I need to update you on the video thing… last post I asked for some input on a video from my new video editor…and since then we have changed some stuff and started to put out new videos (which are now live, and in production).
You can see all of the videos we’ve put out for JibberJobber user tutorials here, on Vimeo. They are hi-def, which means crazy big files, but Vimeo handles it well, and the user doesn’t see slow download time (afaik). Also, if they make the video bigger the quality is good. Cool.
I’ve also been working on the first series that I’ll sell – because it is HD we can’t do downloads as it’s GBs of info – just barely enough to fit on one DVD. More on that soon!
Thanks to everyone who gave input on the video post from last time 🙂
I need some input/feedback on some changes I’m doing with my JibberJobber user tutorial videos. I’ve embedded our test video below, but you can see the wider version here. Notice that the visible quality is horrible – we’ve uploaded it on vimeo.com also, but it is still rendering apparently… so ignoring the visual (and my narration), I’m wondering about the editing and final product.
Here are my initial thoughts/questions (I hope this doesn’t influence your feedback):
Is the intro music (just a few seconds) okay? I think it’s kind of cool but I wouldn’t have thought of it…
I’m not sure about the music throughout the entire video… is it… good? Distracting? Okay, or horrible?
At the end the video editor put his voice in the conclusion – thoughts? My initial thought is “don’t say www”… it is not necessary when typing it in.
What else – what am i missing?
Again, realize the quality of what you see (not the audio) will look much, much better on vimeo.
I love the song If I Had A Million Dollars by Barenaked Ladies. When I watched these very cool/funny/clever videos I got jealous of TheLadders marketing budget, and thought, indeed, if I had a million dollars this is what I would want to come up with:
him: and I LOST my teeth! They weren’t under the pillow.
… a few minutes later he found his teeth.
me: where were they???
him: Under (my sister’s) pillow!
Good thing I don’t drink coffee – I would have spewed it all over my keyboard!
His sister, in the middle of the night, stole his teeth from under his pillow and put them under hers… hopeful little girl :p
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I overheard his in the airport a few days ago. No kidding. I couldn’t believe it. It came from a guy who looked like he was about 25ish… maybe a little older. Dressed in business casual, with a laptop bag… you know, a responsible guy with a job.
“… all I remember was that I was trying really hard to act sober. But I know I was really drunk.”
OMG. I better anyone who was around him KNEW that (a) he was really drunk, and (b) any acting sober wasn’t fooling anyone.
Can a really drunk guy effectively act sober enough to trick everyone around him that he’s not really drunk?
Tim Ferriss is one of my new favorite bloggers… he may not be new to blogging but his blog is new to me. It’s really brilliant stuff. Here’s a snippet I really liked from his “Things I’ve Learned and Loved in 2008” post:
You don’t have to recoup losses the same way you lose them. I own a home in San Jose but moved almost 12 months ago. It’s been empty since, and I’m paying a large mortgage each month. The best part? I don’t care. But this wasn’t always the case. For many months, I felt demoralized as others pressured me to rent it, emphasizing how I was just flushing money away otherwise. Then I realized: you don’t have to make $ back the same way you lose it. If you lose $1,000 at the blackjack table, should you try and recoup it there? Of course not. I don’t want to deal with renters, even with a property management company. The solution: leave the house alone, use it on occasion, and just create incoming revenue elsewhere that would cover the cost of the mortgage through consulting, publishing, etc.
Wow, I’ve never thought about that but how powerful. There’s other super-cool stuff in that post, one of which I really like (as an author/speaker) is: Related: You’re never as bad as they say you are.
A good friend of mine, Chip Hartman, who is the Editor-in-Chief at the ETP Network, recently watched the 2 hour webinar I did called Blog Marketing 201-501. Here’s what he had to say:
Just finished your Blog Marketing 201-501 Webinar and was totally blown away! This is truly phenomenal, in-depth coverage of blogging with all the critical linkages to SEO peppered throughout the presentation.
I have 9 pages of notes and a completely full bladder because I just didn’t want to pause the program even for a minute – and when a man delays peeing in order to stay tuned in to a webinar, … well, that’s high praise, sir.
Thank you, thank you, thank you and since it’s a Jason Alba production, I’m not the least bit surprised that it’s another blockbuster.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I have something I need to do …
I thought his “something to do” was implement the stuff from the webinar… alas, it was something else (I had to reread a few times) :)And with that, I’m ending the year with a big smile!
I’m just finishing up The Google Story, a really cool book about the history of Google. I remember the first time I used Google, and hearing about some of the Google news as it happened, since all of this happened since I started college… anyway, here’s one of the funnest paragraphs from the book, page 275, bottom of the page:
Larry and Sergey, mathematicians turned moguls, were still turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. In the months following Google’s IPO, the 31-year-old founders became America’s newest and wealthiest young billionaires, and hundreds of other Googlers became millionaires. The guys debuted on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans at number 43, with a net worth of $4 billion each. That was based on a Google stock price of about $110. When the stock shot up in price to more than $300 in the summer of 2005, each of the founders had a net worth in excess of $10 billion. Still, this wasn’t good enough for Sergey’s mother, Eugenia Brin, who wanted him to return to Stanford, write his thesis, and finish his Ph.D.
I love it … of course money isn’t everything, and this story proves that again… Euginia isn’t mentioned much in the book, but she is mentioned with much respect… you can find out WHY she was so intent on that goal in the early part of the book… definitely a strong recommendation on reading the book from me!
I’m working on a powerpoint for my presentation on Wednesday… it was due last Friday. Here’s the message I get right now:
This is one of my great presentation fears, especially when I plan on going online (I usually have a ppt backup, but don’t want to get caught with this message when I plan on going online).
I remember the pricing discussion I had with Happy About about my LinkedIn book. It was more involved than I thought it would be, and we finally agreed on $19.95 for the paperback and $11.95 for the Linkedin ebook, with NO discounts (except for a short while as a promotional thing).
I’ve thought a lot about book pricing since then, as I’ve gotten various feedback from people. Here’s a line from a comment on Amazon (this is from someone who gave the first edition a one star):
“The book practically does not offer more than I found myself within 2 hours.”
So what does that mean? Is it overpriced? Let’s assume that it’s not contentless, or that the issue isn’t that there isn’t any meat… let’s assume this LinkedIn book helps you avoid searching on your own for 2 hours.
What do you make in two hours? If you have a job you probably make at least $15/hour. If you are a consultant you probably charge at least $70/hour.
Would a $20 purchase… or an $11.95 purchase, be worth two hours of your time? Or would it be better to sift through stuff online to find what you are looking for?
That’s a decision the reader has to make, but as I’ve thought about how this book should be priced, and if it’s overpriced, I keep coming back to this: there is value in the book, and I invested my time in providing the value, giving opinions, collecting information, and working on presenting it in a format you could use as a manual/guide to get more out of LinkedIn.
I think pricing it lower would be a disservice to me. Pricing it higher would be a disservice to you.
I would love to hear what other authors/publishers think about book pricing….
