Archive for the “Blogs & Websites” Category

Today, O2 Media President/CEO Gerald Czarnecki emailed me a PDF letter to voice his concerns of allegations and accusations against the company and business he works in.

However, my reporting on O2 Media has been relatively light and mostly indirect. Most of it was actually focused on “Incredible Discoveries”, not O2 Media itself.  What seems to be damaging to O2 Media are the apparent connections to “Incredible Discoveries”, earlier businesses, and companies through related parties that have many complaints and lawsuits.

It would seem they really want my “approval” and yet all I have done is accurately report on information I found, acquired, and corroborated:

• Florida Division of Corporations
• Broward County Clerk of Courts
• CorporationWiki
• Florida Attorney General’s Office
• My phone interviews with various defendants
• Google search engine research
• Numerous email complaints and reports I have received
• Email from O2 Media employee (jhc0615@aol.com)
• Palm Beach Post newspaper story

Getting my “approval” would certainly not change the past or my informational findings. In my open response to Gerald Czarnecki, I recommended he look within his own organization to clear up any unhappiness that is occurring.

Before I even contacted TubeMogul (a video distribution web service), I suspected that I would be in for sticker-shock.  It is always a bad sign when a company offers a free service but then list no prices for the upgraded versions.  It is sort of like buying a car with no sticker price.  It does not give me a good sense of security.  I searched the Internet for the prices but most of the people posted spouted the TubeMogul party line that they have a free version.

However, the free version means very little beyond using it for testing purposes.  Why bother getting invested with a service (no matter what the features are) if they are going to blow the budget?

While 100 video deployments per month sounds impressive, one video to the top 10 video sites will use up 10% of your quota.  And if you happen to screw up along the way, which is entirely likely, that will chisel away at the monthly quota.  Basically, you can expect to distribute around 9 videos per month at best.

To be fair, their sample free service seems to be pretty good.  I was pleased with it.  Otherwise, I would not have even bothered to ask for the price for the upgraded versions.  Also, TubeMogul has the right to focus in on any market that they choose.  Personally, I think they have cut a large slice of potential customers out simply because of the $500 entry barrier.

The will argue the entry barrier is $0 but I didn’t just fall of the turnip truck yesterday.  Yes, you can try it out for free and get some minimal use but the true entry point is $500.  You should keep that in mind.

Personally, I am looking into other options (which there are).  HeySpread.com has a “pay as you use” model which is interesting but that might get tricky depending on how the math works out.  I am not going to even mention the others until I try it myself.

I know a LOT of people who are willing to pay but most are not going to shell out $500/month for this service.  They will brag about the analytics but that is secondary to me to the time savings.

This is a teaser post. I don’t have much I want to reveal at this time except for a couple of nuggets.

I am working on a project called the CEO Publishing University.  If all goes well, it will launch in Spring 2010.  This is a work-in-progress.  Don’t assume anything you see on the website will be in the final version. Don’t read more into the project until I officially announce.  I am making no promises to anything or anyone until I make it “official”.

Yes, it is very much related and tied to my current published series, “The TurnKey Publisher” Series.

I am very excited about this project and I am currently assembling a team of advisors.

Again, all of this is a tease but it isn’t a joke.

This was first published on The TurnKey Publishing Blog.

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As an added feature to the TurnKeyPublisher.com website, I have added a Discussion Forum as an open and free resource for anyone interested in getting into the independent publishing business, how to write a book, how to produce audio programs, and other related subjects.

I have visited various publishing discussion forums and I am disappointed by what I see.  There is clearly a lot of interest but there are lots of spam-like posts, self-promotional posts, and otherwise unrelated posts.  Having successfully operated and managed a very active business discussion forum for many years, I thought I was done with that phase of my life.

However, it looks like I am getting back in the discussion forum game on the subject of Independent Publishing because I want to see a better quality and better managed forum where there is quality information and solid enforcement of rules to keep out unrelated, spam-like, and self-promotional postings.

Like my prior forum, I will be assembling a small team of subject matter experts who will assist me in managing and answer questions on this forum.  For now, I am both the Host and Moderator.

If you have any questions regarding how to write non-fiction books or starting an independent publishing business, you will want to register yourself and participate.

This was first posted on The TurnKey Publishing Blog.

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I have set up The TurnKey Publisher Fan Page within Facebook for anyone who wants to follow the latest TurnKey Publisher updates.

Do a search on “TurnKey Publisher” within your Facebook account and you should find it.

This was first posted on The TurnKey Publishing Blog.

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After some thought and consideration, I have decided to establish a Twitter account for myself as The TurnKey Publisher.

You can find me, The TurnKey Publisher, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tkpublisher.

At this time, I cannot promise daily updates but I will try to provide updates from time to time.

This was first posted on The TurnKey Publishing Blog.

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I have finally launched The TurnKey Publisher Channel on YouTube. Although centered on the subjects of independent publishing, book publishing, audio publishing, and accelerated publishing, I will be stretching myself and producing videos that are tangential to publishing.  If you don’t know what that means yet, you probably will as time progresses. As a teaser, I will be discussing the importance and strategy of educational marketing and credibility marketing.  IN a time where trust is harder than ever to earn, learning how to do educational marketing and credibility marketing will be essential to long-term survival in these difficult economic times.

The videos will be an ongoing work-in-progress.  I will give everyone fair warning that as I add new and better videos, I will be removing the videos that I feel are a bit substandard. However, if you can get past my clumsiness and awkwardness of a few of these videos and focus on the information I am presenting, I trust you will get some value out of it.

I recently sent a batch of very old 110 and 126 negatives along with a variety of developed paper photographs collected over the years (some going back over 20+ years) to have them scanned and preserved digitally.  Many of my negatives and paper photos were showing signs of age and I decided I better do something about it while I could.

Once again, I used my favorite digital photo scanning vendor ScanCafe.  They have come a ways since I began using them a couple years ago.  They have gotten better at what they do and more efficient.

I am thrilled once again to experience a time warp visually reliving the moments those photos captured.  In many cases, it is a better experience to view them onscreen in high-resolution than to see them on small paper photos.

I have uploaded all of my digitally-taken and the scanned photos to my favorite online photo hosting service, SmugMug as a backup in case my computers die and/or I lose the photo DVDs.