Where did the passion go?

Do you remember when you first started your business? The ideas, the fire, the drive you had when you woke up in the morning. Sitting at your coffee table, reading the paper, following CNN; thinking about how you are going to change one aspect of your business to better the rest. You had no doubt about the direction, you had no doubt that you wouldn’t succeed. No one could tell you any different from what you thought. You attended the network meetings, you handed out the business cards that you self designed. You even made it a point to shake everyone hands.

So now you are a few years into your business, the fire is still there but it is now more of a light flame, just enough light to keep you going, but not the fire it use to be, getting up in the morning doesn’t have the same flare it use to. The once organized coffee table is now a cluster of assorted papers that you still have to go thru. Where did that passion go? Where did that love for your business go? Why isn’t the fire burning as bright as it use to?

Maybe it is the routine of your business, like any new job, once you begin, you have this passion to be the best, strive harder then any other employee, to stand out above any other, but once that passion in that job is gone and the days and hours come and go, you get into a routine, and that passion doesn’t go away but instead turns into routine, you are no longer have that “on fire” feeling, but now it is a routine of daily chores that provide you with a pay check.

So how do you get that passion back? How do you get back to the days when you were on fire, how do you incorporate the passion you once had with the market and changes of today?

 

I think one way is integration. As the years go on, the way we market, promote and advertise ourselves changes. I have been to so many networking groups where the people use the same techniques from years passed to market themselves. You start introducing yourself as if you were reading from a que-card. The speeches, the act, the persona you once carried is now routine. We have forgotten to integrate our unique personality into our business. Remember that people are buying you as well as your product. Selling is a face to face art. Not just handing out a business card and calling it quits.

Try new ideas and techniques. Marketing in this economy is as every changing as the people who do the marketing..

I think another way is stepping outside of the box and looking at your competition and seeing what is working for them. You don’t need to copy them because success is not universal. The person who is successful by doing one thing is not necessarily going to work for you.

The goal in the end of course is to get that passion back into your life. Even I sometimes lose a little of my fire for what I do…even blogging. As the market changes entrepreneurs, individuals and corporations have to change with it. Passion is huge! You need to keep that fire for what you love going! Without that fire and passion in your business. It will never grow and you will never succeed, no matter how smart you are or no matter how much you want it. People can see that passion for what you do in your voice, on your face and in your heart! Remember you are a reflection of your business!! If there is no Passion in your heart then there is no passion in your business.

Youtube: The bleeding artery of Google.com ( A love story)

* What would be your course of action if you purchased a company for 1.65 billion dollars and it only brought in 240 million this year and grows deeper in debt everyday? I would say what a tragic mishap! I would sell it and try my best to cut my further losses and never make that mistake again. But that’s just me and that’s definitely not Google.com. Who made this decision three years ago when they purchased the number one video site search engine Youtube.com

So let’s dwell further into Google’s love story with Youtube. Like I said; Youtube is lying like a lame horse right now, any farm owner would have taken that horse outside and put it down. But Google has many plans to revive Youtube and make it the forerunner as the premier search engine site.

There are a few problems with the site. One is that the video sharing site has failed to attract quality programming

While Google doesn’t break out exact company expenses, what is known is that Youtube is the largest video platform in the world. Users upload 20 hours of video to it each minute, at tremendous cost to Google (That’s a lot of server space and maintenance on a monthly basis…I’d say in the tens of millions)

Youtube remains a repository for long tail content that appeals to a niche audience: clips of cats chasing dogs or the newest death defying stunt (they do have mass audience viewings like Michael Jackson, Susan Boyle which attracted millions)

But despite Google repeated efforts Youtube has failed to create an environment for professional video content where many advertisers are clamoring to put their money right now.

* However Hulu- A joint venture from GE’s NBC, News Corp’s Fox and now Disney’s ABC has catapulted to success among advertisers and consumers. With it sharp media player and a very comfortable and easy to use interface that feels like a traditional television.

Hulu has become the second most watched video site after….you guessed it, Youtube.

Launched in March 2008 it began hosting episodes of “Saturday night live” and “The Office”

A visit to Youtube showed it was airing original series like “Bewitched” (Although my favorite series “firefly” is aired in sections by users of the site)

So with the success of Hulu and the clear and visible mistake of the cash guzzling purchase of Youtube, you would think Google would back down and give this site up. But in fact the parent company is doubling down. A report in fortune magazine says that Google has moved some of its brightest executives to Youtube offices in hope of turning it around. Tech Guru’s are also tweaking the technology that sorts and spits out Youtube content to make it easier for marketers to buy sponsored search links and simultaneously run advertising, as of now the site is now able to make money on 13% of its content up from 3% last year.

Google’s very cost conscious finance chief was also quoted as being very upbeat on recent earnings call saying “soon we’ll actually see a very profitable and good business.

* From my perspective Google ambitions for Youtube have nothing to do with cute cat clips or viral web video, and everything to do with data. Video is still in its teenage years on the web, but it is growing up quickly. Laptops and iphones now have quality webcams and teenagers increasingly use video instead of email to send each other messages, posting the clips on their Facebook walls.

So while Google aims (and prays!) to profit from the video on the site today, it ultimately is more interested in making sure that the company becomes the primary platform use to generate, store, sort and view all their video content and communications. (This, by the way, is exactly the kind of wide-reaching power that concerns privacy and antitrust advocates)

*So how do you stop the bleeding and make a profit?

That’s the question for Jawed Karim who joined the Google team in 2005. His quest is to make money from Youtube. Karim was the one at Google who came up with Adwords, Google biggest revenue, which lets advertisers pay a fee each time user’s click on their links. Google hopes he can work that same magic again.

His first move was to create different types of ads such as small ads that pop up inside videos; it has also added click-to-buy options to some videos(Watch Michael Jackson’s “Billie jean” on the site and you have the option to buy the song from Amazon)

Either way you cut it, Youtube is far from fixed and in my opinion losing ground against the competition. Looking at Youtube as a whole, how much content is produced by network studios? The stuff that is most easily monetized today. And if Google merely wanted to sell ads against its inventory of online videos, that might be a problem since it costs the company way more to host and deliver videos that it currently makes on video ads (A credit Suisse report suggests that the site spends $375 million a year on network infrastructure alone; a recent study by strategic outsourcing adviser Ramp Rate puts the annual costs at closer to $83 million)

Well for all of Google’s Youtube woes. Earlier this year Youtube quietly became the second biggest search engine on the web; only Google.com is larger

 If video online becomes pervasive and consumers first gravitate to video searches rather than look for articles or websites it may be only a matter of time before the long tail wags the dog

* In my opinion, while I am not a tech guru and can’t fully fathom the risks that are involved with paying billions of dollars for a company only to make chump change in profit. I can say that I am a fan of Youtube and of course want to see it succeed, but like any pioneer Youtube was the first to do what they did. They gave any one and everyone a place to show their face(not necessarily talent) and when other companies or groups stand outside the box and analyze what they like and dislike about there competition you can always find better ways to do it and profit from it. Google (Youtube of course) need to step out of there singular box and reassess what works and doesn’t work. And while Youtube will never be the money giant Google is, there is always a chance it can change the playing field in terms of advertisement and how people asses how they market or advertise themselves!

The in’s & Out’s of Google.com

Common Forum Questions & Answers:

1) Q: What is the ‘Google Dance’

A: The ‘Google Dance’ is what the monthly update is commonly called. It refers to the update process that is visible in the index. The update takes about a week to complete and during that time you will see the listings vary wildly from new data to old while positions will jump up and down (and sometimes completely out) in a SERP as well.

2) Q: When does Google update?

A: Google has a standard monthly update which generally occurs at the end of every month. The data for this update is gathered during the preceding weeks. Google has been known to delay updates (or process them sooner than expected) when the mood strikes. Chances are delays are due to new algorithms being implemented and tested.

3) Q: What is “Everflux, Freshbot, Freshcrawl”

A: Everflux is when the SERPs appear to change (sites move up and down) while the update is NOT in effect. This is brought about by the Freshbot (or Freshcrawl) and is Googles way of ensuring that their data is the ‘freshest’ on the web. When the phenomena first occurred it was identifiable by the word ‘Fresh!’ and a date appearing on the last line of your listing between the URL and the ‘Cached’ link. The addition of ‘Fresh!’ the word was misleading to the public at large as it appeared to be a comment on the quality of the data not the recency of the crawl (which was what it was) so the word was quickly removed but the date remains. When you see this date attached to your listing you know that it is the product of a ‘Fresh crawl’ or ‘Everflux’. What does this do for you? This enables Google to present the most recent version of your site in their listings and can cause your listing to move up or down in the SERPs. This is not a permanent change of your information within their database and if your site is not re-crawled by the ‘freshbot’ any changes associated with this crawl will fall out in approximately 48hrs. If your site is new to Google and is crawled by the ‘freshbot’ Note: there is no official bot called ‘freshbot’ it is a term used in forums to describe the googlebot that affects these specific changes within SERPs so don’t email them for information regarding the ‘freshbot’ as they will respond that it doesn’t exist! (because it doesn’t)

4) Q: When will Google spider my site and how can I tell?
Q: What is googlebot?

A: Googlebot (Google’s spider) finds sites by following links from other sites. The more links to your site they find the the chance of Googlebot finding you. They also follow links from their addurl form, but prefer to find links to you instead. You can check to see if/when Googlebot has visited by reviewing your site’s logs located on your server. When Googlebot visits you will see a reference to ‘The little robot that google.com sends out to spider website content GoogleBot’ or ‘crawler12.googlebot.com’ or something similar. They announce who they are. For more on locating and viewing your server logs you need to speak to your hosting company. Many common website statistics (site stats) programs will gather this information and present an easy to read report for you.

5) Q: What is PageRank?

A: PageRank is Google’s method of ranking web pages. Google basically counts the number of incoming links to your web PAGE and (considers various other factors) to determine the importance of your web page and where it should rank. Keep in mind that this is only one factor in ranking.

6) Q: Will Google index my (asp, php, html, xml, etc) site?

A: Probably. Here is a list of what Google indexes as of 9/12/02 (from Google.com):
http://www.google.com/corporate/facts.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

HyperText Markup Language (html, pdf, asp, jsp, hdml, shtml, xml, cfml)
Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
Adobe PostScript (ps)
Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
Lotus WordPro (lwp)
MacWrite (mw)
Microsoft Excel (xls)
Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
Microsoft Word (doc)
Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
Microsoft Write (wri)
Rich Text Format (rtf)
Text (ans, txt)
Images
Usenet messages

7) Q: I reported spam I found in Google, why is it still there?

A: Google does not remove spam just because it was reported. They review the report as soon as they can to determine if it really is spam (imagine, what would you do if it was that easy and your competitor got you removed). If it is particularly bad they may manually remove the offensive site or page but they do try and avoid this when ever possible. If it is not then the site or page will most likely become test material for new filter tweaks. Google always prefer to adjust their filters and algorithms to catch spam.

8) [Common listing description questions]
– Can I change my description?
– What is my description?
– That’s not the description I wanted!

A: The description Google provides with your listing is comprised of what they call Snippets. Snippets are created by taking the searched term and pulling that, along with the surrounding text, from your text data on your page. This Snippet is variable and changes with the search term.

If your site/url has an ODP/DMOZ listing then Google will list the ODP description below the Snippet, indicated by the word ‘Description:’ preceding it. The only way to alter this is by getting your ODP description altered.

9) What are internal links, external links, backlinks?

A: Internal links are links to your own site from withing your own site. External links are links to your site from someone else’s site. Backlinks describes the links that Google shows as counting towards your site. Via the Google ToolBar there is a button that states “Backward Links” which when clicked is supposed to show you sites linking to the page your browser is currently viewing. Note that this button does not show all links indexed or credited to your site. Common belief is that it only shows links with a PR4 or above and that it also only shows 1/2 of the links credited to your site/page.

10) What do links have to do with Google?

A: Links, internal and external, help Googlebot find the pages within your site so that it can index them. Links also count, to various degrees depending on the link, towards your PageRank.

11) What is proxy.google.com ?

A: Google offers wireless services for several devices and go so far as to convert your html site for viewers using wireless appliances (such as cell phones and pda’s). Google Wireless, wireless user guide.