Not specifically related to web publishing, but still interesting –

People who run their own businesses have such flexibility and independence that they enjoy far greater job satisfaction, experts claim. The self-employed work longer hours for lower wages than their wage-slave counterparts.

Are you happier working for yourself than you were as an employee?

Without a doubt, I believe that the lack of government regulation online has been very important to its massive growth and the ease of publishing information. Unfortunately, there are some downsides. Chris over at WebSitePublisher.net made a post about some of the shenanigans that have occured over the .EU domain.

Chris also mentions how sometimes you look for unregistered domains and then they suddenly are mysteriously registered. I have had this happen to me as well, but I suspect that in some cases its just the whois database messing or really bad timing.

For example, a few months ago I recieved an issue of Business 2.0 with a cover article on space tourism. Billionaire Richard Branson is involved with Virgin Galactic and a space port is being built in New Mexico. Another company which put the first tourist in space for $30 million, Space Adventures, recently announced they were building a spaceport in the middle east. All the indicators say that this industry is going to explode over the next decade.

Within a matter of minutes of paging through that issue of Business 2.0 I was scouring the web for good space tourism domains. I located SpaceVacations.com for a mere $1,500 on BuyDomains.com. This was an unbelievable bargain! This was in the early afternoon; I decided I would take a look at my finances and buy it the next day. Three hours later I checked the domain and it was gone. I contacted the buyer but never recieved a reponse (feel free to give it a try if you’d like.)

Perhaps some registrars are snapping up good domain names. If you have a big list you have compiled over the past month and half are taken when you try to register them, don’t blame the registrar. Bottom line, if you really want a domain, buy it immediately.

I had a chance to interview Brendon Sinclair about his ventures into online video. You may recognize Brendon as the author of the highly publicized Web Design Business Kit on Sitepoint. He is also the owner of Tailored Consulting in Australia.

Website publishers often ignore video, first, because of the bandwidth, second because it appear to have minimal search engine optimization value (not exactly true) and secondly because of the effort and cost involved in producing it. Should you ignore it? After reading this interview you may have a different opinion.

1. What first initiated your interest in online video?

My interest was increased when I kept seeing the increasing uptake of broadband and the subsequent increase in the use of higher bandwidth technologies, such as podcasts. We developed a podcast that has proven quite popular and I saw how visitors react to having more information.

Because the web is about content. Content is King. The more content the better.

We also manage quite a few holiday resorts and I saw video as an excellent way to demonstrate the quality of the resorts. The more information you have the more likely visitors are to book. And video seemed like a great way to show the resort, show the proximity to the beach, show the nice staff, etc.

All the signs pointed to online video becoming increasingly popular and effective - high uptake of broadband, high penetration of online media players and increased time online.

2. You reviewed Aaron Wall’s SEOBook both on Tailored Consulting’s site and in video at www.SEOBookReview.com, how do the conversion rates of the two compare?

They’re not even close. The video review converts at 3-4 times the rate of the text review. And I’d expect it to - I can provide so much more information via video through using graphs, graphics and audio (I can do that to an extent with the text page but not nearly so well) that really help me get my message across..

The other critical aspect of the video review is that people get to see me. They can see, I hope, my genuineness (is that even a word?!) and my passion about Aaron’s book. And they can see my passion about the very positive influence that successful search engine optimization can have on a business or person. An important part of the video is that I can also demonstrate some credibility.

I’ve been on the web for a while now and through my own book, the SitePoint Tribune newsletter I write and a few little successes I’ve had visitors can see that I actually know wha I’m talking about. I really try and avoid the usual hype associated with online marketing and I think video is a way where visitors can get a sense of who you are and what sort of person you might be.

Whilst text is great and, in some cases, better than video for visitors looking for information figured the target audience would be mainly tech-savvy and be receptive to video. It’s a matter of delivering the message in the right way for the target audience. Video does that for a search engine optimization book review.

3. How many hours went in to putting together the web video on SEOBookReview.com, from start to finish?

It took a while. Getting online video together is a very time-consuming job. A good rule of thumb is for each minute of video allow 1 day. That’s not quite true for the SEOBookReview.com site - it took a day to come up with the concept and then write the script, a day to set up and shoot, and then a couple of days to edit, do all the techniocal bits and pieces and then put the video onto the site.

So that’s 4 days in total.

You learn so much in the process. In the video you’ll see me seated at a desk in my office, the wall behind me has a range of pictures (photos, plaques, etc) and we have a plant and a section of a bookcase. I’m wearing a white shirt and a blue sports jacket.

All of what you see in the video is done for a reason. And the set up takes quite a while.

I’m wearing the white shirt and jack to look professional. Some people say I should have worn a tie - good point. But we wanted to look friendly and approachable because I see our market as non-stuffy 20-40 year olds who are a bit more relaxed.

The desk is clear - implying I’m organised.

The plaques in the background are for some awards I’ve been presented with (not that you can see them well) - suggesting we’re good enough at something to actually win.

And you probably noticed that I’m not reading from notes - I’m actually reading from my laptop which is positioned just under the camera (if you look closely you’ll see my eyes move down a few times).

So, 4 days in total. And that was 1 day for me and 3 days from Tina. And Tina is experienced at editing video.

4. Other than a video camera, what software and hardware is used to put together a typical web video?

It’s remarkably simple to get a video online. Get a video camera and shoot. Then get an editing program to edit it (Windows XP comes with Moviemaker 2, Mac comes with iMovie and there are lots of reasonably priced simple editors around.). Then upload it. It’s that simple.

But of course, like so many things, the better quality video you want the more sophsiticated your equipment needs to be.

We started off with just the camera and tripod. Here’s a run down of what we have now:

Tripod
Shotgun Microphone (great to have, but you can do without for lots of simple
online video)
Firewire card ($30 US)
Firewire cable ($15 US)
Edius Pro (Canopus product) ($230 US)
Procoder Express to export from Edius (comes with Edius Pro)
Flash ($700 US)
Flash video encoder
Headphones ($30 US)
Reflector ($40 US)

The only other thing you need is great content. And great content is informative, entertaining and what your visitors want.

5. I am seeing more bloggers move into podcast and even video casting. You also run TailoredPodcast.com, any chance that will become a videocast someday?

Yep, it’s on our agenda. we see video is a more interesting experience. Sound is great and a step up from text, but video is another step further. The only trouble is that not everyone easily plays video (we currently do our videos in Flash 7 for a whole range of reasons related to accessability), but if we can produce consistently informative and entertaining video then those few who can’t see the video will go to the trouble of downloading the required player.

We envisage having a live video podcast in the future with calls/IM/emails coming in to be it as interactive as possible. That’s a while away, but in the meantime we’ll develop some video podcasts similar to what’s about at the moment.

Video works and it works really well at converting visitors to buyers. It’s because they ‘buy’ your message because your message is more comprehensive than any other way that can be delivered.

And video works well for expressing ideas for exactly the same reasons. And, importantly, the ideas are delivered in a way that it easy and convenient for the visitor. Video podcasting is a great way to inform, educate and entertain your visitors - and that’s when they’ll come back for more.

I really see online video as a huge opportunity for web develoeprs and marketers. Now is to time to get onboard and learn the skills that will make a huge difference to online sales.

As reported by DNJournal, Mortage.com sold for $242,400 this past week. This sale set a record as the highest reported typo domain name sale in history.

If you have been reading my blog since the beginning, you know that I’m generally very bullish on domain names. In addition to direct traffic, they also provide search engine optimization bonuses and strong branding value.

Was this domain overpriced? I have no idea without seeing hard statistics for its earnings.

Last year I wrote an article for Chris over at WebsitePublisher.net titled “Google Adsense Optimization Secrets.” Admitedly, nothing was really a secret but it made a great title.

I am amazed how few people bother to test out new things with their Adsense units. Unlike CPM ads, you have the ability to dramatically influence your Adsense earnings by controlling placement and earnings. When I say dramatically, I don’t mean increase your earnings 2-3%; I mean doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your earnings. It turns out even that may be conservative:

…one of my favourites was a science website that was earning about $10 per day…Things went crazy from there and earnings shot up to $700 per day. Finally, they moved one of the 300×250 Rectangles from the top of their page to a location more embedded in their content. After that, earnings went to over $1,700 per day!

Does that sound like an over-hyped sales copy for an equally over-priced e-book? Its not. Its straight from Google’s official Adsense blog.

Earlier today I wrote up a post about advertiser reputations. I really didn’t like the outcome of the post so I canned it. After reading a few forum posts I have a better idea of what I want to say.

If you are in this game for the long term, don’t do dumb things today for easy money. The most obvious example are the people that click on their own Adsense ads. Easy money, right? Click, click, click, cha-ching.

Why would you want to exchange your status at Google for a few hundred dollars (if even that much)? A year from now your site could be making $100 a day and sending real people to advertisers.
Take bloggers who promote low-quality clickbank garbage, as an example. They are exchanging their name and reputation for some quick cash. Are a few thousand dollars this month really worth six figure opportunities next year?

If you are beginning your online journey it may difficult to see the road ahead of you. Along the way there will be short term, fast cash for you to chase after. Sometimes it will be the result of your hard work. Just pause and make sure that the money isn’t costing you, or your website, long term revenue.

Take a look at this search on Google: “350z nissan” Right now this search is displaying a special Google Base search section. Interesting to note, this doesn’t appear for either “350z” or “nissan 350z” Let the speculation begin. Click here for a screenshot.

The number one question I hear, both from in-person interactions and online is “what do I make a website on?”

If you are really struggling check out Yahoo’s Buzz Log. A daily post highlights some of the hot search terms and their buzz index ranks things in a big list. Not everything is a viable niche, but you can branch out ideas from each and every term. Right now “Deal or No Deal” is #1. As an example, you could make a blog about the show. (Admitedly, I’ve seen the show so I’m not quite sure what there would be to talk about.. but thats for another discussion.)

There are hundreds of thousands of niches out there, and nearly every one of them contains the potential to fully employee a single individual. I’m not saying they will make you rich, but they can pay the bills. I believe that the future of news and information is in the hands of individual experts rather than big corporations. I believe that the recent sale and division of Knight Ridder is only a sign of things to come.

My post on Azoogle has been getting some trackbacks, a post on The Blog Herald suggested using it for blogs.

I think I should have elaborated on this better, but I do not think Azoogle is a good choice for blog advertising, but rather for more mainstream sites. The reason for this is because within the correct market its not uncommon for Adsense to bring in 30 cent to a dollar a click, where as Azoogle brings in may be 10 cents. Additionally, Azoogle’s programs are less targetted than Adsense ads thus resulting in a lower clickthrough rate.

Even on my “mainstream” sites Azoogle under performs Adsense. On a blog with a very niche audience (which most blogs have) Azoogle would be a poor choice. They are a great program (with the best support I’ve ever seen) but I don’t believe sending bloggers with 100 targeted daily readers there way benefits either party.

There is a lot of cynicism in the online business today (and to be fair, its every where else as well) from Web 2.0 jokes to allegations of multi-level marketing.

You are an entrepreneur. Pay attention to what the noise is about, but don’t become part of it. If you are careless bad ideas can cloud your vision and sense of direction and you will miss out on great changes.
While some people were spending their time on forums mocking Myspace, others where busy using it to add to their website’s success. Who do you think is going to be in a better position a year from now?

I realised just how destructive this attutide was after understanding just how powerful good domain names are. In 1995, $100 was too much for a domain name. In 1999 “squatters” were crooks waiting to get sued. In 2005, good domain names were a critical part of branding and search engine optimization (at least with MSN.)

As an entrepreneur you need to be ready to sieze opportunities. If you spend your time explaining how these opportunities are a waste of time, well, you reap what you sow. Do scams exist? Do they need to be called out? Absolutely. Try this instead of making jokes: capitalize on the vacuum of quality the con-artists create.