A guide to the best web sites that will enable you to convert your
video into cold, hard cash
By: Mark Shapiro
Are you a moviemaker or video maker? Have you been creating and posting
videos to sites like YouTube, Metacafe and MySpaceTV? You have been getting
lots of great feedback, viewers have been favoriting your videos and sharing
them among their friends, and maybe now you are thinking, how do I make some
money on this?
You may be an upcoming video producer, videographer, or editor and you
recognize the web is the wild frontier of video and film; now you want to get a
piece of it. Or, maybe you are running a business and you're smart enough to
recognize that maybe you can make some additional money by leveraging your
products and services via web video.
Yes, you can make money in web video. You don't need to be a big-time
producer with deep pockets. You don't need to have graduated from a top notch
film school. You don't even need fancy video cameras and video editing gear.
There are various paths and directions you can take depending on what
kind of video you are making and what your goals are.
For the professional video or filmmaker, the creator of short videos or
independent films, the best choice is to hook up with a major content provider
that already has a presence on the web as well as in broadcast. Companies like
Atom Films, Break, iFilm and the My Damn Channel all buy and license video
streaming content from professional video makers. See the list of Sites that
pay for video at Internet Video Magazine.
These web video distributors license your videos to other content
companies and also exhibit your film on their Internet site, sharing the
various advertisings and licensing revenues they get with you.
Most of these types of sites run ads before your video, as well as a
plethora of ads and banners on the web site. They have money coming in and
realizing the value of well made content, will pay you for your videos and
films.
Atom Films says, "We earn good money from those ads and we share a
percentage of the gross revenue with content creators. That money is paid out
according to the relative popularity of each movie on Atom Films; so the more
plays your movie generates, the more money you make."
Because companies like Atom Films also function as a source for video
content to other media companies, they can pay you a slice of that as well.
Atom Films supplies content to companies like Comedy Central, Spike TV,
Verizon's Vcast mobile entertainment service and Bell South's web portal. These
partners pay Atom for the content, and from that revenue they pay royalties to
the creators whose movies are shown.
According to Atom Films many of their film and video creators earn
hundreds of dollars, some earn thousands of dollars. The most successful
creators have made tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There are some sites that are actually pay per view and work best for
content that is either informational like "how to do it"
videos or travel videos, or contain "special content"
that cannot be easily accessed elsewhere. Some of the leading sites for
this are Veoh, BrightCove, VideoJug and ExpertVillage.
If you are running a business and want to promote it via video, you
have a few options. You could use one of the pay per view services to
distribute educational videos you produce. You could distribute and re-purpose
your TV and cable commercials by posting them to one or more of the "free"
video posting sites, or you could actually create a "viral"
video that drives traffic to your site.
A great example is the "Will It Blend" series of videos by a
small company known as BlendTec. Originally done as a one off joke video
featuring Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson and his blending antics, it turned viral.
The company followed up with an almost endless series of videos of him grinding
up objects of all types and sizes; from marbles, to an iPhone, to a rake
handle. It has become a wonderful advertising and promotional medium for their
company and now almost everyone knows who they are.
Make Money with Online Music Videos
Many musicians are using web videos to promote themselves, their bands
and their music. These can be a great way to build a new audience and get music
enthusiasts exposed to their work without having to go through the music
industry machine. Musicians can add links to their web sites on their videos to
drive interest, or actually have roll-over promo appear when a web visitor
checks out their video.
Maybe the most interesting channel to make money with your Internet
video is by using sites that allow you to post almost any kind of video you
create.
It can be a sophisticated, dramatic piece; or a video clip snippet
captured from your camcorder or your video phone. As long as you created it,
you can make money from it. Once it is posted, whenever someone clicks on it
and watches the video, you get paid. It's all about driving content and
eyeballs. Some interesting sites include YouTube, LuluTV, Flixya, Magnify, BlipTV,
and many others. Also check out how-to video sites HowCast.
For example, BlipTV - Blip TV offers a 50/50 revenue share with the
advertising that is streamed with your video. Blip TV says, "Blip.tv has
built an open advertising marketplace where you can pick the video advertising
company that works best for you. If you've got a hit show we'll even go out and
meet with media buyers directly to get you a real, honest-to-goodness high-end
sponsorship."
Another option is YouTube. They run ads with the videos and share the
revenue with the content providers.
You've Got to Promote Your On-Line
Video
Once you have your videos uploaded, you also need to promote them and
tell the world they are out there. For example, one of my favorite sites is
French Maids TV - The Viral Video of "How To" by French Maids.
Their videos are everywhere; on BlipTV, on YouTube, etc.. According to Tim
Street, creator and executive Producer, not only do they get paid to create
these "viral" videos by each show's tech
sponsors, they collect thousands of dollars each month through links on other
web sites.
These shows combine a lot of humor and a bit of sex to promote the
product or service featured on each clip. In addition to these natural hooks,
he also promotes the show using RSS and podcast directories.
Tim said, "You need to make sure that you create a RSS Feed - a
podcast of your videos. Then you need to get listed on all the podcast
directories including the most important one of all, the one that can change
your life forever, the one and only iTunes Store! Seriously iTunes has done
more to promote French Maid TV than any other thing out there. It took French
Maid TV a month to get listed on the iTunes Store. Three days later French Maid
TV was number one and we had twenty thousand subscribers."
There is a lot of money to be made in online video. Whether you are
just uploading short clips captured by your camcorder phone, creating
infomercials or how-to videos, or producing creative and funny short films or
indie full-length features; the online market is hungry for content. Check out
some of these sites listed at the Best Web Hosting Sites page at Internet Video
Magazine and find out how you can cash in on this opportunity.
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Mark
Shapiro has been writing about, and promoting, consumer, broadcast and Internet
Video for over 20 years. Recognized as a leading expert in consumer and
business video trends and production, he has written for numerous industry
publications including VideoMaker Magazine, Digital Photographer, and Camcorder
& Computer Video Magazine. He is currently editor in chief at Internet
Video Magazine.