Waxing Philosophical about Browsings, Work, and Love

PoddedMeat Stuff
The first and second weeks ratings are in for PoddedMeat. If it were two years ago, and it were the Mark and Darrell Show, I'd be absolutely elated - our numbers exceeded any ratings I've ever recieved on RantRadio, AKA, and the podcast feed combined. On the other hand, I was expecting a bit higher debut than where we started.

The upside is that we increased our ratings for the second week by roughly 170%. Again, a bit disappointing for me - even though we're talking four-digit numbers here, I'm expecting these numbers to eventually rival Laporte's and Rose's numbers. Granted, I don't have a juggernaut like Digg fueling my subscriber numbers, but in time I'm sure I will.

I had some really positive conversations with companies that I'm sure you all have heard of yesterday. I can't say who they are because we're just in the preliminary talks, but I can say this: watch closely during the commercial breaks in the coming weeks. The promos for second season should start running soon, and will provide clues for the types of entertainment programs we have planned.

Running a set of talking head programs is a bit more difficult than I envisioned, and it's taking a few more episodes to bang out what our style is than I expected - on the other hand, I think the shows are coming along quite nicely. I think that NewsCube this week finally found it's rhythm, and RunTime isn't very far behind them. RunTime has a lot more variable elements to it, so it's going to take a couple more episodes before I think it'll gel properly, but it's definately getting there. Luke and Laney are finally comfortable in their skins on camera, and it's starting to show.

Monetization Stuff
As you folks know, I've been searching around for different ways to monetize and promote the network of Oblong Box as well as PoddedMeat. I've managed ad campaigns for companies (before I dropped everything to work on these content based projects, it was something I did for my clients), so when I was sent a link for a PPC management agency to check out, I reviewed the site with a critical eye.

Honestly, they look legitimate, and their FAQ brings up a number of valid points. As someone who has done this type of work before, I think that a couple salient details should be brought up when talking about this or any other PPC management group:

It's just as important (if not more important) that the copy of the landing site as well as the structure of the landing site be designed to entice in further and capture information from the potential customer. PPC advertising relies mostly on tricking the customer to give you as much information as possible about them so you can drip on them later with further sales calls, be they email, snail mail, or phone calls.

All in all, I think this is a fairly reputable group, from the sounds of it, but I'm concerned about the method of advertising they utilize to promote themselves ... I didn't find them through a PPC ad. The only other weakness I see is that their copy on their website is slightly less than compelling, but then they may have gone to another school of learning when it comes to how they came upon their PPC skills than I did.

All in all, I'd suggest if you're going to go with PPC management services, try these guys out on a limited basis.

Quote of the Entry:
[Rizzn's Note: this is just one of the reasons I love this girl]

iris: Love is not an adaquate word I can use to express how I really feel about you... my love for you is more "love itself"
rizzn: That's beautiful, honey.
iris: cause I am freaking bad ass
rizzn: haha

Libertarians File for Redistricted Congressional Seats

AUSTIN - August 24, 2006 - Tomorrow, James Arthur Strohm will file to run as a Libertarian in Texas Congressional District 21, and Barbara
Cunningham will file to run as a Libertarian in Texas Congressional
District 25.

The candidates or their representatives will file the paperwork at 11:00
am at the Elections Division office in the Rusk Building in downtown
Austin.

Strohm and Cunningham will face incumbents Lamar Smith and Lloyd
Doggett, as well as other candidates. Because of a federal court's
redistricting decision on August 4, party nominations were nullified,
and candidates were required to pay a $3,125 fee to re-file for an open
special election.

The Libertarian Party of Texas (LPT) expects to have 167 candidates on
the ballot this November.

"We are very pleased that in Travis County, one of our strongholds,
every voter will once again be able to vote for a Libertarian for
Congress," said Wes Benedict, Executive Director of the LPT.

Travis County also includes part of District 10. Michael Badnarik is the
Libertarian nominee for that district.

Barbara Cunningham replaces Grant Rostig, who received the Libertarian nomination for District 25 in March, but recently re-filed as a Republican.

Benedict continued, "From time to time, Libertarians defect to another
party expecting to be welcomed with open arms, and that's certainly
their right. It will be interesting to see if Republicans back Rostig,
who was against the War in Iraq and against the War on Drugs. At least,
that was the case while he was a Libertarian candidate."

Snakes on a Plane!

I watched Snakes on a Plane last night.

I've gotta say - wow. Really a great movie. I can't believe it, but it was a great movie.

Don't ask me how, but it was great.

Other then that I went to Dragon's Breath today and looked at some nice Hookahs. They don't have a very big variety but the one with the 6 hoses was my favorite. The body of it was purple and the hoses were a bluish purple. It was amazing, reminded me of something that I seen out of a Cheech and Chong movie one time. My friend Wendy was telling me about this one Hookah that has 12 hoses and is about 6 feet tall. She said it looked like something out of a movie. I'm sure she smoked something other then tobacco in it, but you never know.



/rizzn

Advertising and Marketing

This last week has been an exercise in advertising and marketing for me. A run-down of what was accomplished last week for the Rizzn-associated media groups:

• Solidified a deal with a new Blogging PR firm
• Got our third episodes for Podded Meat shot
• Got our second episodes for Podded Meat edited
• Began talks three different ad agencies with focused directly on Vodcast advertising.
• Currently spending a wonderful weekend with my girlfriend (I love her - I know it's not work related, but damn it's been a great weekend!).
  

I do have a few thoughts from this week's work, though. The news is mostly mixed. It wasn't a 100% good or 100% bad week as far as the developments go, but the take-a-way is that things are mostly better than bad.

Oblong Box Stuff
First of all, the blogging thing is going along well, although much short of original projections. The entry level blogging PR company isn't sending nearly the volume of work they originally promised, nor the volume of work they seemed to have in the past. They overshot in their recruitment of bloggers and have more writers than they have work for. As a result, I have consistent amounts of work coming in, but it's not enough to spread around to the growing number of bloggers.

The upside is that the work does seem to be on a slight increase, so this should remedy itself.

The second PR firm I've solidified for the Oblong Box network has a much larger volume of work available for my writers, but they have a stringent recruitment policy. This is both good and bad. The most difficult rule to get around is that the bloggers that perform the placements for this company must have been in existence for at least three months, which currently excludes the bulk of the Oblong Box network (the first tier of writers, i.e. the early adopters, will qualify in about fifteen days).

The upside of this rule is that we're probably not going to run into the problem of having too little work, since their screening process is so stringent.

As I have mentioned before, the payout rates from this group are in most cases 100% more than the current PR company we have, and in some cases, dramatically more (I have seen a couple placements go for $35 a pop, vs the $2 a pop we currently have). This can obviously add up quite quickly.

Podded Meat Thoughts
This week was a technical difficulties filled week. We're still getting our production legs, and technical difficulties greatly increased the production time on our work this week. A critical cable went out on the sound board this weekend, and we had to record to tape instead of recording to hard drive. This really isn't an issue, since the tapes are DV, and maintain the digital format, but we weren't able to monitor sounds. Thank goodness the audio recording system has quadruple redundancy in that format, because two microphones did not record anything at all this weekend.

Additionally, hard drive requirements for other production work in the studio this week made things very difficult to work with. The editing box has a five disk ultra-scsi 3 raid array, and the whole sucker is full up to about 500 meg left (each drive is I think 36 Gig or something). If anyone has a lead on cheap Ultra SCSI3 drives, let me know. We need to upgrade.

We're currently building a new editing box with better drive capacity, but in the meantime, we may need a better harddrive setup to hold us over. There's about enough room on the drive for about four commercial jobs and one week's worth of episodes before the whole machine starts dragging horribly. If we had more shows in the pipe than we currently do, we'd likely be in a bit of trouble.

Incidentally, I'm also scouting out good show ideas. I'm interested in taking a tight knit community site out on the net, and developing a show around the socially driven content that is created there on a regular basis. We were in talks with such a group last week, but they decided to go with a more traditional media outlet instead of us to produce their show. Short-sighted in my opinion, but ultimately their choice.

If you have any ideas in that vein, let me know.

The upside to all this is that we had over 1000 show views between both of our first episodes with almost nil promotion. This project is going to be wildly popular and successful. It's just a matter of nailing down the monetezation. The adfirms I talked to sounded promising, but light background checks with their current vodcast partners proved un-impressive, so I'm still seeking national ad firms willing to expirement in New Media.

Other News
I went to pick up my perscription for my Advair today, and noticed that a lot of the doctors and nurses were useing the same website for all the information they needed about the medications they were handing out. I stoped on of the nurses to ask her more about this site. She said that it was a good and easy way too look up over 3,000 different types of medications, and it told you about the dosage and whatever interactions it might have with other medications taken. It sounds wonderful if you ask me.

Conclusion
Between all these things, and iRP and the campaign junk I'm still trying to keep together, I'm unbelievably busy. I like life this way, but again, as many of you know, things fall through the cracks. I expect a couple more weeks of this before things start to settle down for me. We're trying to decide on whether we're going to do a 10-week season or a 23-week season. I'm leaning towards 10, so we can introduce new shows in about seven weeks or so. It all depends on how quickly things take off.

Check out PoddedMeat on Monday - new eps coming out then!

/rizzn

Wasting Time on YouTube (Davison Design)

I've been looking around on YouTube while I'm designing slates for the shows today, hoping for some inspiration for second season shows. I found this funny commercial




It's for a company who assists inventors through the process of getting their idea to market (Submit Your Idea to Davison). Still, I wish I had that button sometimes.

Contempt for Myself

"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."
- Albert Einstein

Just a quick "I'm Alive" update

This post contains paid placement.

Things are unbelievably busy these days. I'll give you some bulletpoints, since that's all I have time for at the moment.

• If I don't answer your phone call, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means I'm busy. The only calls I take 100% of the time right now are the studio, paying clients, and my girlfriend. Don't be insulted if you're not on the list, it's just that I must prioritize things very carefully for the next couple weeks.
• If you're calling me to pile on more pro bono work, don't bother. I need cashflow, not something to keep me up for another hour before bedtime.
• The shows are going swimmingly. I'm working on slates and graphics that will be going into each show so it'll have more of a custom 'network feel' to it.
• I'm not stopping the blogging network thing - it's very important to me, but it's slightly backburner at the moment. New site creation should resume next week. We're also in the slow process of switching PR companies for our paid placements. Downside: slow transfer process. Upside: much higher payouts (by 100%).
• Does anyone have any contacts with Ad Agencies and Media Groups with national accounts? If so, let me know. It's important.
• I think I'm getting carpal tunnel. I've been typing a lot lately.
• My girlfriend is coming to town this weekend! I'm excited!
• She's staying till Monday!
• I found a company that sets up corporations for $89 without dealing with lawyers. This is actually a pretty good deal, as most online incorporation processes take about that much moneay anyways. Check it out: Nevada incorporation process: http://www.incparadise.com/
  

That's all for the moment. I'll post more later. Maybe.

/rizzn

Podded Meat Update

Despite what was a really rough start to my weekend, Saturday has been incredibly productive, and this evening promises to be even better.

We shot what has been the best episode of Run Time ever, quite entertaining. Laney and Luke were in fine form. I stumbled through reading the news, and I'm going to have to work on my scriptwriting abilities to make it snappier and more interesting, but all and all, it was a decent production. Ad sales on a limited basis are probably going to start with the third episode of everything.

We're still slated to release our first two shows on Monday - RunTime and NewsCube. Head on over to the PoddedMeat website to go check it out.

I'm headed out to Dallas this evening to go spend the weekend with the love of my life. I've missed her dearly this week - she is a calming influence, and I'm generally a much happier person when I'm around her. I'm definately looking forward to that. I'll likely be back in town around iRP time Sunday evening, although I'm toying with the idea of coming back on Monday.

The last part of DragonQuest occurs Tuesday night. It's a closed adventure meant for the people already on it, but if you want to watch from the Inn, you're welcome to join up. Head on over to the iRP website and set up an account if you haven't already.

That's all I have time for at the moment. See you folks later!

/rizzn

Major Personal/Professional Issues

Well, I'll just come out and say it. I fired Darrell today.

It's been a mighty stressful week, things were tightly scheduled, and if all the cogs weren't in exactly the right place, the whole structure (much like a jenga puzzle) would come tumbling down.

And once again, Darrell failed to follow through on something. Those that have been following the exploits of Darrell and I over the years will not be very surprised by this. He was the reason the Mark and Darrell show got canned on RantRadio back in the day. He's probably by far the least prolific blogger on the network, despite the fact he's had two domain names and three blog designs created for him. He's also the sole reason we haven't produced one single episode of LateCast for the PoddedMeat Network yet.

Nevermind the fact that we are two weeks behind schedule on shooting the show - that doesn't seem to matter to him. Nevermind that I impressed upon him the absolute gravity of the situation if he didn't perform. Nevermind the fact that he saw how absolutely upset and angry I was the one time Hannah and Sam were no-shows to a rehersal.

He still found a way to blame the whole situation on me, as he did with the MADshow debacle, and as he has done with the blogging situation.

I had reached my fill of this behavior, and when he hung up on me after giving me lip and attitude, I fired him.

Darrell is no longer associated with any of my projects from this point out.

/rizzn

Just so ya know...

I've got my girlfriend in town for the weekend. Don't expect a lot out of me till Monday!

/rizzn