Money From Web Video: Costs Low, Marketing Smarts

UPDATE: 51% of TubeMogul users are making videos to make money from ad revenue shares. (Though, as Silicon Alley Insider notes (in linked story) the data is suspect.)

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Keys to making money in Web video:

1. keeping your production costs low
2. marketing marketing and marketing -- and thinking of marketing in a very traditional test, rinse, repeat kind of way
3. having something else to sell besides the video. IE, your services as a live performer

These from Jennie Bourne, author, Taking Your Video to the Web, at the Web 2.0 conference at Pace University. She gave a few examples. She talked about the success of the Coke/Mentos video (currently at more than 7 million views on YouTube, and more on other platforms). “What’s behind that is some very careful thinking about marketing, and the audience they were trying to reach. They studied everything that’s successful on the Web to come up with and create a successful viral video .They looked at what the content was, whether it had physical action. Whether it was elaborately produced. Whether it had more than one camera. And step by step they put it together ... They did it hundreds of times to get it right.”

To make money from it they put it on Revver, which shares revenues with producers, and also used it as a way to promote their live act, which ultimately is paying them more than the video ever did, she says. Added moderator Dave Burstein of DSL Prime: “They went from semi-employed circus performers to more work than they could handle, at Vegas and elsewhere.”

A counter example Bourne gave is from the producers of “The All for Nots.” They had a show called “The Burg,” which got sponsorship. They then raised their production values, increasing the cost of the show, but when they lost sponsorship were unable to continue it, because it cost them too much. The current site site is begging for more viewers to try to get sponsorship.

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