Bill Cammack

So, The other day, I go to lunch with a friend of mine who isn’t into Social Media. I start showing him my personal fansite, my business site, Facebook, Twitter / TweetDeck, blip.tv, YouTube, Tumblr, Ustream, IRC, Skype, iChat, so then he goes:

“So how do you make money with all this stuff?”

So I laughed a little, because I knew I had a long, LONG explanation ahead of me. :D

Special Case

Before I get started with this, I need to mention that I’m a special case. PART of what I’m about to say will be useful to someone else. Most of it’s only useful to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Roxanne & Shane, founders & owners of Bare Feet Studios & Beachwalks.tv have been consulting and in the internet industry a lot longer than I have and I was fortunate enough to receive some vital coaching from both of them concerning Time, specifically relating to being a freelancer.

I physically met Roxanne Darling two years ago in November 2006, but I knew her already from the Yahoo Videoblogging Group. We had some great and important conversations and I knew she had her finger on the pulse of what was going on in this new “New Media” world I was diving into from my Corporate and Broadcast video background.

Rox & Shane did their own show, Beachwalks.tv, but what I didn’t know at the time was that they were also very, very, VERY busy with their consulting business where they have 12 years of experience working in internet technology, streaming media, audio & video podcasting, new media creation and consulting, content management systems, event production, and public speaking.

Fast Forward to March 2007, and I accompanied Rox to NYC’s BlogHerBiz ’07 conference. We were filming or attending discussions all day, which probably amounted to 6 or 8 hours, tops, before we shut the productions down and got ready to socialize for the rest of the evening.

When Rox turned her computer on, she said something about having 80 emails since she had last checked this morning. I remember laughing at that, thinking “ha ha, you have all this spam/bacn to get rid of, hahaha” To my shock & horror, I found out she had 80 actual legitimate BUSINESS emails, with more coming in.

At the time, I was probably only getting 30 emails a day… like, meaning in a 24-hour period… and those were mostly garbage. There was something about Rox’s email situation that told me to pay attention, because I was looking at my future. We headed to the socializing events with both of us knowing that by the time she returned from having a good time (and, less importantly, business networking at the same time), even MORE email would be stacking up… Read the rest of this entry »

I just read this article by Sarah Lacy where she describes part of her journey into becoming a brand and then attempting to leverage her new positions. The pivotal paragraph for me was:

Sarah: That take-on-the-world morning, I was having coffee with Steven Levy, then of Newsweek, now of Wired, who challenged this whole idea of whether this “Sarah Lacy” brand was actually translating into things that mattered, like book sales, money, something real and tangible, or whether it was a just smokescreen of hype. And I granted his point. I’ve long been dubious of Internet celebrity’s staying power. It seems the Internet famous hit that moment where they’re on the Today Show, and just about to close a deal with ABC or HBO or pick the big money, you’ve-made-it acronym, but it never really materializes.

I’ve watched this happen several times since I entered the scene in 2006. Internet Celebrities attempting to take their game to the next level. The first, and most obvious example from the paragraph above being Amanda Congdon, formerly of Rocketboom fame, who went on to do Amanda Across America and then a derivative show for ABC where they attempted to emulate Rocketboom, but severely overproduced Amanda, stomping the life and fun out of the personality that she had brought to the Rocketboom anchor chair AND forcing 30-second pre-roll advertisements that had lots of people clicking off the site before they ever got to Amanda’s performance.

Another example would be Lisa Donavan (LisaNova), who went from YouTube to MADtv and then back to the internet. Then, there’s Ze Frank, who made up his own brand of show and viewer interaction, soared to immense popularity, deliberately quit his show after a calendar year and last I noticed, was on the lecture circuit.

So the question is whether the Personal Brand you’re creating “is actually translating into things that matter”. I touched upon this in August, 2008, in Conversion of “Cred”, but Sarah sums up my own personal experience here: Read the rest of this entry »

Walt Ribeiro does a new video every single day… Like “Rejected”:

Meanwhile, I have at the very least *100* show ideas, and I’m not doing ANY of them. Not ONE of them. The last video I uploaded was “Social Media Observations”, almost exactly two months ago:

Granted, that was my 315th episode in two years, but still, I didn’t stop because I needed a break. I stopped because something that I couldn’t place my finger on wasn’t making sense.

I met Walt on May 16th, 2008 @ MashBash NYC. He left the afterparty right before we took this picture:

At some point, I became aware that Walt is extremely enthusiastic! hahahaha He really seems INTERESTED in things, and PSYCHED! :D I then found out that he does a show about music, teaching people about music via the internet. Of course, one of my myriad shows was about music, so I watched a few episodes.

This is when I realized that Walt was outputting so much material. Doing a daily show is really amazing. I already knew how to do it, but at least three things were stopping me…

1) I wanted to make shows instead of, let’s call it, “video documentation of events”, which calls for a lot more production and a lot more time spent to output each episode.
2) I didn’t have consistent crew to do an ensemble show with, and didn’t feel like doing a show featuring mainly myself.
3) I didn’t have a reason at the time to do a show about myself.

Meanwhile, my site evolved from a work-based, Emmy Award-Winning Video Editorial site to a documentation of the NYC Videoblogging scene to its current form, which is simply a Bill Cammack fansite.

I used to do videos about stuff that I do, like visiting the World Trade Center (Ground Zero) with my friend Joey in the middle of the night, when we were on our way to the club:

 
… or hanging out with Masami, Masako & Laetitia:

Click the arrow in the bottom right corner to change from English subtitles to Japanese, powered by Dotsub.com.
 
But that stuff was different from “shows” to me. It was just “what was happening”, and I happened to film it. The ‘problem’ with doing shows is that you get caught up in a lot of minutia that REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY doesn’t have JACK to do with the videos you’re making… such as:
 
1) Who’s watching this?
2) How do I monetize this?
3) How do I know who my audience is?
4) How do I attract and grow my audience?
5) How do I get sponsored?
6) How do I let people know about the show(s)?
7) How do I get UGC? (User-Generated Content)
8) What topic can I / do I want to blog about consistently?

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

So here comes Walt, :) Sitting down in front of his video camera or iSight or whatever, and just KICKIN’ IT. How simple is it? He doesn’t need extra crew. He has a goal (teaching people music). It’s something he’s enthusiastic about and something he does naturally. The show doesn’t revolve around gimmicks or graphics. The show revolves around what Walt has to offer to whomever’s interested in watching.

I named this season of my videoblog “Delusions of Grandeur” because you have to have them to assume that ANYBODY is watching your material. Meanwhile, one of my four (4) videoblogs on blip.tv recently surpassed 45,000 views:

WAY more importantly… I’ve become aware over the season of quite a few people that I know personally or that I’m related to that are subscribed to my blog in one format or another. I’m going to make a separate post about that, but it makes an immense difference when you personally know someone… ANYONE that you’re communicating to through your articles and self-expressions on the net. It makes a MAJOR difference, and now I know to whom I’m speaking when I do my “documentation of events”. I’m also glad when people that I’ve met IRL go back to their home cities, states or countries and “tune in” when I’m doing my thang. It’s cool and all that that people read some of my blogs essentially around the world, but a few of those markers belong to people I know, Like Rox in Hawaii or Phil in the UK or Masami in Japan.

August 22, 2008 – Recent Visitor Map for Bill Cammack dot com

So.. What does all this have to do with Being Like Walt? :D He’s found what he wants to do, and he’s doing it. It’s Quick & Dirty and serves his intended purpose. He’s doing what feels good TO HIM and doing what HE wants to do. Would he love to have his own television show? Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t. Until that time, he’s doing HIS thing, and I’m gonna do MINE. :D

So what’s the Q&D show going to be about? Nothing. Everything. Whatever. hmmm… I guess that spells “new”. Anyway… Cheers to Walt for his enthusiasm and for leading by example, and let’s get this show on the road! :D

AIIIIITE?

LET ‘EM KNOW!!!

Walt Ribeiro & Bill Cammack

I’m experimenting with Google Ads. I don’t actually LIKE them, so this experiment will probably be rather short-lived. :D

I used to use them a long time ago, but then I stopped. The general point was that they were poor-looking and at the same time generated close to *ZERO* revenue, hahaha. I think that when I went to reactivate my account, I had accrued like $10 or like $9.50 or something. Meanwhile, I could have stood in front of McDonald’s opening doors for people and requesting change from them as they left the establishment and made that much in one day…. well… actually in just a couple of hours.

The reason I decided to bring them back was that I get a lot of random traffic now. Most of the traffic I got before was from my posting links to social media sites, so it didn’t make sense to tell people “Come to my site to look at advertisements! :D “. At this point, most of my traffic comes from Google, and they tend to bounce pretty quickly, so if they decide to bounce to an ad link, that’s fine with me. :D

Still, I didn’t want the ads to show up to people who ‘normally’ browse my site, like actually going to my home page and seeing what’s on it. For that reason, I took Tyme‘s advice and implemented the ads in my single post code.

I decided to use link units instead of ad units, because I could get link units that were only 15 pixels high. The “thinnest” ad units I could get were 60 pixels high.

I immediately noticed a problem with relevance… Not that adsense was having trouble parsing the text on the page, but because I talk about so much different stuff in my posts. I don’t even TALK about cars, yet they were posting automobile links on my pages. One of my titles included the name “Nichelle”, so all the ads on the page were for “Helle” shoes or something. So, without the ability to specifically say “give me these type of ads”, there’s an incredible relevance ‘problem’. They would probably work better if my posts were only a couple of paragraphs long and about specifically one topic.

In general, I’m not a fan of random advertising anyway. I’ve been saying for probably a year now that product placement and sponsorship is the way to go. This is another reason these ads will probably have to vamoose immediately. :) I don’t enjoy seeing mentions of items that don’t have anything to do with anything on my pages. I also can’t imagine why anybody would want to click on the random words they come up with. Then again, I’m not aiming them at ME, I’m aiming them at people who randomly search through google for topics they want to read about at that point in time.

I guess part of the experiment is to gauge the worth of random google ads vs sponsored ads… which is practically ZERO since you’re guaranteed to get paid whatever amount by a sponsor by the nature of the relationship. Google ads are like a gamble. “I DEFINITELY show your ads, and I MAYBE get a couple of cents out of the deal”. :)

Anyway, it’ll be an interesting experiment. I’m up to 83 page impressions since this morning, with ZERO clicks and ZERO page CTR, hahaha. I’ll most likely be done with this experiment when I wake up tomorrow morning. :D

Television is about advertising… NOT entertainment.

The product is YOU, the viewer.

The networks provide you to advertisers, grouped together usefully for the advertiser’s purposes.

The advertiser pays to get their carefully-crafted commercials in front of a lot of people that might accept the message and buy their product or service.

The networks pay production companies to create programming that gets a certain demographic to sit there and watch the commercials. The production company pays editors and talent. Sometimes, the network has their own editors, to make sure the quality is uniform across certain shows, like news programs.

So the advertisers pay the network to pay production companies to pay crew to create a show that gets the viewer to watch the network so they can see the advertisers’ commercials and buy their products or services and give them more money back than they spent on the commercials.

Meanwhile, cable companies get money for bringing the signal from the networks to your house, so they get to sell advertising on top of the advertising that’s embedded in the actual shows.

Ultimately, the product is *YOU*, and the goal is to get you to hand over your money in exchange for the entertainment of television.