I know a lot of my current traffic is coming from places like NP and a couple other boards I belong to but it is still an eye opener looking at the stats. Yesterday 26 visitors looked at 113 minutes of videos, that is four and a half minutes per visitor, that is pretty sticky.
Your doing a great job so far Wineguy! Keep it up!! By the way, I came accross some videos that maybe you could get permission to use. Not really sure how content issues work. Here is the link: http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/F...0,4258,,00.html
Also, the site has very nice catagories you may want to consider as you build your site.
Cheers!
__________________ Sign up as a Beta user atBands.TV Bars.tv Punk.tv Cabo.tv Rwanda.tv, Bulgaria.tv, Sri-lanka.tv Cleveland.tv, Minneapolis.tv, Oakland.tv, PaloAlto.tv, StPetersburg.tv, Scottsdale.tv, SanAntonio.tv, Alabama.tv
Yeah, I am working on them as we speak. Some companies don't quite "get it" yet and that is mostly because we are still developing the language for the industry, eventually they will come on board. Geez, did I just say "industry" as if we are all a part of it. Well I guess we are, how exciting is that. Kinda nice being two years ahead of the eight ball instead of two years behind!!
the left hand side of the graphic and the color scheme are both excellent. IMHO, I would make the .tv part a little bigger or more prominent. We still need to beat it into users' heads not to go to: winecountry.com or winecountrytv.com (!)
I am very impressed with your pace of development.
We, wrestled with the idea of how prominent the .tv should be. At first we thought it should be in CAPS. When this designer placed it on the top in lower case and colored as it is, it seemed to be pretty obvious, but I do hear you, that is why.........
When the console opens in the near future (the now purple area) there will be a two or three second flash animation where the logo ( same logo set up differently for centering) zooms into the frame and is then static. I am thinking of having the designer make the .tv sorta balloon up, puff up,morph it, whatever you would call it, at the end and then go back to it original size. Should be a nice visual. Maybe even make it have a couple antennae sticking out for a moment and then they pop back in?
The other thing we may do is a preroll with voice over and a tag line which we are still working on.
Yesterday I put together our licensing agreement, still fine tuning that, and today we are writing the letter of introduction to content owners we want to work with. Still looking at a good launch by September 1st, we may even have the WineShop.TV up by that time as some of the same clients will be able to populate that site with content and inventory. Already working on the press release and will need to get traffic lined up. Some will come from sites I own and others from syndicating regular and custom players to other sites.
WineAuction.TV will need a bit more programming so don't see that becoming a reality til after the first of 2007.
In the meantime my 30 day goals are to get my first 20 videos, signed up, encoded and up and running. Would like to sell one ad deal this month (August). Will incorporate Adsense on the interior landing pages/advertorial pages. Aneed to sell another 10 domains in the next 30 days. Should cover any financing needed for a little bit.
Happy with the progress considering I didn't know anything about any of this stuff 60 days ago.
Advice for anyone else out ther considering doing this, just do it and do it now while you have first mover advantage and can build some value in the marketplace. I am considering so many more video projects now that I wish I could sell my whole domain portfolio right now. It feels like we are two years ahead of the curve rather than two years behind. And in reality I think there is a small window of opportunity to carve whatever niche you may have or want in this new industry.
Sounds great. Please share with us any learnings you have regarding licensing, both in terms of legal issues but also in terms of what the key terms of agreement are....
Awesome sight and thanks for sharing, imploring, inspiring all of us to really dig deep and develop our .tv's. You've brought wonderful insight, knowledge and new life into this top. It does feel good to be ahead of the curve instead of the day late, dollar short mantra that so many of us find ourselves feeling. I too, would appreciate your insight regarding licensing agreements, initial contacts with content providers etc. (forgive me if you've already addressed this in another thread... as I type, i'm beginning to recall some of that discussed in the IPTV thread)
Right now, I am going to keep most of the specifics underwrap of our agreement for a bit, but this aspect of this business is more important than hardware, software, platforms and players.
Here are the broad strokes and frankly the sales pitch (WIIFM):
Content owner gives us exclusive use of video for only a couple things, the WineCountry.TV site and any aggregated cable tv content distribution deal.
In exchange they receive no monetary compensation but access to our targetted demographically attractive traffic through links on our site and on their onsite landing page/advertorial and all the syndicated players distributed to other sites. So basically they get already interested traffic.
They receive their video content encoded in flash for their own use.
They receive a customized/branded/logoed video player for their site with their content already loaded fueled by my bandwidth??? Still thinking about that one.
Side Note: By the way I spoke to BrightCove about their costs to us producers when we are out of BETA. It will be a combination of bandwidth cost and per play. No up front cost but basically they are repackaging bandwidth to sell a a 100% mark up, why didn't I think of that?
I will update this in a bit the phone is ringing.
Cheers!
WG
I have touched on the licensing , but what I didn't say is what westblock put nicely in this thread:
If you are in the domain business youare by default in the Itellectual Property business, but we, I DO include myself, treat our domains as inventory up untile we get a 'cease and desist' order. I have only gotten one and can proudly say it was from PlayBoy Corp.. I haven't even visited the TM waters since. No need actually.
But back to the point, if you think about it we are entering the same kind of "Napster in 2000" "free for all" that ended badly for some companies. With the amount of video that is out there untapped and unlicensed we should be able to do well if we protect ourselves and the content producers.
Very true. There's a lot we can gather from many of the failed biz models of that era and why I can see protection as being be priority #1 (right behind getting that great name) as far as building this segment of the industry legitimately. Hmmmm... lots to think about.
BrightCove / WineCountry.TV test. 
