Keep up the good work.

Justin.TV is a week old, and is taking the web (or at least the hyper-interconnected……

I actually didn’t call you, but thanks for the advice!

Justin

As an infrequent visitor here, I found these comments and started to read, and way down in #48 the name ZeFrank jumped out at me.

Way back in the year 2000, when I was still very wet behind the ears, I created this page as ’something for potential users’ to do !

http://auctionpix.co.uk/doodle.html

It uses ZeFranks doodle thingy, which after all these years I am still impressed with.

I’m not sure, but I think this guy called me a couple months ago. I was too busy to call back but if I had, I would have given him the following advice:

1. If you want to attract mainstream advertisers, keep it clean. I remember my publicist wanting to quit when I turned down an interview from Howard Stern, yet a few weeks later when I landed UPS as a sponsor, they confirmed that had I interviewed on Stern, they wouldn’t have become a sponsor.

2. Sell as much advertising in advance as possible. We sold about $1,000,000 before I entered the house. The next 12 months the “sales” team sold about $200,000. (At the time, we paid Yahoo! about $100,000/month for the streaming video so you can see the problem we had.)

3. Don’t skimp on the video. Use a video camera not a web cam.

4. Find something to build hype. For us, it was Y2K. You would have thought I was plannign to go to the moon. People were genuinely worried that the Internet would go up in flames before I entered the house at noon on 1/1/2000. But since situations like that are once in a lifetime (unless daylight savings time is changed and Microsoft doesn’t patch their OS) don’t expect too much media attention.

5. Partner with traditional media. Invite the journalists to “walk in your shoes” for a day. They have a larger viewing audience and they are too conceited to think you’ll glean any viewers from them.

6. Bands, bands, bands…. Local bands are always looking for exposure (myspace anyone?). More importantly, people always want to find a fresh sound that hasn’t been jaded by the industry which = more viewers.

7. Blog! I had a “Daily Journal” (wish we’d thought to call it blogging) built on a Lotus Domino platform I had created. Fortunately now you can blog with free software and even video blog and interact with your viewers as they blog their responses.

8. Don’t sign with CAA. I was told it would make us more money but it was one of the biggest mistakes I made. They did nothing but prevent me from breaking the actor’s strike in commercials at the time. But what more do you expect from an “interactive media” agency with a website like this: caa.com.

9. Don’t “be the guy” if it’s your idea. Anyone can be the guy but only you can run the business with the passion and integrity it needs. You can’t always trust people to run your business for you. They might not pay payroll taxes they withheld from employees, use their salary to support a drug habit, or spend all the money before you see a dime. Not that any of that happened, but I’m sure it’s possible

10. And most importantly keep it clean. (See #1) There’s enough trash online. You actually will stand out more from the noise with clean, educational, and compelling content. My favorite moments were the US premier of the Wiggles, the launch of eHarmony, and a sunrise service on Easter Sunday by Watermark.org.

PS

Justin-
I’m sorry I didn’t have time to call you back.
Mitch