The big trend in internet marketing seems to be video. While I see advantages to video, I also see drawbacks. The main problem is video’s lack of value for reference. When I have written instructions, I can refer back to it. I can make additional notes and highlight important points. Another point in favor of written instructions is that you can take it with you and read it anywhere. I always have something with me to read or study so I can take advantage of blocks of free time. The best of both worlds would be to provide video instruction with written documentation.

I have been experimenting with Twitter over the past few weeks. I really like it. It’s quick and easy. You control who you follow, so spam is not a problem. Posts are limited to 140 characters, so it’s quick and easy. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/mikesmind.

Now, about the cowpetition. I had never heard about John Cow prior to getting an email from Jason Katzenback at Comment Kahuna. I decided to opt in to John’s cowpetition, as his method of building contacts was very creative. It involves his RSS feed, Twitter, and YouTube. I can do the first four steps to earn 40 points, but will have to skip the last one. I just don’t have time today to get a video up on YouTube.

Right now, you can jump over to John’s site and check out his cowpetition yourself. There is over $3,000 worth of prizes to the winner!

I have been busy creating a new website. It has been a lot of fun and things are coming along well. with that, I have also been working to learn how to make money on the internet. I have been reading various emails, blogs, websites, and other materials from “internet marketing gurus.” The amount of stuff out there is truly overwhelming!

Truth be told, the “internet marketing guru” portion is not going so well. There is so much advice out there and it is often hard to tell who is a real “internet marketing guru.” Many people are buying and selling content, but I am interested in people who are generating useful content that I can apply to my projects. I could list the folks that I have decided to ignore for now, but perhaps it is more constructive to list who I am going to pay attention to.

In no particular order, those are:

1) Jonathan Leger
2) John Reese
3) Joel Comm

Why did I pick these three? For one, they all give valuable advice for free! Each of their websites offer many things you can do to help your business and it is given in the spirit of giving back. Also, for the most part, there is very little hype for these three. They tend to recommend things they have already tried themselves and they do this with straight talk, including the down-side of product or technique they are recommending. In other words, they are real pros.

Click over to their websites and give them a try. Also, share your recommendations in my comments section.

One website that I like to read is Groklaw. It is a website that discusses the law and information technology. It gained its’ fame through covering the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Today, I read an article on Groklaw called Google Taking Blog Comments Searching Real-Time? by Bill Binko. In it he describes some changes in how Google seems to be indexing the web and the amazing speed at which they are doing it. He gives several examples in the article. Below, are a few that I tried for phrases from recent posts on The Lower Barn.

“unusual icicle formation” The only result is for The Lower Barn.

“a good land flowing with milk” The Lower Barn shows up as number eight on the search (On 1/22/08 at 2:50 PM CST, when I executed the search.).

“correct temperature for the milk” The Lower Barn shows up as number three on the search (On 1/22/08 at 2:52 PM CST, when I executed the search.).

What does this mean? For one thing, content gets indexed fast, even for websites with little traffic. As the article points out, Google may be looking more at current content than established content. Even the “little guy” can now show up on searches if the content is good and current.

Life has been very busy so blogging has been light. I am getting to the point where I can start blogging again. One thing I have been thinking about is the merits of niche marketing. Conventional wisdom, on the web, is that successful websites are targeted to a particular niche. I am thinking about pursuing a strategy of combining multiple niches in one site, effectively creating a “multi-niche” e-commerce site.

Today my e-commerce website, www.TenFootTable.com, is most successful in selling Celtic Sea Salt. Some of my plans are to expand the marketing of related items on this site. Salt, while a good seller, is a low-margin product. I want to create cross-sell opportunities for higher-margin sales. This fits well into the niche marketing concept.

It is appealing to add unrelated (to salt) items to sell on the same website. My main reason is that as a small operation it is time consuming to maintain multiple websites and the associated back-ends and/or business entities. Our business is also a family business. As a family, we have varied interests. Is it possible to market to many niches in one website? It will be interesting to find out.