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[Terry Crim]

What tools do you use to create products with?

Here is a list of some of the software I use when creating products, membership sites and what have you for clients and JV partners.

Open Office to create reports and eBooks to PDF.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro to edit and add more complex content to PDF.

Flash CS3, Flex Builder 2 and various 3rd party wrappers to create windows software and web ready content.

Dreamweaver CS3 for creating web pages and online content, custom CMS's and membership control applications for custom membership sites.

Photoshop CS3 Extended, Fireworks CS3, Paint.net and various other software for graphic creation.

Creatoon v3 for custom animated content.

Camtasia for creating tutorial and video instructional content.

The list of software and techniques I use would go on and on but the basics of what I use to create products I listed above.

What tools and techniques do you use to create content?   Outsourcing is a good answer too but am kinda looking for specific tools, both free and paid.


Thanks,

- Terry

[Mike Ambrosio]

My products are very basic, so I tend to use basic tools:

MS Word
Acrobat
Dreamweaver
Photoshop
Camtasia

For the most part, that's it.  I'm not a Flash guy, I am not a video editing expert. If I need stuff in these areas done, I hire it out. I don't have the desire or time to learn new stuff at the moment 

[Quentin]

I also use Audacity for creating audios, PowerPoint for doing presentation and online slide productions, Sony Vegas for movies, skype for recording interviews, hotconference for doing and recording training material.

Quentin

[profitclinic]

I use QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign for creating master documents and exporting them as PDF documents.

I use Adobe Acrobat for added functionality and security for PDF documents.

I use Impact Web Audio for creating streaming audio and controlling simple multi-media presentations (original sound recording and editing in either Audacity or Audio Studio7. I also use AudioRazor for some audio.

I use Dreamweaver, NVU, BBedit and TextEdit for creating web pages.

I use Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady for creating and editing images (for web or PDF originals).

I use Symantec Visual Page (old!) for super-fast, one-click selection of transparency colours in .gif files (never seen it anywhere else).

There are other bits'n'pieces that i use for some specialized functions, too.

I try to avoid Microsloth bloatware unless absolutely unavoidable.

I never use word processing applications for publishing. (Like trying to do brain surgery with a knife and fork.)

Oh, yes... I use Cloak and Tracker for all link cloaking and tracking and for personalizing landing pages from personalized email links.


John Counsel
CEO, The Profit Clinic

Insight Report: "What the 'Gurus' WON'T Tell You! (The Facts, Fallacies, Fables and Falsehoods of Internet marketing")
(Or How to separate the 'ahah!' from the rah-rah, ga-ga and ca-ca!)

[JHardin]

My tools are also basic but I love em. It takes me a while to get accustom to new programs but when I do Watch Out. This post is interesting because it shows available tools others are using. Good Pluck
MS Word
Acrobat
Dreamweaver
Primo PDF
MSAccess
Excell
WS_FTP

[Joseph Ratliff]

1)  The inches of grey matter between my ears (when it works, lol).

2)  Web Audio Plus for audio files

3)  OpenOffice for documents and creating PDF files

4)  Foxit Reader for reading pdfs

5)  Camtasia Studio 5 for video

6)  Outsource for ebook covers and site design

Really, pretty basic.

[Jeff Smith]

I try to keep it as simple and professional as possible, easy to get lost in the technology at expense of missing the mark in other areas such as hitting the right topics, differentiating and positioning within a niche and creating great content. 

1. MS Word

2. Adobe Acrobat

3. Open Office as an alternative

4. Camtasia 5 (though I still revert back to v3 at times - damn there are some things about 5 that drive me NUTS!)

5. MS Powerpoint

6. Sony Vegas (Video Editing)

7. 1001 Clipart Images

8. Binders full of Royalty Free Audio to use as intros, chapter separation, endings for videos

9. Audacity for audio recording and audio file editing/manipulation

Lots of other little stuff, but these are the main tools.

Jeff

[ChadTKimball]

Wow, most of the tools I use have already been mentioned! I've been a long time Camtasia user for my info products and marketing, but that's not available to my brother (my web designer and a Mac user).

A fantastic (and cheap) Camtasia substitute for Macintosh computers is iShowU (screencapture) and VisualHub (video conversion).  These have been a lifesaver for us since now he can do a lot of the video production himself.

- Chad

[Joetrevison]

I outsource most of the public domain books now.

[Joreymay]

I try to avoid Microsloth bloatware unless absolutely unavoidable.

Agreed.

I never use word processing applications for publishing. (Like trying to do brain surgery with a knife and fork.)

I disagree with you there. OpenOffice.org has been both easy and effective to use for my PDF products. And it's free.

Jorey
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