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. 

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. 

Copyright part three

A short note about YouTube 

If you use YouTube to post videos I hope you read your user agreement closely. Did you know that you authorize others to post your video within specific parameters?

“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.” (YouTube terms of service section 6C)

This also has an impact on bloggers. This means that you can post other peoples YouTube videos on your blog. You must have it linked back to the original YouTube post though. I would also ensure that you cite your source appropriately. I would be careful but you are covered by the YouTube TOS if you want to do it. 

Pocket - Review

Keep your reading organized

If you are like me, you do a lot of surfing on the internet to find ideas to write about. You also follow a fair amount of people on twitter and Facebook. I find a lot of articles that I want to read but generally don’t have the time. I wanted to share my solution with you.

I use a program called Pocket. Pocket is an amazing website that lets you save articles to be read when you have the time. It has an Android and iPhone app also. It is very simple also. First make an account. Then add their link to your bookmark bar or you can use their browser extensions. Add articles as you find them. You can also save from your phone using the "share" feature on a website or in your browser.

When you have time, waiting for an appointment, riding a train, whenever, you can read your articles. The best part is that on your mobile device, it is all saved offline so you don’t need to have internet access to read.

Pocket has a lot of options when reading an article. You can modify the layout, change the font size, or share the article to other applications. After reading you can delete the article, save it, or star it. Pocket also saves the images embedded in articles. Pocket saves the original link back to the article so you can always get back to where you found it at.

I love Pocket for keeping track of articles I want to read. I also use it to save websites that I want to review later. I spend time in the morning roaming the internet and saving articles to Pocket. Then, throughout the day I read them and determine if they might be useful to my readers. If not it gets deleted. If it could be useful I save it and write a post about it later that night or when I have time.

Check out GetPocket.com. Oh, and did I mention that it is completely free? 

AdSense... part two

My experience with AdSense

So I applied for Adsense about two days after starting my blog. I very quickly got a form email back stating that I didn’t have enough content. They need content in order to decide what, if any, ads were pertinent to my blog. That sounded reasonable. I waited two weeks or so and then re-applied. I wasn’t hopeful but I wanted to see what would happen. I got the same form letter back. Again, I understand. I am not even remotely established. I am still growing and finding my feet. So I waited a few more weeks and applied again. Then I got something I did not expect.

I got an email back a day or two later. It stated, essentially, that Google AdSense was too big to deal with the little guy. Ok, that’s how it felt at least. What it really said was that AdSense was not able to contract with me because they have to be selective in who they choose to advertise with.

I will accept that I am naive when it comes to these things.  I have only been at this for a little over a month. I have done a lot of research though. I also roam other peoples blogs and YouTube pages. Google Adsense is seen on a lot of different websites and YouTube streams. Based on this roaming, I assumed that anyone with an active blog or YouTube stream qualified for Adsense. I was wrong.  It is my guess that AdSense has grown too large to pay attention to the little guy now.  I will look around and see what other options are available and report back. 

HootSuite - Review

Don't let Twitter overwhelm you

If you are like me, you started blogging and used twitter to draw in to your blog page. For me, it was a great way to start getting my name out there. I had never used Twitter before so it took me awhile to get the hang of it. As time went on and I started using Twitter more frequently it became apparent that I needed to change the way I was doing things. That’s when I found HootSuite.

HootSuite is a great website that helps you manage your Twitter feed(s) and Facebook posts. You can set up streams of content depending on what you want to view. There are also plug-ins for it for other things like Reddit and Linkedin.

The best part of HootSuite, to me at least, is the Publish feature. This allows me to schedule my Tweets. I try to schedule three days out. I have heard that people with a more established blog/community schedule a week out. I don't have enough to say to do that.

The website is really simple to use and they have a good tutorial to walk you through how to use it if needed. To sweeten the deal, there is a mobile app. I am running it on my android phone. It doesn't slow my phone down or interact with other apps, like general twitter apps do. I like that because I work hard to keep my private life separate from my blogging one.

To top everything off, it is free. They have a professional version that does cost cash but for a small time or new blogger/twitterer (I don’t know if that is a word) the basic version is perfect. The professional version is an reasonable price also, if you need the upgrade.

So check out Hootsuite.com. 

Copyrights...part two

Infringement and Creative Commons

With the invention of the internet a lot of issues have come up around copyright laws. In the past few years there have been a lot of questions about what is and is not covered by copyright. Is anything I post on the internet automatically protected? Can you use any picture you find on the internet for whatever you want?

First off let me say, no, you cannot use anything you find on the internet for your business use. You must check to see if it is covered by a copyright, patent, or trade mark. It is your responsibility to check. If someone else is using an image in violation of a copyright and you also use it, you are still guilty of copyright infringement. So check your source or purchase your images from a reputable source.

With the ongoing arguments and lawsuits over copyright infringement, there are a lot of different ways that peoples works are protected. The first and easiest is a copyright. In part one of this series I explained that when you put something in print, or post it on your website, it is covered by a limited copyright. It is your idea that you have memorialized in print and is protected. Applying for a copyright gives you more protection though.

So, how can you get your work out there without losing your connection to it? Creative Commons license might be your answer. (http://creativecommons.org) There are different levels or types of creative commons license but in general, they let other people use your work as long as they cite and link back to you. You can allow people to modify your work if you want or limit commercial use of it. It is simple and free to use.

Citations: http://creativecommons.org, http://www.youtube.com/t/creative_commons

The $10 marketing experiment

The beginning

To make a long story short, I have started a new blogging experiment. Every month I am going to spend $10 on advertising. That's it, just 10 bucks. It is looking to be a lot harder than I though, but I guess that is what makes it interesting. I am dedicating a page to this experiment. So check out the experiment on astutely named "$10 marketing experiment" page.