In many ways, it really is the wild west out there in SEO land. Yesterday I posted a job on eLance requesting someone who specializes in Youtube SEO to help me improve the rankings of the videos on my channel, Most of the offers I’ve had are clearly from bots, but one individual did take the time to write a personal offer and give his opinion, I replied…. I should also add that my channel is ranked #1 for
YouTube’s subscription feed sucks
Back in May ’12 I posted a video explaining why changes YouTube made to the subscription feed were bad for both creators and the users. The complaint is primarily directed at the “highlights for feed” filter, which works similar to the activity feed filter on Facebook where it only shows posts based on your recent history with the poster. YouTube’s filter is different in that it favors big channels over smaller channels (making it hard for a small creator to
Hey OkCupid, you just lost a 9 year customer. Here’s why:
About a month ago I found myself unable to login to my account. I couldn’t even reset my account. All I got was a message saying “Sorry, we’re having technical difficulties right now. Check back later.” I did a Google search for that string and discovered this “technical difficulties” message is what you display when you ban accounts. Seriously?? You banned my account? I’ve used the site pretty much since it came out. I’ve answered pretty much every question in
Reddit, why do you hate indie creators so much?
I originally posted this into /r/AskReddit, where it was (expectedly) ignored. It is about how reddit’s self-promotion policy is hugely flawed. I decided to repost here so those outside that community’s bubble might read it. ———- My name is Carey Martell. I am entrepreneur, game journalist, disabled veteran and CEO of an Austin, TX based Youtube MCN. I’m probably best known for my web series, http://www.youtube.com/TheRpgFanatic/ and my LinkedIn profile is here www.linkedin.com/pub/carey-martell/37/b20/9b4 for verification. As the years go by I find myself less
The San Antonio VA Vocational Rehab Counselors are Violating My Rights
Today I received the following letter from my Vocational Rehabilitation counselor, Scott G. Alexander, telling me that he is going to remove me from the Chapter 31 Vocational Rehabilitation Program: Now that it has come to this I have no choice but to go public in the hopes that, like with the VA backlog crisis, the shame of it will finally force the VA to do what it should have done to begin with: its job. I doubt I’m the
The things I want YouTube to change the most
#1) Remove the ‘Mark as Spam’ option so that only the VIDEO UPLOADER can mark the comment as spam. This feature is currently abused by trolls to silence comments they don’t agree with — even the responses from the person who made the video to begin with. On that note, remove the “this comment has too many negative votes” feature too. #2) Get rid of the ‘highlights for feeds’ garbage. Implement a better subscription feed system that is designed to accomodate
Bank of America, you have inconvenienced me for the last time.
Bank of America, eventually your people are going to wonder why you lost me as a customer. This is the reason. I need a bank who will honor their own checks. Bank of America clearly has a policy to not do so if they can find some trivial reason to not pay, even if it’s due to a mistake they caused in the first place. I’d also like a bank who doesn’t close their “existing mortgage loan departments” on Sat
Post SXSW and Martell TV Phase II
Well SXSW came and went. We had a lot of events we attended, and made some great contacts. We’re now showing off some demo footage of the Martell TV beta app, which we will release next month. But we’ve also released an Indiegogo page for our round 2 development.
Looking Forward: SXSW 2013
Now that I got the messy and uncomfortable, but necessary, blog post out of the way, I want to share my excitement for the events this month. I have made a lot of progress going through the Venture Forth program, and my pitch deck is nearly complete. I will be attending a variety of startup showcase events and performing pitches to potential investors. I hope to create a lot of positive buzz about my company, and get an investment so
The Department of Veteran Affairs Betrays Vets Like Me
I hate talking about my weaknesses. I like to focus on what I can change, and the future. I hate dwelling on the things I can do little to nothing about. It’s impossible to talk about my disabilities without feeling just a little bit helpless, and I absolutely despise both the pity and ridicule talking about such things brings; people either feel sorry for you, or think it’s a weapon to be used to knock you down. But I need
The Public Domain and YouTube
There are around 50,000 films in the public domain, and this is good. Major networks like Turner Broadcasting Systems started out airing films and shorts in the public domain, and were able to grow empires by running advertising on the content. So it stands to reason that Youtubers can employ the same technique to fill gaps of programming and increase revenue for developing their own networks, right? Not exactly. Youtube has a fingerprinting technology called Content ID, which is available to
Why I Don’t Like The Media Conglomerates
As a company focused on entertainment, the most natural place to find investors would be from one of the major media conglomerates like News Corp. or Time Warner. Our competitor Maker Studios has certainly gone that route already, raising about 30 million dollars by doing so. But that is not the path I am taking Martell Brothers and I’ll tell you why: The world is too small. When a handful of companies own practically everything, that doesn’t give a lot of air
This is the beginning of the blog
It’s been almost six months since we launched our internet television network, so in the interest of becoming more transparent about how we run and what direction we are heading, I thought it was time to start running a personal blog. I’m no stranger to blogging, as I have maintained a few over the years, but I’ve never made any kind of personal diary blog. Let me bring you up to speed on how things have gone: I started watching