Which programs are best for helping entrepreneurs create engaging, informative videos?

This article surveys several of the best options that exist to help you get started creating compelling videos for your website.

The options are different depending on whether you’re using a PC or a Mac. We’ll look at both sides of the equation in this article and determine which software options will help you bring video to your websites most effectively.

1. Camtasia for PC and Mac

Camtasia is the best option for PC users that want to create screen capture videos.

Whether you want to create a Powerpoint slideshow and film it with live narration or guide your audience through specific actions you’re taking on your computer, Camtasia makes it easy to capture video directly from your computer screen.

The PC version of Camtasia is easily the best option for a powerful introductory piece of video editing software for the PC.

On the Mac, Camtasia isn’t quite as robust. Mac users will still be able to create solid screen capture videos and edit them successfully, but overall, Camtasia on the Mac is a bit underpowered and underfeatured.

2. Screenflow for Mac

As an alternative to Camtasia for screen capture video on the Mac, consider Screenflow.

Screenflow makes capturing video from your computer screen easy and intuitive, and it also boasts an array of powerful editing capabilities.

The user interface is very intuitive, and Screenflow makes shooting, editing and rendering screen capture videos on the Mac very easy.

Free Trial of Screenflow for Mac
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Those are the primary programs you’ll want to consider when you’re first getting into creating videos for your website, particularly if you are utilizing screen capture footage.

If you are shooting live video, then you will want to consider some other video editing programs that specialize in handling live video.

3. Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum for PC

For PC users, the Sony Vegas Movie Studio program runs around $84. For this amount, you get a very usable program that will let you create simple videos easily.

The Vegas Movie Studio package actually comes with quite a number of features, and unless you’re very serious about creating high-level professional-quality videos, you’ll likely be more than happy with Sony Vegas Movie Studio

4. Adobe Premiere Elements for PC and Mac

Adobe’s Premeire Elements has a very intuitive user interface. It makes editing and rendering videos a snap, but the problem comes in if you don’t have a particularly powerful computer. This program is a major resource hog. It’s flexible and very capable, but those capabilities will stretch your system.

5. Final Cut Express for Mac

The intro version of Final Cut, Final Cut Express boasts the sleek user interface that has caused many users of Final Cut to fall in love with this program.

At $165, this is the most expensive of the entry-level video software that we’ve looked at here. However, Final Cut Express will enable you to create solid videos with ease. The program runs smoothly and makes editing and rendering very easy while still providing lots of functionality.

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So those are the best entry-level video capture, editing and rendering software packages.

If you are serious about video and would like to have video software that can handle literally anything that you throw at it, then you have a few high-priced options.

6. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 for PC and Mac

Take the interface and flexibility of Premiere Pro Elements and amp all of its functions up to the max and you have the full version of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

CS5 will demand a lot from your system, but it also delivers a lot. At this level (Premiere Pro retails alone for $749), you’ll want to investigate your precise needs and the type of interface that you prefer.

For PC users, the choice is pretty easy: Premiere Pro CS5 is the best option you’ll find unless you opt for Avid Media Composer (which retails for $2400).

For Mac users, it’s a battle between Premiere Pro CS5 and Final Cut Studio.

7. Final Cut Studio

At $798, Final Cut Studio isn’t cheap. But it is fantastic.

If you’re a Mac user looking for the best video software available, then look no further than Final Cut Studio.

You’ll be in good company with Final Cut Studio—many of the biggest Hollywood films are processed through Final Cut Studio.

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Depending on your needs, there are many different software options available that will help you create video lessons for your online business.

Consider the options and select the software package that will best help you create your content.

Keep in mind, though, that the more advanced software packages also generally have a much steeper learning curve. Take care when you select your video software.

Choose the software that will facilitate your work and help you simultaneously make the best possible video without requiring too much in the way of a learning curve.

It helps to have a guide in the wild world of online entrepreneurship, however.

Thankfully, a number of books offer to teach readers the ins and outs of generating passive income. This list contains some of the best books out there that will orient you and teach you the skills you need to know in order to start making progress toward your passive income dreams.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

This book introduces the important distinction between assets and liabilities and provides a solid grounding in the possibility of passive income. Rich Dad Poor Dad doesn’t cover the technical details of setting up online passive income streams, but it nails the high-level ideas that will reorient your thinking about money and how you make it.

The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

In this book, author Ferriss coined the phrase “lifestyle design,” which has since become a part of the online lexicon. Although the specific tactics Ferriss explains are by now a bit dated (believe it or not, three and a half years is a long time in the world of e-business), the ideas in The Four Hour Workweek retain their punch. Take advantage of the possibilities unleashed by computers and the internet to design your ideal lifestyle—The Four Hour Workweek can show you how.

Problogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

What do you get when two successful bloggers and online business experts pool their knowledge and distill it into book form? A heck of a tour of how to succeed at blogging.

Problogger is clear, packed with information and designed to be used and implemented in real-time. This is probably the best book on blogging currently available. If you are at all interested in incorporating blogging into your online passive income strategy, then you owe it to yourself to check out this book.

How to Make Millions With Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy

In this book, Dan Kennedy surveys the gamut of possible avenues for entrepreneurial endeavors and shares a huge array of ideas and approaches. If you would like to get moving toward creating passive income but feel stuck, this book will very likely get your ideas flowing.

Minimalist Business by Everett Bogue

This list wouldn’t be complete without at least one e-book to help you on your way to creating passive income.

The author of this e-book, Everett Bogue, writes a popular blog on minimalism at www.farbeyondthestars.com

In Minimalist Business, Bogue shares the approach he took to go from 0 to generating six figures in his first year of writing his blog and selling affiliate and original products through his site.

Everett also places a heavy emphasis on minimizing unnecessary expenses on your way to creating your online passive income. Extremely sound advice for any online entrepreneur just starting out.

The Dip and Linchpin by Seth Godin

Seth Godin is one of the best-known marketing authors in the world.

If you only read two of his books (though you’d do well to read everything he’s ever written, including his longstanding blog), then read The Dip and Linchpin.

The Dip covers the challenges that confront anyone endeavoring to undertake something worthwhile (and how to make it through The Dip and over to the other side) while Linchpin articulates the attributes necessary for those who want to excel in this new economic age.

To succeed online, you’ll need to adopt a totally different attitude toward your business efforts than you would if you were just working a job for someone else. Both of these books by Seth Godin emphasize the particular characteristics that will most help you cross over from being paid by someone else to being in charge of your economic destiny.

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This is, of course, a very short list of books that can help you on your way to creating passive income online. If you’re looking for a solid grounding in the mentality that will help you think differently about your options and opportunities as an independent online entrepreneur, start with these and let us know your favorites in the comments!

Before you pour tons of time, effort and money into any online endeavor, it’s extremely important that you scout out your options and select the one that offers you the best chance of succeeding.

A niche is a small segment of a market. There are specific qualities to look for in any niche where you are considering starting an online business.

Let’s take a look at four important things to look out for as you select a niche.

1. Potential Customers

If you’re going to dive into a niche, you better be sure that there are hungry customers ready to pay to solve their problems within the niche.

Niches come in large and small sizes. They range from extraordinarily narrow and specific to extremely large and encompassing.

While there is no single rule of thumb to apply when pinpointing a niche, it’s important to make sure that you select a niche where there are enough potential buyers to sustain your business. If you go too narrow, you risk appealing to an overly small group of people.

On the other hand, if you target a larger, nonspecific market, you run the risk of being drowned out by much larger and more entrenched competitors.

Here’s a good way to test any potential niche: go to a bookstore and peruse the magazine section. Look for magazines related to the niche you want to go into. If you find several magazines targeting your niche, that’s a good sign—it means there are enough customers in the niche to support each of those magazines, and it means there are advertisers willing to pay to get their products in front of the eyeballs of all those magazine readers.

If there are products, magazines and advertisers all clamoring to serve a certain niche, then it’s a good bet that there will be plenty of action to feed your business when you jump in.

2. Survey Your Competitors

Competitors are a very good thing. If you’re the only one in your given niche, that probably means that there isn’t much money to be had in your area of focus.

The existence of competitors tells you that other people are making the niche work.

That means you can figure out a way to make the niche work for you as well.

Of course, you’ll want to gauge your competitors to see what they’re doing and how well they’re doing it. The trick is to position yourself at a level of your niche where you have a few competitors, but you still have the ability to distinguish yourself and do something new, better and different.

If you can tell that a niche has potential buyers as well as a mix of competitors, you’re honing in on a potentially very good niche. But what else should you look for?

3. Keyword Research

Google’s keyword research tool can help you approach your niche from new angles.

Just head to the Google keyword tool and type in some of the main keywords that you would expect your potential customers to search for.

Then, survey the results you receive. You’re not only looking for the monthly search volume of your primary niche keywords; you’re also looking for other angles and ideas that you might not have thought of. Related keyword searches are a great way to jog your mind and inspire new angles of approach.

Notice, also, the level of the competition for the keywords you search for that relate to your niche. The holy grail of online search terms would be a heavily trafficked keyword that doesn’t have much competition.

Those are extraordinarily rare these days, though. Instead, accept a healthy amount of competition for the keywords that relate most specifically to your chosen niche.

Don’t underestimate the power or usefulness of the keyword tool to help you get a handle on where the action is in your niche.

4. Your Level of Interest

Depending on your business philosophy, you might want to begin with this point in how to go about identifying a viable niche.

If you don’t have passion for a given niche, then you’re going to be less likely to push through the inevitable challenges and roadblocks that crop up on the way to success online.

It really helps if you are interested in the niche you focus on.

So, as you narrow down potential niche candidates in relation to the other criteria mentioned above, keep your own level of interest in mind each step of the way.

Your ideal niche links your passions with the needs of a hungry population of potential clients. When you find that area of overlap, you’ve found your niche.

At that point, it’s all up to you to get busy.

With so many different options to choose from, it can be hard to know who to go to when you’re ready to set up your website on your own domain.

Look no further than the four options in this post. Whether you’re using Drupal, Joomla or WordPress as your CMS, each of these hosting companies makes the installation and upkeep of your website simple and straightforward.

So, in no particular order, here are MakingMoneyOnline’s top four web hosting companies:

Bluehost

At $6.95 per month, Bluehost is one of the cheapest web hosts you’ll find, but that doesn’t mean their service is flimsy.

Many different online entrepreneurs use Bluehost for their site’s web hosting, and by far the majority of those I’ve encountered sing Bluehost’s praises.

Bluehost only publicizes its standard $6.95 per month hosting plan, but that plan offers ample bandwith, disk space and extras to support your site from lift-off to maturation.

It’ll take you a good while to outgrow Bluehost, and in the meantime, they provide excellent hosting and among the highest-rated customer service in the web hosting industry.

Hostgator

Houston, Texas headquartered Hostgator provides hosting to over 2 million different domains.

Hostgator has a fantastic reputation in the online community for its high quality service, rapid customer service teams and flexible plans.

The average-sized introductory hosting plan starts at $9.95 per month, and the intro-level business hosting plan begins at $12.95 per month. So, while Hostgator does cost a bit more than its competitors, its reputation and quality of service have earned it a rabidly loyal customer base.

Take a look at their various hosting plans to see if one is right for your site.

Dreamhost

Dreamhost is another web hosting company that makes it easy for you to install Drupal, Joomla and/or WordPress on your new domain.

Dreamhost provides its web hosting services for $8.95 per month, though they occasionally offer discounted specials. The hosting is comparable to Bluehost and Hostgator—one difference involves the web interface that users use to maintain their sites. Unlike Bluehost and Hostgator, which use cPanel, Dreamhost employs its own custom interface to allow users to access the backend of the hosting plan.

All three of these hosting companies offer reliable, affordable monthly web hosting for people who don’t require the resources of a dedicated server.

VPS.net

If you need extremely high performance from your web hosting service, consider VPS.net.

With VPS.net, you will pay a higher monthly fee in order to have your own Virtual Private Server.

The lowest package offered by VPS.net starts at $19 per month, so you’ll pay quite a bit more than you will with either of the other hosting companies mentioned here. However, the great thing about obtaining your hosting from VPS is that you can easily scale your hosting plan as your website’s needs grow.

Additionally, VPS.net receives rave reviews from its customers for the performance of its hosted sites. VPS-hosted sites tend to be lightning-quick.

If you are concerned with your site’s performance and don’t mind shelling out a little extra money each month, then definitely consider VPS as you survey your web hosting options.

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For most new web entrepreneurs, Bluehost, Hostgator and Dreamhost will more than suffice. These are the big three web hosting providers that have established reputations, proven high quality track records and very good customer service. Should you require more advanced hosting, VPS.net is a great place to check out.

Best of luck finding the right web host for your current needs—let us know your experiences with these and other hosting service providers in the comments!

Tons of different plugins exist that can help your blog have killer SEO—but which WordPress SEO plugins actually do the job and help your site rise in the rankings? Read right along to discover the top SEO plugins to use on your WordPress site.

All In One SEO Pack

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the All In One SEO Pack plugin will actually handle ALL of your SEO needs, but it does thoroughly cover the basics of how you title your site’s pages and posts for maximum SEO impact. The All In One SEO Pack lets you set global settings for your site’s page and post titles, and it also provides easy access so you can customize individual pages and posts on the fly.

Platinum SEO

Platinum SEO is another comprehensive SEO plugin. Like the All In One SEO pack, it allows you to optimize the information that appears on your blog, and it also allows you to customize how and where to apply the SEO data to your site’s assorted posts and pages. Unless you’re a high-level WordPress SEO jedi, you will do well with either the All In One SEO pack or the Platinum SEO plugin.

Headspace2

Headspace2 is another very powerful SEO plugin. With Headspace2, you can customize the titles and metadata of all of your site’s pages. Headspace2 gives you extremely tight control over every aspect of optimizing your on-page SEO configurations. In addition to the global settings panel, you also have a Headspace2 panel in every single page and post that you create. Using this panel, you can customize any individual page to optimize it exactly as you like. A highly recommended option for WordPress SEO.

SEO Friendly Images

This plugin allows you to apply global settings to all the images that you include in your WordPress site. The control panel allows you to specify the title and alt attributes of any image that appears on your site. A simple, effective and important plugin.

Google XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps bolster your SEO by telling search engines about the pages on your site that exist. When a search engine spider enters your site, the sitemap orients the spider and enables the spider to crawl your site efficiently and completely. While this doesn’t guarantee that your site will rise in the rankings, it is a great thing to enable to facilitate your site’s mapping in the search engines.

Simple Tags

This plugin gives you granular control over everything related to optimizing your content’s tags. There are a lot of nice options within this plugin, including the ability to include Related Posts at the end of each of your posts.

Redirection

The Redirection plugin helps you manage 301 redirections when you change the URL of a given piece of content. It also helps you keep track of 404 errors and generally protects you from missing any odds and ends that restructuring or site migration might cause.

WP Super-Cache

Speed of page loading is a major factor in your site’s search engine rankings. This plugin creates static HTML files that, once generated, will be loaded by the visitor’s browser instead of the more resource-intensive php files that run the dynamic content on any WordPress site. A speedier site makes both for a faster experience for your visitors and a better ranking in the eyes of the search engines.

Date Exclusion SEO

It’s possible that visitors to your site may be turned off by older dates appearing on your site’s content. This plugin disables the dates that would otherwise appear on your posts and pages, and your site’s content feels fresher and more evergreen as a result.

SEO Smart Links

This plugin automatically links between posts using in-common keywords and phrases. This helps your content become interlinked more easily.

WP PageNavi

This plugin organizes all the pages within any given category or section of your site. Visitors and search engine spiders alike can quickly navigate through all the pages of any section. This is another detail that will make your site easier and faster to navigate, which will help its SEO.

Here are some tips you need to keep in mind and put to use in order to succeed with affiliate marketing.

1. Set financial goals. Before you dive into affiliate marketing, it’s absolutely essential that you set some goals and objectives. How much money do you want to make with affiliate marketing? Make sure you write down your financial goals and review them often. Begin with a reasonable amount that you can realistically achieve and increase it over time. Once you begin affiliate marketing you will then have a clear destination that you can work towards.

2. Follow your heart. If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing then it’s really advised that you stick to niches that match your hobbies and interests. While more experienced Internet marketers have more flexibility in this regard, beginners simply lose motivation if they are promoting a product or service that doesn’t appeal to them.

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Once you find a market that interests you, make sure that it is one that is profitable. This may seem obvious, but many people end up focusing on niches that lack in profitability. Nearly any niche can be monetized, but for the majority of the time if you don’t see other affiliates promoting that particular product or niche then you should seriously think twice.

4. Ensure credibility. Make sure the affiliate program you decide on is managed by someone with a good reputation. This is to guarantee that the product not only sells well, but also that customers will be satisfied and not ask for refunds. Remember, a refund sale means no income for you so don’t waste your time on dishonest products and services.

5. Understand your audience. Prior to promoting the product or service you’ve chosen, take some time out to study those interested in the particular niche. By doing so you’ll be able to engage the people in a way better than others since you will be able to relate to them and understand their needs.

6. Provide value. When you launch your website to promote the affiliate product or service, make sure it is helpful, motivating, and rich in content. People will feel more likely to follow through and purchase the offer you’re advertising if you over deliver on value due to the feeling of trust you’ve established.

7. Optimize your site. Along with strong content, make sure you choose the best keywords and use them properly to increase your ranking in the search engines. If your site can’t be seen in the search engines then you’re going to have a hard time driving traffic to it.

8. Build backlinks. There are many different types of backlinks and your site needs a variety of them to increase in ranking. When building backlinks, be sure to include your top keywords in the anchor text of the link so that you rank higher for these keywords in the search engines.

9. Track your traffic. Use quality tracking software so that you know exactly how people are reaching your site, what they’re doing once they reach it, and where they end up going afterward. An excellent, free solution to tracking is Google Analytics.

10. Do article marketing. Make article marketing a strategic part of your overall affiliate marketing plan. Writing and distributing articles for free on various article directories, such as EzineArticles and ArticlesBase, still proves to be one of the best ways to generate traffic to your site. It’s also a fantastic way to put the reader into the buying mood.

11. Diversify affiliate programs. Never put all of your hopes in one product or service. If something goes wrong and you don’t receive payment from the merchant or the product simply isn’t selling as well as it once did then you will still have other programs to fall back on.

12. Don’t give up. Affiliate marketing is not about instant results. This business requires consistency so don’t be easily discouraged if some time passes before you see sales.

Melissa Tamura Writes about Accredited Online Colleges for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best online psychology schools.

Dear Making Money Online,
I’ve tried the blogging thing. Affiliate marketing was fun until Big G axed my money pages. Contributing posts to revenue sharing websites works OK, as long as I don’t want to earn any more than a Starbucks coffee (not even a Latte) each month. In short, I need some help: What other legitimate ways are there to make money online?
–Whiskey Pete

Well Whiskey Pete, you’re in luck, because this week I stumbled upon a site that’s intended for people just like you. My friend Brock Hamilton has put together what just may be the web’s most comprehensive list of legitimate ways to make money online. His website 101 Ways to Make Money is just the thing for anyone who feels like their online cash generating skills are in a rut.

Need to get a little more creative than the usual money making tricks?

Sure, you’ll find the usuals there, like making money with online surveys or blogging, but Brock has gone much further to help you find your own personal cash machine with such unusual tactics as scrap metal, animal ID tags, or even poetry.

Hi everyone. This is be a quick post asking for a HUGE (but easy to accomplish) favor. This site Making Money Online is in a contest to win the “Rookie Blogger of the Year” award over at TycoonBlogger.com and we would love your vote if possible. We are actually up against several great blogs, so if you think one of them deserves it more, we totally understand if you vote for one of them. But if you really like what we are doing here, and you think we deserve to win… we would really appreciate your vote.

To vote, simply go to http://tycoonblogger.com/featured-articles/vote-now-for-the-rookie-blogger-of-the-year and make your selection. We are listed in the sidebar on the right side. Just check the circle just above our thumbnail and select “Vote” and you are done.

We would like to thank Dan, (the owner of TycoonBlogger) for all the hard work in putting this contest together and honoring us with a chance to win Rookie Blogger of the Year!

Also, we would like to send out a BIG THANKS to all of YOU! We really appreciate all the support you have given us so far and we hope you like what we are doing with this site so far. If you ever have any suggestions, we would love to hear them!

We have been receiving a lot of emails here at Making Money Online lately asking us why we don’t explain the basics of how to get started online. For some reason when we started this site, we kinda started in the middle, instead of the beginning… as we assumed most of our visitors were somewhat experienced internet marketers and/or bloggers. From reading the emails, it appears many of our visitors are brand new to the Internet (who are known as newbies or noobs), so we are going to shift gears a little to let everyone catch up.

So for the next couple of weeks (at least), we are going to go over a lot of the basics when it comes to starting an online business. Topics like how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start with, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc… We are going to call this our “Getting Started” series!

Once the “Getting Started” series is completed… we will organize them on the site in some way so everyone will have easy access to them.

After that series is done we will start focusing on some more advanced techniques of making money online, as well as show you some other projects we are starting to work on to generate a nice monthly cash flow. Hopefully, not only will these projects help you with some ideas on how you can make some money… but we are hoping that in sharing what we are doing, you guys can help us in making these sites better and more profitable too.

Also… we eventually plan on making a video collection to go along with “Getting Started” series, but that probably won’t be happening until the end of this year or the beginning of next… so you will have to wait for those.

So stay tuned for Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” series…

We now have our 3rd winner in our Making Money Online Subscriber Contest. The winner will receive a custom Character Mascot… courtesy of LogoNerds.com.

This week we even have a new girl pulling out the winner’s name to add a little spice to these videos

As always… PLEASE watch the video below before scrolling to the bottom to see who wins this week. It makes it much more fun to see your name pulled out of a fish bowl vs. seeing it just written down. The video is just over 1 minute long… so watch it first.