Looking at Video on the Web with Ken McCarthy

YouTube 1 billion views a day

2009-10-31T16:18:49-04:00

These days, it's looks like I'm posting every three months. C'est la vie.

The Internet video revolution has come, saw and conquered. What's left to say?

Well, occasionally things happen that deserve attention.

Here are two big ones that jumped out at me while I was in the UK:

1. YouTube hits 1 billion video downloads a day

Holy smokes! There are only about 1 billion Internet users. Does this mean that everyone on the Internet is watching an average of at least 1 video a day on YouTube?

I guess it does and then there are people who watch 50 or more a day. Me, for example. It's not hard to do.

I don't watch TV. Why bother when I can call up anything I want whenever I want? TV is doomed.

2. The Internet creams TV

Speaking of the UK, the amount of money spent by advertisers on Internet advertising in that country just exceeded the amount spent on TV advertising. The numbers are 1.75 billion for online advertising vs. 1.64 for TV advertising. More evidence that...TV is doomed.

And this is only the beginning. Looks like the things I predicted when I started this blog four years ago are starting to come to pass.

Speaking of beginnings, I've been going over to the UK occasionally for years but something "clicked" for me on my latest trip and after tidying up some business here, I'm heading right back.

Next year, I'm planning on spending a few months there as I do in New Orleans ever year.

One of the reasons I'm going back to the UK so soon is that I'm putting on a one day seminar with Mark Attwood in Manchester. It's something that we cooked up while I was in London earlier this month.

Mark has a lot of interesting and practical things to say about blogging, SEO, twitter, video and many other topics. The difference is that unlike 99% of the people wag their jaw on these subjects, Mark has used his know-how to create a business that has generated over $16 million a year in sales. (Another System Seminar success story.)

A bunch of my Internet marketing friends are combining attending this seminar this with the UFC fights in Manchester that are happening the same time. System grad Lloyd Irvin has a team in the competition. To fill out an already busy week, I'm bringing New Orleans jazz poet Chuck Perkins over to do some gigs in that poetry and music loving city to help open the door for other New Orleans musicians looking for new markets to perform in.

Never a dull moment.

Interestingly, all the guys who are coming over for the fights and the seminar are heavy users of Internet video - that'd be Lloyd, me, Greg Davis, Ben Moskel and Mark Attwood.

Heavy users of video in our marketing - and we're all doing well. Coincidence? I don't think so.

If you're interested in getting some free pointers about how to use the new media including video, Twitter and blogging to get more traffic to your sites, we running a pre-seminar training on the subject. It's free and open to all. People often tell me they learn more from the free stuff we give away that at seminars costing many thousands of dollars.

Details:

http://www.systemintensive.com/mark/

Ken

Monetizing videos - long videos

2009-07-18T13:48:00-04:00

Monetizing videos - long videos

We're coming up on the fourth anniversary of the System Video Blog so I took some time to go over the past four years worth of articles. I'm happy to say in all that time, we never steered you wrong.

We said Internet video was going to explode, take over the Internet and shake things up in TV Land and that's pretty much what's happened.

Speaking of NOT on target, in the early days of Internet video (remember way back then?), legions of newly minted Internet video experts would loudly tell anyone who would listen that Internet videos had to be short or no one would watch them.

"Viewership drops off dramatically after two minutes."

The idiocy of this pronouncement always galled me...

=== Duh!

Of course, viewership drops off dramatically at the beginning!

That's because the video in question is not a fit for all the viewers who clicked on it. Those who are interested in the subject will watch much longer videos - and do so gladly.

Imagine if the Nielsen ratings counted all the views of people who channel surfed cable twenty times a minute. 2 seconds here on Program A. 5 seconds there on Program B. 3 seconds there. 1 second there.

By that logic cable and network TV shows should only be 5 seconds long because "the metrics" show that viewership drops dramatically after five seconds.

Well, until recently, the idiot analysts were winning. Not because they were right, but because they had the momentum of unconsidered opinion behind them.

Well, the latest stats are in and..

=== Here comes the reality check

- Last year, the top 25 shows on blip.tv averaged under five minutes. This year, the number is up to 14 minutes, roughly THREE TIMES longer - an increase accomplished in just 12 months!

- Internet video is mainstream now with about 150 million viewers in the US alone (about half the population) and the average viewer is watching 97 videos per month. Pretty amazing when you consider just five years ago, the typical Internet use was watching zero videos per month.

- Netflix has made over 12,000 feature length films available to its customers for instant streaming - and no one's complaining "they're too long."

Two interesting quotes from a recent New York Times article on this subject:

"People are getting more comfortable, for better or worse, bringing a computer to bed with them."

- Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.TV

"I think it comes down to quality winning out over minutes and seconds."

- Rob Barnett, Founder of My Damn Channel.

=== Yes, and there's more

As for computers in bed, things are really going to take off when one of the high tech rocket scientists makes it brain dead simple to search and stream online video with a TV remote and watch it through your TV set. If that doesn't toll the death knell for TV as we know it, it'll be pretty darn close.

As for quality winning? Not quite. It's not quality that matters. It's relevance.

If I am a left handed Lesbian lacrosse fan from Lithuania, I'll watch HOURS of left handed Lesbian lacrosse content from Lithuania. Quality doesn't hurt, but it runs a distant second to relevance.

=== Quality matters only this far

1) Your quality has to be "good enough" to not be totally annoying and

2) There isn't another left handed Lesbian Lithuanian lacrosse channel out there that does a better job than yours because no matter how we improve the medium, normal people only want to watch one program at a time.

=== The future

We're heading to narrowcasting, even if a few topics - sports, financial reporting, and big news - still will command big audiences.

The future market for the traditional boob tube boils down to this: 1) the technically backward, 2) the institutionalized (in prison, in hospitals, in nursing homes), 3) three year olds and younger who don't yet have the cognitive skills to manage a remote.

As I've been saying to broadcast and cable for years now: Change or die.

Best,

Ken

P.S. Last year, I wrote a little here about my system for creating and promoting on demand, narrowcast Internet TV channels which in 2008 generated over 11,000,000 views for me at a hair less than 1 cent net per view.

Total time involved to keep my "channel" running: 15 to 30 minutes a day. Total capitalization required to get started: less than $100 without ever having to put any additional money in. I started two news ones this year.

I only presented the system in two places in 2008 - both times without tape recorders running. This year, I'm only going to talk about it once: in London in late September at the System UK Intensive.

I've made many big improvements to the system since last year in the areas of building in automatic SEO and increasing visitor value.

If you're interested, this is the event where I'll be talking about my video monetization system in detail:

http://www.systemintensive.com/

Hacker makes clueless company $590 million

2009-03-22T23:28:01-04:00

Hard to believe, but it's been three years since I wrote about a little company called Pure Digital and its
interesting - but dumb - idea for disposable video cameras.

While it was cool to be able to buy a video camera for $29, being able to use it only once was not cool

That's where the hacker came in.

As I reported nearly three years ago, hackers were already at work to unlock the camera's "one use"
limitation so it could be used over and over again.

To its credit, the Pure Digital got a clue, raised the price on its cameras significantly and took over the market for super small, super cheap video cameras beating giants like Sony and Panasonic.

The result is they just sold their company to Cicso for $590 million dollars. Not bad considering all the gloom and doom these days.

What's the message? There are actually lots of them.

1. Listen to your customers - even people who are hacking your products

2. The right idea at the right time executed the right way trumps bad times and big companies

3. You really should be paying close attention to what we're up to at the System. We constantly catch meaningul trends and opportunities long before they appear on the radar screens of others.

They're still time to find out what we're doing at System 2009 this march 27 & 29 in Chicago:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/inc.html

"Attention jazz fans..."

2009-01-03T10:18:26-05:00

Can you put your offering in a headline with the formula "Attention (fill in the blank)"?

If not, you may have what I call a "diffused" (widely scattered) audience.

Not that "diffused" and "difficult" start with the same four letters.

I could also add to that the word "diffident" which means "lacking in confidence" - something marketers who don't have a clear target in mind eventually become.

The solution is another "diff" word: differentiate, one meaning of which is "to make specialized or distinct."

If you're aiming at a target, it helps a lot if there's one clear target and there's a big red bulls eye painted on it.

What does this have to do with monetizing web video?

A lot.

There are many fascinating topics in the world, but unless you want to become like "YouTube" what you're really looking for is not a topic, but a clearly differentiated market.

One of the bells your advertising MUST ring in your prospect's mind if you want to be successful is the "This is for ME!" bell.

That's hard to do if you're trying to be all things to all people.

I see this mistake being made over and over again.

If you're YouTube, maybe you can get away with it (though I'm not sure that YouTube with its tens of billions of views is doing that well. )

But if have e a one-person operation (or one that aspires to run "lean and mean" forever) you need tightly focused targets.

It's true that one micro-market might not be enough to support you, but if you target a micro-market you will get that business to its natural critical mass much faster and you'll get a much better yield on the market you attract. Then, once that enterprise is on solid ground, you can start another one.

What does all this have to so with marketing video on the web?

A lot.

Here's an example of someone who "gets" this.

If you're a jazz fan, you will LOVE it and will want to subscribe and tell all your fellow jazz fans about it.

If you're not, you should still study what this guy is doing. Simplicity can be deceiving.

http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/16.html

Ken

11,000,000+ video views in 2008

2008-12-29T13:23:41-05:00

I'd didn't have much time for blogging this year.

Instead I spent my free time making and promoting videos.

(Hint: Making and promoting Internet videos pays better than blogging.)

Results: We crossed the 11,000,000 video view mark for 2008 yesterday. No one is more shocked than me.

Total costs to host, serve and promote?

Less than $100 for the year.

Net revenue (entirely from AdSense): a hair less than 1 cent per view.

Total time spent: 15 to 20 minutes per day - every day.

If you do the math on the return on my time (assume 20 minutes a day and 1.2 cents per view), you will discover something interesting.

See? I told you Internet video was for real :-)

It took me two and years of modest, steady effort to get it to this point. Note the word steady. This is not get rich quick. On the other hand, with constant tending, the revenue is virtually bullet proof - and it grows.

The tools I used: YouTube, aweber and a very simple web site. And that's it.

Later when realized what I was doing had promise, I created a custom page creation/content manager program to speed up the page creation process and allow me to track my stats easier.

I explained this unique video publishing system in detail at the Smart Beginners seminar in Chicago and at the UK Intensive in London. The people who attended those seminars were very smart indeed.

I will not be teaching it again in a public setting again until the fall of 2009 at the earliest. Watch this space for details.

If you can't beat them...Viacom and MTV figure it out

2008-11-03T20:42:23-05:00

It seems like a hundred years ago.

Overnight, it became dead simple to copy and post video to the Internet and everyone started doing it.

Copyright owners wailed and gnashed their teeth. Can you blame them? Suddenly, it was easier to copy and repost their uber-expensive products than it was to make paper copies. (At least you have to pay to make photocopies.)

To get the ball rolling, Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube. (That lawsuit is still pending I believe.)

In the meantime, someone got intelligent.

A company called Auditude ran the numbers...

It turns out that viewers upload 20 times number of clips that content producers do and viewership of viewer-uploaded videos is SIX times higher than the viewership of videos posted by content owners.

In short, unpaid volunteers were generating more viewers for content owners than the content owners were able to produce for themselves.

MySpace, working with Autitude's technology, can now identify clips produced by Viacom (MTV etc.) uploaded by MySpace customers and automatically attach relevant ads to them.

How beautiful is this?

Viacom gets paid for its content. MySpace gets paid for access to its audience. Users get to go wild and do what they want to do which is repost video's they like.

Imagine being able to expand the distribution of your product SIXFOLD by just letting people do what they want to do.

For years, "viral marketing" has been the holy grail for marketers. With help from Autitude, Viacom is getting it instead of filing lawsuits to try to stop it.

How to create a viral video

2008-10-01T09:49:49-04:00

Well, I have one.

A genuine viral video

How about 1,234,411 views for one page in September - with no advertising, no SEO, no nothing? Just raw viral power.

Just in case you didn't read that right, that's over ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND views for one page in one month.

Now that I am a genuine viral marketing "expert", here's what I've learned...

But first one more number...

Total views for this video so far: 2,336, 649.

How did I advertise it?

I mailed the address to my list of less than 20,000 once - then again a few months later. And that's it.

Here's the real beauty of this...

It's not a YouTube hit. All this traffic is coming to my site. I'm getting opt-ins. I'm selling clicks with Google. This one page broke five figures net revenue in September (according to Google's AdSense accounting program.)

So how did I work this piece of Internet marketing magic?

Two words: Dumb luck.

That's right. I'm throwing my away my chance to be the next Malcolm Gladstone ("Blink" and "The Tipping Point") by cutting to the chase and telling the truth.

That being said, there are a few fine points I can share about how to profit from an occurrence like this when it happens...some things you can do to enhance the chance it will happen...and the "big secret" behind this and all other viral success stories.

Principle #1: It's all about the list

Give me the right list and I can put a deranged chimpanzee in the White House. Just a sidebar: Did you know that Karl Rove was, and still is, a primo direct mail guy?

(Note to Bush fans: I did not say "George Bush is a deranged chimpanzee." I could have been talking about Bill Clinton. Or Rutherford B. Hayes. So don't rat me out to Bill O'Reilly, OK?)

Anyway, having a "hit" on YouTube is the booby prize.

Yes, it might generate some "friends" but all Web 2.0 BS aside, I don't want friends, I want subscribers (list members) and I want thousands of them. Preferably tens of thousands of them. (Come to think about it, hundreds of thousands of them.)

You want people to come to YOUR site, not YouTube's and you want to aggressively go for the opt-in. If I hadn't done that from Day One - and mailed my list a great new video every day - I would not have had a good sized list to launch the video to in the first place.

Now, because I took this approach, creating a 10,000 - a 20,000 - even a 50,000 + views per video, video promotion is no big deal for me. I can do it in my sleep - to my targeted list.

Notice all the qualifications there...I have a targeted list...I mail them something great and relevant every day...I work constantly to grow the list.

By the way, 100% of my list growth comes from word-of-mouth. Friends tell friends. I do a lot to grease the wheels to make this happen, but that's it. I've never spend one second on SEO. I've never bought an AdSense ad. I've never sought publicity. I've never tried to be viral!

I started with a small existing list of less than 500 active people and a little more than two years later, I'm closing in on 50,000 active subscribers.

There's enough room in this particular market for me to hit 100,000 easily, probably much more. But being the "one foot in front of the other" kind of guy I am, I'm not thinking about that. Right now, I'm look at 50,000 and then I'll look at 100,000 and when I get there, then I'll start thinking about the next milestone.

So please, if you want to become "Mr. Viral" (Or "Ms. Viral") realize that it's all about the list. Passively waiting for the magic to happen...or buying expensive "viral marketing" courses...or reading Malcolm Gladstone books... is not going to make it happen.

Principle #2: If you get up to bat enough times, eventually you will hit a game-winning grand slam home run

Since the summer of 2006 when I started the video magazine site that this super hit is on, I've posted 436 videos. Four hundred and thirty six (436.)

My big winner was video #325.

Now please pay close attention to the next thing I'm going to say:

"Not only did I have no idea that this video would take off the way it did, I also almost didn't post it because I didn't think it was good enough."

Please read that about 10,000 times and then send me a check for $10,000 because that's what that advice is worth.

I remember distinctly being tired that night and almost blowing off posting a video that day altogether.

If I had done that...well, let's just say it would have been a five-figure mistake.

Instead of being able to write about what a marketing genius I am, I'd be quietly grumbling about how much darn work this web site is and how all this Internet video stuff just is a lot of hot air.

What's the lesson: In addition to being focused on list building, I work my ass off.

A new video every day. Every freaking day. Without fail. Through thick and thin. For better or for worse. I get up to bat every day.

I laugh when certain people tell me how hard they're working - and then I look at their sites. No quality. No consistency. No critical mass of content. No commitment. Of course nothing is happening.

Behind every overnight, viral success story, you'll find a maniac who is probably working a little too hard :-)

Just to put your mind at rest, I don't create the videos. I just get them from YouTube or Google video, grab the embed code and put the videos on MY site. Perfectly legit. Google wants you to do it (which is why they give away the embed code.)

By the way, here's another news flash...I never expected this site to be successful financially. It never occurred to me that it was even possible. I built it first for myself, then for some friends, then for all the strangers who started showing up and were really into the topic.

You can cut me another $10,000 check for that piece of advice too. I just gave you the formula for risk-free business success.

Bottom line: No one knows in advance where their big "hit" is going to come from. You create a hit by putting lots and lots and lots and lots - did I say lots? - of stuff out there.

Ask 1,000 successful people. I'm sure that in 99.9% of the time, the thing that "made" them was only a tiny fraction of all the stuff they've done over the years and in many cases it came as a total surprise.

Principle #3: Play a game worth winning

Getting a million people to watch your video of a kitten in a boot on YouTube is sweet.

It's also the definition of a booby prize - unless you can somehow extract value from being the guy or gal who got one million people to watch a video of a kitten in a boot. (Good luck on that one. Let me know how it works out for you.)

No, no, no. Numbers alone are meaningless.

Focus on two questions:

1. Is this video helping me build a targeted list?

2. Can I monetize the list?

If 10 billion people watch your kitten in a boot video on YouTube, you may get your fifteen minutes of fame, but that's it.

If you don't have a targeted list that you can mail to where you know the people: 1) trust and like you and 2) are interested in the topic you cover - you will not make any money on the Internet.

I know, I know, there are all sorts of exceptions to this. If you can pay your mortgage with the hope of being one of the exceptions, great. Have at it.

On the other hand, if you want to treat the whole "video on the Internet" thing like a business, you will think in terms of building an audience.

(Time to write me another $10,000 check. I just gave you the one thing the Web 2.0 people never talk about. They're always going on and on about "community." I'm all for community, but it's audiences who pay my bills.)

There's a second part to this...go after groups that monetize well.

In other words, if you have a choice of creating content for pan handlers who sleep in doorways or a content for people who are wondering where best to invest their 401Ks, go with the latter, or ANYTHING that results in people buying something.

We're talking about advertising and publishing. That's the business you're in if you're doing this to make money.

Google AdSense makes the whole process absurdly simple. Let's pray that they stay in business, maintain the model as it is, and don't get insanely greedy.

You send your list members to your new video, you surround it with AdSense ads, a percentage of viewers will click on something, and cha-ching, you've got cash.

I know this sounds too easy and too unsophisticated to be of any really value, but I'm sorry that's how it works. No business plan, no cash flow projections, no pitches to investors. You just get checks and you cash them. How embarrassing.

The size of your check?

It's a very simple formula - another really embarrassingly simple one that will never get me admitted to the "Captains of Industry Hall of Fame":

"Size of list + relationship you have with list + monetization potential of topic = size of check"

No one - not Google, not God, not George Bush - limits the size of the check.

If you can get the formula right, it can be any size you want.

How to learn more

I've shared everything I can easily share with you through a keyboard, but I haven't shown you: 1) the video, 2) the site it's on or 3) the software I use to create and manage the site.

If I showed you the page that is getting all these hits, you simply would not believe it - until you saw the stats. It looks like nothing. Remember: I almost didn't post it because it seemed a little boring.

And the site itself? Well, it looks like it was created by a deranged chimpanzee. Me in this case. I sketched it out on the back of a cocktail napkin two and half years ago and have never changed it since. It's ugly.

The software? It's not magic, but it does let me create, publish and promote a new video page in about fifteen minutes day.

If you want to "get under the hood" and see how it all works, plus get additional words of wisdom
on viral marketing (there are a few other things to know), I am going to be sharing this material in two places... Chicago, this November 8 - 9th and London, UK, November 15 - 16th.

I'll be offering a full blown tutorial on this as a bonus session at two seminars I'm offering on Internet marketing.

No tape recorders. No cell phones in the room. And you'll have to sign a formal Non-Disclosure Agreement to attend the bonus session where I'll be covering this.

Here's the deal:

You can use the info to start your own business, but if you violate the NDA and teach, publish or otherwise share the inner workings of this system, my attorneys will see to it that you put all my nephews through college.

I have three of them and their parents have their hearts set on Ivy League schools for all of them. Did I ever mention that both my brother and sister are attorneys? For real.

I've joked about this, but clearly I'm stumbled on a formula that can create a multi-million dollar business starting with zero capital and needing no employees.

It's worth a lot...and if you join us in Chicago and/or London (truly smart people will come to both), you
can walk home with it in your gift bag.

Details:

Chicago: http://www.SmartBeginners.com/bootcamp

London: http://www.TheSystemIntensive.com

Ken

P.S. Even if I weren't sharing my video publishing and promotion system with you, both these trainings would be worth ten times the tuition.

I'm the only person who teaches Internet marketing who can fill a room with people who started with zero and are doing six, seven and in one case over eight figures a year in online sales.

It's pretty rare for me to offer a small group training these days and in both cases I'm going to be supported by amazing guest speakers.

P.P.S. I've been writing about video on the Internet for as long as I've been teaching Internet marketing - since 1994.

Doesn't it make sense that I'd be the first guy to really "crack the code?"

Remember, if you get up to bat enough times, you'll eventually hit a grand slam home run.

Here's to yours....

Chicago: http://www.SmartBeginners.com/bootcamp

London: http://www.TheSystemIntensive.com

Further adventures in YouTube promotion

2008-09-15T03:15:56-04:00

We did it.

We took an important subject that the media wants to ignore and put it - and kept it - at the top of YouTube's "New and Politics" charts.

As I write this, the video - "The Truth about Katrina" - is the #10 highest rated video in this category of this month. Amazing when you think about what we're up against - McCain, Obama, Palin, Wall Street melt down, etc. etc. and the fact that the Katrina anniversary and Hurricane Gustav are long over.

The underdog - in this case the people of New Orleans and Southern Louisiana - can win...if the underdog has some Internet savvy.

Speaking of savvy, YouTube is adding so many cool "bells and whistles" that it's hard for me to keep up.

Can anyone point us to a good online resource (maybe hidden somewhere on YouTubes's site) that goes into the fine points of creating and customizing a YouTube channel and using all the other new stuff they're offering (text annotation, automatic transfer to another video, click from video to a web site)

The speed of change in this medium has swamped my ability to keep up. If you've got anything to share on this point, I'm sure fellow SystemVideoBlog readers will appreciate it. I know I will.

(Please limit posts to this subject.)

Thanks.

Ken

One million again + 10%

2008-09-01T00:03:27-04:00

In July, my "hobby" site broke one million views per month.

The numbers are in for August.

We did it again PLUS 10%.

I'll be revealing the formula I used to create this amazing traffic magnet at the London, UK System Intensive and the Chicago System Boot Camp.

Cash required to start: zero. My total time commitment: 15 minutes per day.

Revenue: Currently just a hair away from five figures net per month. And growing at 10% per month. Perfectly scalable. Could be ten times the size with no additional work required and the market has at least that much room to grow.

Called it...did it - in real time

2008-08-31T10:18:37-04:00

A few days ago, I accepted what sounded like a totally insane challenge.

A friend asked if I could help promote a video I made for her group on YouTube.

"What category?" I asked.

"News and politics," she said.

"Let me get this straight. The Democrats are right in the middle of their convention. The Republicans are starting their own soon. All the TV news, all the newspaper headlines, all the blogs are focused on the conventions and you want to go up against that?"

(I mean, really. Can you imagine anything more impractical, more pie-in-the-sky, more unlikely to ever happen?)

Then she hit me with the zinger:

"It's for New Orleans."

"Oh...OK...Let's do it!"

24 hours ago, we had a zero ranking on YouTube. Now look at where we're at...On the top line of the highest rated videos, right next to the Democrats and the Republicans.

Let's see...the candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars to promote themselves. The news media threw in, what, maybe another $100 million worth of free exposure. They have thousands of minions and operatives at their beck and call.

And we're right up there...for zero dollars...in our spare time...all from a lap top.

That's Internet power baby. The System Way.

Can your guru do that? Can they go up against the real world's biggest media guns, call it, win it and do it in real time?

Sometime next week, I'll explain how YOU can do this too - and you won't have to touch your credit card to learn.

Meanwhile, here's the video. Soon we're going to get knocked down to the "Weekly" top rated instead of "Today's" top rated so I'm still hustling for traffic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k

Check it out: Bottom right hand corner. It's called "The Katrina Myth."

Best placement money can buy - but we got it free.

Internet video power

2008-08-29T20:09:22-04:00

We hit a million plus viewers again in the month of August, but that's not what I'm really excited about.

A friend and I made this video from scratch - from concept, to script, to production, to being seen by thousands online - in just three weeks from start to finish.

All the footage was "found" on the Internet and it was a very part time effort for both of us.

I'd like you to click through to YouTube and rank it (with five stars), favorite it, and comment on it.

If readers of this blog generate at least 20,000 YouTube views, I'll interview the guy who did the production and post it for you.

If you guys generate 50,000 or more visits, I'll explain how I get 1 million plus visitors to a video site working just 15 minutes a day.

You have seven days to make your numbers. Good luck - and as you'll see - this is for a good cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k

My first million

2008-08-10T17:39:23-04:00

After two years of very part-time experimentation, I've come up with a formula that this past month (July 2008) generated over 1,000,000 video views.

Better yet, traffic for the test site is growing at 10% per month - and it's all free - so next year this time, the site will be doing well over 2,000,000 views per month, unless I get ambitious and start pushing it a little.

Total time investment to keep the thing going and growing: 15 minutes per day.

More details later, but here's the screen shot:

Click here for experimental site results

Virtual worlds: $1 billion in

2008-05-18T10:13:09-04:00

I had friends who played in virtual worlds in the late 1970s (they needed mainframe access back then.)

I didn't get it then - and I don't get it now - but whether I get it or not doesn't matter.

This year $1 billion was invested in various "virtual world" ventures. OK, there's a lot of hot money around right now, but it can't ALL be dumb money.

Also, if "community" is the key to the Internet, what could be more of a community than a place where you completely immerse yourself in another world with fellow virtual world inhabitants.

Two resources for you if you want to keep up-to-date with what's going on:

!. Virtual World Management

The virtual world industry is big enough to have its own conferences, expos and industry analysts.

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/

2. Machinima

What is it?

It's "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment."

Frankly, I've yet to see a good machinima (I haven't looked all that hard), but clearly this is a medium to watch. It's growing fast and the current fan base is very passionate.

You can get a crash course here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

Ken

The cognitive surplus - Clay Shirky

2008-05-12T13:52:04-04:00

A bit long-winded (he's an academic) but when he finally makes his point at the end, it's a pretty good one.

Actually, John Walker, co-founder founder of AutoCAD, made this same point brilliantly way back in the early nineties. The folks who are going to make a killing in software, he said, are the folks who create tools that let people make their own stuff.

Lon Naylor: Selling with the screen

2008-04-09T09:25:42-04:00

There's so much going on in Internet video, just tracking it could be a full time job.

Unfortunately, I already have a full time "job" (actually a couple of them): running a business; organizing and hosting the annual System Seminar; counseling non-profits in New Orleans.

So the number of posts to the blog has suffered, though I do think the quality has been sky high.

In fact, we accomplished the most important thing: alerting Internet marketers to the impending breakthroughs that were on track to put Internet video on the map as a major force in Internet marketing. Folks who took our advice were well positioned when the reality we predicted (with a pretty good degree of precision) arrived.

Now video on the Internet has practically become "business as usual."

With that in mind, let's talk with a real Internet video veteran, a guy who, while he was at Microsoft, was already looking at video's online potential seriously TWELVE years ago.

Hundreds of high level, high stakes online video presentations later, he has a lot of practical advice to share with us:

http://www.thesystemblog.com/2008/03/lon-naylor---vi.html

Apple #1 music retailer now

2008-04-04T14:47:30-04:00

Did you feel the earth shake?

You should have.

Little Apple, Inc. (formerly Apple Computer) which many were ready to write off as dead as recently as ten years ago is now the world's biggest music retailer. It just beat out the former champion Wal-Mart.

Who says this is so? The NPD group.

There was no online music industry to speak up five years ago. Chalk up another one to the Internet.

Internet TV triumphs

2008-03-11T12:24:05-04:00

If you haven't heard from me lately it's because I've been far too busy making and promoting Internet videos to take the time to write about them.

If you're new to the site, just check out the archive. It's got plenty of very useful, on-target information on Internet video - including the original premise of the site itself.

This is my 15th year of talking about the impending impact of the Internet on TV and my third year of this blog.

Since then, my clients and I have used Internet video to sell millions of dollars worth of products in all categories. I routinely get uploaded videos to 10,000+ viral view status and have occasionally hit 100,000 plus with one video crossing the 500,000 views mark - all viral without penny one of advertising (or real effort for that matter.)

A casual, extremely part time video publishing experiment I started in August of 2006 with a mailing to 50 colleagues has now blossomed into an active subscriber list of 23,000 and growing. Again, all without a penny in advertising. Amazingly, because it wasn't my intention, the site accidentally nets over $3,000 a month. Imagine if I invested in it a little bit.

A quote in an article in yesterday's New York Times by Alan Wutzel, the head of research for NBC put it best:

"(Watching video on the Internet) has become a mainstream behavior in an extraordinarily quick time. It isn't just the province of college students or generation Y-ers. It spans all ages."

I know. I called it three years ago (fifteen really, but who's counting?)

It was inevitable. After all, corporate TV sucks. Always has. The only reason they were able to get away with it for so long was because an alternate distribution hadn't emerged. Now it has. "Game Over" for the bad guys.

In the same article, Quincy Smith, the president of CBS Interactive summed up the big broadcasting industry's problem quite nicely:

"The four and a half billion we make on broadcast is never going to equate to four and a half billion online."

Well, boo-hoo. After all the big networks have done such a good job maintaining and raising cultural standards and educating people about health, personal finance and citizenship that it would be tragic to see them go out of business. NOT.

Internet television will generate many billions of dollars in revenue and that revenue will be distributed broadly. Network executives may actually have to work for a living some day. Meanwhile, people with their wits about them and content that people want will be doing just fine.

Will it all be good? No, of course not, but a lot of voices that are currently not being heard thanks to what amounts to Corporate Amerikan censorship will be heard and the country and world will be a better place for it.

Firebrand.com

2008-02-14T11:40:31-05:00

You gotta love this.

A web site and TV channel that are nothing but commercials.

It's called Firebrand.com

Content: free. Production values: sky high.

Will people watch? I watched for a while last night in a hotel room. It was better than the cr@p that was on the local cable service.

Monetization?

They do a lot of call outs to people who view the channel online. I think they could be doing a lot better on the monetization front, but hey, it's a start, and they're both online and on cable.

To see it in action: Firebrand.

Google Product Search replaces Video on the home page

2007-11-29T00:23:39-05:00

For over a year now, "Video" has been one of the choices Google has offered on its very spare home page along with other popular search services like "Images", "News", and "Maps" etc.

Well, I just took a look on my spanking brand new MacBook and "Video" is gone as a home page choice.

It's been replaced with a button called "Products."

If you google "Google Products" what you come up with are lists of the all the software products that Google makes available above and beyond their search results (ex. gmail, Google Earth)

A very quick search on Google itself turned up nothing about this new initiative.

So what is it exactly?

First, "Products" is shorthand for "Google Product Search" and like all things Google it's in "beta."

Second, it is a very slick, lightening fast search engine for...products. You name it and it appears Google has got it. Think UBER-catalog.

Not only that, but it appears Google has made is dead simple to shop across multiple online catalogs with a service called Google "Shopping List."

The experience ends, of course, with a visit to Google "Checkout."

Do you selling physical "stuff?" You need to get on this...like now.

By the way, Google's catchphrase for the service is "search for stuff to buy." Talk about cutting to the chase. I have a feeling this is going to be huge. There's got to be a cold chill going through the folks at Yahoo Stores and even eBay right now.

Here's what the page looks like: Google Product Search

Here's in the info page for sellers: Sell with Google

Writers strike

2007-11-02T13:43:53-04:00

I happen to be in LA this week so I'm seeing lots of new about the looming writers strike.

Writers on strike?

Believe it or not those charming airheads on the tube don't write the words that come out of their mouths. A back office of writers keeps the game going.

Now those writers are on the verge of walking off the job. Their complaint is that they're not receiving compensation for DVD sales and other digital repackaging of their work.

Is this really a big deal?

Yes it is for two reasons, one micro and one macro...

On the micro level, a writers strike shuts a big part of the entertainment industry down. In the LA area alone, that's 200,000 people. The last writers strike, which was quite prolonged, cost the California economy a few billion dollars.

The macro level is a little more interesting.

The last time there was a writers strike there was no such thing as Internet video and certainly no such thing as user-generated Internet video content.

If this strike takes place, many popular television programs will be forced to run archived shows. During the last writers strike, viewers grumbled at being served up "leftover" fare. This time around they have an option: the Internet.

The Internet has relentlessly been stealing eyeballs from TV - with TV offering its best stuff. What will happen when TV is offering crap?

This strike may prove to be historic for reasons the writers union and entertainment industry may not like.

Hulu.com beta

2007-10-30T14:48:59-04:00

If you want to take a look at an NBC/Fox attempt to steal market share from Google/YouTube, you can take a look at the beta here: Hulu.com

It makes sense that some big "me too" ventures would crop up. The smart thing would be for these two networks to promote Hulu.com heavily on their broadcasts. They'll be able to generate a surprising amount of spike traffic this way.

Interesting counterbalance to Google's lock on search traffic.

TV still trumps search when it comes to eye balls, but of course the the Internet, the distance from screen to play button is a whole lot shorter.

Online TV App Breaks the Mold

2007-10-12T10:42:17-04:00

There have been illegal TV episode viewing sites for years, each getting shut down by the MPAA and similar entities for illegal distribution. You might have visited one of these sites, watched a few episodes of The Simpsons Season 4 and the next day, the site vanished. Apple Inc. in the past year has been making agreements with cinema and television companies in order to provide video content for iTunes and the iPod. Other companies are beginning to follow suit.

An Online TV Application called Joost was recently released to the public. Joost claims to be the first Broadcast Quality Internet Television service. The Online TV Company secured $45 million in financing back in May 2007. Joost has since made agreements with major networks like MTV, CNN, Discovery Channel, WB, and CBS so they can provide over 15,000 shows and several channels at launch.

Joost is an application that you can download for free for Windows and Mac. You need a broadband connection to use the service. Joost boasts an amazing interface that allows you to browse channels via a grid. You can search for a show you want to watch. There are chat rooms, so you can talk with others watching the same show, similar to watching TV in your own home. There is instant messaging support for gMail and Jabber. Joost supports multiple accounts, so different users can customize the interface to their liking. There are commercial breaks with only one commercial per break.

Look at Joost Press Releases Here.

Download Joost from the Official website to see what the buzz is all about.

Microsoft video

2007-10-01T19:21:46-04:00

Microsoft has now launched its online video service out of Beta.

http://video.msn.com

Aside from the fact MSN Video will distribute content for NBC Universal and News Corp, and this video content will include full-length programming, movies and clips from at least a dozen television networks and two major film studios.

Forget the fact that they have years of experience in encoding and distributing video across the Internet, or their robust and scalable content delivery network.

The real buzz is the other side of the new MSN Video portal.

It's Microsoft's "User Generated Content" section called SoapBox on MSN.

There are over 100 websites that offer the ability to upload your videos for the world to view, most notably YouTube and Google Video.

So why would Microsoft's SoapBox be important?

Three words: "Mass Market Reach".

For the last 24 months Microsoft has really been investing in a collection of integrated services and products called Windows Live.

The most familiar is Windows Live Messenger, the replacement for the market leading MSN Messenger.

So wouldn't it be a nice idea if Microsoft would let you create a list of videos on MSN Soapbox and then actually watch them with your friends and family in Windows Live Messenger.

Well you can... here is an image of how it looks:

http://www.marctalkstech.com/images/messenger-soapbox.jpg

Now realize that Windows Live Messenger is free to download and is available in 26 languages and is used in more than 60 countries by more than 240 million active accounts each month. And you should start to see the attractive nature of this new video portal.

Can anyone say "Viral Video"? But it does not end there.

Microsoft is adding MSN SoapBox functionality directly within other Windows Live software that can be downloaded free of charge.

Windows Live Writer (Blog posting software for the desktop) and Windows Photo Gallery (desktop photo/video management software) now offer SoapBox support for uploading videos to Microsoft's portal, and in the case of Live Writer actually posting SoapBox videos you find directly to your blog.

Also don't forget the Microsoft Search engine "Live.Com" which serves up videos direct from its own MSN Video portal!

After purchasing YouTube, Google always seemed to be unrivaled in terms of online video.

But that may be about to change now Microsoft has entered the arena in a big way and with a sound business model included. Whilst you may argue SoapBox is no YouTube, Microsoft does have a huge user base to tap into - and it is!

Let the battle begin.

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

Note from Ken:

P.S. Did you know I'm on the road this fall?

For the first time in three years, I'll be
offering small group trainings in Internet
marketing.

Here's where I'll be and when:

Toronto - October 13
Los Angeles - November 3
San Francisco - November 10
Vancouver - November 17

Details: http://www.SystemIntensive.com

Think again - about Internet video

2007-09-27T19:04:17-04:00

I like this promotion from the magazine Streaming Media

It expresses the urgency that small businesses should be - but for the most part are not - feeling about the unfolding Internet video revolution.

It's an advertisement for a white paper on Internet video and education, but it equally applies to anyone who has a story to tell or a product to sell.

The old adage "the more you tell, the more you sell" is as valid as it was 100 years ago. Internet video is evolving into one of the premiere ways to tell. Ignore it at your peril. I guarantee your more ambitious competitors are not:

"Think the video revolution is limited to user-generated content and online movie downloads? Think again.

And you'd better think fast, because learners of all kinds-whether college students, outside sales forces, or technicians in the field-are increasingly demanding the ability to receive both traditional academic courses and training materials on video. They also expect that video to work as seamlessly and easily as YouTube and with the portability of their iPods, but with the kind of interactivity and supplemental materials they'd receive in a traditional classroom.

All of which means that academic institutions and enterprises alike are looking for the most advanced, efficient, and cost-effective ways to teach and train online..."

Three business models

2007-09-23T05:37:00-04:00

Here's Shelly Palmer, president of the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the guys who award the Emmy's. Palmer shares some very good business advice for people who want to create Internet TV channels.

Of course, the smartest use of Internet video is for entrepreneurs to use it to sell and educate their customers directly without a media middleman.

This is a hard concept for people from the traditional television and advertising industries (the middlemen) to grasp. They'll get it - some day. In the meantime, here's some state of the art advice on niche video publishing.