Amazon Introduces Video On Demand

September 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 6 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Movies, TV 

In early September, Amazon announced the availability of Amazon Video On Demand.

Now, you can instantly watch movies and television shows commercial-free on Macs or PCs.

You can enjoy instant playback of hit Hollywood movies and the latest TV shows.

This new movie and TV streaming service offers a wide range of movies, TV seasons, and individual TV episodes.

Of course, to take full advantage of this service, you’ll need a broadband connection to the Internet.

To make it even easier for you to decide to rent or purchase a movie or TV show, the first two minutes of videos automatically play at no charge when you visit the detail page for that video. At any time during this 2-minute viewing period, you can choose to purchase or rent the video to watch it in its entirety.

If you are an Amazon.com affiliate, you can earn up to 10% referral fees on movie and television show purchases. Amazon makes it easy to link to the Video On Demand section of their massive store and you can link to individual videos using standard product links or the versatile movie and TV show preview widget.

NetFlix – an alternative to Amazon

I live in an area where high-speed broadband access to the Internet is not available. So, video on demand, no matter how reasonably priced and convenient, is simply not an option.

I have been a very satisfied NetFlix customer for several years and enjoy watching movies and TV shows by selecting them on the NetFlix website and then receiving the DVDs in the mail. After I’m done watching the video, and re-watching the best, it’s a simple matter of inserting the DVD in the postage-paid envelope and dropping it into the mailbox. A few days later, the next video in the list of shows I have selected is automatically sent to me. There are no late fees and you can keep a DVD until you have the time to watch it and are ready to return it.

Lately, I’ve been watching entire TV shows in order, episode by episode, year by year.

Currently, I’m on season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise, and last month I watched season 3 of Stargate Atlantis and the Stargate Continuum movie.

I’m getting a chance to watch shows I never had time to watch, before.

Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home – Try free for 2 weeks

In addition to renting videos on DVD, some are available for instant viewing, so NetFlix may be a convenient alternative to Amazon.

One advantage that NetFlix has is a fixed price. I subscribe to the plan where I can have up to 3 DVDs out at any one time and pay less than $20 per month. Most months, I can watch about 15 DVDs, and some have four to six TV episodes on them.

Today, for instance, I’m supposed to receive the next two DVDs of Star Trek Enterprise season 3, and that will include four episodes per disc, for a total of eight episodes.

I live on a strange schedule and work whenever I feel like it – an advantage of working at home – so I may watch a video during the day, evening, or even the middle of the night. It’s completely up to me. I can watch the good shows more than once, if I want.

Last month, when I rented Stargate Continuum from NetFlix, I watched it three times before returning it.

I mainly watch science fiction, but over the last few months, I rented the first three seasons of Little House on the Prairie, and Mom loved watching shows that she understood and enjoyed much better than the sci-fi flicks I love.

Currently, I have over 100 DVDs in my NetFlix queue, including the first two seasons of Boston Legal, and I’m considering watching the entire production of The West Wing.

It is convenient and cost-effective to watch videos in your own home. For the price of one or two movies at the theater, you can watch a dozen or more in your home. And, both Amazon and Netflix have many thousands of videos from which to choose.

Plus, for people like me – and possibly you – they both have an affiliate program and you can earn nice commissions for referring people to their services.

All work and no play…

I enjoy working, but there is also a lot to say for entertainment.

I am 100% satisfied with my multi-year experiences with Amazon and NetFlix. I am happy to recommend them to you.

Take a break. Watch a video today. Enjoy yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is Squidoo another blogging platform?

August 18, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Marketing, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Twitter 

Aussie Sire asked a question on one of my twitter update posts and suggested that I rewrite my reply as a blog post. I think that’s a great idea.

He said:

Hi John, I had a look at your Squidoo page and I must say it is very impressive. I have heard of Squidoo and lenses and such but never really looked into them. It seems like another blogging platform but I assume there is a difference?

Hi Sire, thanks for the kind words about my Squidoo page for this blog:

21st Century Affiliate Marketing

Squidoo is not a blogging platform, but it works well with blogs. I try to build a Squidoo lens for each of my blogs for one specific reason: I can syndicate the RSS feed on the lens and Google likes Squidoo lenses. That means that some people may find my blog indirectly via the lens I create on Squidoo.

Squidoo is more of a simple webpage builder and they call each page a lens because the object is to focus on a single topic per page.

You may understand Squidoo a bit more if you read my lens at:

Marketing With Squidoo

That lens syndicates the feed from this blog, my social networking community for Squidoo lensmasters who enjoy marketing, and my blog specifically about marketing with Squidoo.

It also links to other lenses that have information about marketing using Squidoo.

You can build as many (or as few) lenses as you want and it’s always free. In fact, if you build lenses that attract visitors and get clicks, you can earn money from your lenses. Some very few people earn over $1,000 per month; a few dozen lensmasters earn around $100 per month; and most of us earn less than that. Your earnings come from sharing with Squidoo the commissions from Adsense and Glam ads on your lens.

I get a welcome deposit from Squidoo into my PayPal account every month.

Since you already have several blogs, perhaps you could start by building a lens about the main topic of one of your blogs.

You can get started here:

Join Squidoo and start building your own lenses.

But, I earn much more than the payment I get directly from Squidoo, because I promote affiliate links on my lenses and don’t have to share the proceeds from those commissions with Squidoo.

I also promote my CafePress shop on a few of my lenses and link back to some of my websites on other lenses.

So, I use Squidoo both as a traffic generator and as another profit center. It’s also great at cross-promoting lenses, blogs, forums, websites, social networking sites, and other web presences that share common themes and topics.

If you have a blog and you’d like Google to pay more attention, you may want to build a lens about the blog’s main topic and syndicate your RSS feed on the lens. You can also recommend books and other products from Amazon.com.

You can even recommend products from CafePress without having to join their affiliate program, but you’ll be sharing the commissions with Squidoo. It’s worth it because the CafePress module makes it so easy to promote the products you like on CafePress. There are thousands of shopkeepers selling their designs on CafePress and you can select from millions of product/design combinations.

Once a lens is built, it doesn’t take a lot of work to keep it current, and your blog’s feed is automatically updated on the lens on a schedule you can choose, i.e. every hour, every six hours, etc.

Another thing you can do to build interactivity into your lens is to add a guestbook, set up polls, start a duel (conversation/argument), and there are other modules that are of interest, too.

There are a lot of things you can do with Squidoo easily that are more difficult on a blog. I think the two of them work very well together.

Again, you can learn more, if you’re still interested at:

Marketing With Squidoo

I hope that helps you get the idea of what you can do with Squidoo.

One other lens you may want to visit is my lensography, where I write about my lenses, link to some of my blogs, show my Twitter tweets, and more:

Who is John Dilbeck?

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to do my best to answer them or refer you to another site with the answers.

I almost forgot. There is a social networking aspect to Squidoo where you can meet other highly-motivated lensmasters and help cross-promote each others’ sites, lenses, and blogs.

For example every time you add a quality comment to another lensmaster’s lens, you’ll get a link back to your lensmaster page.

Then there is the ability for a visitor to your site to join your fan club. Whenever you post a SquidCast about your lens, people in your fan club and anyone who has marked that lens as their favorite will see the SquidCast on their favorites page at Squidoo.

You can even get a chicklet to show how many fans you have and it links to your lensmaster page:

A lens is like a blog in one respect. Each time you publish your lens (after the initial build or whenever it is updated), you can send what is called a SquidCast, but which is really a posting that is added to the lens’ RSS feed. Then you can ping that update to spread the word among the large RSS aggregators.

Of course, the SquidCast is also shown on the favorites page of your fans and the people who favorited that lens. It is also promoted on the Squidcast Twitter feed.

So, there are a lot of reasons to include Squidoo as an integral part of your marketing mix, even if you are a blogger or webmaster, already.

And, don’t forget, you don’t have to join Squidoo because you want to make money. You can build your lenses on the topics of your choice, so tell your stories, publish your poems, or show photos of your kids and pets.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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