by: AskPat 354 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 354 of AskPat. I hope you're having an amazing day like I am, and I'm happy to be here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
All right, here's today's question from Fay.
Faye: Hi, Pat. This is Fay McLean, and I have a blog called PropertyInvestingSupport.com. And my question is, I would like to include a lot more videos on my blog, and I'm wondering what you would recommend for cost-effective video hosting. I am aware of YouTube and Wistia and a few others, and I'm just wondering if you have any ideas as to something that is reliable. And I'm looking for something that gives my consumer an enjoyable experience, as well as being cost-effective from a business with a low income. Thank you!
Pat Flynn: Hey, Faye. Thank you so much for the question. Just to get right down to it, if you're looking for the most cost-effective video hosting solution, it's going to be YouTube by far, because it's absolutely free and they have a lot of options; they give you a lot of great data that even some of the other paid platforms won't give you, although Wistia by far is the best out there, Wistia.com. But you do get what you pay for, because you pay quite a bit, but you get a lot of amazing things. I would say that once your business starts going, if you have a membership site, for example, that has videos in it, Wistia would be the ideal platform to use. There's also Vimeo or Vimeo Pro, which is a little bit less costly than Wistia, but Wistia by far is one of the best. They are built specifically for people putting videos on their website platform.
This isn't a video hosting platform, but this is a video resource you can use: That's Caleb Wojcik's website at DIY Video Guide, or DIY Video Guy, whichever one you please. He's going to help you with your videos; he's going to help you share a lot of the resources and equipment and all those sorts of things. He talks about hosting as well I'm sure. So that's DIYVideoGuide.com, or DIYVideoGuy.com. He actually got both on purpose 'cause they both kinda sound the same, which is actually really smart.
So, that'll help you a little bit, but I will say that if you have just videos that you're going to post publicly on your website, I would absolutely use YouTube. I would actually prefer YouTube over the others if you were posting these videos public for everybody to see on your website, for a few reasons. One, because when you post them on YouTube, you're going to see a lot of website traffic coming directly from YouTube, because YouTube is a search engine as well. You're going to get higher rankings over time on YouTube, you're going to be able to build an audience on YouTube as well, if you'd like, although I'd recommend bringing people from your videos to your website. Recently, YouTube came out with this feature called YouTube Cards where unlike annotations, it looks a little bit better, and it's less obtrusive, but it works really well for getting traffic from people who are watching your video, back to your website which is great. You can see a lot of YouTube Cards in the latest videos of SPI TV if you go WatchSPI.tv and watch some of the latest episodes. I think past episode 13 or 13 and on, you'll see those cards in use immediately when you play those particular videos. That's a great way to market your brand, to get people to a particular page on your website. You have to verify your page, though, as a verified page for that particular YouTube account, so that might take a little bit of time. But if you go into your settings in YouTube, you'll see how to do that, and it won't take very long, hopefully. Also, when you embed your video on your website, that's going to help that particular post rank higher in the search engines as well because you have a YouTube video there of the same topic, of the same name, providing a lot more value to that particular page. And who owns YouTube? Well, Google does, so there's a lot of play back and forth there and that can do nothing but help you. The other thing that goes along with that is it's just a lot of value for your particular audience.
So, I would recommend that you should have video, even if you have a membership site and a course, and that's kind of where that question is coming from; you still want to have these public-facing videos. Now, in addition to all that, I would highly recommend posting your videos; the ones that are public facing; the ones that you would also post on YouTube, I would upload them directly to Facebook. So if you have a Facebook page, upload them directly to Facebook, even if you have a Facebook group too. The reason for this is because videos get a lot of authority and a lot of plays and a lot of views. Videos that get uploaded directly to Facebook have a high preferential rate and getting shown in more news feeds than a video, for example, that is uploaded to YouTube and then linked to on Facebook. So make sure that you're uploading your videos directly to Facebook as well. I'd try to do that as much as possible, even for the longer videos. I've seen that I often get 10 times as many views within the first week on Facebook, but then YouTube eventually catches up, because you get search engine optimization and the videos live longer on YouTube. On Facebook, for example, they're there when they're on people's news feeds, and then the next day they're gone. They live on your page a little bit longer but on their newsfeed other news has come since then so you lose that effect that you have when you first put a video on Facebook.
Now, going back to your video hosting options, the big thing is if you have a paid membership or a paid course, you do have the option of hosting on YouTube and then putting those Unlisted or Privately into your course or membership site program. But, that affects the user experience a little bit, and it's not quite as professional; it almost looks unprofessional, because you're using a free hosting platform to host your videos for a paid membership site. That's when I would look to, for example, Vimeo Pro or Wistia. Those are the ones that I would recommend if you have a paid course. And of course, if you're just starting out, you're going to be paying not as much as you would be if you were getting a lot more views. So that's a cool thing about those platforms. I think Wistia specifically pays; there's a per annual fee I believe, but also you will have to pay per gigabyte. And of course, the more videos you have, the more you'll pay, and the less you have if you're just starting out, the less you'll pay, which is similar to how AWeber works with email marketing. That's why it's great to start out with it, because when you're starting out you don't have to pay very much, and as you grow you pay more, and hopefully as you grow with your membership site, you'd be getting more money and that would just make sense.
Faye, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for it today. Love to send you an AskPat t-shirt and you're going to see an email from my assistant in the next couple days or couple weeks actually, to collect that information so we can send you an AskPat question for free.
For those of you listening, if you have an AskPat t-shirt, great. That's not what I meant to say, but if you have an AskPat t-shirt, awesome; thank you for the questions in the past. But if you don't have an AskPat t-shirt and you'd like to ask a question here on the show, just head on over to AskPat and you might get featured on the show, and get an AskPat t-shirt as a result. Again that's free of charge, free of shipping, we just love to do that. And now we're starting to see the AskPat t-shirts in the wild which is pretty cool and a lot of people are sending their pictures in which I always love. And they're even saying that they're getting people asking, “Who's Pat?”, and they tell them, and that's kinda cool, actually. That wasn't the purpose, but we just want to give something back and thank you guys for all the support. Obviously this show wouldn't exist without all the questions that you're asking me. I love the questions that come in. AskPat, you can ask your questions there.
As always, I love to end with a quote, and this quote is from Henry Ford. He says, “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” And by service, I'm pretty sure he meant, really making sure you're there to serve your audience, not necessarily a service-based business, but a business absolutely devoted to service. So you're devoted to your audience and providing value, and providing a service in that way by actually being helpful. So do that, and your profits will be embarrassingly large, as Henry Ford said.
Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Have a great weekend. Thank you for all the support, and if you have a moment, please head on over to iTunes. Search for AskPat and please leave an iTunes review and rating. It helps out the show a lot, and I read every single one of them, even in other countries. I go into other countries every once in a while and read those reviews too, and I just love you guys. Thank you so much for the support. I appreciate it, and I'll see you next week. Cheers.