If you're not familiar with YouTube.com they are a video
sharing site that's currently the 14th most visited site on
the internet, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Right now
YouTube gets about 72 million visitors per month and 14,000
new video uploads every day.
What Google gets out of the deal is traffic. Millions of
eyeballs get to look at their targeted ads.
YouTube gets stronger filtering to keep out unwanted
material, and Google's power of search, to find videos
on the YouTube site. But even more important will be
the YouTube videos starting to show up on Google.
As test we made a silly video on how to groom a cat.
My friend took three different brushes and showed how
to use them. A month later, that silly video gets viewed
hundreds of times per week. So what could you make a
video of? How about...
Changing a car tire.
Barbecuing eggplant.
Setting up a tent.
Heating a baby bottle.
Writing on a cake.
Putting on makeup.
Opening a bottle of wine.
Yes, we all had to learn how to do all, or many of
these things at one point in time in our life.
Another friend of mine does a certain kind of yoga...
well that's boring enough. What's good about watching
someone standing still? It's not the pose... it's getting
into the twisted pose that makes a great movie. After
the movie we can send visitors to a website to buy yoga
mats, clothing, DVDs and accessories.
Anything that has a process can have a video made of it.
Trust me, YouTube will evolve into not just entertainment,
but an on-demand video encyclopedia of how to do all things.
But at the moment, the more goofy and funny your video is,
the more viral and popular it will become.
Don't let your lack of gear prevent you from getting started.
In the case of the cat video, it was totally amateur. We didn't
use proper lighting, or even have a video camera. It was a
digital still camera that had low resolution video capability.
We recorded the 30 second clip, and transferred it to the
computer. We then used Apple's QuickTime Pro for Windows,
to convert the video into a YouTube friendly format. (QT
Pro is a 30 dollar upgrade from basic QuickTime and it's
available directly from Apple.com.)
We uploaded the video to YouTube.com and almost immediately,
people were watching it and voting on it. Within four weeks
we had received thousands of views. So now that we had the
eyeballs, we needed to test the marketing.
Here's the secret. Using software like QuickTime Pro you can
add a freeze frame to the end of the video. Like the credits
at the end of a movie. This is when and where to advertise
your site.
All you need to do is make a 320 by 240 pixel graphic (or
whatever size your movie is) in Photoshop Elements or your
favorite graphics software. On the graphic you could say
something like, "For more Videos and cat grooming tips just
like this one visit EverythingKitty.com.
Once you have your graphic done, open QuickTime Pro and
choose "Open Image Sequence." Set your "Frame Rate" to
five seconds. This will display your graphic for five seconds.
Next, take the time slider and move it to the very beginning
of the five second clip. Drag in your 30 second movie from
your desktop into the QuickTime window.
This time, when you play your movie, your marketing
message will be displayed for five seconds at the end of
the movie. All that's left to do, is save it as MPEG4 and
upload it to YouTube. There's all sorts of other tricks you
can do, but this one will get you started.
So how well did we do with the kitty video and the five
second marketing message. Just over 437 dollars in affiliate
revenue, from 1,209 visitors in less than a week. That's
just over 36 cents per visitor. (Known in marketing speak
as dollar value per visitor.)
So what are you going to do this weekend? The same old
marketing stuff you've always done, or get your camera
out and start goofing around for fun and profit? You'll be
surprised at how many new visitors you can get in a very
short time.
That's it for this issue my friend. Thank you for reading.
We'll chat again soon. Until then, here's wishing you all
the best for online success.
Michael Campbell
P. S.
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