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So you want to know how to put video on your blog but you don’t want to buy Camtasia.

I received an email today from Lon Naylor – the Camtasia expert from ScreenCastProfits in which he told me about Screen Toaster. Thanks Lon. (He’s one of my Google Friends in the sidebar).

It’s an online service that enables you to record your PC screen (just like Camtasia) and Callouts (just like Camtasia) and Voice Overs (just like Camtasia) but it’s free (unlike Camtasia)

Is it any good? We’re about to find out together.

This was totally off the cuff, no preparation and no prior knowledge of how it works so excuse the “content” or lack thereof!

Initial thoughts?

Good, bit slow on loading but easy to use. Once created easy to add callouts and the screen shot. Easy to embed – just copy the code and paste in to blog post (make sure your in HTML screen and not Visual, in Wordpress I mean). The size is just fine for the width of this blog – so any Mandigo users won’t go wrong either.

Give it a try. Just sign up and you can start immediately – you don’t even need to wait for their email to arrive.

One of our members asked “How do I add Powerpoint and PDFs to my blog pages?”

It’s a great question that is easily answered but thinking back I had great difficulty in accomplishing this task when I started.

The video showing how this is done is now in the Blogging Beginners Members Site Download area – you can login in the sidebar – and here are the files I uploaded in the video.

They’re not very exciting so please don’t think you’re getting something for nothing!

Download Powerpoint Slideshow

To download the pdf – right click and “Save As”, “Save Link As” or “Save Target As” depending on the browser you are using to view this page.

Download the pdf

Download Slides

And for those of you who are a little more adventurous here are a few Download Buttons you can use on your blogs with my compliments.

You’ll have to watch the video in the members area if you don’t know how to get them linked.

The request received was for me to produce a video showing how to put video on your blog.

These blogging instructions are created for our members. The actual video is available inside the Blogging Beginners members area – current members can login via the link in the sidebar.

The video below is merely the item I used to demonstrate how to insert a video into a blog although if you are into music you may want to take a look at where I was in Blip.fm – it’s a good way to get to know people with similar tastes – it’s bit like Musical Twitter!

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

And this video is one I found on YouTube and is shown again purely as it forms part of the instruction video in blogging beginners .

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

You will know I decided to take Mr SEO on at trying to get a post of mine – Blogging Instructions-  to the front page of Google very quickly.

Now I didn’t actually tell him about it – he kind of found out – WAS IT YOU WHO SPILT THE BEANS?

Any way it’s all good humoured stuff and after 6 days I found my page was no 11 on page 2 of Google out of 5.5 million competing pages.

So using Randy’s method in his video in the members area I can assure you that you too can get posts listed on page one and two of Google in a really short space of time.

He’s good – but don’t tell him I said that!

Now, I don’t profess to really understand this but on a site called Jumptags (which ranks just above my post in the Search Engines) right now I see that my two posts are actually above Randy’s. Told him he better watch out.

Here’s a screen shot for permanent proof in case he does something really clever and doesn’t tell any of us! Just click the image for a full size view.

Blogging Instructions Evidence

The Conclusion

Whatever niche you are in you can get a top listing in Google by following Randy’s methods. Don’t forget WizzerSays is a new blog I started just for illustrative purposes and I’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing more with it than following our own guidance which is readily available via the videos at Blogging Beginners.

Post Script

While I was writing this I leapt from page 2 to position 7 on page 1 of Google for the search term “blogging instructions”. Not bad in just one week!

It can be a nightmare – login names and passwords are required for virtually every site you visit!

ners" style="text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px #0400b5 solid; color: #0400b5;" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" >blogging beginners obviously have their WordPress blog admin logins and passwords plus the admin area at Blogging Beginners as an absolute minimum. But what about all those social sites, like Digg, Stumble Upon not to mention Squidoo and Blip and countless others.

Do you use the same logins and passwords? Is that really a sensible thing to do?

And if you use different details each time how do you remember them? Do you write them down? Do you have a spreadsheet?

Or do you do what I do?

Without doubt 2 of the most useful tools I use are Roboform on my PC and 1Password on my Mac.

These programs securely store the login user name and password for each site and automatically populate the boxes each time I visit.

I was prompted to write this when somebody told me today they couldn’t remember a login password nor could they find where it was recorded.

Both of the programs I use have a free option – but this restricts the number of sites that can be recorded. I bought both – Roboform I’ve been using for years and has hunders of passwords stored. I’d be totally lost without it. Oh, yes, you can get a memory stick version (Pass2Go) that you can take with you and plug in to any computer and access your sites.

Now that is really cool. I wouldn’t want to write a list on a piece of paper and run the risk of losing it. The memory stick can of course be password protected so nobody could access your sites if you lost it.

If you struggle with passwords this could be the answer to your prayers!