Today I have an interview with one of biggest stars of Video Blogging – Gideon Shalwick of RapidVideoBlogging.com and Become a Blogger. Gideon teaches aspiring video bloggers (like me) how to be better video bloggers.

Make sure to download Gideon’s FREE eBook on how to create video and make money from it, click here to download!

You will have noticed that recently I have started to do some video blogging – and the remarkable thing I have found is just how ‘NATURAL” blogging on video feels to me. I say this in particular because less than 12 months ago I would not have thought of Video as being a blogging medium for me but as I have discovered many times in my life some of the things you ‘fear’ the most turn out to be the things you enjoy the most.

I accept that for some Video Blogging will never feel that natural but I would encourage you to at least give it a try. One of the big advantages of being a Video Blogger is that you don’t have to be Tom Cruise to succeed at it. Indeed it appears that the more you are ‘yourself’ and the more authentic you are the better your videos are received.

Gideon shares so many Golden Nuggets of information in this interview, I don’t really know where to start. Indeed, I’d say Gideon is one of my most generous interviewees ever – he gives away a ton of amazing information here for free. One of the things Gideon discusses is creating a:

Video Domination Hub

According to Gideon a Video Domination Hub is a YouTube channel linked with your video blog. And a video blog is just a normal blog with your YouTube videos on it (along with transcripts if you really want to do it right). You use YouTube for traffic, credibility, and exposure and you use your video blog for capturing the traffic. Then, you use a list building mechanism like AWeber on your blog to build your email list. Gideon is shortly releasing a report on this at RapidVideoBlogging.com which I encourage you to get.

There is also the other point about going for QUALITY over QUANTITY. It doesn’t take that much longer to create an exceptional video, so go for quality. Nearly one third of YouTube videos have less than 100 views and only around 10% get more than 500 views. More stats and related links at Gorumors.com

As Gideon says it is not difficult to stand out from the YouTube crowd if you are prepared to just put a little more effort into creating quality content – that people will actually get pleasure from watching. And with those stats above it is relatively easy to become a Star Video producer as well.

Listen to the Podcast or read the Interview Transcript is below – I think you will be impressed with everything Gideon has to say.

I look forward to your comments and also I’d love to hear about your own experiences with making videos – what worked for you, what did not.

And yes, I know it is a little ironic this interview is on audio and not video. Gideon is in beautiful Australia and I am in the UK (but I do hope to record some SKYPE Video calls in the near future)

To our Video Blogging Success

Michael

[podcast]http://www.incomediary.com/gideon-shalwick-interview.mp3[/podcast]

**** Gideon Shalwick Interview Transcript ****

Michael Dunlop: Hello, everyone. This is Michael Dunlop from Income Diary, and today I’m interviewing Gideon Shalwick, who is one of the top video bloggers I know. He has a few blogs and is very well known for his site, BecomeABlogger.com, which he does with Yaro Starak. Welcome, Gideon.

Gideon Shalwick: Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to the call and sharing whatever knowledge you’d like me to impart.

Michael: I think we’ll start straight off: why should be people be video blogging? Because I’ve started it recently. I know how powerful it can be. So I’d love you to share that with my readers.

Gideon: Simple answer: massive exposure. If you haven’t been on YouTube yet, which I highly doubt, it’s an amazing place. It’s an amazing place to hang out. Just so many people go there, and it’s just an amazing place to use to help you get seriously massive exposure for whatever you’re doing online. To give you just an example of what I’ve been able to achieve over the last 12 months, with a side project that I did with a friend of mine in the magic niche, we decided to put together a YouTube channel, where my friend — his name is JJ; he’s a professional magician — he does magic tricks, and we teach people how to do magic. And so we do these little videos where he does the magic trick, and then he teaches it after-wards.

We’ve been doing that for about the last year and, so far, we’ve built up a following of around about 23,000 people. That’s an email list of 23,000 people. We’re getting about 100 opt-ins a day to our email list.

We’re getting close to about 30,000 hits to our website every month. And most of our traffic is coming from YouTube. And if those numbers don’t convince you that there’s something going on there that is useful [laughs] and incredible, I’m not sure what would.

I mean, some more statistics. I love statistics, especially about things like this. YouTube, you may have heard this, but they’re getting around about a billion views a day. That’s billion with a B, for Bobby. It’s huge.

So, why get on video marketing or use video to help market your business? Because it’s one of the biggest opportunities to hit us, ever, in the history of the world

Michael: All right. Cool. And you mentioned that a lot of your traffic comes from YouTube. How do you drive them from YouTube itself to your site?

Gideon: There are a number of things we do. Just before I tell you some of the strategies we use, I think people are probably wondering: why bother driving people back to your site? A number of reasons for that. The first one is, of course, that you don’t own your YouTube channel. It’s a bit like having a Facebook page. You don’t actually own it. And so, you don’t know what could happen in the future. YouTube could go down. I mean, look at MySpace: used to be really hot, and now no one talks about it anymore. [laughs] So, same thing could happen to YouTube. You never know.

You don’t actually own it. And therefore what you need to do is get people back to your blog or website and capture that traffic somehow. We use an email-collection method to get people on our email list. But the idea is to get people back to your blog or your website, and that’s where you have the conversation with them, and that’s where you keep on building the relationship with them.

Jay Jay, Yaro and Gideon - The Three Monkeys as described by Gideon.

Some of the things we do to help us with that is, first of all, to create great videos, to create video content that people enjoy and love and want to keep on watching. That’s the first thing. If you have crappy videos, no matter how many different strategies you use, people are not going to come back to your site. So that’s the first thing: make sure that you provide value with your videos.

The next thing you could do is to make sure that you always create some sort of a link or an image with the URL of your website or the domain name of your website on your videos. If you want to see some examples of this, you can go to the magic blog, which is at freemagiclive.com.

You’ll see some of the videos there. On pretty much all of them, you’ll see our URL inside the video: freemagiclive.com. It’s somewhere on the bottom or somewhere inside the video. It’s embedded. So what that means is, when people watch the video, if they want to check out our website, they can just easily see it there and type it into the browser and go there. Done.

The other thing we do is, also, to tell people to go and visit our website. So they’ll watch the video. Normally towards the end we say, “Hey, if you want to get access to a free report, or want to find out more information, or want to watch other videos like this, or interact with the community, go and check out our website. Go to freemagiclive.com,” for example.

So those are two things that we do. There’s one more thing that we do that’s, I guess, the three main things we do for getting traffic back. And that is, of course, having a clickable link inside a description area inside YouTube for each of our videos.

And that just means, whenever you create the description for your video, you just add the “http://”; in front of your domain name when you enter it in. That just makes it clickable, so people can easily click on that and come back to your website.

So those are the three main things we use for getting people back, and of course, given that you create some nice, quality content and make sure that people keep on coming back.

Michael: Very good. And one thing I found with video myself is that you’ve got to, obviously, share top advice and provide great value. What’s your tips to making sure you come across right on video so that you can deliver you content to the highest level?

Gideon: Well, I think on YouTube it’s different to other mediums that we’ve been brought up with, say. If you compare it to television, for example, it’s a totally different medium. Compared to radio even, it’s a very, very different medium. And what I’ve found is the content on YouTube that has a better chance of going viral are the content that is more real than, say, the kind of stuff you get on television. So it’s the unpolished stuff. It’s the reality-TV kind of stuff you get on YouTube that is the good stuff. And so that’s actually a good thing, because it means you don’t have to worry too much about your production quality. You just need to make sure that it’s what actually appeals to people. And for that, you don’t need a Hollywood production. You can make some pretty simple videos and get them to go pretty viral.

So that’s the first thing to keep in mind. The other thing is to look at what else is happening on YouTube. Go and check out other people’s channels. Look at the most popular channels on YouTube. Go into the browse section, look at the different categories, and see who comes up at the top for the videos.

Look at the top channels on YouTube and see what they do. How do they create their videos? What kind of content do they have? What kind of followers do they have, and what kind of comments do they leave? Just do a bit of research like that and see what is it that actually works on YouTube. And it’s pretty simple once you start looking. All the answers are there.

And I think, if you can figure out, through a method like that, what people actually want, then your job as a content creator becomes a lot easier. Because instead of just guessing what people want, you actually have a much, much clearer idea of what they want, and then you just give it to them.

And you keep on refining. As you build your audience, you can actually start asking them directly, say, “Hey, you’ve been my follower now for a year or whatever, and I want to find out what it is that you want from me. What kind of videos do you want me to create?” And then they tell you. [laughs] And then you do it. You just create it for them. And they love it. And that increases the interaction a lot as well.

Michael: Cool. So you’re pretty much saying good enough is good enough. You don’t have to do 100 takes. Just make it good enough. If your cat walks across the screen or anything, don’t worry about it.

Gideon: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in fact, if it is perfect, people will probably be put off by it a little bit, because that’s not what YouTube is about. It’s not about Hollywood productions. People don’t go there to watch big movies and stuff. I mean, I know that you can, but most of the popular videos are like only two, three minutes long. And they’re simple: simple production, simple editing. Most of them don’t even have any music or any fancy graphics in them. It’s just real people.

Just the other day, I was doing a recording for one of my products. It’s not actually going to be a YouTube video. But my wife actually came in the door as I was recording, and I just kept on going. And afterward’s, I was thinking, “Should I rerecord?”

And then I thought, “No, I’m not going to,” because people, they want to see that I’m a human being. I’m not a machine. They want to see that there’s a human behind the camera. And I think that’s why YouTube is so successful is that it’s a social site. People want to interact. They want to see that you’re a human being. And the more human you can come across, the better.

Michael: Great. Cool. Yeah, that takes a couple worries away from me. [laughter]

Michael: So, we’ve mentioned mainly YouTube. Should people be just using YouTube, or other services, like Viddler.com?

Gideon: That’s a really good question. Of course, the more exposure you can get on the more different mediums, the better, of course. The only trouble with trying to spread yourself too thin is that you don’t have any focus. And so what I recommend, especially at the beginning, is to look at YouTube as, I call it a beachhead, a YouTube beachhead. Geoffrey Moore, he wrote a book called “Crossing the Chasm,” for the high-tech marketing industry. And basically what it talks about is that there’s this chasm that exists at the beginning of the product life cycle for most new high-tech products, and these companies just fall into this chasm because they run out of customers and they can’t get into the mainstream. And he explains this beachhead that successful companies would use to get into the mainstream.

And all it was was, basically, a massive amount of focus on one big player in the mainstream. They will just focus all their attention on this one player, get them to buy their products. And once this big player would buy their products, they would immediately give them this massive social proof for the product, and then everyone else in the mainstream would look at this big player and go, “Oh, they’re using it. We’d better start using it, too.”

And that way they get this breakthrough point, where they reach the tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell talks about in “The Tipping Point.” And so that’s the beachhead strategy.

I look at YouTube in the same way. I look at YouTube sort of as that one massive player that I can use for leverage. And so at the beginning, I recommend, if people are just starting out, to just focus just on YouTube. Just build your audience there. Build your credibility there and get involved there. Put all your focus and effort into getting to know the players and getting to know the community.

And, if you have time, then start using everything else, or then start syndicating your content to other sites, like Viddler.com or Vimeo.com or Metacafe.com or revver.com, all these other sites. There are so many. I don’t think it can hurt.

The only reservation I have about sending your videos to a whole bunch of different other video-sharing sites is that, to me at least, it comes across as a little bit spammy

There are some services around, like TubeMogul.com, for example, and I think it has a good purpose, when used well.

But some people have really crappy videos, and they use TubeMogul to distribute their videos to dozens of video-sharing sites with the click of a button and essentially spread a lot of rubbish on the Internet. And I don’t see how that’s beneficial to anybody.

So that’s why I say, just focus on YouTube. And then as you build your audience, start introducing other syndication streams and see how you go. And test everything. Test it and see what happens.

Michael: All right. Great advice. You mentioned earlier that you don’t have to have a big Hollywood sort of setup. What setup do you use, and what sort of recommendations would you make to any new video bloggers to be able to record at home?

Gideon: Yeah. I think, that said, I’ve gone full-circle with this. Seriously. I’ve been at it for about four years now, with focusing on online video in particular and online video marketing. So I’ve seen the whole gamut. I’ve tried pretty much everything. And I started off with a pretty low-level consumer camera. Then I moved onto something a bit more pro. I’ve worked with people with really professional cameras, costing thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. And now I’ve gone back. I’ve gone back to a very, very, very, very simple solution. [laughs] And you’ll laugh. I mean, my actual solution is… I’ve done a few things extra to make it a little bit better, but you can get away with maybe having a budget of $500 and get a really, really good solution for YouTube, for online video.

So let me explain it. What I recommend, if you’re just going to be creating online videos, or YouTube in particular, get a camera like the Flip UltraHD camera. That’s what I use now. Awesome little camera. The quality of video that you can get on it is just amazing.

A drawback with it is that it doesn’t have an external microphone. But that’s cool. You can solve that. All you do is you get an external voice recorder, like a Sony digital voice recorder, and plug a lapel microphone into that. And then during the editing phase, you just match up the sound with the sound from the video, and then you’re done. You’ve got beautiful audio.

Of course, you can get a camera like the Kodak Zi8. That’s a pretty popular little camera, too, and that comes with the external microphone jack. What I don’t like about the Zi8 is that it has a built-in rechargeable battery. That’s cool, but it means that when you run out of juice and you’re in the middle of nowhere, you can’t replace it. Whereas, with the Flip UltraHD, you can; you just put in a couple of AA batteries. So that’s great.

Another cool little camera that I’ve just been looking at recently is the… Vado Pocket Video Cam.

And what’s really cool about that little camera is that you can use it in any part of the world. A challenge with the Flip, as well as the Zi8 camera, is that they’re designed for the States. The power source in the states is 60 Hertz. And of course, if you’re in Australia or a country similar to Australia, the power source is 50 Hertz.

And what that means is that if you’re recording with either the Flip or the Kodak camera, you can notice a flicker. When you record inside fluorescent lights, that is, you get a flicker on the screen. And that’s not so nice. Whereas with the Creative Vado, you can actually switch between 60 and 50 Hertz, which is cool, which means that’s not an issue.

Michael: I did notice that in one of your videos, actually. I was curious. [laughs]

Gideon: A bit of flickering? [laughs]

Michael: No, why you didn’t have it.

Gideon: Why it didn’t have flicker?

Michael: Yeah.

Gideon: Yeah. I’ve got to be clever with how I position my lights now, because I’ve got some nice fluorescent lights. And if I’ve got a really bright background, like a white wall, for example, that doesn’t work with my fluorescent lights. So I need to either choose a black or a really dark background or make sure that there’s not reflective walls or whatever when I’m using my fluorescent lights. But that’s really the only issue. You can easily get around it. If you have nice, natural light, it’s not an issue. The picture quality is just beautiful. So it’s not really a big issue. It’s just, if you’re anal like me about the video quality, you want to make sure it looks good. [laughs] But I really do hope that Flip does bring out a camera with a 50 Hertz option as well.

Michael: All right, Wicked! And I’ll just throw in one thing that I use, and that’s a white board. I know you use PowerPoint, sometimes, with video. But I find having it written up for me and sort of churning through it, and then just evaluate it and everything, that it really helps me perform much better video than if I had to remember everything.

Gideon: Yeah, that’s a really good tip. I’ve actually watched some of your videos, and I think it’s, as you say, it’s really good for you as the person recording the video because it helps you focus on what you want to talk about. But it’s also really good for the person watching the video because it gives them a bit more of a structure to see what’s going on. If you don’t have a whiteboard, what I did more recently is I actually created a mind map of what I want to talk about beforehand. Then I just print it out on a 8×4 sheet, then I actually just stick it on the camera just below the lens, then I just kind of look at that while I do the recording. I just refer to it every now and then to remind me what I want to speak about.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good tip to help you focus your presentation, really good.

Michael: All right, cool. So apart from the equipment itself, what about software? Do they need any software? Because I know certain cameras actually offer editing software so you can straightaway upload it. What’s your take on that?

Gideon: Yeah, it depends on your preference. OK, this is interesting what I’m going to say now because before I said you don’t need a Hollywood production type of quality video on YouTube, but you still need to have it good enough. There are seriously so many really bad videos on YouTube. So what that means is it’s not actually that difficult to stand out from the crowd. If you just do a little bit of editing, a little bit of editing to just round it off just a little bit. You can stand out from the crowd, seriously, so easy, it’s not even funny.

Normally what I found with the software that comes with cameras, it’s normally not very good. It’s normally very, very limited and you don’t have too many options. It’s a pain to use. I’ve used, I don’t know, probably hundreds of different software packages to try and get the best possible solution.

The solution that I’ve settled on right now with my Flip camera is on Macintosh to use ScreenFlow screencasting software, which is funny, but it does an amazing job. It’s easy to use and the quality that you get is just stunning. So I use that with my Flip. On a PC, you can use Sony Vegas HD. (Michael recommends using a Mac – so much better for video production than a PC – in my experience)

Gideon Having Fun - The Internet Lifestyle

Two very simple options. They’re both really affordable. I think Screenflow only about $100 or so. The Sony Vegas one, it’s called Vegas Movie Studio HD, that’s the one that I recommend. What’s cool about that one is that it’s got a few nice features that goes with YouTube, for example. Once you’ve edited your video, you can export or upload it to YouTube automatically. You just click one button and it’s done. So great piece of software.

So those are the two that I actually recommend. They do a great job. So you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on software. These two programs will do a fantastic job. As I said before, just using some little bit of editing, you can stand out from the crowd. It’s still not going to be a Hollywood production, but you don’t need that. You just need a little bit of editing, and that will be good enough.

Michael: Very good. As you mentioned, real quickly just talked about it, should people consider screen capture and run them through something on their computer itself, or would you say stick straight to video?

Gideon: I think a combination is a good idea. The trouble with screen capture videos, where it’s essentially just the screen that you’re recording that’s it, there’s no particular video movement like a face or a person moving around and talking, the issue with that is that it’s really easy for people to lose interest and to get bored and to click away. While it’s OK for longer educational club videos, perhaps, where people are really interested in the information, for shorter type of videos on YouTube where you’re trying to get people’s attention and trying to get them to your website, you need to do some pretty special stuff with screen capture videos to keep it interesting.

You need a lot of graphics moving, you need some music, you need things moving, basically, so that visually people are kept interested. So that’s why I’m saying if you can combine it with moving pictures, like normal video, you can have a very good combination.

Michael: All right, cool. So what would be your number one tip for video bloggers that they can go off and do right now to improve what they’re doing?

Gideon: My number one tip, that’s a tricky one because I’m not sure if there’s just one thing. But I think it’s probably one concept. I talk about this inside a report that I’m just busy with at the moment, I’m going to release it very soon. It’s about setting up — I’m giving it a fancy name but it’s really quite simple– it’s the Video Domination Hub. All it really is a YouTube channel with a video blog, which is just a normal blog with videos on it, and a list building mechanism. That’s it. So that’s your Video Domination Hub. So use YouTube for traffic, and for credibility, and for exposure. You use your video blog for capturing the traffic. Then, you use your list building mechanism like AWeber, for example, to help build your email list.

What you do is you set up that structure, that domination hub, and you just go nuts with providing high quality content to your audience because ultimately that is what’s going to help you get exposure, get traffic, and build credibility.

Michael: Great. I’m quite happy that you mentioned the high quality content site because so many people try and rush and get any post up, any video that they can get up just because they feel they have to get something up daily or twice a day. Focus on value, guys. Your content will go a lot further than if you did like 10 bad ones.

Gideon: Yeah, I kind of agree. I kind of agree more with that. Once again, if you just go through a little more effort of thinking about the content of your videos, once again, it’s not going to be difficult to stand out from the crowd, seriously. Most videos on YouTube, I saw the statistic today, I think it was something stupid like most videos only get 100 views or something like that. It’s not much. So getting to the higher levels of YouTube and getting more views is not all that difficult. You just need to stand out a little bit from the crowd and you can make some pretty big waves.

Michael: OK, cool. Blogging, you’re not just hot on video, I’ve seen you blogging. You do a very good job. You also co-founded BecomeaBlogger.com, I believe?

Gideon: Yes.

Michael: So, yeah, I want to touch on that quickly. You’ve got your videos, you’re driving the traffic, how should you lay out your blog to make sure you get the most out of these people coming to your sites?

Gideon: OK. I guess what I’m more moving towards now is, I guess, what I’m calling video blogging. Well, it’s not my name, but it’s…

Michael: [laughs]

Gideon: I’m not calling it that, that’s what it’s called. It’s video blogging. But it’s really just a normal blog, and all I do is I grab the videos from my YouTube channel and embed it on my normal blog. So each and every post that I have on my blog has a video on it. I do have some text on there, as well. I transcribe all of my videos, for example, and I sometimes give a quick summary of what’s inside the video just so people can quickly see that.

But every post has a video on it. I think what that does for your blog is it makes it look more colorful, it makes it look more friendly, and a lot more interactive, and it creates rapport really quickly if you’ve got video on your blog. Even if you don’t do it for every blog post, some of them will already help you achieve that. So that’s just the first thing.

Some of the other things, in terms of lay out, is building your list and having a list-building strategy in place. There’s a couple things I do there. One is I always have, for any new video blog I set up, I always have an opt-in form somewhere on the page at the top. I normally have it on the sidebar on the right-hand side. I’ve seen some people get some really good results just having it right on the top.

In fact, I think you do it that way, right, Michael?

Michael: Yes.

Gideon: You’ve got yours right at the top, right?

Michael: Yeah, definitely.

Gideon: So that’s where people’s eyes go first. So I think that’s a really good layout. Yaro Starak has moved to that now more recently with having the opt-in form right at the top where the main content is. But as long as you’ve got it there at the top somewhere so people can see it. The other thing to do is to, this is a bit more contentious but it works, is to use a pop-up opt-in form. A lot of people hate it. But here’s the thing, as soon as I started doing it, when I tested it on the magic site, the day that I did it, our opt-in rate doubled. [laughs] So I think we went from something like 30 opt-ins a day to 60 a day, at the time when I did it. Now we’re getting about 100.

So if you can double your rate of opt-ins, instead of getting 50 a day now, we’re getting 100 a day, so in a year’s time instead of just building 15,000 people on our email list, we build 35,000 people, 36,000 people. It’s a huge difference. In two years time, in five years time, that makes a massive difference.

So you might as well give it a go. It may put a few people off, but you just set it to come up for the first time for the first visitor, then after that, they don’t see it again. It’s not a big deal. But you can increase your opt-in rates quite a lot.

Michael: Great tip. So let’s end this interview with a couple quick fire questions at you. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Gideon: In general or about video marketing?

Michael: In life.

Gideon: [laughs] OK. I’ll relate it back to business because I think it’s applicable for this interview. It’s what’s called the hedgehog concept. Jim Collins talked about in his book, “Good to Great.”

It’s basically a way of finding out what is your main thing in life either for you as an individual or for you as a business. It’s basically the intersection of three things: it’s what you’re truly passionate about, it’s what you can become the best at in the world, which relates to your skill level, of course, and how you can make money from that.

So in my example, I’m really passionate about online video marketing. I’ve now developed a skill in that, and also a skill in being able to teach it. So there’s the passion, there’s the best in the world ad thing. Now I can make money from it. I can sell courses on it. I can do consultancy on it. Or I can get invited to speak at events. I have been doing that. So it’s a perfect hedgehog.

I think that’s a really, really, powerful concept. If you want to learn more about it, get a copy of Jim Collins’ “Good to Great.” Awesome book.

Michael: All right, cool. If it’s possible, I’m pretty sure it’s not right now, if there was a time machine, and you could jump in it and go back and do something differently in your business, what would it be?

Gideon: Actually, I think we’re not too far from that, that Hawkings did. Didn’t he just say that time travel is possible?

Michael: That would be interesting.

Gideon: Yeah, if it even worked. But no, seriously, one thing I would possibly do different in a way I would probably say nothing because all of it has been educational. But if there is one thing I would think would be a more clever way of going about it is, first of all, not go to university. [laughs] Start a business as soon as possible, so I could learn much faster. You know I started this real late. I was only 27 when I started my business. I’m turning 33 this year.

The other thing is to look for leverage points. One big one is just using outsourcing, for example, to help you get stuff done much faster.

So those are a couple of things. Don’t take the education system too seriously, and look for leverage points in your business and in life.

Michael: Great. What do you like most about the Internet?

Gideon: I love the fact that I can play on it all day, and people think I’m working from home but I’m actually playing from home, and I’m actually making money from it. [laughs] About, I don’t know, seven or eight months ago, my wife, she quit her job. Because things were going so well with us that she didn’t work anymore. So we’re both working or, I’m sorry, playing from home now on the Internet. There are just so many opportunities that are out there, especially now with online video. It’s just fun. It’s just so much fun. I love it.

Michael: That’s great to hear. What do you dislike most about the Internet?

Gideon: [laughs] I think distraction, that’s the clear thing that comes to mind there. As much fun as it is, it’s so easy to get distracted with the Internet, with your normal Internet browsing, there’s Twitter, there’s Skype, there’s Facebook, there’s YouTube. There are all these… Oh, and email. I haven’t even mentioned email. There are all these things that demand your attention or that pop-up and demand your attention here, demand your attention there. In terms of productivity, that’s just a killer. I’m a great believer in focus, if you can pull it off.

That basically means that you can’t do multitasking, and you’ve got to turn stuff off. The times that I get my best work done is when I turn the Internet off, and I go to a coffee shop where I can’t get Internet, and I just focus. I can just focus without getting a Skype message sent to me, or an email thing or wanting to even check my statistics, how many sales have I made or how many people have signed up to my new list.

So just turning it off I think works for me.

Michael: Definitely. I highly recommend just changing your surroundings area. It can really help so much, it just clears your mind to come up with all those new ideas. All right. Thanks very much, Gideon, for this interview. Before you go though, how can my readers find you? Would you like to quickly mention rapid video blogging because I’m sure this is something that everyone’s going to want to get their hands on after hearing you today?

Gideon: I think today was… I’m not sure how long it took, about 40 minutes or something. But I’m almost finished with this report that I’ve just written. Darren Rowse is actually writing the forward for it, Darren Rowse from Problogger.net. It’s about 80 pages long; it might be a little bit longer. But it’s chock full of some really good tips. It’s free; I’m going to give it away for free. It basically takes you right from the start, from niche selection to the exact video solution that I use for creating my videos, really, really fast and still get high quality. I go into my special content creation process that I’ve developed to help me increase the speed of that even further. I go into growth strategies for growing your traffic, growing your number of views, growing your email lists, all these things.

There are, I don’t know, 30 or 40 different growth strategies that I’ve identified. I’ve revealed some of them inside this report. I talk about some viral strategies to help you make your videos go viral. Then I also talk about how to monetize the whole thing, how do you actually make money from the whole show.

So that’s all inside that report. It’s going to be about 80 pages long or so. You can get it for free. Either go to just RapidVideoBlogging.com or check out my blog, you can get it there too, GideonShalwick.com

Michael: All right, thank you very much, Gideon.

Gideon: Thanks, Michael, and all the best to everyone else doing their video projects

Recommended Video by Gideon:

How To Make Sure People Watch Your Videos From Start To End Without Clicking Away!

As I was thinking about my introduction for this interview I am once again reminded of what a huge influence Yanik Silver and his Underground Online Seminar have been on my life.

You see, today’s guest – Mr Andrew Lock is yet another person I met via Yanik way back in 2006. Andrew has gone on to become a good friend and mentor and is frankly one of the nicest people you are ever likely to meet in the Internet Marketing space. We cover such a lot in this interview but one thing in particular that stands out in Andrews reply is his response to ‘the best business advice he has ever been gave”

The best advice I’ve ever been given is to look at what other people in your industry are doing and do the opposite

That pretty sums up Andrews whole approach to business.

Andrew is English but now lives in beautiful Utah where he recently launched a new Web TV Business which follows on from his hugely successful and No1 unconventional Marketing Web TV Show: Help My Business SUCKS! If you have never seen Help My Business SUCKS! then go check it out – in only 10 minutes each week Andrew cranks out the best business TV I know – it is just about impossible to watch and not pick up something useful. And I say it again – it is only 10 minutes!

In particular look out for Andrew’s Nifty Clicks feature on the show. One of the reasons Andrew is hugely successful is because he leverages little known web tools and resources, many of which are free to get thinks done quicker and easier – which Andrew refers to as Nifty Clicks. Indeed Andrew has created a website around the theme of introducing people to these unusual and powerful resources at http://niftyclicks.com

One other thing I should say about Andrew is that he knows a lot about about A LOT OF THINGS – he is also an Ebay Expert for example and runs a print Newsletter called Microwave Marketing but today we are going to focus on Video and WEB TV.

I have been keen to learn more about Web TV for some time, who knows, perhaps there will be an Income Diary Web TV show one of these days. What I am certain about is that when it comes to finding out how to create a Web TV show Andrew Lock is the man to follow and I do consider myself hugely blessed to know Andrew both as a friend and as a mentor.

Thank you Andrew.

Enjoy the interview everyone and as always I do look forward to your comments.

Michael

PS: Are you using Video on your blog? Would you like to see more video on this site?

Andrew Lock Interview

Interview Transcript:

Michael: Thank you for joining us today Andrew – my first question is, should people be using video on their websites?

Andrew: Oh, absolutely. Video is more engaging for most people than written content, or even audio. Obviously, involves more senses and anyone that I’ve spoken to that is using video really has benefited greatly from adding it to their sites.

There’s a reason why YouTube has become so successful. It’s a great opportunity, because we’re sort of at gold rush time where previously, the technical constraints were a problem with the small, postage size video.

And also the cost implications were a barrier to, because you used to have to host videos yourself, and the bandwidth cost were just outrageous. So those two hurdles have been overcome now. So there’s no excuse for anyone not to have video on their site.

Michael: Great. And what’s the best way for everyone to start using video on their websites or their blogs?

Andrew: Well, it can be as simple as simply hooking up a webcam to your computer via a USB port. [coughs] Excuse me. Something like Logitech or Creative make good quality webcams. You want 640 by 480 resolution, with the capability of doing 30 frames a second. That basically is near TV resolution and quality.

And, the latest webcams are really good quality. So, once you have that hooked up, it’s as easy as going to YouTube, creating a free account, pressing the record button, and you can actually record directly into YouTube. So there’s no software really to worry about. And that’s the most basic way of doing it. But, you can build up from there. Maybe get a higher quality camera.

Something like a Flip or Kodak Z i80 is a really good one. That has a microphone. And beyond that, then you’re into the whelm of more traditional camcorders that record, many of them to these storage cards like SD cards, that kind of thing.

So you don’t really need to spend a lot of money. The main thing, of course, is that you have something worthwhile to say. And preferably something that will help other people rather than pitching them, or trying to sell them.

Michael: Yeah exactly. And you just mentioned YouTube. Do you think YouTube is the best place to go for publishing your videos or any other sites? Or just do it your own way, a custom player.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a good question. YouTube is a good place to start up, because it’s so easy. I don’t recommend people rely on YouTube, because the problem with YouTube is, because it’s the biggest site, finding good quality content. It is there, but it’s really buried. It is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, unfortunately.

So YouTube is a great place to learn the ropes, because it’s very easy. Once you are a bit more comfortable with the technology and being in front of the camera and so on, then I suggest that you go to a more specialist site. And some really good ones are viddler.com, Blip.tv, revver.com and Veoh.com.

And all of those types of sites attract more, what I call episodic content, more quality content that is regularly released. The term podcast is an old fashioned word really, but that’s really what it is. It’s regular content.

Those types of sites really love that content. And people are finding out they can watch better quality content on those sites compared to YouTube.

Michael: Oh great. And with regard to driving traffic, because I have created a few of my own videos myself and I’ve sent them out. And they have bought me traffic. Is there any advice you give to bloggers in particular, using videos to drive traffic to their website?

Andrew: It’s easier than most people realize, really. A couple of things that are important are: First of all, every one of the sites that I mentioned allows you to not only include your URL in the notes that go with the video, but they also allow you to include keywords and a description.

So, I see a lot of people make the pretty obvious mistake really, of ignoring those things. Maybe they’re in a rush to get the video up, and they’re really losing out on a lot of potential traffic, by not just taking five minutes to add the keywords, to add the URL, and to add the description. Because all of those things, obviously are going to help you get found.

Not only in the individual video websites but also with Google. Because Google loves video. It really does. You can see that by the way that Google ranks results.

The other thing that you need to do is to include your URL in the actual, when you make the video. So, you might start by saying:

“Hey, this is Michael Dunlop from incomediary.com, and today I’ve got a quick tip for you about X.”

And again end up, finish the video in the same way.

“I hope you enjoyed that tip. Again, this was Michael Dunlop from incomediary.com.”

And lets say you started and ended with your URL.

That’s never perceived as a pitch. It’s just stating who you are. But it’s important to include that, obviously. Cause you want to make it easy for people to find you, especially if they really respond and like the content that you’ve given them.

Michael: All right. That seems like a no brainer to me. That’s good advice. I hear you’re quite successful with iTunes. I believe you’re one of the top ones for entrepreneurs, if not the top.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Help My Business SUCKS! is currently number one for entrepreneurs, above Harvard Business, Business Week and Advertising Age. Which is some big companies. And really, that should give people confidence, that you can, as an individual, create something that really people respond to very well and want to seek out and watch.

By comparison, here’s me, this one guy producing this show on a daily basis, that’s got to the top of the ranking on iTunes. Compare to these huge companies with virtually unlimited resources, there’s no comparison.

But, I believe what I did different is I created content that is very practical, and it aims to not only educate but also entertain.

Most people’s content is quite dry and boring. Even if it’s good content, it needs to be presented in an unboring way, a lively presentation, and a way that…

You know, just like you watch with regular TV, think of the shows that you like. Usually there’s some form of entertainment value in there, it’s not just pure education, because most people don’t like that, professor style of learning. It sends shivers down most people’s spines and then they compare it to college or university, that kind of thing.

So those are the reasons, I think, that my show’s become very popular, and I’m delighted about that, of course.

Michael: I have watched quite a few shows myself and you do a very good job at putting together a video show, I have to admit.

Andrew Lock: Yes, I’ve learnt a lot from Gary Vaynerchuck, who I know you’ve interviewed on the site too, and Gary was very helpful to me in the early stages of putting the show together, gave me some good tips.

And I watched his show, I watched some other shows that were out there at the time. There wasn’t many, to be honest, but I just tried to learn from what other people were doing and put my own spin on it too, so I didn’t want to become a clone of Gary Vaynerchuck or any other show.

Again, that’s another mistake that people make. You need to be yourself, you need to be real and a true representation of your own passions and interests. Don’t just try and copy someone else.

Michael: Exactly. I do see people copy myself, my websites before, but also I see people copy everyone. I mean, I guess to some point it’s good to copy because it’s obviously proven to show results.

But when it’s your own passion and your own personality, there’s no point being someone else, because you’re not being true to who you are, I guess. So I’d agree with that.

Andrew: Yes, copying ideas from other sites and video content and so on, it’s fine. The way I liken it when I talk about examples on my show is for people to adapt what they see, not directly adopt it. It’s not about just copying everything word for word or the exact style or so on, it’s taking the principles behind it.

And if you look at your site, for example, that very nice, clean layout that you’ve got on the home page there, nice design, it’s very easy to see what the site is about, that is the lesson that people should take away from the site.

They shouldn’t just go and create a carbon copy of that site. I mean that’s not only lazy but it also doesn’t separate themselves from what other people are doing. They need to put their own brand spin and style on it, but just understand the principles. That’s what is beneficial.

Michael: I couldn’t agree more. Now I do understand you monetize your videos themselves. Not many people really think about the fact that they could actually monetize a video. They know they can monetize a blog in most of the traditional ways, but would you like to quickly explain how people could monetize their videos?

Andrew: Well, again it’s easier than most people realize, and I was at one of the trade shows for new media, new media expo, I think it was Blog World, a few weeks back, and the majority of people there weren’t making any money.

They were either doing it as a hobby, which is fine, or they in most cases they wanted to make money, but they just didn’t have any idea about how to do that.

So with my site, there’s actually numerous ways that we generate revenue and the interesting thing about that is that most people, when they watch the show, make the comment to me, “Love the show, but how do you make money from it?” And that’s a really… I always enjoy it when they ask me. That means I’m doing a good job of monetizing it without making it overly hype or sales.

And one of the things that we do is we have a sponsor for each episode, which is a product or service that I have personally used and benefited from and in some cases they approach me, in other cases I approach them. I tell them about the show, I tell them who the demographic is, that it’s 100% entrepreneurs, it’s a very good fit for their audience. So that’s one method.

When I mention resources and tools that are available on the show, if there’s an affiliate link available for those, then I use the affiliate method. I have shows that lead into webinars and in the webinar, I provide content which ultimately, at the end of the webinar I sell some kind of course or system or guide, that kind of thing. That’s another way of generating revenue.

I offer reports or ebooks within the show. That’s another way of generating revenue. And there are lots of other ways too.

So, you’ve just got to be creative and try and maintain the quality of the content and material and you never want it to get to a place where people believe that it’s more about pitching than it is about content. It should always be subtle.

So one of the subtle ways that I use, for example, is when someone writes in a question for me to answer on the show in a segment called ‘Ask Andrew’, when that question is answered on the show, I reward that person and I actually tell viewers on the show.

I say something like, “In return for asking the question, Bob Smith wins three issues of my popular training program ‘Microwave Marketing’, which gives you ready-to-use marketing recipes that you can use in any business.” That kind of thing.

And so it’s positioned as a prize for the person that asked the question, but in giving the prize, I’ve also promoted the product. So that’s one example of how to do it in a non-confrontational way, in a very low-key way that still promotes the product.

Michael: Yes, brilliant advice. I particularly like the sponsor idea. Actually heard that one from somebody recently mention your site and that’s how you make some money.

Andrew: Yes, well, it works.

Michael: I will be using that, I’m starting my own video series for a web design site I have.

Andrew: Good, good.

Michael: So that’s cool. One thing I’m sure a lot of the listeners today, or readers, will be thinking to themselves, “But I don’t look good on camera.” Or, “I’ll get nervous, ” or something like that. What would you say to them because that’s me as well?

Andrew Lock: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t worry about looks. I mean, I’m far from being an airbrushed-type celebrity, but really, that is the point, is that generally people…

If your content is good, people really respond well, because they see you as real and likeable and personable and that’s really an edge that you can get with web TV in comparison to traditional TV.

Because really your positioning is that you are an expert advisor in your field, you’re not an airbrushed celebrity who’s just reading lines off of a teleprompter that someone else has written.

Not everybody is going to like it but that’s fine. But to the people that do like it, they will not only like it, but they’ll love the content. They’ll realize it’s not about what you look like. It’s about what you can provide for them. That works really well.

In terms of being comfortable in front of the camera, like anything it’s a skill that can be learned by anybody. I’m definitely not the most outgoing person. I, traditionally, was the person behind the scenes with TV production. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve stepped in front of the camera.

It is something that you will get better at the more you do it. So start as soon as possible, do some test videos, get comfortable in front of the camera. The more you do it, the better you will become.

I think beyond that, the thing to say is that, in the grand scheme of things, really what we’re doing is quite trivial. There are big issues on the world scene and in the news, and so on, that are critically important, but what we’re doing really is a frivolity, regardless of what industry we’re in.

We want to help people, but, at the same time, we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously

You’ll notice, with my show, that [Michael laughs] the occasional slip and stumble with what I say, I tend to just move on from it. I acknowledge it and then move on. I don’t try and be word perfect. That, I think, is the right thing to do for this type of medium.

I think it’s wrong to become overly slick and polished [Michael laughs]. Because, yeah, you lose that sense of being real. Does that help?

Michael: Oh, yeah. That’s actually quite true, because when I started just doing audio, myself, and video, if I had to get it perfect, I’d have never completed anything [laughs].

Andrew: Right-right.

Michael: So you’ve been doing your video blog for – it must be coming up to two years or…

Andrew: Yeah-yeah.

Michael: … one and half years now.

Andrew: That’s right.

Michael: If you could go back, time machine, say it existed, what would you do differently?

Andrew: Oh, good question. I think I would try not to worry. Like you just said. I would not worry so much about getting it perfect, which I did tend to do in the early days. So that’s something I’ve learned. Better to be prolific than perfect.

I think, also, I would have had a clearer structure in place for creating the show. That evolved over time. I’m a lot more organized with it, now that I’ve done on to the 80s. 82, I think, was the last episode.

I don’t really have any major regrets or changes about it, because I’ve tried to be quite methodical with it. Those are a couple of things that I would have done a lot different.

Michael: Great. The next I want to talk from is Nifty Clicks.

Andrew: Yeah.

Michael: I’ve always enjoyed them [Andrew laughs]. You’ve done a couple of sessions of them at the underground. Do you want to quickly just tell us what the Nifty Clicks is about and if you have any good shares for bloggers.

Andrew: Yeah, well, I have to say that I can’t claim credit for the name. It was actually our good friend, Ryan Lee, who helped me come up with the name in a mastermind session. I was stumped.

I described what I wanted the name for and it’s these unconventional, little-known, underground, web tools and resources that enable you to be more productive or get things done more easily, to “systemize” certain aspects of business, that kind of thing.

Within that realm of these resources that I seem to have a knack for covering, I wanted a name for that segment of the show. Ryan helped me with that and came up with the name Nifty Clicks. Which I loved. It’s a good way to brand those resources.

So there was a lesson there in that. In that, it’s good to break a show into segments and have catchy names for each segment, which I’ve tried to do with my show. If you watch that, you’ll see how those segments are broken up. So, yeah, that’s Nifty Clicks.

What happened was, I thought that people would respond well to the show. It’s actually become one of the most popular segments of the show where I reveal a resource each week that most people aren’t aware of. As the show evolved, over the first six months or so, because that section became so popular, I basically did a spin-off.

I created a membership site called niftyclicks.com, where I not only added all the nifty clicks that I’d talked about on the show, but I had – it’s a continuing process all the time – hundreds more of the ones that I had discovered. I had them made into videos and they’re categorized.

If you go to niftyclicks.com and you look at the categories on the left hand side, there are all kinds of areas. There are Nifty Clicks that can help people with multimedia tools, outsourcing tools, productivity resources, resources for public domain, for research, for social media, travel, all kinds of things.

Basically anything a business owner needs to help create and run their business.

So that’s been phenomenally popular. Again, going back to what we were saying earlier, I managed to promote it in a very soft sell way, by saying within the show, I share a Nifty Click for that week and then I say, “If you like that Nifty Click, then you’ll love niftyclicks.com, which is site where I explain hundreds of other web tools and resources.”

That’s how it was born. It’s made itself into a nice little membership site now. Every time I mention Nifty Clicks on every episode, new people sign up, without me having to pitch it.

Michael: Oh, that’s great. That’s really cool. Is there any Nifty Clicks, in particular for bloggers, that you’d recommend?

Andrew: For bloggers, yeah. Let me think. I’m always discovering new ones. There was a plug-in, recently, that I discovered that I liked. I’m trying to remember the name of it, now.

There’s a plug-in called WordPress Wassup, and that has the ability to see real-time stats for your WordPress blog. So you can actually get this really fancy graph where you see where people come from and what the visitors look like in real-time. That’s a pretty clever one.

What else? The themes that you like are the ones that I recommend too. I forget the name of them now. The Woo Themes?

Michael: Oh yeah. I use Woo Themes.

Andrew: I really like those, think they’re excellent. What else? Let me see here. Trying to remember. The “at this” again is a really good one and the “share this” plug-in too, to enable people to easily use the service that they wanted to recommend the site to others.

And I like that particularly because, previously… I listed all of the different options down the site and it just made it very cluttered so by implementing “share this” it’s just one button, and that enables people to share the site in whatever way that they, whatever method they use, whether it’s Stumble Upon, or Digg, or whatever they like.

Oh another one I came across recently is called Apture. Are you familiar with that?

Michael: I have heard of that yes.

Andrew: Yes. Apture is really good. It allows you to add multimedia elements to your website. It’s a little difficult to explain, but if you go to Apture.com I think it’s a free plug-in, and yeah it’s pretty cool because it can add some multimedia elements to any post very easily so I like that one.

Michael: Great. We’ve pretty much discussed everything involved in putting together the videos and monetizing it and bringing traffic to your site. What’s your top tip for those out there who are doing their own web TV show or their own video blog? What’s the most important thing for them to know?

Andrew: I think the most important thing overall is to do it on a subject that you’re truly passionate about. You know that might sound obvious, but the fact is that a lot of people are creating blogs and video content in areas where they are only in it because they think that there’s money to be made.

Michael: Exactly.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s really, that’s a recipe for disaster, because you are just not going to be fully into it and that’s going to come across in the content, whether it’s written or video content and you’re not likely to stick with it over the long term.

So in the long term it’s not going to be a profitable venture anyway. So if you want to build a solid business always construct it around the subject that you are truly passionate about and then it won’t be a job, it won’t be work, it will actually be enjoyable for you to do. It’ll almost be like doing a hobby.

Michael: I completely agree. So many people, especially in my niche in particular because it is about making money, teaching people that, so many people take my resources and then think, “Hey, should I teach this myself?” Because obviously I am doing an all right job myself. So, there’s a mistake a lot of people make.

And I do recommend to everyone listening right now, you have to go with your passion. Wherever you have a great interest in, go for that. As long it’s not like bottled water or something, because you are not going to make too much money with that.

But hey, to end this interview, I have a few quick, five questions. What did you like most about the Internet?

Andrew: What do I like? The ability to find amazing content from intelligent people on literally any subject.

Michael: All right. I hear that. What did you like the least about the Internet?

Andrew: The least is the way that it’s misused by people, the obvious ways that we don’t need to expand on. But, it seems like every positive invention or so is used for negative ways, so that’s a sad, sad part.

Michael: Yeah. And what’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Andrew: Oh that’s a good question. I think the best advice I’ve ever been given is to look at what other people in your industry are doing and do the opposite. In other words, don’t follow the crowd, go in a different direction and by doing that you’ll stand out from the crowd and get noticed.

The best advice I’ve ever been given is to look at what other people in your industry are doing and do the opposite

Michael: Yeah. That’s cool. And last question, who do you look up to or model yourself on if anyone?

Andrew: I try and learn from everybody. I read a lot of books, especially business books. I like stuff from Dan Kennedy. I think Seth Godin has some good materials. I loved the book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational

Excellent book about… it’s more from the psychology of selling but very easy to read, style.

Michael: All right. Thanks very much Andrew for this great interview. Would you like to share anything before we leave? Perhaps you’d like to tell everyone about your recent launch, GotBiz.TV which I am sure is great match for all of my readers.

Andrew: So GotBiz.TV is a new web TV network which we just launched. It’s still in a beta phase. But anybody can go to that site and I liken it to being the Hulu for entrepreneurs. So, I don’t think you can access Hulu actually in the UK can you?

Michael: No. I have read up on it myself.

Andrew: Yeah. There are probably similar sites that are around or that will be launched in the UK but what we’re doing is we’ve created what we call an online web TV network, so if you go to GotBiz.TV, there are multiple shows there that we produce in-house with experts in various niches.

Like Ryan Lee has one of the shows on there and they relate to different topics of helping entrepreneurs in their business like accounting, customer service, marketing, sales, advertising, e-commerce, Internet business, blogging, all those kind of topics. And they’re all free.

They’re weekly shows that are released and you can watch them On Demand. And we’ve tried with each show to make it – like I said earlier – not only educational but also entertaining.

So we think that will help a lot of entrepreneurs and for business owners. And I think that’s the way that a lot of this content is going online you know because we can more closely match people’s interest and passions with this niche content.

Because these types of shows, you would never be able to see them on regular TV because the topic is too narrow. But you can do it online and that’s what we’re trying to help people with.

Michael: All right. Brilliant. Thanks very much Andrew. And it’s been a pleasure doing this interview with you today.

Andrew: Oh yeah. The pleasure is mine. I really enjoyed it. Anytime.

Michael: Thanks.

Andrew Lock, is a maverick marketer who’s been influenced by generations of unconventional marketers including Claude Hopkins, Dale Carnegie, Dan Kennedy, Rich Schefren, Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, and of course, fellow Brit Richard Branson of the Virgin empire.

Check out some of his websites at:

Help My Business SUCKS!

http://niftyclicks.com