Making money through "charitable contributions"

Seth Harwood's Latest
Print Release

Check out this link: http://kck.st/piYHWd.  It'll take you to a page where one of my favorite authors, Seth Harwood, is raising money to help fund an independent book release.  While it might not be ideal for all situations, it seems to be a viable new way to get some initial funding through, what is essentially, charitable giving.  It's actually a genius idea to offer people the chance to be listed as a contributor IN THE BOOK if you send some cash his way.

Google+ Gets Verified!

The Internet is a crazy place, and there are all types of even CRAZIER people using it! Verification on Google+ and other social networks for celebrities and other public figures ensures that when I try to follow my favorite movie star, I can. There's nothing worse than following someone, then finding out that it's actually a 17-year-old kid in Korea.

Wasting time like a pro!

I just read an article on SocialMediaToday.com called, "6 Ways to Waste Your Time on Social Media." Click the title of this post to go directly to the post. It did a great job of pointing out some fairly common ways that a lot of people, including myself, waste time in the social sphere.

Video success is more complicated than I thought...

For anyone who works in an "online" environment, Website Magazine is a great way to get caught up on current issues. I read an article the other day called, "Getting Scene in a World of Clips," by Michelle Wicmandy. It gave me some insights into the basics of using online videos to promote products.

According to a comScore report from December 2008, the following is true of online video:
- 78.5% of online users watched video on the Internet.
- 309 minutes of online video were watched by the average viewer.
- 5.9 billion videos were watched on YouTube by 98.9 millions viewers.
- The overall average online video was 3.2 minutes long.
- Viewers on MySpace.com watched 367 million videos.
- Hulu.com's average video is 10.1 minutes long, which is higher than any of the other top 10 sites.

The article also talked about advances in SEO technology for indexing and listing video in search engine results. Some, like Blinkx, have software programs that can analyze audio to create keywords for search.

As social networking specialist at Bountiful Wi-Fi, most interesting to me was the social media aspect of online video. My job, as far as video goes, will be to write, produce and distribute company videos through as many online channels as possible. The article listed a few, and I need to learn more about each of the top 10 vehicles so I know how to use them for the benefit of the company. Any marketer who deals with anything online - or even those who should be using online channels (that's everybody, by the way) - needs to know the different ways that people can find out about their companies.

If we undestand online channels, specifically video, we can use them to our advantage to promote products and give people opportunities to interact with our brands.

Twitter users vs Habitat

"Habitat" is a UK furniture brand; apparently it's like an upscale IKEA. It's been a respected brand since its creation in the 1970's, but then they decided to dabble in the social media giant called Twitter. Not only did they use their brand and marketing power for evil by using spam tweets, they still haven't apologized for it.

In the world of social media, where feedback is instant, brands need to have someone on

Image via CrunchBase

call when they use a campaign tactic like this. Twitter's not a bad way to advertise promotions, sales and new products, but it needs to be done in a responsible way to avoid the negative fallout that can follow within minutes.

Here's a link to a good article on Habitat's mess:

http://www.digitaltip.com.au/index.php/how-not-to-use-twitter-habitatuk-as-a-case-study/

How could this happen?

News Corp. has decided to "dissolve" Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which has, up until this point, been their digital arm. That's sad, and even more sad is the fact that they might lay off 350 people in the near future. That being said, as a social networking specialist, I'm even more worried about that will happen now to my favorite part of FIM: MySpace; News Corp. already fired 400 employees at the former social networking juggernaut on Tuesday.

This revolutionary company turned the world upside down with its ability to network people across the globe like never before. It helped turn the Internet into the necessary part of life that it is today. Now it may disappear. Goodbye, old friend...

Blogging for Dollars, Part 1

Fifteen years ago, no one could have guessed that people would have FREE space on the Internet to write WHATEVER they wanted to write. And now, to top it off, people can make money off of these personal records on the web, called "weblogs" (now just called "blogs")! There are more ways than ever to make money off of the Internet. The plethora of companies that sell their products via electronic stores has grow exponentially, even in the past five years. Web 2.0 and it's usability have turned the web into a money making machine.

In addition to web carts, Google has enabled advertisers of all sizes through its service, AdSense. If you're unfamiliar with the products, it works like this:
- Bloggers sign up for free accounts.
- These authors choose where and how ads are displayed on their sites.
- Google uses its analytical tools to match up random ads with content found on sites.
- If visitors to these blogs click on ads, the authors get paid by the advertisers.
- Genius, no?

Granted, the money that most bloggers receive is pretty paltry, and to actually get a check, a blog has to have $100 worth of ad revenue. Considering that you need 100 or more hits on your blog to receive anywhere from 1 penny or more means that it could take a while. But still, it's an interesting idea that has paid off for people.