Hello to all of my friends.  I hope you are happy to hear from me after my long absence.  I have ended my tour of duty with my local Census Office (the 2010 Census is now officially over), and am back to my office, evaluating what I am going to do, what I am NOT going to do, and how I am going to do it.

A lot has changed over the past year since I wrote “101 Things To Do With Audio And Video (To Promote Your Business)“.  Different services have come and gone, and many are going through a lot of changes.  I can only imagine that you all have gone through myriad changes as well.  I’d love to know what you’re doing at this point in your life (and in the economy!).

I’ve been thinking about all I have created and done since I started Encouraging Audiobooks back in 2004.  My husband has never understood how I got to where I am now, since I started with such a simple idea, and it got a lot more complex (and expensive) as I went. 

I started with an idea to help people share encouraging, inspirational stories in audio book format.  The problem was that no one knew how to record audio books.  So that meant I had to change my services to include TEACHING how to record audio books.

Then I had to learn about promoting the audio books, and my idea was to create audio articles (sent out in an audiozine as opposed to an e-zine) with excerpts of books and audio versions of articles.  I was trying to find a way where people could download all of the audio files at one time and get them onto their mp3 players and cell phones at one time, but no luck.  And THEN came podcasting. 

So I changed from sending out links to my uploaded audio files to putting them on an RSS feed to create a podcast.  The creation of FeedBlitz made it easy to take my RSS feed podcast and turn it into an auto-subscription newsletter, complete with links to play and download the audio.  Things were picking up speed.

Of course, my audio clients wanted to learn about podcasting, along with a lot of other people, including Lifetime TV, who hired me as their Podcasting Consultant back in 2006.  So I created the Online International Podcasting Expos back in 2006, where people from all over the world came to learn podcasting.  I also started online classes on podcasting in small groups and one-on-one.

Then I started using my experience as a TV Director/Editor and picked up with creating video.  I found that my audio clients also wanted to learn about video creation, so video production classes started.

Next came my fascination with Podcast Directories, and the realization about what great Google search engine ranking tools they were.  What if I could create a Podcast Directory software for every niche available and sell them?  So I did.  It was a turnkey Podcast Directory that anyone could buy and have people submit their podcasts and blogs to it.  They could sell advertising or prime real estate on it – however they wanted to use it.  But it always put them at the top of their keywords for Google, without having to do a thing once it was in motion.

However, once that was set up, I realized that the only people that could post on the Directories were people that already knew how to podcast and blog.  What if I make another version of the Directory that let people upload audios, videos and articles directly to it?  That was the beginning of Online Community Magazines.  The idea behind this was to get offline businesses (perhaps through Chambers of Commerce) to get online with this one tool, which would also create an online magazine of all of their aggregate content.

Of course, this brought up another question.  How do I help people who don’t know HOW to create audio and video, and are scared of the process?  So now I had to create a multimedia production suite for novices, where everything was super easy, and even came with help from me.  That turned into the Commercial Creation Center.

You’d think I’d stop there, but much to my husband’s dismay, I didn’t.  I couldn’t.  Because there was something missing.  I had done hundreds of podcasts, and had the idea that it should be super simple to take all of those posts and create PDF ebooks from them, complete with links to play/download the audios and videos.

However, no such system existed.  So I HAD to create one.  That turned into RSSzine.  Plus, I liked the flash, turning page magazines, and thought it would be cool to do that affordably for people, so I added that service as well.   This fit perfectly with the Online Community Magazines, since I could now take all of everyone’s posts and create a monthly PDF and turning page version of it for the Magazine owners.  (See http://PositivelyPittsburghLiveMagazine.com for an example.)

Lastly, I figured I could make some extra money setting up WordPress web sites for people, and hosting their web sites, which is what I do at Multimedia Web Sites.

Now, it’s 2010, and after having taken a year off from creating, my mind is whirring about how to now create customizable mobile phone applications.  I have ideas (as always), but I’m not quite sure if my ideas are always marketable at that time.  I always seem to be about 3 years ahead of the curve.  Maybe I’ll be right on time now?

My other question is whether to start back up my last podcast, “Marketing With Audio And Video“.  I did that for a year and had great guests and feedback, but I’m just not sure if that will serve my purpose right now.

So that’s my update and initial return post.  I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing over the past year.  I’m going to open up the comments and let you share your journey as well, or if you have a post on your own blog, put that link in. 

Thanks for those of you who have stuck with me over the past year, and who have been great companions since this journey started in 2004.  Looking forward to reconnecting with you all soon.

Penny Haynes

http://www.PennyHaynes.com