Make Money With A Video Blog
The first blog post is always the hardest with amblings on who you are and what you have set out to do. I’ve decided to keep the introduction short and jump right into some nice, worthwhile content. So, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mark and I’ve moved from zzmarketing.co.uk where I used to blog as “MarkZZ”, as zoomzoom’s Head of Online Marketing. If you’d like to know more, you can have a look here – or if you want to make some money, keep reading! [Update: Now working at Further as Online Marketing Manager]
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 maximising 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. 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 optimising your Adsense placement and layout later, if you want to take the optimisation 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!
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, humour – 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. Optimisation 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 Feedburnt
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:
and replace with:
And you’re done!
I’m not going to tell you how to design your layout pixel by pixel, because one of the keys with maximising your profit is experimentation. Here are some guidelines:
Adsense Placement & Optimisation
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 336x280px “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 – minimising 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 colour 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 colour, you will need to use this colour for your Adsense titles. I however, think this colour 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 colour as your standard hyperlinks. If you’re using Firefox there is a great Colour Picker addon, which gives you the hex code for any colour, 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. Voila! 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 Green: Our main above the scroll adsense
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, humour, 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!
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Very well written article. I look forward to experimenting with some of these tips in my next projects.
Comment by Adam
April 17th, 2007 @ 1:38 am
Very very very Good article!
Thanks, I’d love to see more posts like this. I can’t wait to see what you got up your sleeve.
One thing to also note would be to hunt down places that may have the unsavy internet users and also allow videos, such as myspace videos. I think the stumbleupon advice was particularly great because even though your target captive audience will be the ones that aren’t already addicted to big places like youtube or google video, it’s the savvy users that will help spread your videos far and wide. It also doesn’t hurt to submit a few through digg as well.
Thanks
Comment by Eli
April 17th, 2007 @ 5:15 am
Wow! Thanks for sharing a screenshot of one of your sites. This has really inspired me on how to optimize better.
Comment by Carl Pei
April 17th, 2007 @ 8:54 am
Great article man! Can’t wait to give this a shot.
Keep em comin!
Comment by Mr Blonde
April 18th, 2007 @ 7:01 am
Very well written and informative guide.
The only thing that looks strange to me is that 25% CTR. Have you achieved this or is it a goal you have?
Comment by payment blogger
April 19th, 2007 @ 10:56 am
With a similar design 25% is quite possible, today so far I’m on 33.33%
Comment by Mark
April 19th, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Good. I will try this
Comment by payment blogger
April 19th, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
Hi
Thanks for sharing. I will give this a go and let you know how I get on.
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?
Mark
Comment by MarkF
April 27th, 2007 @ 12:21 pm
Hey mark, awesome first post, I’m adding you to my reader list.
One question about this post: do you have any suggestions/preferences with actual video advertisements at the end of the videos? If you are taking the time to download the videos and add in site advertisements at the beginning, it would seem a good idea to add video ads at the end.
Comment by Will
April 27th, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
Hi MarkF/Will
Funny, I think Will was talking to me? I think one of us is confused!
Im answer to your question, Will. I was placing ads at the beginning and end of the videos, so yea – it’s a good idea for them to finish on your URL!
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.
Comment by Mark
April 27th, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
Hi Will
Thanks for the nice comment.
My intention is to place a simple overlay of my domain on the video with a very short but emotive phrase to entice viewers to type it into their browser and come to my site. I’ll be placing this at the beginning and end.
This is why I’m seeking feedback on how I’ll stand with the copyright.
Comment by MarkF
April 27th, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
i have followed these instructions and have had very good results
Comment by Corey
April 27th, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Great, Corey! I’m really pleased I could help some of you guys! I’m working on some more guides which I should have ready soon.. So keep your pockets peeled!
Comment by Mark
April 27th, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
Thanks for your reply Mark
Yes, I thought that was an excessively generous statement for my rather insignificant post. I got caught out by forgetting you’re name is also Mark.
Comment by MarkF
April 27th, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
I really enjoyed this post, and it was extremely well-timed, as I have just started two sites along these lines in the last month.
In fact, I was impressed enough to subscribe to your feed once I saw that your other posts were very solid as well.
I don’t agree with everything you recommend. For example, the hijacking of other people’s content by adding your site title over the top….I personally find that somewhat “iffy”. I know it’s done all the time. But if I didn’t add value to the content, I can’t see how that’s justified.
But many of the other ideas were very strong. One little technical beef with the post. I really wanted to copy the code to do the title swap thing…but you posted it as a graphic!! Have pity on those of us who don’t write code and don’t know where all those characters come from, and post it as text instead.
Thanks!
Comment by Chuck
April 28th, 2007 @ 1:25 am
Hi Chuck,
Thanks for the kind comments, appreciated.
I don’t class labeling the videos as hijacking content as they have posted it on YouTube anyway, so you are allowed to embed the videos in your blog. I simply brand them to show that they’ve been added to my collection, loads of placed like metacafe and ebaums to this – but I guess it’s up to you what you do!
My code blocks don’t work properly as I messed around with WP a bit too much, I just quickly posted it as code. I can e-mail it to you if you like?
Thanks for dropping by and subscribing!
Comment by Mark
April 28th, 2007 @ 1:29 am
Trying to follow this awesome post… but I’m stuck. I haven’t used WordPress before, and I can’t seem to be able to add the block of AdSense below the first post.
I have the same template you used, unnamed… just because I know it works (I’ll change it once I get the hang of things).
Which file did you edit to add that large rectangle of AdSense below the first post?
Thanks in advance!
Comment by Chad
April 28th, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
Wow, great blog, congrats. And you’re in Norwich… So am I! I’ll give your ideas a try and report back on how I get along.
Comment by John Squires
April 28th, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
Chad,
there is a wordpress plugin that makes it very easy. It’s called Adsense Deluxe
You can download it here
Comment by Eli
April 29th, 2007 @ 3:58 am
Thanks for the offer, Mark. It would be great if you could email me that code.
And yeah…I know it’s just a judgment call on branding the videos. I like the idea of doing it myself, if I can bring some additional value to the video. And I’ve been thinking about ways of doing that since reading your post.
Comment by Chuck
April 29th, 2007 @ 7:35 am
I figured out how to get the block of adsense directly under the first post only.
So… my new site has been online for a couple days and I’ve done promotion through those 5 sites you recommended (yahoo, open directory, etc…). I also signed up with stumbleupon.com, and stumbleXchance, and stumbled quite a few pages.
How long does it generally take (without another, more established, site boosting your site) to get some decent amounts of traffic?
Thanks!
Comment by Chad
April 29th, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
Hey Chad,
If you promote through YouTube your traffic will be instant. Most people on DP that have followed the guide are reporting about 500 uniques within 3 days.
Comment by Mark
April 29th, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
Mark, thanks for the quick response! What angle do you prefer to take when promoting with YouTube?
Also, does DP mean Digital Point? Do you have a link to other’s discussing this technique?
Thanks for everything!
Comment by Chad
April 30th, 2007 @ 2:27 am
Hi Chad,
I literally do exactly as I wrote in the post in regard to promoting with YouTube. If you want to catch on the Digital Point discussion, it’s here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=301511
Comment by Mark
April 30th, 2007 @ 2:40 am
I had a question about editing the videos. I tried downloading some from google and running them through rivercast to convert the mp4 to AVI. When I did this though a 8mb MP4 file turned into a 100mb file. Is that normal or did I do something wrong? Thanks!
Comment by David
April 30th, 2007 @ 4:56 am
Hey Mark great read. Can you get the same results (success/flexability) with the wordpress.com as you would with the install on your own server? Thanks again.
Comment by gerg
April 30th, 2007 @ 5:07 am
Hey Mark,
What an awesome way to start a blog…Your post is too good.
I wanted to know one thing, Is it that the more videos you post the more you earn ? I was am asking this because in non video blogs our feed readers are not comfortable if we post too much…So i just wanted to know…
And is your major traffic from search engines ??
Cheers !!!
Comment by Vyom
May 1st, 2007 @ 11:41 am
Hi Vyom,
Hehe, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s people that blog too much! There is a “correct” amount for me at least. I tend to remove blogs from my reader that get 12 new posts per day, you can’t post that much and maintain quality! So it becomes a chore reading through fluff to get to the good stuff.
I have found the opposite to be true to video blogs. This is because there are some major differences:
1) The content only takes 20 seconds to absorb and has little “re-watch” value.
2) It doesn’t matter if you miss some posts, they’re only videos.
3) You are aiming to please a wide audience, what some people find entertaining, others might not.
For this reason I’ve found the *only* way to build up decent traffic is to add a video (or two) at least once per day!
The major traffic I have been getting is definitely not from search engines. Most of my traffic comes from stumble, youtube and other social networks. Hope this helps!
Comment by Mark
May 1st, 2007 @ 11:49 am
I’ve followed your guide fairly to the letter, and while my traffic is fantastic, I can’t seem to get these guys to click through. MY CTR is at 1% currently, The site has such great potential, and I really appreciate the guide but even with the exact layout you have I’m getting a pretty bad CTR… any ideas?
Comment by Kristofer
May 3rd, 2007 @ 3:11 am
[...] guide to setting up a video blog. The thread was started by thetafferboy83 aka Mark Cook who posted the same article on his [...]
Comment by How to Make Money with a Video Blog
May 3rd, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
I’m also confused about how to get the Adsense bar under the first post only. I’ve installed Adsense Deluxe, but the only way I can see to accomplish this is to manually add and remove the Adsense placeholder every time I update the site so only the most recent video has the Adsense code under it. This would be pretty inefficient and time consuming.
One idea I thought of was to just have the Adsense underneath every post I make, since no more than 3 ad bars can be displayed and I already have the other two on the same page. This would also make it so it would show under individual post pages. Problem is, since the sidebar is on the left and thus after the post content section of the .php file, two adsense bars show up for the first two posts, and the sidebar skyscraper bar gets cut.
Anyone else come up with a work around for this?
Comment by Altares
May 5th, 2007 @ 4:43 am
Edit your “theloop.php” file and add this line:
$cnt=0;
before “/* Start the loop */ ”
On the first line after the start the loop add this:
< ?php
$cnt++;
?>
Then just before the end of “theloop” put this code:
< ?php
if ($cnt==1) {
?>
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
< ?php
} ?>
Comment by Mark
May 5th, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Brilliant! Thanks for the fast response Mark.
Now if I could only figure out how to convince Adsense that my content isn’t about used cars and Hummers
.
Comment by Altares
May 5th, 2007 @ 8:43 am
Thanks a lot for that piece of information Mark i was some what thinking the same thing so i thought it would be better if i just clarified it.
One more thing i wanted to ask you that did it have the same potential if we had a video blog running on a blogspot blog ?
Comment by Vyom
May 9th, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
Hey Altares,
Make sure you have the words “funny video” in your blog post titles and on the page. Also you can use competitive ad filter to get rid of persistently bad ads.
Comment by Mark
May 9th, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
Hi Vyom,
Potentially yes, however it doesn’t offer the flexibility that WordPress does, so if you have the choice, I’d go for WP every time!
Comment by Mark
May 9th, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
Hey Mark,
Thanks a Lot for all your replies. But i have finally got the domain registered and i am all set to start my video blog on wordpress. I am quite excited about it so lets hope it works out…
Your post was really great.
Cheers !!!
Comment by vyom
May 10th, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
Great stuff Mark. I’m gonnna get right on this! I’ve been searching around for convertors etc. Found this site which has loads of articles, which may be of help to other subscribers.
http://www.digital-digest.com/
Your site is bookmarked, for sure.
Cheers for now,
Col
Comment by Col
May 14th, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
just to update i used your tips at DP when starting and now have over 17,500 unique visitors so far this month on http://www.favouredcontent.com
Comment by Corey
May 20th, 2007 @ 8:08 am
Excellent post Mark, one quick question. I’m using a wp theme that has no “theloop.php” how would I go about editing so that adsense will only show under the first post? Thanks
Comment by Orion
May 25th, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
I got this one Mark.
Orion, it’s going to be in the main index file. And then do the code that Mark posted above.
Comment by chatmasta
May 27th, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Since I’m a first time wp user, I’m waiting for an answer on that one, but my guess is you should edit single.php
Comment by SpiritFly
May 28th, 2007 @ 6:12 am
Okay I already posted the answer though.
It’s going to be the main index file.
Then do the code that Mark posted above ….I can’t be bothered to find it.
Comment by chatmasta
May 29th, 2007 @ 11:17 pm
Damn dude, I’m doing all this right now.
Setting up the blog and getting everything perfect (with a kinda poorly coded template) took 3-4 hours yesterday.
I spent 1-2 hours (33 pages of digg) finding 20 google videos last night.
Looks like I’m going to spend 2-3 hours converting, editing in Adobe Premiere Pro (for some reason it doesn’t import mp4), converting back to mp4, and uploading. I’m convertnig back to mp4 because the .avi files are like 100-500mb. O_O
Almost done converting, then uploading will be no problem.
Looking good so far, just a lot of time.
Comment by chatmasta
May 30th, 2007 @ 1:42 am
Hi Mark,
Thank you for writing this great post!!
I tried to add to my site a vertical Adsense unit (skyscraper) & an e-mail subscribe box as you explained, but I am not able to do so!
Which blog files should I edit & where would I place my (Adsense) codes?
Many thanks!
Comment by Michel Z.
June 6th, 2007 @ 9:26 am
Regarding Google custom search engine, how to remove the Google button and text at the bottom of the search box. I guess I’m talking about just having a clean looking search box without all that stuff around it.
Comment by emigre
June 10th, 2007 @ 3:33 am
I created a video blog at http://www.vidslam.com. I used Viper’s videotags plugin, which works on the main pages, but when I click on the “categories” or “archives” links on the sidebar, my posts only contain the videotags code, not the video itself. Anyone have a solution to this?
Comment by Jason
June 13th, 2007 @ 7:07 pm
Jason, I would recommend that you do NOT use Viper’s videotags or any other quick video plugin, because on the WordPress support forums I found out that by using those plugins your RSS feed will display the URL to the video (on , etc) rather than the full video (you can observe this by looking at your feedburner feed page).
Comment by Roman
June 23rd, 2007 @ 6:15 am
Hello, Your site is great. Regards, Valintino Guxxi
Comment by Valintino
June 24th, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
It was a very details post. Great sharing. My next project will be something base on this idea. Thank you.
Comment by bigcatjump
June 30th, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
Hey, good info! Keep up the good job!
Hope we can share some ideas on internet marketing, blog me at Internet Marketing Blog For Newbie
Or visit me at Internet Marketing Strategies Revealed
Comment by vanne
July 2nd, 2007 @ 8:59 am
“..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 found a free program to convert the mp4 to avi, and the quality is great. Here it is: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
While you find the link to download is a little pain in the butt, but I’ve tried it and it IS really free without adware/spyware or anything. It converts many different video formats, try it.
Comment by SpiritFly
July 3rd, 2007 @ 3:51 am
Awesome post Mark!!! I created a blog http://www.astafun.com but I have the same problem as Jason with categories and archives showing only the links, not the videos. Is there a fix for this?
Comment by nomad
July 4th, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
Hi nomand,
Yup, when you sign up to feedburner, change your “i am a podcaster” options to not enclose content in your feed.
Comment by Mark
July 25th, 2007 @ 5:37 pm
Hi Spiritfly,
I saw your blog today on sxc – Loosen your neck and let your Spirit Fly
Comment by Mark
July 25th, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
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?
Comment by Eric
July 26th, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
Well, I’ve followed your advice for the most part and built out a site in the baby video niche.
I’m testing doing things a little differently for a little while – before I start repurposing videos with my logo at the end, I decided to just post embeded videos from YouTube and submit to several of the social networking sites.
Well it turns out that one of my very first posts was dugg pretty quickly out of the gate. I had over 2,500 visitors to that page of my site in the first 24 hours after I submitted the post.
If anyone want’s to see, here it is . . . http://www.happybabyvideos.com/older-baby-videos/baby-see-baby-do-powerful-video
I’m a beginner folks, hopefully it stays this easy as I get going.
I’ll probably ditch AdSense soon and try to get some CPM ads in place. I dunno, we’ll see.
Comment by Jeremiah
August 1st, 2007 @ 12:12 am
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Comment by Digerati Marketing » Getting Started: Making Money Online
August 1st, 2007 @ 12:48 am
Hi Mark, yesterday one of my video went to youtube top and become most popular on the site.
In the last 22 hours video received about 270k views and 1 hour ago my account was deleted “due the terms violation”.
My blog visited about 3200 uniqs, and adsense has about 9300 impressions, 1000 clicks and that is about $40.
Is that good earn for such amount of a traffic?
Is any ways to stay on youtube with large amount of views without account deletion?
Comment by Kon
August 11th, 2007 @ 2:29 am
So, in regards to step:
Some WordPress essentials
3) Change page titles.
If my header.php code is:
—
how would I need to modify that in order to make the suggested “Post Title†— “Blog Name†position swap?
Comment by JamesTibco
August 18th, 2007 @ 5:57 am
Mark:
I guess I’m not allowed to post code, as it was removed from my prior post? Please let me know if there is a way around as I see you were able to do so in a prior response.
Comment by JamesTibco
August 18th, 2007 @ 6:04 am
thank you for this articl. I will create the site videos as soon as posible ;0
nice idea
Comment by Zeus
August 25th, 2007 @ 7:44 am
I made one of these video blogs a few months ago and followed pretty much all the instructions above. I got virtually no traffic to it until about a week ago, when my stumbleupon referrals went suddenly up to a couple of hundred per day.
My conclusion is that it may take a while before the work you put in starts to bear fruit. I now get mostly referrals, quite a few type-ins (from the branded videos I made) and just a little bit of Google organics. It’s very different from my other websites that are mostly organics.
Comment by John S
September 11th, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
“Hi Mark, yesterday one of my video went to youtube top and become most popular on the site.
In the last 22 hours video received about 270k views and 1 hour ago my account was deleted “due the terms violationâ€Â.
My blog visited about 3200 uniqs, and adsense has about 9300 impressions, 1000 clicks and that is about $40.
Is that good earn for such amount of a traffic?
Is any ways to stay on youtube with large amount of views without account deletion?”
I too am curious as to the reason for this. Kon, were you ever given any specific reason as to why your account was deleted? (I assume it was your YouTube account)
Interesting idea though.
Question: If I were to build up a list of say 30 or so videos, would I:
1) post them one at a time on my video blog
2) promote them by continuously submitting them to YouTube under different e-mail addresses?
Comment by Jeffery W
September 19th, 2007 @ 8:03 am
Great Article!… I’m going to try to use your tactics to promote my new site. Look im using one of your ideas… replying to people’s articles lol. Thank you though…
Comment by Scott
October 4th, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
I am a 100% non-technical man. I can not surf correctly internet. Your write up inspair me and I like to earn money. Have you any provisions to make a complete web site which you write above. If yes which amount I have to pay and how?
Comment by Pradip Das
November 3rd, 2007 @ 9:21 am
[...] A good friend of mine thought he’d give cookie stuffing a try. So he started delivering cookies on an e-commerce site he had, as well as a video blog. [...]
Comment by Digerati Marketing » Affiliate Networks Don’t Care About Cookie Stuffing
December 22nd, 2007 @ 5:34 am
Hi Mark,
I have implemented a similar idea where users can add videos from multiple video sites and make money from Adsense. Check it out. CTRs are never above 2% though. I’ll try your method
Comment by VideoDump
January 11th, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
The most important thing to earn from this kind of site is to get many visitors. I decided to do some SEO things on my site and get traffic from Search Engines… All You need to success is to choose best keywords… and then do link building for the site…
Mark
Comment by YouTubeVideos
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
thank you for this articl. I will create the site videos as soon as posible ;0
nice idea
Comment by Video izle
January 25th, 2008 @ 11:50 am
I am a 100% non-technical man. I can not surf correctly internet. Your write up inspair me and I like to earn money. Have you any provisions to make a complete web site which you write above. If yes which amount I have to pay and how?
Comment by dizi izle
January 28th, 2008 @ 9:04 pm
I have utilised this idea on a number of the portals I develop, whereas they are yet to hit the dynamite factory and blow open the dam walls for an adsense revenue flood it has helped further in search indexing by utilising another method attached to your idea
Comment by GlobalBuzz
February 4th, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
Thanks for the useful article. Though I have tryed to make a monetized video blog (vid-tube.blogspot.com), it is far from earning any good money. It simply doesn’t earn well without AdSense (banned, so I can’t use).
Comment by Make Money Blogging
February 4th, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
Wow… thanks for the links. I am going over there. Nice information.
Comment by MyEzBiz
February 12th, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
I like to do some home business which would help me make
Some money online. Can anyone suggest me some ideas for this.
Comment by marketingideastodaycom
February 21st, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Hi, I have a few questions:
I started a video site and incorporated a deals page with affiliates offers, a funny pics, and a funny stories page. From a success point of view, is it better to focus your website on one specific rather than bunching up? I could just start two individual websites.. but which would return the most revenue?
Thanks
Comment by pb
March 8th, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?
Comment by Yaz Okulu
March 23rd, 2008 @ 7:31 am
Hi Mark,
Well I just found your post and must say it’s very inspiring. I Started build my 1st video site before finding your article so will now be making some major changes. (Thanks)
I’ve just noticed on my site & others that all of a sudden there are a lot of videos that are no longer available? “Were sorry this video is no longer availableâ€
Is this something new, or has this always been an issue or does YouTube periodically simply clear out-delete older videos?
Thanks Again,
Dave
Comment by Dave
April 10th, 2008 @ 10:45 am
Hey Mark,
Quick question: do you think $1,000 a month is the absolute max someone can make, or is there room for more $$$ to be made? I know some sites makes tons on advertising, just want to get your take.
Comment by DREW
April 21st, 2008 @ 7:32 am
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?
Comment by video
May 16th, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
I think they are wrong, and that is why I no longer participate in their program. (It’s not like it cost me anything to quit.)
Comment by astım
August 13th, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
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Comment by Digerati Marketing » How To Make Money With An Automated Blog & AutoStumble
August 14th, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
Thanks for your help Mark. Using this guide I was able to create http://www.zackandben.com and so far so good.
I am still struggling with the stumble upon concepts, and further marketing is pretty tough. However, our content is solid.
Thanks again brother.
Warm Regards,
Ben Pace
http://www.zackandben.com
Comment by Ben
October 7th, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Excellent Post.
I’m gonna ask the question everyone is gagging to know the answer to.
Is anyone earning the stated $1000/m?
Please contribute to this great post.
Comment by mickyR
October 22nd, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
Sho-to-ka-ka-a-like:)
Comment by Rodion
November 6th, 2008 @ 3:08 am
Thank you for your tips,
using your perfect guide I am going to have an web-adventure with two videoblogs:
http://www.videoclinical.com and http://www.fishingfreevideo.com
Comment by Guido
November 7th, 2008 @ 1:22 pm
Hi Mark
Notice you posted this article back in 2007.
Just wondered what your stats and traffic are like for VideoWhip now, as I see it is still a live site
Comment by [email protected]
January 18th, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
WOOO i may be getting old in the tooth but also way behind the news but i just noticed MSN Media Bot. took them a while but hey ho love and peace to all
Comment by thrifty
January 25th, 2009 @ 11:46 pm
Brilliant! Thanks for the fast response Mark.
Now if I could only figure out how to convince Adsense that my content isn’t about used cars and Hummers
.
Comment by Kayserispor
February 27th, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
to bad you dont display the post date so cannot see if post is up to date and the tactic is working…
Comment by Ralph
April 6th, 2009 @ 11:10 am
Thanks for awesome tips on word press. I have a couple of sites that uses wp but now I will try the video blog, I will share back how it comes up..
Comment by Avustralyada egitim
June 8th, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
Great post! I just set up a new wp blog with your technique in just 3 hours. Can I reach $1000? Let’s see the result in the next month.
Thx anyway. You rock!
Comment by Daily Funny Videos
June 14th, 2009 @ 6:34 am
Great article! Thanks for sharing this idea.
Comment by Video Marketing
June 15th, 2009 @ 1:36 pm
Thank you! Quality job
Comment by divx film izle
June 18th, 2009 @ 12:01 am
Great strategies for newbies.
Comment by Green Card
July 1st, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
Dude your giving so much quality content away. I love it.
Comment by Nigel
July 11th, 2009 @ 4:28 am
Thanks Mark
This has really inspired me
Comment by DimasPrast
September 25th, 2009 @ 1:13 am
Thanks a lot dude…
It’s really help me..
Now i will start with my first vBlog..
Comment by Izham
October 2nd, 2009 @ 8:15 am
I’ll try to create photoblog too with this technique. Thanks alot Mark
Comment by Dimas Prast
November 2nd, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
Thanks for you post! And I think you can use iwisoft free video converter to convert any video to flv for your blog. It’s the best free video converter i have used. http://www.easy-video-converter.com
Comment by seoi
December 7th, 2009 @ 8:59 am
nice…
Comment by film seyret
December 11th, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
thank you for this articl. I will create the site videos as soon as posible..
nice idea
Comment by hd film izle
December 11th, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
I?ll try to create photoblog too with this technique. Thanks alot Mark
Comment by mustafa
March 20th, 2010 @ 12:16 pm
Great article Mark! There’s some great tips in there for those who are willing to put them into practice.
Comment by Youtube Video Marketing
April 13th, 2010 @ 1:20 am
Great article, Mark. Very useful tips. Keep up the good work!
Comment by Tube
July 18th, 2010 @ 9:34 am
i have my own video blog. its a hd film web site. thank you for this article…
Comment by Deniz
August 31st, 2010 @ 4:48 pm
Wonderful article, the only i can say is WOW!!
Comment by Judy
October 18th, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
Hi, I have a blog and I also create my own art videos but for sure I can’t wait until tomorrow because it is when I can start to my videoblog. I will follow step by step your tips even though I have never used wordpress…but i am so excited. Thanks so so much!!! For sure I will register to follow !!!
Comment by Judy
October 18th, 2010 @ 8:28 pm
Great article, Mark. Very useful tips. Keep up the good work!
Comment by kacmazdizi
May 15th, 2011 @ 9:57 pm