Services
YouTube Isn’t the Only Game in Town
I have been talking off and on about how to use online video for marketing. The benefits of doing video marketing are many. Among them are the fact that it is free (except for production potentially) and the fact that videos just have the eye appeal that makes people watch them (unlike the written word). But, one of the things to keep in mind, too, is that in order to get the most bang out of your videos, you need them to be REALLY out there. While Youtube is obviously the most popular video service, there are many others out there. And quite frankly, Youtube’s competitors typically offer better video quality and more speed and just more options in general. Due to Youtube’s size, they just can’t offer all those things. Proof of that is the fact that they limit all videos to 10 minutes in length. So, here are a list of some video services out there you can check out:
- Youtube. Obviously.
- Revver . Quality is better than Youtube, and you can make a little money with their ads. You have to have a manual approval process on videos uploaded.
- Blip.Tv. Nice service, good quality, and ads can monetize your videos.
- Google Video.
- VideoEgg. More of a publishing platform than a pure video sharing site like Youtube.
- Eyespot.
- MetaCafe
- SelfCastTV. Not as well known, but another place to stick your videos.
- DailyMotion
- BrightCove
While I’m at it, you might want to check out VodPod as a unique way to share videos. Its more for bloggers interested in sharing videos they like. Its not aimed at a video publisher.
As for video sites, my favorites right now are Youtube, Revver and Blip.Tv. We have a channel over at Youtube where you can view all our stuff. Youtube is not the best game in town, however they are the most popular. That means that if you really want people to WATCH your videos, you really need to get them up on Youtube. It depends on your purpose. The stuff on Youtube is limited to 10 minutes and the quality is not as good (due to high compression). Revver and Blip, however, host higher quality video. We have been (for the last few weeks) posting our videos for PCMechTV over at Revver and then embedding into our site from Revver. We just like the higher quality. I recently found Blip.TV, and our channel only has one video right now for that reason. I’m still working on getting things set up the way we want. So, we may switch over to Blip rather than Revver, but we will continue to post to Youtube for the promotional value. You just can’t beat Youtube for that reason alone. They’ve got the eyeballs, and that’s what we’re ultimately after.
Finding a Virtual Assistant
I have been spending time here and there over the last week attending to a very important action for my business: hiring a virtual assistant. Now, let me say ahead of time that I have not yet signed a contract with the person I am going to try out, however I should be doing that before the end of the week. I would, though, like to blurb about my experience thus far on finding a VA.
First off, a virtual assistant (VA) is essentially an assistant that does not work in my office. In other words, they are not an employee, but an independent contractor. They provide their own material and they work remotely, doing whatever you ask them to do. With the technology we have today, there really is no reason that you HAVE to have people in your office. In my case, I operate out of a home office. Even if the VA needs to work with your own software, you can give them remote desktop access and they can use a computer in your office while sitting anywhere in the world. Hence the name virtual assistant.
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Pirillo Live Using Freely Available Technologies
Over at BUZZscreen, I made mention of Chris Pirillo’s new venture. Chris is now broadcasting via webcam all day long, answering people’s questions, etc. He is answering 4-5 questions per day and posting the recordings to various video sites like Youtube. In between recordings, you’re basically watching him work at his computer. I was curious how he managed to get all this set up.
First off, you will see the that the video feed is branded by Ustream.tv. I went and checked it out and was quite impressed. Essentially, for free, you can set up an account and broadcast to the internet anything from your webcam. What gives them the ability to do that is Flash. I believe you need to have at least Flash 8 to make it work (somebody correct me if I’m wrong…perhaps its v9). However, you basically set up an account, enter some details for your “show”, and hit the button to start broadcasting. On my PC, the input into Flash was picking up my TV tuner, so I had to change the input via the Flash settings. But, it picked up my webcam input quickly and, sure enough, you could see me online looking like a fool. Ustream then provides code to embed the viewer into other webpages, which is what Chris did to allow you to see him on his site.
I was then curious how Chris was able to alter his webcam feed to to insert sponsor logos and the feed from his accompanying IRC channel. In doing some research into this, I have found that Macs are simply better equipped (software-wise) to do it. There are just more options out there for the Mac, which is why I believe Pirillo is using a Mac to host his webcam and Windows on the machine that you’re watching him use.
I also saw on his site the widget from Eyejot. Eyejot is another service which uses the same capability from Flash and allows you to send video messages via email. They give you a free inbox on the Eyejot website and you go to down with it. I can see the power of this for web businesses who want to allow their customers to send in video messages (i.e. testimonials). And its great for Pirillo because then he has video of the people who are sending in questions actually asking the questions! Also on the multimedia front, you might want to check out MyChingo, a site which allows your users to leave audio messages easily on your site. Basically, its audio comments.
It amazes me the kinds of multimedia capabilities now out there on the web. This kind of content is no longer a one-way flow from big broadcast to us “mere listeners”. It is now literally a matter of hitting a button to broadcast anywhere on the world from your PC. Strategically, I can see Chris’s desire to get into this. I think he only just started it a matter of a weeks ago. I’ve always said that video is a powerful medium, and now Chris is doing it each and every day – live. As a web businessman, I think Chris is making a very innovative and smart move.
Youtube Silently Sticks it to Director Accounts
As a little followup to my podcast earlier today as well as an excuse to vent, I have just found out today that Youtube has silently stuck it to Director accounts. It wasn’t long ago that you had to actually APPLY for a Director account. With the enhanced account, you would be able to do certain things – one of which was to post videos that were over ten (10) minutes in length. Well, apparently that is no more. We tried to post a new WebbyOnline video presentation today that was about 13 minutes long. Our video got rejected for being too long, even though we have a Director account. I check out their Help center and get this crap.
All videos uploaded to YouTube have a 100MB file size limit. The longer the video is, the more compression will be required to fit it into that size. For that reason, most videos on YouTube are under five minutes long and there is a 10-minute length limit for all videos.
Personally, I think that’s a load of hot air. Our video was 13 minutes long and was less than a quarter of the 100 MB file size limit. So, I don’t see how this has anything to do with the difficulty of getting sub 100 MB files. I did some looking around and it looks like others have gotten the same problem. And another. I then found this story from The Register. It talks about Youtube’s issues with people posting copyrighted video clips and why the 10-minute cap was a response to that. Yeah, well perhaps they caved, because now even Directors can’t go past 10 minutes.
What is amazing to me is the silence with which they did it. I was Googling around about this and found absolutely NOTHING from Youtube announcing the change. I had to find it from other blogs. All patterns seem to indicate they made this change some time around March 2007 and never really told anybody.
We’ll keep using Youtube, but I think they should be more open about this stuff. In the meantime, its time to go open an account at Revver. I might try Google Video, too, although that one is, too, owned by “big Google”.
PairNIC versus GoDaddy for Domains
I have been a hosting customer of Pair Networks for quite some time now. They are solid and I am happy with them. I’ve got two dedicated servers with them working in tandem and, yeah, I throw a good chunk of scratch their way every month for it. I have also been managing my domain names using PairNIC, which is Pair’s domain management service. I am happy with PairNIC as well, except for one little point: they are pricey. If you renew for 5 years, you get the domains at $10/year, but that’s $50 on the table for a new domain right out of the gate. If you take it yearly, you’re forking over $19/year. But, if you head over to GoDaddy, you can register a new domain for $8.95/year even if you do it on a yearly basis. And they throw some things on the pile to sweeten the pot. I just registered 6 domains with GoDaddy and paid $7.95/year for each because I registered in bulk. PairNIC doesn’t provide any bulk discounts.
So, my question is: Why is PairNIC charging me $11.05 more per year for a domain name? At this point, I’m beginning to think I’ve been an idiot for using PairNIC all this time. But, let me see.
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Google Analytics Redesign = Simplicity
I logged into Google Analytics this afternoon and was greeted with a notice at the top of my screen telling me about the new format for the reports. When I clicked into one of my reports, I saw it was completely re-designed. I like what they’ve done with it.
I have used Google Analytics for some time now. Its very popular among site owners because (1) it is a great analytics package and (2) it is free. There are some other notable analytics packages out there, but you might be surprised just how much loot you can throw into analytics. It absolutely floors me sometimes. For example, ClickTracks is a solution often recommended. I would love to give it a try, but come on! The pricing STARTS at $79/month, but for the kind of traffic I do collectively, it would run me $400-$500 monthly. If you use the more advanced packages, you can easily sink thousands into it. No thanks, Clicktracks.
Analytics is great, but I have found a few things about it tedious. For example, in the previous interface, I found it tedious to get good reporting on what keywords were bringing in the traffic. In the new interface, you click on “Traffic Sources” and the top 5 keywords are right on that page! Click on “view full report” and all the data is right there for you. I also like how they have put a one month traffic graph at the top of the screen. Its not real high, so it doesn’t take up the entire screen. However, a monthly graph tells you more about the trend of your traffic than the one-week range which was default in the prior interface.
The keyword here is simplicity. I am impressed with how Google has simplified the reporting interface for Analytics. The key stats are spelled out right there for you with little mini-graphs next to each. The report categories on the left are much more clear. I still get little “weirdisms” I haven’t figured out, such as the site overlay map showing wildly inaccurate click numbers on links. The best site overlay system I’ve used so far has been CrazyEgg. I wish Analytics could set up something that worked as well.
Overall, the Analytics re-design is a huge improvement, in my eyes. Very well done, Google!
Google Pay-Per-Action Launches
Google has just launched a new service in Beta called Pay-Per-Action. Judging by the logo in the upper left, this is going to be some kind of sub-service of Google Adwords (and hence Adsense as well). The long and short of it can be gotten right off their site, namely: “Increase your advertising reach while paying only for actions that you define. First, you’ll create an ad and define the action that you want a user to perform when they visit your site, such as signing up for your newsletter or purchasing a product. Then you’ll set the amount that you’re willing to pay when this action is completed. Finally, you’ll install conversion tracking code on your website so that we can verify when an action has been completed.“
This looks like a very interesting model, allowing advertisers the ability to set up simple CPA campaigns and run them through Google’s Adwords network. As a publisher, you could then view available CPA campaigns and decide based on quality and CPA rate whether to run the ad or not on your site. I have to say, this has got to have existing CPA networks a little worried. Google is always the big elephant in the room when it gets into something, and other affiliate/CPA networks have to be a little worried about Google doing this. AzoogleAds, keep your head up.
There are other issues at play here, though, as Diorex so aptly points out. As he puts it, “would you want to share any of this data with your competitors, suppliers, partners, or anyone other than an accountant? Profit per sale, sales volume, average transaction size, conversion rate, or average lifetime value of a customer? I would consider all of these pretty darn proprietary, yet tens of thousands of publishers have handed this very data over to what could very well become your biggest competitor.” It’s a damn good point. As I mentioned above, look at Google now getting into CPA and stepping on the foot of all of those networks already doing CPA. As we all hand a bunch of our business information over to Google, what’s going to happen is someday Google decides to get into a business which competes with us?
I use Analytics on my sites. I am a user of Adsense. I use Google Docs every once in awhile. I use Gmail sometimes when I am out of town. Of all these, Analytics and Adsense is perhaps the most open in terms of handing valuable information over to Google. However, any ad network I would work with would know information about my sites’ traffic, and it really doesn’t bother me. But, Google offers a LOT for free, and it does beg the question “Why would they do that?” IT could be simply that it helps promote Google. It could be that they just love all of us like their children and like to spoil us rotten. Or, perhaps it could be that they are using all the information we all send them to make business decisions that can make them a lot of money. In other words, are we their guinea pigs?
MyBlogLog – Community for Your Blog
Last night, I was surfing around, making the usual rounds to keep up with what’s going on. I have noticed on other sites (and never thought much of it) this table of mug shots from a service called MyBlogLog. So, finally, I went ahead and checked it out. Very cool! Essentially, it is a community service where you sign up, get a profile, then as you surf around other blogs who are signed up with the service, you show up as a person who recently visited that blog. You’re in their blog log, so to speak. When I signed up for a profile, I set up WebbyOnline as one of my blog sites. I set up an avatar for myself and snapped a screenshot of this site for upload. This morning, I installed one of their “widgets” to the sidebar which will list out MyBlogLog members which visit WebbyOnline.
Its basically another networking opportunity, and one geared specifically to bloggers.
What is a bit intriguing to me is exactly how the hell they are tracking me. For example, I head on over to ProBlogger because I know they are using MyBlogLog. Sure enough, my mug shot appears in the widget on the left side. Now, I am not bothered by this because I signed up for it, but how exactly are they tracking my web surfing like that? I can only assume they are using a tracking cookie. I checked out my cookies list in Firefox and I do see cookies for “.mybloglog.com”. That period in front of the domain is for a sub-domain. My guess is that their widget/tracking javascript (the code I put into my website) is programmed to detect that cookie and it knows who I am.
You definitely wouldn’t want to sign up with MyBlogLog if you are a privacy freak. That said, most bloggers are not worried about protecting their identity otherwise they wouldn’t be blogging. 
Plunge into Deep MySpace
As we all know, Myspace.com is one of the most popular names in social media today. However, it has a reputation amongst professionals of being basically a big teen hangout and not worth time for anybody with serious motives. The age breakdown might be a bit of a surprise, though. Interestingly, in this article on MSNBC, Myspace responded to a question about age breakdown by saying they don’t discuss the age breakdown (weird response). In this post by ZDNET, we see that there is a drop in the usage by younger people and a marked increase in use by adults. In fact, teenager use of Myspace, according to that survey, is now sitting just under 12% of the total community while 40-50% of the community is over 35.
What does this mean? It means that, as web publisher, most likely much of our potential public is on Myspace. More importantly, as a provider of a service on the internet, many of your potential customers are on Myspace. And, as you might expect then, more and more businesses are now setting up profiles on Myspace. And that is what I just did, as you can see here. I have stayed clear of creating a profile on Myspace for the longest time mainly because I saw no point. But, its so easy that I might as well set up shop there.
Now, using Myspace for business purposes is not easy, and truth be told, I don’t exactly plan to use Myspace as some kind of involved promotional medium. Myspace is a networking site, and thus, can be used to network your business. It will take a lot of work, because like any networking site, the only ways to make lots of contacts is to proactively be out on the site, posting to other’s profiles, getting friends, etc. And you can’t be overt about commercializing your presence because it can be seen as the equivalent of spam and nobody will pay any attention to you. But, used properly, a Myspace profile can be used to:
- Network with others of similar interest
- Promote your business through your friends network
- Monitor market trends and interests
- Use your friends to gauge interest in new products and services
I should also mention here that, in my opinion, most Myspace profiles are horribly ugly. Some people keep the default Myspace profile design which is quite clean, but also very boring. Most customize their profile. Myspace does not provide any built-in way to design your profile. Instead, people do it by pasting CSS code directly into their “About Me” sections and essentially overriding Myspace’s CSS with their own. In short, you’re basically jerry-rigging your profile. If you view source on my Myspace profile, you’ll see that there’s a HUGE block of CSS code mid-way in the code and it is that code which makes my profile look different. I have made an effort to make my profile fairly professional looking, but most users’ profiles are like a blast from the 90’s, complete with HORRIBLE background images, embedded music, you name it. If you are going to create a profile for your business or as a professional, definitely DON’T create an ugly profile that makes you look like an amateur.
Lastly, if you are conducting business on the internet or have a fairly noticeable presence online, if you don’t have a Myspace profile, I think you should create one if for no other reason than to protect your own identity. The last thing you need is somebody creating a profile with your name and then making a mess of your reputation.
Exporting USPS Orders From X-Cart to Endicia
I mentioned in the last edition of the WebbyOnline Newsletter that I was giving Endicia a try. Endicia is a service with an accompying program called Dazzle that allows quick usage of the United States Portal Service. It can be used for preparing your business mailings, but I am interested in using it to automate USPS orders placed on my ecommerce store over on PCMech. In the past, we used Stamps.com. Stamps.com is pretty good, but doesn’t offer as much for the money as Endicia. I had cancelled Stamps.com due to our switch to UPS, however we found before too long that the higher cost of UPS scared some customers off. So, now, we make USPS appear first as the shipping option but allow the customer to pay the extra cost of UPS if they want the tracking information. Now that our volume of USPS shipments has gone back up, we’re in need of an automated method of handling shipments.
So, having Dazzle installed on the local computer, we want a quick way to export USPS orders from X-Cart (the store software we use) and import them into Dazzle. Luckily, Dazzle supports printing postage labels directly from an XML file. You need to have the premium service with Endicia to use this service along with Dazzle Designer. You can find the PDF document here that describes the XML fields needed to make this work. With that as your reference, let me give you a big head start here on getting this done for your X-Cart store:
- Here is the source PHP code for the export. Note that I had to make this code a little more generic than the one I am using because I use my own database abstraction layer, etc. However, this is the logic I am using.
- In the source code, you may want to modify the $shipfromlocal variable. I used this because I have some products in my store which are not shipped from my office but are shipped from a supplier in California. I obviously don’t want to export those because we don’t ship them. If you ship everything in your store, then you can comment out that variable. If you do, make sure you modify the queries that use it otherwise you will get an SQL error.
- Also in the source code, you can modify the $customdesc variable. These are the item descriptions used on US Customs forms. Since I did not want these to be the same as the actual product names, I used this array to define names which are more vague for the purposes of customs.
- Finalize your PHP file and upload into your X-Cart admin directory.
- Next, log into your X-Cart store and go to the orders.tpl template in the “main” folder of your active skin. In that template, you can add a button next to the order search buttons that will directly call this new PHP file. When you are done, you can click that button and you’ll get an XML export of any new USPS shipments.
This script essentially looks for any orders with USPS specified as the shipping method where the order is in “Processed” status. You may need to modify this to suit your needs, but I couldn’t find anything that did this. Hopefully this can give you a head start.
To use it in Dazzle, you would go to File > Print From > External File. Select the XML file. Dazzle will immediately import the XML file, verify all the addresses, and begin printing postage labels. You will, of course, want to make sure you have any templates set up before doing this. Dazzle just begins printing.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
