The Hackers Kit

 

The Hackers Kit: The Ultimate Guide

In this part of my blog, I want to show some help­ful tools and resources to suc­cess­ful­ly hack platforms.

In order to hack plat­forms, you have a need in basic equip­ment of hard­ware and soft­ware. Depend­ing on which plat­form you want to be active on, the require­ments are of course dif­fer­ent. Nev­er­the­less, you need hard­ware, soft­ware and know-how.

(Where­by soft­ware is, of course, a vari­able here. But, depend­ing on how pro­fes­sion­al you want to be on cer­tain plat­forms, you will need cer­tain software)

In this part of the blog, I will intro­duce you to prod­ucts, soft­ware and know-how sources that I use myself and there­fore can def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend. I will also present some alter­na­tives, just to give you some choice.

Let’s go!

Hardware Equipment

Equip­ment is essen­tial to be able to trav­el pro­fes­sion­al­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly through and on plat­forms. What exact­ly does the equip­ment include?

Plat­forms are dig­i­tal. There­fore, it is most impor­tant to have and be able to use all hard­ware for rea­son­able work on a computer.

Here you’ll find some more infor­ma­tion and my per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions about: 

 

What hardware does a platform-hacker really need?

As I men­tioned before, it all depends on what plat­form you do want to hack. Some plat­forms require good images, so it’s help­ful to have a good Cam­era (I use my Canon 5D Mark IV) and light­ning options, oth­ers require good videos and audio qual­i­ty, so you may need a Micro­phone. See what I mean?

When I cut it to the basic, to answer this ques­tion, you have to know that all plat­forms are dig­i­tal and with­out access to the inter­net not to use. So you need access to inter­net. A com­put­er is nice to work with, but a lap­top will also do. Some Plat­forms can even be hacked on your smart­phone, but most­ly you will work on a com­put­er or lap­top. I assume, that you have a com­put­er to work on. 

To work nice and smooth, I require next a nice and big mon­i­tor. It can be help­ful to work on a big­ger screen (I often even work on 2 screens). And this is it. This is the absolute basic in hardware.

 

Equipment for more advanced Platform-Hackers

For a more pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, I rec­om­mend some basic hard­ware equip­ment con­sist­ing a cam­era and cam­era lens­es (I have a Canon 35mm 1.4 lens (Mark IV) and a Canon 16–35mm 2.8 Mark III as lens­es for my Canon D5 Mark IV. I am super sat­is­fied with these lens­es and can def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend them), micro­phones and light­ning (soft­box­es). With this kind of basic set in hard­ware equip­ment, you can work per­fect­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly on 90% of the platforms.

For pho­tog­ra­phers, I also rec­om­mend some uv-fil­ters (if want­ed), tripods and good mem­o­ry cards. In a very advanced ver­sion and for real geeks I also decid­ed to give some rec­om­men­da­tions on drones (I am the proud own­er of a DJI Mav­ic Air Drone). But don’t wor­ry, for an absolute begin­ner, it is total­ly fine to start tak­ing pic­tures with a smart­phone camera. 

If you spe­cial­ize more in vocal and sound audios I high­ly rec­om­mend you to spend your mon­ey on a good micro­phone, (adapters to your instru­ments) and mixta­bles (and/or vocal cut­ting soft­ware). Also con­sid­er good sound­box­es for your com­put­er to help you by lis­ten­ing and cut­ting your sounds.

 

How to Choose the Right Equipment?

It is very dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly for begin­ners, to choose the right equip­ment and not spend­ing tons of mon­ey on use­less equip­ment. There­fore, I came up with this ulti­mate guide. I will try to give you the best rec­om­men­da­tions. All items are test­ed by myself and I will always be hon­est in my reviews. 

For most hard­ware equip­ment you can ask your­self these 6 ques­tions before buy­ing the equipment.

  • What type of plat­form do I want to hack?
  • What equip­ment do I need, there­fore? (Focus on the need­ed equipment)
  • How much can I spend on my equipment? 
  • Do I real­ly need to buy the equip­ment or can I bor­row it somewhere?
  • What fea­tures does my equip­ment need?
  • What is just a nice to have, but not real­ly needed? 

To help you find the per­fect equip­ment I wrote a bunch of guides. Check them out, I am sure they will be help­ful to choose the right equipment.

→ The Best Video Equip­ment For Beginners

 

How To Sell Big Best Picks for Beginners:

 

Pana­son­ic Lumix G7 4k 

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Rode Dynam­ic Video Microphone

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Neew­er Soft­box­es Kit

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Blue Yeti USB Microphone

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Software

When it comes to the right use of soft­ware it is very dif­fi­cult to give pre­cis­es rec­om­men­da­tions. Here it real­ly depends on what plat­form you want to work on and what kind of busi­ness you want to grow. To give you some rec­om­men­da­tions I came up with cat­e­go­ry groups of soft­ware you can check out.

Most of the Plat­forms are work­ing with tags and/or key­words. So before start­ing hack­ing a plat­form, I require a research tool. It depends on what you have to do research­es for: Key­words, Cat­e­gories, Tags and Tar­get groups. I am work­ing on guides to help you find the right research­es tools for the right plat­forms, check them out. 

Work­ing with Images and Pho­tos, you may need an image edit­ing tool. Most­ly I use Adobe Light­room or Adobe Pho­to­shop, but I rec­om­mend you as well a cou­ple of Apps (for edit­ing on your smart­phone) and some cloud ser­vices. Read this guide to get fur­ther information.

Video edit­ing is anoth­er big thing. If you work with videos, check out my video edit­ing tools rec­om­men­da­tions. Also, you often need host­ing ser­vices e.g. YouTube or vimeo. Be sure to find the right hosts by read­ing my pros and cons list of video hosts. 

Work­ing with Sounds and Audios, make sure to use the right record­ing and cut­ting soft­ware. I came up with this hope­ful­ly help­ful record­ing soft­ware guide.

Maybe you also want to auto­mate your con­tent pub­lish­ing. In this case I came up with these con­tent plan­ning and orga­niz­ing tools, I want to rec­om­mend to you guys. You’ll find at the same time some rec­om­men­da­tions on Word­Press plu­g­ins you can use to share your blog con­tent eas­i­ly on dif­fer­ent channels.

Last but not least, you should track your traf­fic, cam­paigns and ROI. There­fore, I decid­ed to give you some rec­om­men­da­tions on mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware you could use. Please note, that dif­fer­ent plat­forms require dif­fer­ent mon­i­tor­ing tools. I tried to cov­er up as many as pos­si­ble, but sure there are so many tools one can use, it is hard to check on all of them. 

How­ev­er, if you think, I real­ly should check on a tool, email me and I will have a look at that software/tool.

 

Know-How Sources

Know-how is the most valu­able thing you can have. I’m sure you’ll agree with me on this. On my blog, you will find a lot of know-how about all kinds of plat­forms, but there are plat­forms or hacks that you bet­ter have a look at in detail. I have been hack­ing plat­forms for years, but I also start­ed from scratch. What I did first was to learn. I tried to learned every­thing that had to do with online mar­ket­ing, self-pub­lish­ing and plat­form hack­ing. Here, I would like to rec­om­mend my sources for the right knowl­edge about (spe­cif­ic) plat­form hack­ing. This is about books, online cours­es, oth­er blogs and YouTube chan­nels that you should def­i­nite­ly check out. I update these reg­u­lar­ly so make sure to check them out once in a while. 

Since I present many dif­fer­ent plat­forms here, I have sort­ed my know-how sources by plat­form under the dif­fer­ent media. I will only rec­om­mend the best cours­es, in my opin­ion, from which I have learned the most. Some of these cours­es and books were real mile­stones for me, with­out which I would not be where I am today.

If you also have rec­om­men­da­tions for cours­es, books, and oth­er knowl­edge sources that were real mile­stones for you, please feel free to write the rec­om­men­da­tion in the com­ments or by email to mail@howtosellbig.com.

 

Books

Yes, I am crazy in love with books. Since I was lit­tle, I always loved to sit down and read some­thing. Through the time my taste in books changed but nev­er the fact, that I am crazy in love with read­ing and the feel­ing and smell of paper. In this part of the Blog, I present you my best books recommendations.

Feel free to con­nect with me on Goodreads and give me rec­om­men­da­tions as well. I am pas­sion­ate about Online Mar­ket­ing, Plat­forms and Biogra­phies of great personalities.

 

 

(Online) Courses

(Online) Cours­es have been the entrance for me. I remem­ber years ago doing my first online course about build­ing a web­site with Word­Press. This course was my entry into online mar­ket­ing, which was lat­er fol­lowed by plat­form hack­ing. I am still very grate­ful to have done this course. Hun­dreds of oth­er online cours­es fol­lowed — I just love to take online cours­es. We live in a time when every expert can share his knowl­edge and there are incred­i­bly smart experts out there. Check out here which cours­es I can recommend.

  • Social Media Courses
  • Self-Pub­lish­ing Courses
  • Plat­form clos­ing courses
  • Online Mar­ket­ing Know-How Courses
  • Mind­set courses
  • Busi­ness class­es (Strat­e­gy, Busi­ness Mod­els and Leadership)

 

Webinars and Seminars

I have vis­it­ed a lot of sem­i­nars. It is just some­thing dif­fer­ent to feel the ener­gy in a room and get in con­tact with like-mind­ed peo­ple. I just rec­om­mend you a few big inter­na­tion­al sem­i­nars, since it’s impos­si­ble for me to cov­er local sem­i­nars in all these coun­tries you guys come from. 

But I do want to rec­om­mend you some great webi­na­rs I took or which are on my wish­list. Webi­na­rs are a mix of online seminars/ lec­tures and video cours­es. They often take a cou­ple of hours but are very prac­ti­cal, which is great when you do spe­cial soft­ware webinars.

 

Other Useful Tools

I have a list with oth­er use­ful tools, I want to share with you. This list includes oth­er plat­forms you can use to sim­pli­fy your work process, automa­tion tools, Con­tent plan­ner, Check­list and so on. 

I update all my tool rec­om­men­da­tions reg­u­lar­ly, so make sure to watch on by from time to time. 

 

Any­way, if you use great tools, that I do not men­tion, but you think they are worth to be shared, please con­tact me and leave me a rec­om­men­da­tion. I am also con­stant­ly look­ing for guest authors, so maybe you even feel like writ­ing and pub­lish­ing an arti­cle about your beloved — worth to be shared — tool 🙂