For anyone who gets involved in an internet home based business, one of the first things that they are taught to do in order to build a successful online business is to get a website, a blog and an auto-responder. In fact these three things are the most important tools when starting an internet business.

What we are going to discuss here is ways to get your list building and blogging activities to synchronize in such a way that your marketing efforts will support both these activities at the same time. In other words, your blog will support your list building and your list building will support your blog.

Let’s begin by looking at how you can use your blog as a way to build your list.

When setting up your blog make sure that you add an opt-in box to your auto-responder and place it in a prominent position where your visitors will see it on arrival at your blog. Near to the top and either on the left or right hand side is good. You could offer a free report or e-book as an inducement to sign up to your list.

Whenever you make a new post to your blog, sign off with your name and a link to your squeeze page. Encourage your visitors to sign up to your list so that they will be notified every time you make a new post on your blog.

Another way that you can promote your blog is by inviting people to comment on your blog posts. The advantage for them is that their comments can link back to their websites when they enter the URL field on the comment form.

If your business is internet marketing then make posts about this and teach your subscribers about the benefits and etiquette of commenting and linking back to their sites from the blog comments. Make sure that they understand that spamming is not an option.

Whenever you make a new post about something controversial or a review on a product or service, email your list and ask them to give you their opinions on whatever you have blogged about and include a link to your blog post.

You should see a significant increase in traffic to your site from your email list if your post is well targeted and also a big increase in the number of comments that you get to each article.

Offer your readers the opportunity of using your posts on their own blogs provided they include a link back to your site and acknowledge you as the author of that post. Also submit your articles or posts to other peoples’ blogs for possible inclusion on their sites. Invite your email list to submit articles for possible inclusion on your blog with a link back to their sites and inform them of how guest blogging will help to increase their own profiles on the internet. This will help to keep your blog loaded with fresh content at all times.

By adding these tactics to your list building and blogging efforts you will be creating a well synchronized and effective marketing strategy for your internet home based business.

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If you enjoyed this article by Michelle Jayes then visit her website http://www.online-income-business.com for more ideas and online opportunities and sign up for her free newsletter

Shooting and uploading your own video is one of the best ways to connect with, and market to, your customers and prospects.

There are a number of factors that affect how you are going to encode your video so you can publish it on the web. These include the efficiency of the encoder and, ultimately, how it looks to the end user. Two key factors play a significant role in the encoding process: source quality and frame motion, so let’s take a closer look at them.

Once you have pressed record on your camera, you have determined the source quality of your video. What you want to achieve is the best quality video possible so here are some basic guidelines to help you get great source video quality and achieve maximum quality in your final compressed video. Use a tripod to reduce camera movement.

You must get this right, because any camera movement means that the picture moves as well. This means that a high percentage of pixels in the video are changing from frame to frame. This results in worse quality at lower compression rates and although camcorders are fitted with an anti-shake device, the more you can do to keep your camera steady the better will be the result.

Even with a tripod and a high-end camera you can still produce a low-quality image if there is not enough light. Low-light or light-gain filters produce video noise on the image; this is different for each frame of video and so it is more difficult for the codec (compressor/decompressor) to compress the file and give a good quality result.

Use the best camera possible. If you have a secure, steady, camera – and the lighting is right – you will get a reasonable result from even an inexpensive camera. BUT, it is best to have one that can capture your footage in digital format, and personally my business partner Neil Travers and I prefer using miniDV to capture our footage.

When you start out you don’t always have access to professional equipment, like high end consumer camcorders, a tripod, and excellent lighting conditions. Do the best you can with what’s available and always remember: the higher the quality of your video source, and the less noise in that source, the lower the data rate required to render a good playback file. Whenever possible, always encode a file from its uncompressed form.

If you convert a pre-compressed digital video format into the FLV format, the previous encoder can introduce video noise. This can occur because the first compressor has already performed its encoding algorithm on the video and has already reduced its quality, frame size, and rate. Digital “effects” or noise can be added. This additional noise affects the FLV encoding process and may require a higher data rate to play back a good quality file.

This is another important factor to consider in your encoding formula and refers to the percentage of the pixels that change from one frame to another. There are a variety of things that can affect this, from people or objects moving, camera effects or even post-production effects.

So watch out for the following points as they can all have an impact on frame motion:

- People and objects moving can include someone walking past the lens, tree leaves blowing in the wind, cars driving by, or an extreme close-up of a face.

- You can get nearly 100% pixel change from frame to frame from camera effects like panning, zooming, and having a hand-held result in almost There is also a high percentage of pixel changes from frame to frame when you use post-production effects like dissolves, fades, wipes, or complex video effects. Clips with a lot of motion in them mean the encoder has more information to compress than with static clips like one person talking to camera.

- An interview or conversation with two people works best if it is fairly static, like our own ‘kitchencasts’ where we are seated at a table while talking.

- Encoding works by the video codec using a method of dropping frames and then encoding a series of fully uncompressed frames. Key frames, which is what these are, are used to calculate and “rebuild” the missing frames during playback.

So I hope you can see that video is a great tool to use in your marketing, and it can be simple and cost effective. Just take your time, experiment, and enjoy yourself.

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Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Internet Marketing Review the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. ‘Test drive’ the Newsletter for FREE – Visit this special web page for more information: http://www.internetmarketingreview.com/2months