I've been talking a lot about this stuff on this blog, checkout article about how the Youtube recommended channels feed has sucked lately and how Youtube is driving search results to VEVO music videos that have nothing to do with those keywords.
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Thursday, May 31, 2012
More talk about #SaveOurYoutube
Reelseo.com has published an article I think every Youtuber needs to read,
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Getting listed on Technorati the smart way
Technorati is a blog search engine and it is kind of a big deal. I haven't jumped on board with it because I wasn't quite sure how it works, but now that I've investigated it I realize it's pretty important to be listed on it.
So I'm going to walk you step by step through the process of getting a blog listed. Hopefully by now you've taken my previous advice and made a few blogs where you've embedded your Youtube videos, so this is the next step you need to do so people can actually find your blog.
First thing is first, make a brand new account and choose a user name that is going to be relevant to the content you want people to be searching for. If nothing else, use your real name so that your profile might appear at the top of Google search results for your name, as I've spoken about in a previous article about that topic.
Next you want to claim your blogs. This must be done individually by going into your profile and selecting 'Claim blog', and it's kind of a drawn out process. It must be done for each individual blog one at a time.
You'll then be presented with a screen to fill in a bunch of information, including the URL for your RSS feed.
The site description and site tags are the two most important areas. These two places will determine how often your blog actually gets seen by Technorati users. You want to ensure they are both keyword rich.
For my description this is what I used,
As you can see, it is very keyword rich. I've listed several big franchise games and some of the well known videogame reviewers on Youtube. I also used highly searched keywords relevant to my content, like "rpgs", "old games", "retro" and "new video games". I also use my real name, Carey Martell, in the blog description because that is also a keyword I want Google to pick up on.
You might wonder what site tags you should use for your blog. Many people will probably just fill it with whatever comes to mind but you should be more intelligent about it than that.
This is technorati's tag index page. This page only displays popular tags (i.e. those keywords people are actually searching on Technorati), which means if the tag doesn't appear on this page then you shouldn't be using it for your blog.
Here's another example of site tags. This time for the listing I created for this blog you're reading, Youtube Video Marketing for Losers.
After you submit you will receive this screen, and you'll be emailed with the information for the next step (which is to make a post on your blog with some code so that Technorati is sure you are the owner of the blog).
They'll email you a "claim token", which is a string of letters and numbers that looks something like this,
FBKVWX6H4DJZ
That is actually the claim token I'm using to claim this blog on Technorati ^^
The next and final step is to go back to your profile and click the 'Claim' button,
After that you're done!
So I'm going to walk you step by step through the process of getting a blog listed. Hopefully by now you've taken my previous advice and made a few blogs where you've embedded your Youtube videos, so this is the next step you need to do so people can actually find your blog.
First thing is first, make a brand new account and choose a user name that is going to be relevant to the content you want people to be searching for. If nothing else, use your real name so that your profile might appear at the top of Google search results for your name, as I've spoken about in a previous article about that topic.
Next you want to claim your blogs. This must be done individually by going into your profile and selecting 'Claim blog', and it's kind of a drawn out process. It must be done for each individual blog one at a time.
You'll then be presented with a screen to fill in a bunch of information, including the URL for your RSS feed.
The site description and site tags are the two most important areas. These two places will determine how often your blog actually gets seen by Technorati users. You want to ensure they are both keyword rich.
For my description this is what I used,
"Fanatical reviews and commentary about roleplaying videogames. Hosted by Carey Martell, The RPG Fanatic Show is a video game review show that has over 100 videos! This tumblr blog updates with the latest RPGs videos from the channel! If you love rpgs games then this is the Youtube channel for you!
The RPG Fanatic Show is kind of like The Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN), 16-Bit Gems, or Irate Gamer Show, but focused exclusively on RPG games, many of which are old games! Hosted by Carey Martell, the videos talks and shares news about all new video games and classic retro titles like Final Fantasy, Legend of Mana, The Lord of the Rings games, Disgaea, World of Warcraft and Wizardry! This is one of the best game channels for game videos!
The RPG Fanatic Show is also a Machinima Realm director channel."
As you can see, it is very keyword rich. I've listed several big franchise games and some of the well known videogame reviewers on Youtube. I also used highly searched keywords relevant to my content, like "rpgs", "old games", "retro" and "new video games". I also use my real name, Carey Martell, in the blog description because that is also a keyword I want Google to pick up on.
You might wonder what site tags you should use for your blog. Many people will probably just fill it with whatever comes to mind but you should be more intelligent about it than that.
This is technorati's tag index page. This page only displays popular tags (i.e. those keywords people are actually searching on Technorati), which means if the tag doesn't appear on this page then you shouldn't be using it for your blog.
Here's another example of site tags. This time for the listing I created for this blog you're reading, Youtube Video Marketing for Losers.
After you submit you will receive this screen, and you'll be emailed with the information for the next step (which is to make a post on your blog with some code so that Technorati is sure you are the owner of the blog).
They'll email you a "claim token", which is a string of letters and numbers that looks something like this,
FBKVWX6H4DJZ
That is actually the claim token I'm using to claim this blog on Technorati ^^
The next and final step is to go back to your profile and click the 'Claim' button,
After that you're done!
Another reason why we've lost so many views
Youtube's Cosmic Panda update made major changes to the way Youtube Search ranked the search results.
One of these changes seems to be to favor videos from mega Partner networks like VEVO.
I first noticed it when I was looking for "WoW" videos to see the most popular ones (searching by "view counts"), and saw tons of music videos that had nothing to do with World of Warcraft.
Don't believe me? Observe for yourself that the "most viewed" World of Warcraft related videos are all music videos from VEVO,
Mike Mozart noticed it also happens with "kittens".
Check for yourself! Search "kitten" by the parameter "most viewed".
Here's a screenshot of what my results are,
These videos cannot in any, way, shape or form be considered relevant to "kitten".
What is most interesting is if we do the search as "kittens",
Pretty big difference, isn't there?
This implies that Google is manipulating the front page results for specific keywords to favor certain Partners like VEVO. That really is the only explanation for what is happening, because you shouldn't obtain dramatically different results for "kitten" compared to "kittens".
And this is yet another reason why many Youtube Partners have lost massive amounts of traffic they used to have.
This also isn't a brand new thing. I pointed this out to Youtube Partner Support months ago when I first noticed it. They haven't fixed it, which means to me this is intentional.
Oh and another thing: Mike Mozart also noticed that pirated re-uploads of his videos are appearing in the recommended video feeds of his videos. I've previously complained about how worthless the recommended video feed has become over the past few years, but this is even worse! Now you have to compete with internet pirates on Youtube monetizing your videos and stealing your revenue and views.
I'm not the only one noticing this stuff. Check out this article from Crovati, ironically titled "Youtube is killing us".
Follow Carey on Google+
Hey, have you heard about Youtube Money Storm? Click Here To Learn More!(Advertisement)
One of these changes seems to be to favor videos from mega Partner networks like VEVO.
I first noticed it when I was looking for "WoW" videos to see the most popular ones (searching by "view counts"), and saw tons of music videos that had nothing to do with World of Warcraft.
Don't believe me? Observe for yourself that the "most viewed" World of Warcraft related videos are all music videos from VEVO,
Mike Mozart noticed it also happens with "kittens".
Check for yourself! Search "kitten" by the parameter "most viewed".
Here's a screenshot of what my results are,
These videos cannot in any, way, shape or form be considered relevant to "kitten".
What is most interesting is if we do the search as "kittens",
Pretty big difference, isn't there?
This implies that Google is manipulating the front page results for specific keywords to favor certain Partners like VEVO. That really is the only explanation for what is happening, because you shouldn't obtain dramatically different results for "kitten" compared to "kittens".
And this is yet another reason why many Youtube Partners have lost massive amounts of traffic they used to have.
This also isn't a brand new thing. I pointed this out to Youtube Partner Support months ago when I first noticed it. They haven't fixed it, which means to me this is intentional.
Oh and another thing: Mike Mozart also noticed that pirated re-uploads of his videos are appearing in the recommended video feeds of his videos. I've previously complained about how worthless the recommended video feed has become over the past few years, but this is even worse! Now you have to compete with internet pirates on Youtube monetizing your videos and stealing your revenue and views.
I'm not the only one noticing this stuff. Check out this article from Crovati, ironically titled "Youtube is killing us".
Follow Carey on Google+
Hey, have you heard about Youtube Money Storm? Click Here To Learn More!(Advertisement)
Friday, May 25, 2012
Youtube Updates 'Show' Pages
Youtube just updated the 'Show' page today for all the Shows on Youtube. You can see it on my RPG Fanatic Show Page on Youtube,
I have to say, I very much approve of this change. The old Show layout didn't allow you to watch videos on the page, and forced users to go through several screens just to see how many videos were available.
The new layout looks a lot more like a regular channel, and puts all the Seasons into a playlist.
This is one change I'm happy that Youtube made.
I have to say, I very much approve of this change. The old Show layout didn't allow you to watch videos on the page, and forced users to go through several screens just to see how many videos were available.
The new layout looks a lot more like a regular channel, and puts all the Seasons into a playlist.
This is one change I'm happy that Youtube made.
EmpireAvenue for Klout networking and analyzing reach
Empire Avenue is a website designed to treat social media like the stock market.
I've been a member of the site for several months now (you can find my account right here, Carey Martell @ Empire Avenue) , though I'll admit that I haven't been an exceptionally active user.
This is because the majority of the Empire Avenue users seem to be engaged in a game of Klout manipulation, and I really don't care that much about my Klout score. I'm not involved in an industry where it really impacts me (don't know what Klout is? More info can be found here).
I originally got into Empire Avenue because I was attracted to the idea of a game that measures how effective your social media marketing efforts are, and tracks the rise and fall of your "reach".
However over the months since I made my account, the site has been re-designed to emphasize the stock trading and Klout farming aspect. Which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, but I don't have that much free time in my day.
However, Empire Avenue eventually introduced a new feature that caught my interest; Missions.
With Missions you can pay other users a virtual currency (earned from others buying stock in you, or from the dividends you earn from stock you buy) to perform tasks for you, such as 'liking' a Facebook Fan Page or a Youtube Video,
I actually tried testing it out using one of my videos that was dislike bombed a few months back, but the results have been rather underwhelming. It turns out that the 'Like' button on Empire Avenue does not actually add any 'likes' to a Youtube video; instead, it just gives the user their virtual currency reward.
Only a small number of the people who perform the mission will actually take several seconds to go to the video itself and click 'like', then claim their reward. So this is a flawed design on the part of Empire Avenue, because only the most honest of person is going to jump that extra hoop.
And a website where the majority of users are trying to manipulate their Klout scores by liking everything and anything doesn't exactly breed honesty among its users.
The Missions are also rather expensive; you can expect to pay at least 100k in the virtual currency just to get a small mission going. That amount can take awhile to acquire if you're not willing to fully immerse yourself into the stock market trading.
My verdict is that the site doesn't have a lot of value for Youtube Partners who want to drive more traffic to their videos or learn how to do so, but it might be useful if you're looking for other people who want to game Klout. That seems to be the task the entire community is devoted to.
I've been a member of the site for several months now (you can find my account right here, Carey Martell @ Empire Avenue) , though I'll admit that I haven't been an exceptionally active user.
This is because the majority of the Empire Avenue users seem to be engaged in a game of Klout manipulation, and I really don't care that much about my Klout score. I'm not involved in an industry where it really impacts me (don't know what Klout is? More info can be found here).
I originally got into Empire Avenue because I was attracted to the idea of a game that measures how effective your social media marketing efforts are, and tracks the rise and fall of your "reach".
However over the months since I made my account, the site has been re-designed to emphasize the stock trading and Klout farming aspect. Which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, but I don't have that much free time in my day.
However, Empire Avenue eventually introduced a new feature that caught my interest; Missions.
With Missions you can pay other users a virtual currency (earned from others buying stock in you, or from the dividends you earn from stock you buy) to perform tasks for you, such as 'liking' a Facebook Fan Page or a Youtube Video,
I actually tried testing it out using one of my videos that was dislike bombed a few months back, but the results have been rather underwhelming. It turns out that the 'Like' button on Empire Avenue does not actually add any 'likes' to a Youtube video; instead, it just gives the user their virtual currency reward.
Only a small number of the people who perform the mission will actually take several seconds to go to the video itself and click 'like', then claim their reward. So this is a flawed design on the part of Empire Avenue, because only the most honest of person is going to jump that extra hoop.
And a website where the majority of users are trying to manipulate their Klout scores by liking everything and anything doesn't exactly breed honesty among its users.
The Missions are also rather expensive; you can expect to pay at least 100k in the virtual currency just to get a small mission going. That amount can take awhile to acquire if you're not willing to fully immerse yourself into the stock market trading.
My verdict is that the site doesn't have a lot of value for Youtube Partners who want to drive more traffic to their videos or learn how to do so, but it might be useful if you're looking for other people who want to game Klout. That seems to be the task the entire community is devoted to.
Youtube Has Been Sucking Hard This Year
Mike Mozart, owner of the JeepersMedia Youtube brands, has been posting a lot on his Google+ page about how royally screwed up Youtube has been for the past few months.
He's not alone.
nigahiga posted two days ago about the massive loss of ACTIVE accounts subscribed to his channel.
And on my RPG Fanatic Youtube Video channel also talked about the new "highlights" feed that is hiding videos from our subscribers,
Over at A Better Partner Forum, several Partners have been talking about how their monthly earnings from Youtube have been cut by half or more,
The Philip DeFranco Show also mentioned it at the end of this video,
I've personally had a really crappy time of things, too. By looking at my Analytics data, I can see about 100-200 of my 1,826 subscribers to The RPG Fanatic Show are actually seeing my most recent videos in their feeds, and I've had subscribers tell me they didn't realize I had any new videos.
I'm sure specific Partners are being benefited by this, but it's not equal. The majority of us are losing our business and the fault belongs to Google for implementing algorithms that were not ready to go live, and now refusing to roll back the changes until the bugs are worked out.
He's not alone.
nigahiga posted two days ago about the massive loss of ACTIVE accounts subscribed to his channel.
And on my RPG Fanatic Youtube Video channel also talked about the new "highlights" feed that is hiding videos from our subscribers,
Over at A Better Partner Forum, several Partners have been talking about how their monthly earnings from Youtube have been cut by half or more,
The Philip DeFranco Show also mentioned it at the end of this video,
I've personally had a really crappy time of things, too. By looking at my Analytics data, I can see about 100-200 of my 1,826 subscribers to The RPG Fanatic Show are actually seeing my most recent videos in their feeds, and I've had subscribers tell me they didn't realize I had any new videos.
I'm sure specific Partners are being benefited by this, but it's not equal. The majority of us are losing our business and the fault belongs to Google for implementing algorithms that were not ready to go live, and now refusing to roll back the changes until the bugs are worked out.
Youtube Partner Support Has Terrible Customer Service
Youtube Partner Support has the worst customer service of any business I've ever encountered.
I distinctly recall when Sesame Street and fred both had their accounts hacked, their videos deleted and porn uploaded to their accounts. You don't have to take my word for it, ABC actually reported on it when it occurred.
And I also remember that Youtube repaired their accounts in a few hours. So that leads people to believe Youtube cares about quickly responding to these issues, right?
Wrong.
That same kind of quick service isn't done for smaller Partners, who Youtube Partner Support have always treated like unwanted baggage even though we make up the majority of Youtube Partner channels and collectively earn Youtube millions of dollars.
Observe the plight of DietHobby, a doctor, grandmother and small business owner who creates health related videos on on her DietHobby Youtube Partner channel.
Or at least she did before the hacker had his way with it. This is what is on her channel right now.
This Google Product forum thread demonstrates it's been a week since DietHobby notified Youtube Partner support that her account was hacked. She has even learned who is responsible, because the individual has been bragging about it on the videos he's uploaded to her channel.
In the thread she talks about how she has lost a massive amount of subscribers since the hacking. This kind of thing is destroying a brand she has been working hard to build up. But the Youtube Partner Support Team is doing nothing about it.
Her Partnership has obviously been revoked as well.
It is clear that Youtube Support Team can respond to issues like this quickly, because they have done so for large Partners like Sesame Street. Instead they do not lift a finger to help her and reply to her with form letters telling her that her community strikes were valid. For two weeks she is unable to login to her account to even try to repair the damage, due to how the strike system works on Youtube.
And again, it's not like anyone hasn't read her emails. She has been receiving form letters telling her that her strikes wont be removed.
But I'll bet fred and Sesame Street had their strikes removed for the porn the hackers uploaded to their channels.
The worst is that this kind of thing is common. Youtube Partner Support frequently ignores emails that Partners send, and instead return form letters to them. See my click bombing guide for some transcripts of emails I received when I was trying to get assistance from Partner Support.
It's quite shameful how little Youtube cares for small business. The only time they give us quick service is if we're going to purchase AdWords ads. Youtube Partner Support has no phone service, and honestly no email service either because nearly every email we send is replied to with a generic form letter.
I wish ABC would report on how they ignore the emails of small businesses and don't spend 5 minutes to restore our channels when things like this occur. Maybe then Google would be embarrassed enough to make the Youtube Partner Support Team do their jobs correctly.
And while they're at it, maybe restore Partnerships to those who lost them due to click bombings they weren't even aware of.
I wish ABC would report on how they ignore the emails of small businesses and don't spend 5 minutes to restore our channels when things like this occur. Maybe then Google would be embarrassed enough to make the Youtube Partner Support Team do their jobs correctly.
And while they're at it, maybe restore Partnerships to those who lost them due to click bombings they weren't even aware of.
My.tv as another way to reach viewers?
My.tv is a new service similar to the others I've written about, such as tumblr and pinterest. I came across it while looking at ads on MyLikes and thought it sounded interesting.
Whereas something like tumblr is primarily focused on sharing images, My.tv is focused on sharing videos you find online.
To help promote their service My.tv has a contest that calculates how many referrals your channel is bringing to their website. The prize is an Amazon gift card.... which could actually be very useful to me given I have a large number of games and books I want to order off Amazon.
Anyway after making an account using Facebook Connect, I was asked to choose what kind of videos I want to be shown,
Youtube does a pretty good job of flooding my feeds with music videos as it is, so I really don't need to sign up for any of those feeds. Instead I signed up for a few other feeds that Youtube tends to hide from me, just to help figure out if My.tv will actually show me content Youtube has been burying in the search results.
The next step is to add some videos to your own channel. This is done by clicking on one of those empty dropboxes, which brings up a menu where you can paste a URL that goes directly to a Youtube video.
The service only works with Youtube at the moment and doesn't appear to have plans to incorporate other streaming services. For example, I tried pasting in the URL to one of my blip.tv videos and it wouldn't accept it.
Still being able to easily promote your Youtube videos is pretty good. Youtube is the best streaming video site right now anyway, even if it is having a ton of other issues with it's recommended video and subscriber feeds.
What is also neat is that you can add other people's videos to your channel, much like a Youtube playlist. This can be very useful for cross-promoting with other Youtube Partners who make similar content to your own, allowing you to share each other's promotion efforts and increase the reach of your My.tv channel; for example, someone might discover the video of your friend and then while watching that video they will see your own videos on the channel!
This is what my RPG Fanatic My.tv Youtube channel looks like after adding a bunch of my videos to it,
At the top you have a tab marked, 'My Feed' which will display all the various content related to the categories you chose when you made your account,
Unfortunately it seems the order of videos is determined by how many views it has on Youtube; in this case, Evolution of Dance is dominating my feed because it's one of the most highly watched videos on Youtube.
So this makes the feed pretty damn worthless for Youtube Partners who actually need to get their content seen by new viewers, or people who want to discover content that is buried on Youtube.
Granted, once you actually subscribe to other user's channels it starts only displaying videos from those channels...but since there is no way to see all the videos uploaded without having to first subscribe, the feed tab is pretty crappy.
However, all is not completely lost. The 'Browse' menu does have some promise,
The order doesn't appear to be determined by how popular the content is, so theoretically someone can discover new content here.
The only problem is that it organizes by user names. You have no idea who these people are. This is the same problem that Youtube's browse channel menus have; other than the channel name and the image, you don't know what kind of content is there. Why would anyone click on these icons if they don't have enough information to do so?
There is also seemingly no 'Search' box, so you can't even search through all the videos uploaded to My.tv to see what might be available.
It seems the only way you can discover new videos with this site is if your friends sync their My.tv account with Facebook and then actually go to the bother of adding videos to their My.tv account. It is MUCH EASIER to just post the Youtube videos onto Facebook directly without using this middle man website.
My.tv has a long way to go until it is going to be something that actually drives traffic to Youtube videos but it has promise, so it might be beneficial to jump on board while it's relatively new so when the site is useful your content will already be there.
Whereas something like tumblr is primarily focused on sharing images, My.tv is focused on sharing videos you find online.
To help promote their service My.tv has a contest that calculates how many referrals your channel is bringing to their website. The prize is an Amazon gift card.... which could actually be very useful to me given I have a large number of games and books I want to order off Amazon.
Anyway after making an account using Facebook Connect, I was asked to choose what kind of videos I want to be shown,
Youtube does a pretty good job of flooding my feeds with music videos as it is, so I really don't need to sign up for any of those feeds. Instead I signed up for a few other feeds that Youtube tends to hide from me, just to help figure out if My.tv will actually show me content Youtube has been burying in the search results.
The next step is to add some videos to your own channel. This is done by clicking on one of those empty dropboxes, which brings up a menu where you can paste a URL that goes directly to a Youtube video.
The service only works with Youtube at the moment and doesn't appear to have plans to incorporate other streaming services. For example, I tried pasting in the URL to one of my blip.tv videos and it wouldn't accept it.
What is also neat is that you can add other people's videos to your channel, much like a Youtube playlist. This can be very useful for cross-promoting with other Youtube Partners who make similar content to your own, allowing you to share each other's promotion efforts and increase the reach of your My.tv channel; for example, someone might discover the video of your friend and then while watching that video they will see your own videos on the channel!
This is what my RPG Fanatic My.tv Youtube channel looks like after adding a bunch of my videos to it,
At the top you have a tab marked, 'My Feed' which will display all the various content related to the categories you chose when you made your account,
Unfortunately it seems the order of videos is determined by how many views it has on Youtube; in this case, Evolution of Dance is dominating my feed because it's one of the most highly watched videos on Youtube.
So this makes the feed pretty damn worthless for Youtube Partners who actually need to get their content seen by new viewers, or people who want to discover content that is buried on Youtube.
Granted, once you actually subscribe to other user's channels it starts only displaying videos from those channels...but since there is no way to see all the videos uploaded without having to first subscribe, the feed tab is pretty crappy.
However, all is not completely lost. The 'Browse' menu does have some promise,
The order doesn't appear to be determined by how popular the content is, so theoretically someone can discover new content here.
The only problem is that it organizes by user names. You have no idea who these people are. This is the same problem that Youtube's browse channel menus have; other than the channel name and the image, you don't know what kind of content is there. Why would anyone click on these icons if they don't have enough information to do so?
There is also seemingly no 'Search' box, so you can't even search through all the videos uploaded to My.tv to see what might be available.
It seems the only way you can discover new videos with this site is if your friends sync their My.tv account with Facebook and then actually go to the bother of adding videos to their My.tv account. It is MUCH EASIER to just post the Youtube videos onto Facebook directly without using this middle man website.
My.tv has a long way to go until it is going to be something that actually drives traffic to Youtube videos but it has promise, so it might be beneficial to jump on board while it's relatively new so when the site is useful your content will already be there.
Study the competition's backlinks using Open Site Explorer
Backlinks are very important to SEOing. I realize this blog is about marketing Youtube videos so talk of Search Engine Optimizing might sound weird, but the subject is relevant. It's difficult to get Youtube videos to rank highly in Google Search results and so much easier to get a video embedded in a blog to rank highly.
I embed my videos into several blogs, most notably my RPG Fanatic Video Game Community website.
But it can be difficult to figure out how to get your pages to rank higher, especially since Google has done a lot of changes to their Search algorithms.
Fortunately one technique is still useful; look at what your competition is doing.
As an example, my videos are similar to those featured on Blistered Thumbs; game reviews. So the natural thing to do is find out which websites are linking to articles on Blistered Thumbs and then put links to my website onto those site.
You can use the Alexa toolbar to check this date but it's also handy to use Open Site Explorer to get additional links, as Alexa tends to not display all the back links unless you pay some money. Open Site Explorer also has a subscription service but it'll show a lot more sites for free than Alexa will.
I embed my videos into several blogs, most notably my RPG Fanatic Video Game Community website.
But it can be difficult to figure out how to get your pages to rank higher, especially since Google has done a lot of changes to their Search algorithms.
Fortunately one technique is still useful; look at what your competition is doing.
As an example, my videos are similar to those featured on Blistered Thumbs; game reviews. So the natural thing to do is find out which websites are linking to articles on Blistered Thumbs and then put links to my website onto those site.
You can use the Alexa toolbar to check this date but it's also handy to use Open Site Explorer to get additional links, as Alexa tends to not display all the back links unless you pay some money. Open Site Explorer also has a subscription service but it'll show a lot more sites for free than Alexa will.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
nofollow and Youtube Social Blogs
So Youtube has updated a feature -- the "As seen on" links, and some people may have noticed it,
If you can get one of these, this backlink can be incredibly beneficial to your website. By clicking on the link a user is brought to a page that shows all the video content that has been posted to your website, along with a direct link back to your website.
There are several delicious things about this page.
The "As seen on" feature has been around since last year but the social blog pages -- site channels -- are pretty new. Clearly I want to create one of these pages for my RPG Fanatic community website. One of the primary purposes of our website is to allow users to submit their Youtube videos. This feature fits my website like a glove.
But there is a problem; you can't just make one of these channels; the pages are auto-generated by Youtube.
I'm still trying to piece together how these pages get generated but it seems to be related to the nofollow tag (which you can read about on Wikipedia). In order for these pages to be created your video embed cannot have a 'nofollow' tag in the code.
My website currently does not use nofollow tags for embedding, yet videos embedded to the site aren't generating "As seen on" social blog pages. There is probably more requirements, possibly having to do with the PageRank of the website.
Another thing that seems important is RSS feeds. It is implied from a post on the Official Youtube blog that the pages are pulling data from RSS feeds which Youtube is tracking for videos. In the case of The Escapist, they have an RSS page which all their various feeds.
However not every RSS feed seems good enough. I know I've plugged many of my own videos on my blogger and tumblr accounts, and none of them have a Youtube site channel yet. Both blogger and tumblr have RSS feeds by default. My personal RPG Fanatic website has RSS feeds for all the blogs as well.
It is possible that there is some kind of approval process for obtaining one.
Update: Buried deeply within Youtube's Support pages is this page talking about channels which Youtube auto-generates. A new requirement is revealed; the videos must be trending.
However, it doesn't explain how you can get Youtube to make one for a website but it's a start.
If you can get one of these, this backlink can be incredibly beneficial to your website. By clicking on the link a user is brought to a page that shows all the video content that has been posted to your website, along with a direct link back to your website.
There are several delicious things about this page.
- Users can subscribe to be notified of all new videos which get embedded to your website,
- Users can embed their videos onto your website, helping drive traffic to your website from this page.
- Users can see all the videos uploaded to your site
- The recommended site channels feed may introduce people on other site channels to your own website.
The "As seen on" feature has been around since last year but the social blog pages -- site channels -- are pretty new. Clearly I want to create one of these pages for my RPG Fanatic community website. One of the primary purposes of our website is to allow users to submit their Youtube videos. This feature fits my website like a glove.
But there is a problem; you can't just make one of these channels; the pages are auto-generated by Youtube.
I'm still trying to piece together how these pages get generated but it seems to be related to the nofollow tag (which you can read about on Wikipedia). In order for these pages to be created your video embed cannot have a 'nofollow' tag in the code.
My website currently does not use nofollow tags for embedding, yet videos embedded to the site aren't generating "As seen on" social blog pages. There is probably more requirements, possibly having to do with the PageRank of the website.
Another thing that seems important is RSS feeds. It is implied from a post on the Official Youtube blog that the pages are pulling data from RSS feeds which Youtube is tracking for videos. In the case of The Escapist, they have an RSS page which all their various feeds.
However not every RSS feed seems good enough. I know I've plugged many of my own videos on my blogger and tumblr accounts, and none of them have a Youtube site channel yet. Both blogger and tumblr have RSS feeds by default. My personal RPG Fanatic website has RSS feeds for all the blogs as well.
It is possible that there is some kind of approval process for obtaining one.
Update: Buried deeply within Youtube's Support pages is this page talking about channels which Youtube auto-generates. A new requirement is revealed; the videos must be trending.
However, it doesn't explain how you can get Youtube to make one for a website but it's a start.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Brandyourself.com for some slight SEOing
Brandyourself.com is a website that offers to help you manage your personal brand. The idea is to gauge how often your own pages about yourself appear at the top of Google search results, compared to other people's content about you (which can be positive or negative).
They offer two types of accounts: one requiring a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 and another which is free.
This article will talk about the free account because I am a Youtube Marketing loser and I have no money to splurge on services like this.
Anyway, you can synchronize your account with the Brandyourself.com service and it will give you advice on how to improve your personal pages in search results for your name. It will also tell you how effective your SEOing has been; for example, I have a very good rating. Pretty much every top Google Search result for my name, 'Carey Martell', is not just about me; the majority are also pages I actually control,
As an example, my Twitter account's public name was originally set as 'Carey M.' when I made my account. However, the website tools recommended I change it to 'Carey Martell'. This now seems very obvious, but for all the years I've had Twitter it never occurred to me that I should do this.
It also encouraged me to put the name 'Carey Martell' in my bio section. Again this should be obvious but it is something that completely slipped my mind until it was pointed out.
Now although this service is meant for your personal brand (i.e. Your real name) you can use the same techniques it suggests for your brand. For example, when I added 'Carey Martell' to my Twitter I also added 'The RPG Fanatic Show', 'Youtube' and 'roleplaying games' to my bio so that when people search for those keywords my Twitter account will appear more often in the search results.
All that said, there does seem to be some dubious suggestions. For example, the site recommends I make my Twitter website my brandyourself.com profile instead of my personal website.
This recommendation is seems designed to help improve the search rankings of the brandyourself.com website instead of my own content I want to drive people to, so I'm going to ignore this piece of "advice" and suggest others do the same.
Anyway the service also allows you to link to your Youtube channel and perform the same kind of SEOing upgrading to your account.
One of the steps it recommends is having a Youtube channel whose username is identical to your personal brand; in this case it suggests I make a channel named 'Youtube.com/Careymartell' . In this case I'm not going to do so because I already created a channel like that and because the Youtube channel I actually want to promote is http://www.youtube.com/therpgfanatic
There are other tips which are useful for me; I can update my bio page to include 'Carey Martell' in it....
....and as I do so I can also add keywords to my title section like 'RPG Fanatic Show' and 'Video Game Reviews'.
The free service offers optimization tips for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, BigSight, Quora, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, and Youtube....so there is quite a few social networks supported by the free account.
If you get a paid account you can also monitor your Delicious, Foursquare, Diigo, Webshots, Stumbleupon, Hunch, Daily Motion, Daily Booth, Digg, Squidoo, Fotolog, Slideshare and Lookup Page, Blogger, Wordpress, Weebly, Flavors.me, Posterous, Pen.io, About.me, Zerply, and Formspring accounts and their rankings in search engine results.
However, a lot of the SEOing suggestions can be summarized as,
Every service allows you to do this, although it may call it something a little different; for example, Twitter calls it your bio while Google+ calls it a a tagline. But it's all the same to the search engines.
I can't see what advice it gives for platforms like Blogger and Wordpress but I assume sticking 'Carey Martell' in every page on Wordpress and every blog article I write would improve the search engine results of those pages.
One of the biggest benefits is that your profile page on brandyourself.com is optimized to help boost traffic to your various websites. For example, here is mine, http://careymartell.brandyourself.com/
Brandyourself.com has a pretty decent Alexa ranking and PageRank rating, so by having links like this on your page it does help improve the Google search results of your many profiles.
In closing there is one last thing I should remind people about Search Engine Optimization that many places don't tell you and that Brandyourself.com does make effort to remind users of,
I've told this to friends before and they've accused me of being full of crap, but it's the honest truth.
Google Search results are determined by very complicated algorithms and some of these algorithms display your results based on what other Google Search users in your geographical location have selected in searches for those terms.
For example, let's say I'm a plumber in Austin, TX. In order for my business to succeed I need my website to appear in the top Google results for "plumber" when anyone in the Austin, TX area searches for "plumber".
The way I achieve that is by...
You'll see that national chains like Roto-rooter will appear at the top of Google results for plumbing in most major areas where Roto-rooter operations, because Roto-rooter is one of the largest plumbing franchises and it is national. Every other result after Roto-rooter is likely to be a local small business in your area.
The only exception is if you do something like "plumbing San Marcos, CA"; it will then display results for the region you used as keywords.
I'm pointing this out because chances are you don't have an unusual name like 'Carey Martell' to help you. You probably share a name with other individuals who work in the same exact industry you do. The way you differentiate yourself is by focusing on boosting your geographical results.
For example, if my name was 'John Smith' and I was a birthday clown in San Antonio, TX then I would focus on networking with other business in the San Antonio, TX area to get them to link back to my websites, and I would make sure my websites all have 'San Antonio, Texas' on every page that has my name, along with keywords related to birthday clowning.
Or change my name to something less common.
Anyway, I believe brandyourself.com can be very useful to those trying to improve their Google search rankings for personal brands and I recommend you check it out.
They offer two types of accounts: one requiring a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 and another which is free.
This article will talk about the free account because I am a Youtube Marketing loser and I have no money to splurge on services like this.
Anyway, you can synchronize your account with the Brandyourself.com service and it will give you advice on how to improve your personal pages in search results for your name. It will also tell you how effective your SEOing has been; for example, I have a very good rating. Pretty much every top Google Search result for my name, 'Carey Martell', is not just about me; the majority are also pages I actually control,
This is partly because my parents did at least one thing right when I was born; they gave me a highly unusual name.
The other reason is because I've actually been quite busy making lots and lots of pages with my name all over them.
Anyway, the main use people will have for this website is getting pages they own to show up on the front page of Google search results for their own names. This requires you to properly SEO your many personal accounts and this is one thing I haven't been doing as well as I could have.
As an example, my Twitter account's public name was originally set as 'Carey M.' when I made my account. However, the website tools recommended I change it to 'Carey Martell'. This now seems very obvious, but for all the years I've had Twitter it never occurred to me that I should do this.
It also encouraged me to put the name 'Carey Martell' in my bio section. Again this should be obvious but it is something that completely slipped my mind until it was pointed out.
Now although this service is meant for your personal brand (i.e. Your real name) you can use the same techniques it suggests for your brand. For example, when I added 'Carey Martell' to my Twitter I also added 'The RPG Fanatic Show', 'Youtube' and 'roleplaying games' to my bio so that when people search for those keywords my Twitter account will appear more often in the search results.
All that said, there does seem to be some dubious suggestions. For example, the site recommends I make my Twitter website my brandyourself.com profile instead of my personal website.
This recommendation is seems designed to help improve the search rankings of the brandyourself.com website instead of my own content I want to drive people to, so I'm going to ignore this piece of "advice" and suggest others do the same.
Anyway the service also allows you to link to your Youtube channel and perform the same kind of SEOing upgrading to your account.
One of the steps it recommends is having a Youtube channel whose username is identical to your personal brand; in this case it suggests I make a channel named 'Youtube.com/Careymartell' . In this case I'm not going to do so because I already created a channel like that and because the Youtube channel I actually want to promote is http://www.youtube.com/therpgfanatic
There are other tips which are useful for me; I can update my bio page to include 'Carey Martell' in it....
....and as I do so I can also add keywords to my title section like 'RPG Fanatic Show' and 'Video Game Reviews'.
The free service offers optimization tips for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, BigSight, Quora, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, and Youtube....so there is quite a few social networks supported by the free account.
If you get a paid account you can also monitor your Delicious, Foursquare, Diigo, Webshots, Stumbleupon, Hunch, Daily Motion, Daily Booth, Digg, Squidoo, Fotolog, Slideshare and Lookup Page, Blogger, Wordpress, Weebly, Flavors.me, Posterous, Pen.io, About.me, Zerply, and Formspring accounts and their rankings in search engine results.
However, a lot of the SEOing suggestions can be summarized as,
"Just stick your brand name in the bio, username and title of your pages!"
Every service allows you to do this, although it may call it something a little different; for example, Twitter calls it your bio while Google+ calls it a a tagline. But it's all the same to the search engines.
I can't see what advice it gives for platforms like Blogger and Wordpress but I assume sticking 'Carey Martell' in every page on Wordpress and every blog article I write would improve the search engine results of those pages.
One of the biggest benefits is that your profile page on brandyourself.com is optimized to help boost traffic to your various websites. For example, here is mine, http://careymartell.brandyourself.com/
Brandyourself.com has a pretty decent Alexa ranking and PageRank rating, so by having links like this on your page it does help improve the Google search results of your many profiles.
In closing there is one last thing I should remind people about Search Engine Optimization that many places don't tell you and that Brandyourself.com does make effort to remind users of,
Google Search results are largely based on geographical locations, and that makes it very difficult to dominate the front page of Google.
I've told this to friends before and they've accused me of being full of crap, but it's the honest truth.
Google Search results are determined by very complicated algorithms and some of these algorithms display your results based on what other Google Search users in your geographical location have selected in searches for those terms.
For example, let's say I'm a plumber in Austin, TX. In order for my business to succeed I need my website to appear in the top Google results for "plumber" when anyone in the Austin, TX area searches for "plumber".
The way I achieve that is by...
...including a Google maps plugin to my website that says my business is located in Austin, TX...
....splashing plumbing related keywords all over my page....
...and then I need local business websites in the Austin area to link to my website using a keyword like "plumbing"...
...and I also need people who perform Google searches for "plumbing" to find my listing on Google and click on it, because that determines the "local user activity" rating of my page.
You'll see that national chains like Roto-rooter will appear at the top of Google results for plumbing in most major areas where Roto-rooter operations, because Roto-rooter is one of the largest plumbing franchises and it is national. Every other result after Roto-rooter is likely to be a local small business in your area.
The only exception is if you do something like "plumbing San Marcos, CA"; it will then display results for the region you used as keywords.
I'm pointing this out because chances are you don't have an unusual name like 'Carey Martell' to help you. You probably share a name with other individuals who work in the same exact industry you do. The way you differentiate yourself is by focusing on boosting your geographical results.
For example, if my name was 'John Smith' and I was a birthday clown in San Antonio, TX then I would focus on networking with other business in the San Antonio, TX area to get them to link back to my websites, and I would make sure my websites all have 'San Antonio, Texas' on every page that has my name, along with keywords related to birthday clowning.
Or change my name to something less common.
Anyway, I believe brandyourself.com can be very useful to those trying to improve their Google search rankings for personal brands and I recommend you check it out.
Friday, May 18, 2012
What makes people subscribe to Youtube channels?
There have been various articles already written that attempt to explain why people unsubscribe from email lists, Facebook and Twitter but I don't think there has been any data about what makes people unsub from Youtube channels.
I personally have never had that many subscribers, so it's difficult for me to figure this out by looking at my own channel data. That said, I do have a few guesses based on what little data I have acquired from the lifetime of my oldest channel,
2,065 of the people who subscribed to my channel did so from my channel page.
After that, people subscribed after watching some of my videos; doing so by using the 'subscribe' button located on that video's watch page.
It seems clear there is no reason to believe that video view count is related to subscription numbers. My more popular videos don't acquire me any subscribers; for example, my Ultraman review has obtained 97,685 views as of this writing, but has earned my channel no subscribers.
I also lost some subscribers after people watched videos. However the number I lost is incredibly low; for the videos where people unsubbed, no more than 1 or 2 subscribers were lost.
I assume this was done by people who somehow accidentally subscribed to my channel or was an individual who was trying to make it seem like I was losing subscribers. Either way I think it is safe to say 0.000001% of the people who watched my videos unsubbed from my channel after watching a video.
The majority of my subscribers are people who live in countries where English is the primary language but I also have a number of folks who speak English as a second language.
You might wonder if I lost a significant amount of subscribers during the inactive account purges. I seem to have only lost 68 subscribers from these actions.
When I look through the dates of subscriber losses, I seem to lose 1-3 subscribers every other day. I'm unsure what to make of this, but it might be due to bots who sub to channels in order to build awareness of the channel and then unsub once they reach the limit of subscriptions they can have. Or the losses are from the people who try to do the "sub 4 sub" thing and unsub me when I don't sub back to them.
For comparison, here is the subscription data from the lifetime of my RPG Fanatic channel,
Very few unsubbed after watching a video, and the majority of the lost subscriptions seem to have been from the channel page or the account subscription page.
I have a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out how this data can be meaningful to me. If I was losing a lot of subscribers after making a certain video that would imply my activity is chasing people away..... but that isn't what I'm seeing. Even my controversial videos like the Star Wars : TOR rant led to people subscribing while many other videos I made did not result in any direct subscriptions.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps I should make more videos like the ones which directly resulted in people subscribing to my channel. For example, a lot of people liked the Castlevania SOTN review enough to subscribe so perhaps I should do more Castlevania SOTN videos?
I also think the majority of people watching my videos probably aren't logged into Youtube, or perhaps they don't even have Youtube accounts? That would also explain why there is such a wide gap between the number of views and the number of people who subscribe to my channel.
That said, there does seem to be certain videos that have a "higher return" per view count; my MegaTen Spell names video has a very low number of views but has earned me more subscribers than the more popular videos. I suspect that if this video had tens of thousands of views I would have a lot more subscribers to my channel.
I do know one thing: analyzing this data allows me to figure out which of my older videos I should promote on places like reddit; the videos that encourage people to subscribe are the ones I should be using to introduce new viewers to my channel.
I personally have never had that many subscribers, so it's difficult for me to figure this out by looking at my own channel data. That said, I do have a few guesses based on what little data I have acquired from the lifetime of my oldest channel,
2,065 of the people who subscribed to my channel did so from my channel page.
After that, people subscribed after watching some of my videos; doing so by using the 'subscribe' button located on that video's watch page.
- 48 subscribed after watching my Cosplayers documentary (current views: 23,888 )
- 49 subscribed after watching my Final Fantasy Mystic Quest review. (current views: 8,766 )
- 44 subscribed after watching my Reasons Star Wars Won't Kill WoW (current views: 25,679 )
- 45 subscribed after watching my Castlevania: SOTN Review (current views: 20,005 )
- 36 subscribed after watching my Shin Megami MMO Review (current views: 12,933 )
- 35 subscribed after watching my Willow NES review (current views: 9,738 )
- 36 subscribed after watching my Film slate tutorial video (current views: 14,904 )
- 33 subscribed after watching my Unlosing Ranger review (current views: 52,706 )
- 34 subscribed after watching my real history of jrpgs video. (current views: 15,867 )
It seems clear there is no reason to believe that video view count is related to subscription numbers. My more popular videos don't acquire me any subscribers; for example, my Ultraman review has obtained 97,685 views as of this writing, but has earned my channel no subscribers.
I also lost some subscribers after people watched videos. However the number I lost is incredibly low; for the videos where people unsubbed, no more than 1 or 2 subscribers were lost.
I assume this was done by people who somehow accidentally subscribed to my channel or was an individual who was trying to make it seem like I was losing subscribers. Either way I think it is safe to say 0.000001% of the people who watched my videos unsubbed from my channel after watching a video.
The majority of my subscribers are people who live in countries where English is the primary language but I also have a number of folks who speak English as a second language.
You might wonder if I lost a significant amount of subscribers during the inactive account purges. I seem to have only lost 68 subscribers from these actions.
When I look through the dates of subscriber losses, I seem to lose 1-3 subscribers every other day. I'm unsure what to make of this, but it might be due to bots who sub to channels in order to build awareness of the channel and then unsub once they reach the limit of subscriptions they can have. Or the losses are from the people who try to do the "sub 4 sub" thing and unsub me when I don't sub back to them.
For comparison, here is the subscription data from the lifetime of my RPG Fanatic channel,
- 1,577 subscriptions were gained from my channel page
- 61 subscribed after watching my Legend of Mana review (current views: 14,176 )
- 55 subscribed after watching my BioWare Bans SW:TOR Players rant (current views: 19,257 )
- 51 subscribed after watching my Azure Dreams review (current views: 24,604 )
- 42 subscribed after watching my MegaTen spell names video (current views: 3,574 )
- 31 subscribed after watching my Persona 4 review (current views: 12,186 )
- 28 subscribed after watching my World of Warcraft review (current views: 8,340 )
- 19 subscribed after watching my Chocobo origins video (current views: 3,778 )
- 19 subscribed after watching my JRPG history video (current views: 6,928 )
- 19 subscribed after watching my Unlimited Saga review (current views: 6,478 )
Very few unsubbed after watching a video, and the majority of the lost subscriptions seem to have been from the channel page or the account subscription page.
I have a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out how this data can be meaningful to me. If I was losing a lot of subscribers after making a certain video that would imply my activity is chasing people away..... but that isn't what I'm seeing. Even my controversial videos like the Star Wars : TOR rant led to people subscribing while many other videos I made did not result in any direct subscriptions.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps I should make more videos like the ones which directly resulted in people subscribing to my channel. For example, a lot of people liked the Castlevania SOTN review enough to subscribe so perhaps I should do more Castlevania SOTN videos?
I also think the majority of people watching my videos probably aren't logged into Youtube, or perhaps they don't even have Youtube accounts? That would also explain why there is such a wide gap between the number of views and the number of people who subscribe to my channel.
That said, there does seem to be certain videos that have a "higher return" per view count; my MegaTen Spell names video has a very low number of views but has earned me more subscribers than the more popular videos. I suspect that if this video had tens of thousands of views I would have a lot more subscribers to my channel.
I do know one thing: analyzing this data allows me to figure out which of my older videos I should promote on places like reddit; the videos that encourage people to subscribe are the ones I should be using to introduce new viewers to my channel.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Mylikes to make additional income from Youtube Videos?
Mylikes was originally launched in 2009 as Likeaholix. The website is aimed at helping users share content they like with others and get paid to do so. What brought Mylikes to my attention is their page titled "Make Money on Youtube" -- the service makes it easy to find advertisers and create sponsored videos for them.
I should say outright that I'm initially cautious of websites like Mylikes and it's not hard to find information to support my concerns. A Google Search for the website brought up this article that talks about the many problems with the site; namely that you might inadvertently be promoting a scam. That's obviously not good because promoting a scam would damage your reputation with your Youtube audience.
But I don't need to take that blog author's word for it. I can look at the 'Games' category and see there are several potential scams involving the sale of MMO gold,
There is a huge trust factor in building a fanbase and if your fans do not trust you then you cannot maintain them.
That said, there are several popular Youtube Partners who use the service so it cannot be all bad, right? At the least, if my channel is featured on their site it should improve the ranking of my Youtube channel in search engine results. So it is worth making an account just for that, but make sure you research the website or brand before you start promoting it.
As an example of how this works, here is one of the many sponsored Youtube video offers,
This offer is sponsored by Samsung to help promote one of their new phones. They want you to make a video response back to an advertisement video on their Youtube channel -- no doubt to improve the ranking of that video in search results and drive additional traffic to that video. The sponsored video is part of a contest but chances are people are not going to win it.
What we do want to pay attention to is the referral fee; the video is estimating that we'll get $21 per 1,000 video views our video response receives.
Here is another example,
This video is sponsored by Mylikes and pays $7 per 1,000 views. All you need to do is make a video declaring how great MyLikes is and encourage people to make an account on the service.
You can also use Mylikes to promote content via Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Here is an example of my RPG Fanatic Twitter account,
You might wonder how Mylikes determines that people have watched your video, and herein lies the issue with this. Mylikes will give you a code to insert into the description of your video and you only get paid when people actually click on that link,
That can actually be rather difficult to achieve. I know from having a link to my website on every video I have, tens of thousands of views a month only translates into a few hundred clicks back to my website from all my videos.
Still, if you have a large fanbases then you might profit exceptionally well from something like this. And there really is no way to know for certain what will happen if you don't try uploading some videos.
So this is what I will do: right now, I'm going to make a few sponsored videos and stick them on my channels. I'll see what happens and make another blog article revealing the results of my experiment.
I should say outright that I'm initially cautious of websites like Mylikes and it's not hard to find information to support my concerns. A Google Search for the website brought up this article that talks about the many problems with the site; namely that you might inadvertently be promoting a scam. That's obviously not good because promoting a scam would damage your reputation with your Youtube audience.
But I don't need to take that blog author's word for it. I can look at the 'Games' category and see there are several potential scams involving the sale of MMO gold,
There is a huge trust factor in building a fanbase and if your fans do not trust you then you cannot maintain them.
That said, there are several popular Youtube Partners who use the service so it cannot be all bad, right? At the least, if my channel is featured on their site it should improve the ranking of my Youtube channel in search engine results. So it is worth making an account just for that, but make sure you research the website or brand before you start promoting it.
As an example of how this works, here is one of the many sponsored Youtube video offers,
This offer is sponsored by Samsung to help promote one of their new phones. They want you to make a video response back to an advertisement video on their Youtube channel -- no doubt to improve the ranking of that video in search results and drive additional traffic to that video. The sponsored video is part of a contest but chances are people are not going to win it.
What we do want to pay attention to is the referral fee; the video is estimating that we'll get $21 per 1,000 video views our video response receives.
Here is another example,
This video is sponsored by Mylikes and pays $7 per 1,000 views. All you need to do is make a video declaring how great MyLikes is and encourage people to make an account on the service.
You can also use Mylikes to promote content via Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Here is an example of my RPG Fanatic Twitter account,
You might wonder how Mylikes determines that people have watched your video, and herein lies the issue with this. Mylikes will give you a code to insert into the description of your video and you only get paid when people actually click on that link,
That can actually be rather difficult to achieve. I know from having a link to my website on every video I have, tens of thousands of views a month only translates into a few hundred clicks back to my website from all my videos.
Still, if you have a large fanbases then you might profit exceptionally well from something like this. And there really is no way to know for certain what will happen if you don't try uploading some videos.
So this is what I will do: right now, I'm going to make a few sponsored videos and stick them on my channels. I'll see what happens and make another blog article revealing the results of my experiment.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Network Youtube Channels Together For More Views?
I wrote in a previous blog that I've noticed the larger Youtube Partners cross-promote one another using their favorites, likes and plugging one another in their Facebook fan pages.
I've decided to try taking the idea of cross-promotion one step further and create playlists filled with videos from the featured contributors to my roleplaying videogame community website. The idea is to make it easier for people visiting one channel to discover videos made by the other contributors, with the hope this will lead to more views for everyone as the awareness of our content increases.
Will it work? I don't know, but it is certainly worth a try. I've started testing the waters out by making a playlist for my pal 8-Bit Eric. I intend to make playlists for the other featured contributors later tonight.
Edit: Got several more playlists done, you can see them on my channel. I've also had the other contributors do this as well. We'll see if this helps our subs and view counts out; Analytics will at least tell us if traffic is coming from playlists.
I've decided to try taking the idea of cross-promotion one step further and create playlists filled with videos from the featured contributors to my roleplaying videogame community website. The idea is to make it easier for people visiting one channel to discover videos made by the other contributors, with the hope this will lead to more views for everyone as the awareness of our content increases.
Will it work? I don't know, but it is certainly worth a try. I've started testing the waters out by making a playlist for my pal 8-Bit Eric. I intend to make playlists for the other featured contributors later tonight.
Edit: Got several more playlists done, you can see them on my channel. I've also had the other contributors do this as well. We'll see if this helps our subs and view counts out; Analytics will at least tell us if traffic is coming from playlists.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
TubePartnerz.com
Tubepartnerz.com is a website my company created to make it easier for people to find high quality content on Youtube. The concept is to build a directory of Youtube Partner channels and organize them under categories pertaining to the type of content the channel releases videos about.
We've had trouble getting people to use the site. I think this is partly because it's not very Web 2.0 ish; people can leave comments but they can't submit new channels or information about them. The owners of the channels also cannot control what is uploaded about them; I handle all the archiving myself.
The site was also built using Joomla and many extensions for it, and some of these just don't work the way we'd like them to.
But I think the basic concept has merit; allow people to search for channels instead of just individual videos. One of the problems with Youtube Search is that some search results will be nothing but a page of videos from just one or two channels, and everyone else is buried. When you organize by channels you don't have that problem.
Now it is true that Youtube does recommend channels BUT they apply filters to the channels, and try to make decisions for you. For example, if you look under the Browse channels / Gaming category it will only show some of the most subscribed channels with gaming content, and nobody else.
Youtube has transformed over the years into a website where unless you are popular or people already know about you, it is very hard for people to discover your content.
Tubepartnerz was an attempt to make it a lot easier because we don't filter or rank results, and allow people to see everything that has been added to the site.
It seems to be failing because many Youtubers do not understand how much content is hidden from their search results and browse channel menus, so they don't realize the true value of our website.
I believe that in order to make the website successful we would need to launch an advertising campaign to bring attention to the issue, and unfortunately we are in no financial position to launch such a campaign.
However I believe we also need to improve the site by re-building it with the same publishing platform we use on my RPG video game community website. We intend to update the site with this new design sometime this year.
We've had trouble getting people to use the site. I think this is partly because it's not very Web 2.0 ish; people can leave comments but they can't submit new channels or information about them. The owners of the channels also cannot control what is uploaded about them; I handle all the archiving myself.
The site was also built using Joomla and many extensions for it, and some of these just don't work the way we'd like them to.
But I think the basic concept has merit; allow people to search for channels instead of just individual videos. One of the problems with Youtube Search is that some search results will be nothing but a page of videos from just one or two channels, and everyone else is buried. When you organize by channels you don't have that problem.
Now it is true that Youtube does recommend channels BUT they apply filters to the channels, and try to make decisions for you. For example, if you look under the Browse channels / Gaming category it will only show some of the most subscribed channels with gaming content, and nobody else.
Youtube has transformed over the years into a website where unless you are popular or people already know about you, it is very hard for people to discover your content.
Tubepartnerz was an attempt to make it a lot easier because we don't filter or rank results, and allow people to see everything that has been added to the site.
It seems to be failing because many Youtubers do not understand how much content is hidden from their search results and browse channel menus, so they don't realize the true value of our website.
I believe that in order to make the website successful we would need to launch an advertising campaign to bring attention to the issue, and unfortunately we are in no financial position to launch such a campaign.
However I believe we also need to improve the site by re-building it with the same publishing platform we use on my RPG video game community website. We intend to update the site with this new design sometime this year.
Paying for Views is a Bad Idea
It still surprises me that many Partners are unaware of this but there are several ways to "cheat" at Youtube. This is because Youtube's algorithms are very easy to manipulate. All one really need do is obtain some software to make a bunch of proxies and then setup bots to constantly watch videos and reload them.
Don't believe me? Okay, I suppose the burden falls on me to prove this subculture exists.
However bear in mind that I do not advocate the use of these methods at all. It is easy to see that Youtube obviously doesn't catch all instances where people use these tricks but there is still a high chance you may have your Partnership revoked for using these services. This is because they violate the Youtube terms of service agreement, which Google takes very seriously because they wish to protect advertisers.
I am only talking about these methods because I want to drill it into people's heads that Youtube is a game and it is possible to win, even cheat at it. This is important for people to accept so they can truly understand how Youtube works.
Exhibit A: Viewtube Train
This website allows people to earn "points" by watching other user's submitted videos, and these points can be spent to get other people to watch your own videos. It's a simple concept. Fortunately the site seems to have a small population and at best, the "top" videos can only manage to acquire about 20k views. However, that can be enough to get a video into the "trending" feeds where it may truly go viral.
Now here is another thing to consider: this site requires you to install a Firefox toolbar. That sounds like a really bad idea. There is no real reason why they need to have you install a toolbar of any sort to do a site like this. I would be very cautious of that toolbar having a keylogger. There is a lot of hackings going around on Youtube and it wouldn't surprise me that websites like this are involved.
Exhibit B: Blackhat World forums
There is no shortage of public forums primarily populated by script kiddies who promise all kinds of services, including the sale of large quantities of Youtube views. And they can easily deliver because it's not terribly hard; all one need do is understand how to make proxies and have a bot that watches videos in multiple browsers.
Of course these methods can be detected if performed in a haphazard manner, which is why it is a terrible idea to buy views. Do you really want to entrust the fate of your AdSense account to some random person who feels no qualms ripping off Google and its advertisers?
Exhibit C: Viewet
Viewet is a tad more sophisticated of a website than other places. The site also specializes in more than just Youtube views; you can also buy Facebook Fan Page likes and Twitter followers.
The problem with these services is that they merely create the illusion of success; you will get exactly what you pay for. If you buy 1,000 Facebook likes, that is what you get and not a single more.
However..... once you have obtained enough "social proof" (the number of comments, 'likes' and views) this social proof can be used to trick real people into believing that you are someone they should pay attention to. For example, my ex girlfriend would look at the comments of a video before she actually watched the video and she did this to figure out if the video was worth watching; she relied on random strangers to tell her what to think about a video.
This is the deception of the internet; many people have a tendency to assume that every 'like' and comment is from a real person and not some bot created to encourage real people to believe the image the marketer is trying to present.
Exhibit D: Tube Automater
Tube Automater is $30 software that does the whole proxie and multiple browser thing mentioned earlier. A lot of people seem to use this software as part of a marketing scam involving referral offers, where they are simply trying to lure people to click on the referral link.
The software is fairly sophisticated in that it also adds lots of comments to the video from an army of sock puppet accounts. I'm sure this has been successful at deceiving many viewers into believing a video is truly popular.
Keep in mind, if these reviews are to be believed, the use of this software has led to several individuals being banned from Youtube. The product does have some positive reviews BUT it is certainly possible that if someone can make a bot to post comments on Youtube videos, then they are fully capable of making a bot to post phony user reviews claiming the software works.
Don't automatically assume everything you read on a review site is the truth. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn't true.
Conclusion:
There are more sites out there which provide these services, but there is no real point in discussing them. If you turn to any of these methods you are risking having your AdSense terminated. AdSense is required to be a Youtube Partner and if you lose your AdSense you cannot make another account without using someone else's SSN.
It is a very poor idea to turn to these methods but I wanted to shine a spotlight on their existence so that Partners better understand that Youtube success is more complicated than simply choosing the right keywords and releasing videos on a consistent schedule; much of your success on Youtube depends upon getting lots of views from the charts, and there are people who are dominating spots on the charts by using these services.
It is very difficult to legitimately compete with the botters, and you are never going to do so by simply posting content onto Youtube and doing absolutely no other marketing of your work. It takes longer and more effort than creating artificial traffic with bots, but the long term benefits of networking with other Partners is a much better choice; and better yet it won't get you banned from AdSense.
Don't believe me? Okay, I suppose the burden falls on me to prove this subculture exists.
However bear in mind that I do not advocate the use of these methods at all. It is easy to see that Youtube obviously doesn't catch all instances where people use these tricks but there is still a high chance you may have your Partnership revoked for using these services. This is because they violate the Youtube terms of service agreement, which Google takes very seriously because they wish to protect advertisers.
I am only talking about these methods because I want to drill it into people's heads that Youtube is a game and it is possible to win, even cheat at it. This is important for people to accept so they can truly understand how Youtube works.
Exhibit A: Viewtube Train
This website allows people to earn "points" by watching other user's submitted videos, and these points can be spent to get other people to watch your own videos. It's a simple concept. Fortunately the site seems to have a small population and at best, the "top" videos can only manage to acquire about 20k views. However, that can be enough to get a video into the "trending" feeds where it may truly go viral.
Now here is another thing to consider: this site requires you to install a Firefox toolbar. That sounds like a really bad idea. There is no real reason why they need to have you install a toolbar of any sort to do a site like this. I would be very cautious of that toolbar having a keylogger. There is a lot of hackings going around on Youtube and it wouldn't surprise me that websites like this are involved.
Exhibit B: Blackhat World forums
There is no shortage of public forums primarily populated by script kiddies who promise all kinds of services, including the sale of large quantities of Youtube views. And they can easily deliver because it's not terribly hard; all one need do is understand how to make proxies and have a bot that watches videos in multiple browsers.
Of course these methods can be detected if performed in a haphazard manner, which is why it is a terrible idea to buy views. Do you really want to entrust the fate of your AdSense account to some random person who feels no qualms ripping off Google and its advertisers?
Exhibit C: Viewet
Viewet is a tad more sophisticated of a website than other places. The site also specializes in more than just Youtube views; you can also buy Facebook Fan Page likes and Twitter followers.
The problem with these services is that they merely create the illusion of success; you will get exactly what you pay for. If you buy 1,000 Facebook likes, that is what you get and not a single more.
However..... once you have obtained enough "social proof" (the number of comments, 'likes' and views) this social proof can be used to trick real people into believing that you are someone they should pay attention to. For example, my ex girlfriend would look at the comments of a video before she actually watched the video and she did this to figure out if the video was worth watching; she relied on random strangers to tell her what to think about a video.
This is the deception of the internet; many people have a tendency to assume that every 'like' and comment is from a real person and not some bot created to encourage real people to believe the image the marketer is trying to present.
Exhibit D: Tube Automater
Tube Automater is $30 software that does the whole proxie and multiple browser thing mentioned earlier. A lot of people seem to use this software as part of a marketing scam involving referral offers, where they are simply trying to lure people to click on the referral link.
The software is fairly sophisticated in that it also adds lots of comments to the video from an army of sock puppet accounts. I'm sure this has been successful at deceiving many viewers into believing a video is truly popular.
Keep in mind, if these reviews are to be believed, the use of this software has led to several individuals being banned from Youtube. The product does have some positive reviews BUT it is certainly possible that if someone can make a bot to post comments on Youtube videos, then they are fully capable of making a bot to post phony user reviews claiming the software works.
Don't automatically assume everything you read on a review site is the truth. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn't true.
Conclusion:
There are more sites out there which provide these services, but there is no real point in discussing them. If you turn to any of these methods you are risking having your AdSense terminated. AdSense is required to be a Youtube Partner and if you lose your AdSense you cannot make another account without using someone else's SSN.
It is a very poor idea to turn to these methods but I wanted to shine a spotlight on their existence so that Partners better understand that Youtube success is more complicated than simply choosing the right keywords and releasing videos on a consistent schedule; much of your success on Youtube depends upon getting lots of views from the charts, and there are people who are dominating spots on the charts by using these services.
It is very difficult to legitimately compete with the botters, and you are never going to do so by simply posting content onto Youtube and doing absolutely no other marketing of your work. It takes longer and more effort than creating artificial traffic with bots, but the long term benefits of networking with other Partners is a much better choice; and better yet it won't get you banned from AdSense.
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