools to know which one to use for which task to enable quick editing. The free trial period of the paid tools always come in handy.

Training is also given in the multimedia profession for experts leading to careers like;

• Captioners
• Film and video editors adding sound like music, audio, making advanced enhancements, etc.
• Animators
• Adding transitions
• Motion graphics
• Audio production experts
• Digital camera operators

These skills lead to jobs available in companies with an online presence, TV stations, newsrooms, private video making companies, print, and digital studio businesses. They focus on emerging trends and ensure competitiveness that results in improved service in organisations and businesses.

Let us know the skills and video software you use in the comments area below. Also also like and share. Thanks.

Free Image Download and Image Design Sites

November 1, 2019 By Irene Leave a Comment

Free Image Download Sites

Free Image Download and Image Design Sites

It is common to download images produced by others from free image download sites to add some variety to your own images on your site. Many photographers seeing this need have come together, formed teams and created websites where images are periodically posted for free use by the public. Pictures that are relevant make posts, whether on a blog or social media visually appealing; hence generating shares, discussions, downloads and traffic. Images convey meaning to a person just by looking at it and aids in remembering a topic. Images can also be us to clarify data.

It is now much easier to find completely free images for download, both professional and stock images to use for any purpose, because of the availability of hundreds of free image sites. Such sites are also very helpful as one may not have images for all categories needed for a project.

Requirements to find on such image download sites include whether

• images are free to use without permission, credit or attribution, or
• to use with attribution and link back to image site
• whether there is paid or pro options
• giving of email before free download

These are fairly general and reasonable requirements considering the quality of images and ease with which to get them to use for projects. A few of the sites have been listed below
Wikipedia Creative Commons images
Gratisography
Pixabay
Unsplash
Pexels
Hubspot
Death to stock
Free range
New old stock
Picjumbo
… Download this post as a pdf to read later …

Free Image Design Sites
- After selecting a picture from one or more of the above sites the next thing is to edit it by adding some text, resize, enhance, make a collage etc and that’s where the use of free image design making tools come in. With such tools you can upload a picture you’ve already saved to your p.c from one of the above sites or use some of the already provided templates on these sites to design your pic. After this the image can be shared to social media or sent by email and additionally saved to your pc right from the design site. Templates for various uses like social media page or feed cover, banners, e-book cover, presentation is provide. Images can be saved in jpeg, png, vector and gif forms.
Who can use such tools?

Non designers and professionals alike. It is easy to learn to use these tools from tutorials provided or You Tube tutorials, of which there are several videos for all the tools.

More features provided on image design tools are:
- Free on site images
- different fonts and/or you can upload your own fonts.
- Pre-made template
- friendly interface
- drag and drop features and several design resources for image saturation and brightness
- document format for ebooks.
- unlimited storage for images.
- Crop, flip, rotate and resize features.
- Some have limited upload for the free option
- free download of image on completion.
- Provision for setting image dimensions
- Also vectors, shapes and frames can be added
Listed below are some of the image design tools;
- Befuncky
- Stencil
- Designbold
- Designer
- Fotor
- Canva
- picmonkey
- Fotojet
- Piktochart – specifically for infographics
- Snappa
- Pablo – features for scheduling for future posting
- Skitch [A feature of Evernote used for screencapture and annotation]
- GIMP
- Pixlr
- Adobe Photoshop
Benefit of using such tools

Fast, saves time and;

Its mostly free to use

Which devices allow the use of such design tools
- Android, windows and mac.
- Firefox and chrome browser extensions of some tools is also available
Bonus: Click to download Start a Blog Checklist pdf

Go ahead an use some of these image download or design tools and share this post if you enjoyed it.

Steps to Writing an E-book using Microsoft Word

September 5, 2019 By Irene Leave a Comment

Writing an E-book

Did you know that Microsoft Word has enough features to make an e-book quite easily? More often than not you’ll need to put a document into an acceptable form to be accessible by others. One way of doing this is to convert it into an e-book using Microsoft word, a programme used daily by most people.

When writing an e-book, use a minimum of styles; and keep the texts clean and as simple as possible, with a simple layout.

APPLICATION OF CONCEPT – (OWT) 1.1

The steps to creating an e-book using a word doc are:

Open word, click new page

If you want to see how your book will appear on several pages as you type, click view, two pages (optional)

It is usual to start with the following:

a title page which includes a subtitle if applicable, and the author’s name e.g

snip 1

a copyright page
acknowledgments and a prologue if you wish to include the latter.

After each of the above pages, click insert, page break or ctrl +enter to insert the break and go to the next page

Copy a page or two, of a doc already on your pc into the other pages. It must have the main title or heading and subtitle.

Apply these Ebook Writing Steps

On the home tab, look towards the right of the screen and click on change styles, style set. Hover your cursor over each style in turn and watch how the text you’ve posted on the page changes with the selected style. Select one to apply to your text. Apply a normal style to the body of your text, and also choose a style to apply to the heading.

You get the same results if you hover the cursor over the images namely ‘normal’, heading 1, heading 2, etc

Alternatively, you can click on normal and right click modify to make changes to your text. The advantage with this one is that you see the changes as they will actually look on screen in real time.

For a novel with several parts, use

Use Header One for Parts, if there are several Parts of the book;
Header Two for Chapters, and
Subheadings should be written with Header Three

Click file, save as pdf or XPS, create PDF/XPS button. Give the e-book a name and Publish.

After publishing, you can use other e-book creation tools to convert the files into whatever other e-book formats you need.

5. With ‘Table of Contents’, click references and select one of the options provided or click ‘insert table of contents’, choose the first option and click ok. Click section break, break to go to the next page

6. Position your cursor at the place where you’d want the picture to be if there are images in your book. Click on insert, picture and select a picture from your pc. Right click on the picture and apply more formatting to it. If you desire to use page numbers

7. Go to Insert and click the header and footer tabs, then add page numbers to the pages.

Adding an E-book cover

Word has provided e-book cover templates. The templates can be obtained from Insert, Cover Page. Click on one of the templates to insert it instantly. Also, customize it by adding some text. Always test the e-book template with a few pages of the book before finalizing it.

E-book covers can also be created with image creation sites like Gimp, Photoshop, Canva, etc. Covers when created, is saved on pc and uploaded unto the book.

Suggested Resources:

Selling ebooks online

Did you enjoy this post? If you did, comment below and also share.

The Best Way to Promote your Niche using a Newsletter made with Microsoft’s Publisher Tools

September 4, 2019 By Irene Leave a Comment

Promoting your Niche

A niche topic can also be promoted with a professional-looking newsletter made with Microsoft’s Publisher tools; as most people still accept and understand the concept of a newsletter. It is also ideal for sending information from colleagues, friends, and family. Using this method is unlike the modern method of sending email newsletters using autoresponders like Aweber, Mailchimp or Getresponse.

A newsletter is a communication tool that can be used for consistent exposure on a topic. It should inform, motivate, persuade and sell. It is also to build your image, create awareness and establish credibility with an audience.

Tips for a successful newsletter series

Content should be of high quality.
The newsletter should answer the questions or solve the problems of the audience.
Promotion on social media and in groups related to the niche
Giving it out as a gift
Using as a cheat sheet added to a landing page and offered on a paid monthly subscription.

Step by step Guide for newsletter creation

Microsoft’s newsletter is free and easy to customise.

Go to file, new and select the newsletter template, or search for ‘newsletter templates’ in the search bar
Select a newsletter template with the desired number of columns. The template should be distinct, consistent and recognizable for all the sections namely heading, sub-heading, and body of text.
Customise it by deleting the default headings and replacing them with your own titles using desired fonts
Replace any images
Save as a pdf file

To create a newsletter from scratch

Choose a newsletter option of a word document
Insert/Text Box to input your titles and headings
Add colour effects
Insert a graphic using Insert/Picture menu command
Add columns and divide the text into smaller sections
Put in page breaks and quotes where necessary
Click save when complete

Suggested resources:

Office 365 all-in-one

Did you enjoy this post? Do leave me a comment, and share.

Free ebook

February 24, 2017 By Irene Leave a Comment

EBOOK ON HOW TO RECORD YOUTUBE VIDEOS

USING POWERPOINT AND SCREENCASTOMATIC

The above ebook goes into more detail on the steps used in recording videos for Youtube an other video sharing sites.

Recording a great video content of your product gives it the visual presentation preferred by some against reading. Videos are useful as

an alternative way of communicating
demonstrating a product in action
a way of scaling the effort of staff to reach more people
a time saving and productivity increasing strategy
an efficient way of engaging students, clients, visitors to blog etc

Make ebook with Powerpoint and Screencastomatic — Record video with Powerpoint and Screencastomatic

The free ebook is aimed at those who need to sharpen their skills in video creation for their products, information

and/or for teaching purposes. Could be demo videos that explain the value of your product. using a variety of styles.

This type of video production is made possible by powerpoint’s presentation features which combines well with screencastomatic’s free recorder for economical and efficient, capturing and sharing.

Use these two tools to mix your concepts and features in a creative manner to make captivating, interesting, and/or funny videos that are simple and easy to understand to spark the interest of your viewers.

Hopefully as you go through the steps and practice, your video making will be quickened and you will Sharpen your skills or develop new ones.

Click here to download

Do share and also leave comments below.

Wealthy Affiliate is Worth Trying

Wealthy Affiliate, Popular Online Training

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