Ever see that video of that kid on YouTube who was all doped up from his dentist appointment? It’s funny, yes. Well guess what? His dad is now $25k richer from that video via the YouTube Partner Program which allows video owners to share in the wealth of advertisements. Watch this report.

If you haven’t gotten your hands on a cheap Flip cam yet, what are you waiting for? Then get over to the Online Video Toolkit and learn how to use it.

Then all you have to do is film yourself or your kid or your wife or your dog or whomever… doing something funny and you could be rich! :) Ok, it’s probably harder than that, but you get the point, right?

$25k for a video he made in 1 minute? Not a bad ROI. I’m a YouTube partner and I earn very small amounts from my videos because I make videos that don’t really get viewed that much. I think my most viewed video is just over 50k views and that’s because it was a funny political video. Most of my videos get a few thousand views at most.

If you can make fun, viral videos you can earn some bucks. Try it.

I’ve been an AT&T customer for over 12 years, at least. I know my cell phone, with the same number, has been with them for at least that long. I currently use them for my DSL in my office location, and used to get a phone line with them, and even a 800-number in the past. So my point is, I know AT&T pretty well. We’ve had our disagreements and technical problems, but let’s be honest, who doesn’t?

Now AT&T is launching a new Web portal geared and targeted to small business owners (people like me). AT&T Small Business InSite. Oh, there’s a contest too, read below for that.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Obviously, it is their intent to promote themselves by providing a helpful resource of information for small business owners. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a great example of good solid content marketing that solves problems for the customer. I like the Idea Exchange idea. Reminds me of a place where people with similar challenges and opportunities can get together to share information. They have experts (how do I apply?) and even courses you can take. I can’t tell if you have to pay for them though. You need to login before you get details. Not sure I like that. There’s also a tips and tools page.

I like the idea here. It makes sense to do this. I just wish it was more comprehensive but perhaps that’s just because it’s new? I deal with small businesses every day. That’s me, and my customers, so I know what challenges we face. AT&T seems to understand that the best way to reach us as customers is to help us solve our problems. I appreciate that.

The Contest…

Don’t forget about the contest. It’s called the AT&T Small Biz Tech Makeover online contest. The winner(s) get expert advice and one year of free AT&T products and services. It will be awarded to the small business owner who can best explain his or her need for a technology makeover. I don’t know about you, but as a small business owner just starting out, I could have used a makeover back then. I know most small biz owners could, and SHOULD enter this contest.

If you want to participate in the contest, just complete the online form here and send in a short video with your story. Easy, and if you have subscribed to my OnlineVideoToolkit.com you would know how to make a Web video quickly by now. :)

So today, for me, another first. I got to hang out and interview the person with the most viewed video on YouTube… EVER! Yep, that’s Judson Laipply (@judsonlaipply on Twitter), the guy who performed the Evolution of Dance video that has been seen, at the time of this blog post, over 120 MILLION times. Wow. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here.

Lucky for me, Judson was speaking today at the Online Marketing Summit here in Cleveland, OH. (Which, by the way, is an awesome event. Look for one coming near you soon).

So I found myself sitting in the front row for his lunchtime talk today to learn about his success and well, to watch him dance. So first, here’s him doing the dance today. And yes, he does the dance at the end of every speaking gig.

After the event I was able to spend 15-minutes or so talking with Judson about the business of viral, and Web fame and the corporate world’s lack of creativity when it comes to doing something remarkable. Here’s part 1 of that interview.

Here’s part 2.

I hope you enjoy hearing from Judson as much as I did. Here’s a guy who “just did it”. He had an idea and thought it might be cool and just went for it. Now that’s someone who I can relate with.

I found his presentation and his success story fascinating and inspirational. Visit Judson’s site at MightAsWellDance.com.

Take a look at this video. It’s nothing special. A woman who sells trees and plants in her backyard posted this home made video on YouTube of her touring around her yard showing you what she has to offer.

Go ahead, just watch it. All she did was link this off of her Craigslist page.

Man, that video completely sucked right? Wrong!

I love that video. Why? Because it’s real. Because if I was in the market for a new cherry tree and had the choice between going to this woman’s backyard down the road from me and Home Depot… I’d MUCH rather go to her.

See, I’ve been saying this for years… It has NOTHING to do with the quality of the video. It doesn’t have to be scripted, or with multiple shots, or done with big fancy equipment. It just doesn’t.

I simply has to be real, and solve a problem.

Anyone can do this. Get a Flip cam (BuytheFlip.com) and point it at yourself or your products and click the record button. Then upload it to YouTube and you’re done.

Bad videos suck… In a good way.

Again, anyone can do this. You HAVE to do this. Check out my free Online Video Toolkit to learn how to make Web videos.

Thank you to Robert Crabtree for pointing me to this video and sharing his story with me.

Every Wednesday at Noon I do a show called “The Web Success Show”. It’s a free show where I talk about all of the tips, resources and ideas I have floating around in my head based upon my experiences. The point of the show is to help you become more successful online with your business, brand or career. What, you don’t want to be successful?

You can either click here to listen to the podcast, or watch the live stream recording below.

On this week’s show I talk about a new promotional idea a company is using to get my attention and how you can do it too. I also cover how to get testimonials and show you my two biggest, and free/easy, techniques to do so.

Here are some of the links from the show.

• http://www.grasshopper.com/idea
• http://www.k7.net
• What if? So what?
• http://www.onlinevideotoolkit.com
• http://www.tengoldenrules.com

Enjoy the show and feel free to call in and listen next week! Just visit http://www.thebizwebcoach.com and join the email signup list to be notified of new shows.

In my presentation called “Beyond the Website” (watch here) I have a slide that says this.

“The Internet is for kids and geeks, and MY customers will never be online.” – Unnamed 1990’s executive.

I don’t remember where I found that quote online, and I have no idea if it’s real or not (I bet it is). But I love it because it illustrates the short-sighted approach that many people take when emerging trends and technologies grab the hearts and minds of the world.

The thing is, people are still saying that quote, but today they’re inserting social media in place of “the Internet”. You know, things like Twitter, and Facebook and Myspace and all the rest. All of those things are just for kids and geeks… right.

Let’s redo the quote for effect. You know you know somebody like this.

“Social media is for kids and geeks, and MY customers will never use social media.” – Unnamed executive.

At this point I could go on and on about how that’s a big fail waiting to happen, and most surely a pink slip for the person who said it down the road as their business lags behind competitors who didn’t think that way.

However… let’s not do that. Let’s prove them wrong. On another slide in my presentation I point to a BusinessWeek piece that defines the 6 types of social media users.

BIG Image of above graphic

If you could really dig into this slide you would see that it’s not just kids that are using social media. The scale skews to younger, sure, but in fact, this data (which is two years old btw) does indeed show a major trend toward “older” people using social media in all kinds of facets.

Ignore social media at your own peril. This is your last warning!

The other day I did a video interview with Bill Vick of XtremeRecruiting.tv.

On Skype. And it was recorded. Pretty darn neat if you ask me.

Here’s the interview.

How do you do this? You use Skype.com, which is free. Then you download a piece of software called Call Recorder from Ecamm.com. ($15). I should mention this is Mac only. Anyone know how to do this on a PC?

When you start Skype, you tell it to record the conversation and well, it does! That’s it. Pretty darn neat way of doing video interviews.

One of the best things you can do in video that you can’t do in text, or even audio, is explain things. You know, like a tutorial. Guy Kawasaki has a great article about tutorials here.

This week I sat through eight hours of companies pitching themselves to a panel of experts at SXSW. It was a challenging experience because the companies had two minutes to explain what they do, and very few could. Indeed, in most cases the first question that the panelists asked was, “What exactly do you do again?” The same thing happens hundreds of thousands of times every day as people visit company websites. How many websites pass this simple test: “People can understand what the company does in two minutes or less”?

One of the video tutorials he talks about is this one below.

Here’s another tutorial video below that talks about the credit crisis.

You should watch for two reasons. 1. Because it’s a good video that explains how the USA got into this financial mess, and 2. Because it shows an effective way to explain something in visual form.

Of course, Lee over at CommonCraft.com is the master of these types of videos as well. Here’s a video on investing in what they call “plain English”.

These types of tutorial videos are an extremely effective way of getting your point across about a complex issue. Try it.

I should point out that making these types of videos is not easy. Many of them require effects that need to be done by a professional video editor or animator. It’s not going to be cheap to get this done. Contact me if you need a resource.

Just recently I’ve updated my blog theme to the WPUnlimted theme, which I really like. It’s a powerful, professional, modern type of theme that is in the new wave of wordpress themes that “do it all for you” without having to know how to code.

The people who created that theme have given me 10 free copies to give away to you, my loyal readers. So for next week, I’m going to give 5 of those away ($60 value each!). Here’s how to enter to win.

RULES TO ENTER

First, you must become an affiliate for the theme by visiting here and signing up (it’s free). The good news is once you do you can promote the theme and earn 40% for all sales you make of it.

Second, you need to send out a Tweet that sends them to this post. Something like (include hashtag #wpunlimited so I can track entries):

@jimkukral is giving away 5 brand new WPUnlimited professional Wordpress themes. Enter yourself at http://www.jimkukral.com/win-a-wpunlimited-wordpress-professional-theme #wpunlimited

That’s it. I’ll pick the winners at the end of next week and announce it here on my blog.

What’s the #1 question you have about creating, editing or marketing Web video? I’m asking you to tell me because I’m trying to decide how to focus the 2.0 version of OnlineVideoToolkit.com. Yep, I’m upgrading it, and it will still be free! Thousands of people have enjoyed it so far and now it’s time to help thousands more!

So, go here and ask me the question you most want to know about Web video. I’ll answer your questions live on the preview call next Friday. If you can’t make the call, don’t worry, I’ll send you the recording if you sign up.

What’s the #1 question you have about creating, editing or marketing Web video? Ask me right now.