Although Eric Schwartzman doesn’t make money directly from his podcasting, the indirect return on his efforts can be counted in financial terms all the same. Let’s see how one podcast host has succeeded, the soft skills needed in podcasting, how to sell your company on the idea of adding podcasting to its Web sites and where you can get training to develop a podcast series.
What will your job as a web worker look like in 2015? Yes, it’ll still encompass digital devices, a multitude of communications technologies and social networking. But it may also offer a 20-hour work week, according to Gartner research director Brian Prentice.
In a new report Prentice envisions a world in which a free agent world composed of retiring baby boomers, working-age moms and Gen Xers relinquish traditional work structures in favor of “less-time” roles. This is good news, since those who work part-time are happier than those working full-time — the better to balance work and life among personal, family and community responsibilities.
Britanyj Crimson earned 34,000 dollars last month online through the sale of jewelry she designed and created herself. That doesn’t include what her shop took in as donations for Relay For Life. Not bad for a business that didn’t exist before February 2007.
Britanyj is selling her wares on Second Life, and those Linden dollars translate to only about $120 in US dollars at current market rates. But for Dana Jones, the first world Web developer behind Second Mirage (the name of the jewelry shop), that revenue covers the expenses of what has become a rather pricey hobby. She projects that it could become a sideline business for her by the end of the year if she continues having sales growth akin to what she saw in April. (Full disclosure: Jones is the wife of WWD contributor Mike Gunderloy.)
If you have expertise in a specialized business area, can keep your cool when hundreds of people are hanging on your every word, and know how to show good humor when technical snafus arise, you may have a bright future as a webinar host.
And the potential is only growing. A survey by webcast company On24 reported that the 35 b-to-be media companies it studied produced more than 1,200 individual Web events last year, up 32 percent from the previous year.
The web isn’t the free-for-all that some of us believe it to be. Many sites, especially those catering to niche audiences, use the skills of online community managers to nudge the conversation, seed chat forums with threads, recruit others to take a lead in various topics, and monitor the dialogue to follow site policies. Pay varies from highly compensated to totally voluntary.
When Claudia Linh first entered the field in 1999, she said, “I couldn’t tell you what the job was.” Now, she has friends working for the private sector making “well over six figures.” In those cases, community relations typically falls under the marketing side of the company, said Linh, director of online programs for Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation, which helps sick children and their family cope with major illnesses through entertainment, education and family activities.
MoveOn.org is a poster child for virtual companies. Its staff is entirely distributed. It holds no scheduled meetings. And when it decided to gather for a retreat, it did so virtually.
In a panel during Software 2007 in Santa Clara, CA, MoveOn co-founder Wes Boyd shared his organization’s approach to operation, including how they held a six-hour virtual corporate retreat on the phone.
This week in Bonita Springs, Florida, during Search Insider Summit, 100 search marketing experts will pay major bucks to network over pinot gris and spanakopita. These insiders understand how to exploit search engine optimization (SEO) to make money for their companies and clients, and themselves.
How can web workers join in on paid search to generate some extra income? One way, of course, is to declare yourself an instant expert and hang out your highly optimized shingle page. Or you could follow a more methodical approach, as we outline here.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
