A lot of new internet marketing products get released in video format lately, a trend I find very annoying.

I do think that a lot of people learn a lot better by watching, rather than reading. As you may have guessed by now, I am not one of them, but I even have my doubts as to whether all the video products out there actually help anyone.

The reasons I think that video is not a very good tool for teaching internet marketing are as follows (please note, some of these points may not apply to a particular video set, but I have generally found them to hold true):

1. Low-Quality Video Direction:
   1. All the video products I have ever looked at make use of software that records screen activity, with the author providing a voice-over to explain what he is doing on the screen.
   2. Some products actually consist of nothing but those videos, while others add some ‘talking head’ moments, with someone explaining the technique, frequently with bad lighting and set design.
   3. The editing tends to be very bad, with over-long pauses and sudden cuts
2. They are Slow: Maybe its just me, but I read a lot faster than I listen or watch, so it always seems to me like the videos take ages to get to a point. Very often I have seen cases where the author will say something like ‘and now we will go and check X’, followed by thirty seconds of silence, as we watch the cursor move around the screen, navigating on its way to the relevant information. A process which was often demonstrated to the user earlier on in the series.
3. They explain the obvious: To be fair, this is also a problem with a lot of eBooks out there. A lot of video creators seem to assume that a user is completely ignorant of how to use the basics online, and explain such things as how to fill out a form (’… and then type in your address in the address field”). Really, if somebody cannot figure out how to fill in a form on a sign-up page, perhaps, just perhaps, internet marketing is not the field they should be going into.
4. They are not browsable: If you are using an eBook, you can use various methods to find information within it, such as searching, using indexes, links, etc… With a video its a lot harder to find that one piece of information you need, without watching the whole thing.
5. They do not provide other resources: Any good eBook would contain links to other useful resources. While it is possible to embed links in a video, I have not seen any internet marketing videos that make use of this. Leaving the user to remember the URL of any resources mentioned and type it in later. Just to make this a bit more difficult, the urls are often not displayed on the screen for long enough… Unless the creator has erred on the side of caution, and the user is left staring at the link for a couple of minutes.
6. They are not portable: Audio products suffer from some of the same problems as video, but they have one big advantage: I can listen to them while driving. Watching videos while driving would be a really bad idea.
7. Internet Marketing is not a good subject matter for videos: Lets face it, from the visual point of view, internet marketing looks pretty boring. It boils down to one guy/girl sitting in front of a computer, moving the mouse around, and typing stuff. Even the software on screen does not look that exciting.
8. Bandwidth: Videos are big, and most sites that sell them use streaming video, which has the double annoyance of making it difficult to download to your computer (so, if the site goes down, you cannot access the information you paid for), and making it very choppy on a slow connection.

Well, there you have it. Despite what I said in this post, I am sure that more and more internet marketing videos will start to appear, due to the low cost and ease of producing them.

Technorati Tags: video, internet marketing, streaming video, internet marketing videos

I know I have not posted in a long time, but I promise that I will catch up soon.

Unfortunately, the demands of my day-job where a bit too much for me lately, but things have calmed down now. I really need to get to a point where I make a full time income just by working online!

Despite the work, I have had some time to think about the direction my efforts are taking, but I will talk more about that in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Plans, delays, work, real life

I have decided to join The Million Dollar Race, an idea suggested by Broc from Existential Ventures.

The idea is that we start counting the money we make from the time we post the explanation of the contest on our blog, and see who reaches $1,000,000 first, with monthly updates.

The contestants so far:
Broc Copeland
Garry Conn
Nenad Ristic

Technorati Tags: contests, money, million dollars, competition

Well, I have just installed ScribeFire, so here is my post to test it.

For those of you that have not heard of it, ScribeFire is a blogging editor Add-on for Firefox. It was originally known as Performancing for Firefox, but it has recently changed its name (even if they did forget to change some of the settings to the new name).

So far, it seems very good and easy to use, and at least it will allow me to start adding images to my posts more easily.

Technorati Tags: ScribeFire, Editing, blogging

Ok, the idea here is not originally mine, but I did get it from stubbsy’s comment. In which he mentioned the idea of revenue sharing with commenters, in order to encourage comments.

Well, this gave me an idea for a wordpress plugin. I do not have enough time to write it at this moment, and I probably never will. So, rather than letting it gather dust in a fogotten corner of my harddrive.

Anyway, the idea is this: Using the adsense API, allow each commenter to enter their Adsnese publisher id. The adsense ads on the relevant comment page will then be rotated between the commenters, and between the original author.

So, is there anybody out there that would consider writing such a plugin (and if anybody writes it, will anybody use it?)

Technorati Tags: ideas, adsense, revenue sharing, worpress plugin, commenting, encouraging comments

Don’t worry, I will start doing some proper posts sonner or later, its just that so many bloggers are running so many brilliant competitions, that I just cannot resist entirng them (and therefore posting about them)…

I will add some proper content tomorrow, I promise!

Anyway, this is to announce a competition from Existential Ventures, in which Broc is offering a prize of a digital camera and photo printer

Well, as you can see I like the idea of being able to win stuff…

The strategy of running a contest seems to work for backlinks and so on. I should consider it, as soon as I have something prizeworthy.

Technorati Tags: Competition

I have decided to start doing my progress reports only once a month, mainly because I do not think that they really add much to my site, and that I would rather use the time to work on icreasing my income, rather than writing about it.

Let me know what you think about that?

Yet another post inspired by John Chow, but at least this one is probably more helpful.

In a recent article, John Chow discusses the idea whether affiliate links in posts should be marked as such or not.

For those of you who have not read the title of this blog, it is about making money, as such, you can bet that any link that I publish will make me money if there is a way that I can think of doing so. This does not mean that I will wax lyrical about products that I think are crap, its just that if I link to a product or resource,  and it has an affiliate program, it will be an affiliate link (if it sin’t, you can assume that I did not find the affiliate program).

The sheer variety of affiliate programs out there, as well as my own ethics, ensure that I will not praise resources and products that do not deserve it. When writing about something, I try to be as unbiased as possible. Even if I say that I absolutelly hate something, I will still use an affiliate link to it… After all, somebody might say “Hey, Nenad hates it, it must be good!”

So, here it is, I will not mark affiliate links here, but if you see a link, it likelly is one.

Technorati Tags: Affliate Marketing, Affiliate Link, Internet Marketing Ethics, blogging

Ok, this is yet another post about John Chow. I cannot help it, He is offering a Nintendo Wii to anyone who blogs about the competition, in a contest sponsored by a coompany that manufactures promotional pens (don’t ask me what a Wii has to do with promotional pens)

He truly is the root of all evil, since I have wanted a Nintendo Wii since I first heard about the idea behind it (when it was still known as the revolution). The fact that Nintendo decided that they were notgoing to release it in South Africa, means that I will have to figure out some other way of getting one.

Technorati Tags: John Chow, Contest, Nintendo Wii, Promotional Pens, Evil

I just thought I would share this with you guys. Yesterday, I received a cheque from Text Link Ads for $37.89. It feels really good to actually get some real money out of this internet marketing thing.

Technorati Tags: money, cheque, text link ads