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The Story Of Poolandspa.TV
By Janice Beckman
From Poolandspa.com News
Online Newsletter
April 2008
The best promotional tool that we discovered in 2007 was the use of
How-To Videos on our web site. Although we here at Poolandspa.com
like to think that we are very technologically advanced and ahead of
the game when it comes to web site technology, very few of us had
dabbled in the world of YouTube and online videos until last August
2007.
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Dan Harrison,
Poolandspa.com |
It wasn’t until our company president, Dan Harrison, saw
a news clip on CNN about an odd looking person screaming
something about “Leave
Britney Alone”, that we all gathered around one of
our computers and, for the first time, logged onto this
“YouTube” we had heard about, to get a glimpse. Turns
out, that seemingly unimportant piece of pop culture
struck a chord with Dan. He actually went to Hofstra
University in the late 70’s and majored in Film and TV
Communications, but had never seen much of a connection
with the pool and spa industry.
He spoke to our staff and computer people about it
during one memorable staff meeting. He wanted to know if
we could possibly put videos on our Poolandspa.com web
site. The frightened looks of “a deer in the headlight”
darted across the room as each staff member said “I
don’t know”. Others said it would be too expensive, it
would take up too much bandwidth, no one would be
interested, etc., etc., etc.
Dan had heard this type of “it’s not possible reaction”
before when he opened one of the first “all hot tub”
stores in the early 1980’s. Also when he started one of
the first mail order catalogs for pool and spa supplies
in the mid-1980’s. And again when he started one of the
first pool and spa web sites in 1994. People said it was
crazy to have a store that just sold hot tubs…how
ridiculous. People said no one would ever buy pool and
spa supplies through the mail…that is absurd. And people
certainly said that the idea of people using a computer
to purchase pool and spa products from a web site was
just plain insane, and the Internet was just a
“flash-in-the-pan”. |
Within a week of that fabled staff meeting, the UPS packages started
to be delivered to our office. Video cameras, tripods, wireless
microphones, monitors, cables, camera cranes, video and sound
editing equipment and the like. We could all see that here would be
no stopping Dan once he got a new promotional marketing idea in his
head. We quickly acquired a few new web addresses,
Poolandspa.TV, PoolandspaTV.com and
PoolandspaTube.com. We could all see that there was no turning back.
We made a separate section of our web site for Poolandspa.TV and
posted a few videos at first. Some were from YouTube, some were from
customers and some were from other pool and spa companies that had
produced videos or promotional DVD’s about their products. Almost
immediately this area of our web site started to get thousands of
visitors each day.
We produced a few crude How-To videos just to get something up there
and to learn how to use all this new equipment. We had to hire a few
technical folks to help us out as well. But after a few weeks, some
of our staff members took the reigns and learned how to make a
decent video. The most popular video we produced in 2007 was “How to
Close a Pool”, which was a 30 minute show in a “Hometime” home
improvement show type format.
This spring, we produced a few more elaborate How-To videos which
included “How To Open A Pool”, “How To Drain, Acid Wash & Paint a
Pool”, and the runaway YouTube hit “How To Clear A Green Pool” which
to date has had over 25,000 YouTube views. We have been getting
thousand of web visitors each day who watch our videos. It is
driving a lot of fresh traffic to our site and it is also increasing
sales of the products we feature in the videos.
Although there is a very steep learning curve with this type of
promotion, and there is also a very high cost in both time and
money, we can see that video-on-the-web is definitely here to stay
and will greatly benefit the pool and spa consumer by providing very
detailed information that may not be as easily relayed with just the
written word on a web page.
For further information, contact:
Betty Carter at 702-437-4343 or
betty@poolandspa.com
The History Of .TV
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You will be seeing the .tv
extension more and more in the future. The .tv comes
from the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu, complete
with it’s red hot top level domain name .tv. Less than
three years ago Travel.tv sold for $65,000 while Mail.tv
sold for $35,000 and these are not even close to the
highest reported sales of all-time. It was rumored that
Golf.tv sold for $600,000 in years past but can not be
verified. Other top reported .tv sales include; China.tv,
Free.tv and Net.tv, all of which had over $100,000 price
tags.
Why so much fuss over this tiny island country of just
11,636 inhabitants? It’s simple really, the acronym TV
is known around the world as the abbreviation for
television, this acronym has no language barriers. It is
without question one of the most recognized two letter
combinations in the entire world and we all know the
world has an incredible fascination with their beloved
televisions. In fact in many countries throughout the
world watching television is their favorite past time.
From one study we saw it showed that an average person
watches TV for nearly 30 hours on average per week.
That’s nearly 1,000 hours per year...this a lot of time
to devote to the tube. And broadband web use is also
growing exponentially worldwide. So the mixing of
web-based content with TV content is a natural next
step.
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Press Release:
Poolandspa.com Acquires Poolandspa.TV
Poolandspa.com News, Las Vegas, NV
May 1, 2008
Poolandspa.com Inc., a Las
Vegas, Nevada online retailer, has recently acquired
Poolandspa.TV. This web site is used to
host and promote Poolandspa TV programs, How-To Videos, Promotional
Videos from the Pool & Spa Industry and instructional DVD's.
With the popularity of YouTube, Poolandspa.com has had a lot of
requests for pool and spa related videos to be put on their site.
This has been quite an undertaking, to produce and gather many
videos like this, but they are currently working on the videos and
web pages daily. It is changing all the time, so visitors are urged
to check the web site frequently for all the latest.
Future plans include the production of a How-to DVD later this year
that will include Pool & Spa Opening and Closing instructions as
well as various maintenance and How-To videos.
To date, Poolandspa.TV has produced 43 How-To videos that are
currently available online that include: How To Open A Pool, How To
Drain & Clean A Spa, How To Clear A Green Pool, How To Backwash A
Filter, How To Acid Wash A Pool, How To Paint A Pool, How To Repair
A Cement Pool Step, How To Install A Spa Cover Lifter, How To
Install Spa Cover Mural, among others.
Their videos have had over 75,000 YouTube views so far this year,
which makes the Poolandspa.TV How-To series of videos the most
viewed pool and spa related videos on YouTube.
Poolandspa.com also has plans in the works to launch their own cable
TV show 'Poolandspa TV' to be aired next year on a popular
Do-It-Yourself-type cable network. They hope that the new
Poolandspa.TV name will become a
household word in the near future!
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