Shyzer.com

In my eternal quest to “grow up” in the most absurd ways possible, I’ve begun to purchase music. I still don’t feel bad about freely obtaining music from huge bands worth millions, but the thought of stomping on the head of a struggling newcomer just doesn’t sit that well with me. Who better to give your money to then the guys still playing in dive bars and hole in the walls across the Tri-state area? Fuck, what better people to be friends with, for that matter?

Anyway, I used iTunes for the first few dozen songs I bought. What did I get? A ton of 128kpbs music ensnared by DRM. Nightmare, let me introduce you to Goob and his six computers running three different operating systems all synced with various iPods. You two are going to be great friends.

Then I found Amazon MP3. Better quality (256kbps), DRM-free, and cheaper to boot! I love my Mac, iPods, Apple tech support (I was sent a brand new Macbook battery last week, which is a whole other post altogether), and pretty much the entire efficiency package of everything Mac-related.

Yet Apple needs to realize that sleekness and ease of use are no substitute for superior product and cheaper prices. Just ask Wal-Mart.

Boo iTunes, Hooray Amazon MP3 (even more so if you drink Pepsi and save those codes under the bottle caps).

At least, I don’t want them to think otherwise because I would hate it if they started signing me up for gay dating sites.

Here’s just a little tip to any of you employed by a company where Internet access is available while on the job. It’s 2007. Anything you do can be traced right back to you. Easily. Come on people, I thought we’d been over this by now. That chapter can be found right between the “don’t pass on chain e-mails” lesson and the “yes, Wikipedia can have false information on it” section. Get with the program.

Battlestar Galactica, which I anointed as the Best Television Show Ever last season, will officially end after their 4th season in 2008.

And you know what? I’m not crushed. Hell, I wasn’t even that bummed when I initially heard the news and here’s why: This means BSG can now only go out on top and with a bang. Think for a minute, when was the last series finale that you were absolutely thrilled with after it aired? Seinfeld’s was kind of stupid, as was Friends’ and West Wing’s. Many shows that are hits stay on the air until they become stale or, more importantly in the network’s eyes, stop making money. Hell, the only thing worse than a great show being canceled too early is when a network or creator refuses to let it die. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MATT GROENING!

So when a writing staff or executive producer has the gaul to come out and say, “You know, we’re doing great, but let’s not drag this thing out too long. How about we just go out on top?,” you have to applaud them. LOST did this a few weeks ago, announcing they were only going to make three more seasons before they called it quits and I have a hunch that in the not too distant future, more and more shows are going to be doing this, which is fantastic.

Viewing habits of most Americans have drastically shifted in the past three years, what with the rise of TiVo, iTunes, torrents, YouTube, and cable plans with millions of channels. As a result, we’re more accustomed to not only watching TV whenever we want, but skipping the crap we don’t like and finding alternative shows. Thus, more and more dramas like BSG and LOST are going to have to plan ahead and know where the hell they’re going if they expect to keep things not only fresh, but exciting as well for their viewers. As a result, we’re left with fewer “filler” episodes that shows always air in months like October and April and instead get seasons where the plot is moved significantly all year long.

From the marketing aspect, it’s also a smart move. When shows like ER and Desperate Housewives have no real end date in sight and the story just seems to keep dragging on and on, it’s easy to kind of shrug and not get excited about a new episode. (Not that I watch either of those) But even if the end date is far in the future, just having that date set in stone makes it a bit easier to go, “Hell, there’s not that many new episodes left, I’m gonna watch this!” On the flip side, competition between advertisers may increase as they know there is only a limited number of shows left where they can pitch their product. Of course, this won’t work as well on some shows as others, but a smart ad ex could certainly work some magic if they knew what they were doing. I bet Travelocity or Expedia would pay a little more if they knew Amazing Race only had two more seasons left or Chevy would sponsor more episodes if 24 was only having a few more days (which, after this last season, needs to happen. Seriously, that show sucks now, but whatever.)

So bravo, BSG. I can’t fraking wait to see what happens next and how this epic show actually ends.

A while back I wrote how I thought some of the new TV shows of the season were shaping up. What I didn’t mention was how Heroes first episode of sucktitude screwed me over.

This past August I was looking to start a new website and I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to take it. I already had a pointless, no-monetary-goal-whatsoever site in Shyzer and a “up-and-comer” that required a bit of work day in a day out in Hey, It’s Free! So I was looking for something in the middle, something that could one day make some coin but at the same time didn’t require much work. I looked into buying a turnkey website, something like an arcade site or a Myspace resource site, but I decided against it since there are around 28 thousand of each of those already.

In the end, I settled on making a blog that would focus on a niche topic, like with HIF. But since I didn’t want to be putting in as much work on this new venture as I did on HIF, I tried to think of something topical that didn’t have breaking news that I’d need to be posting every day. And that’s about the time I remembered about LOST.

You see, back when LOST first hit the net, two or three guys each started their own fansites centered around the show. They’d post a recap of the week’s episode every Thursday morning and then just post links to any related news articles they found during the week. When the show exploded, they were the only sites dedicated specifically to it and they freaking took off. Thousands of people joined the forums, pretty soon the readers were making their own crazy thoughts and ideas that the owners could just copy and paste on the site and when the DVD box sets came out, they made for perfect little advertisements on the sidebar of the site right snug between some Google Ads.

Long story short, they were making a fair bit of spare change for not much work. And that’s always a winning strategy in my book.

So I took a look at the upcoming Fall lineup last August and I tried to envision A) What might take off and be a smash hit while B) having a type of plot line that would highly interest nerds. You see, it’s kinda hard to run a blog dedicated to Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives because their main demographic audience isn’t the type to jump on-line and start blogging about it after the episode ends. Thus, I had to eliminate any dramas, sitcoms, comedies, or reality shows (the latter being ruled out because I think I might have stabbed myself in the eyes by Thanksgiving if I had been forced to actually watch such show.)

It didn’t take long to realize that Heroes was going to be the best shot at what I wanted to do. It was on at a prime time, it had the type of story that would get computer nerds and college kids interested, and it seemed like something that I would actually throughly enjoy watching. I looked at what fansites were already created for it, they were pretty shit, and so I thought I’d go for it.

Then I saw the first episode.

And it sucked.

We’re talking suuuuuuucked. Seriously, go back and watch that first episode and marvel in the craptacularness that it is. If you’re anything like me, you probably saw that first episode and stopped watching. And if you’re still anything else like me, you probably gave it another shot later on after hearing about how awesome it was, realized that the show had finally gotten good, and then tried kicking yourself in the nuts when you realized that everybody and their cousin had already started a fansite for the show.

In the end I created Facebook Talk, which I can’t say turned out poorly for me. And I probably won’t bother trying to create a fansite for a show this upcoming season, because it’s gotten to the point now where large companies are creating fansites for every show on the major network lineups and then just sticking with the ones that are good.

But it really would have been helpful had that first episode not sucked.

Remember the post I made a month ago about viral videos and making money? Of course you do, seeing as how it’s just a few scrolls below this post since I haven’t written much lately. Anyways, it turns out there’s a website called Revver that is offering a service similar to what I proposed. Yet they’re still screwing things up.

Revver allows users to upload their homemade movies to their site, just like somebody can on YouTube. However, Revver sticks a short ad to the end of the video. Any time a visitor clicks the ad, Revver splits the profits 50/50 between themselves and the video’s creator. Sounds like a decent plan, right? Not really. My main problem with the whole self-made and viral video craze sweeping the net is that the content producers are getting hosed in the end result. They create the content, star in it, produce it, and publish it. Yet they don’t see a dime simply because YouTube or some other website hosts the video and puts their ads up, which is a problem in two ways. First, the little man isn’t seeing his fair share of the cut, which both my plan and Revver’s tries to address. However, Revver’s idea is simply to rely on traditional methods of earning money on the Internet – click through advertisements. And this only sets them up for failure.

It’s time companies start realizing that PPC (pay per click) is going the way of the banner ads. They just aren’t effective in some of the major website settings anymore. Sure, there are some cases where they can be effective (hello there, Hey, It’s Free!) but there are also times where it’s as effective as trying to put out a forest fire by spitting on it. (I’m looking at you, Shyzer!)

Think of it this way. In order to induce your visitors into clicking an advertisement, you need to have something relevant to your content. Take my previous examples for instance. With HIF, the site revolves around getting stuff from the Internet for free. That means that in order for me to use PPC ads effectively, there needs to be other freebie related sites on the Internet who want to advertise on sites that have a strong demographic in people who are looking for free stuff. Luckily for me, there are, and thus I can make a few extra dollars by people clicking on the relevant links on my site. But what if I were to put up ads for used cars? Or injury lawyers. Or anything else you can think of that has nothing to do with other sites where you could get free stuff? Well then nobody would click the ads and I wouldn’t make a dime.

So what if I wanted to put ads here on Shyzer? Who would advertise here? Other blogs? Yeah right – who is going to pay money to advertise their blog? And as I proved over the course of last year when I had them up, Google Adsense certainly doesn’t know how to match relevant ads with a blog. They were all over the place, from the best places to buy tires in Columbia to Thai restaurant reviews in Seattle. In fact, I just checked out the predicted Google Ads for this very post (which can be seen if you click the comments link and scroll down.) You know what my results were? The True Iraq (an anti-Iraq war website), Philippines Dating, Stay at Hampton Inn Hotel, and Top Trade Schools. I shit you not. Now how do ANY of those have ANYTHING to do wiht this post? Well, the reason Google has such trouble is simple. There’s no clear demographic here on Shyzer, nor is there any clear topic to match the ads with. Thus, Google just goes crazy and slaps some random ads up, meaning that putting PPC ads here on Shyzer would make as much sense as slapping a flashing banner from 1998 up there next to the logo and expecting it to convert well.

Which is why Revver’s idea is completely in the wrong direction. How are these ads at the end of the videos even relevant to the videos that are being displayed? What if I upload a video every week of my brother and I doing crazy and wacky things around our house? Or of me lip synching a Britney Spears song? Or any other number of random things that people record and then upload to the Internet? What company out there is going to have a appropriate ad? These types of videos being uploaded to media sites are just like blogs – few have any clear and consistent topic and those that do are still within a small window of similar pertinent ads.

And even if you do manage to match up a weekly video about, say, shoe fashion with an ad for NIKE, what are you going to do the next week? Most of these semi-regular videos have fairly high visitor retention numbers, which means the 2nd week and each week thereafter, you are faced with people who have already seen this NIKE ad during the first week. Are they going to click it a 2nd time? A 3rd? How about three months later? So now you have to keep finding not only relevant ads, but NEW relevant ads every time a new video is released! Talk about fun!….

With the way the PPC market is right now, I’m surprised Revver would even build a site around it. Heck, Google just settled a lawsuit regarding fraudulent clicks with their Adsense PPC program and one against Yahoo isn’t far behind. It just seems absurd to me that instead of setting up a system like I proposed, they’d go with PPC and stupid, non-relevant, big corporation ads at the end of viral media. That’s the whole point of viral media!! People creating what they want instead of relying on TV and movies to provide it. So then why would you assume the viewers would want to watch a freaking commercial at the end of the video, even if it’s short? If I’m watching something and once it’s finished, an ad start, I simply turn it off. It’s not rocket science we’re dealing with here.

I’ll give Revver props for realizing content creators would be attracted to a system where they get a piece of the pie. I’ll even go so far as to say that unless some other website starts where they implement an idea similar to mine, Revver will last. But trust me, as soon as that Shyzicorp website launches and people see how much more money they can make simply by ditching the ads at the end of their video and charging a mere penny per video, they’ll flock to that site and Revver will die a quick and painful death.

I have ideas. Lots of ‘em. I’ve got a notebook right here full of ideas for products, websites, journeys, books, Mariners lineups, etc.

One such idea that I’ve had recently has centered abound the whole consumer created media wave that’s been sweeping the Internet for the past few years now. I’m of course talking about podcasts, vlogs (video blogs, where instead of typing out a post like this, the author records himself speaking it into a camcorder and just uploads the movie) It’s finally reached the point where the “fad” label can be taken off and instead we can look at this section of the Internet market as something that is here to stay, whether we know and understand it or not. (in fact, here’s a good article about it with some great sites at the bottom.)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you know about sites like YouTube. Based on traffic (20+ million visitors monthly) and downloads (100 million videos daily), YouTube has been pegged as somewhere between the 15th and 25th most trafficked site on the net and it only takes a few minutes or surfing around on their site to realize why. It’s a virtual landmine of entertainment and enjoyment. Want to watch a video of a kid hitting another kid in the crotch? No problem. How about a funny SNL or Daily Show clip? They’ve got ya covered. And if watching Chinese adolescents lip-synch to Backstreet Boys, you’re in luck. And it’s all for free, watchable in a matter of seconds and easily shared amongst friends, blogs, and other websites.

Now, business model aside for a moment (How in the hell is YouTube making money and covering the cost of streaming 30+ million videos monthly?! Simply from ads? I don’t buy that for one second. So far, they seem to have relied on investments, the latest being $15 million dollars this month. But once they use that to blow through bandwidth over the course of a few months, they’re right back where they started. I don’t see where they are getting their profit from.), legal questions soon pop up. Who owns these videos? Surely NBC and Comedy Central do not profit from the SNL and Daily Show clips on YouTube, so what’s in it for them? Not a thing and as such, YouTube says they honor such requests to delete copyrighted material. But to put it plainly, they don’t. Try it out for yourself, do a search for Daily Show or Family Guy or any other funny show out there. THOUSANDS of videos will pop up in the results from those respective shows. But these are large, multi-billion dollar companies, they can absorb the blow until the legal questions can be settled.

But what about you and me?

The reason vlogs, podcasts, and random consumer created media in general is so popular is because anybody can do it. There’s no reason for Seth McFarland to make a funny vlog when he can instead he can be paid millions to make a funny episode of The Family Guy. The same goes for Jon Stewart making a satirical podcast when instead he is paid to do so on cable TV. But you and I don’t have the luxury of being paid for our funny and unique ideas, so in the old days, that meant tough shit for us. But now, we can simply go ahead and create whatever videos, songs, or other media our little heart’s desire, upload it to the Internet, and viola!

But how are we supposed to get people to see our media? That’s where YouTube and other services step in, offering us to upload it to their websites. The catch is that almost every website that offers such a service has a little clause in their TOS stating that they own any uploaded material. So that means that YouTube can simply sit around, let all of its content be created by the users, and then profit from it without sharing.

Fair? Hardly.

Sure, I might be happy at first simply with getting more eyeballs on my content. If I made a vlog here and only got 10 people to see it versus uploading it to YouTube and getting 10,000, then it’s a no-brainer. But after I’ve built my fan base, then what? Shouldn’t I get at least some of the pie for doing all the work? And if I somehow find a way to get people to pay for my content, what if others go and upload it anyways to YouTube, thus allowing freeloaders to skirt around the issue. And you think YouTube actually gives a care who uploaded the video? Think again.

What the Internet needs is for some sort of universal payment method that will allow users to conveniently pay only a few cents for things like video views and podcasts. Creators could sign up for the service and host their videos, podcasts, etc only through them. The service would then in turn allow users to pay a small, small fee to access the media. That’s the type of service that needs to be created and yet for some reason, nobody has done so yet.

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend such a service was started tomorrow named Shyzicorp. If I have 20,000 people viewing my vlog (which might sound like a lot, but I could sit here and rattle off a twenty page list of people who have such followings, many of which get double, triple, or more in viewership, myself being a huge fan of one or two in particular) and I get them to spend a mere penny a pop, that’s a $200 right there. If Shyzicorp splits the profits with me 50/50, I’m making $100 per episode.

Most of these are created and updated daily or semi-daily, so let’s pretend I make a new video three times a week. That’s $15,600 a year and while it might not sound like much, remember this is a side project (ie, disposable extra income on top of your normal job) and that many, many people are already doing for free. If content creators were to have 100,000 daily viewers and they created a new clip every weekday, they’d be pulling in $2500 per week, after Shyzicorp’s equal cut, and thus would be making $130,000 a year. With that type of income, who needs a day job?

Some might ask if users would actually pay for content, but think about that for a second. As a user, I’d be paying a penny per episode and thus over the course of a year, I’d be paying $1.56. For half the price of a coffee at Starbucks, I could support my favorite vlogger or podcaster for an entire year. If people will pay a buck a song on iTunes, I promise you Shyzicorp could get people to pay a few bucks a year for their favorite sites and content.

You could even make content like “Ask A Ninja” and other exceptional material three or five cents since it’s only updated weekly or so. I’d pay a nickel for Ask A Ninja. Heck, I’d pay a dime to listen to TWiT. With the numbers they claim to have, at a dime a download, that’d be over 31 grand an episode, per week.

Just make it easy to pay a few cents and “viral” becomes “Viable.”

The payment method could even be simplified to the point where a user pays $5.00 and gets 500 viewable credits so that they don’t have to through the payment method every time they wanted to watch something. You could operate under the method where once a user pays for something, they can watch it however many times they wanted. Or you could even license the content so that once it’s paid for, it’s viewable for, say, a week. After that, they have to drop yet another penny to watch it again, thus making the archives of the content continue to generate money.

You could embed short, 15-second advertisements at the start or end of each video. Viewers could either watch / listen to them or maybe pay $5-10 per year to have access to ad-free content. There are countless other options here as well.

What I’m getting at is that companies like YouTube and Myspace currently are blowing through bandwidth, making little to no profit, and sharing none whatsoever of what they actually make with the content creators. There are a few sites, like Revver, that simply stick ads at the end of videos and pay the content creator a few cents each time the ad is clicked, but that’s just a single rung on the ladder up from YouTube and the such.

I can promise you this. If Shyzicorp burst onto the scene tomorrow with an easy, quick, and cheap website/program and offered vlogers and podcasters half the cut of whatever was earned on a pay-per-view license, 90% of the market would shift to them.

And at a base rate of a penny a pop, you’d have absolutely no trouble getting the users to follow.