Hi, I am planning to start a video site for users to share videos. Problem is I dont have many videos. Whats the best way to advertise it and to get people to upload videos?
to start a video site from scratch is obviously going to be pretty hard. because..of the existing ones like youtube, metacafe. Now meta cafe pays thousands of dollars to their video publishers as well.. So i'd say if its a broad category..like "Videos" then there isnt much chance or hope...But if its a small niche like "world of warcraft videos" then you stand a chance. Another way can be --..if you make a website like "best of youtube"...where you will only upload the top videos of Youtube. You can contact all the high ranked directors, and video unloaders in youtube... Write them sumthing nice......and ask them to upload their video (the one they posted in youtube)...in your website. If they have a blog....you can also give them a link back. So this will require a lot of viral marketing...but if you can do it properly...it can be successful. 3rd option is...get an automated video script...and FULL all the videos from youtube, AOL etc..and just show adsense on your site..this way you dont have to upload any videos...nor there is any option for the visitors to upload...but if you can do SEO properly..you will be able to rank well for the less competitve terms and get...atleast 400-600 uniques a day which will give you roughly about $5 (in adsense) a day. Infact I have converted some of my unused domains in video site and they are all earning 4.5-5 a day...and it isnt tht bad considering you have nothing to lose. If you are a programmer maybe you can make something like - RSS + user upload option...2 in 1...I haven't seen any script yet..which can actually to that......