djchuang.com » internet

Lessons from YouTube Channels Making Money

djchuang — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:54:02 +0000

YouTube has become quite the pop culture shaper and launched a little cottage industry for thousands. I’d anticipate that will only continue to grow. That’s entertainment!

Wired magazine recently featured a dozen or so Partners in The YouTube Laugh Factory: A Studio System for Viral Video (December 2011) and distilled these 5 rules for getting noticed according to YouTube Partners (people making money via YouTube):

Make a lot of content. A lot.
Target a niche.
Connect with your fans.
Collaborate.
Optimize for the algorithms.

According to a USA Today article (June 2011), there are over 20,000 YouTube Partners and a few hundred are making over $100,000 per year. At least 1 has made over $1,000,000. Revenue estimates 2010 are projected in this article, How Much Money Do The Top Grossing YouTube Partners Make? quoting the Business Insider piece, Meet The YouTube Stars Making $100,000 Plus Per Year.

According to a YouTube Partners discussion thread, the legal (and confidential) agreement states that “… You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program” though it’s often erroneously rumored that YouTube Partners are prohibited from disclosing earning figures.

Note you can make smaller amounts of money at an entry level called Revenue Sharing on YouTube videos; but to make bigger money and get extra perks, apply for approval to the Partners program. And YouTube provides tips and resources for producing quality videos at Creators’ Corner and Creators Hub. After all, if you make money, they make money.

Here’s 5 Secrets of YouTube’s Success (April 2010), an article published for the 5-year anniversary of YouTube with observations about why it’s succeeded beyond survival, and how it’s thriving and growing –

It elevated the absurd.
It got creative with advertising.
It plays nice with Hollywood.
It launched a new creative class.
It’s willing to reinvent itself.

And, by the way, it’s messing with our brains - Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think (December 2008). Keen insights from the communication-meister Marshall McLuhan:

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that whenever we get our hands on a new medium we tend to use it like older ones. Early TV broadcasts consisted of guys sitting around reading radio scripts because nobody had realized yet that TV could tell stories differently. It’s the same with much of today’s webcam video; most people still try to emulate TV and film. Only weirdos like MadV are really exploring its potential.

A bigger leap will occur when we get better tools for archiving and searching video. Then we’ll start using it the way we use paper or word processing: to take notes or mull over a problem, like Tom Cruise flipping through scenes at the beginning of Minority Report. We think of video as a way to communicate with others—but it’s becoming a way to communicate with ourselves.

whether to connect Twitter to Facebook or not

djchuang — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:34:38 +0000

2 social networks dominate the new media landscape at this point in history — Facebook and Twitter. At the time of this writing, Facebook has 800+ million active users and Twitter has 100+ million active users.

Many of you, like me, use both Twitter and Facebook. But given the disparity in numbers, many more are on only Facebook and not Twitter. Thus, my rationale for sharing my Twitter tweets (which I use more) to my Facebook status updates, so that both my Twitter followers and Facebook friends can see my latest finds — a large %age of my updates are links to goodies I find. (I do have my Twitter Facebook app configured so that my twitter @replies do not get posted to Facebook.)

I didn’t want to be insensitive to my friends on Facebook; I’ve recently asked them if I should continue feeding my Facebook status updates with my latest tweets, or keep the two separated. The results ended in a close heat, by a margin of 9 votes, more of my friends wanted to keep my tweets connected!

The wisdom of the crowd is split on whether you should or shouldn’t have social networks connected with mirrored content. My counsel: be considerate of your Facebook friends, yours may be more Twitter-averse.

Here are comments that came in during polling season, for your reference, to assist you in making an informed decision about how you might use your Twitter and Facebook accounts:

KL: “It annoys me when people post to both twitter and FB because I have to see the same thing twice. Then again, I don’t follow many people on both twitter and FB so in practice this isn’t really a problem.”

TL: i think ideally you want to separate fb and twitter because they are different mediums with different purposes and circles (no google+ pun intended). so tweet certain things and fb post other different things. but who does that really?

i think the reality is that most people are heavier users of either one or the other. so it’s probably the minority that would see your posts duplicated on twitter and fb (and previously buzz)

KH: i think connecting different social media platforms is a great invention! =)

SM: i don’t know about ‘overwhelmed’, but i tend to prefer separate streams…

RM: Only because every one else says this.

WS: And I like to read them here too!!

LL: selective tweets is a good option so it doesn’t flood your fb

VS: it is a question I’ve wrestled with myself. At the moment the “time” issue is the determinant…I don’t have to do independent posts. When that changes, I will probably split the information.

MM: I also use the Selective Tweets. I appreciate the option of determining which tweets come to Facebook.

SK: I’m probably not a good one to ask, because I port all my tweets over to Facebook. Using Selective Tweets is too mentally taxing. I don’t have time to parse whether a tweet is “appropriate” for Facebook or not. I just know that everything I post on Twitter shows up here on FB, and that’s fine. Two different audiences (for the most part). Different conversations take place around the same content. It’s all good. That’d be my vote, keep on keepin’ on.

SS: I’d say go with your instinct, your gut feel. I like the way you think and reason!

SO: I would vote for Disconnect if it wasn’t for the parenthetical addendum. Its for strategic reasons I advocate separating them, not because I am “easily overwhelmed”

LS: Pile it on! I love reading your stuff.

DI: I say disconnect them! Why follow on facebook & twitter if both have same content?

CM: I use selective tweets. I think that works best also!

JR: I follow you on twitter. plus you can use selective tweets.

BW: I see all your Tweets on Twitter, so I wouldn’t need to see them here too. But, if it’s easier for you, I don’t mind them in both!

BR: Use select tweets so updates appropriate for FB can still be brought over. [re: what is appropriate?] Things that you think your friends might comment on as well as just less than twitter. Things w/o hashtags too.

What counsel would you add about whether or not to connect Twitter to Facebook?

Now, It’s also possible to connect things the other way, so your Facebook status updates get automatically posted over to Twitter. When do you think it’s better to connect it the other direction?

List of Christian podcasts that aren’t sermons

djchuang — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:43:37 +0000

Recently I’ve been looking for podcasts to subscribe to for my commute time. I’m most interested in the intersection of social and spiritual things, aka people & relationships, which isn’t as popular as topics like technology or cooking or celebrity gossip.

In the Christian podcasting world, most podcasts are sermons or teachings or devotionals or church tech; that’s okay for the masses. I’m looking to check the “other” box, not so much what books tag as “Christian life”; just Christians (and Christian-friendly people) talking about a faith-informed life.

Here’s a list of active podcasts I’ve found so far — if you know others, please do add a comment:

Frank the Podcast - a humorous and irreverent look at life informed by faith (w @DarinMcWatters et al)
One Extraordinary Marriage – Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo share tips and stories on how to create the marriage that you want
Something Beautiful - stories worth talking about: stories about God, life, friends, family and why it all matters (w @JDBlundell et al)
Foster Parenting – foster parents Tim and Wendy as they discuss foster care and adoption
Homebrew Christianity – Tripp & Chad crafting, experimenting, imagining, and sharing a Christian faith that is life-giving
Let’s Talk It’s Relationship - Bob, David, and Loren from Family Room Media discuss real life issues and the exciting journey of life in God outside of institutional Christianity
Beyond the Box - life beyond the box of institutional religion
Two Blind Squirrels Podcast - Christian comedy podcast that features everything from new contemporary Christian artists to two off key goofs singing about nothing.
[update] Lifehouse Podcast – discuss how God has influenced our lives and interviews with other Christians [iTunes]
Frederica Here and Now with Frederica Matthewes-Green and more podcasts at Ancient Faith Radio
International Arts Movement (IAM) podcast
The Wally Show – Wally infuses Christian radio with a good balance of humor and heart

Aside: the term “podcast” has been co-opted for audio files posted on a website. Podcasts I’m listing here are those that can be subscribed via iTunes or a podcatcher app (cf. Google Listen or Podkicker on Android), and are recorded & produced only for the podcast show, not recordings from other broadcast media. This list isn’t for dormant podcasts (cf. The Nick & Josh Podcast, Wired Parish), only those that are actively updated, like weekly.

How many churches have websites in America

djchuang — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:47:27 +0000

What is the number of church websites in the United States? Yes it’s quite a herculean effort to count the exact number and I’m not sure there’s research money to pull off such a census. Plus the wide range of differing theological definitions for what is a church exacerbates any attempts to quantify them.

First, the big number, that is, how many churches in America. Hartford Institute estimates there are roughly 335,000 religious congregations in the United States. Of those, about 300,000 are Protestant and other Christian churches, and 22,000 are Catholic and Orthodox churches. And: According to the book Beyond Megachurch Myths, there were 320,000 Christian U.S. churches in 2007.

Two surveys have an answer for how many churches have websites: 69% and 78%. Doing the math on the conservative side (because just having a website doesn’t mean the information is current), 69% of 300,000 is 207,000.

Here’s the numbers behind the numbers –

The FACT 2010 Report: A Decade of Change in American Congregations 2000 – 2010 cited “… By 2010 over 90% of congregations used email; seven in ten had websites, and four in ten had Facebook pages…” // … the FACT 2010 national aggregated data set includes responses from 11,077 congregations, and over 120 denominations. … Sampling error for a survey such as FACT2010 can only be roughly estimated. We believe a conservative estimate is +/- 4% at the 95% confidence level. … with responses from 14,301 congregations it remains the largest national survey of congregations ever conducted in the U.S.

LifeWay Research study sponsored by Axletree Media cited “… survey of 1,003 Protestant churches found that while 78 percent have a website …” // Their methodology: LifeWay Research conducted a phone survey among a stratified, random sample of Protestant churches Sept. 8-20, 2010, interviewing 1,003 staff members most responsible for making decisions about the technology used in their church. Responses were weighted to reflect the natural size distribution of churches. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed ±3.2 percent.

How to get a custom welcome page for Facebook

djchuang — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:53:00 +0000

Getting a custom welcome landing page (aka welcome tab) to invite someone to Like a Facebook Page has become a popular tactic for businesses and organizations to build its audience. While there is Facebook Developer documentation online that has a Page Tab tutorial, I don’t find it plain and simple to use. Here are template-driven web apps for generating a custom welcome page (and asterisked ones have additional apps that integrate into Facebook page tabs):

http://www.pagemodo.com
http://www.shortstack.com
http://northsocial.com
http://fanpageengine.com
http://hostfb.com/
http://socialstage.com
http://socialdragonflys.com
http://wp4fb.com
http://www.faceitpages.com * [ed.note: this app calls it a "fan gate"]
http://iframes.wildfireapp.com
http://www.tabsite.com
http://apps.tradablebits.com *
http://www.socialappshq.com *
Static HTML: iframe tabs
http://pages.wix.com/ppcfpa/fb_102
other apps listed in socialmediaexaminer.com, another list
+ Steve Fogg’s step-by-step guide to build one for free http://www.stevefogg.com/2011/10/09/how-i-created-a-facebook-landing-page-for-free-and-you-can-too/

Of course, growing audience engagement takes more than a welcome page, but sometimes non-techie decision-makers aren’t aware of the total cost of effort to keep fresh content flowing consistently. (cf. When A Welcome Tab Isn’t Enough: Use Custom Facebook Tabs To Give Fans More)

Love the CaseCrown iPad 2 Bold Standby Case

djchuang — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:30:30 +0000

This is one amazing faux leather case for my iPad 2 and it comes in orange !! It also comes in a bunch of other colors: white, purple, green, red, pink, hot pink, coffee, brown, blue, and black. Retails for an unbelievable $26.95 with free shipping!

Here’s my video review :

In case you’re a leatherphile, they also have the very same case made with genuine leather for a few extra $s.

[disclosure: I received a complimentary case, courtesy of CaseCrown.com]

Being First on Twitter in the OC

djchuang — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:35:20 +0000

Thanks to ksablan (Kevin Sablan) for noticing my earliest adoption of Twitter. (Granted, back in July 2006 when I signed up for Twitter, I was a resident in the metro DC area and not in the OC, I have lived in the OC since July 2007.)

In over 5 years of twittering, here’s some things I’ve noticed and/or learned:

When a new technology is launched into the public, there’s no guarantee that it’ll flourish into mainstream adoption nor that it will keep growing its popularity and audience base (i.e. SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace).
Social media is about the people, not the technology, nor the “superiority” thereof. When I first used Twitter, there wasn’t much going on there because there weren’t people there. The wisdom of the crowd had not yet figured out valuable ways to use real-time updates. Journalists were among the earlier to use it, along with some ham-radio-like amateur hobbyists. Hashtags were a later invention/ innovation.
Twitter is much more valuable because it is an open platform in the public, rather than being behind a virtual wall a la Facebook. I know there are millions more people on Facebook where people are connecting with friends and being fans of brands/people they like. Twitter lets me get near-real-time news, jump in (and out of) conversations, and connect with total strangers and meet new people in ways that Facebook doesn’t.
The life span of a tweet is shrinking as it’s become more mainstream. Used to be able to search tweets back to 3 weeks, now the twitter search engine goes back maybe 3 days. The technical requirements needed to run twitter is undoubtedly costly, and all the more so with more usage.
I love new things and exploring what could be next. This isn’t a “first mover advantage” for me, since I am not doing this to look for opportunities to monetize or to grow a business, though it has indirectly been an asset in my paid work. (Do you have a suggestion for how to get paid to for exploring? I’d love to hear it!)

From Social Media Potential to Mastery

djchuang — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:30:17 +0000

These are my slides from my breakout session at Sticky Teams 2.0 Oct 24-25. Thanks to North Coast Training Network for hosting this incredible conference for like 750+ church leaders and inviting me to be a part of it!

And, I’ll be adding other links and websites mentioned in the breakout here.

Mark Driscoll http://pastormark.tv, Pete Wilson http://withoutwax.tv, Carlos Whittaker http://www.ragamuffinsoul.com, Mark Batterson http://markbatterson.com, Artie Davis http://artiedavis.com, Eugene Cho http://eugenecho.com, Verge Network vergenetwork.org, Guy Kawasaki guykawasaki.com
twitter, facebook, wordpress, blogger, youtube, vimeo
hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com, seesmic.com, cotweet.com
Google Analytics, Klout.com, crowdbooster.com
Text alerts to group: http://jarbyco.com, http://www.textmarks.com, http://www.tatango.com, http://www.eztexting.com, http://grouptexting.com, http://www.protexting.com, http://trumpia.com
Leadia – interactive growth experience for your iPad/iPhone/iTouch
infographic: How the Top 50 Nonprofits do Social Media
Top 10 Facebook Apps for Building Custom Pages & Tabs, also http://www.shortstack.com, http://www.pagemodo.com, http://www.coolmojito.com, http://www.tabsite.com/

Even though these slides would make more sense if you were in attendance in person, I was told these sessions will be recorded. I’ll do what I can to share what I can with you, so do bookmark and return to this blog post for new updates and addendums.

While a 75-minute breakout session is a valuable introduction to vital principles, nothing compares to getting serious with developing and implementing social media as a part of your total communication strategy.

So, to help you get to that next level of mastery by developing and implementing your personal social media strategy, North Coast Training is offering a full-day Social Media Bootcamp with myself and Justin Wise on Monday December 5th at North Coast Church in Vista, CA.

Take a look at what we’re offering at this Social Media Bootcamp and see for yourself how this investment will extend your ministry reach and engagement. Would love to see you there!

the genius of Steve Jobs and his gift to us

djchuang — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:19:48 +0000

The timing of Steve Jobs’ death hit the news cycle last night and will be the topic of conversation for days and weeks to come. While it leaves many of us speechless, and there’s not enough words to convey all that his life has meant to humanity, that doesn’t mean we should stay silent and say nothing, nor do we leave it to the “pundits” and “experts” to say things “better” than we could. Steve Jobs is an instrumental part of a team at Apple that’s empowered us to have a voice through all of these awesome tech devices. I made a few remarks last night via my MacBook onto YouTube.

Link to my video.

Where can you get 100% uptime web hosting?

djchuang — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:10:49 +0000

When a service declares a 99.9% uptime guarantee might sounds kinda impressive. But do the math, and it turns out that 99.9% allows for 43 minutes of downtime per month or over 8 hours in a year, while 99.99% uptime is up to 4 minutes of downtime per month.

With web hosting becoming more and more essential to our lives – work, play, personal, and e-commerce — finding a reliable web hosting service can be elusive. Even with thorough research, past performance is no guarantee of future reliability and tech support responsiveness.

So you do what you can with the time and effort you’ve got. Think about it, what can a company do to make good on a guarantee anyways? Pro-rated credit? Tech support response time? Battery backup? Network redundancy? Multiple data centers?

And when it comes to an “uptime guarantee,” read the fine print. There’s the marketing-speak and then the legal-speak. Don’t be mesmerized by the number itself. Look at what these different companies mean by their service level agreement (SLA) ::

Network will be available 100% of the time in a given month, excluding scheduled maintenance. … A credit of 5% of the monthly fee for each 30 minutes of downtime. A credit of up to 100% of the monthly fee for the affected server. [Rackspace]

For each hour after you notified support of your downtime, your account will be credited for 10% of you monthly billing total, up to 100% your total bill. [VPS.net]

If your web site, databases, email, FTP, SSH or webmail is unusable as a result of a failure in our systems and for reasons other than previously announced scheduled maintenance, coding or configuration errors on your part, we’ll credit your next invoice with 1 day hosting free for each 1 hour (or fraction thereof) of service interruption; up to 10% of your next pre-paid hosting renewal fee. [Dreamhost]

Site5 has a unique take on its 99.9% uptime guarantee for shared hosting, “… offering you a pro-rated credit for any downtime outside of our guaranteed window.” Site5 has a page with the real time status of all their servers and they publicly list the uptime records of all their servers. [ed.note: transparency does make for more data-informed decisions]

If your shared / reseller server has a physical downtime that is not within the 99.9% uptime you may receive one month of credit on your account. Approval of the credit is at the discretion of HostGator dependent upon justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor’s network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system and the Apache Web Server which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services. To request a credit, please contact sales@hostgator.com with justification. All requests must be made in writing via email. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared / reseller solutions. … [HostGator]

We Guarantee! that our network will stay up 99.9% of the time. … will not charge you for leaving your hosting agreement early due to server downtime. Furthermore, we allow you to cancel your account at anytime without any penalties and with a pro-rated refund of the unused portion of your hosting agreement. [bluehost]

My 3 wishes for Google+ Plus

djchuang — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:04:00 +0000

I confess I’m not the most active user of Google+, the new social network that’s currently in private beta, or so-called “field trial”, with already over 25 million users… and probably a majority of Google+ people are already active on other social media. And what makes a social network great is both the people and the technology’s features/ functions. For Google+ to have a smaller feature set, and using that magical number “3″ to frame its features (circles, hangouts, sparks), it’s looking to be the next big thing (and seasons for a social network’s popularity ebb and flow, a la Friendster, MySpace, Facebook…), btw, here’s a free invite to Google+ http://ow.ly/5ZhVf

What’s great about Google+ is how it’s easy-to-use for sharing stuff, be it a status update, a link, a photo, a video (especially YouTube)… and to share that in select circles (or select individuals). And I do like to share. There are 3 things that are missing for me, and how I’d like to use Google+

1. search. Yes Google is the king of search. I’d want to search my own stream, or a stream of one of my circles, or all my streams. There are things I remember seeing on my stream but want to get back to it more quickly than scrolling back to try to find it. (there are some hacks + workarounds)

2. filter. I don’t keep Google+ open in a web browser all the time, so I kinda miss hours of stream shares at a time. I don’t want to scroll back to see everything, but I do want to catch when certain topics or keywords get mentioned. What if Sparks could be applied to just my stream and/or certain ones of my circles?

3. my +1′s. From what I can tell, +1′s adds to the count of people who liked a certain shared item. Good that the person who shared it knows how many +’s and subsequent users who see that shared item. What I’d also like to see is a stream of items I have +1′d. That’d be a good bread crumb trail of goodies I would like to reference, or even to share that. [update: aha! found my +1's listing - thank you Google!]

There you go, three of my thoughts about Google+. For more about the latest, check in with these blogs: the official Google blog, the official Google+ platform blog, unofficial Google Plus blog.

Plus, for fans of group video chat, find an open hangouts + connect with new people spontaneously at: hangoutongplus.com + gphangouts.com + plusroulette.com + hangouthut.com

Aside: when the name of something is difficult to type or has more than one way to identify it, that does make for some challenges.. so on a keyword search, does one search for Google+ or Google Plus? One thing I kept running into with my work at L² Foundation was gently informing people that it’s “L-Squared” and not elle-two. Such as it is when you can’t superscript in plain text.

Recalibrating my blogging pace

djchuang — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:54:56 +0000

Summer wraps up its hey days. September comes around to launch a new school year. Setting the pace of life back to that normal routine for 9 months.

Now I find myself blogging at a different pace: it’s looking like once or twice a week for this season of life. In the past, The pace I liked to have for my blogging is 2 to 3 posts per week.

(What is a good rhythm of blogging? As a point of reference, I typically advise people to not start blogging if s/he cannot make a blog post at least once a week. I know there are people out there more in the professional blogging realm that blog every weekday in a very disciplined manner. For business- and goal-oriented people, that’s a good thing to do.)

With 12 years of blogging, I’ve certainly not exhausted topics to be blogging about. I’m not considering pulling the plug. This blog started as a personal endeavor and will remain so. Just a place where I can share (a part of) my life and to connect with people far beyond my geographical limitation. Yes, I have a wide eclectic range of topics of interest.

All this to say, not all that much is changing here. Just a change of pace. Add a comment with a topic you’d love to see me blog about. And I’ll queue it up for next week.

a 21st century high tech prison ministry

djchuang — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:22:39 +0000

Jesus said “… when I was in prison, you visited me.” I confess I’m missing out on a glimpse of Jesus since I have not yet ever visited someone a prison. By grace I don’t personally know anyone there, and of course that’s not the point. When it comes to following Christ, it means so much more to be altruistic and doing good for total strangers and not only for people you know, family, and/or friends.

A social marketing friend Jim Gray is running a campaign this week for God Behind Bars a new ministry for those in prison for a season. God Behind Bars partners with churches and faith-based organizations to stream live worship experiences into prisons all over the world. And, they’ve got an online campus called “Church With Inmates” that allows the families of prisoners to see and experience the same service that their loved one is watching from inside the prison. One more “wall” that’s broken down. 92% of inmates serve their time and are release back to society. So keeping them connected with society in this spiritual dimension is certainly important, and good for everyone.

Another part of the world that’s isolated from the public is the online world of Google+, in many ways yet another social network. (How’s that for a segue?) If you’re on the outside looking in and want to get an account and access Google+ , leave a comment here and I’ll invite you! You’ll get bumped to the front of the line and get in on their limited-access beta. I’ve got more invites, I don’t know how many, so it’swhile supplies last.