You Can Get Free Images, But Do You Want To Run Someone Else’s Ads?

You Can Get Free Images, But Do You Want To Run Someone Else’s Ads?
The World Wide Web Celebrates Its 25th Birthday
Starting Your Startup: The Risks and How to Avoid Them
Get Extraordinary Results By Doing “One Thing”

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 03:00 PM PDT

Some online publishers may be celebrating the news. Getty Images is making about 35 million high-resolution photos free for non-commercial use online.

Non-commercial means your blog, too. That’s even if you have Google Ads or other advertising that’s making you money on your blog already. It even means a big publisher like The New York Times could embed images free of charge on its site and news apps.

But watch out! You’ll also be distracting visitors to your blog from the Google Ads that are hopefully making you money there.

That’s because Getty plans to monetize this free content by running display ads somewhere on the images. Getty Images Senior Vice President of Business Development, Content and Marketing Craig Peters explained the plan in a recent interview. But he did not say exactly how ads would appear with free embedded photos.

Peters told the British Journal of Photography how it might be similar to the way Google Ads appear on embedded YouTube videos. So if you embed Getty Images, that’s basically like allowing someone else’s ads to appear on your website for free.

Ads aside, you shouldn’t forget. If you begin embedding free images from Getty, you may also be hurting other small business people. Those include independent photographers who took some of the photos in the first place and would like to get paid for their use.

Another stock photography startup, Picfair.com, reacted to the news with an “open letter” posted on the official PicFair blog. In the post, Founder Benji Lanyado insists that, despite the free images, demand for commercial photography from those willing to pay for its use, continues to grow.

However, Lanyado says in most cases photographers still aren’t paid enough for the images they create. He explains:

“The vast majority of the money paid for these commercial images does not go to the people who create them. On average, 74% of image fees go to the middlepeople. Yup, seventy…four…percent goes to anyone but the photographer.”

In a prepared statement on In Focus, an official Getty Images blog, Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Klein said:

“Images are the communication medium of today and imagery has become the world's most spoken language. Whether via a blog, website or social media, everyone is a publisher and increasingly visually literate.”

Based on mock-ups new embedded images might include the photographer’s name in a box below the photo. They would also include social sharing buttons. So your friends and connections could post them on social networks and even embed them on their own pages. A visitor clicking on the image would be directed to a Getty page where they could buy the image for commercial use.

Image: Wikipedia

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The World Wide Web Celebrates Its 25th Birthday

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 12:00 PM PDT

world wide web birthday

It’s hard to believe, but the Web becomes 25 years old on March 12, 2014. It seems like only yesterday that we were on Yahoo Geocities making our first flashing business website with Comic Sans font. We’ve come a long way since then.

A lot of people refer to the “Internet” and the “World Wide Web” as one and the same. They are not the same beast, however. They are two different entities. So in order to ensure that we are wishing the right part a happy birthday, let’s take a quick look at what the Internet and World Wide Web exactly are.

The Internet is a huge network of networks. It connects millions of computers globally, forming a network in which any computer can talk with any other computer – as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Traffic flows over it. It truly is the like a tech superhighway, as it’s been called.

Now the World Wide Web is simply a vehicle for sending and receiving information over the Internet. Today, most of us use the “http” protocol in browsers such as Firefox or Chrome to access webpages on the World Wide Web. Think of the World Wide Web as places where information resides and can be found.

According to a report released by the Pew Research Center, 87% of American adults are now on the Internet and adult ownership of mobile phones has risen from 53% to 90% in the past 14 years. Also, 90% of Internet users say the Internet has been a good thing for them personally and only 6% say it has been bad.

Overall, the report shows that in the 25 years of the World Wide Web, usage has exploded. And the Web has got its hooks into people. According to the report, 53% of users said it would be very difficult to give up the Web.

How and Why the World Wide Web Got Started

Before 1989, using the Internet was technologically challenging. It was mostly used by a small number of geeks in academia and government. While there are many important milestones in the history of the Internet and the World Wide Web, one date stands out. That’s March 1989, when Tim Berners Lee wrote a proposal at CERN in Switzerland, for “a large hypertext database with typed links” that came to be called the World Wide Web.

Before then, you still had to be a tech geek to understand the commands to the various bulletin boards online. The birth of the Web eventually opened the way for regular citizens to start using the Internet.

Another important milestone was the development of the Mosaic browser in 1993. Mosaic displayed text and graphics in a more user-friendly way than raw software commands. Mosaic was developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by Marc Andreessen, now a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

Donna Hoffman, co-director of the Center for the Connected Consumer at George Washington University, told NBC News:

“If you weren’t technologically sophisticated, you couldn’t really use [the Internet], because you had to use all of these arcane tools and commands.”

The Web and Mosaic, she said:

“. . .opened up the world of the Internet to anybody who had a browser and a mouse.”

Today, the World Wide Web can be used by everyday citizens who don’t need a lot of technical knowledge. For that we say, “Happy Birthday!”

Balloon Photo via Shutterstock

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Starting Your Startup: The Risks and How to Avoid Them

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

starting your startup

Starting your startup business is an exciting and empowering venture – and an extremely risky one. Only about 25% of startups successfully pay back their investors, and even those face a 53% chance of failing within five years. And technology startups have the highest failure rate, with Allmand Law's putting it at 90%.

So does this mean you should pack up your dream and work for someone else's company?

Of course not. While the majority of startups fail, there are still a significant number that succeed – and your company could be one of them. You just have to be smart about how you plan and implement your new venture.

Starting Your Startup

The Right Idea

To start a great business you have to have a great idea. It has to be an idea that will motivate you through the rough spots in the early stages of your business as well as one that will attract potential investors and customers.

Daniel Gulati, author of Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders, surveyed successful entrepreneurs about where they came up with their ideas. He found that many of these entrepreneurs were simply responding to needs in their own lives.

For example, Neil Blumenthal was frustrated by how much he was spending on eyeglasses. So he founded Warby Parker, which sells high quality glasses at lower prices and donates a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair sold. Other potential sources of ideas include a special skill or passion that you may possess, or unmet customer needs that you might notice in your current industry.

The most marketable ideas also tend to be sizeable. While it is fine to want to pursue a niche venture, such as a local leaf blowing business, most investors want to back ideas that have the potential to reach a wide customer base. And the ideas that really take off tend to tap into current market trends.

For example the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the event-planning industry will grow 44% between 2010 and 2020. So if you've been dreaming of starting your own event planning business, now may be the time. Here are other business ideas that have potential in 2014.

The Right Team

Let's say you already have your million-dollar idea; the rest will take care of itself, right? Unfortunately, great ideas fail to translate into great businesses all the time. For example, there have been several attempts to launch a digital business card, an innovative idea that taps into a customer need, but as of yet no company has truly succeeded.

So, what do you need to turn your idea into a thriving business?

First off, you need to surround yourself with the right people. Most investors don't want to back a single-founder venture, so a partner can both enhance your fledging company's bankability and bring his or her own skills and ideas to the table. You want your partner to be someone who will provide a skillset that you lack.

For example, if you have technical skills but lack finance acumen, find someone who can handle that side of business for you.

If you don't know someone in your network who meets your needs, then attend startup events like Technori Pitch or visit sites specifically designed to match you with potential startup partners, like Startup Weekend and TechCofounder.

But be careful who you ultimately choose. Noam Wasserman studied 10,000 founders for his book "The Founder's Dilemma" and found that discord among co-founders causes 65% of high-potential startups to fail. You're best bet is to work with someone you've worked with before, but barring that, choose someone with whom you are compatible on both a business and a personal level.

The Right Plan

You've got your winning idea and your enthusiastic business team, so now's the time to reach out to investors and launch your business, right? Not so fast. You need a solid business plan before you even consider moving forward.

Ask yourself the basic questions that underpin any company. Who is your customer base? How are you going to make a profit? Many companies have collapsed after failing to focus in on a specific customer demographic.

A recent Forbes article described a company that tried to market B2C and B2B, the latter of which included ten different industries. While it may be tempting to make your potential customer base as wide as possible, this sort of wide-ranging marketing strategy will only split your focus and confuse your customers.

Similarly, you need to come up with a specific plan to make a return at least 10 times your invested capital. This applies whether or not you are investing in your own business or utilizing outside investors. A successful company is a profitable one, so make sure your great idea translates into a product or service customers will seek out and buy.

However, don't lock yourself into these initial plans, either. The thing that distinguishes startups from their established corporate counterparts is their freedom and flexibility. If you find that one business strategy isn't working, then switch to another one. B2B marketing isn't working? Consider B2C. It may take several tries to figure out the path to making your idea marketable and profitable; the key is to keep trying.

While a large majority of startup ventures fail, yours doesn't have to. With the right idea, team and plan, your business can get off to a great start.

Startup Photo via Shutterstock

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Get Extraordinary Results By Doing “One Thing”

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PDT

doing one thing In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with alerts, messages, phone calls, and the urgency to fulfill each role within our lives, it becomes overwhelming to stay on track towards our goals of producing great results.

Over the years, we’ve learned that in order to be successful in all areas while having only 24-hours in the day, that we should multitask. As a result, we begin piling on everything we’re required to do with the thought that we’re going to succeed, when in reality, we don’t.

If this type of lifestyle sounds familiar to you, then The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan is the next book you should pick up.

Keller and Papasan do a great job at explaining how dividing your focus among multiple tasks is a disservice. Instead, you should find the ONE thing that you could do now that would deliver extraordinary results in multiple areas of your life.

With many analogies and personal stories, Keller and Papasan make it easy to relate and identify the behavior we enlist with the assumption that we’re being efficient – when we’re really not.

The book is broken into three parts, starting with the dispelling of the “multitasking” myth, then revealing the truth on how a simple path can produce productivity, and ways we can implement the concept of The ONE Thing in our lives. Keller and Papasan used real life examples and studies showing how their theory has been proven successful.

With little effort being placed on your ONE thing, the positive results are guaranteed to trickle over to all areas of your life.

Before diving into each section, Keller and Papasan start out by asking:

“What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it – everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”

Looking back at their own lives, they were able to notice how they found huge success after narrowing down their concentration and focused on simply, ONE thing.

PART 1 The Lies: They Mislead and Derail Us

Keller and Papasan begin this section by listing, then detailing six lies that are keeping us from being successful. We believe that everything we do or set out to accomplish matters equally, and that multitasking is the way to go. With great detail and research, they discovered that multitaskers make more mistakes than non-multitaskers.

“When you try to do too much at once, you end up doing nothing well.”

With this simple explanation, I was immediately able to relate and think about the occurrences of a simple task of trying to read a book while watching a TV show. Neither task was receiving my full attention, so nothing was accomplished at all.

This example alone can be applied to many personal and professional situations we find ourselves in where we’re trying to “kill two birds with one stone” in order to save time – but the result turns out to be counterproductive.

PART 2 The Truth: The Simple Path To Productivity

“Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it.”

This section allowed us an opportunity to learn how to form the right question that would lead us to identifying our ONE thing. Keller and Papasan did an excellent job at detailing how to do this, which included performing the necessary steps to break down our big goals into small actionable steps.

We either tend to think big or small, and broad or specific. I loved how they iterated how its okay to think big – but be sure that our path is a combination of small steps.

PART 3 Extraordinary Results: Unlocking the Possibilities Within You

After learning what The ONE Thing theory consisted of and how we could begin to think in terms of identifying our ONE thing, the last part of the book was focused on application and implementation.

With tips such as goal setting and time blocking, Keller and Papasan encourage the reader to focus on following a path of mastery:

“To many people reach a level where their performance is “good enough” and then stop working on getting better. People on the path to mastery avoid this by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice.”

To be successful in life as well as business, The ONE Thing is never-ending. According to Keller and Papasan, we must always ask ourselves, “What is the ONE thing I can do to achieve my small goal, in a specific time, that will have a positive effect on achieving my big goal?

This book was not only great for the ambitious and overachieving professional, but also for anyone who wishes to become a better individual in their personal life as well.

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