“It’s about creating new market opportunities. Giving users new ways to be creative…We see our technology as a platform for other things” – Chad Hurley.

Like many other concepts that we now take for granted as part of our everyday lives, YouTube developed from a fragmented series of ideas and became the product of its own popularity. Rather than representing the result of a well thought out business plan, or a journey through the helping hands of various angel investors, the explosion of the ultimate concept propelled YouTube from an unknown to a household name in very short order. Cofounder and chief executive officer Chad Hurley is a graphic designer, but always had an eye for a business opportunity. Little did he dream, surely, that his first venture would be a beauty to behold.

Chad Hurley was born in Birdsboro, PA in 1976. He exhibited a keen interest in computers during high school, but an even keener interest in design arts. In 1999 he graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in finance. Ironically, his first job position was at PayPal, another quick startup-to-Internet phenomenon. He is credited with designing the initial PayPal logo as part of his job initiation and was to go on to make a significant impression within the company, engaging two company engineers, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim to help him brainstorm his business idea.

The Web 2.0 revolution was really humming at that time and in 2002 auctioneer eBay bought out PayPal as part of its expansion plans. Hurley received a bonus from this transaction which he used, in co-operation with Chen and Karim to launch YouTube. Launch may be too grand a word, as the initial days of the company were spent in less than ideal surroundings, working from homes and in tandem with a couple of handfuls of dedicated enthusiasts, all working more for love than money. Chad was keen to develop something which had the chance to “affect people’s lives,” and he had a keen eye for popular culture. He worked on a process of trust and friendship with his compatriots and his skills as a good motivator certainly helped in those early days.

YouTube did not really have a business model, although the team quickly came to learn that they needed core video upload sites to distribute videos in and around the community. It wasn’t too long before the concept became known within the blogosphere and suddenly went viral. YouTube went from virtually nothing to one million visitors per day in a very short space of time.

With some assistance from the former chief financial officer of PayPal, Roelof Botha, Hurley and his team were able to secure significant rounds of funding to fuel explosive growth. Storage and distribution of video files requires a huge server capacity, a team of very knowledgeable people and the ability to scale on an almost unheard-of level. Hurley basically created “a community around video,” and the concept seems so simple, yet essential today. “I see our service as one that’s been needed for a long time. The pieces to make it all happen just weren’t in place until we came around.”

YouTube was sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, with significant portions of the wealth attributed to Hurley, Chen and Karim. In addition to addressing the power of popular culture, YouTube has become the chosen marketing tool for corporations large and small. People love the moving image and they often opt to open a video file before a static file when they surf the net. There are clearly significant options for monetization, although Hurley has always said that “we’re building a community and we don’t want to bombard people with advertising. We’re not in a hurry. We’re trying to improve the experience for people on our site.” Nevertheless, as YouTube now represents a significantly scaled search engine in its own right, “pre-roll” ads may yet appear when you click to view your favorite videos.

The YouTube of today likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, for as Hurley puts it, “everybody aspires to be a star.”

Matthew Toren

In this grand old world of search engine optimization, technicians, advocates and clients alike all tend to get caught up in the terminology, the latest analysis of the Google “slap,” an interpretation of the most complex algorithms and the tactics necessary to jump ahead of your closest competitors within the search engine rankings. Many snake oil salesmen will tell you that you should just focus on following their techniques and opening their bag of tricks and you can get your latest “made for Adsense” masterpiece way up there on the rankings.

As the Internet market as a whole has become more and more mature and as search engine mechanics develop accordingly, we see that it is far less likely for an artificially enhanced webpage to achieve good rankings. So much emphasis is now placed on quality of content as opposed to pure technicality that it behooves each one of us within the Internet marketing arena to strive for top quality content.

Those of us who have been around a while sometimes get frustrated when they see sites that have little to contribute appear within higher positions on search engine results pages, but as time goes by they are becoming fewer and fewer. In short, you need to make sure that your site contains remarkable information and is designed as part of an overall marketing initiative to provide something of significant value. Once you are able to do this and to demonstrate that you go above and beyond, then results for you will naturally follow. We know that authority sites have no problem in linking to other authority sites, or to sites that provide significant value and you should really be sure that you deserve your place at the top of the search engine results before you strive to get there.

We often hear that the cream rises to the top and this is appropriate here as well. You should not spend too much time fretting about your search engine optimization unless or until you are sure that the product or service that you have to offer, or the information that you are trying to disseminate is first class and worthy of a position ahead of its peers.

As the search engine engineers hone their skills we are likely to see even more emphasis placed on quality of content and social proof. Reputations will be more important and you should spend more of your time developing and perfecting your Internet reputation as part of an overall search engine marketing approach, rather than through egocentric search engine optimization efforts!

How have you got noticed?

Matthew Toren

The marriage of convenience between MSN and Yahoo gave us Bing. The birth of this child should have been celebrated with more verve by the online marketing community as we might finally have something to stand up against the omnipresence of the great Google. Not that we have particular reasons to be displeased with Google, as it provides a fantastic service and has spawned a number of mostly free tools that webmasters are very pleased to have received. However, a monopolistic situation is never good from an overall perspective and the fact that Yahoo seemed to be floundering around in the waters was not very palatable.

In the world of online marketing, we basically rely on results retrieved through search engines more than we would wish to admit. Our websites are always optimized to make them crawlable and readable at the same time and we put great emphasis on achieving a high ranking in the eyes of Google, primarily. It remains to be seen whether the creatively promoted Bing will make any inroads into what is still a monopoly for Google, but it’s advance should be heralded by everyone in this field.

Bing markets itself as more of a “decision engine,” obviously seeking to set itself apart from Google. It suggests that it is intuitive and can really understand “what we mean” when we try and enter those all important keywords. As such, they will often return a very different set of results as compared to Google and this may in turn provide us Internet marketers with additional ideas and information for our campaigns. We can now turn to a variety of upstart sites to enable us to view interpretations of both Google and Bing (and others) at the same time.

One of our favorites is Bingle, which can be easily added to your browser bar, as can Bing and Google and Stringy. Furia is a very basic option for quick access.

If you want to take this a step further, you can choose to compare results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, InfoSpace, AltaVista, Lycos and Dogpile using the creative tools provided by Googawho. Search3 also includes a three-way selection tool, choosing from Twitter, Yahoo and eBay.

Make your selection and try analyzing certain results from both sides of the fence, as it were. There’s no such thing as too much information.

What’s your search engine of choice?

Adam Toren

Many people are being lured to the world of Internet marketing as our new age unfolds before us. People are now becoming multidimensional and looking for multiple streams of income, once only touted by those late-night infomercial gurus. But is there room for everybody in the Internet world? Will this process of jumping on the Internet bandwagon lead to oversaturation and the headlong rush into something else? Of course this is highly unlikely if not impossible as we see the growth of the Internet and the explosion of social media platforms, only seeking to solidify the online experience for thousands of people, who are discovering the phenomenon on a daily basis.

The question still remains in many minds however – how is it possible to make money through Internet marketing? The short answer is that you should select a product or service as something of a compromise, bearing in mind that you should ideally be passionate about what you do but also be fully aware that there is a market out there to enable you to sell whatever that product or service should be.

Experts, such as Matt Cutts of Google, advocate that you should always be passionate about your Internet endeavors. This will enable you to keep at it, maintaining enthusiasm for those daily blog posts or those regular site updates, the creative content provision necessary to ensure that your presence is relevant and welcomed. It is reasonably argued that without an element of passion for your work, you may not be able to maintain it over the long term or worse still, the lack of passion will come across in your creativity.

Coupled with this passion for what you do, the Internet entrepreneur must ensure that there is an adequate market for his or her wares. It is true to say that we are all passionate about something and most of us have more than just a passing interest in many different spheres. Does this translate into a good business plan? This is where adequate research comes in prior to launching a project and the selection of expertly targeted keywords to ensure that your research provides you with information which is totally relevant to your concept. If you can see that large numbers of people are often searching for information on your subject and that the market is not overly saturated by other individuals or companies, then you are off to the races.

There are many ways of earning money online, through e-commerce, affiliate marketing, service provision, various advertising platforms. Whichever approach you choose, create value or you’ll never earn the income you desire. For instance, it is no good creating a website around a keyword with the sole intention of driving people immediately away from that website to a revenue earning alternate. This approach is sometimes known as “made for Adsense,” as these webpages are composed of nothing but adverts provided by the Google advertising company. There’s nothing of value on the pages and the visitor has little choice but to click one of the ads to move forward. When the click is made, the site owner earns a commission.

There is no longevity in “made for Adsense” sites and they are not recommended. Whatever your niche, make sure that you create your own value. As long as you have something different to say you have a good chance and will, over time, build your presence, creating your role as niche expert and making long-term money through having supplied something of value.

Have you found your niche?

Matthew Toren