I am happy to announce that the founder of the popular internet radio service, Digitally Imported, has agreed to participate in an interview with Web Publishing Blog.

Digitally Imported began in 1999 as an electronic music station and has since expanded to include genres from classical to reggae.

Andrew: When did your interest in electronic music and internet radio begin, and how did the two converge?

Ari: I guess I’ve always liked that kind of music whenever I’ve heard pieces of it here and there. The main problem is that there was not much exposure for it at all in the United States. So I didn’t really know for sure that I liked so much of it until years later. When I entered college and got broadband in my dorm room, it didn’t take long to find the new music on the net. Around that time I also found Shoutcast.com and started toying around with streaming radio right out of the college dorm room. Hey, an AMD 200Mhz box can host only so many listeners in a college dorm room on it! But that’s where it started, right after the box kept freezing because too many listeners would connect to hear the Trance and Eurodance picks I’ve selected for them to hear in those days.

Andrew: With such a wide variety of global artists being played on Digitally Imported, how difficult is it to manage copyright and royalty payment issues?

Ari: It’s kind of a pain to deal with the bureaucracy of it - a pain and a drain It can be a barrier to entry for some folks wanting to get into the space based on all the confusion. But at least one thing was made easy is that in the US we only have to pay recording royalties to one organization which redistributes to artists, and that organization being SoundExchange. There are other companies for songwriters and musicians such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, it gets a little more involved there at times.

Andrew: From the technical side of things, how many servers do you have and what kind of bandwidth are you doing on average?

Ari: I can’t go into too many details, but we have a few dozen of servers here and there so far. We use a few Gbits of bandwidth per second on our radio network.

Andrew: For someone considering starting their own internet radio station, do you have any advice or resources you would direct them towards?

Ari: Yes, find another hobby, this one takes long to grow! I am in it already and I love it, but it takes time to get on its feet for sure.

Andrew: 10 years from now, do you see yourself still in internet radio or having moved on to something else?

Ari: I can’t imagine myself in the mirror 10 years from now. Online 10 years is a lifetime. I definitely imagine Digitally Imported continuing to be a strong brand in its niche and even expanding into other things besides radio. But 10 years is a long time, all this might be in video by then! As for me personally I couldn’t comment on what I’d be doing, too many ideas.

Andrew: Right now di.fm ranks on the first page of Google for terms such as “online radio”, “electronic music” “trance.” Was there ever any intentional search engine optimization of the site?

Ari: No we haven’t done any at all actually. Just good old word of mouth over the last 7 years.

Andrew: Is there any pending US legislation which you believe would threaten online radio?

Ari: Yes, actually the royalties to SoundExchange are not agreed upon at this time, since it runs out every few years. Some want it to be as high as 30% of the revenue, which would put us out of business. There’s legal stuff going on now trying to sort it out. But perhaps worse of all is not something that is pending but something passed. I am talking about the DMCA, it’s a horrible piece of legislation and really limits the way we can creatively make services online available to all.

From ITWorld - “The complaint by The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed Wednesday, asks the FTC to investigate Microsoft’s use of customer data collection in its Web advertising service, called adCenter. The adCenter service targets customers with contextual advertising based on their Web habits.”

For advertising networks and advertisers, behavioral targeting is the next big step. Why only target based on on-page content when you can target ads with that content and that user’s interests, based on a recorded history?

Privacy is a huge issue. However, I am not convinced its going to be a show stopper. The AOL data leak resulted in quite an uproar.. for about 5 days. Is anyone going to care if Microsoft shows them new cars ads because they looked up the new Corvette yesterday?

Without question, business blogs play a critical role of information distribution in many industries. Although many industries are still lagging way behind — they will catch up (providing once-in-a-lifetime oppurtunities to a select few.)

Right now I am subscribed to about 300 blog RSS feeds. Some get deleted. Some get added. I have been writing this blog for over a year now. In that time, I have figured a few things out. Rules are meant to be broken, but that doesn’t mean they are bad starting points.

1. Minimize your personal life — but don’t ignore it. If every blog post is about which concert the writer went to last night I am going to start losing interest fast.

On the other hand, readers like to know you are a real person and not a journalism major earning $20,000 a year. If you are doing something exciting or adventurous post about it. I’d like to be known as the blogger who summited Everest, but for now I’ll just be the insomniac-by-choice who has carpel tunnel

2. People want to hear about success. The big earners generate big buzz. The Markus Frind interview was hands down the best linkbait I ever produced.

3. I have a confession to make, my blog was originally meant as a cover to hear from interesting people, not a website to attract a lot of traffic. Perhaps thats a good rule. If you love what you are writing about you’ll dig deeper. That means your posts will be more interesting, more unique, and soon you’ll be scooping your news sources.

4. People want to hear what they have to do to be successful. Whether they follow the instructions or not is up to them. It makes people feel better when they know that they know what to do to be successful. Thats why one self-help book is never enough.

5. Linking to other bloggers is a very good idea. Besides the obvious SEO implications, your biggest audience are those who are already reading blogs. As trackbacks on popular blogs become more saturated, you also must e-mail the writers and regularly post comments.

Think of yourself as a D-class celebrity. The paparazzi aren’t stalking you — if you want to be seen you better show up anywhere and everywhere. That means if you think you wrote a good post, tell people about it. Need a reason? Figure out a way to mention them in it.

6. If everyone else reported it, put a really good spin on it, or ignore it.

7. Use images. I break this rule because I am too busy. If your blog audience is slanted toward a more mainstream audience this is a must. If you can use video, even better.

8. Back away from over-used & tired out blogging trends — you don’t want to blend in. A few examples: numbered or bulleted lists, digg-baiting irrelevent content, and interviewing important people in your industry. Just kidding. If your blog has no readers it probably is because you have not done one of these things.

9. Create controversy. If you want to be unprofessional this is really easy to do. A common technique is to completely bash someone one day and then high five them the next.

This is a very tricky technique for several reasons. First, it can make you look like an idiot. If you have no claim to fame, people are going to have a hard time taking you seriously anymore. Building mind share is a critical part of success,. Destroying your brand value means losing your relevence and being placed on a fast track to failure.

10. That being said, second guessing everything you say doesn’t make for a good read. Blogging is the exact opposite of a scientific journal. You write what you feel, when you feel it. If the information is wrong, so be it. Despite a handful of grammer polyps most of your readers aren’t interested in reading an English masterpiece. Can’t figure out what they really want? Re-read this post.

Here is a post that is especially directed towards those who are newer to this industry, but it may give some ideas for those of you who have been around a while.

Making money online is a challenge. That challenge, and its rewards, are what draw so many people here. Unfortunately many with great web sites end up stunting their potential due to under-monetization.

This list is far from comprehensive, but it should give you some ideas.

1. Advertising. Since the launch of Adsense, advertising has become the monetization method of choice for small internet publishers. Publisher-side pay-per-click advertising makes the “throw it on the wall and see what sticks” method profitable.

Pros: Advertising makes any piece of content monetizable without significant work. Targeting technologies such as Adsense mean a third party figures out what makes your content profitable.

Cons: Advertising may mean someone else is walking away with the bulk of your profits. If an ad market for a particular niche is weak your earnings will suffer. With the exception of pay per click arbitrage (where incoming traffic is immediately driven away from your site via ads) positive ROI from ad buying is rarely profitable.

2. Selling for other people. In web jargon, affiliate marketing. In this case you take a cut of the profit, or a lead fee. Unlike ad models, payment is strictly performance based.

Pros: No need to occupy your time on shipping, customer service, or other retail hassles. 100% of your time is going to marketing.

Cons: Although you may turn a bigger profit on the front end (think ringtone offers paying out $12 for $10 subscriptions) you are missing out on the back end (the additional $40 the ringtone provider makes for the next 4 months the customer remains subscribed.) Additionally, you lose much of the branding benefit. In rare cases an affiliate advertiser will provide you with a white-label solution.

3. Selling your own product(s). Many mom-and-pop shops benefiting from the internet have taken this approach. A niche product may make 30 sales a year locally but do 3000 sales a year globally, turning a hobby in to a home-based business.

Pros: You are in full control. You can adjust your product based on customer feedback. Detailed customer data can give you an inside look on who your customer is and what they want. You can recruit other affiliates to sell your product, thus benefiting from other’s expert skills and knowledge. If you are failing at #2 this may be a better option for you.

Cons: Most of you time and effort may not go toward promotion and marketing. Rather, you may end up spending the bulk of your time managing employees, cashflow, production, etc. Alternatively, if you are selling information (ebooks, website subscription) the option may be more attractive.

4. Build to be bought. No joke, just as during the dot com days a growing number of companies are being created solely to be bought by a larger company. Large companies are opting to purchase smaller businesses rather than roll the dice on their own R&D.

Pros: As the YouTube deal has reminded us again, this can be one of the most profitable business models. Good luck making a billion dollars on numbers 1-3 in 2 years.

Cons: High cost, high risk. The business model behind number 4 is venture capital. The financer can afford to lose millions because they are financing many similar deals. Only one has to be a winner for them to profit. If its not you, you’ll walk away with little or nothing.

Nothing is set in stone. A successful business model relies on only two things: expenses and revenues. (Of course, trying to avoid breaking the law & killing off your customers are an added plus.)

Free traffic means you can get away with making a fraction of a penny from each visitor. The catch is you either need to be very crafty, or you do something that makes them want to be there.

Everyone complains about expensive ebooks with little offer. The fact is much of the cost you are paying for that ebook is the cost of getting you to even know it exists. $25 might be a nice price point your new ebook on blogging, but if you spend $30 on Adwords for every person who becomes a customer, you have no business.

Just the same, a brand new pair of Nike shoes may cost the company a few dollars in parts, labor, and shipping — but you pay $150 for them. After spending so much money on advertising campaigns and celebrity endorsements you no longer have a $3 shoe. Still doesn’t add up to $150? Thats the reason why Nike’s founder, Philip H Knight, has a net worth of $7.9 billion.