August 22, 2007

YouTube Social Marketing Experiment


youtube logoHave you ever tried bringing traffic from YouTube? I have tried uploading a few videos before, but never had the chance to test the actual traffic coming from YouTube.

Social marketing is becoming huge. There are many popular websites like YouTube, StumpleUpon, MySpace, etc. If you have direct links from a site, you can easily track the traffic you’re receiving, and even every single detail from the traffic.

But with the addition of online video websites, most users will upload a video and implement their website URL onto the video, such as “Brought to you by blahblah.com” caption text on the video. This is great, if the person who is watching the video likes it, he/she may be checking your website also for more. But since the URL on the video is not clickable, they will type the URL and visit your site. Statistics softwares will show these visitors as “Direct Traffic” and you will never know where they came from.

I wanted to test the actual effectiveness of YouTube and similar online video social sites. I have registered a brand new domain, and setup a very short blog about a specific niche. Created a “How To” type video with nice caption text, titles, credits, etc. and uploaded it to YouTube. I’ve hidden the blog from search engines. Never uploaded a sitemap, added noindex on the pages, and didn’t get backlinks. With only 1 instructional and informational video my blog site has received 220 unique visitors within 7 days. It is over 30 uniques a day.

How can you make money with YouTube?

Find an affiliate product (software, website registration, etc.) which pays a nice CPA. Create a very informative how to guide type video and upload it to YouTube. Prepare a website/blog with little more details and information, more a landing page than a website. Add your credentials (with a clear URL of your site) onto the video. Register a username at YouTube with your website URL, upload the video, and promote the video on YouTube and other places. If people like your video, they’ll definitely visit your site (at least some of them). And you will have a nice way of getting some affiliate commissions.

If you have any tips and/or success stories about marketing on YouTube, please share them with us.

4 Comment(s)

  1. John | Aug 22, 2007 | Reply

    I have been following you and will be following.Love your articles they are so informtive and easy to read.

  2. Seraph | Aug 23, 2007 | Reply

    really good idea. creating traffic from youtube is a great thing. the ways to popular your site are really huge. Nice post, anyway

  3. Be a Good Daughter | Oct 18, 2007 | Reply

    Hi your article is amazing.
    I like your diary..
    bye

  4. youtube traffic | Jul 13, 2008 | Reply

    thank you for such a great topic. I have learned a lot by reading on this website today.

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