There is a lot of talk about "how" to use youtube to promote your site. And I see just that - "talk" and few real examples. When someone ask about promotion techniques, and ask a question about youtube, there are usually a lot of replies about how to do this or do that. But when the person giving the advice is asked to post examples, or a link to their youtube channel, sometimes they never reply or simply disappear. I would like to post an example of "proof" of how a youtube channel can help you promote your site. Even though I have videos spread out over about a dozen video hosting sites, youtube gets the most views. Break.com is in second place, but for the most part, youtube will get my videos viewed the most. In my opinion, the traffic to my site is directly related to my videos. This past week my youtube videos broke the 2 million views mark. Its only taken about a year and a half. Its taken a year and a half of maturing for my videos and my traffic to reach the point where they are today. So do not expect over night success. It takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work. Also, my youtube channel has a PR of 5 - http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalistboards I do not understand "how" my page has a PR of 5, but oh well, just something to talk about. My Youtube stats: Videos Watched: 3,511 Videos Uploaded: 313 Video Views: 2,016,955 Favorites: 27 Channel Type: Director Channel Views: 81,303 Subscribers: 3,796 Yesterday my site also set a new record: Quote: My site - http://www.survivalistboards.com/ Traffic: For those of you that want to see pretty charts, take a look at my quantcast account - http://www.quantcast.com/survivalistboards.com I put the traffic tag on my site back in July, so it only going to show 2 months of data. Future Growth: I am hoping to break 1,000 members every 24 hours by the end of 2008. Hunting season should help get some more traffic, because my videos are going to switch from summer activities to hunting and camping. Your videos not only have to mature, but they need to cover a wide range of topics. Most of my videos are seasonal. In the spring - early summer I cover gardening, hiking and camping. In the fall - winter I cover camping again, but also hunting. The middle of the summer is a slow point for my videos, as the 100 degree daytime temperatures prevent me from doing too much. If you are looking for a steady stream of traffic, consider putting together a youtube account and posting some videos. Pulling traffic from outside youtube: One thing that can happen, if people like your videos they will post a link to your videos on other forums. If you watermark and copyright your videos, this can help draw traffic from other sites to your site. If people do not like your video, this can be of some help as well. Several of my videos have been posted on other sites just to be made fun of. Even though I found it offensive, I realized that most of the people that posted my videos were my competition. Members of those other forums posted my videos in their forums to insult me and call me names. But by doing this, they exposed more people to my websites name. Like they say, any publicity is good publicity. Whether its good, or bad - as long as the customer sees your name they will remember it.
Man, that is alot of videos! I just have the one for now, should add some more. But the one I have on there showing tattoo designs was added only about 2 months ago and has already had over 1250 views! I think thats crazy.... but I have no idea how many people are actually clicking on my site link from it though. Which leads me to an interesting question, how do you know how many hits you've had from the you tube videos? For some reason it does'nt show up in my sites awstats....
Do you have a google analytics account? If not, get it set up. Google analytics can tell you what sites are referring traffic to your site. Right now youtube is the #3 source of traffic to my site, just ahead of yahoo by a few thousand referrals. If you have a tattoo site, I would focus on women getting tattoos. Its kinda sexy, and sex sells big time.
Your videos are great. They have a great how-to feel to them. Obviously, you have local resources that you can use too. I cannot think of anything like that that I could use. Many of my sites and interests are mainstream. For instance, formula one - the only videos I could make for that would soon get taken down thanks to DCMA. I think you need a good niche that fits video. For example, many of my niches are in the health area. Great for desperate buyers but I cannot make any great compelling videos. Sure, I can make spammy slideshows but I can't make interesting, fun and engaging videos.
No I don't think I do have an analytics account. Is it free to set one up? You don't need an API key for that do you? I think thats what its called anyways.... As for focusing on women, your right. I get alot more women than men visiting my site and I would say 75% that have joined have been women....
Time to downgrade this thread, lol. Na, I can see some things that may be a little misleading. Some of these include: 1. you have had over 2 million video views and not website views. Most probably say 2% clicked through from the video, that's 40,000 uniques to your website rather than 2 million. Although saying this it's still a lot of traffic, but that's if you can get 2% to convert into clickthru traffic. 40,000 uniques is very good if the work involved is not to much hassle. 2. A percentage of your forum members are problem yahoo robots. Normally they send so many over to one site in any one time period that it ups the quest visitor count on the forums. Overall though I can say that you have done well for 2 million video views and your forums look good and your videos looked interesting. If I had time I would have probably watched them as I have a little interest in that sort of stuff.
This is a great share information, love it. I do completely agree that youtube is great place to gain traffics
By memebers do you mean viewers? Also besides creating an awesome funny beautiful video and have good headlines how can you promote your video? I am in the process of making mine for my site but perfecting my ideas first Great post by the way
By members, I mean members on my forum. You do not have to create any beautiful as in kittens, or funny kids. You just create a video on the topic you want to cover. Make sure you have good keywords in the video description and people will find your video. Promoting your video on youtube is a little different then promoting your website on the internet. On youtube you just throw your videos out there and people will find them. Think of youtube as nitch marketing. There will be people looking for videos for certain topics, you jut have to put the video in front of them.