I have a silly question here. Just how do the big players get themselves promoted so fast? Like youtube. How did they inquire billions of traffic in one year?
Typically from large investments. If you look, YouTube has had millions poured into it from various organisations which all goes towards promoting it on a voluminous scale.
they did not start as a big player, they just invent or start new trends and simply rock the market. role is simple, if you got unique product and finance available you can too get tons of traffic!!
First, YouTube belongs to Google as seen here http://youtube.com/t/about So YouTube is leveraging on the resources and public acceptance of Google. You will realise that the original owners had funding from Sequoia Capital and they have partnered with CBS, BBC, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, NBA, The Sundance Channel - which by itself is massive networking. The advertsing and technology costs for these sites are really huge. So, in sum, big players have big partners and big capital. If you can acquire 1000 PR8 links for your site, spend $5m at a Super Bowl slot, you are sure on your way up the SERPs and drawing millions of traffic. When myspace was launched, I was surprised at the heavy ad it launched - almost parallel to that of existing services like Yahoo Personals.
Yes marketing is a lot to do with it, but when it comes to YouTube it really wasn't about how much money was orginially invested in the business. YouTube brough something NEW and FRESH to the online industry. No one else was doing it. Then when MySpace got famous, all members were hosting there videos through YouTube which also brought popularity to the site. You can try to re-invent something that has already been implemented, but if you going against someone big; you will need the DOLLARS to get ahead. Google attempted a video sharing portion as well. Since they never made it has popular as YouTbue, they just bought it.
I heard (although I haven't researched it too much) that YouTube launched with $16 million in invested capital. I also read an interview with one of the owners of YouTube that his long-time girlfriend's dad is a media mogul. In the same article, they trumpeted the guys who started YouTube as lucky entrepreneurial geniuses. It's pretty hard not to come off as a semi-genius and generate incredible amounts of brand recognition if you have millions with which to advertise. YouTube is a great web app—that cannot be denied—and they were at the start of the storm instead of jumping on the the wave at the end. So obviously they made some great decisions/forecasts. It just seems that many people have a false idea of what it takes to get to that level. There were probably a handful of other similar web apps at the time. Maybe they weren't as good as YouTube, maybe some were better—I really don't know. But I think YouTube was the first to offer a great video-social web app and combine it with ridiculous marketing capital. I think YouTube as a pioneering web application can be debated. But they announced their presence with authority, at the perfect time riding the momentum of web usability/viral features that were picking up speed, combined with peripheral technologies that really supported their features (camera phone video and digital point-and-shoot video + iMovie type of softwares). And by doing that, they left everyone else in the dust. Sorry to be so long-winded. I think my main point is that it either takes LOTS of money, or lots of time, or a strike of lightning The problem with the 'lots of time' option is that someone with lots of money will leapfrog you. So a thousand users will know you were there first, but in like two days, a half-million other users will think your competitor just started a new trend... because of advertising.
It helps when tv stations have a part in the site. I bet they did not pay much for some of the ads and they got alot of free press on the news from the companies involved. If you get free press on tv your on your way. look at the million dollar home page kid. Simple site but he was first one to do it and he called the press to tell his story. last i heard montsh ago he made over $500,000 off the site.