Greenroots Social Network

We have just opened up a social network on Ning for internet video creators. Go stop by and check it out.

If you are an internet video creator yourself, feel free to sign up and tell your friends to sign up as well. Then upload any videos that you have created and discuss problems, techniques, methods and more with your peers.

As time goes on, we will add documentation to help you create internet videos. Including how-to guides about writing, shooting, acting, etc. We will also have sample release forms for actors and locations along with other legal documents.

Head on over to greenrootsmedia.ning.com today, sign up, upload your videos, and begin the conversation.

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Business Banking

When starting up a business, one of the main steps is to open up a business bank account in order to separate your personal finances from work finances. Many factors go into this decision such as monthly maintenance fees, minimum balance requirements, etc. In our quest to find the right bank to use, we ran into some issues.

First, it was nearly impossible to find a solid comparison of banks showing the pros and cons of their business accounts. I should be a little more specific, it was nearly impossible to find information on American banks. There are lists for European banks all over the place.

After a little googling and a lot of reading, we have decided to go with Washington Mutual. They are the one with the commercial with all the old bankers pissed at the young guy. Lame commercials, but good deals. They have a free business checking account with no minimum balance, no maintenance fees, no bullsh. Just what we need in order to get started. If anyone has any comments about the best banks for business, feel free to let us know.

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HugeCrab and Torrentspy Plugs

Greenroots has recently acquired hugecrab.com, an novelty site dedicated to archiving evidence of huge crabs throughout the world. Really hilarious and definitely worth a look. We placed an ad for The Adventures of Nate Grace: Tucson Underground at the top, be sure to check it out.

We also now have an ad on the TorrentSpy website, you have to scroll down a ways, but it is there on the right side. Check it out.

These are just the beginnings of our marketing plan, we are working out the details as we go. This is our first venture and it is all very new and exciting, but at the same time, we make a lot of mistakes that we must learn from quickly. If anyone has any free/inexpensive marketing ideas they would like to share, feel free to shoot us an email.

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Sausage Fest

The next series that we are developing is a comedy called Sausage Fest. It is about four guys in LA making a documentary about trying to meet girls. We have just finished our first revision of the treatment and we will go through it a couple more times and then begin to write out the actual script. We will post Sausage Fest updates as they happen. For now check out this video that we did about a year ago, also entitled Sausage Fest. It was somewhat the inspiration for the series that we are working on now.

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Greenroots on Youtube

Greenroots has started a new YouTube channel to post our videos as they come out. You should head over there and check out the vids for yourself. Also, if you have a YouTube account, please add us as a friend and subscribe to our videos.

Currently the only videos we have available are the Issues of The Adventures of Nate Grace: Tucson Underground. On YouTube, these videos are all branded with the url of Tucson Underground. Viewers must still go to the official website to see the latest Issues and Extras. This is our first attempt to use YouTube as a traffic generating tool for one of our productions. We will keep you posted on our success.

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Tucson Underground on Spiked Humor

In a little over a week, we will be launching a Tucson Underground channel over at SpikedHumor.com. It will be a completely customized experience within SpikedHumor's network to showcase our videos. In addition to getting our videos seen by as many eyeballs as possible, we will also be directing traffic to our own site in order to view exclusive extras and other goodies. Tucson Underground is going to be everywhere soon. Woohoo!

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Problems Not Working Locally

This morning I woke up and went to the Tucson Underground website to find that our extras section was not loading. This is a huge deal for us as the majority of our updates throughout the week are loaded directly into this section.

Our entire website was created and designed by a company called Mindsmack based out of the east coast. We are based on the west coast. News reports and businesses are always talking about outsourcing, how much money it saves you, how flexible it allows your business to be, etc. It has been a very interesting learning experience to try and do business with people accross the country that I've never met face to face. However, as is true with all learning experiences, there have been many problems.

The major problem is that it is difficult to convey your ideas to someone over the phone or over the internet. You only have so much time and you can only say so much with words. I cannot even imagine trying to deal with companies who speak another language.

Two other problems I have experienced are time differences and really just a lack of understanding of what is going on "on the ground", to use the military term. The time issue is obvious, I find issues with the site at 2pm and it is too late because it is 5pm on the east coast. As far as the situation on the ground, without being able to step into the office and see what is happening, it becomes difficult to know what is really being done.

This is by no means a criticism of Mindsmack. We have had a great experience with them and we would be nowhere without their help. As a first time entrepreneur, this is just one of the many obstacles that we must wrestle with on a daily basis. I am providing this example to perhaps help others to realize that while outsourcing sounds like a good idea, it has it's fair share of pains.

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