Pros and Cons of Becoming a YouTube Partner – Revisited!

YouTubePartnerDue to the overwhelming amount of traffic we’ve received on one post in particular – “8 Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a YouTube Partner” – we thought we’d offer up a second helping on insight and info on this topic.

The first time around we outlined a few of the advantages – greater exposure, how ad revenue sharing can make you money, and neat-o page customization – and a few of the disadvantages, such as the language and location restrictions and copyright ownership.

Before we get into the pro and cons of partnering with YouTube, however, it’s important that you understand what a partnership with YouTube is. In a nutshell, partnering with the video-sharing site allows you to share in revenue-generating opportunities. Some of the benefits include sharing revenue from relevant InVideo ads overlaid on your videos and banner ads running next to your videos to earn money, participating in co-marketing & branded entertainment opportunities with top brand advertiser, and utilizing your own sales to sell your own ads.

That all sounds well and good considering the enormous reach of YouTube, facts that the Google-owned operation happily points out:

  • People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube, and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily.
  • YouTube is the number one video site on the internet and the 4th largest Internet destination in the world. (Nielsen NetRatings, December 2008)
  • YouTube attracted over 300 million unique video viewers across the world in December 2008. (Nielsen NetRatings, December 2008)
  • YouTube is the #2 Search engine in the world, after Google and before Yahoo! (comScore, October 2008)

Of course, there are lots of good things to gain as a YouTube partner – based on those statistics alone. But there’s another side of the partnership that YouTube doesn’t talk about – and rightfully so.

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Preparing Your Site for the Holiday Season

sug_0006_gifAfter the major disappointment that was last December, retailers will be spending more time and energy this year in preparing their Web sites for the holiday season.

You might be thinking though, how can I compete with major retailers whose sites are all shiny and sleek? Trust us, even the shiniest, sleekest sites have their problems. And their oversights could be your gain.

So what exactly should you do to prepare your site for the holiday season.

In an article on MultichannelMerchant.com, James Gardner details a few important steps you should take now to help stay ahead of the curve a month from now.

1. Don’t Forget the Basics

A common mistake that most retailers make, says Gardner – and we agree – is that too many times they concentrate their energy on a particular promotion or holiday campaign. But what about the rest of the site? What happens when all those people who are impressed by the company’s Christmas creativity can’t access others parts of the site because of poor functionality? Well, they answer, all too often, is that leave. They don’t want to be bother with a slow site that isn’t working correctly.

So, before you go spending all your resources on your holiday push, go through your site – meticulously – to make sure that everything is in working order. Make sure there are no unnecessary obstacles that stand in the way of consumer and checkout. Make sure that they have no reason to leave your site because of broken links and videos or images that don’t load. You owe it to yourself and your customers.

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Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?

092909_facebookrichThat’s what a new Nielsen Claritas study suggests.

The study says that there are class differences among users of social networks – particularly Facebook and MySpace. Wealthier people are 25% more likely to use the former, while the less affluent are 37% more likely to cling to the latter.

More specifically, the research found that “almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16% of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28% of Facebook users.”

MySpace users tend to be “in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods,” said Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, which used an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. “They’re on their way up, or perhaps not college educated.”

LinkedIn and Twitter were also part of the study – and the two skew even higher among affluent users.

Nearly 38% of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year, and there’s a strong overlap between Facebook and LinkedIn users.

4ba7f_facebookMySpace

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The Official Launch of VisibleU is this Wednesday!

VisibleUMonths of intense labor has finally paid off … Visible Shops is very happy to announce the launch of VisibleU!

The official launch of VisibleU is on Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at the NY XPO for Business. It’s the region’s largest B2B show, featuring a full day of business opportunity, growth and value. Not to mention plenty of time to network! If you have time to stop by, we highly recommend it. You never know who you’ll meet – besides us, of course.

In the meantime, we wanted to let all of you know that VisibleU is up and running right now, and we’d like all of our friends from Visible Shops to see what we’ve done and how you can benefit from it.

Through the past several years we met with many small business owners who really liked our concepts, our methodology and our people, but said that we simply cost too much for them. We decided a year ago to do something about that. We resolved to find a way to bring our concepts, methodology and expertise to every small business owner that wanted to take advantage of Internet marketing.

The rules we set for ourselves were simple.

1.    Must be affordable for all businesses no matter how small.
2.    Must be able to educate small business owners on Internet Marketing concepts and tools.
3.    Must provide access to our professional Internet Marketing Staff.
4.    Must be scalable so all businesses can get what they need.
5.    Should not require a long term contract.
6.    Should always deliver a positive .

We did it! Now it’s available to you. Visit the VisibleU Web site and check it out.

But wait – there’s more…

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MarketingCharts Help with Internet Research

hitwise-2009-september-print-media-websitesIf you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that we use a lot of statistics and facts to present compelling cases for all manner of arguments regarding .

Of course, we don’t make that data up. No, we use sources such as eMarketer, MarketingProfs and other research entities that compile information that allow us to draw conclusions and provide our two cents on various topics on advertising and marketing across channels but especially online.

Unless you’re a subscriber to these services, however, you may not have access to all the information they hold. Information that can help you when planning your own marketing campaigns or campaigns for clients.

A great resource that we’ve found – which is available to everyone – is MarketingCharts, charts and data for marketers in Web and Excel formats.

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