Adding Videos To Your Blog

As you no doubt noticed, I’ve starting adding videos to this blog in a big way. The effect on traffic has been quite positive. Video is where blogging is heading and you should consider adding a video element to your blog if you haven’t already done so.

Videos Boosts Blog Traffic

I have noticed traffic to the blog has gone up by 15% since adding more videos to my posts. In addition, RSS subscription is on the verge of breaking 26,000 for the first time. Readers seem to really like videos. It allows me to express myself in ways words on a blog can never do.

Something I haven’t paid attention to at all was YouTube subscribers. I didn’t know I had any until I checked it. There are nearly 100 people subscribed to my YouTube videos. YouTube could be a nice traffic source if you built up a big enough subscriber base. I found iJustine via YouTube and I’m sure many others found her the same way.

Google Can Spider Video Content

Here’s another reason why you want to start adding videos to your blog. Google now has the technology to spider video content. YouTube videos are showing up more often on Google search results. For example, the YouTube video for the Macbook Air commercial shows up on page 1 when you do a search for MacBook Air. The video has been viewed nearly 2 million times. Imagine how much traffic you would get if you had been the one to post that video with your blog URL watermarked on it.

Videos Are Inexpensive To Add

You don’t need an expensive film studio to add videos to your blog. All my videos are shot with an inexpensive Flip Video digital camcorder. Most digital cameras can take video so you don’t have to buy a separate video recorder.

Editing the videos can be done with the software that came with your computer OS. I used Windows Movie Maker when I had the PC. Now I use iMovie on the Macbook Pro. While neither program is as powerful as Adobe Premier, they’ll get the job done and they’re easier to use. Thanks to services like YouTube, hosting your video is easy and free.

Videos Can Make You Money

I haven’t tried to make money with my videos yet but I can this as a viable income stream down the road. We already have sponsors giving us free stuff for the weekly Dot Com Pho videos and I can see product placement fees in the future.

Another way to make money with the video is by becoming a YouTube partner to get a percentage of the advertising money. YouTube is not the only service to offer partnerships. There are tons of video sharing sites, like Revver, that will give you a cut of the advertising dollars.

Maximizing Your Video Traffic

To get the most out of their videos, many bloggers will upload their videos to a bunch of video sharing sites. However, this can be a long and boring process. To make thing easier, I recommend using a service like Tube Mogul, which distributes your videos to all the major video sharing sites with a single upload.

The service also offers video analytics so you can see how your videos are performing across all the video sharing sites. It’s no harder to use than uploading a single YouTube video so I highly recommend it.

Another thing I recommend to maximize your video traffic is to always embed your blog URL into your videos. If the viewer likes the video, chances are he’ll want to know who made it and see any other videos you may have made. Putting your URL at the beginning or end is also good for branding purposes.