How to earn from blog video
Video Blogging: What Is It And
Why Should I Be Doing It?
Video blogging is steadily emerging as one of the newest, hottest Internet trends.
However, as the art of the video blog – often called “vlogging,” “vidding,” or
“videoblogging” by lovers of the craft – is still relatively new as compared to more
traditional methods of information dissemination over the Internet, so many
people aren’t exactly familiar with the ins and outs of the process.
That’s where this primer comes into help. With this in hand, you can go out there
and tackle your cyber audiences with the pomp and flash that video blogging
offers. The salience of this technique on the Information Superhighway may
surprise you.
If you’ve been on the Internet for any period of time at all, you’re likely familiar
with the blog. A blog – short for “weblog” – is essentially a stream of articles that
is constantly being updated. Blogs are used for several purposes across the
Internet, from self-promotion to corporate memo slinging to self-expression and
nearly anything in between.
Blogs have great value to websites that use them properly – through a blog, a
website can both show how active it is as well as reach out constantly to the
website’s viewers with new, updated information.
A blog is often the number one reason why visitors return to certain sites, as
most other site content is static. A blog is anything but, and a good blog keeps
the viewer wanting more and coming back.
A video blog is the same thing; just replace article feeds with videos. The great
thing about video blogging is that it totally revolutionizes the purpose and scope
of a blog – where as before the information was consigned to the written page
(rather, the written web page), now the blog has gone 3D.
For example, if you happen to run a travel blog, a traditional blog would allow you
to get the information of your exploits out to your readers in a concise and timely
fashion, but often your reader’s understanding of the situation was limited to both
your writing abilities and the amount of time you had to dedicate to the creation of
the post.
Not all of us are Hemmingway – much can get lost in the translation from
experience to memoir. This is where the video blog comes in.
Want your readers to experience the view at the top of Diamondback? Don’t just
tell them with words: with the video blog you can show them with a panoramic
shot of the beautiful island spread at the foot of the mountain.
Video blogging is also incredibly useful for those who run do-it-yourself websites
– instead of dealing with numbering your steps and agonizing over word choice,
why not set up a camera and film the process of changing a tire, spackling a wall,
or soldering a pipe?
Even if you’ve never heard of a video blog before, don’t think that this is an
isolated phenomenon only known by tech-heads. The video blog has been in
existence since the early 2000s, and one trip to YouTube will show you just how
thriving the video blogging community really is.
There’s even an annual video blogging award that’s been held since 2006, and a
movie is due to be released as a major motion picture in 2011, which will be
comprised entirely of video blogs.
Video blogging is an excellent way of getting the information regarding your
product, services, or opinions out on the Internet. Just as a traditional blog feed
showcases your website as living entity, the video blog does that and also allows
your face and movements to be connected with the website that’s promoting your
goods.
Video blogging truly allows you to bring yourself and your offerings into the
homes and workplaces of the viewer like no other form of information sharing can
offer.
What is video blogging? It’s a highly effective way of sharing information through
the heightened capabilities of modern technology. Used correctly it can get your
name, face, and products out on the world wide web with greater impact and
efficiency than any other method of advertising.
Why should you video blog? It’s effective, inexpensive, and most people would
say it’s fun!
How To Set Up A Video Blog
So, you’ve been convinced that video blogging is the next wave in information
sharing. You’d be correct in this – now, the next step is understanding what
you’ll need to get started with a video blog, and how best to get your videos up
and running on the world wide web.
1. Buy a Domain Name and Hosting. It is preferable to register a .com
domain name over the other extensions, the main reason for this is .com's
are easier to remember.
If you are looking to create a blog about yourself, then register a domain
name which includes your own personal name. This will help a lot with
your own personal branding. If you are looking to create a blog in a
different niche, you should try and get the most important keywords at the
beginning of the domain name.
You are literally spoilt for choice for domain name registration companies.
One of the most popular domain name registrar's is GoDaddy who charge
around $10 to register your domain name for one year.
A professional hosting package is also very inexpensive these days and
well-known companies such as Hostgator are able to set you up for a less
than $10 per month.
2. Get WordPress. WordPress is free software that creates and manages
blogs. You’ll need to download it from the WordPress website and install
it to your server – there are instructions on the website concerning how to
accomplish this.
3. Get a YouTube WordPress Plugin. It is easy to embed your YouTube
videos into your WordPress blog by using one of several plugins freely
available to download.
On my blog, I use Viper's Video Quicktags which enables me to embed videos
from YouTube as well as other popular video sharing websites such as Daily
Motion, Vimeo, Viddler and other.s
4. Get Easy Video Player. While using the likes of YouTube is great to get
started, there will come a time when you need something a little more
robust and professional.
For example, you may want to produce a video that is longer than the 15
minute YouTube limit or you may want to create a “top secret” video that is
only available to your customers or subscribers, rather than it being freely
available on the Internet.
In these circumstances, you may want to host your videos at Amazon (all
of the big players in Internet marketing do) and use Easy Video Player to
embed your videos easily into your blog.
NOTE: This outline is dedicated mostly toward setting up video on a blog that
visitors can stream, or watch while they’re visiting your website. You can also
disseminate videos by putting them up on your site to download.
Generally speaking it’s a good idea to give your viewers the option to stream or
download.
Many video bloggers also take advantage of what’s known as RSS feeding,
which is where a person interested in following your blog uses “podcatcher”
software (iTunes is an example) to detect and download your video blogs to an
external device such as an iPod or a computer when you put them up. There are
many ways to video blog, but streaming is the most popular way, so we focus on
this here.
As for the physical hardware you’ll need to set up a video blog, the first and most
obvious piece of equipment would be a computer – but seeing as you’re reading
this information, it’s likely that you already have one.
The second more-or-less obvious hardware requirement would be a camera.
Like with most other products out there, there are hundreds of different cameras
on the market, all with different specs, pros, and cons.
You don’t need to purchase the most expensive camera on the market to set up
an effective video blog, and, in fact, many people are successful with the built-in
cameras that come with most modern laptops.
Again, the kind of camera you use to create your blog posts should be dictated
more by your budget and personal wants than by any pressing need to have the
latest and greatest.
With a camera in hand and a website ready to take your video blogs, you’re
ready to start producing.
Types of Video Blogs
As mentioned before, the video blog is extremely versatile. There are many
ways in which you can use your blog to market items, engage in self-promotion,
or even simply for your own enjoyment.
While the opportunities insofar as video blogging is concerned quite literally
number high as the stars do, we’ve compiled some information regarding the
more common uses of video blogs to give you some ideas on how you can utilize
this method of information sharing to better your wants and needs.
1. Product reviews. This is one of the more common uses of video blogs
and for good reason – they’re popular with consumers.
People love to read information about products from members of the
public who have already bought the product itself. It’s a free source of
information that the consumer can trust to be honest – that is, the person
who is airing the review isn’t being paid to advertise the product.
Product reviews are useful and will definitely garner your website a lot of
attention if the video blogs you offer are thoughtful and comprehensive in
nature.
2. Personal posts. In addition to being enjoyable to make, personal posts
allow your viewers to get a glimpse of who you are beyond the products and self-promotion.
Video blogs got their start in personal posts, where people would put up
video snippets of their travels for friends and family to enjoy. Of course,
the market expanded from there.
3. How To Videos. If you are selling a product that requires some
explanation or set-up, including a how-to video on your video blog is
priceless.
While having written explanation is necessary and helpful, nothing beats
being able to hit “play” on a video and see somebody else putting the
bookshelf together, cooking the steak, or applying the eye shadow.
Many
video blogs are entirely dedicated to the art of “how to,” and the sites that
are good at this receive a lot of hits.
4. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). If you sell a product or do how-to
videos that result in your inbox overflowing with questions, it’s not a bad
idea to consider dedicating a video blog to questions you get most often.
This will help your viewers and also show that you’re responsive to the
communications you receive.
Additionally, it does you the favor of
answering the questions you get most often so the constant battering of
your inbox will cease, or at least slow to the point where if you get the
occasional question that addresses something that your video blog has
already covered, you can reference the video blog.
5. Opinion Videos. If you favor a particular brand of makeup, or a certain
airline carrier, or always use the same monkey wrench, explaining to your
viewers why you do so will be helpful.
Most of us do have brand loyalty to some degree, and telling your viewers
why you like this particular kind of cheese above all others gives your
viewers a window into your thought processes.
Of course, you don’t want to seem overly promotional (unless, of course,
you are promoting the brand in question), but telling why you like that
certain version of whatever is helpful to the viewer.
If it’s helpful, the
viewer is likely to come back for more of your videos.
Creating Irresistible Videos
The following fact is a little discouraging to those who are trying to create quality
video blogs but is nonetheless true: the average viewer on YouTube watches a
video for seven seconds before deciding whether or not to keep viewing.
This means that you need to establish your video as worthy of a viewer’s time
within those seven seconds.
That’s not a whole lot of time to work with, if you’re
trying to get your viewer to stay with you.
While many people who start video blogs do so primarily for the hits, it’s hardly
worth the time, effort, and even money expended to create video blog posts if
nobody stays and watches the fruits of your labors.
Also, hooking viewers is a good way to get repeated visitors as well as the
almighty “subscriber,” or somebody who actively seeks out your video feeds.
So, how does the entrepreneurial video blog producer get up to snuff with those
seven seconds?
There’s no real magical formula for this, unfortunately – you very well could have
the best video blog post in the history of mankind but the viewer doesn’t stick
around because his or her internet connection is slow or they just aren’t feeling
up to watching a 5 minute segment about basket weaving on that particular day
You can’t control everything, but there are certain tenants that you should start
with if you want your viewers to hang around after those elusive seven seconds.
• Plan it out. Don’t just set up your camera in a dark corner and start
talking at it. If you really want your viewers to take you and your camera
seriously, you also need to take it seriously.
What is the point of this blog? Are you doing a personal segment, a howto, or are you answering questions?
You don’t necessarily need to sit down and script out every word that
you’re going to say – in fact, we recommend against this as viewers can
usually tell if you’re reading off of a piece of paper and generally find this
less than inspiring – but it helps to take a bit to think about the point of the
post, where you’ll start and where you end it.
• Don’t go for the elaborate opening. While it’s certainly appealing and
fun to sit around and make a theme song for your blog, we recommend
against taking up 20 seconds of your viewer’s time with cutsey logos and
Yamaha keyboarding.
Most viewers are more interested in what you have to say rather than how
well you can rhyme. If you must have an opening, keep it to three
seconds or less. Remember the seven-second rule – if the entirety of the
seven seconds is taken up with useless intro, the chances of losing your
reader goes up exponentially
• Pay attention to your audio. Unless you’re filming in the bowels of a
library, no room is silent. (And, frankly, no library is entirely silent either).
You need to be aware of the sounds in the room you’re filming in. If the
background is nothing but chatter and construction noises and
thunderstorms, your viewers are going to have a very hard time
understanding what you say.
Spending a few minutes to figure out where the optimal, silent area of the
house (or wherever you’re shooting) is located can be the difference
between thousands of viewers and none. On this note, be sure not to play
overbearing background music over your words.
Many video blogs have guitar riffs that are louder than the person
speaking, and this is unfortunate. If you live in an area that’s constantly
loud or you just can’t seem to get rid of high levels of background static no
matter what you do, consider purchasing a microphone. This will help
ensure that the audio that gets to your viewer is the audio you want them
to hear.
• Lighting, anyone? The Cryptkeeper was cool, but unless you’re aiming
for a very specific audience you’ll need to make sure that they can see
you. You also don’t need to spend a fortune on custom lighting if you
don’t want, or can’t do so: many people get excellent results by using a tall
lamp with a shade, and simply adjusting the shade to control the angle of
the light.
Be sure to check out the individual options on your camera as well – many
cameras these days allow you to check the white balance on the camera,
or the way that the lens allows light to play with the subjects being filmed.
In this way, you can prevent your shot from becoming too washed out, or
too Cryptkeeper-like.
• Motion sickness matters. This would seem like an obvious tip, but the
overwhelming amount of videos released on the Internet that seem like
they have been shot during an earthquake would imply otherwise.
If your film causes your viewers to be sick due to shakiness, it’s not a
good film and nobody is going to want to watch it. Be sure that your
camera is mounted on a secure surface. Many webcams attach to the top
of a computer, which helps. If you’re working with a more traditional
camera, it will behoove you to invest in a tripod.
If you’re shooting motion shots, use the “human tripod” method, which
involves leaning up against a wall (or a tree, or a rock, or even somebody
else), bracing your arms against the solid surface, and slowly moving the
camera. Anything too fast will make it look like you’re tweaking out on
caffeine.
• Check your shots. Are you too close to the camera? Too far away? Be
sure to adjust your zoom settings to make the pictures crisp, clean, and
easy on the eyes. Just be aware that the more you zoom, the wobblier
your shots will become.
Money From Video Blogging
Most ventures in life optimally arrive at profit somehow. There are, of course, the
things that you do purely for pleasure, but in a perfect world everybody would be
able to spend time doing things that they love and get paid for it. Unfortunately,
it’s not a perfect world and most of us have to keep our day jobs while we pursue
our dreams.
However, if you are one of those individuals who really likes video blogging,
there’s always a chance for a little extra dough to be made in the corners. For
those who are extremely dedicated and understand how the system works, it’s
entirely possible to make a living at video blogging, but you’ll need to be one of
the biggest names in the business to achieve that level of success.
But even if you’re just starting out video blogging, working hard at creating useful,
creative video content and attracting new visitors and subscribers, there’s some
extra cash to be had in the sidelines for those who seek it.
First, if you’re really looking to make your video blog a profitable venture, you’re
going to have to spend some money to make money. While you can be
successful using tools around your house and the microphone and webcam that
came standard with your computer, it’s going to be hard to make profit off of
something that looks and feels extremely amateurish.
If you want to be paid like a professional, then you’ll have to act like a
professional. Now is the time to consider investing in high quality cameras and
possibly microphones. If you’re looking to take the next step into professional
video blogging, the camera and microphone are probably the two best things to
invest in; later on you can consider buying better lighting sources and other such
accoutrements.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that if you want your video blog to be
profitable, you’ll need to constantly be coming out with new material. A good
standard to have is one video blog per week, but once you start getting viewers
clambering for more, you’ll likely up this to several videos a week.
All right. Now that you’ve started producing professional grade videos on a
regular basis, here’s the secret to making money: marketing. The surest way to
start gaining revenue from your site is to open it up to advertisers. This may
sound a little bit less than appealing, but the fact of the matter is that advertising
can be extremely lucrative and not overbearing if done right.
One of the easiest ways for a beginner to get started making money with their
video blog is Google Adsense. The great thing about Adsense is that their
marketing methods aren’t intrusive – your viewers won’t be bombed with
hundreds of pop up windows or animated advertisements that will take up half of
the screen. The advertisements that Adsense puts out are contextual – meaning
that they will have something to do with the subject covered in the video blog –
and unobtrusive.
The way that this particular brand of advertising works is that you get paid per
click on the advertisement displayed. That is, if a visitor to your website finds one of the ads placed around your video blog appealing and clicks on it, you get
paid for that click. In the advertising world this is called “pay per click”
advertising, and is pretty much the Internet version of quid pro quo. If the viewer
clicks on the advertisement, you get money. Alternatively, even if you have over
a million visitors per month and none of them click on the advertisement, you
make nothing. So you’ll need to do some legwork that ensures that at least
some of those viewers click on the ads!
A great way to encourage your viewers to check out your ads without being too
overbearing about it is to optimize the placement of the ads. Studies have shown
that viewers are more likely to click on ads located in certain places of the
website. The trick is finding a balance between making the advertisements
visible but not letting them take over the entirety of your video blog.
Every webmaster has a particular strategy when dealing with ad placement and
optimization, but there are some general tips can should be kept in mind when
deciding where to put your Adsense ads.
• Put an advertisement at the top of the page. The viewer’s eye will
naturally gravitate toward that spot, as we’re trained to look to the top of
the page to find out new information.
• Assuming that you have your page organized vertically with the most
recent video being displayed at the topmost part of the screen, insert a
second ad below the most recent video blog and the next most recent.
Generally speaking, even if the visitor is only at the site for the most recent
blog post, they’ll naturally look down at the rest of the videos displayed –
and they’ll see the second ad.
Be sure to pay attention to Google Adsense’ Terms of Service. There are
actually rules regarding where and how often you can put advertisements on
your site. While it’s important to be thorough with advertising in order for it to be
effective, you also don’t want to wallpaper your site with ads. Not only is this
distasteful to the viewer, it also annoys Google and could land you in hot water!
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