Making Your Articles Work Harder #2: Turning Articles into YouTube Videos

Once you have written some articles to submit to article directories, why stop there? You might as well make your hard work stretch as far as you can. One way of doing this is to turn your articles into YouTube videos. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I think this is the quickest and easiest way you will find and does not require any specialist knowledge of video editing software, and what's more there is no cost involved in buying software either.

The first thing you need to do is to turn your article into a format that is suitable for a video. The easiest way of doing this is to turn it into a slideshow presentation. You could use Powerpoint for this, but in this instance I recommend you download Open Office for free. The reason for this is that Open Office has a presentation application known as Impress which has a useful feature that is not available on Powerpoint.

Once you have downloaded Open Office then click on the "Presentation" icon to start. This will then guide you through the process of starting a presentation allowing you to select a template and a background. I suggest that you use a blank template, but use a colored background (but don't forget to change the color of the text to make it more visible).

Once you are past this you will see it looks pretty much like Powerpoint where, on a basic level, you can just type into the slide. Now, open up your article in Word, Notepad or whatever else you used to write it. Your task now is to translate your article into a presentation. Obviously, start with your title slide, but make sure that you put the url of your website under the title so that is the first thing that the viewer sees. What you need to do from here is to avoid making your slides too wordy otherwise people will not have chance to read them and lose interest. So, what you can do is cut and paste short sentences from your article or, summarize your content into bullet points. I think that bullet points are much more effective as they get your point across quickly and effectively. Make sure that your final slide also includes the url of your website again.

Once you have completed your presentation, making sure that you saved it of course, now comes the fancy bit! On the top left of the screen, click "File" then on the drop down choose "Wizards", then on the next drop down choose "Web Page".

Just follow the wizard through clicking "Next" when asked. What this will do is create a folder of files that you could use to upload your presentation to the internet. However, we are not going to do that. If you go into the folder you will see that it contains a number of HTML files and some image files. It is actually just the image files you want as these images contain your individual slides.

Now, head on over to YouTube. If you haven't done so already then create an account there. Once you have done this you can start creating your video. If you already have software for creating videos then you could use that, but we are going for the easy and free method that does not you to buy any software. Here is what you do:

• Click on "Upload"
• On the right hand side of the screen you will see a box which says "Create your own animation - try now"
• Click that link

Once you done this you see a number of options for services for creating your video. My personal preference is for "One True Media", but by all means experiment and see which you prefer.

Once you have clicked on the One True Media "Create Video" button you will be asked what files you want to upload. Simply select your image files that you created earlier and click upload. Once they have finished uploading then click the "Done" button.

You will then see this menu open up:

This gives a range of options for editing your video - but my recommendation is to keep it simple. You can see a "Choose Music" option here which allows you to choose from a number of pre-loaded options (overcomes any copyright issues) or you can upload your own if you prefer.

Once you are happy with your creation then simply click the "Publish to YouTube" button. Remember to add a description when prompted including a link to your site. You cannot use HTML so you have to just type in the url of your site (including the http://) and it will automatically convert to a clickable link.

Once your video is live then remember to bookmark it, Tweet about it, tell your Facebook friends, blog about it, etc. Don't forget that you can embed your video into blog posts, Squidoo lenses, HubPages Hubs, etc.

There you have it - the easiest cost-free method of converting articles into YouTube videos known to man (or woman!). The only downside to this method is there is no option of uploading your video to other video sharing sites, for that you really need to download some software to do this which usually involves spending some money.

Making Your Articles Work Harder #1 - Using Document Sharing Sites

Submitting articles to article directories is a great way to gain back links to your website, blog, Squidoo lens, etc., but once you have put time and effort into writing your article shouldn't you get as much value out of them as you can? You can submit your article to multiple directories of course, but what I want to discuss here is using document sharing sites. The best known of these are Scribd and Docstoc which are the two I use most. Docstoc also has a revenue sharing element using Adsense which is nice bonus. There are also a number of others out there that are worth trying but I only have limited experience of those.

First of all, what is a document sharing site? Well it is simply a site where you can upload a document. Usually they can take a number of formats, but PDF is the most common - you can use Word if you prefer, but your document will not look as professional and you run the risk of someone downloading your document and editing it for their own purposes.

You can convert your articles to PDF format by using Open Office which can be downloaded for free. Open Office is similar to Microsoft Office and includes a word processor very similar to Word, with the important distinction that it allows you to convert your documents into PDF at the click of a button. During this process, make sure that you include links to your site - unlike article directories you can put your links wherever you like, so you could put one in the body of the article and another in the footer. Also, you can put in affiliate links. If you want to you can spruce up your article with some pictures as well, but this is not essential.

All you have to do now is upload your document to Scribd and/or Docstoc. Simply register with the sites, click the upload button and follow the instructions.

Unlike submissions to article directories this will not help your site get found in the search engines. So why do it? Well it is simply another way of helping people find you - what you are aiming for is for people to download your document, perhaps share with others and then click on the links to visit your site. It is very quick and easy to do, so well worth the effort.