Everybody Needs a Coach

My involvement with NetAudioAds over the past 4 months reminds me in some ways of my efforts in the 1980s to help build the old A.L. Williams company. Art Williams was known for his exciting, fun and inspirational speeches and coaching sessions. Art was an award winning high school football coach, turned financial services mogul. ALW was on a mission to help people financially through education and introduce a completely new way of doing business in an old industry. If you spoke with anybody associated with the insurance industry about ALW, you would have thought it was a company and concept spawned from the depths of Hell. Oh how they hated us as we took their customers away from them by the thousands.

Likewise, NetAudioAds is on a mission that may revolutionize an old industry with the introduction of a new advertising concept consisting of 5-second internet audio ad plays. In the process, NAA will help many network publishers become financially successful and many advertisers have a better business. Since the beginning efforts to start building the publishers network together last December, NetAudioAds and PayPerPlay has endured a barrage of negativity primarily engineered by a couple of less-than honorable folks with a hidden agenda. If one was to look only at some of what they say and does not take a closer look, the same "spawned from Hell" conclusion might be reached.

Art Williams refused to be deterred regardless of setbacks, attacks by business enemies, or complaints from naysayers, detractors and even disgruntled associates. He was determined to build long-term financial success for he and his family along with thousands of others who believed and worked to acheive common goals. He did make the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. He was listed in the Forbes 400 riches men in America list within a few short years and is, I believe, a billionaire today. You can judge whether his refusal to be deterred by negativity worked out or not.

I have personally spent a great deal of time being involved with the PayPerPlay publishers forum while the business has been preparing to come out of beta. During this waiting game, I observed a number of the same type of detractors and naysayers that we had back in the ALW days. For a variety of reasons, they didn't understand what they were involved with and often quit before they even got started. Some of them would then tell others that it was a scam or that they were ripped off because they didn't make enough money to even cover their licensing expeneses. I saw it happen over and over again. To succeed in ALW required real and continuing efforts. Sadly, most folks were not willing to pay a price to succeed.

But with NetAudioAds, there is no price to pay, zero cost to join and virtually no continuing efforts that must be maintained. It's simply a matter of placing a bit of code on their web sites. The amazing thing about some of these negative types in the PPP forum is that even though they are associates and claim they understand, they simply do not really know what they are involved with, and that's a shame. Just as the old ALW days, they make silly and uninformed remarks.

NetAudioAds does not have a person such as Art Williams, nor do they have the need of one because it is a wholly different type of business. Nevertheless, someone has to address things when people raise various issues. As the PPP forum members will attest, I certainly endeavored to help the common cause with frequent and sometimes long posts addressing a variety of issues and various remarks by sometimes disguntled associates and some whom simply had no clue what the business is trying to accomplish.

Partially as a product of that involvement and partially by private communications, I had ample opportunity to observe the remarks and actions of Larry Host, CTO of NetAudioAds. What I found in Larry was the same type of resolute determination that I witnessed in Art Williams. Art knew exactly where he was going. Likewise, Larry knows exactly what they are doing and believes in where they are going. He is fully determined to build something that will last and is not in the slightest degree, interested in some flash in the pan type operation. NetAudioAds is here to stay. Patience as the process plays out has been a hallmark of Larry's actions. That characteristic is a bit different than Art. Anyone who remembers those days, recalls (probably fondly) the many references to half-butts and losers :)

Art Williams later sold the sales agency and it became Primerica Financial Services, a part of the huge CitiGroup organization. To this day, PFS is still the target of it's business enemies with relentless attacks on internet forums by some very nasty folks (traditional life insurance agents) who masquerade as wanting to help folks. The truth is, they only want to help folks by relieving them of their money for overly expensive insurance products.

The early days of ALW was really exciting times for many of us and few who were involved then would deny that. Building a new business from scratch with such high ideals that defined the ALW organization of helping people with their financial affairs by saving them huge amounts of money. Hundreds of thousands of people joined that business with the hope of changing their whole lives. For tens of thousands, it in fact did.

A few hours ago, I stumbled across an ALW related site. I posted a message comment to Art there. It has to have a moderator approval process to happen before it actually posts. I decided to place the whole thing here and that is what lead to the article title of Everyone Needs a Coach.

Hi Art,

I just stumbled on everybodywantsacoach.com for the first time. I want to say hello and send a big thank you for the part you played in my life. Like others, I too consider my time with A.L. Williams /Primerica as one of the most exciting portions of my life. I had the pleasure of speaking directly with you and Angela a time or two in Las Vegas (though there is no reason why you would remember). I wrote a rather long, heart-felt letter to Angela once to which she sent back a personal reply which revealed that she had indeed read and was touched by what I had sent.

Greg Gentry and I shared an office in Parkersburg, WV and were a part of the Kip Ridley, Ronnie Barnes organization. I count it a pleasure to have been an RVP with the original team that won the 1st national championship. The 1984 celebration in New Orleans is a special memory that remains clear in my mind to this day. What was it, 40,000 of us at that meeting? I will never forget walking into the convention center with the Rockbusters Song blasting our senses.

After only 7 years from a standing start… knocking off Prudential’s butt as the largest seller of life insurance in the world that year was just too, too satisfying :) Come to think of it, so were old agent confrontations. I’m suddenly remembering how much I hated those guys.

I just can’t say enough about what all the “Just Do It” and other Art ism’s and principles have meant to me over the years. Sometimes when it seems that the stupidity of various political situations become just too much to contemplate, I will recall you talking about Margaret Thacher’s little war in the Falkland Islands and how it had no bearing on our day to day lives… just do it… ha!

I am no longer in the financial services business for no particular reason other than life just sometimes goes in unexpected directions. Like Sharmaine Hobbs said in a previous comment, there was a time that I went through a wilderness experience and felt like a failure after I was no longer active in the business. And, as with so many others who were involved with ALW, my relationship with God was something that was like a master control overlay program under which all of life’s activities were subjected. I gave Him complete permission to take my life in whatever direction it needed to go in order to develop me into who He wanted me to be. So I figure that wilderness experience was ordained from above.

Years ago, I had the good fortune of crossing paths with a man who in some ways reminds me of you. Kelley Varner is a well known leader in the church world and has had a major impact in the lives of God’s people around the world. He was talking one time about the trials that the people of God go through. His closing remarks were about how the most important thing one can say is that after all is said and done… I’m Still Here!!

Well, I AM STILL HERE. No weapon formed against me did or will prosper. Life is strange, is a huge understatement. Who would have thunk it… of all things, I found myself providing electronics service manuals for vintage audio equipment on the internet. An internet presence often leads to other things so I’ve recently been investigating and learning about some other internet marketing type things.

The most recent thing that has excited me is a new internet advertising model by NetAudioAds. It primarily consists of targeted 5-second audio ads that play to internet users worldwide. There are also plans to implement the world’s first Internet Emergency Broadcasting System. In many ways, I consider my involvement with NetAudioAds akin to my days with A.L. Williams… being a part of something larger than myself. I’m also about to start developing a blog site where I’ll be bloviating about many things… and probably some old ALW war stories and principles :)

I’ll close with this… I’m just another example of the old adage, “You can take the boy out of ALW, but you can never take the ALW out of the boy.”

Thanks a million Art!!

Rick Stout
Parkersburg, WV
StereoManuals.com
RickWords
NetAudioAds-PPP

NetAudioAds and PayPerPlay - The DIS-crediting of Trolls with an Agenda Begins Big Time!

Halt the presses! Larry Host announces Big, Big News about NetAudioAds, PayPerPlay, Voice2Page, and V2P Communications!

For the past 4-5 months, dishonest, lying bloggers with an agenda have been making God-only-knows how much money from their mini-career of bad-mouthing NetAudioAds (NAA), Voice2Page (V2P Communications), PayPerPlay (PPP) and Larry Host (CTO) on a personal basis. Many blog posts and various web sites were created for their nefarious purposes. A great amount of effort went into SEO efforts to drive their pages to the top of the search results.

I hope their day in the sun was a satisfying experience, cause guess what? Their credibility is about to go down the toilet where it belonged in the first place.


Dateline: Fri May 02, 2008 3:35 pm
Larry Host, CTO of Voice2Page and NetAudiosAds posted this message in the PayPerPlay members forum regarding the long-awaited NetAudioAds, Voice2Page and PayPerPlay audit results being completed by the highly respected BPA Worldwide.

BPA is preparing the final report on our audit. I had an extensive conference call with their engineering team earlier this week and they have sent me the following email detailing the decisions we made during that call. As normal, I am striking individual names and links at the request of BPA.

Hello Larry,

It was nice speaking with you the other day regarding the NetAudioAds Interactive audit. In summary, The January 24 – February 14 Interactive Audit will focus primarily on the following: Adlet Plays, Listener Sessions, Unique Listeners, Publisher Domains, Publisher Pages and Unique Adlets. For the Initial audit, Unique Adlets will be listed as a metric on the statement, however no total will be provided with a footnote.

After later reviewing our call and discussing with XXXXXXX and XXXXXXX our plan of action, I have put together a rough draft of what your audit statement would potentially look like (please see attached). Please be advised that this is just a rough draft and we can discuss any issues you may have with the current form.

Page 1: Page 1 will list your contact information, the NetAudioAds logo, a paragraph about NetAudioAds and will list the following top line figures:

Adlet Plays
Listener Sessions
Unique Listeners
Average Adlet Plays per Listener Session
Average Listener Session Duration
Publisher Domains
Publisher Pages
Unique Adlets *

* A footnote will be displayed stating Unique Adlets were not counted with the Initial Audit. (Please review the current statement and let me know your thoughts.)

Page 2: Page 2 will consist of a daily breakout of Adlet Plays and Listener sessions for the full audit period. A bar chart at the top of the page will also display this breakout.

Page 3: At the top of page 3, two bar charts will show the Total Adlet Plays by Day of the Week and also by Hour (EST). At the bottom of page 3 will be a full geographical breakout by State, Canadian Province and Foreign Countries.

Page 4: Page 4 will be a short Glossary of Terms found within the audit report. I have left the definition for Adlet open. If you currently have a definition, please pass it along as we would like to review it.

As promised in the opening post of this blog..... MUCH MORE to come. Stay Tuned folks.

So What's In a Word... like Juggernaut

People are interesting. I had a PayPerPlay forum member send me a message yesterday. He said:

"Nice blog you set up. One thing though... I don't think I would have used the word "Juggernaut". While "Juggernaut" is defined as a noun as in "An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path", a positive of sorts, it's more common definitions are rather negitive, as in "Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed", and "any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship, or a powerful football team:"

I thought about that for a minute and realized I didn't really think of the word in that light. Of course, I don't spend my life living in the dictionary, so I'm left with using words in whatever way my poor brain normally thinks they mean (or should mean). So I hit Google and instantly saw the word used in the way I normally think of it right on the search results page.

Juggernaut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A juggernaut (American pronunciation (help·info)) is any literal or metaphorical force regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut

There ya go! Now that's the way I think of Juggernaut, when I think of Juggernaut, which isn't too often actually. The definition sent to me is what American Heritage Dictionary uses. I also found this definition from Random House.

Jug·ger·naut –noun
1. (often lowercase) any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship, or a powerful football team.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

So what makes the difference? Well, I bring this up because I do NOT want any readers to think that I or any of the principles of NetAudioAds thinks that 5 second audio adlets are designed to crush all competition or destroy all other forms of advertising. In fact, it is not designed nor intended to displace other forms of Internet advertising such as Google AdSense as an example.

So when I used the word Juggernaut, I really just meant that I believe NetAudioAds-PPP is an up and coming force to be reckoned with in the Internet advertising world. I believe it will be unstoppable. I believe it will grow to be a very powerful advertising medium. I believe it will make a huge difference to many businesses that surely will be using it more and more as it comes out of beta into full deployment.

What do you think?

NetAudioAds-PPP - A New Internet Advertising Juggernaut

NetAudioAds (NAA) in conjunction with PayPerPlay (PPP) is a new Internet audio advertising juggernaut in the making. The medium is 5 second audio adlets that advertisers can have automatically delivered to web site visitors worldwide. These adlets are not delivered via a random scatter shot method across participating web sites. Instead, the audio adlets are delivered to web sites visitors that fit various targeting parameters. It makes no difference where in the world the participating web site is in relation to the site visitor. Adlets are targeted to visitors, not sites. Targeting parameters may be the visitor's location (worldwide, country, state, region, city, etc.), time of day, or even particular types of visitors through the use of keyword targeting. NetAudioads has elected to do this right by introducing a fully 3rd party audited system. The audit company chosen for this job is the respected BPA Worldwide which will insure that advertisers are getting exactly what they pay for and do not pay for any ads that were not delivered to their targeted audience.

NetAudioAds is a business operation of V2P Communications which was formed in 2005 for the purpose of introducing innovative audio services and strategically implementing them across the Internet and merging them with a variety of emerging new Internet technologies. The other main V2P business operation is Voice2Page. The co-founders of V2P are Larry Host, CTO and Mike Knox who serves as VP of Development. The President and CEO is Sam Deeb.

The Voice2Page side of the business has successfully delivered millions and millions of audio plays of various kinds to a huge number of web sites, blogs, businesses, eBay auctions, craigslist ads and social networking sites like MySpace, etc. Several of the Voice2Page products are provided on a completely free basis to the user, but they also offer enhanced services through value-added or premium services for a fee.

Voice2Page Record-byPhone and other audio technologies have been heard by millions of Internet users over the past few years. Many tens of thousands of MySpace users are familiar with the Voice2Page Comment Player (also known as Voice2Comment). Others may be familiar with the V2P Music Machine where music fans may listen to personal comments and music by many of their favorite artists such as Beyonce, Snoop Dogg, Carrie Underwood, Eminem and many others. Others have heard voice services on web sites and had no idea who was providing that technology.

So what is PayPerPlay (PPP)? Well, in order for NetAudioAds to deliver 5 second audio adlets to Internet users around the world, they need a network of Internet web site owners who will participate in the publishing network by having a javascript code embedded in their site pages. In this regard, it is exactly like Google AdSense and other Internet advertising systems. AdSense must have web site owners who will embed their javascript code in their pages in order to deliver their text-based ads.

Initially, Voice2Page tried to set up a network of web site owners under a system that ultimately didn't work out. It just wasn't the right model for a audio ads distribution network, so that system was scrapped and shut down. Some rethinking and retooling needed done to get a viable publisher network built. After some further research, V2P contracted on a non-exclusive basis with Charles Heflin, a well-known SEO expert and Internet marketing person to develop a publisher network.

The network of publishers is called PayPerPlay (or PPP for short), because when a 5 second audio adlet is played to visitors on their sites, they get paid. Google AdSense can not exist unless web site owners agree to embed a Google javascript code on their pages to display AdSense on their pages. In the exact same way, NetAudioAds can not deliver 5 second audio adlets unless site owners embed a NetAudioAds javascript on their site pages that will play them to their visitors. So NetAudiosAds and PayPerPlay are like two sides of the same coin. One can not exist without the other.

Except this time, site visitors do not have to click on an ad that is taking up space on the web site pages. The adlet plays automatically and requires no space on the site's pages which leaves the site owner to have much better use of his own site pages... and did I mention that it does not require the site's visitors to click on anything?

So Charles developed a viral marketing campaign to recruit a network of publishers and it began in early December 2007. The initial wildest expectations were to recruit perhaps 10,000 web site owners, followed up by having the ad distribution network all fired up and running at the beginning of February, 2008. Then shortly after that, see the network running at or nearly at full capacity. The plan was that publishers would have ads played to every visitor to their site. Well, as with most new endeavors, things happen and usually those things are of the unexpected variety.

The biggest unexpected thing was that Charles was wildly more successful than NetAudioAds ever dreamed he would be. Suddenly Charles was delivering new signups at an almost unbelievable rate. Now it became evident later that various things put out in that network-building campaign was not totally accurate. That caused some consternation on the part of a number of people and some felt they had been lied to. This is an understandable reaction, but it does not mean that anything malicious or devious or evil was intended.

Oh! And it's VERY important to note that it cost zero money for any web site owner to join PayPerPlay. Nobody was asking anybody to cough up money to be involved. After digging into the facts, I find ample reasons to understand how some miscommunications resulted in the initial promotional materials being flawed. Everyone wishes it didn't happen that way, including me... but it did. I find no particular fault nor lay blame at the feet of Charles or anybody else. I'll have a great deal more to say about these matters in some later blog posts and I believe most clear thinking individuals will understand when I'm through explaining what I believe happened.

V2P has the program classified as beta for the time being. But the developments were just about more beta than they bargained for. V2P had a situation on their hands where they had built infrastructure to handle approximately double the size of what they thought the network would be but now realized that was woefully inadequate. And along with this surge of signups came a number of "clever" folks who were trying to set up automated bot programs to steal revenue from NetAudioAds, PayPerPlay publishers and ultimately advertisers. As you might imagine, NAA had their hands full for awhile.

We'll visit some of those details in some later blog posts. But for now, we'll just say that the server farm was massively upgraded in record time. Software code was modified to fight bots. New procedures were developed. New ideas were brain-stormed with the new publisher network. NetAudioAds has made great strides and shown themselves to be a very serious, transparent, and reliable business partner.

The PayPerPlay publisher network stands at approximately 40,000 web site publishers with close to 1,000,000 web site domains and more than 30,000,000 web pages with NetAudioAds javascript code. Now for all this massive capability, currently (April 29, 2008) only a tiny portion of the publisher network is being served with ads.

There have been some ads being sold and delivered which also means some in the PayPerPlay publisher network have been receiving commissions and have been for several weeks. But it is obvious to anybody who pays the slightest bit of attention, that the vast majority of publishers are not currently being paid anywhere near what expectations are.

The main reason for that is also similarly easy to understand, howbeit somewhat frustrating. This project is breaking new ground in the advertising community. NetAudioAds business model is based upon being able to deliver verifiable proof of concept and proof of execution to the largest ad agencies who are responsible for the ad campaigns of the largest companies in the world. Nobody expects those companies to commit their advertising budgets in large amounts to an unproven new medium.

BPA Worldwide (the auditing company) was overwhelmed with the size of the initial audit logs. They were several times larger than the initial estimates given by NetAudioAds. As a result of these things, they simply were not prepared for such a large task and to deliver results on their initial timeline. They will not put their good name nor stamp of approval on any half-baked audit. They were contracted by NetAudioAds to do a professional job and that is what they will do. So everyone involved is (not so) patiently waiting for those audit results.

A few fairly well-known bloggers over the past 4 months or so have expressed skepticism about the whole concept of audio advertising. In my opinion, most of them based their comments on nothing but opinion, certainly not on facts or honest investigation. Most of those bloggers didn't seem to be malicious for the most part, just not well informed before they wrote their blogs.

However, a very small group with hidden agendas started at the very beginning to do everything in their power to destroy the reputation of NetAudioAds and PayPerPlay even before it launched. An obsessive and almost maniacal campaign was begun (which goes on to this day) that involves very, very few people (1 or 2 or 3 basically), but with several web sites, blogs, blogging comments, multiple identities, hidden identities, advertising, cross-promotions, viral marketing attacks, etc. while never disclosing the true reasons behind their obsessive efforts. Money is being made by trying to destroy the reputation and hinder a successful launch. We'll have more to say about some of those issues in a later blog posting.

So am I just a misguided cheerleader? The answer to that would be a resounding NO!

As they say... I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I ain't dull either. I may not be the brightest bulb out there but that doesn't translate to stupid. I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. You get the picture.

I've spent a great deal of my adult life learning to discern the heart of people and the motivations behind one's words and actions. Nobody is perfect at this, but I'm seen enough to believe that the nay-sayers got it wrong. And the outright lying, dishonest ones are just that... lying and dishonest and deceiving a number of casual observers for their own selfish and misguided purposes.

I've never been a blogger, but thought for a long time that I should. My involvement in this project has prompted me to get on with it. Besides this site, I will have some additional sites up and running soon. We'll have much more to add in this blog plus on the other sites. Stay tuned.