Corporate Blog

Practice Pitch Results

Thanks Dave!

That’s pretty much what I was thinking. I have also found that ClickTube lacks stickiness; that is, users have little reason to come back. Also, I’ve been reviewing the project with Josh Matthews and we’ve come up with a long list of issues, both technical and business. I’m stepping back to review the plan and decide where to take it, no doubt the business model will need to be radically changed.

Btw, I really enjoyed TEDx. I like the high level of thinking. I feel that most of us spend too much time looking at the trees and not the forest.

See you at the hive, JR

From: David T
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 6:37 AM
To: J.R.
Subject: Re: Practice Pitch for ClickTube

Hi JR,

Sorry for the slow response; was busy with TEDx and a million other things.

The general feedback was that you're working in a place that is hard to protect from YouTube. There were also concerns about HTML5. Pretty predictable. I think to allay those concerns you'd need to have some market traction and/or a few partners lined up. If you can get something like that going, you may find some interest in a local angel or two and then be able to leverage that into interest from more local investors and possibly a specialist on the west coast.

Hope that helps some!

Dave

On Oct 20, 2010, at 9:50 AM, J.R. wrote:

Hi Dave,

I’ve been meaning to catch up with you to get the feedback from my practice pitch, but I think we’ve both been so busy it’s hard to connect. Is there a good time to catch you? Thx, JR

What about video magazines?

Met with Mr. Joel Shalowitz yesterday. He explained that he wanted to use Clicktube as a platform for a Weekly Video magazine that would feature the Jewish community in and around the Baltimore-Washington area. We tried to decide metrics including break-even traffic, but I just don’t have enough data from Clicktube yet to get good numbers.

I realized that part of my problems are that Clicktube has strayed away from it’s original objective to be just a platform. Instead of Clicktube trying to match film makers and retailers and advertisers, we should let them do that themselves. This means that we need to let them:

Easily upload videos (need to open this to the public)
Choose ad campaigns themselves. They can pick who they advertise based on content and incentives
Let them upload products to the catalog themselves.

This will take a considerable amount of programming.

YouTube: Broadcast yourself

ClickTube: Be your own broadcast station

Lessons Learned, OCT2010

Issues	Lessons Learned	What We should Do
In-house film making is not working. Trying to unite retailers and filmmakers is virtually impossible and comes with its own set of problems and issues. Perhaps the biggest issues is that filmmakers (most) are motivated by ego, not money. They have little interest in product placement. Successful filmmakers already have other sources of income so they don’t need the product placement. Retailers like the idea of getting more exposure for their products but have little faith in the business model and won’t donate free samples unless they have control over how they are used. We talked to Zappos who was willing to listen and work with us, but insisted that their name be shown. They suggested placing a Zappos shoe box in the background. Making videos is very expensive. The editing alone takes hours and hours, even days. We would have to sell a lot of products at a very high margin to make up for these costs. This was also a great point form Josh: There are too many problems with filmmakers. We can’t solve all of their problems and solve our overall problem (getting more exposure for retailers) at the same time.	- Need to cut either filmmakers or retailers or both out of the equation. Probably best to eliminate the role of filmmakers. - Let the users make the videos. This will same tons of $$ in costs.	Eliminate the role of film makers.
Marketing. When we market, we get hits, but as soon as we stop marketing, the hits go away. The means we need a system that keeps users coming back. Otherwise, are marketing $/efforts are for nothing.	Most effective marketing: SEO Getting a high listing on Google can get lots of traffic. The key is to monetize that traffic. Email: Very effective if you have addresses that are relevant. Getting content creators to market their own content (see below) SEO every video. Concentrate on SEO Slowly build a reliable email list/subscribers. Build a presence on fb and twitter. 10,000 fb fans will get you noticed by investors.
Focus is too broad	ClickTube’s current focus is too broad. We don’t have the resources to be another Youtube or a Vimeo or even a metacafe. Need to focus on a niche.	GET MORE FOCUS!! Find a niche and stick with it.
Not getting conversions.	Even if people click on objects, they won’t buy them. At this point I think the reasons are: - They are just clicking to test the technology. - They don’t trust us enough to buy from us. - They go to Google or big shopping sites and buy it. - We just don’t have enough traffic to get the small % of people who will actually buy something. - Our content does not flatter the product. I watch QVC for a few hours and noticed the power of the host. They are selling a life style, not a product. Products don’t sell themselves. A guy from Toyota once told me that their good cars sell themselves. If that’s true, why would they spend any $$$ at all on marketing?	??? have no idea here, keep thinking!
*Good Thing* Filmmakers will market their own stuff if you show them how.	Getting/helping the content creators market their own content is a big help and saves us lots of $$$$ on marketing. Even if we pivot, we should keep this strategy.	Keep doing this J
Maintaining a catalog of products is difficult	Our current model is to offer the product from sale from us then drop ship it. I’ve done some research and found that drop shipping will only work as a temporary solution at best. Zappos started by drop shipping but quickly moved to carrying their own inventory. There are many issues with drop shipping (too many to list here). So it’s not really a good solution. PIVOT? Instead of offering the products, show a list of available products, their retailers, and coupons.	Ditch the product catalog. OR, turn it off for now. Perhaps in the future we can automate this process somehow.
TEAM TEAM TEAM	It’s all about the team, I’m reminded of this every day.	FIND TEAM MEMBERS
We’re not getting featured in hot blogs nor are we ready too.	I talked to Opinionaided.com after their pitch presentation. They got a huge boost from getting reviewed in a popular blog in Germany (as far as I remember the conversation). This added a lot of users, but they didn’t have the staff in place to analyze and capitalize on the traffic. They do now.	Get the site ready for a big review. Make sure in one line, we can describe exactly what the site does.
The Player: - The upload process is confusing and cumbersome. - It’s not integrated with the rest of the site. - The video stops playing when you click on something. - Access control with the Veeple player doesn’t work and they seem to have no plans on fixing it – very dangerous for us. - It doesn’t have the ability to server ads or pre/post rolls.	The player need to be easy to use.	We need our own player and it needs to be integrated with the site.
I’m failing, but I’m learning	Not a bad thing	Keep doing this as long as your getting closer to success.

added later:

The interactive video world is growing leaps and bounds. I was just looking at the player at wirewax. I love the idea of letting users add their own tags. Adding tags/hotspots to video takes a lot of time. We need to move this to the user side. I’ve also checked out mailVU.com. They have a built in video recorder. This would be a great way for users to record themselves directly to the site, no need to download/upload files.

Thinking:

Buy stuff from a local store.
As you check out, pick up a small card with their link
At home, log into ClickTube and show off your stuff.
Add the link from the card to your video.
Market your video.
When someone clicks on a link, you (user) gets paid.

The technology to do all of this is out there! How to utilize it and get traction??

(using the same technology as mailVU)

User log’s in
Enter product they will review. (this should be designed so they review one product at a time. It should automatically SEO the video)
Enter retailer ? retailers code?
Record the review
Press publish.
Video is available on site.

Doing some research:

Trending for terms related to shopping reviews is going up (getting more traffic).
The keyword competition for a ‘review brush’ is much less than ‘brush.’ Each video should feature just one product and be SEO’d for that product.
1. Ex. Instead of having a brush and hair dryer in one video, one video should be made of the brush and SEO for ‘review brush’ while the other should be made for ‘hair dryer’ and optimized for review hair dryer.
2. Need keywords with high monthly searches, but low competition.
3. The word “review” has 55 million searchs/month yet rated as low competition.
4. ‘movie review’ has 1 million search/month, but very low competition rating.
5. As users enter a description of what they are reviewing, the video/page should be automatically SEO’d for that item.

What about video reviews?

Meet with Josh today. Boy, it really helps to get someone else’s opinion. He quickly identified the problems I was trying to solve and I added all of the ‘hidden’ issues that come with working with filmmakers and retailers. We looked at a couple of other site that are trying to match producer and advertiser and I talked about all of the issues that they will face. One major issue is filmmakers. Let’s face it, filmmakers are a pain in the ass to work with, and they’re not very motivated to make money. We both like the idea of cutting them out of the picture.

Josh mentioned social shopping, and I added that I have been thinking of doing more of a ‘QVC’ type of thing.

Josh recommended reading The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell and the four steps to Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank. I can’t afford the four steps so I ordered the tipping point.

Troubles with filmmakers :(

Trying to get filmmakers and retailers together is like trying to get Democrats and Republicans to agree on fiscal policy. Their motivations are completely opposite. I finally got the director onboard with product placement, but I can tell he thinks it’s just another hassle to deal with.

We shot a short film, b-kids, which is supposed to server as a demo for ClickTube.com and an entry to a local film festival called the 29 days later film festival. The piece cost $3500 including $1600 I paid for a used camera.

ClickTube beta