Introduction
Video is the fastest growing type of media online.
Even companies that were founded on other types of broadcasting—such as Twitter and Instagram have begun to embrace video in order to improve visitor engagement and better connect with their target audience.
With the prevalence of high-speed internet access in most areas of the world, it’s no wonder video is the preferred method of communication, whether it be for educational purposes, or entertainment.
Unfortunately, incorporating video content on your blog or website hasn’t always been an easy task.
For many, uploading videos to their own hosting account is time-consuming and expensive, and while embedding videos from third-party services simplifies things, you’ll often end up losing a lot of control over how the videos are displayed.
Fortunately, there are simple solutions to these common issues, and you can use video on all your sites and blogs without the expense of hosting them yourself, and with all of the control you would expect if you DID host them!
In this guide, you’re going to learn some of the best ways to use video on your websites profitably, and just how easy it is to get around some of the biggest issues you might face when using it.
Why Use Video?
You may be wondering what all the fuss is about, and why you should even bother using video on your websites.
Maybe you think your website or blog isn’t conducive to video, or that it’s not worth the trouble, or that it’s too expensive or time-consuming.
But the fact is, pretty much any website you can think of can be made better with video.
Let’s look at how video can improve some of today’s most prevalent types of websites:
• Blogs – Blogs of all types can benefit from the addition of video. They don’t even have to be your videos.
You can embed videos from YouTube or other websites, too, and studies have shown that this tactic can actually improve SEO, especially if you use text on the same page to describe the video and add your own commentary about what’s being presented in the video.
• Ecommerce Sites – Ecommerce sites can see a huge boost in conversions by having video reviews of products, product demos, testimonials, etc.
• Sales Letters – Sales letters, as you probably already know, often see huge conversion boosts with the addition of video. A simple video at the top of a sales letter can be remarkably effective.
• Squeeze Pages – Just like sales letters, squeeze page conversions can be boosted significantly with the addition of video.
• Education & Training – As we have seen with the rise of sites like Udemy, websites that teach people things can benefit hugely from the use of video.
• Hobbies – Hobby websites can also benefit from video to teach people how to do things.
• Local Sites – Websites for local businesses can benefit greatly from video, too. You can use video to introduce the business, its products or services, and its employees and owners.
• Service Websites – If you offer a service, video can help you explain what you do to potential clients, as well as present examples of what you’ve done.
• Restaurants – Sometimes nothing can make someone want to eat more than seeing a video of food bubbling, steaming, or sizzling! Photos just don’t have as much of an effect.
Videos add life to presentations. They help demonstrate positive benefits and aspects of a product or service.
They transform static presentations into lively, engaging messages that trigger emotions, and help to communicate on a deeper level than nearly any other form of marketing.
You can use videos to define your brand, to establish a presence within your market and to become memorable or sticky.
It’s evident with the growing number of video campaigns that marketers are looking to connect and communicate with their audience in a more interactive and engaging way. And now it’s your turn to join them!
How to Make Money with Videos
In this segment of our special report, we’ll take a closer look at how you can maximize sales and conversion rates with powerful video campaigns.
Increase the Value of Your Products
Videos add value to your products because they cater to the ever-growing demand for visual training.
People don’t have a lot of time to spend reading eBooks and training guides, and so by offering your product in a video based format, you can increase value instantly, while giving your customers exactly what they want most!
Minimizes Learning Curves
If you sell information products, scripts, software, plugins or other material that requires step by step installation or guidance, videos can help minimize the learning curve and simplify the process (which means fewer support requests and more sales!).
People often feel overwhelmed when given a lot of training material, and chances are if you’ve been involved in the information market for any length of time, you already know just how many people will abandon projects, or give up on learning simply because they don’t know where to start.
Videos simplify the learning process, and help customers progress at their own speed.
You can easily create video tutorials using free software (which we’ll discuss in a later segment).
Drives targeted traffic to your websites and landing pages
There are four important types of marketing you can use within your videos to drive traffic to your websites:
1. Feature a URL at the bottom of the video for the entire presentation.
2. Place a URL at the end of the video that directs viewers to your website or landing page.
3. Include a URL that’s mentioned during the video (or at the end).
4. Place a link in the description of the video itself.
The easiest way to get traffic from your video is to simply place the URL at the bottom of the screen for the entire duration of the video.
This will ensure that your URL is seen, even if someone doesn’t finish the entire video presentation.
You should also make sure to include a screenshot at the end of the video that contains your website or landing page URL, and a clear call-to-action to get people to take action to visit the URL.
You want to be very clear with what you want them to do!
Example:
“Click the link below to find out more about how I can help you grow your business!”
Creating Your Own Videos
There are some situations where you pretty much have to make your own videos, because you have something specialized to present that no one else’s videos could do.
For example, if you are selling a product you created yourself, you’ll need to create your own video, because you have to show YOUR product.
Or if you want to teach people your own unique or secret method of doing something.
Fortunately, creating videos is easier than ever with the introduction of products and services that focus on making the video production process as quick and painless as possible.
Many of these services are cloud-based, which means they will work on any operating system and nearly any device, so you could even potentially make videos with your mobile phone or tablet.
Here are some of the most popular video creation platforms right now:
Animoto
>> http://www.animoto.com
Shakr
>> http://www.shakr.com
Videze
>> http://www.videzelaunch.com
You could also consider using downloadable apps and programs that come pre-installed on various operating systems, such as Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, or any one of thousands of apps and programs that allow you to make videos on whatever device you have.
Creating your own videos has the added benefit of giving you an additional marketing outlet, because you can upload your videos to YouTube and other channels and direct traffic to your website or blog.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to create your own videos if it makes sense for your business and you have the desire and ability to do so.
You can also outsource video creation if you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself.
Sites like Fiverr and Upwork make it easy to find professionals to do the work for you, and you’d be surprised how inexpensive it can be to get videos made for you.
Fiverr
>> http://www.fiverr.com
Upwork
>> http://www.upwork.com
The biggest problem with creating your own videos is that you have to find a way to host them.
Traditionally, that means either putting them on your own server, which can be prohibitively expensive since videos have large file sizes and thus eat a lot of bandwidth, or uploading them to a site like YouTube, which means losing control of a lot of factors.
But there is
Video Storage Services
You’ve probably heard of “the cloud”. It’s not some magical place with harps and winged beauties.
It’s referring to storing your files in a remote location.
And you can use it to host your videos without having to pay a fortune for bandwidth.
A lot of people use Amazon S3, from Amazon Web Services, to host their videos, because the bandwidth is considerably cheaper than most hosting companies and it won’t slow your server down like it might if you hosted your own.
Amazon S3
>> https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
Of course, S3 DOES still cost money, and it doesn’t offer the type of control over displaying your videos that you might like.
So you might prefer to use something else—perhaps something free.
YouTube is another very popular choice for hosting videos, and it gives you the added option of being another marketing channel, too.
Since YouTube has a lot of traffic, and videos also tend to rank very well in Google and other search engines, you can actually gain a lot of additional traffic just by hosting your videos there.
Best of all, of course, is the fact that uploading your videos to YouTube is FREE.
So not only are you gaining another marketing channel, but you don’t have to pay to host your videos, either.
But what if you don’t want to make your own videos?
Using Other People’s Videos To Maximize Exposure
If you don’t want to make your own videos, you can always embed other people’s videos on your website.
This is beneficial for SEO, because all you have to do to create new content for your site is simply embed a video and then write up your own unique description of the content found within the video.
It’s usually much easier to write up a quick description and some commentary than it is to think up a topic, do your research, and write an entire article from scratch.
Plus, Google LOVES video content.
Why would you want to put other people’s content on YOUR website?
Well, there are many reasons, but the biggest one is that it gives you free content that Google loves and that your visitors will love, too.
All you have to do is add a little bit of text content to go along with the video you’ve embedded, and you’re good to go!
Can’t think of what to write? Just watch the video and add a description of it, and perhaps offer your own thoughts on the topic presented in the video.
Here’s an example:
“In this video, you’ll see Jane Doe making her own DIY version of the hottest new beauty trend—light-up eyebrows! This look could be great for grabbing attention at the club or at a party.
In the video, she suggests using a tiny LED set that she found on Amazon, but I think another good idea would be using some of those glow-in-the-dark bracelets that you cut to fit and gluing them on with lash glue.
This might be a cheaper alternative, and would catch attention under blacklight or in darker rooms.”
You want to insert a few phrases that would work well for SEO purposes, while also providing a little bit more information to support the content of the video.
One of the biggest problems with this is that the creator’s marketing is often all over it.
For example, they may have annotations in their videos, or they may have links in the description that you’d rather not send your visitors off to see if they happen to click off your site to the video host to watch the video.
Keep in mind that the creator of the video may not like the fact that you are using their video without their marketing included, so be prepared to receive a message asking you to remove the video or at least re-add their marketing.
If this happens, it’s best to just be polite and do as they ask. It’s their content, after all.
But even if you want to leave their ads in, what about other elements of embedded YouTube videos that you might want get rid of or take control of?
MonkeyPlayr
MonkeyPlayr is the ultimate solution for taking total control over every single video you embed on your website or blog.
Some features include:
• Autoplay Videos – You can choose to set your videos to play automatically if you choose to, which is perfect for sales pages and squeeze pages.
• Custom Start/Stop Times – If you don’t want to play a video in its entirety, you can set it to play only a specific section. For example, let’s say you only want to discuss a brief segment of a long video. You can set the player to show only the section you want to show.
• Remove Branding – If you are using a hosting service that applies their branding to videos, such as YouTube, you can remove their branding so it looks more clean and professional.
• Loop Videos – You can loop single videos or even entire playlists, which could be beneficial, for example, if you created a playlist of soothing nature sounds for your blog on coping with anxiety, or if you create music and wanted to let people loop your songs.
• Force HD – If you want to make sure your videos look as good as possible, you can force videos to play in 720p or 1080p. This means your videos will keep their polished, professional look.
• Force HTTPS – If you have videos on secure pages, such as login pages or payment pages, you can force them to be served with HTTPS.
• Specify Dimensions – If you need your videos to be a very specific size, you can set the specific height and width you’d like them to be displayed at.
• Responsive – You can also make videos resize dynamically for responsive designs.
• Disable Annotations – You can even disable annotations that were added by the video’s creator.
• Disable Controls – If you don’t want viewers to be able to pause, rewind, fast forward, etc., you can disable controls completely.
• Disable Dropdowns – You can disable those annoying dropdown and video information boxes.
• Redirect Viewers – You can even redirect users to another page after the video is finished. This is perfect if you want to send users to a checkout page after they finish watching it.
Best of all, it’s very easy to use, doesn’t require any coding or installation of files, and works on both HTML and WordPress sites!
MonkeyPlayr
>> http://www.monkeyplayr.com
Powerful Video Ideas
Let’s look at a few other ways you can use video to spice up nearly any type of blog or website.
• Draw Attention – Videos can be embedded on nearly any page to draw attention to something. You might embed an auto-play video that asks people to turn off their add blocker, follow you on social media, or check out one of your ads.
• Sell Products – Sales videos work great to get people to take action, by either buying your product, opting in to your list, or buying an affiliate product. They increase conversions significantly!
• Demonstrate Use – If you have your own product, or you’re selling an affiliate product, you can use video to show people how easy the product is to use, how useful it is, etc.
• Tutorials – Almost any type of tutorial is greatly enhanced by video. Some people simply can’t grasp a topic via text and/or photos, but video will help almost anyone understand a subject.
• Attract Attention (and keep it!) – Videos can definitely be more enticing that photos, and certainly more so than text.
Imagine going to the website of your local steakhouse and seeing a video of a sizzling ribeye coming off the grill and being sliced open, glistening and juicy.
Or going to a gaming website and seeing a video of how spectacular the graphics and gameplay is for a new game that just came out.
• Connect with your Audience – Sometimes people just want to feel connected to you, and video is the perfect way to accomplish that.
You can include a video of yourself on your website to let people know who you are and connect with you on a more personal level.
• Make Topics More Interesting – Some topics just aren’t that interesting or entertaining, but the right video can turn a boring topic into one that is fun or exciting!
• Show Off Your Skills – If you provide a service, video is the perfect way to show people what you can do.
Imagine a paint contractor giving a room-by-room tour of a beautiful home they just painted, or an artist giving a live demo of their creations!
• Retain Viewers – You may or may not know this, but Google looks at “bounce rate” as a big factor in SEO.
Bounce rate is the number of people who leave your site without visiting another page other than the one they initially landed on.
They also use the amount of time spent on a page as a factor. Video can keep people on your site longer, and entice them to view more pages.
These are just a few ideas of ways you can use video to enhance your websites or landing pages.
Conclusion
If you thought video was too difficult, too expensive, or too frustrating to be worth the time and effort, hopefully you’ve changed your mind after reading this guide.
Video is a lot easier to put on your site than you think, and it can capture attention, get people to take action, and significantly boost conversions.
If you’re not using video on your websites, you could seriously be leaving money on the table.
We’ve covered some great ways to use video on your websites, how they can be beneficial, and how to put them on your site without spending a fortune in bandwidth and without losing control of the display options.
Video is no longer just for young people, or for tech websites, or for educational websites, or social media.
Video has practical applications for nearly every type of online presence you can think of.
Resources
For your convenience, here are links to all of the resources mentioned in this guide.
Video Creation Resources:
Animoto
>> http://www.animoto.com
Shakr
>> http://www.shakr.com
Videze
>> http://www.videzelaunch.com
Outsourcing Video Creation
Fiverr
>> http://www.fiverr.com
Upwork
>> http://www.upwork.com
Video Hosting
Amazon AWS S3
>> https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
Video Control
MonkeyPlayr
>> http://www.monkeyplayr.com
