In 9th grade, my social studies teacher taught me that the greatest marketing slogan ever were the words “rinse and repeat ” that they put on shampoo bottles. There is absolutely no reason to wash your hair twice, but if anyone does, they are that much closer to buying another bottle.
A simple, and maybe as effective option for video ? Allow for downloads.
I was watching video on a news site and wanted to keep a copy of the video. This was original video to the station, so there were no copyright issues. So there was no reason for them not to allow a download.
The crazy part is that since they were using flash, it was progressive download. The video is there on the hard drive, its just a matter of making it easy for the end user to rewatch the video. Again and again and again..
Many of the major video sites have added this option, but its amazing that newspaper, TV and other sites that have recently added video, for the most part do not.
With online video, maybe adding the word “Save” to Share & Replay might not double viewing, but every additional local view not only can increase revenue, but it can eliminate paying for bandwidth for those users who go back to the original link and stream the video again.
Im just saying..
Hello, Mark. I agree – providing visitors/members multiple ways to
consume the website’s content is invaluable. We (BlackBottom.com) have
targeted the African-American niche (we’re known within the community as the
“Black YouTube”) and have, thus far, performed extraordinarily well due to the
sharing and “network effect” (see http://www.quantcast.com/blackbottom.com).
We haven’t allowed downloads, though.
Comment by Herb -
I think the amount of type in traffic from a URL on a video that someone is sent is pretty small. It wouldn\’t compensate for the ad revenue you would get from people coming to your site via a link instead. Links are easily clickable and video files aren\’t. Also the amount of type in traffic depends on the character length of your domain name.
Despite the ability to put an actual link to your site in the video description area on YouTube, almost no one clicks on those links. So how may people will go to the bother of typing in a URL shown on a video caption? Not many…
As mentioned above, providing a download just encourages misuse of your video elsewhere.
Soon everyone is going to realise that RSS is a licence to steal your content and that uploading the same videos, tags and descriptions everywhere is a mistake. It\’s far better to have one destination for your video — on your own site. People will find it on Google.
If the same video is on YouTube and dozens of other video sharing sites, likely they will appear above your site in the Google search results (because those sites all have so much more great content in total than your site does!). So say bye bye to visitors to your site.
They\’ll be busy on all those other video sharing sites that are showing their own ads alongside your video content! While almost no one clicks through to you (why would they when they can see all your content somewhere else?).
Comment by Gary -
My guiding biz philosophy is give the customer, viewer, reader as many ways to digest your product, article, info as possible. i.e. RSS, Email, MP3, Downloads, Demos, Limited Function Downloads, PDF, Doc, RTF, HTML, User Licenses, Downloadable Installs, etc. The more ways they can get it, the more likely they are to get it. In new millennium business, the cost to deliver in many formats is very low, so why not. Keep up the gr8 work Mark!
Comment by Rob Thrasher -
I agree with you Mark. When I started my online basketball training website http://www.JumpStartHoops.com all I had was DVDs distributed through Amazon.com. As soon as I allowed customers to download my material and watch it \”On Demand\” I hit a whole new market. Thanks for the post.
Comment by Coach Koran Godwin -
Right on. I always want the option to download so I can watch later. Especially if the video is long.
Comment by sales training -
Have you heard about Miro? It is a free, cross-platform video player that allows you to download your videos and watch them on your own time – kind of like Tivo but for your web videos.
Enjoy!
Brad
Comment by Brad Z. -