Abstract Living

How to Make a Video for your Website on a Budget

If you’re building a startup of any kind, chances are you'll need an explainer video. Explainer videos are short 1-3 minute videos that help spread your message and teach people what your product and company is all about. A startup video can help explain difficult to understand concepts and, if you’re lucky, can go viral and give you a bunch of traction — as was the case with Dropbox. In this post, I will break down how I created our explainer video (above) for less than $300, and how you can make your own for even cheaper. There is a huge benefit to being in control of your own explainer video. The first and obvious benefit is cost. Doing it yourself is much cheaper than hiring a professional firm like Revolution Productions which can charge between $500-$20,000 for a video. Not that these companies don’t have their place — a great explainer video can significantly boost your conversions and sales. But be careful investing that kind of money into your video before you have product market fit and some traction. Another reason is, as a new startup, the chances that your company, product or idea will be exactly the same in 6 or 12 months are pretty small. If you're doing product demos in your explainer video, it is likely you will have updated the look and feel of your product. For example, maybe you've added extra features you want to show off, or you've discovered a new lucrative market to go after. Whatever the case, startups iterate quickly and pivot often. Paying $5,000 every time you launch a new feature or target a different market can get expensive quickly. But, if you control the video yourself, you can easily swap out new screen captures or slot in new features, allowing your videos to grow with your startup. **Ninja Tip:** Upload your explainer videos to YouTube and title them with keywords you are targeting for your business. Don't call the video “Product Name Explainer Video”. Here you can see the first explainer video I made (which I actually did at the same time as my Startup Chile video), is ranking on the first page in Google for its term “business systemization”. Since your explainer video will get lots of views from the homepage of your website and will be embedded around the web (in your Angel List profile, for example) it should rank relatively high in Google and YouTube search results and will continue to bring in leads even after you stop using that version of the video on your homepage. **Double Ninja Tip**: Add an annotation to your video telling people they are looking at an “old version of the product” and linking to your homepage. This will significantly increase click throughs to your site and will give you some grace if your early videos are lower quality. With that being said, let me get into the details of how I made our explainer video. ## 1\. Script The script of your explainer video is easily the most important part. Even if you’re paying an experienced company to make your video, you will still want to write the script, or at least be heavily involved in its design, since nobody knows your product and market better than you. The two most common types of scripts in the startup world are “the user story” script and the “problem and solution” script. The user, or "Meet Bob", story takes a viewer through the journey of a user like this video from Med Climate: A "problem, solution" video is similar to the one I did for Process Street. State the problem your customers are facing then show how your product can solve that problem. Here is another problem-solution video by Zen Cash. In both cases, you're first stating the problem, then the solution derived by your product. The rest of the script will depend on your product, but focusing on the benefits and uses of your product rather than the features is a good rule of thumb. If you're really creative and super pro, you can do something new and exciting like the Dollar Shave Club video below, but careful with these: if executed poorly they can look amateur. If you're not a video pro, it's best to keep it simple. Neil Patel at Quicksprout wrote a great article on how to write a script for your explainer video, check it out here. If you want some inspiration, check out Startup Videos, they have 100+ pages of videos you can browse through. ## 2\. Audio Audio is the second most important element after the script. A great video can be ruined by poor audio. For the Process Street video, I recorded the audio myself. I mostly did this because I had recently purchased a new microphone to make various videos and was itching to use it. If you're interested, the microphone I bought was the Yeti Blu — I got it from Techworld in Santiago for about $180 USD but they go for about $100 on Amazon. If you don't want to spend that kind of money on a microphone just to do one 2 minute video, you can easily pay someone on Elance to record it for you. The quality will be better and it will be MUCH cheaper. For $20-50 you can get a 2 minute video recorded. Just post a job looking for voice talent and you will get a bunch of applications from real professionals who have done commercials for Fortune 500 brands. They will submit their 'demo reels’ from which you can decide on the type of voice you want. For most people, paying a specialist is the way to go. I think the audio quality on my video is the major weak point. While it's still pretty good (I'd give it an 8 out of 10) it’s not AS good as professional voice over done in a studio. One benefit of doing it myself is that it is easier to make changes when needed so it really depends on your situation and what you want. ## 3\. Video Storyboard The storyboard is a series of images that make up the scenes in your video. Here is where you'll decide what visuals you want to match with the audio track you produced in the above step. This will differ depending on how you decide to create your video: animations, real humans, slides and screencasts are the most common elements in an explainer video. Check out the below video to see how Pixar storyboards entire animated movies: height="420" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"> For the Process Street video, I broke it down into two elements, animations and screencasts. I then decided which screencasts I wanted for which parts of the script. For inspiration on animations, I turned to VideoMakerFX. I basically browsed through their templates looking at kinetic words and clips that I thought would fit into my script. ## 4\. Animations Animations in startup explainer videos are very popular these days. For the Process Street video I used VideoMakerFX, a great tool that makes it simple to create cool-looking animations. It has hundreds of pre-designed animations targeted at explainer videos that you can easily customize the look of, changing the text, colors, backgrounds and animations. VideoMakerFX costs $97 which is relatively cheap compared to paying for a professional video. It lets you create as many videos as you want, and you can even use it for other videos, like this one I did on how to create a blog. There are a number of other tools that do animations as well. The powerhouse is Adobe After Effects, an expensive, complex tool targeted at professionals. You can make the process less painful by using pre-made templates, but there is still a decent learning curve. Other tools to check out include PowToon, GoAnimate and Wideo. If you really want to go ghetto you can use Powerpoint and record your screen (see screencasts below) as you go through the slides, or better yet, use SlideBean (also a Startup Chile company) to add a bit of animation to the slides. ## 5\. Screencasts A screencast video is basically a video recording of your computer screen. Screencasts a great way to show off your product, they speak a thousand words when trying to convey features in the short time-frame of your explainer video. I make a lot of screencast videos, they are great for demo and marketing videos. I use Camtasia to record my screen generally on a PC, but TechsSmith also offers a free product called Jing which lets you record up to 5 minutes of video. This is more than enough for a 2 min explainer video. A quick search and you will find a bunch of other free tools for screen recording on both Windows and Mac. For your screencasts, record the actions you want based on how you designed your script. Typically showing off various features of your product as the audio track explains it. You can speed up the video and add effects such as tilts and zooms pretty easily in most editing software. I recommend doing this, as a little bit of movement makes things look professional and hold the viewers interest. ## 6\. Music Track To polish off your video you will want to pick a music track to play in the background. A background music track will keep people entertained and give your video a consistent, less choppy feel. Pick something with a tempo and theme that matches your video and product. Don't pick some overly fast happy music if you are selling a serious B2B product, and don't pick a dull slow track if you have a cool, fun consumer product. There are plenty of options when choosing a music track, if you want to go the free route, take a look at some of these: FreeSound, Audio Archive, iBeat, Artist Server and more than 30 others. If you want something more specific, the guys over at Envato have you covered again with their premium audio library Audio Jungle that has a ton of cool tracks you can buy for around $10 each. VideoMakerFX also includes a small library of audio tracks you can use for free once you own the product. That’s actually where I found the track for our video. ## 7\. Putting it all together To edit everything I used Adobe Premiere, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. I already pay for Adobe so this was the obvious choice. I have also edited videos in the past using Camtaisa — it's quicker for screencasts and the interface is easy to use. Otherwise, Windows Movie Maker and iMovie will both get the job done. All you need is basic scene arrangement, clip speed control and transitions. There are probably a bunch of apps on the iPad that can do this too, but I haven't tested any of them. Don't get scared by the editing part. Some of these programs can seem confusing, but really it's quite simple. First, record your audio and import it into your editing tool. Next, add your screencast segments in the correct positions making sure to match up audio to the time of the clip (you will probably need to speed up your screencast clips to do this effectively). Then, fill in the gaps with animations or slides until you fill out the whole audio script. Once the animations match up to the audio you'll want to do a few quality control runs before you continue further (with transitions, music, etc). Watch the video 2-3 times and look for things like thin lines around the edge, image quality and brightness consistency. If you are using different audio tracks (like a video intro for example) make sure your audio volume is level across the whole video. If you get stuck on any of these parts, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials teaching you the different controls in most video editing programs. Next, you should add a call to action to the end of your video. This should be fairly long, somewhere between 15-45 seconds. If you watch through my explainer video above until the end, you'll see that I prompt the viewer to enter their email. This is important for two reasons. First, it tells the viewer what to do next, increasing conversions. Second, it stops the YouTube suggested videos from popping up and distracting your viewer with what is probably one of your competitors videos. Actually lots of people don’t use YouTube to host their explainer videos for this reason and instead opt for a service like Wistia or Vimeo. Personally, I like to host my video on YouTube until it is ranking for my target keyword, then either release a new video or switch it to Wistia. Once you’re happy with the core structure of the video, add your final zooms, tilts and transitions. Finish up by adding in your audio track, reducing the volume and fading in and out at the beginning and the end. ## Final Thoughts And there you have it, a completed explainer video! If you calculate all the expenses above you might come to something like this: - Microphone: $180 - VideoMakerFX: $99 - Camtasia: $299 - Adobe Creative Suite: $49/month **Total: $627** But since I already own Camtasia and Adobe Creative suite, **my cost was $279**. And remember, I can use the microphone and software to create other videos so really the cost is even lower over time. You can do this cheaper however, by using a combination like: - Elance Voice Over: $30 - VideoMakerFX: $99 - Jing: Free - iMovie: $14.99 **Total: $143.99** I hope this post was helpful. If you use any of the above to create an explainer video for your startup I would love to see it. You can leave a comment or reach me on Twitter or Google+. If you want to see more posts like this, subscribe to the Process Street Blog. This post originally appeared as a guest post on the Startup Chile blog. If you're digging into video, you'll probably also enjoy Video Failure and a New Future - Niche Site Duel 04.

Ultimate Youtube Video Ranking Guide

I've been using videos to market our startup Process Street for the last few months and have been getting some great results with video bringing in a steady flow of views, leads and customers. Now, you might already be aware that video is an important marketing tool in today's online world — that's why products like PowToon exist — but the way I use video might be a little different. See, I'm not using video in a traditional sense of putting it on my website and using it to convert customers or explain ideas (although I do that too), **I'm using these videos as pieces of content to rank in Google to bring in organic search traffic**. # Why Video is Awesome Creating videos in this way is similar to creating blog posts or landing pages for SEO, but with some important benefits. Firstly, YouTube videos rank well in Google. Like really well. Since YouTube is owned by Google, and is already an extremely high authority site, chances are that a piece of content you put on YouTube will rank higher than your own site, especially if your site is new and doesn't have much authority. Posting content on YouTube also lets your content be discovered when people search YouTube, which is the second biggest search engine in the world, bigger than both Bing and Yahoo. Moreover, optimizing your videos to rank in Google automatically optimizes them to rank in YouTube too, bringing an additional traffic stream you otherwise wouldn't've had. But what is really great about ranking in Google search is that it's search traffic, the best kind of traffic for a product like mine, which is solving a very specific pain point for businesses. This kind of traffic brings us customers from huge enterprises which I otherwise would have had a hard time identifying and marketing to. # How I Rank YouTube Videos In this post I will explain the process I use to optimize and rank my videos in Google. Here are a few examples of terms my videos are ranking for in Google: Standard Operating Procedure Software (Google Search|Video Link) Business Systemization (Google Search|Video Link) Sharepoint DMS alternative (Google Search|Video Link) The amazing thing about ranking videos for these kinds of keywords is that, even though they might not have a ton of traffic, they are VERY targeted visitors, people searching for that exact kind of product. I am not going to talk about how to make a video in this post. If you want to learn more about creating videos, I recently wrote a post on how to create a startup explainer video plus PowToon has a number of great tutorials on their blog. In this post I will show you how to optimize your videos and get them ranking for your target keywords. # On Page Optimization The first thing you should do before uploading your video is prepare you keywords, title and description. ## Keyword Research When ranking YouTube videos it's good practice to target multiple long tail keywords in the video. This will bring in more traffic as you rank for multiple terms with just one video. For example, this video I did on checklist software is ranking for Checklist Software, Checklist Software Tool and Checklist Template Software. You should find a keyword to target based on the content of your video. This is pretty easy: type a few variations into the AdWords Keyword Planner tool and find the one that ranks the highest. There are a few tricks you can do to find keywords that have low competition, but for the sake of this guide I am going to a assume you already know what keyword you want to rank for before you created the video. For our example, lets use "Tree Removal Miami" > Tree Removal Miami Once you have your primary keyword, it's time to get to work building a list of secondary keywords and constructing a title and description for your video. Below is a video I made for a friend teaching him the process of keyword research and constructing the title and description. In the video I walk through two example keywords "Tree Removal Miami" and "Electrician Miami". The video is an over the shoulder of me doing it, and runs about 30 minutes if you need a detailed explanation. (Spreadsheet from Video) ## Build Keyword List Take your primary keyword and put it into the AdWords tool, then pick 3-6 other keywords that have the highest search traffic and are related to your product. You can also use Uber Suggest to find the most common searched for terms after your keyword. This is the keyword list I came up with for Tree Removal Miami > tree removal miami tree removal cost miami tree removal service miami tree stump removal miami palm tree removal miami tree removal services miami emergency tree removal miami tree removal company miami tree removal miami FL tree removal cost miami FL tree removal service miami FL tree stump removal miami FL palm tree removal miami FL tree removal services miami FL emergency tree removal miami FL tree removal company miami FL ## Video Title Use the keyword list to construct the title. Weave in as many of the keywords as you can with the title still making sense and not looking like spam. > Tree Removal Service Miami FL | 555-555-5555 | Low Cost Emergency Tree Stump Removal Company ## Video Description The description should include ALL your keywords, woven into legible paragraphs that again don't look like spam. > Tree Removal Service Miami FL | 555-555-5555 > Low Cost Emergency Tree Stump Removal Company in Miami FL. Get lowest cost services on your emergency tree removal. > We guarantee the lowest tree removal cost in all of florida for tree stump removal. Contact us today for a free quote from the most reliable tree removal company in Miami FL. ## Video Tags For the video tags, just copy and paste in your keyword list. Easy. ## Advanced Optimization There are also a couple of advanced optimization techniques that I hear good things about. They are: - Transcript (adding a written transcript to your video can help the search engines crawl the video and give you higher rankings) - Annotations (again adding more text to the video helps with search) I haven't tested these myself yet but so far I have been able to get to the first page of Google for a number of terms just using the methods above of optimizing the Title, Description and Tags then doing the off page optimization steps outlined below. # Off Page Optimization - Backlinks Now your video is uploaded and optimized, it's time to start ranking it. Ranking a YouTube video is pretty similar to ranking any website where the main ranking determinant is the number of backlinks you have pointing towards that video. YouTube has another factor however and that is the number of websites that have actually embedded the video, making it slightly different to creating backlinks for traditional websites. Here is a list of YouTube ranking factors in order of importance: 1. Embeds 2. Links with Anchor Text 3. Links without Anchor Text 4. Social Signals Below are the strategies I use to rank my videos on YouTube. Keep in mind that these are not all the strategies that exist, and that there are many ways to get backlinks and embeds. ## Submit to Social Media Properties - Share on personal Google+ and company - Share on company Facebook page, like it, share it - Share it on twitter company account - Retweet on your own account ## Submit to Onlywire Onlywire is a service that lets you manage over 30 web 2.0 properties from one control panel. It's awesome to get a quick backlink shot of 20-30 links to any post or video you publish. Submitting your video to Onlywire won't move the needle much but it takes just a second to do and the more links the better. I use Onlywire quite a bit as I use it to build links to every Web 2.0 post, guest post, video, forum post, profile, etc. that I create. This is a really easy way to get a quick link boost. Plus you can pay someone on Fiverr to set it all up for just $5, an effective, cheap and automated way to do social bookmarking submissions. I talk about submitting to Onlywire a lot in the rest of this post. This is not a necessity though, merely a shortcut. There are other social tools to help you manage various social networks, or you can simply submit to them manually for free. However, Onlywire is the easiest tool I have found, and it's what I use in my business. ## Post on Site Create a blog post or landing page on your website. A general rule for a landing page is that it should have 300-500 words of unique content. The keyword should be included in the title and the body. The keyword should be linked to the YouTube video, the video should be embedded onto the page and you should also link out to an authority site. To beef up the page further, add the keyword into an **h1** tag and as the alt text of an image. This formula should be followed when posting anywhere, including your site, other blogs you own, or Web 2.0 sites. Here is a quick checklist: - 300-500 words unique content - Keyword in title - Keyword in body - Keyword anchor text linked to video - Embed video - Authority link - H1 tag with keyword - Image with keyword in alt text Once you have published your post to your site, don't forget to promote it. Submit it to social bookmarking sites, Onlywire and across the web. If you are looking for more places to promote your content, try this checklist. ## Post on Blog Network Create a blog post on a personal blog or other site you own. If you don't own any other web properties, now might be a good time to create a blog. Having a second web property such as a blog is a great way to get additional exposure and backlinks for your videos. I have a few older blogs that are still around and have some decent authority so I use them to write posts and embed my videos in, like this one I did on standard operating procedure software. Once you have published your post to your blog using the same format as above, submit it to Onlywire. ## Submit to Profiles Company profiles and business directories are another great way to get embeds for your video. Depending on your niche you can embed your video onto your LinkedIn page, Angel List profile, or Yelp listing. These are great quick ways to not only get backlinks to your videos but also to generally increase your branding as a company. Remember to submit your profile pages to Onlywire to get some secondary link juice. ## Guest Post Write related guest posts for other sites and find meaningful ways to link or embed your videos into the guest post. This is one of the most powerful ways to get links to your videos. In fact, I am doing it right now with this post. Another example of a guest post where I embed and link to a number of my videos is this post I did for the Startup Chile blog. Remember to promote your guest posts too! Submit them to social bookmarking sites and Onlywire. If you want to learn more about guest posting, try these guides: Advanced Guest Posting 10 Resources to Make You The Best Guest Blogger Ever ## Create a Post on Your Web 2.0 Properties Another great way to get embeds, links and views for your videos is to publish them on your Web 2.0 sites like the ones listed below. Use the same format as when submitting to your blog or website. There are a lot of different Web 2.0 sites available, and it can take a bunch of time and resources to post on all of them, so I have broken them down into Tier 1 and Tier 2 sites. Start with the Tier 1 and, if you have the time, keep posting onto the Tier 2 sites. ### Tier 1 Wordpress.com Blogger.com Tumblr.com Medium.com ### Tier 2 LiveJournal.com Soup.io Webs.com Doomby.com Hpage.com Sosblogs.com Blog.com SnapPages.com Jigsy.com Beep.com Tripod.lycos.com Ucoz.com Jimdo.com Bravesites.com Newsvine.com Storify.com Over-blog.com Whether you are posting on Tier 1 or Tier 2, every time you create a new post, make sure to submit it to Onlywire. ## Keep on Linking As you continue to write content, do presentations, post on forums, etc., remember to keep linking back to your videos when you can. The more links you can get back to your videos the better they will rank over time, so keep on plugging them wherever you can. If you do the linking optimization tips above and actively work on generating links and embeds to your YouTube videos, they will rank in Google and bring in a targeted, free flow of traffic. Tell us about your YouTube ranking experiences in the comments below! Related reading on video: Start-Up Chile Application Video.

21 Things I LOVE About Travel

Vinay Patankar
17 May, 2015
Travel

I travel a lot. I've basically been a digital nomad for over 5 years, earning a living running (and failing at) start ups and various internet companies. I have visited hundreds of cities and met a lot of crazy people. Thus I know a thing or two about sleep hacks and travel gear. But even after all this time, I still love travelling. Travel is awesome. Here's why: 1. I don’t have to shave 2. Every day is an adventure 3. I have more time to read 4. I get to try new beer 5. I’m a friendlier person 6. I'm less fashion conscious (usually) 7. I’m forced into awkward situations outside my comfort zone 8. There’s no TV 9. I meet someone new everyday 10. Every day is the weekend 11. I have more time to write 12. I’m getting used to funky smells 13. I learn all day every day – kinda like school, only fun 14. I judge less 15. I no longer let ‘what I do for a job’ define me 16. I’ve become more comfortable on my own 17. Food! So much new food 18. I sleep less… It’s ok, I can sleep when I’m dead 19. I’m more relaxed 20. I have few material possessions to worry about 21. I smile more What do you love about travel? To go deeper on travel, check out Travel and Me.

Abstract Job Hunting - Using Google Adwords to land your Dream Job

Vinay Patankar
03 May, 2015
Business

As an ex recruiter I know a thing or two about how to get a job. I've seen a whole bunch of crazy techniques people have used to land themselves their dream job. Some pretty cool, like creative web-pages, some completly idiotic like calling everyday saying "I have job". I came across this video the other day of a SUPER-EPICLY-AWESOME way to get your next job. The guy was looking to get senior job at one of 4 or 5 firms, working for one of the executives. What he did was create a Google Adwords campaign, with the keywords targeted to the names of the Executives he wanted to work for. If you dont already know, Google Adwords are the sponsored advertisments you see on the top and side of a Google search result. Its basically how they make all their cash. Take a look at the example below: The areas in the red are the areas you can "rent" from Google for a price per click. Usually in the 10c - $2 range. Oh and sorry about the funky language, I'm in Budapest at the moment and Google tracks your location to display advertisments close to you. This guy bought the space for the executives names, so when they Google themself, his advertisment popped up on the top of the search and took them into his website of some sort, which I am guessing was a sales page / resume of him asking for a job. Check the video he made of the experiement: (click here if you cant see the video) For all his efforts (probably 1 days work) and money invested ($6) he ended up with two job offers! Genius! Think of all the cool stuff you could use this for. Tim Ferriss used it for choosing the title of his book. Next time your struggelling to get past that gatekeeper consider the option of putting up a Google ad and see what happens. Now thats abstract living! Related reading on abstract: Abstract Income: How to Support an Abstract Lifestyle.

Mexican Story - Four Hour Work Week

Vinay Patankar
02 May, 2015
Business

This story kicks ass. Its from the . I don't think the lifestyle is for me I'd probably get bored, but the story has stuck with me. The perspective is the complete opposite to my capitalist mindset so I like to think it brings me closer to the middle somewhere. Enjoy! > American consultant was at a pier in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. > The Mexican replied only a little while. > The consultant then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? > The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. > The American then asked the Mexican how he spent the rest of his time. > The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.” > The American consultant scoffed, “I am business consultant and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. > “You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.” > The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?” > To which the American consultant replied, “15-20 years.” > “But what then, senor?” asked the fisherman. > The consultant laughed, and said, “That’s the best part! When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public. You’ll become very rich, you would make millions!” > “Millions, senor?” replied the Mexican. “Then what?” > The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.” If you're digging into work, you'll probably also enjoy Startup Idea: Work and Workout Space.

A Simple Tip for Socialising while Travelling Solo (or How to Have Mind Blowing Nights Out when you’re on your Own)

Travelling alone is one of the best things I've ever done. It opened my eyes to both the external world and internally into my own personality and mind. One of the changes I had to quickly adapt to was that if I wanted any type of human interaction I had to go out and find it. Moving about constantly means you need to be able to make friends quickly or else you may find yourself eating dinner alone, which is no fun. While there are hundreds of ways you can go about meeting people while travelling, with hanging out in a hostel being one of the easiest, I want to share a simple strategy that I used all the time in every country with a 90% success rate (I just made up that number but it basically works all the time). It’s also a strategy you can use if you are staying in a nicer hotel or on a business trip so don’t worry if you don’t plan on going backpacking any time soon. ## The Bar Strategy Sounds like a pretty unique strategy right? Just read... If you're travelling on your own (even if you're in your own city really) and feel like meeting someone new and not spending the evening alone, here is what you do. Spend your day sightseeing or in your meetings. While you're going about during the day look out for bars that you feel are your kind of style. When I say a bar, I mean a place with a bar. Not a lounge, not a club and not a beer garden. You want somewhere that has an actual bar, around the bar tender area with stools you can go and sit on. Plus they should serve food. If you see a place during the day, pop in quickly and chat to the bar tender. > You: “Hey, I’m new in town and looking for somewhere to hang out tonight, what’s this place like? BT: Its good / Its bad. \*If it seems like somewhere cool that you could hang out at, and it seems like it gets a little busy follow up with this.\* You: Awsome, sounds cool. I think I’ll head back here later. Thanks so much for helping me out. What’s your name? BT: No problems, I’m Julie. You: Julie, nice to meet you. I’m Vinay. Are you going to be working tonight? BT: Nah, I finish at three. You: Ahh, too bad. I wanted to see you again so I could give you a HUGE tip for helping me out. Do you know who is going to be working tonight? BT: Yeh its Dave I think. You: Dave hey, what does he look like? BT: (blah bla description) You: Ok cool. Thanks again Julie, it was nice talking to you. I may see you again tomorrow. What you have just done there is properly sussed out a venue. It’s only a 1 min conversation but if you jump into 5 different bars throughout your daily venturing, it can seriously help out the quality of your night. Plus, now you have something to talk about when you go back in later. It works just as well if the bartender is still going to be working that evening. Come back into the bar, ideally earlyish. 6 or 7. With the plan to eat dinner and get a few drinks (or not if you don’t drink). Sit down at the bar, in the middle of the bar. Next to other people and ideally near the section where people come and buy drinks. Strike up a conversation with Dave telling him how you met Julie earlier. Tell him you’re new into town or on holiday. Ask him what is happening in the area tonight. Talk LOUD (but not obnoxiously) so that others in the bar can hear your conversation and contribute. As soon as you get chatting with the people next to you, introduce yourself. Find out what they're up to (if they're staying for a few or about to leave is all you need to know). If they're staying for a while, offer to buy them a drink straight away. Don’t worry, you will get one back. Tip the bartender big the first time. You now have a whole bar full of friends. When people (read girls) come up to the bar to order their drinks, bring them into your conversation. Introduce the girls to the bartender and to your new friends. Can you see the snowballing effects here? Don't worry if the bar isn't the coolest place in the world. You can always move on later in the night. Also, don't worry if you don't get a chance to check it out during the day. If its fairly busy and has a bar, it still works fine. I can’t tell you how many crazy nights I have had that have started off in this exact manner. I've ended up being taken out by the bar tenders, the people next to me and the girls that walk up. To all sorts of crazy places, in different countries. You never know where you'll end up. As a closing rule, if you are travelling and out to experience. Try Do not to say no to anything. If some old dude invites you to his kids birthday: Yes. If two seedy guys invite you to a strip club: Yes. If two beautiful girls invite you back to their place... Life can be awesome if you let it. If travelling is relevant to what you're working on, this is worth reading next: Working while Travelling: Distractions and the Zone.

Checklist to Run Before you Publish Visual Content

Here is a post on Viral Tag's blog that talks about the best way to publish visual content. It has a cool checklist to run through explaining the best structure for publishing content and the best process to follow. Take a look at the post below: Visual Content Publishing Checklist Enjoy :) For another perspective on checklist, read Due Diligence Checklist Restaurant.

Duc Tape Marketing's 3 Favourite Tools for the Week

Here are a few cool tool's from Duct Tape Marketing's Blog 3 Tools for the Week of Nov In the post he mentions 3 tools: Doodle – Super, simple scheduling tool that works well for groups Marketing Podcasts – Great directory of marketing related podcasts ranked and reviewed Process Street – Great tool for documenting processes, checklists and SOPs If you're digging into marketing, you'll probably also enjoy 7 Marketing Tasks You Should Really Outsource to a VA.

The Power of the Done List

This is a cool post from the iDoneThis blog where they talk about how todo lists just don't work for some people. You can take a look at the post here: The Power of the Done List It is about a 5 min read. Enjoy! Related reading on business: Wedding Checklist Template.

Embedded Checklists

We have recently launched the ability to make checklists public in Process Street and embed them into any page on the internet, we are super excited about this feature and have some really cool upgrades coming to it shortly. Below is an example embed of one of our checklists: One more post that complements this topic is Actual Proof that Checklists Work, especially around checklists.

Start-Up Idea: TailSearch - Search for Retail Stores

**One liner:** TailSearch: Search for retail stores. **User experience:** - iPad / Touchscreen TV positioned at front and around the store with a search bar / filters to filter down all items in the store. - There is a real-time map of the store with all the items in the store, and as you filter down, they break down and show you the location in the store of the item so you can easily find what you are looking for. - You can filter down men/women, colors, style, type, size etc… select tags, type in search etc… - User can easily search for any item in the store and be guided straight to it. - User can also download an app to their own phone and use that as a map around stores. - User can also search for all stores in area using the tech to see if items are available in other stores, can search from any device. **Store experience:** - Store purchases “security tags” similar to the ones that beep now. Tags are smart tags with geo locators. - Store sets up a geo fence so no need for expensive alarm beepers. Tags beep when taken out of geo fence, also alert is sent to store / security. - Store set up iPads around the store so people can search, store also entered into wider search network. - Store scans barcodes of items and then attaches tag. Users can access that data through search. **Monetization:** 1. Selling security tags 2. Selling monthly recurring to store for software / support 3. Making advertising / affiliate commissions from wider search network 4. Transition into POS and merchanting, take a commission on all sales. **Opportunities:** - Could crowd fund the product since its hardware (maybe? as its b2b) - Clear acquisition targets (Google/Amazon/eBay) **Costs:** Lots of hardware bullshit to deal with Selling won’t be easy Medium-High switching barriers exist To go deeper on start, check out Start-up idea: Marketplace for mechanics to help buyers purchase used cars.

Aweber Affiliate Program is a SCAM Don't Send them Traffic!

This is a bit of a rant post but I am pretty pissed off, I was owed over $1,000 from Aweber in affiliate commissions which they refuse to pay since I did not cash the checks they sent in the first year. I was overseas not able to receive the checks, they never notified me my checks that were not being cashed were being lost FOREVER with no possible way to reclaim the money. They ONLY send payments by check which for an online company is an obvious scam to get out of paying affiliate commissions, or at least those affiliate commissions ever being received and claimed. If you want to promote an ESP go with Getresponse. Below is the chat I had with one of their support staff explaining their 'policy'. **Chat Content:** Stephen C: \[4:51:52 PM\] Welcome to our real-time support chat. My name is Stephen, how can I help you today? Vinay: \[4:51:52 PM\] Affiliate checks getting lost Stephen C: \[4:51:58 PM\] Hello Vinay, what can I do for you? Vinay: \[4:52:02 PM\] hello \[4:52:13 PM\] my affiliate checks have been going to an old address \[4:52:29 PM\] i need all the checks that have not been sent to be consolidated and sent again \[4:52:32 PM\] ideally paid to paypal... \[4:52:47 PM\] all the checks that have not been cashed\* Stephen C: \[4:52:59 PM\] We do not pay out via paypal and for tax purposes the check will not be consolidated. We can certainly resend them to you. Is the address updated on file now? Vinay: \[4:53:27 PM\] nope I will do it 1 second Stephen C: \[4:54:21 PM\] Ok. Vinay: \[4:54:24 PM\] ok updated Stephen C: \[4:56:04 PM\] Ok I will now put the recut requests into the affiliate department. Once they are ready we will send them out to the address on file. Vinay: \[4:56:23 PM\] ok cool so all checks that have not been cashed yea? \[4:56:44 PM\] you know my ID> Stephen C: \[4:57:16 PM\] Anything within the last calendar year. Yes you provided your ID initially I have XXXXXX. Vinay: \[4:57:29 PM\] ok thanks \[4:57:33 PM\] what about ones before that? Stephen C: \[4:58:29 PM\] We can only recut checks that are less than a year old. After a year they completely expire and are no longer eligible for a recut. Vinay: \[4:58:41 PM\] so how do I get that money? Stephen C: \[5:00:14 PM\] There is no way to get it beyond that point. The 1 year rule ensures that our taxes are inline each year. Vinay: \[5:00:45 PM\] how can your taxes be inline if the check was never cashed? Stephen C: \[5:02:03 PM\] Because if we write a check out in 2013 for an affiliate amount that was on file in 2012 it does not line up properly. A check expires after 1 year. Even if the check is never cashed, there will be a check written that doesn't have any record backing it up. Vinay: \[5:02:33 PM\] so you sell a digital product \[5:02:39 PM\] but you pay with physical checks \[5:02:40 PM\] that expire \[5:02:44 PM\] sounds like quite the racket Stephen C: \[5:03:03 PM\] I will forward that to the affiliate department as a suggestion to provide virtual pay outs. Vinay: \[5:03:13 PM\] and pay the money you owe me... \[5:03:24 PM\] for sending you customers and revenue \[5:03:28 PM\] which i was never compensated for Stephen C: \[5:03:52 PM\] We sent the checks to the address on file. It is important to update your information to be the current address. Vinay: \[5:04:19 PM\] i was abroad for 1.5 years and had no way to access the checks Stephen C: \[5:04:48 PM\] I am sorry for that. We were never notified of that and sent the checks to where they were supposed to go according to your account. Vinay: \[5:06:23 PM\] I was never notified my checks were expiring and I was losing that money forever... \[5:06:28 PM\] I assumed you would pay me Stephen C: \[5:08:04 PM\] We attempted to. There is no way for us to know your address is no longer good. If the check never gets returned to us by the post office we will never know until we hear from you. Regardless of what happened, at this point I can put in the recut request for your account including any checks within the last year. \[5:13:02 PM\] It has been several minutes since I last received a reply so unfortunately I will need to end this session. If you have any further questions or requests please feel free to contact us! Our Support is Available on 8AM-8PM ET Mon-Fri which includes our Phones Support Toll Free Phone: +1 877-AWeber-1 (877-293-2371) International Phone: +1 215-825-2196. We also have Email and Livechat Support 9AM-5PM ET Sat-Sun. One more post that complements this topic is Forty-four Social Media Apps Used only by the Top Influencers, especially around business.

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Thoughts on building startups, scaling businesses, productivity, travel, and living intentionally.

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