You only need to take a look at YouTube to see that videos are an
extremely popular medium online. But you may never have thought about
setting up your own site to rival it.
It might take some doing to reach that stage but you can make a
decent amount of money from building up a video website of your own if
you go about it in the right way.
But how do you make the money? After all you can’t really charge the
users to post their videos on your site, since YouTube doesn’t and you
will price yourself out of the market if you attempt to charge for the
privilege.
So what options do you have?
The best way to get established in this arena is to think about how
to get noticed. For example, are you going to accept any and all videos
or are you going to create an online video website around one
particular subject?
A targeted site may do better than simply trying to emulate YouTube’s
success, as it will make you stand out from the crowd. What subjects
are popular enough to build a site around, without breaking any
copyright rules in the process? This is definitely an area where a lot
of thinking is required before you dive in.
Unless you know a lot about web design and development make sure you
get an expert to help you with designing the site so that it not only
looks good but the videos themselves are easy for people to submit as
well. While you won’t charge for membership you should still have a
members’ only area in place where people can manage the videos they send
in to the site.
Next you need to think about making money from your site. The
easiest way to do that is to put Google Adsense ads on your website, in
prominent places on every page. Make sure you tweak the colors and
layout as much as Adsense allows you to though, so that they fit in with
your layout. By doing this they will look a lot less like adverts and
more like links to other areas of interest externally.
The idea is to get your own domain name and hosting before you set up
your own site, but it could be that you don’t want to do this. Maybe
you already have your own website? In that case, why not add a video
section to the site you have now?
This can be a good way to boost your revenue since it adds more
interest for people. Imagine you have a website about interesting and
weird news stories from around the world. You could invite people to
submit their own home movies of various events which happen, and put ads
on those pages as and when you add them to your site. This is a great
idea since it adds more depth to the site you already have, and
encourages more click throughs for your adverts.
Regardless of whether you start from scratch or add a video section
to what you already have, an online video website can tap into a big
section of internet users who regularly flock to sites like this. And
what better place to advertize than on YouTube itself? Don’t make it a
blatant advert though – simply post some videos which have something to
do with your website and watermark your website URL over the top of
them. You might be surprised at how easily you can increase your
visitor count like this!
If this idea appeals to you, leave a comment using the form below – and then start planning your online video empire!
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