ShowMeHowToDoThis Blog

I need to find a writer

2007-03-19T19:45:06Z

Why do you put your address that way? Because of spam harvesting. How do I email you then? If you can't figure it out from the above email, then you're not the right person for this job.]]> We've just crossed the 10,000 videos mark for ShowMeHowToDoThis. I am so excited to get all of these video live for everyone to see, and to really have people start getting interested in individual categories. I do notice that people are subscribing to the major subscription (send me the most recent how-to's), but they're not subscribing to How-To's for the individual categories. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can set it up so that it's more clear?

Find a way

2007-02-16T20:30:27Z

Kilimanjaro climb. They market the Playaway player, which was totally amazing to have on our climb, and they have this philosophy for their company that says, if it doesn't work, just find a way to make it work. The name of the company is FindAWay. And...]]> I'm sitting here thinking about that today and it reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite speakers, Jim Rohn. "Find a way to serve the many, for service to many leads to greatness." And I'm thinking about ShowMeHowToDoThis and realizing that's exactly what I've done. The many who will be served... There are obviously the many who will be less frustrated because of what they're abe to discover, simply by their visit to this site. But who else will be served? The people who make the videos will have the opportunity to become recognized experts in their niches. The sites which host these videos have an additional avenue for distribution. The community of people who are advertising products and services through this site will likely make more sales because of their exposure here. The companies that manage the advertisements that are displayed on this site will increase their revenues. Anyone who doesn't want their videos shared will have the ability to have them removed in a timely way. (And even though I'm not sure why they would want them removed,) That will be a win for them as well.

How to Understand the Differences Between Women and Men

2007-02-08T04:18:19Z

Have you ever wondered how a woman's brain works vs. how a man's brain works? We've got that whole battle of the sexes thing, right? I made a video to explain it.
Differences Between Women And Men - Funny bloopers are a click away And in case you can't see the video for some reason, it's explained here in one, easy-to-understand illustration:]]>

Every one of those little blue balls is a thought about: - something that needs to be done - a decision that needs to be made - a problem that needs to be solved in her life...

A man has only 2 balls, and they take up all his thoughts. Here is a video covering the differences between women and men when it comes to showering.
How To Shower - Men & Women - video powered by Metacafe a

Here's another video which I think you might also like to see! You can also Email The Differences Between Women and Men to a friend a

People are going!

2007-01-07T07:18:52Z

So I got my Elance people going yesterday, and already we're up over 700 entries! Well on the way to 5,000 videos for launching this site. There is, or course, a little editing work that has to be done in the videos themselves (because the embed code is fine, but each video needs its own description and Tags, but all-in-all, I'm very pleased so far with the job that they have been doing and how much time it saves me to have contracted with a couple of people to do the work. Carrie also built a few video entries today with some cooking videos and it's just super exciting to see the project coming together!

Outsourcing is cool

2007-01-03T17:31:38Z

I have used Elance before, for a variety of stuff, but never have I had a response to a project like this. 44 different groups have bid on the project that I posted earlier. 44! Including a phone call this morning from someone in India saying that she saw my project and wanted to call me to ask more about it (which I suspect may have been someone trying to commit some sort of fraud, since the phone disconnected as soon as I started asking some questions... could have just been a bad phone connection or a dropped call though). So I'm really learning the value of outsourcing projects that someone else can do quicker and cheaper. I will be selecting someone today and making a screen capture video for them of what I want done, so as to avoid any confusion.]]> (UPDATE: The woman from India called back... she seems very nice, although we had some challenges communicating... (makes me think I should learn to speak some basic phrases in India's major languages - although I don't even know what they are.) I will compare her bid against the others I've received... also makes me think that I should find some videos on how to get around (in other languages). Anyone know of a good location for finding videos on this?)

Two really cool things

2007-01-02T00:11:23Z

There is always someone who is willing to do work that you would rather not do. Take the example of this site. I'm trying to get all of these videos together because to me it just seems like a HUGE win-win-win situation. But it takes a long time to create all the posts and organize the information on a one-by-one basis. So my friend Kevin Gianni recommended that in addition to the friend I have working on getting some of the videos put up on the site, that I actually use Elance and outsource the work. Sure I will have to pay someone to do it, but it should be VERY worth it. So I posted the job on Elance. I got nine bids back in the last 6 hours, ranging from $50 - $250, from providers of solutions all over the world.]]> this one with the belly dancer... Not only can you learn to belly dance, but wow... what an attractive woman.

Building the SuperStore of How-To's

2006-12-29T04:44:34Z

I was at a Super-Target today returning a couple of Christmas presents, and getting some grocery items for Colorado's second round of major snowfall, and realized something big: I was standing there in the store, looking at all of the signs overhead, and saw all the different sections in the store. Men's, Ladies, Juniors, Misses (I swear that I will continue to try but I don't know that I will EVER understand women's sizes), games, videos/DVD's, Toys, Seasonal, etc... and I realized that I'm building something bigger. This site that I'm building is THE superstore for how-to videos... and not just the superstore for one town or one state even, but for the entire English speaking world. *and maybe someday expanding thoroughly into other languages too.* That's really a very cool realization to come to, and one that I take very seriously as 2007 approaches. I'm very excited about taking this project to the levels it can reach.

Getting the master list together

2006-12-19T17:28:36Z

I think I need to go away for a day or two and put together a master list of everything that needs to be done in the next two weeks to get this site launched by Jan. 15. I'm REALLY wanting to launch this site with about 10,000 videos. We're currently at 544, about 5% of the way there. It's not that I can't launch with fewer videos, it's just that I don't want to! Alex Mandossian has this great call on goals and daily method of operation that is available here. This is one of my favorite calls I have listened to recently because it incorporates much of what I've heard from many other "gurus" about managing time and getting to where you want to be. The sad part of it is that most people will never do what he recommends in this call because they will dismiss it as stupid, or too simple to actually work, or simply won't take the time to do it on a daily basis. It does work, and will on this project as well as it has on many other projects I've done before. It's what's got me thinking that I need to go away for a couple of days (away from distractions) and really lay out a plan for the next 6 months on this site, as well as my own daily method of operations...

Got to be a way

2006-12-07T09:38:23Z

Importing the videos from the other hosting package has got me thinking that there MUST be a better way (other than one video at a time) to grab lots of how to content from online, get it into a text file, and then upload it to the web site, later coming back to do descriptions and transcriptions and whatnot. That has to be the next stage of the evolution for this project. Create a software that will scour the Internet looking for video content on the click of a button. Make that software versatile enough that I can re-sell it. Make the software custom enough that it will work to put content on the site. This will work, and it will be good! :) Bed time. Very tired.

I Woke Up Early Thinking "Butterfly"

2006-12-05T14:43:26Z

I woke up with this really odd dream that reminded me of "The Butterfly Effect" - a movie I'd completely forgotten that I had ever even seen. In the dream, I had to convince this lady that we had to get to her son's school to pick up one of his friends, because this kid's dad was on the way to the school, with a gun, to kill him, in order to get back at his mom. I was able to convince the lady, and we got to the school just in time to rescue the kid. The dad still came in on a shooting spree, but we got the kid out. There was more to the dream, but that formed the majority of it, and it got me thinking about things enough that I had to get up. Why do I blog about that here? Well I went to the IMDB web site and learned (remembered) that the tag line for The Butterfly Effect was "Change one thing, change everything."]]> Add Video" page:

Teach people something that they can use in their everyday life, or in their every day, day-to-day business. Answer a question, solve a problem, alleviate someone else's pain by removing their confusion. When you do this, you not only offer them the help that they need, but you also place yourself in their mind as the person that helps them fix something that was or is broken. By becoming known as a person who helps people fix things, you can become the go-to person in your niche, your market, and perhaps even your industry. Or, if you don't care about any of that, and just think you have a cool video about how to do something, go ahead and share that too!

I think it should be sufficient to help people understand what it is that we're working to accomplish on this site, and should also be sufficient to encourage people to add theirs and others' videos (But I will probably add to that text on the actual above it as time goes on). Okay, well, it's back to moving categories. I plan to get this done today.

The First Post: Moving Hosting Packages

2006-12-04T22:29:01Z

I decided a while ago that I was going to start blogging about this project as it was happening, but today's post is the FIRST on this blog! So that's exciting. The reason I hadn't blogged on the site and it's construction yet is because it was hosted on a package that was shared with other web sites that I run, and for many reasons, it became apparent that TellMeHowToDoThis.com (THMTDT.com) and ShowMeHowToDoThis.com (SMHTDT.com) were going to need a web space of their own. So I've been in the process of the last week of moving over the first 500 videos from the one hosting package to this hosting package. subscribe to receive videos in an individual category. This way, you will be able to either get the newest how-to's from the entire site, or simply get the videos that you want in the individual categories of their interest. The process of migrating these categories is taking much longer than expected, as each one has to be individually placed in the directory tree where it goes, and can't be moved as a group. There's a video I would like to see: "How to move multiple categories in Movable Type." I don't even know if it's possible, but it sure would save me bunches of time right now. By the time you are actually reading this message, the video won't be of much help to me on this crusade, but it might be able to help someone else! A neighbor and friend of mine is currently helping me gather content for the site, but it's become very apparent to me that if we are going to reach our target launch date of Jan. 1, and have 5,000 videos ready to launch that day, that we're going to need to recruit more help. There are a lot of videos out there that will be so easy to actually use when visiting this site, but I need to be sure that this is a valuable resource from day one, to be sure that #1. People experience benefits from using this site, #2. People want to come back and use us again, and #3. People want their friends to come and use this site. Alrighty Of course, once the site is live, adding those videos won't be a problem, because you will be able to add your how to videos and potentially win money from doing so! But right now, it's time for me to get back to work, so that we can meet the goal of a really great launch for 2007. Thanks for taking the time to read this!]]>