Movie Rentals Could Be Coming to YouTube

Hey guys - check out the following Mashable article by Ben Parr about how YouTube is interested in placing entertainment media (movies) on its website. It will be streaming, & users pay a monthly fee to access all the video they like.

Awesome.

OpenCulture.Com - Blog for Free PodCasts, AudioBooks, eBooks

Hey guys - stumbled upon this awesome site blog. Gives a list of top sites for educational & cultural media - PodCasts, Audiobooks, eBooks.

Check it out!

Book Review: FREE - The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

Hey guys - finished another fantastic book. The book, FREE - The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson, who previously wrote, The Long Tail, is about the concept of FREE & how it is changing in today's society.

He starts talking about the Industrial Revolution, & how the concept of FREE was either to 1. Entice you (give you a little bit, ie freebies at the grocery store), 2. Be included in the cost when you buy, 3. Marketing gimmick - buy one, get one free (ie buy one at 1/2 off). And how in the Industrial Age, whose concepts are based on scarce resources, goods, the concept of FREE bred distrust, reeked of scams, etc.

However, with the advent of increasing computing speed, bandwidth, and memory, the Internet is changing the concept of FREE, to be actually really FREE. For example, with improving technology, Moore's Law, and others, the amount of information is doubling every 18 months, and the price of computers is drastically falling (down to as close to zero as possible). And with services, digital media, non-tangible goods/services increasing in ever increasing supply over tangible goods/services, small entrepreneurial companies recognizing this trait have started to rake in profits over the slower, larger corporations. The book is filled with tons of examples, from RyanAir, Google, environmental companies (the list goes on & on), Chris Anderson weaves a fantastic thesis on the concept of FREE & how it is changing in today's Digital Age - politically, economically, socially. You can download a FREE audioversion (abridged) at the following link (not affiliate).

Check it out. I liken it to the book, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

US Open Warns Tennis Stars About Tweeting

Recent article by Mashable's Jennifer Van Grove on curbing athlete Tweeting to prevent leakage of inappropriate information. Check the article out.

Tweeting and Insider Information, interesting.

Interview with Mike Cliffe-Jones, Blogger/ Author/ Consultant

Hey guys - today I'm interviewing Mike who I wrote about in last week's posts about blogging your way to a full time income and the Power of Karma. Mike was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for us today.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself - have you always been an entrepreneur, did you work in the corporate world, etc.

I'd say the entrepreneur has always been within me, but I spent the first 18 years of working life with big corporations, I worked for Toyota, Ford Motor Company and then Volkswagen group in Northern Europe. When we decided to move to the island we live on now, about nine years ago, we set up a Real Estate business, which started small and then become quite big! So I guess that started in an entrepreneurial way, but became something more. I started blogging less than a year ago, but now it's my full time job.

2. Why/how did you get started in blogging?

I'd already started the process of easing myself away from my old business, and I wanted one which could provide me with a solid income, and which I could run until retirement without having staff or meetings or hassle! I also chose blogging because I have been writing all my life, and it was a logical decision. I studied the blogging market for some time before moving into it, and clearly understood what I wanted to do and which niches to enter, and I was fortunate in that my wife joined me in the venture and she runs one of our three blogs.

3. What are some key factors to your success in blogging?

The most important factor is lots of quality content. As long as you keep that going, everything else just seems to happen - traffic growth, more subscribers, great connections with other bloggers. You just have to keep the content coming, and stay focused on your readers and what they need.

4. Any tips on driving traffic to your site - SEO, PPC, affiliates, referrals - on & offline, partnerships?

I'm not a "technical" blogger. That's to say I didn't come at it from a web based background. I'm a writer, and the blog is simply a medium for that. Because of that I have to be honest and say I don't really "do" SEO at all. I simply write what I think is good stuff, and it seems to get indexed well and quickly by the search engines. Twitter has brought me an awful lot of traffic, but again I don't really push it for that reason, I enjoy the communication side of it. I've been lucky enough to develop some quite close relationships with other bloggers, which has enabled us to introduce our readers to each others. I've also worked hard at commenting on other sites, and I know that brings good traffic to mine.

5. Any tips of converting your traffic into profits?

We use different business models on the sites. Mike's Life is aimed at new and learning blogers and the income comes from a few affiliations, and three of my own products which we sell on there. On the other two blogs, the income is from direct advertisers, adsense and affiliations. The best tip I can give people is that the more good quality stuff you give away for free, the more your readers will want to buy the paid-for stuff. And products you create inevitably make more margin than selling other peoples!

6. What experiences - successes, setbacks have you experienced along the way & what have you learned from them?

I set out with some very clear objectives, and bar a few, we've exceeded them all, so I'm very happy! That's not to say I haven't learned a lot of lessons and here are some:

• Aim to grow your email list as fast as you can, and use a "proper" provider like Aweber
• Create a product of your own as soon as possible, it doesn't matter if you only sell two a week!
• If you plan to make money from your site, do so from the beginning, don't wait until you have lots of traffic
• Stay focused on the things that help you achieve objectives - it's easy to get bogged down in unimportant stuff
• Find one social media site you like (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc) and become an authority

7. What projects are you currently working on?

My Beginner's Guide to Blogging course starts again on 1st September, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also working with Nathan Hangen on a book (not an E Book) called "Beyond Blogging" which will go on sale in December. We're excited about that project and so far Gary Vaynerchuk, Penelope Trunk, Chris Garrett and David Risley have agreed to participate. On the travel blog, we are working on a book called "The Insider's Guide to Lanzarote." So we're pretty busy!

8. Where do you see yourself in 10 yrs? What is the long-term vision for your business?

I'll still be running the blogs and still writing every day, but we don't have any plans to grow the business to include staff. It will always just be us. I love public speaking, so I hope to start offering my services to talk at events about blogging and social media. But overall, we'll still be doing what we're doing now, just for millions, rather than thousands of people, I hope!

9. Where do you see the greatest opportunity for bloggers?

The greatest opportunity for bloggers is to provide a great service for a lot of people. There are so many niches out there, and so many people looking for information. Find the niche, provide the information and then sell a product, a service or a membership that relates to it. There's a world of opportunity.

10. What do you do outside of business, to balance your life/work?

I'm a scuba diver, so I get away to dive at least once or twice a week. The best thing about being a blogger is that you can come and go as you please. We are also part way through restoring a huge house in our village, so that takes a lot of time, and we're into various outdoor stuff like water skiing, sailing, cycling, quad trekking and camping. We spend as much time outdoors as possible, which is a great antidote to blogging! For holidays, we love snowboarding and touring around the mainland of Europe.

11. Any resources for beginning bloggers (books, websites, blogs).

My whole site is a resource for new bloggers, but I do give away a free E book for new bloggers to people who join the community, and there are some good starter posts here.

12. Contact info

Skype Camelmediagroup

Email mike@mikeslife.org

Twitter @mikecj

Mike CJ is a full time blogger, author and social media consultant. His main blog Mike's Lifeis focused on helping new and learning bloggers earn a sustainable, long term income from their writing - something he achieved in six months. You can follow Mike on Twitter @mikecj

Book Review: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

Hey guys - great book. The book is written by Glenn Reynolds, who writes on his blog Instapundit.Com. Written in 2006, the book is truly a glimpse into the future.

He starts out by describing the Hunter-Gatherer Age, then progresses into the Agrarian Age, Industrial Age, & into the Information Revolution. He describes the various economic, political, social factors contributing to the transformations.

Citing numerous examples where ordinary people are taking power away from Big Government, Corporations, & the media - from "viral" word of mouth/texting, tribes, easy creation of digital media through YouTube, MovieMaker, GarageBand.Com, to blogs taking over poor media coverage of Iraq, Reynolds illustrates how the "little guy" and "ordinary people" are taking down Big Goliath. He then goes on to describe the future of nanotechnology, space travel, & the singularity. This book is truly ahead of its time & a glimpse of what is in store for us in the future.

Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter

Check it out at the following link, courtesy of Mashable.Com's Cameron Chapman

Enjoy!