Utube Followup: They monetized their website (Like I said they should)

Breaking news, Utube has succumbed to the better option (ie: my advice) and monetized their website with a search bar at the top of their homepage. Now you can get instant access to all the wonderful world of poker / dating & xtreme travel.

At least utube have chosen a smart, professional looking & unobtrusive option without losing too much integrity. The search bar only appears on the homepage & search pages. The only problem with this approach is that it appears this type of monetization doesn’t quite cash in on the video traffic they will be recieving. Thereare no video links or other various other video-targeted strategies I would have imagined. For example, if we were searching for a video of the latest internet hype, Chaccaron, the netflix results return a terrible no results page instead of something that may direct me to a video site, any video site. The only other results I get from searching with utube are Poker ads, which are like the scourge of the internet (even if they do pay well).

I think utube has succeeded in the look & feel of their monetizing efforts, but the execution will leave a lot to be desired. At the end of the day if they leave it like this, they wont make nearly as much money as I predicted they could.

UTube, YouTube & Missed Opportunities

It has come to my attention the company who owns utube.com is sueing YouTube!

From here via drmike:

YouTube is being sued by an industrial equipment maker whose domain name is Utube.com. Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment said it has been deluged by confused video searchers causing numerous crashes of its site and costing it business. The company’s site once drew a steady 1,500 unique users monthly, Utube said, but that figure has soared to some 2 million per month in recent weeks.

This almost makes me extremely angry. I honestly dont know what UTube are thinking here. Something tells me they heard Google bought YouTube out for billions of dollars and somehow they saw dollar signs in their own eyes. It’s not hard to see how this could happen, they just don’t know how truly stupid they are – for a number of reasons.

1. Sueing Google for this is… well… Stupid.

Do I really need to explain how big Google is. But it’s not just theie size that’s a worry. Try the fact that they are complete and utter experts in the web AND technology AND law. If you are suing for something like this, I’d almost compare this with trying to sue Russia. No matter how good UTube’s their argument is, Google will get out of this quite easily.

2. Monetising Your Website means money… lots of it.

I don’t think UTube realise how much cash they would make if they did the following 3 simple steps:

• Moved their corporate website to utubellc.com or something
  (Keep in mind they can still keep their emails on utube.com and also even place a banner to redirect existing clients to their new website)
• Place their website on a domain sponsor page
  or actually develop a small video/media website with ads.
  or even place a one page website with a carefully chose ppc (pay per click) or affiliate program

They could make so much damn money.

For instance…. they are claiming to have 2,000,000 visitors a month. Now lets say they found & utilised a targeted video advertising campaign that gave them 10 cents a click. Keep in mind this is a very very conservative number considering I have basic websites on Google Adsense that can earn up to $1 dollar a click.

Ok now lets just say that conservatively 25% of users clicked through. This all depends on how well the ad is targeted & integrated into the website. I personally believe you could achieve 75% with the right advertising but for now lets say 25%.

Based on the above very conservative calculations, utube.com could make $50,000 in the first month. Not to mention traffic could (and WILL) grow, you could (and WILL be able to) find a better affiliate program in time. This is so scalable as well, for instance 50cents/click at 50% click through at the current rate would mean 10 times this amount: $500,000. This is half a million dollars a month if they play their cards right.

Now I don’t know how large this company is, but honestly how important is a website on a particular domain for a TUBING company. I mean c’mon! An extra 6 million dollars/year revenue is nothing to sneeze at. Especially for just being in the right place at the right time. Not to mention I highly doubt they could settle this at court for any amount near the potential yearly income.

Also don’t forget this will solve their problem with bandwidth issues yet they can still have a reputable website & their email addresses need not change.

Conclusion

I think the best way to look at this would be to compare it to having a Fish & Chip shop on a quiet area of town. Then all of a sudden that part of town gets extremely busy & everyone in the town all of a sudden needs Gummi Bears, and you get lots of people coming into the Fish & Chip store asking for Gummi Bears because you now have the best location in town. You have the option to move out of the busy suburb & keep your current store (being able to convert it into a Gummi bear store or at least refer people to a good gummi bear store for kickbacks). What would you do? What… would you do?

When SEO Fails & The Importance of Impressing Real People

Flash isn’t dead. In fact, Flash could well be growing in more of a niche than we realised. A lot of people may already know this but STOP PRESS: 1. SEO is great, but it’s strategies & implementation tend to spoil a website (gasp, ooh ahhh!). 2. Flash is great, for multimedia style presentations with fantastic creative displays of information & visual elements – when you don’t need to index a million pages & be number one for everything and top 10 google and ppc and adsense and paid links and ctrs and arrrrrrrgh! . . . . . Brain Explode!

My point here is simple: talk to more REAL people (not search engines). The best way to do this is to draw them in with creativity & good flash.

Don’t get me wrong, SEO is important.

…But there are so many people on the bandwagon. It’s gone to the extent of a large number of people using SEO practices as the basis for building websites.

Why not engage & use real life principles.

Be Creative

Be Spontaneous

& most of all

Be Intersting

Also I have found a good site with some good visual flash FX (effects) for those interested after the jump.

A new Google PageRank update?

It seems today (April 6) that Google has done another PageRank update across the board. Naturally I went over to Matt Cutt's blog to see if there was a post about anything but left with an April Fools joke that he is moving to Yahoo. The next stop for me is naturally SitePoint and it seems it's true. Google has updated their pagerank.

The changes

This site has only been up a few months and I have gone from PR0 to a PR6, which is fantastic. This also seems to be the case with a few other SitePoint users. What seems strange though, is Google seems to be giving blogs and real content based and organically linked websites higher priority now more than ever. I mean a PR6 is quite a high PR especially for a new site so I don't see why it would be any other way. Previously, to get such a PageRank you would have to be linked by multiple PR7's (I think I have one PR6 link and a lot of lower ones).

What will the "Internet Marketing" industry do?

This really is going to be quite a shock for a lot of "internet marketers" who have built their websites up with link farms and link exchanges because it just goes to show these really aren't going to make a dent in the future for rankings. They've been saying this for a long time now but I think with this last Google update it's really proved itself.

On the other hand…

Some are saying it's either a hoax or pagerank is bouncing around. This blog doesn't have a load of traffic at all which leads me to consider these points.

Nonetheless, I am happy

UPDATE: A few others are actually posting their experiences on the latest post on Matt's blog. One even said his rank went from 0 to 8 unexpectedly with 6 backlinks. Strange.

WikiPedia’s Influence

You will most likely know that if you post up good content on the internet that it will be well recieved by readers. You may also know that if you are one of the first to do this (and if you do this regularly) you will recieve first option on gaining a link from anyone and everyone who subsequently writes about this topic. This can get you a lot of traffic to your web site. Then there’s getting a link from wikipedia. The results are amazing.

Seth Godin posts about how much traffic he gained from recieving a prominent link on a WikiPedia article. Seth, for those who don’t know is one of the leading marketing guys out there these days so it’s not hard to see why his popularity will gain exponentially.