How to quickly make GIFs and become an outsourcing master

Using GIF Brewery to make a GIF

I still have the chat logs from my endless hours spent on AOL Instant Messenger back in high school (2000 – 2004). I rediscovered them recently and spent about ten minutes reading before I couldn’t go on any further. Every other word made me cringe.

There’s a very specific reason why I was cringing: I remembered exactly what I was thinking as I had those conversations, but that is not at all how it came across as I looked back at things. I thought I was properly communicating my thoughts, but everything was actually coming out all wrong. I wasn’t being witty, I was just being a jerk.

I’ve become slightly better with words since then (I hope!) but there’s only so far that text chats can get you. When you’re trying to explain something to someone, there are times when words aren’t enough. You need to show them.

But when you’re not sitting right next to that person, showing can be difficult. There are a few different ways to solve this problem. Chris Ducker, of Virtual Freedom, crafted what he calls the VA Training Trifecta, in which an entrepreneur can either text, audio, video, or some combination therein to communicate tasks with virtual staff.

But there’s another powerful tool that I use nearly everyday to quickly show people exactly what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about GIFs.

A GIF is the perfect communication tool for describing small bits of dynamic information, like how a button animation should work or the way something is working on your computer. You can guarantee that whoever you’re talking to can see exactly what you’re seeing, and it’s much easier to show rather than trying to describe the problem with words or going through the hassle of creating a huge screencast.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a GIF is worth over 9,000!

I’ve perfected a system that lets me make GIFs on my Mac in about 30 seconds. I’m going to show you exactly how I do it. Continue reading →

019 : Passive income through YouTube and Kindle with Brian Yang

Brian Yang Most people think securing passive income is all about releasing a killer online product that generates a boatload of income and will continue to sell itself in perpetuity.

With this mindset, people will often sit around doing nothing, waiting for the “perfect idea” to strike. Or they’ll spend years tweaking their product, making small changes with every new article or tutorial they read, but never actually release the finished version.

But passive income isn’t about creating and releasing a perfect product that nets thousands of dollars. It’s about setting up lots of smaller imperfect products, testing the market, and perfecting the most effective income generators.

Once your goal become diversifying your offerings, instead is creating a perfect single product, you’ll start seeing the money start rolling in. And that money will only snowball larger as it’s reinvested.

My guest today is Brian Yang, an online entrepreneur and the most popular dance teacher for men on YouTube. He shares exactly how he built his YouTube business, as well as what he’s doing in the Kindle Marketplace.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:25 — 38.1MB) | Embed

Win a free ticket to the MoDev UX conference!

MoDev UX Conference in DC

One lucky reader will win a free ticket to the MoDev UX conference in Washington, DC this month! That’s a $799 value, and all you need to do is tell me why you want to go — I’ve got a form at the bottom of this post. But first, I want to tell you why I’m going and why you should want to go, too.

Why are conferences important?

Once of the first books I bought when I decided to quit my job at The Verge and start freelancing and working on this website full-time was Deduct It!: Lower Your Small Business Taxes by Stephen Fishman. Up until that point, my knowledge of the United States tax system was practically nonexistent, and I got the book to make sure that my first small business venture got off on the right foot.

But reading Deduct It! had unexpected consequences beyond simply understanding the law: each new chapter gave me a ton of new ideas for growing my business.

I was expecting a book about tax law to be extremely boring, but it read more like an instruction manual for kicking ass in small business. By learning the laws pertaining to certain types of purchases and income, I discovered new assets to buy and revenue streams I never even considered.

They say that the best way to learn a new language is through total immersion. That’s exactly what happens at conferences. And speaking this new language is the best way to think differently about your own projects and problems.

Why should I learn UX?

A computer science degree doesn’t teach how to code — it teaches how to think. Students still need to independently study individual programming languages, but the computer science background makes learning new languages much easier. When you already understand the concept of a linked list or an array, it’s easier to learn how to write them in Ruby, Java, Objective-C, or any other programming language.

Similarly, user experience teaches a different way to think about problems. Learning a new method for structuring a website or app will reveal user problems you never even realized existed.

Novice…no longer!

I define a novice as a person who doesn’t know enough about a topic to even ask the right questions. I was a novice when I decided to make my first iPhone app, and remained a novice for much longer than was necessary due to my stubborn desire to learn how to code all by myself and never ask for help.

But I’ve learned that it doesn’t actually take very long to exit the novice stage. The best way to do it is to find someone who knows more than you and make them talk about the topic of interest. Listening to the way these “experts” talk, and the specific points they make, is truly the real fast lane out of novice-dom.

Alright, so gimme my ticket

Ah yes, the free ticket to the MoDev UX conference!

The people who run the MoDev conference have been kind enough to give me two tickets — one for myself and another to give to one lucky reader. You’ll have access to all the workshops and the entire conference for the full two days. That’s a $799 value.

All you need to do is fill out the form below. You have until midnight on Thursday, May 8th. I’ll be contacting the winner on Saturday, May 10th.

Good luck, and I hope to see you there!

Contest entry is now closed.

017 : Using apps to fund apps with Bobby Gill

Bobby Gill I was really into zines when I was in high school. I spent almost all my time on alt.zines, spent way too much time hunting for old issues of Urban Hermitt, and constantly found myself browsing the fantastic zine section at Tower Records. Almost all my money went to Microcosm Publishing.

But whenever I’d browse Microcosm Publishing, one number always caught my eye: the wholesale pricing. It was so much less than the full price. I wanted to pay that price, not retail.

I launched my own zine distribution, Deranged Distro, and stocked only the zines that I wanted to read. Selling copies more than made up for the cost of the issues I bought myself. It was a perfect situation.

My guest today is Bobby Gill, founder of BlueLabel Labs. BlueLabel Labs doesn’t just build apps for other people, it spends half its time working on its own mobile applications. Bobby has a passion for apps and some fantastic business insights. He even shares the reason why his new iOS game is only available in Canada.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:21 — 36.5MB) | Embed

016 : When the consultant gets interns with Lis Hubert

Lis-Hubert I love talking to programmers who no longer spend majority of their time writing code. Having a background in software development bring such a unique and analytical perspective to even project, and that’s definitely true of this week’s podcast episode.

My guest is Lis Hubert, the user experience consultant behind Hubert Experience Design. She was writing Java when she got her first information architecture job offer, and her career has blossomed from there. I talk to her about her experiences in the field and she even shares was it was like to hire two interns at her one-woman UX operation last year.

Entrepreneurship is about working for yourself, and that’s exactly what Lis is doing. There’s great information in here if you’re looking to do the same.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:31 — 36.6MB) | Embed