In 1996, I
got out of the brokerage business (after 8
years) because I
recognized the power of the Internet and I was
tired of being tied to a desk and phone all day
long. To me, the Internet represented the
ultimate entrepreneurial platform where anyone
could create whatever they could imagine. Once
created it could be scaled to any size, without
the limitations of more capital intensive
businesses. Being entrepreneurial by
nature, it seemed like a new frontier that was
just waiting to be conquered.
Even though I saw things early, it
was challenging to figure out how to make money
and differentiate myself from other web sites.
It was basically the blind leading the blind
back then. Everyone was talking about SEO
and how to manipulate their Lycos, Webcrawler
and Alta Vista rankings. Starting out it
was hard to figure out what they were even
talking about.
In early 1998, I discovered Goto.com (which
later became Overture and is now part of Yahoo!)
and things began to make more sense. At the time
it was easy to buy click-through advertising for
a nickel or dime and send people to a targeted
web page. With such low advertising costs,
conversion rates weren't based on the
presentation as much as what you were selling
and whether you had a brand name that people
trusted. Unfortunately, I was trying to sell
product lines that were unknown by the general
public so I struggled badly. Consumers weren't
interested in placing online orders in 1998
either, so that was another obstacle.
By 2000, the internet was becoming a more
friendly place to do business. The Internet
bubble was tough for lots of companies, but it
did bring the Internet to the center of
attention and people began to trust online
commerce. We started marketing online financial
services such as credit cards and home equity
loans for well known and trusted companies and I
turned my first profit.
Through 2001 - 2002 I continued to refine my
sales approach and focused on delivering
customized solutions for visitors. They could
tell us what features they were looking for in a
credit card for example, and we would deliver
the best alternatives for them. In addition, we
would add them to our email database and send
them updated offers whenever they became
available. We later used this same system to
sell Satellite TV systems with very good
results.
I was happy with how things were going, but I
saw advertising rates climbing by leaps and
bounds for all our services. I realized it was
only a matter of time before we wouldn't be able
to purchase advertising at a profitable price
point, so it was increasingly important to get
better and better conversions. In order to
afford to pay the high price of advertising we
had to sell 2 out of 100 visitors instead of 1
out of 100. Today, conversion rates are more
important than ever.
In the fall of 2002 I was surfing some music
sites and I came to a site that was owned by a
small record company and a great song (that I
never had heard) started playing. There was no
delay and it sounded crisp and clean, I just sat
there and listened. Once the song was done I
instantly knew that audio was a tool that I
wanted to use for improving my conversions. Late
in 2002, I incorporated a very powerful audio
that had been recorded by the Former CEO Of
Wal-Mart into an online service we were selling.
The results were absolutely spectacular!
In 2003, my income exploded by over 700% and I
entered a whole new level of business success. I
believe audio is the primary reason why things
improved so dramatically in only 7-8 months. By
the end of 2003, we began experimenting with
video in addition to audio. Our focus turned
almost entirely in the direction of video in
early 2004 and we built a system called Pixona
that allowed people to upload and encode videos
to stream on their web sites. Unfortunately, we
were too early to market with this product, our
bandwidth costs were too high and I spent our
money on the wrong technology. Despite being a
very cool prototype Pixona was never a reliable
encoding service and was a commercial failure.
Learning From Failure...
Even though Pixona was a commercial failure, I
did learn how to stream video in one of the most
effective ways possible. It also increased my
conviction that video was coming to the web in a
big way over the next few years. Late in 2004,
Travis and I developed a new system called
FileStreams that had many of the Pixona features
but used offline compression instead of server
based compression. By compressing and encoding
client videos offline, we could provide more
flexibility in how they wanted their videos to
look. In addition, it was easy to do small edits
at the same time so the videos were more
consistent than ones that were automatically
processed.
FileStreams has been a commercial success and
has achieved a level of reliability (99.967%
average uptime over last 90 days) that I never
dreamed possible (especially after the Pixona
disaster). In fact, working with just a handful
of video streaming clients in 2005 we once again
broke profitability records and learned valuable
lessons on what works best online! (Believe me,
it's not highly polished infomercials or TV
commercials).
2006 & beyond.... Now with Google's purchase of
YouTube, we are moving into the next era for
online video. Many people have learned to create
their own videos but have not learned yet how to
make money with them. It reminds me of where
ecommerce was in 1998.
I set up OnlineMarketingCenter.com to teach
others how to effectively stream audio and video
from their own servers. In addition, I want to
show them how to create effective presentations
because there are very few good examples to
follow online. In other words, my goal is to
first teach you how to effectively stream audio
and video from your existing servers and how to
use these skills to make money!
The tools you will find in our toolkits will
provide you with the absolute best combination
of:
Cost Effectiveness
Video and Audio Clarity
Presentation Flexibility
Conversion Effectiveness
As our client base grows, we will create a
showcase where you can display your work. We
also plan on giving you access to some of our
commercial clients who are looking for creative
input for their marketing and ecommerce web
sites.
I believe in order to achieve financial
security, one must develop skills that are in
demand in the marketplace. For the next couple
decades or more, I believe talents developed in
the area of online multimedia will be richly
rewarded. Let me help you get started with our
Audio & Video Toolkits!
