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!