We are going to have THREE levels of Video Blogs for the remainder of 2010. 

LEVEL ONE blogs are the ones that are free and simple and anyone can make them and post here on the site. The instructions below are a few shorts steps to get you up and running today.  

LEVEL TWO blogs will look more like a TV .newscast, the ones John G does on ezweather.com. Check his site out and how it looks.  Those videos require some investment of a green screen and software and a few other things. I will have more on that later. The heavily trafficed blogs (members and pros...will that equipment as part of the money collected for the membership/donation drive going on right now.

LEVEL THREE blogs will be live streaming broadcasts we hope to have before the winter season.  These will be like breaking newscasts you see on TV but here right on the web.  All this will be included in the GOLD MEMBERSHIP or more when you sign up.  Charter membership of $24.95 is for the first 1,000 people that sign up. After that the rates and length of membership changes. 

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LEVEL ONE VIDEO BLOG INSTRUCTIONS....

This is a simple blogs with audio (you do not need a mic if your Laptop is rather new..it's built in)

GO to screen-o-matic.com

CLICK the create button

You will see a screen with a dotted line. This is the area where you content will be taped in. You can size it down or up by grabbing the small white boxes in the corners.  You can drag it by clicking the black center box with screen-o-matic on it.

GO to web sites or info you want to use for your blog and line them up in this box.  So if I clicked to radar at the NWS just open that window now and you'll see how it fits in here. Open up as many windows that you want to use for your blog.  I do them in order so they line up on the bottom of my screen.  This way you can click one after another as you do them.

After your windows are all ready click on the first one and hit the red record circle. They will give you a countdown of 3-2-1.

**** If you move your mouse over things it will appear as a halo over that area later in preview. Pretty cool to highlight something. We also recommend DESK MARKER to draw and write on things like maps and graphics. You can load that onto your computer. CLICK HERE TO GET DESK MARKER

Once you are finished recording each map/graphic hit the red button again (this can be a pause too) 

CLICK on the DONE button. You can hit the green triangle to review or send it right to YouTube.

Give your weathercast a title....description...and tags. 

Good tag words to get more hits are....
weather, videoblogs, storms, your name, liveweatherblogs, hurricanes, heatwave, date and year of blog, geography like city, region or state.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A YOUTUBE ACCOUNT !

HIT THE UPLOAD BUTTON

It make take a few seconds to encode and upload, the longer the video the longer the wait. I would keep them to 3 min or less. This is the typical time for a TV weather broadcast and the viewer gets bored unless you have some major breaking weather.

Once uploaded you'll see something like this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miL167dOmv8

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Hit that link to see your video on Youtube. Click on the EMBED box in the lower right. You will see a highlighted code. This you will cut and paste into your blog right here on Liveweatherblogs.

When you get to your blog here. look for the SOURCE button...it's right below the word Blog Message. Click the Source Button and than paste the code from Youtube right in your blog. YOU ARE ALL DONE !  Congrats !

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Hey Rob how do I make money by making video blogs ?

It's pretty simple.  We'll add an ad(s) to your video blogs. We'll also have a counter to track the number of views. The more views the more you make. Our ad agency will provide the pricing per 1000 views to us, and at the end of each month you'll recieve a check.  If you make it to the "HOT BOX" I will throw in a little bonus. 

The "HOT BOX" is the best blog or video blog of the day. That blog will be front and center on the site and will be heavily advertised on the site.  Have fun, be creative and don't be afraid to think outside the box so to speak. In the winter and during hurricane season we may pick up to two HOT BOX blogs a day, depending on the weather system and the impact.

We are looking to get more weather blogs outside the Mid Atlantic so if you choose to blog about another area we'll add a bonus to those blog counts. Good luck and I'll be critiquing blogs to help you look like a TV weather star right here on website.