Easy money isn't easy

Why I don't like the "making money on the internet is easy" pitch

I have been noticing a lot of people promoting ways to make "easy" money on YouTube. I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as easy money. Looking into these easy money schemes, I hold to my beliefs. One of the video schemes is that you can make free money by essentially copying other peoples YouTube videos. The video states that all you have to do it take someone else’s video and modify it or cut it together with someone else’s video then post it as your own. I want to explain the problem with that and give a little more information on creative commons copyrights and YouTube. I have commented on it before (http://napalmgraphics.blogspot.com/2012/11/copyright-part-three.html).

First I will agree that YouTube does use Creative Commons license as a default for videos. When you upload, generally speaking, you are agreeing to a few things. Side note, I highly recommend always reading the agreements when you upload, or do much of anything on the internet. Yeah, it is tedious but you want to know what you are actually agreeing to. Anyway, here are a couple things you are agreeing to by using YouTube: You will not access YouTube videos with any other player than YouTube. You will not post YouTube videos on your websites without using an embedded YouTube player.

The important one here is "You affirm, represent, and warrant that you own or have the necessary license...to publish Content you submit." And "(Y)ou retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty free, sub licensable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute..." And "You also hereby grant each user of the service a non-exclusive license to access your content through the service and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the service and under these terms of service.” And to top it off, for every video you want to use, you have to verify that they do not have any other copy rights on their material. Creative Commons license has many different levels and some do not let you modify the content.

So based on YouTube’s user agreement you MAY be ok. It does not say that you can take someone else’s video and modify it without consent. That, to me, is a big enough grey area that means you should not be doing thing. But in order to make money off of it, you have to be running AdSense. So what does AdSense say about this practice. AdSense policy states “Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others.”

Putting it all together, it is a HUGE grey area. Although it may not be outright against policy or copyright infringement, it walks the line. And if you make money off of it, you take the huge risk of a law suit. I ask my readers to be wary of easy money. If it was easy to make money, people wouldn’t be trying so hard to do it. Work is not easy. Making money is not easy. So make your own videos and work hard to get your blog, website, YouTube page, off the ground. If Grump Cat (link) can do you, you can too. 

Blog Review

http://peasepudding.wordpress.com/

There are so many food blogs out there that I don't even read them. But I came across this one and couldn't stop scrolling. What drew me to it was the artwork. The food photos are amazing. I love food and have a great appreciation for eating. This blog made me want to make everything they were talking about. The pictures of the food were so well laid out and organized. The blog layout is very simple, which accents the food pictures. The recipes are also very different and interesting. I will be following this blog

Reddit for marketing

A quick blurb on Reddit

Reddit is a great community of people but they do not welcome direct marketing. Reddit is where people come together to talk about products, life stories, funny stories and anything else. It is not a place for advertising, but it could be a place to talk about products, market demand, market needs and such. Here is a great article on starting out with Reddit (http://blog.kissmetrics.com/reddit-marketing-guide/). I read Reddit but don’t post. I agree with the article that you have to make yourself part of the community before you can try and make any in-roads into selling yourself. And be sure, you are selling yourself, not your product. If you remember that, you might be able to drum up some business from Reddit. I have not tried using Reddit for my blog yet but I will definitely post when I do and let you know how it goes. 

Why I love Google Drive

The best way to keep track of everything

Why I love Google Drive. I have a horrible memory. Really. I can remember random things from 5 years ago but what I was thinking 10 minutes ago is already lost to me. Google Drive has saved me many times.

In case you don't use Drive, let me tell you what it is first. It is a cloud service for documents, pictures, and whatever else you want to have access to anywhere. It hooks up with your Gmail account, android phone and the whole lot of Google products. You can allow other people access to your document also. This allows for “living” documents for work purposes. In my dorky circle of friends, we used it to manage building projects in the game Eve. Or you can use it for budgeting with your spouse. Whatever you need. Drive also has a pretty good spell check and basic formatting.

Anyway, I use it for everything for my blogging work. I started with a document for my research. I moved that over to Pocket (http://napalmgraphics.blogspot.com/2012/11/pocket-review.html) eventually and Pocket works a lot better for that. But, I write all my articles on Drive. I also use it to hold my random ideas. I think of things while doing laundry, playing with the cat, or sitting at my day job. Drive is a great way for me to quickly make a document and add my ideas to it so I won't forget. I had the best idea for a blog a few weeks ago. I was cleaning and was going to go write it down when I was done. I forgot immediately and can still not remember what that idea was. It made me so mad! So never again will I neglect my ideas and not write them down. Drive also allows me to access my information anywhere: from a friend’s computer, from my phone, from my work computer (during my break of course). Really useful for the busy blogger or writer. 

I'm back

After a short break

So, I guess I took a break for a few weeks. It wasn’t intentional. The holidays really make blogging difficult. The difficulty is dealing with family time and dealing with the lake of motivation. I was surprised at just how unmotivated I became. I wanted to get up off the couch and get to work but it didn’t happen. I didn’t even get up to get my tablet to go sit back on the couch and work. On a side note, my android tablet is awesome for the fact that I can sit on my couch and work. Anyway, I have been getting some work done this last week. I am trying to get a week or two ahead so that this doesn’t happen again. I was working a week ahead when I started but, the bell curve being what it is, I went on a downward slide and got behind. So my lesson for this post is that best practice is to always have two weeks’ worth of posts ready to go. That way when the holidays hit, you can slack off a little.