by Alex Nesbitt
Brian Clark, of Copyblogger, has just released a free report called Authority Rules. Brian’s a great writer and he has done a superb job of growing Copyblogger into a high traffic authority on blogging and copywriting.
If you’re a content producer of any kind, his new report is a fast 18 page read that’s worth getting and reading a couple of times.
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Awesome year. Awesome series by the Lakers. Kobe, Pau, Fish, Odem, Ariza and all the guys were GREAT.
Orlando put up a great fight. They played hard all the way through, but in the end just did not have the depth to beat the Lakers.
Phil did his usual, incredible job of helping great athletes focus and perform. He did it for Michael Jordan and he’s done it for Kobe. Congrats on #10.
Pau showed how tough he really is, ooing up against Dwight Howard. He could not have faced a stronger challenger.
Kobe showed some amazing leadership. It is his time.
Goooooo Lakers. It’s celebration time.
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Podcasting has been around for just over four years now and people are still struggling to make money podcasting. What’s the problem? Maybe we just haven’t discovered the business model(s) that work. There are lots of ideas out there and I thought it would be a good idea to make a list ( and make some money doing it – Note: If you click on links on this post and try the services, it will make me money. Many of the links use affliate program links to illustrate one of these business models. I use all of these programs and refer you to only the ones that seem good. Hope you don’t mind me making some money from writing about ways you can make money:)
Here’s my list. I’ve ordered the list from the what may be the most obvious ideas to the not so obvious ideas. Read to the end to find something you may not have thought about.
If you have another idea add it with a comment. Or you can comment on these ideas.
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Today, only big companies get a tax deduction for health insurance.
Get laid off, no tax deduction for you. You pay taxes on your health insurance bill.
Work for yourself. You pay taxes on your health insurance bill.
To me, this is one of the biggest problems with our health care system.
It makes people captive to working for big companies and captive to the health care plans the company decides on.
It means the unemployed and the entrepreneurs pay much more for health insurance.
The current system is bad policy, bad for business, bad for personal choice and totally BS.
The American Medical Association is asking people to tell their representatives to change this bad policy.
I’ve read their proposal and it seems good.
Tell the bozos in Washington to fix it. I did and I hope you will too.
Here’s a short cut http://ta.gg/2v9
Alex
If you want health care fixed, pass it on.
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt

The LA Games Conference, held in Hollywood, was a great event. I had 10 key takeaways from the show. If you want to learn more, click through to see the video.
- The strong financial performance of the game industry continues despite the bad economy
- The rise of free to play – see FreeRealms.com as an example
- The power of virtual currency, goods, commerce to monetize play and turn communities into economies (Got to wonder when will Facebook and Myspace figure this out?)
- Apple doubled the mobile games market almost overnight
- Phones will become one of the interfaces for games
- Mobile applications are emerging as a new ad unit
- The mobile game/iPhone application market is creating a huge merchandising problem
- Integration of games/real world – See Nolan Bushnell
- Rise of electronic Distribution – Steam
- Emergence of cloud based distribution – Onlive

Digital Podcast 58 [8:32m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Ashton Kutcher and CNN seem to be in a race to 1,000,000 Twitter followers. Ashton brings everyone up to date with this video from his car via Qik.
Some memorable quotes from Ashton:
I found it astonishing that one person can have as big a voice as an entire media company on Twitter.

Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN [1:59m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
If you’re an author, info marketer or publisher and your sick and tired of producing events or content that only a few people consume and you would like to make more money podcasting, then you should learn about Podcast Secrets. Podcast Secrets is a system for monetizing podcasts developed by Paul Colligan and Alex Mandossian.
Paul Colligan and Alex Mandossian have taken the Podcast concept to new heights because their new and improved system for Podcast Monetization lets you connect directly with your readers and audiences with nothing more than a telephone in your hand!
To introduce Podcast Secrets, Paul and Alex are having a special teleseminar.
The guys were kind enough to provide me with a discount code that will save you $79.
Sign up quick – the call is Thursday, April 9, 2009 @ 6p Pacific / 9p Eastern
You can still get the recording of the call at the link below.
Click here now to register for the teleseminar.
Your VIP Discount Code is: “PC916″
(Saves you $79 from the normal $99 tuition)
Click Here to See the Full Podcast Secrets Class
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Kevin Reilly – President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Interviewed by David Wertheimer, Executive Director, The Entertainment Technology Center @ USC
How is the business different today?
When Kevin started at NBC in 1988, he started to see articles being written about how network TV was a dinosaur. The articles we see today are similar. The death of TV is greatly exaggerated. Back then you could see that cable would grow and network TV would lose share to cable.
There was no discussion of how the business model would change back then. TV was the greatest advertising mechanism every invented. While the media mix will change, there is so much information coming out now that people actually miss ads when they get pulled out of shows. People want to know about products and ads play a useful role.
People will declare TV dead. While there is no turning back the clock, there will be TV networks in the future.
What are the fundamentals that will always apply?
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
Stan Rogow, Executive Producer/Director, Gemini Division and CEO of Electric Farm Entertainment.
Why is a successful producer even dealing with the Internet?
Stan says he has a son who was just not watching TV. He says his son asked him about CSI which he saw on YouTube. His son’s generation just doesn’t know about networks.
The Internet is just growing and growing.
What does it take to make a successful show on the internet?
Click to Continue →
by Alex Nesbitt
At the 2009 Future of Hollywood conference, held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California, Blair Westlake, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Media & Entertainment Group was interviewed by Tom Adams, President of Adams Media Research.
Hulu has been a great consumer success. But it’s not clear how it plays out for the traditional distributors like cable and the content producers.
The traditional distributors are saying hold on, we’re paying to distribute this content and you are giving it away for free online.
The content producers are used to the TV load of advertising revenues which is much higher than the ad load at Hulu. We may not be talking about trading analog dollars for digital pennies, but it may be analog dollars for digital dimes.
Click to Continue →