Filmmaking

Digital Video Solutions: Online Video Bandwagon

Everyone should jump on the online video bandwagon as soon as possible.

Get Your Video Online
Everyone should jump on the online video bandwagon as soon as possible. I know that’s a bold statement, but to say that online video today is exploding in both business and consumer spaces would be the understatement of the year. Photographers are making musical slide shows of their photos and posting them online to both inspire others and get themselves more work. Videographers are filming behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes and posting them online to both educate young filmmakers and draw new audiences to their work. Businesspeople are using video to introduce their companies and show off their products, while both parents and kids use video to stay connected with extended family and friends.

Powerful Promotion
Does that mean that you should abandon your still camera for a video camera and never look back? Absolutely not! What it does mean, however, is that even if you’ve never shot a single second of video, you should at least package your best images into a compelling slide show, add a little music, save it out as a video file, and then distribute it on the Web. Every decent program that can create a slide show also has the capability to save out that slide show in Apple QuickTime, Windows Media, or Adobe Flash format. And this is all you need to upload your work to a potential audience of millions. At worst, your video slide show is an inspiration to someone else aspiring to do the same thing. At best, you’ve just doubled your marketing and picked up a wealth of new clients for your business (whatever it may be).

If you’ve ever seen a slide show presentation set to music at Photoshop World by a world-class photographer such as Moose Peterson, Vincent Versace, Jim DiVitale, John Paul Caponigro, Eddie Tapp, Laurie Excell, Joe Glyda, Ben Willmore, or any of the many, many others, you know just how powerful it can be for both inspiration and for sales. Just ask any one of them how many more books, DVDs, or seminar tickets they sell after a showing.

So the next step would be to upload your video to one of the many video sharing sites that have exploded onto the Web in the last couple of years, but which one? Everyone’s heard of YouTube, but is it the best choice for you? Well, for the last year I’ve been researching and answering those exact same questions for my clients who hire me as a consultant and as a distributor of their online content. In that time I’ve compiled a list of the top 12 sites I like for distributing video online. It’s a lengthy report I usually only share with clients, but I’m going to share some of the key points with you today.

Rod’s top 12 video distribution sites

This list also includes a little bit about each site’s Web traffic and audience demographics (compiled from Google searches and TubeMogul analytics) so that you can decide if the video distribution site is a good fit for you.

YouTube (www.youtube.com): The Mac Daddy of all video distribution sites.
Traffic averages: Nearly 70 million monthly unique visitors; 74 pages viewed per person; 0:55:52 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Evenly female/male audience; largest age cluster in 20–40 year-old range.

MySpace (www.myspace.com): Primarily a social networking site. The video component is not promoted, but is widely used.
Traffic averages: 12.5 million monthly unique visitors; 12 pages viewed per person; 0:07:03 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Surprisingly, the audience only slants slightly younger; roughly even male/female; relatively less educated.

Revver (http://revver.com): This site employs an ad sharing revenue system similar to Google’s AdWords, but for video.
Traffic averages: More than 8 million monthly unique visitors; 16 pages viewed per person; 0:08:07 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; age slants relatively older.

Dailymotion (www.dailymotion.com): Popular video sharing site out of Europe.
Traffic averages: Almost 5.5 million monthly unique visitors; 10 pages viewed per person; 0:04:49 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: International audience; high age and income level; slants white male.

Veoh (www.veoh.com): Focused on full-screen video programming for anyone with a broadband connection.
Traffic averages: 3.6 million monthly unique visitors; 30 pages viewed per person; 0:41:29 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; even distribution across age categories.

Metacafe (www.metacafe.com): Popular worldwide video destination. Prides itself on quality over quantity.
Traffic averages: 3.5 million monthly unique visitors; 15 pages viewed per person; 0:07:10 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Almost 3:1 male-to-female ratio; relatively even education and income.

Yahoo! Video (http://video.yahoo.com): A sleek, entertainment-oriented video site. Not yet fully integrated with all of Yahoo!’s community destinations.
Traffic averages: 3.2 million monthly unique visitors; 4 pages viewed per person; 0:02:76 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male viewers; slants older in age.

blip.tv (http://blip.tv): Publisher-friendly video sharing and distribution site.
Traffic averages: 1.3 million monthly unique visitors; 3 pages viewed per person; 0:02:43 minutes spent on site.
Demographics: Slightly more male; educated and higher income.

Vimeo (www.vimeo.com): Hip, user-generated content.
Traffic averages: 1.3 million monthly unique visitors; 5 pages viewed per person.
Demographics: 2:1 male-to-female ratio; high income and college educated.

Google Video (http://video.google.com): One of the first video sharing sites to offer ad revenue sharing with publishers.
Traffic averages: 436,000 monthly unique visitors; 3 pages viewed per person; 0:02:34 minutes spent on site.

Viddler (www.viddler.com): Newer site with cool features like comments tied to a particular time in the video and automatic webcam sync.
Demographics: Slightly more male; college educated.

Facebook (www.facebook.com): Another major social networking site with more than 100 million users. It’s also the fourth most trafficked website in the world. Need I say more?

So what can online video do for you?

Online video can expose your art, personality, business, and product to a whole new audience that might otherwise not see it. It can inspire others as it inspires you. It can encourage collaboration with people from other disciplines. And it can increase your business and sales so that you can continue to do whatever it is that you love most. Now doesn’t that sound like a good reason to get into online video distribution?


One of my YouTube clips has more than 127,000 views.

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