Welcome back!
I’ve been working online for a while now, off and on, since 2000 when I taught myself html from a book and started a website creation business. I did dabble with posting video on my website way back in about 2003 using my simple little webcam but as I’m so self critical, and of course didn’t realise how ahead of my time I was, I didn’t do more of it.
Well of course, nowadays every internet marketing bod on the planet is waxing lyrical about using video as a more dynamic method of capturing your visitor’s eye, imagination and if you’re offering something half decent, their cash too.
And of course, as someone who gets suckered into reading a whole load of fantastic – and errrm not so great – sales letters/pages I have to agree with it. It’s like the Big Brother thing – people love having a sneak peak at the person behind the screen and it DOESN’T MATTER if they are sitting there being critical of your big nose or tragic hairstyle that day, they are still sitting there engaging with you.
So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and ordered a great webcam and a digital camera – my friend Flugel will fall off his chair at hearing that as I’ve been procrastinating about it for ummm a year or more. My sister Nicola is constantly frustrated at me for taking NO action as I start researching things and either take forever or give up as there’s just too much choice.
So how did I overcome my complete overwhelm at looking for ‘the right one’ for the job?
Well first of all I made the decision that I was going to do it and THEN I wrote it down in my notepad that I was going to do it.
Now that may seem a bit woo woo but for some reason if I actually WRITE a list I tend to get a load more stuff done – try it sometime. (By the way don’t tell my soon-to-be-ex-husband that I am writing lists now ‘cos he’d be too smug for words having tried to make me do them throughout our marriage).
So what about the actual action then Sarah? You’re probably asking…or getting bored of reading this post and thinking ffs woman get on with it.
Well I did my usual thing of wasting time looking in eBay, faced with a myriad of ‘fantastic’ products at ‘best ever’ prices and mostly waiting to be shipped from Hong Kong. So after half an hour of looking at fecking ugly webcams I thought to myself – hang on, lemme look at Skype.com and see what they recommend – they must have done some research! So off I went and sure enough they have a list of products and even tell you what the most popular ones are that people are buying.
So I narrowed it down to the one with the sexy sounding Carl Zeiss optic and after comparing prices between Skype and eBay I clicked the buy now button via Skype and was taken to… Amazon who are currently doing an amazing deal on Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Webcam
As I was there and in a buying mood, I then thought, SOD IT, I need a digital camera I’ll have a look while I’m here. I don’t have a clue about cameras – all I knew is I wanted one that had a clear display image on the back, was simple to use, good zoom and could take video too – essential for when I’m out and about and want to do on the spot interviews with people or record an event I come across.
So I clicked on the Deals Of The Week link in Amazon and voila! A Canon Digital IXUS 970 IS
I haven’t shopped at Amazon for a while actually and was seriously impressed at how slick their sales process is nowadays with all the suggestions, different ways of reviewing products and how they’ve managed to take the pain out of the decision process – if you have an online shop make sure you go take a look and adopt their business model!
So, now I’m armed with two essential tools that I’ve been missing from my arsenal it’ll be interesting to see how, where, when and why I use them and what affect it will have on my feeble business attempts.
I will of course keep you updated here *smile*
