This is an outtake from the special:

So, was Louis C.K. able to make his experiment a success or did the dreaded online pirates swoop in and steal the day?

Judging by Louis C.K’s statement to his fans concerning the sales of the special, the experiment was mostly successful.

“The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.”

Judging by the statement, it sounds like he’s pleased with the results up to this point. It is interesting to note he would have made more money simply releasing his special the traditional way. Making his special DRM-free does leave his product more susceptible to pirating, so does Louis C.K. have any worries from that aspect? On the purchase page, he makes a statement to those who plan to torrent the video:

To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.

Sincerely,
Louis C.K.

I’ve been venturing to various torrent sites to see how the response has been, or if there is an actual torrent up for the special. I have found a couple, and there was interesting conversation unfolding on one of them. Users were arguing to have the torrent taken down from the site to support Louis C.K, while others dropped in to say they paid their $5 and were trying to get others to do the same.

“dude… read this (referencing Louis C.K.’s note to torrenters).. and take this torrent down.. you didnt put this up to make people buy it… seriously, lets not fool ourselves.. take it down.. someones trying to do the right thing, and you are stabbing them in the back”

“seriously though people; buy this thing, even if you can get it for free — if Louis can actually generate a profit from this it will encourage other comedians to do the same and it means they won’t have to go through HBO or Comedy Central to do their specials and in the end we will end up getting more frequent releases at cheaper prices…c’mon folks, it’s only $5!”

“If this torrent was not here , i would have (no) idea that he was doing this deal. We all love our torrents and he knew that it would end up here. Thanks for this torrent am 200% behind you posting it here. I paid my money because of this torrent and for all those who moan its slow , cant you wait an extra 20mins? stop being greedy.”

The support for Louis C.K’s distribution model and the back-and-forth argument over the torrent being available is unlike anything I’ve seen on a torrent site. It goes to show that while people who do pirate material are stealing, they are willing to pay if they aren’t feeling ripped off.

To help make a push for the video, Louis C.K. conducted a reddit interview which yielded some interesting comments from the comedian. In particular, he talks about how this experiment has been all about learning.

Professionally, I’m learning right this minute, a HUGE amount with this web experiment. this live at the beacon thing (available at httlp://www.louisck.com for 5 bucks) is like that thing in the movie “Twisiter” where they send a bunch of little data collecting balls up into a tornado and just download the lovely results. The whole things has been like that. From the moment it went online and i saw the result of every decision i made.

It’s interesting to discover he has so little knowledge of torrenting, online distribution, when this is one of the most genius ideas I’ve seen in quite awhile. It goes to show if you treat people with respect, offer them a quality product at a reasonable price, and don’t handcuff them with restrictions, they’ll respond positively. I’ve bought the special, and if you want to laugh and be amazed for a hour or so then it’s definitely worth the $5.

Bloggers screamed about theft and content scraping amid the wider availability of Shyftr. The service lets a user pull a bunch of feeds into one place, and share those collected feeds with other visitors.

“It’s not the conversations being hosted somewhere else that bothers me, it’s that there are a new crop of services which would not otherwise exist without republishing someone else

Give CondéNet credit for thinking outside the box on this one; YouTube’s still widely regarded as a place to find user-generated videos, as opposed to corporate productions.  Anything that’s useful or entertaining finds itself welcome, though, so the development isn’t at all a bad idea.

Even better – Sarah Chubb, CondéNet’s president, told Emily Steel, “We do not pay to distribute our content.  It is generally a no-cash exchange.  The trade-off is that we get distribution.”  There’s also the matter of potentially profitable advertising, which CondéNet can sell.

From Google’s perspective, this is a no-lose situation, as well – any revenue from that advertising will be shared.  Furthermore, the deal acts to legitimize YouTube, which is something Google is always trying to do.

No timeframe was given for when distribution would begin, but look for it to occur in the near future – picking the content should take longer than sorting out any technical details.

Aside from blogging, posting on forums, and keeping their site content fresh, I always talk about online PR. Most of the time the people I’m conversing with have no idea that you can freely or cheaply distribute press releases online.

Writing a press release and then pushing it out to the various distribution services is a great way to get the word out about recent newsworthy happenings at your organization, and also an effective method of getting inbound links for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization. Some of these sites will also distribute the releases to news syndication services such a Google News and Yahoo! News.

If you’re confident in your writing ability, read over a few press releases that have been released in your industry to get a feel for the format and the writing style and give it a whirl (I wrote the majority of the press releases in the early days of Awecomm – how hard can it be!). If not, go out and hire a freelance writer. There are a lot of good ones out there that don’t charge all that much.

Like many things in business and search engine optimization, this isn’t the holy grail; it’s just one more thing that can attract website visitors and potential customers, and one more thing that you should be doing. Also, there’s really no substitution for a good Public Relations firm if you’re at the point that you can afford it. Until then, get writing, and use the list below!

Free Press Release Distribution Websites

- PR Leap

- I-Newswire

- Webwire

- ClickPress

- PR.com

- PR Log

Paid Press Release Distribution Websites

- PR Web

- 24-7 Press Release

- PR Zoom

- PR Newswire

- Business Wire

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New distribution partners include aNobii, Blinkx, blip.tv, Book Divas, Buy.com, FORA.tv, Goodreads, Lib.rario.us, LibraryThing, Revish, Veoh, Vuze and WhatsOnMyBookshelf.

Currently TurnHere’s distribution network consists of major Web portals including AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo and YouTube. With its new video and publishing partners, TurnHere hopes to bring a global audience of book fans broader access to BookVideos.tv.

"TurnHere’s author videos are compelling content, and we think they are an excellent addition to our author profiles," said Otis Chandler, founder and CEO, Goodreads.

"We’re finding that seeing and hearing a favorite author in an on-page video is a very evocative experience, and we’re very excited to be working with TurnHere to provide it to our members."

In addition to its new distribution partners, TurnHere has launched a new customizable widget and enhanced video player for book publishers. The new video player was built using ActionScript 3.0 programming language, added commenting options, improved author bios and book descriptions, book jacket art, related video links, embed codes and link sharing functionality through RSS feeds and email.

"TurnHere’s network of distribution partners is growing at an incredible rate and we are continuing to look at strategic business initiatives that add value to book publishers through BookVideos.tv," said Bradley J. Inman, CEO and founder, TurnHere.

"As we continue to forge new relationships with a diverse range of Web partners, we are reaching a very engaged online audience never before tapped into by the publishing market."

Heath Clarke, the CEO of Local.com, explained how it makes sense for one search engine to help another.  “Yahoo’s considerable base of high quality local advertisers complements Local.com’s highly relevant search results,” he said in a statement.  “The result is even more relevant content that helps visitors to Local.com and our network of local publishers find the businesses and services they are looking for.”

Yahoo’s Hilary Schneider covered the reverse outlook by adding, “As we continue to grow our advertising marketplace, we’re excited to renew our relationship with Local.com as one of our trusted partners within the Yahoo! Publisher Network.  Local.com’s relevant audience effectively extends our advertisers’ reach, providing them with increased local and vertical targeting opportunities across a wide range of categories.”

Schneider, in case you don’t remember, greatly benefited from last week’s reorganization at Yahoo.  Her new title is Executive Vice President of the Global Partnership Solutions Division – pretty snazzy, huh?  This type of situation is not new to Schneider, however; she gave a similar comment just last month when Philly.com joined Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium.

Indeed, it’s a bit of business as usual for both companies.  “This is too small to have any impact on Yahoo! shares,” wrote 24/7 Wall St.’s Jon C. Ogg, “but Local.Com shares are up 14% to $6.77 in pre-market trading.  As a reminder, this is one of the microcap web stocks that often sees large price swings on days when it has news.”

AdSense Debuts Video Pilot

With the new offering, publishers not only can choose when their ads play, but also can choose which videos they appear in.

AdSense Product Marketing Manager Christine Lee (not to be confused with Bob and Tom’s Kristi Lee) says Google will be gathering information through the pilot to gain a better understanding of what works best in video ads.

The company cites challenges publishers face while trying to monetize their content through video inventory, and building a beneficial relationship with users as the driving force behind the offering.

This new announcement comes on the heels of two other video offerings. AdSense already offers Click-to-Play video ads for any publisher opted into image ads that want to try their hand at video.

In January, AdSense debuted its video distribution and sponsorship service pilot that allows publishers to choose short-form video clips bundled with ads for display on their websites. 

Here are tips Google offers on how to use this data:

• If your goal is to increase conversions such as purchases, page views, sign-ups or leads through your ads, reassess how you’re tracking your conversions. Make sure you’ve implemented conversion tracking so you can understand how individual sites are converting for you. Please note: A low CTR reading on a site does not mean your ads are not performing well. This is because users behave differently on content pages than they do on search sites.
• Use the site exclusion tool to exclude sites that are not converting for your campaign.

  Refine your targeting. If you find that your ads are not showing up on sites with a particular theme that you do not find relevant, try using negative keywords

• Adjust your bids. Enabling our content bidding feature will allow you to bid separately for the content network. Learn more.
• Identify sites that are converting particularly well for your campaign and take steps to increase your exposure on those sites. We recommend enabling our content bidding feature to bid more aggressively on those sites, or targeting them through a site-targeted campaign. Please note that site targeting utilizes cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding.

While those tips generally revolve around track your ads and spend more, they could be a bit more altruistic and useful. Thus, here are my tips on how I might use the data:

• If you are using CPM site targeting on a large site, but find only a few pages convert, consider just targeting those few pages.
• Find sources to buy ads from directly, and buy all their ad inventory. Maybe you can even broker a custom ad deal involving presell pages.
• Find link sources…if they are already selling AdSense it doesn’t take much more work to buy ads directly, especially if they are a smaller player and are not making much from AdSense.
• View what TYPES of content converts and search for other content that matches that intent which you may want to advertise on.
• View page content to see what keyword phrases the converting content covers. Create content covering the same keyword groups.

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If you opt into distribution of your product the way to win is to give extras when people buy direct. As a marketing strategy, it is silly to recommend people avoid your distribution partners. Once you give up distribution you move toward being a commodity unless you add extras or are selling a buying experience.

Even companies like Adobe are canibalizing portions of their business to maintain their market position. When considering opting into other networks or doing things that extend your reach and give you more direct control over the conumer experience it is probably best to stay as close to the consumer as possible.

If you are a product on the shelf you have to pay for shelf space. If you own the shelf space you can sell your own product or sell overpriced ads to others.

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