Some tips on monetizing video
An article in Wall Street Journal online talks about the growing trend of companies looking to put their advertising alongside Web video. Part of the trend is they're starting to look at niche video because of the lack of quality video to put their advertising with.
One thing we need to take a look at is joining a video site that hosts a number of different web video series.
For example, the story in the Journal talks about Geek Entertainment TV landing a sponsorship deal with GoDaddy that was negotiated by video hosting site blip.tv.
In the case of blip.tv, they negotiate the deals and split the revenue with the producers of the programs.
This is a great way to start out and learn the business. Look at Rocketboom, which for some time was the biggest web series. They struggled for a long time to get someone to sponsor them, and they were one of the leading video series online at the time. If they struggle to find sponsors, you can be sure you will too.
The advantage of video hosting sites are they can take care of the marketing and hosting side so you can concentrate on creating great video content.
When you start to consider monetizing your video productions, a major consideration will be to remain predictable. If marketers can't rely on you representing something on a consistent basis, they'll probably hesitate to work with you. They don't want their names going viral around the web based on your deciding to be creative and change what it is you say you represent.
By predictable, I'm not talking about being creative in your productions, but being predictable in who you say you are. A quick way to lose a sponsor is to suddenly surprise them with something far outside your niche or purpose. If you cause their name to go viral in a negative way connected to something you've done, you probably will have destroyed any chance of monetizing your video in the future. We can't get cute here. We must be and remain who we say we are.
There's another side to monetizing video from a producers point of view, and that's control over who wants to advertise with you. Just like an advertiser can be burned by content producers, we producers can also be burned if the advertising doesn't work with our specific demographic.
Keeping that in mind, video hosting sites that help you land advertising deals are one way to go if you want to focus primarily on creating content itself. You can definitely make good income that way if you're creating a good product.
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