User Contributed-Making Money With A Video Blog
Mark, a knowledgeable reader and benevolent commenter here has made a separation and started his own blog called Digerati Marketing. It’s pretty new and only has a couple posts so far, but I got to say the material thus far is absolutely fantastic. I think it’s a great representation of the Blue Hat spirit. So I have absolutely no problem plugging it, because I really do think you should add it to your readers in case he keeps up the excellent work. He was kind enough to donate one of his posts here. It’s called Making Money With A Video Blog. I think it’s a great post and if you’ve been paying close attention you’ll know that I also already do this idea and he is absolutely right on all counts. So enjoy.
-Eli
An Introduction to Video Websites
There’s a lot of them about, a lot. Apart from the old-timers like Ebaumsworld, Google’s acquisition of YouTube has really seen them starting to eat up this market. The great thing is, that doesn’t matter, videos are a disposal media - people look at them once, show their mates and then it’s old news. You’re only as good as your last video! What we’re going to look at doing here is setting up a video website with minimal cost & time and maximizing our profit.
Now, I’m not claiming this will make you a millionaire, but you can earn around £500 ($1000 to our American friends) per month without too much trouble. So it’s well worth it for the day or two it will take to set up!
Step #1: Monetization Strategy
Okay, for this site we are going to make our bucks from a couple of different sources. Our main income will be made from Google Adsense. If you haven’t got yourself a Google Adsense Publisher account, click the big button below and sign up. Adsense will display contextual adverts which you can neatly blend in with the design of your website, to make them non-intrusive, yet a natural click away. For this website we are aiming at generating a 25% click-through rate while staying well inside the Adsense Terms Of Service.
An important note: I’m going to give you some tips on optimizing your Adsense placement and layout later, if you want to take the optimization further, you may be pushing the limit on what Google does and doesn’t allow. The Adsense team can be merciless at times if they think you are breaking their TOS, which can be quite “grey�? at times. So, stick to the guidelines and you’ll be fine, cross the line at your own risk!
So, if you haven’t already,
Step #2: Setting up the website with Wordpress
Yay for Wordpress and its many uses! Wordpress gives you an off the shelf platform for out video blog (vlog). It allows comments, pings, trackbacks, easy archiving, it’s SEO friendly and has loads of plugins. For this kind of mission, it’s definitely the number one choice.
There are two ways you can go about getting Wordpress up and running:
1) You can go to wordpress.com and sign up for a wordpress account, they will provide you with a hosted blog such as myvideoblog.wordpress.com
or
2) You can go wordpress.org and download Wordpress and install it on your server. This is really the preferred option as it will give you the power to use some neat features in the future, which will smooth out the money making process! If you haven’t got web hosting, I use Site5 (aff link) and they’ve always been good to me and are fairly priced.
Once you’ve uploaded Wordpress to your server, follow the installation guide (it’s pretty simple) to get your Wordpress installation and database up and running.
Step #3: Choosing a domain name
Probably the hardest part of building any website is finding a domain name! Don’t worry too much about getting keywords in there, organic SEO isn’t how we’ll be doing the bulk of our promotion, try and focus on getting something short, snappy and memorable. (That means no hyphens!). If you can get something with a keyword or two (funny, video, comedy, humor - reach for your thesaurus) all the better, but as I say - don’t sacrifice the name for it. Once that’s sorted, point it at your server so it will have resolved by the time you’re ready to launch.
Step #4: Plugins Galore
There are some great plugins for Wordpress that will save you a hell of a lot of time and coding. I’ve experimented with quite a few and whittled the list down to some essentials.
Viper’s Video Quicktags - This plugin will save you having to rip out all the embed code from videos on major sites like YouTube, all you need to do is paste in the video ID and this plugin will do all the rest of the code & alignment for you. It’s essential to make adding videos as quick as possible.
WP-Email - This plugin adds an “E-mail This To A Friend�? option at the bottom of every post (which will be your videos). I’ve been using these for a while and although you don’t get loads of people use them, personally recommendation is the best kind of marketing your website could hope for.
WP-PostRatings - This will add the “rate this video�? 0-5 stars function at the bottom of each post. It’s a nice addon to get people to try and interact with your site if the can’t be bothered to post comments. Interaction is good - it’s the first step in relation building with your visitors and ultimately trying to get them to come back.
Sociable - Adds a mini-bar of just about every popular social bookmarking site worth mentioning at the bottom of each post. Digg, Reddit, Bloglines, they’re all there. Optimization Tip: From experimenting, I found it is best not just to select all the social sites going, choose a maximum of 5 major ones, then rotate to see what is most successful. Having a line of 20 social bookmarking icons looks a bit confusing and seems to ultimately put people off using them.
StumbleUpon It! - StumbleUpon is a really great way to promote sites with entertainment and disposable content. This plugin gives you a “stumble it�? button at the bottom of each post, which will play a part in our future marketing strategy.
Did You Pass Math? - Did you? This is just a basic anti-spam measure that puts one of those sums before you’re allowed to comment. Spam is a major problem, so I’d recommend this one, just to save you some time.
Akismet - This should be present in your default Wordpress installation, you require a Wordpress API key - but this little gem has stopped more spam than anything else I’ve ever tried.
Step #5: Get Feedburned
Okay, with further promotion in mind it’s time to sign up to Feedburner. RSS is going to be one of the main ways we keep in touch with our readers, letting them know we’ve put more videos on our site and Feedburner offers a load of other ways to let people subscribe to your content.
Step #6: Theme Design
There are loads of great Wordpress themes at themes.wordpress.net. Have a good look through them until you find something you like. I would generally recommend going for something fairly simplistic and neat with an either 2 or 3 column design. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you could always design your own!
Once you’ve got your theme and uploaded it, I’d suggest tweaking some of the graphics to make it your own. Get your branding up there, design a logo and base your site around the domain name. This is why we wanted something easy to remember and relevant earlier, it’s no good calling your site “Video Hustler�? then having www.my-funny-internet-videos.cc and hoping people will remember it.
Some Wordpress essentials
There are a couple of other tweaks you can do in Wordpress to make your job easier.
1) Add a few categories, I used “Funny Videos�?, “Extreme Videos�? and “Sexy Videos�? just so I could tag my content as I add it.
2) Use custom permalinks! This will make your URLs easier to remember and will help various bots crawl your site. To do this go to the “Options�? menu, then “Permalinks�? and at the bottom check the “custom�? radio button and put /%postname%/ in the field.
3) Change page titles.
What we want to do is to swap the position of “Post Title�? with “Blog Name�?. This is because:
* Search engines uses your Page Title as the linking text in its search engine results page (SERP).
* The search keywords are bolded for page titles in search engines
* It makes it easier for search engine users to know right away if what they are looking for is correct
Now, this will involve some editing to your template files, which is normally called “header.php�?. Find this:
This is how you’re going to make your money, so it’s pretty important! On your main index page you want to have an Adsense content unit at the very top, below your site header, but above the first video. This for me, is by far the highest click though, achieving around 30-40%, with the right keywords later on we can marry these adverts up with your content beautifully.
In your Adsense control console, under Adsense for content, go into your “Ad Units�?. These will get you paid after 1 click, whereas link units require a click to bring you to a results page, then a click on the results to get paid. So select link unit and leave “text only�? (default) selected. There is 468×60 pixel size which fits perfectly above your standard Google or YouTube Video.
You second biggest earner will be the ad unit which will create a gap between the first video and the rest of the videos on the site. Your first video will obviously be visible above the scroll, but being an average 10-30 second long funny clip, people will never be able to resist at least looking at the other videos on your front page. You must exploit this human curiosity! The 336×280px “large rectangle�? unit fits the bill perfectly. Again it will fit in nicely below your video and will give a nice chunk of adverts. This ad unit must only be displayed below the first video as there are limits on the amount of ad units you are allowed on 1 page. You will however, want this ad unit again on the “single post�? page. So, if somebody links directly to one of your videos, you still have max Adsense coverage.
I would recommend showing the first 5 videos on the first page. Having less, will reduce the chances of people looking at anything but the first video on your site and will effectively reduce the page size - minimizing advert space. Having a lots of videos will distract people from using other parts of your site navigation (well, by this I mean will keep people too amused to click on your ads!). It’s a fine line between wetting their appetite but then keeping them hungry for more.
It’s also worth having a vertical unit (skyscraper) near your navigation. You want both of these units clearly visible without scrolling down, so you’ve got the top of the page and the central part covered in lovely adverts, which is where people’s mousey clicks tend to go!
It is important to blend your Adsense into your site and there are two schools of thought on this. The default “blue�? hyperlinks on websites will get the most clicks, always. This color has been drilled into our head since the dawn of the www and your brain just says “click�?, so if any of your other links on your site use this color, you will need to use this color for your Adsense titles. I however, think this color is ugly, so I refrained from using it anywhere on my site at all. If you follow this approach as well, then you simply want to make your Adsense units the same color as your standard hyperlinks. If you’re using Firefox there is a great Colour Picker addon, which gives you the hex code for any color, live on a web page. Since you’re allowed a link unit on the page as well, I tend to put one of these in the footer, just because it looks okay and it does earn a few pennies every now and again.
Beating Adsense Smart Pricing
“Smart Pricing�? is Google’s way of trying to keep its advertisers happy by lowering the cost of junk traffic. Unfortunately, they do this at your expense. Having poor advertisers on your site, will lead to you users clicking the adverts, then leaving the horrible site they land on almost instantly. When people do this, Google will think you’re sending out junky traffic, when actually it’s the advertiser’s site that is at fault. This will lead to the money you get per click, going down.
Fortunately, Google offer a “competitive ad filter�?, which allows you to block certain advertisers from showing ads on your site. Login to your Google Adsense account and go to “Adsense Setup�? and you’ll see a “Competitive Ad Filter�? tab. Click this and you’ll be given a box of URLs to block.
Copy & paste this list into your competitive ad filter and this should help you keep a strong amount per click.
Google Coop
Google Coop is a custom search engine (CSE) which basically allows you to click a few buttons and make a custom search engine. The great thing is, you can tie this in with your current Adsense account and it will pay out when somebody clicks on a sponsored result from your custom search engine. So, rather than leave in the standard Wordpress search, you might as well make some money from it!
Find the bit of code in your theme that shows the default Wordpress search box and comment it out. Create a Google Coop account and you will be presented with if you would like your search engine to search the entire web, with preference to selected sites, or simply search specific sites. Choose the option to select specific sites and just add your own URL. Don’t forget to enter your Adsense Publisher ID!. Google will then generate a chunk of code for you, which you can paste in place of your current Wordpress search. Viola! Monetized search! My search box generates around an extra 30% of my site revenue.
Get Feedburner on there
Login to your Feedburner account and get it to give you the code for an e-mail subscribe box. I’ve found I get more e-mail subscribers than RSS readers. I believe this is because RSS is really only embraced by the more “web savvy�? user and they will be fully capable of finding videos on Digg, YouTube, Google and are more likely to be aware of the bigger sites. So for your regular Joe Blogs (heh), e-mail a nice, easy to understand way to get them to sign up to updates. If you can squeeze your Feedburner RSS subscribe button in above the scroll, all the better - but I have found people that want an RSS feed will find it.
Feedburner also offer “chicklets�? which is a little button that shows the world how many subscribed readers you have. Generally, I’d advise not to install this until you have 100 or so readers, there’s no point showing people how unpopular your site is to begin with! Leave it for bragging rights later. It is quite possible to achieve 500-1000 readers within 6-12 months.
Here’s one I made earlier:
In Yellow: CPM advertising (we’ll talk about this later, but save some banner space!)
In Red: Our monetized Google Coop box
In Brown: The Feedburner subscribe bits. That’s most of the design info covered.Step #7: Sourcing and adding video content to your website
Okay, so how do we go about getting videos onto your site? Well there’s a quick and profitable way and a longer but more profitable away.
The quick and profitable way
I don’t recommend this method to begin with, even though it’s quicker, this is only something you should be doing after your site is established, or if you are very short on time.
Go to digg.com/videos and see what other people find funny. Follow the link through to the video site, grab the video ID and pop it in a post.
When you are post a video, make sure every 2-3 videos you have the words “funny�? and/or “video�? in the post title. Wordpress uses header tags for these titles and it will help make your Adsense adverts more relevant. Below the video, type a couple of lines explaining the video (without giving too much away!). Be as funny/sarcastic as you like, but keep it short and interesting - and write your own descriptions!
The longer but more profitable way
Okay, this takes a bit more work, but will really, really help you promote your site. One neat thing about Google Video is that they allow you to download the videos. So, go have a search around Google Video and download 20-30 videos that you think are funny. Download them in “PSP�? format which will give you a .mp4 format file.
If you have some decent video editing software that can handle mp4 files you can skip this step:
If you’re stuck using Windows Movie Editor you’ll have to convert the file before you can edit it. Now, if you can find a free program, let me know. I’ve been using Riverpast Video Cleaner, which will convert the mp4 files to avi without any real quality loss. It’s $30 but it will be your only expense in this operation. Riverpast will be able to convert all your videos in batch, so go make yourself a cuppa.
Once you’ve got your video in .avi format, create yourself a bitmap image with your site logo and site URL on it. Use your video editing software to show your logo for 5 seconds at the beginning and end of your video, so it’s all branded to you now!
Get your branded videos out there!
Once you’ve got branded videos, you’re really onto a winner. I pull in around 500-800 visitors per day from YouTube alone. Google have a batch video uploader, so your first port of all is to re-upload your newly edited videos onto Google Video.
Once they are uploaded you can add the video information. Generally in the title I again try and get the words “funny video�?, “extreme video�? or similar in. These help pick up a bunch of generic searches. I’ve found the description doesn’t make a huge difference to whether the video is viewed, as long as the title is good. If you’re uploading to Google, using the batch uploader there is a separate field to link to your website, which becomes an active link, so you may as well type a description. Keep it short and snappy to try and get as many views as possible. For tags, I use a set of standard: funny, video, humor, humor, comedy, laugh, lol, cool, extreme, stupid, insane, accident - then add a couple of video specific keywords on the end.
Repeat this process with YouTube. The only difference with YouTube is that there is no separate field for your own site URL. If you just pop your URL into the description, this will automatically become a clickable link. YouTube is a bit more of a pain because you can only upload 1 video at a time, but you can always do other stuff at the same time! The sheer amount of traffic that YouTube gets makes it worthwhile doing this.
Once you have a “base�? of around 30 videos, you don’t need to keep finding new ones. You just create a new YouTube account under a hotmail address every week or so, since you’re a new user and uploading new content, your videos will more often or not appear on the front page briefly which will get you spurts of traffic.
Using your imagination, there are loads of places that accept video uploads that you can use. MySpace anyone? MySpace Video is taking off big-time at the moment, so if you have access to some large MySpace accounts, this can be a great way to get traffic. One other technique is taking a screenshot of your video at 00:00 then posting this picture on a MySpace profile or bulletin, so it looks like an embedded video, but will take people through to your site with the video on. Hey, that’s pretty scrappy - but it works. Make sure you use the border=�?0? attribute on such images so you don’t get a blue border around them!
Step #8: Kick Starting Promotion
Following this recipe so far, you’ll probably make $5-$10 per day. If you want to get up to the $40 per day mark to make your $1,000 a month, you’ll need to give your site a kick up the backside. Here’s how:
Go to www.stumbleupon.com and register yourself with an account and install their browser toolbar.
Once you’re all ready to rock with StumbleUpon, make your way over to www.stumblexchange.com. Stumblexchange is a system where you sign up, stumble a whole list of other people’s sites, then in return they stumble you back. StumbleUpon is fairly simple - the more stumbles your site gets, the more traffic they send you. StumbleUpon has a ton of users and this step will get you 200 more uniques a day for months to come. So login, register your account details and stumble everyone’s site. (If your so inclined, you could script this). Well done, you just added another $200 a month onto your earnings! There’s also a diggxchange and deliciousxchange in this network, however I haven’t experimented with them to comment on this.
Get some links
Everybody loves links, especially Google. There’s a massive list at RSSTop55 of directories and blog aggregators. I would start with these:
Next Steps
Now you’ve got some readers and some regular traffic, you can sign up for a CPA advertiser. Burst Media is quite easy to get into and has a large inventory. Having CPA ads will earn you money for page views, without clicks and makes for an excellent secondary income.
Above all, experiment, experiment, experiment! Let me know how you get on!
Thanks for the great article Mark.
On a side note. If anyone here has a blog post that represents the Blue Hat ideals and you think your blog deserves some attention. Feel free to check out the contribute form. I’d love to read them.
ask Felipe Neto, he knows!
ayhauauhauh
great post! This serves as a great starting point for people to experiment with video blogging as a monetization source.
Great article! video bloggin is less considered tanh other issues.
Yes is not very famous!
Damn nice post.
Props to you, Mark, and Eli for publishing it.
Would be a great addition to the WF blogging case study here.
How often do you add new videos on such a blog? What is the optimal period?
broken link report:
Blogarama.com dd site is now at
http://www.blogarama.com/add-a-site/
Hi,
what do you guys think of automated blogs? Blogs which use specific plugins which fetch videos from Youtube/Google etc. (I guess you can define the videos by keywords) and post them automatically to your blog bit by bit, where you can decide how many videos in which time frame. (as to not spam your own blog)
I’ve never tried this. Has anyone some experience with it? Once set up this would be handsfree.
Mike
There is an AllInSEO plugin for WP which make the seo much easier.
Interesting idea, though I wonder how the CTR would really be? I have a similar site, not exactly like this and the CTR is horrible with similar ad placement.
Hehe, thanks for the kind words, Eli
In reply to Misha:
I tend to add 2 videos per day, just head over to Digg and see what’s hot. With the plugins it litereally takes about 30 seconds per video, so it’s worth it! You need constant new content to attract and retain readers.
In reply to Erik Karey:
Today I’m on 29.2% CTR, with good ad placement 25% is easily possible.
In reply to Mike:
I’m not a fan of automated blogging. It’s worth the extra couple of minutes to check to make sure the videos are good so people will send them to friends/digg them etc.
Thanks for reading and thanks again, Eli
Great read…I already read all this on digitalpoint, where it was originally posted.
/waits for “blue hat spirit” blog badge thing (with mandatory backlink)
No kidding…sign me up for the blue hat badge program!
Great post, i have an old blog that I was thinking of changing to a videoblog, this post has given me loads of ideas and tips. Thanks
Thanks Mike,
Do you do any keyword research or just guess which videos people are looking for?
How big part of the search traffic is generated by the text people use in their comments?
I check your blog out later.
Hey KeywordDonkey,
You can generate decent traffic without “standard seo”, just using social media outlets. So you just tag each video as it comes when you’re putting it YouTube and such. You only really need to get a few keywords in your post titles to make sure adsense plays ball and shows relevant ads.
Great post,indeed true Blue Hat Spirit ! Thxs a lot.
Great tip, I will defiantly add your blog to my reader!
cool post, I gonna try this
but while looking in the WP theme directory I saw an ad, where they sell this technique on a video
for everyone who cares:
http:// www . homepage - wizard . com / pdc / videoblogger/
NO it is not my site, have just seen their ad on the theme directory
Watermarking a video with ffmpeg
In a contributed post over at Blue Hat SEO, there was some talk of branding/watermarking video with a site name and url, and of course there’s no way I would use Windows for that when a Linux command line utility
Thanks for dropping by and answering some questions. That’s really cool of you. Also, I’d like to point out the double ad bar in the example screenshot (300 awesome movie). People have a tendancy to adapt to advertisements and become numb to them. Typically on a three column page the ads are placed on the two sides so their focus goes to the center.placing both ad columns right next to each other forces their eyes to decide which of the two columns is the content. Eitherway they will naturally invest added interest in the two double ad columns. Hence why the click through rate is unusually higher.
Very impressive post!
Having just started a new video site based on the Wordpress platform, and having just reworked my clean humor site on the same platform (which contains a lot of videos as well), I was looking for a way to boost traffic and earnings to my sites.
Not all of these apply directly to me, but just in scanning it, I can see many ways I can benefit from what you’ve offered here.
This info is a terrific gift to someone who’s just getting started with this kind of thing.
I can’t thank you enough! Best post so far for me on Blue Hat!
One question: How do we stand as far as copyright permission goes when it comes to downloading videos from google or other sites, adding a logo and then loading them up as our own?
two: do you suggest keeping to themed video blogs, eg one on humour, one on accidents, etc
Great post
Mark
as far as copyright permission, if the owner of the video wants to screw you… I think you are screwed
good luck undoing the labeling and all.
I love this post though, great stuff.
this is the #1 most useful site that I have come across! Keep up the great work.
This is the best video site with wordpress optimization at its maximum:
http://www.cherez.com
even the css file is renamed to the title!
MarkF: Obviously with copyright, it may well be worth contacting the owner of the video if you’re unsure. Many places like ebaumsworld and metacafe watermark videos which aren’t theirs and the feedback I’ve got sees people split into two camps. So it’s really up to you what you want to do, if you get the owner’s permission (just PM them on YouTube) you’ll be fine.
What cheap and easy Windoze software is best for the editing/branding here? Is there a prog that will do this in batch?
There is a windows version of ‘ffmpeg’, so the command line brander I posted for linux might also work for that, but I have not tried it.
Blue Hat SEO- Making Money With A Video Blog
Eli has done it again. If you don’t already know Blue Hat SEO is the best blog out there for information about using your sites to make money. This time it’s a “user contributed” article about Making Money With A Video Blog . …
Wierd that this was posted, I wrote a post fairly similar about 2 days ago. We all obviously think on fairly similar wavelengths
This was written a week, previous
I read your post on $20 a day on adsense, might give it a crack!
yep, stuarts post was very good.
New design is awesome, btw, Stuart
This may help some people out, I absolutely hate finding wordpress themes, I suck with css and can never find something that looks good “out of the box” It usually takes about 5 hours to get a blog looking somewhat how I want, however recently I stumbled accross this little site: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/
Which essentially lets you set the parameters and it creates a theme based off of them. It’s a real lifesaver. Merry Xmas all.
Oh almost forgot to add this, It is possible to download from Youtube with a Firefox plugin called unplug which you can obtain here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2254
However, Youtube stores it’s videos as flash, the .flv extension. So you still need to find some decent software to convert that if you plan on using Windows Movie Maker to throw up some watermarks. I have to say that this strategy does get a metric fuckton of traffic, because I used something very similar to this for my adult orientated(read: Porn) sites.
Great post. How long do you wait to start promoting? Do you load 20-30 videos instantly, and start promoting or do you do 2-3 per day for a week or so for GOOGLE/MSN/YAHOO to start picking up with the robots, ect?
I’ve had fairly good luck throwing 30 videos up immediately the only thing that’s hitting me hard is that my adsense ads aren’t relevant at all(which I think has to do with the fact that my site isn’t indexed yet).
I set up this site: http://www.nerdonthe.net/ is there any tips or ideas you can give that could possibly make this better converting?
I love how you integrated the dating site thing into it, that’ll probably make you some extra cash. If I were you I’d throw a 3rd adsense bar to come up underneath the first post similar to the example in the post. Just be happy your adsense ads are somewhat relevant my site’s had a really shitty CTR and I just realized my adsense ads are trying to sell people tubing.. because I used the word tube.
Thanks. I’ve had good luck with those dating ads on my adult sites, so I figured I would try on here as well for a while.
As for the adsense ad under the first post, I am not going to do that, because the more ad blocks you have, the more “low paying ads” show up. If you have 8 ads in 2 blocks, then those are the highest paying 8 ads. Hopefully, they are all paying good clicks, but if you add 12 ads on 3 blocks, you get the top 12 ads in that keyword, so if someone clicks on ad ranked #10-12, then you risk a low paying click compared to a high paying click. Thats why with my two ad blocks, theres only 6 ads that show up. Those 6 will be the highest paying ads in that target keyword, so I run better chance of higher paying clicks
Wow I actually never thought about that, may need to rework my ad scheme. I’ve actually never had good luck with dating stuff on my adult sites, I get hundreds of free signups and no conversions, I guess it’s my fault for picking revshare. Out of curiosity how good is your CTR for the vlog? Even after I fixed me keywords I’m still only getting around 1% I’ve got the traffic but no one’s clicking the ads. My vlog is up at http://www.tubebop.com if you care to take a look.
I just started, and haven’t had any traffic yet. I’ve been putting videos up on youtube, but only got like 40 or so views on each video, and 1-2 hits to my actual site. I’m going to try the diggxchange and stumplexchange tomorrow after I add a few more videos.
Nice article. I am thinking about doing this but doubt that my hosting will be able to handle it. How much bandwidth (roughly) would a vlog receiving about 200-400 visitors a day use?
I don’t get it though. If someone subscribes to your RSS feed, they get to see your posts in their feed viewer. But they don’t get to see your adsense in there, so how are you going to get money? Are you assuming that they will follow the feed back to your blog? Do people do that, or do they just read the feed?
Well I am subscriced to about 15 RSS feeds and they all just show up on my bookmarks toolbar in firefox. If I click on one it shows about the 10 most recent items added, so if the title sounds good I will visit the site.
the traffic concept worries me a little. we’re recycling video clips that if the creator was smart, would have uploaded to all the video sites to begin with? are there really lots of funny videos referenced on digg that no one bothers to put into youtube?
I’m not having a problem with my traffic side of things, you get a few heavily searched videos and you’ll get hits for a while. I’ve just been having a terrible CTR. Don’t worry about the traffic if you follow this guide, it works out fine, worry about how to monetize it, and when you figure that out and are making decent money with it, come back and tell me how to.
thanks for the reply hd. are you doing this non-porn as well (i notice your site listed). thanks for the reply.
Yeah, I’m having little success with the monetization of this as well. I’m averaging about 50-75 uniques a day from around 40 videos, with a CTR of 1-2%, earning me ~$0.50 a day. The ads for the most part seem well targeted “Funny video”, etc. They’re also pretty well blended with the rest of the site.
Any ideas on what I could try improving?
Hi everyone!
I’ve found this blog today and I’m astonished!
Just wandering how the things are going folks?!
Never done anything similar and never touched Wordpress befor never worked with Adsensee…
Well, it’s time to start!
Have a couple of questions here..
If I put some normal videos on my main page and Adsense too, but also will create Adult pagewith adult videos, there I will advertise some adult stuff. Can Adsense ban me for doing that?
Please do tell me what Ctr you have reached so far?!
Cheers!
Is it just me or do people not really notice that the whole downloading videos and rebranding them is just a little on the shady side. Some would call it stealing plain and simple.
I run a video blog, been doing it for over a year, before all of these spam video blogs really got started. The same goes with video blogs as any other kind of blog. If you don’t enjoy doing it and are only doing it for the money then you will eventually lose interest in it and stop.
very nice idea, though the work behind it seems to be somewhat tremendous 8(
i got a old url i dont use might just try this out and sell it in a month or 2. thanks for the ideas m8.
Mark,
It looks like your example site is not following a couple of your rules and not sure if your philosophy has changed or what. First off you suggest google coop search your own site only while the pic shows it defaulting to the web. Also your permalink structure doesn’t match the article. Have you found something that works better? Interesting read.
Mark thanks for this informative post! My site is tuberox.com and I’ve managed to get up to 80 visitors / day in 3 days.
Btw., anyone interested in a link exchange?
Hey TubeRox, hows the revenue on this site? What CTR are you getting? This post seems like a good idea, but I’m not quite sure much money can be made from it. The most I’ve seen people make is $0.50 a day.
MeAmRussian, the revenue is very small .. about 0.1$ per day from Google Adsense. And the CTR is about 1.8%.
But it’s only 15 days since I’m running the blog, so I’m confident that the revenue will raise. The traffic is climbing slowly, had a 250 day two day ago (average about 140, but climbing).
I’m planning to achieve 1$ per day from google adsense till the end of the month.
I have been listening to and experiening the issues with monetizing with adsens alone and have been coding and thinking my f*ing head off how to bring this method to the next level.
I am about 2/3rds done with a none wordpress script that is just monetized to the top using popular and highly successful models that have been around for a while (i really like these kinds of sites as it is so i KNOW what works).
I am building a highly “sticky” highly monetized script/template/whatever that i will be distributing FREELY to anyone who wants them. Granted the instructions will be spattered with affiliate links to sign up (you know where you sign up for affiliat program X using my affiliate link and i get Y percentage for that).
I am also considering creating a forum where people can spread ideas, etc.
So its completely win-win and very very affective.
Windows users wanted for testing.
my email can be found by clicking my “visitor ping hacks” just above this post.
Automated Video Blog
So it’s been awhile since I last posted, and by awhile I mean three months, but I plan to make it up to you with another fantastic post on automation, if you haven’t already read the guest post on Making Money with a Video Blog at BlueHatSe…
About that uploading-1-video-at-a-time for Youtube, check out tubecast at sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/tubecast/ does the bulk upload for you.
tubecast can be cool, but i didn’t find the uploading to be the bottle neck of the whole process. Basically the most time consuming bit is actually finding good videos, then you can just pipe line. Also if you are into cutting out old others tags from videos that can take some time soon.
I run fast stumble exchange, which is like stumble exchange only faster (click my nick)
I have found that video pages on there own don’t do so so well on stumble upon, they do much better if you can add the correct comentary.
bad way
“blah blah blah adsense text blah”
[video]
better way:
ol h3 YOU MIGH SUCK IF /h3
li you foo /li
li you bar /li
li you baz /li
/li you act like the guy in this video [video] /li
/ol
or similar.
Hi,
This looks like a really good idea, I’ve been wanting to diversity my collection of websites and this looks like the perfect opportunity to do so. My question is what are the copyright ‘issues’ with downloading a video, branding it and then reuploadling it? Are you allowed to do it, you didn’t make the video after all, you just stuck your name on it and uploaded it to the website. Also, am I right in thinking you download it from a website, tag it and then reupload it to the same website? Surely thats a little flawed (or I got it wrong).
Regards,
Dan
I don’t think that’s a problem. Only at metacafe.com I get my videos flagged as duplicate or inappropriate (1 time only). Yahoo, google and youtube seems to not care so much
How large should a site get before you decide to monetize it? My rule of thumb (I think Aaron Wall at seobook.com said it) is to wait till it gets 100 uniques a day. I’m not there yet on my second site and am just a little bored. Thoughts?
Hi guys,
Just thought I’d stop by and answer some of your questions.
Bootstrapping Blog:
Yes, I would put as many videos up on launch and promote immediately.
Kristofer:
Any irrelevant ads you see, add them to your site filter in adsense right away. This has helped increase my eCPM loads.
Aengus @ Awestyproductions:
The videos don’t take up bandwidth because they stream from a third party.
cornetto:
I get most of my subscribers via e-mail. Most experience people who are savvy with technologies such as RSS will use use Digg or something right away. Although, if you add a couple of videos per day, it is easier for them to load your site and look at them, rather than individually on the rss reader.. Much how I do with icanhascheezburger.
jened:
Most of your traffic comes from youtube referrals, I never really put much importantance on Digg in the article.
daminc:
Haha, the work behind it isn’t really that much. Part of making money online is effort unfortunately
jened: (regarding my site)
My site does use Google Coop, not web search. Also in regard to permalinks, it is something I overlooked when I set my blog up. Changing the structure would damage my links, so I decided to leave it. THe guide is up to date!
MeAmRussian:
Most people seem to have got excited and not followed the guide in regard to adsense placement which is the major downfall. Also might have something to do with 500 new vlogs springing up in the last month
Useful stuff. Saw it a while back but it’s just been linked again on WF and fits nicely with some new sites I’m working on. Cheers!
PS: It told me I failed the maths when I said 3 + 0 = 3
Very interesting!
Great post. I am implementing this idea at Ontigio.com.
One question about getting a youtube video indexed. I uploaded a video yesterday and it has been processed by Youtube. However, if I search for the video or by my channel, I can’t find myself through the search. How long does it take to get indexed by Youtube?
Also, is there an Youtube SEO which will help your videos rank on the 1st page of the SERPS?
I edited a few clips, uploaded them to the server and published.
But on the blog player won’t show any picture until you click “play”.
take a look what i mean: 365tubecom
I’ve tried flash, QT, WMA formats - same result…
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Thanks for great post, very helpful and informative Mark! The past week I have been getting into Video Blogs because I got the powerful vi-script, it’s a neat tool! Thanks again Cheers Dave!
Great post. Thanks. I would love to repost and credit back to you if that is ok on my Video Marketing Site - http://ReelSEO.com
You don’t really need or want that lifestyle, it might hurt y’all slowly more…….Just tell him you
don’t wanna repeat something your not too proud of z7uas.
Excellent post…thought I’d make you aware of a quick and cool converter I came across. Heres the link http://www.filehungry.com/english/product/windows_software/multimedia_&_graphics/video_editors/prism_video_converter
Enjoy and happy blogging.
Tebogo
BTW this is a piece of freeware, again here’s the link
http://www.filehungry.com/english/product/windows_software/multimedia_&_graphics/video_editors/prism_video_converter
Cheers,
Tebogo
You have the natural advantage in counseling debt settlement , which may be appropriate for debtors with …
Great Solution
I have an auto blog running that pulls the video from Youtube, I will be implementing this technique and then will be commenting on the results.
One idea would be to post to the smaller video sites that are out there, as there are soo many. I love your blog by the way
I will be trying this out today, I just need to find some good hosting and a catchy domain.
First time I hear about http://www.stumblexchange.com/
Thanks, I’ll be using it
I’ve downloaded your plugin.. Thanks! I can’t wait to use it for sharing my favorite videos!
Great post!
Very cool ideas here
googling has already ban like 1000s of blogs because of this..
Brandable videos are the way to go, it’s seriously worth the extra effort.
Once you start making some decent cash I suggest finding some kids who are producing interesting content on youtube and offering them contracts to brand their videos with your site name.
Most of them will happily accept $50 or so per video and if they’re already getting decent exposure you should see a decent return.
useful thanks..
I’ve downloaded your plugin, nice work.
You are better off using revver videos and get paid for views as well.
It was by chance that I found this blog. Making money with videos was not in my mind when I started reading and I was pleasantly surprised to find what I was looking for - HOW TO MAKE A WP BLOG. The video idea was a bonus. I don’t know if I will go for videos but I would go for revver (thank you, SEO) if I do to skirt the copyright hassles and all that. So thank you Mark and all who have contributed to the discussion.
Video blogs are hard to make money with
But some do make a living of it
Damn, such a great post!! I read stuff like this and I realize how closed minded I am.
Hey guys. Thanks for the great feedback. I’m well chuffed my post has “survived” this long (:
You can monetize your unique content using this article also.
http://www.payperinstall.org/make-money-with-zango-gateway.html
It is very simple way to make money once you get some traffic and you can not stop it growing…
Sweet thanks for the info, been looking to create a video site for a while, now might be the time
I have to say it is a very nice video post for someone who don’t know the basics. I didn’t and it was very easy to understand.
Excellent post.
truly a genius post with a wealth of information
Love your posts man.
2 :thumbsup
-S
Great tips man thank you very much !
I own one video blog. I got into a free course by another blogger who showed us how to create one. But you got some really nice tips too!
I actually still make few hundred with it a month. Not much, but it was my first site that actually made some money.
10/10 ….. there are some great ideas there that, whilst I do not have a video blog, could help with me with my other sites. Thanks for that !!
Great post!
I especially like the fact that you start with monetization strategy, so many people just start without any businss plan.
Also other very useful feature is Google coop, its not that well know.
this is so cool post I need to print this out
thank you,
Lasse
Great post! Very informative for the starting webmaster!
I would love to add video pages to my blog. I have seen some very nice flickr type video pages. Anyone know the plug-in that does this?
I am currently embedding videos on a post by post basis.
Thanks
Thanks for the article, I would love to add video pages to my blog.
video is pain in the ass sometimes but sometimes it makes thinks easier.
Another potential project to add to my to-do list
)
I did read this post some time ago and did help me a lot. I’m doing project like this but with some changes : Using Pligg (not Wordpress) and “building” my own video search.
thanks man !
That’s sounds interesting,
I haven’t yet tried but will surely look after it soon.
the most complete guide i ever found…a very big thanks to u…keep up ur good work…
I already added fonejacker series 2 video pages to my website. I have seen some very nice youtube type video pages. People are doing well.
thumbs up
very impressive
Wow, that was an awsome read! Thanks for sharing lol i thought i knew everything, but you just proved me wrong, didn’t know bout many of the plugins! Thanks again, Nick!
You …You’re Good You …
You’re also featured as a SEO Master …
SEO Master
:)
Another great post as usual. I have seen the best success with video blogs come from either videos with humor or training videos.
Video blogs are coming along!
I think that the video blog really has a certain difficulty in the copyright.
Another great post as usual. I have seen the best success with video blogs come from either videos with humor or training videos.
As far as making moneyout of video goes, Making money out of Youtube videos is the new thing (was not available when you posted this, may be)
Cheers,
Ajith - DollarShower.com
I’m doing this right now to resurrect my ancient, dusty old camping blog at www.eternalcamp.com - will comment on my progress!!
Thank you so much, Mark and Eli!!
- Falls-Down-Laughing ^_^
This post makes me want to jump right into the video side of things. I’ve been putting things off long enough I suppose. Thanks for the very informative post!
Steve
have to say it is a very nice video post for someone who don’t know the basics. I didn’t and it was very easy to understan
have to say it is a very nice video post for someone who don’t know the basics. I didn’t and it was very easy to understand.
I have tried this recently. I tried wordpress, but it says on WP you can’t put adsense. So how can you make money then? ANyone?
I think that the video blog really has a certain difficulty in copyright.
Thanks! I was just researching how I could change my title tag in wordpress! Im so new to all of this, great post!
Bookmarked for future ref.
Wow! I just came across this tutorial and you did a great job of explaining everything. I definitely bookmarked it.
Learning how to blog is a great way to make money online.
Thanks
I am giving this a whirl at the moment. What I can’t workout is why would people come to your website to watch videos when YouTube does it so much bigger and better. Or is it just capitalizing on peoples curiosity when they see the watermark and getting one off hits?
Could anyone share their thoughts on why this method would work, is it because the videos are handpicked or all relevant?
What value does a site like this hold for anyone?
Wow some really in depth advice. Great post, thank you for sharing. Never thought of using video as a money making system before but this definitely gives me a lot to go on.
There’s a lot of them about, a lot. Apart from the old-timers like Ebaumsworld, Google’s acquisition of YouTube has really seen them starting to eat up this market. The great thing is, that doesn’t matter, videos are a disposal media - people look at them once, show their mates and then it’s old news. You’re only as good as your last video! What we’re going to look at doing here is setting up a video website with minimal cost & time and maximizing our profit.
Sheesh, he posted two brilliant articles on this subject.When adding links to the articles listed on “what links here”, as eli at bluehatseo recommended, if you add your link to the first listed articles they will probably be deleted, because the “what links here” widget lists the most popular or most edited articles first or some sort of popularity metric. To spell it out for you guys, add your link to the bottom-most non-talk-page articles first. Even if that article isn’t closely-related to your niche, it is usually tangientially-related.
Great post - this is one to keep handy
Video blogs take more time to load. To avoid this, simple text and graphics can be made to load initially. After the page loads with these lightweight-things, the videos can then be made to appear.
sextir.com is a free porn site - We provide the world with free: porn videos,porn movies,xxx free movies,free porn,free sex.
Best porn hub and tube on the web
Fantastic POST, Please share more other than video blogs
.
Video marketing is the future of marketing and you will see a large growth soon, especially with increased internet speed.
search engien bots don’t care about your URL structure these days. Still worth using custom permalinks for clickthrougs. But ranking won’t be that affected.
thanks you so much
You can make money by creating viral videos and driving them to MetaCafe.
Didn’t know you could make money with videos. Thanks.
Looks like you can really make money via videos.
Video blogs are a great way of making money.
There is probably a better way to make money with videos (if you host your own). Embedding advertisements within the video will be a sure way you gain exposure to whatever you are advertising. This is the reason why if you can afford to host your own videos, do it. Don’t rely on Youtube, because Youtube has it’s own advertising embedded in their videos, and you will not profit from it. If you host your own videos, the truth is, you have complete control.
I think that SEO really helps when it comes to generating topics to a web site. And right, I agree with you guys, video blogs do make money.
This looks like something a teenager could do and make some additional cash.
Not sure how you could make money with videos, but will reread this.
well….great article…great way of making more cash
Blog directories are fairly overlooked by bloggers. Using them is a sure way for quality backlinks. Good post.
Hi, I am aware about only Black hat and white hat type of seo. But these seems something new concept to me. Anyway it seems effective one.
Looking to add some SEO information to our marketing area on our blog. We have never discussed blue hat, but discovered you from Googling.
Thanks.
Useful post here, I wonder if others think so too, considering it has a lot of useful information in it
Great posting, it’s useful for me….thanks
This post makes me want to jump right into the video side of things. I’ve been putting things off long enough I suppose.
I think you are screwed
good luck undoing the labeling and all.
This looks like something a teenager could do and make some additional cash.
Video blogs are a great way of making money.
Great post….thnkas
I started my blog by discussing hot topic on google and attached a video with each post. May consider your advise to create my own video instead of share others video.
Dont forget to work daily, actions instead of daydreaming about it.
Make your video blogs credible, provide relevant information that would give best answer to the question of your visitors.
Hey everyone. There’s a lot of them about, a lot. Apart from the old-timers like Ebaumsworld, Google’s acquisition of YouTube has really seen them starting to eat up this market. The great thing is, that doesn’t matter, videos are a disposal media - people look at them once, show their mates and then it’s old news. You’re only as good as your last video! What we’re going to look at doing here is setting up a video website with minimal cost & time and maximizing our profit.
all cars wallpapers
Earning money with videos is a great tip you have told us and i prefer to launch some flash videos as a introductory page on my website to get some extras.
In a contributed post over at Blue Hat SEO, there was some talk of branding/watermarking video with a site name and url, and of course there’s no way I would use Windows for that when a Linux command line utility
nice post !! thank for sharing this.
I do agree with you on this article, although I read from another blog something different from what you are saying.
Anyway thank you for your review.
All the best!
I hope that they don’t take another year to open the other NS stores…
Good! ! Thank you very much for sharing this.
http://lesiily.blog.bokee.net/
Useful stuff. Saw it a while back but it’s just been linked again on WF and fits nicely with some new sites I’m working on. Cheers!
Extremely fruitful stuff! Thanks
Great information about search engine optimization. Very useful and very informative. Thank you for the contribution.
despite I’m not try all method, but few contents of this article really works guys.
Wonderful article! Thank you for your time and effort in putting this together!
I think the need to focus on this issue. karin germe site with a site before Turks had read an article about this subject
Hello this post is very interesting. Can you reply me any related articles?Come on the internet site and yourself check it!
http://blog.163.com/lesiily@yeah/
Who wouldn’t want to make money with a video blog.
I tried this awhile back, it made me about $20 a day!
You only really need to get a few keywords in your post titles to make sure adsense plays ball and shows relevant ads. thanks for the post
Thanks for great tutorial
great post! This serves as a great starting point for people to experiment with video blogging as a monetization source.
Useful stuff. Saw it a while back but it’s just been linked again on WF and fits nicely with some new sites I’m working on. Cheers!
I think that the video blog really has a certain difficulty in copyright.
your info is worthy enough even yet
hello-world. have we all seen it?
There is an AllInSEO plugin for WP which make the seo way much easier.
You are better off using revver videos and get paid for views as well.
great post! This serves as a great starting point for people to experiment with video blogging as a monetization source.
Aside from all the lame comments in here, I want to thank you for the great post! Totally helping my golf trainer site!
great post! This serves as a great starting point for people to experiment with video blogging as a monetization source.
To be honest i didn ‘t know that you can make money on the video. Many thanks for the information!
Great post… I’ve been meaning to start a video blog for some time now
Me as well
It is a beautiful post. I like it.
Awesome stuff you guys got here. I really like the theme of the website and how well you organized the content. It’s a marvelous job I will come back
and check you out sometime.check my video site if you have time
I’ve been meaning to start a video blog for some time now
keep it up
thanx
I have seen the best success with video blogs come from either videos with humor or training videos.
Nice
Do follow list PR 7 Blogs SEO
Nice indeed
So what’s new, porn is the biggest industry on the net !
Lol truth hurts
It is abhorent that people are using and abusing this blog, simply not cricket.
good website and nice pro chat p7bk good staf chat egypt girl
and this is something which i always had in mind but was hesitating of using it. ftw Eli
a fantasti article i will definately be using some of the information to try and help how i earn from youtube. I started off by finding the info on this website. www.makeyourselfsomemoney.com I hope this is of help
Good work ELi.
and Tom realy helpfull..
good one
:) Good
nitii
Thanks for this amazing site. The information sharing here by all is very informative and helpful. Good Work.
Great Videos … especially last photograph is soo Cool. This type of Cool Videos are really awesome.
video blogging is a very new and effective way of driving traffic and making money today.
Videos on YouTube is one perfect sale trick.
Wow nice to hear that strategy.
But I wonder if it still effective today?
I am posting here just to let you know that you are doing a good job by keeping us posted about this. Please keep on posting such quality articles as this is a rare thing to find these days.
great points altogether, you just gained a new reader. What would you suggest in regards to your post that you made? Any positive?
Stiforp Scam
Lots of great info! I have been meaning to try video blogging but it’s often hard to start things without an action plan so thanks for putting all of this info together! Cheers
Matt
I haven’t tried using video blog. But i think it is reliable method. I will try to make one next time.
i love you for this post and for all your posts!! first off, “thanks”!
Great read…I already read all this on digitalpoint, where it was originally posted.
Thanks for this amazing site. The information sharing here by all is very informative and helpful. Good Work.
great post! This serves as a great starting point for people to experiment with video blogging as a monetization source.
i have just started a video blog and adsense is not doing good on it… now its time to experiment….
PTC sites that pays
making money hot heres how to get making money fast home, this is the best making money site. Have you seen this other site on making money fast home. It is similiar to yours. Making Money Hot
Great post on SEO tactics Using these methods will turn your website or blog into one of the highest paying jobs out there. Make money from your site using this information. Thanks!
Great article
thanks
if you want to take the optimization further, you may be pushing the limit on what Google does and doesn’t allow. The Adsense team can be merciless at times if they think you are breaking their TOS
making money online is always a good thing
video marketing has been in the forefront of making money nowadays
wesome stuff you guys got here. I really like the theme of the website and how well you organized the content.
Gone are the days of posting a vid and having it ranked the next day.
Kerry served as a Swift Boat Captain during the Vietnam War and patrolled the coastal and riverine areas. He was wounded three times and received several awards. Among other things, a Silver Star and three Purple Heart . He later became a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and testified before Congress as an advocate for Vietnam veterans against the war. He was known for his quote: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”. The same quote he used several times in his opposition to the Iraq war .
auto transport leads only as good as your last video! What we’re going to look at doing here is setting up a video website with minimal cost & time and maximizing our profit.