Salestorm.net

Isn’t it time to stop using so much paper?

Jun.21, 2008 in Business 1 Comment

I was looking for some smartphone & communicator reviews and stumbled across this:

The Tytn 2 is an impressive pocket pc/cell phone, but switch your attention from it to the package… How much paper did he get out of that box?

I never keep the piles of wood that come with a laptop, phone or other device. When & if I need to read them, I head to the manufacturer’s website and find the electronic versions. Same goes for CD’s with drivers & applications, I get the latest versions online.

Everyone has internet access, so why not stop wasting money and resources for these useless things?

Instead of those papers, they could put a card or something with a login/password to access my personal account on their website and see the status of the warranty, download drivers and read the user manuals. The account could be activated when I first login and enter my personal details, so that no one else would use it. It’s very easy to do.

Even Bank of America stopped sending me mail and switched to an all-electronic version.

Using video sharing to make money

Feb.13, 2008 in Marketing 2 Comments

Ever wonder how people make money from videos and video sharing sites like Youtube and MetaCafe? Well, here is how I make money using videos and affiliate links.

It is actually pretty simple, after you grasp the basics. Here is a list of needed stuff:

1. Video editing software. I use Adobe Premiere (no comments, this is the best software available, IMO). If you want something (much) cheaper and simpler, you can go with VideoWatermarkFactory.

2. Video converting software, just in case you have a format that’s not supported by your editing software. I used a totally free utility called SUPER (Eset Smart Security didn’t detect any Trojans or other malware, which is surprising). I don’t know if it uses internal or external codecs. I had the K-Lite Codec Pack installed, so maybe SUPER used it to encode the videos. Anyway, install both just in case (actually, install K-Lite even if you don’t want to encode videos, as it allows you to play ANY format that exists or existed).

3. An unused domain. Register one anywhere for $6-9, preferably with hosting. I’d recommend 1and1 or ComputingHost, as both of them have provided me with excellent service and prices for the last 2 years.

4. Accounts on the most popular video sharing sites. I mainly use Youtube, Yahoo Video & Google Video.

That’s about it. Now, the process of generating income. I’ll be using music videos to generate leads for Ringtone providers ( you can also use any matching videos/advertisers, like skin care products reviews & Avon Cosmetics, or something like that).

Forwarding the domain (or installing a redirect script) to the affiliate link. I wanted to create my landing page, but the one provided by the advertiser was nice and I decided to just install a PHP redirect script (got the code here).
Adding a watermark (the address of my domain) in any corner of the video (lower right is the best, lower left comes in second. Didn’t try the upper corners though).
Adding a message at the end of the video. Something like “Get This Ringtone at www.domain.com”. It should last 12-15 seconds and overlap with some audio, as it seems that Youtube (and possibly others) is cutting the last 4-6 seconds of the clip.
Encoding it with the best available video and audio quality, while keeping it under the allowed limit. Mine were 80-90 MB each. This is very important. People aren’t looking for videos to go to your sites. They’re looking for good quality video and, in this case, audio (low quality audio on music videos hurts my ears and makes me wanna swear and run away, and I guess others think so too). The main reason to make files smaller would be bandwidth, but I haven’t seen a Limited bandwidth connection in years. It’s your choice, but I can assure you that good quality always pays off.
Uploading the videos.

That’s ALL. In 1-2 weeks your video will start to gain popularity (hopefully), and get more and more views. Users that will like what they saw will go to your site, which will try and sell them something.

Now, let’s see my statistics for the last 2 weeks. I uploaded 3 videos (kinda old, every one of them has been around for minimum 4 months) on 3 video sharing sites (mentioned above). It took me 2 hours to get, edit and upload them. The domain was already configured. I got 476 Views and 15 Leads. The first week I got 4 leads, the second week another 11. And there will be more.

Earnings: $127.05… Not bad. I spent only $6 and 2 hours, so I could say I got $60/hour (the number will surely increase). Click on the image to see a bigger version.

I have to say that I tried 3-4 combinations of videos, domain names and advertisers before I started seeing results, so not everything is as perfect and easy as you may think. I will not tell you which videos & advertisers I used (I am worried that you won’t understand and remember the basics of this technique if you’ll just copy my steps exactly, so try and find your best advertisers. It’s very easy).