Is This The Secret To YouTube Success?

Great videos are key to popularity on YouTube but there’s another quality just as important: consistency.
Be consistent in the following 3 ways and you could see your audience growing in response.

Personal Brand
Keep the same style for all your graphics, fonts, colors, and identity. The more familiar viewers get with your look, the easier you’ll be able to build your YouTube recognition. Retaining the same style and feel throughout all your social media and related pages will separate you from the crowd of hundreds of thousands of content creators, and help you stay ahead of the game.

Episode Structure
Whether you’re doing reviews, uploading cooking lessons, or creating comedy sketches, give your audience the same episode format. Even something as simple as always showing an amazing shot of food during the first 10 seconds of a cooking video is a convention the audience will come to expect. The same structure every time helps your viewers know what’s going to happen next and when. Sticking to consistent content is also helpful. Don’t jump from topic to topic and instead keep to the focus your audience expects from you.

Upload Times
Are you going to upload your videos every Saturday at 5? The first day of every month? It’s your call, but provide a programming schedule and give the audience an opportunity to follow your next videos with a date and time. And, like your favourite TV show, a schedule will help your fans know when to tune in for your next video. An added bonus is that it will force you in the habit of making videos regularly.

Original article: http://viso.tv/is-this-the-secret-to-youtube-success/

How To Make The Most Of Your Business’ YouTube Channel

YouTube is by far the most popular video sharing site online. 72 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute, there are more than 1 billion unique visitors to the site every month and they watch over 4 billion hours of content in that time. These astronomical engagement and audience figures make YouTube a must-use social media site for companies who want to promote themselves using visual media. 
So, how do you make the most of your business’ YouTube channel? It is imperative, of course, that you get the videos right, but the rest of your channel needs to be maintained as well: before the videos, you need to create the right channel to represent your business; after the videos, you need to promote them online and monitor the success of your content. Here are a few hints and tips on how to make the most of your channel.

1. Before the Videos

If you are making videos for YouTube, you need the right equipment. Do you have a camera and editing software? Do you have sound recording equipment and employees who know how to handle it? Of course, depending on the quality of the videos you intend to create, you could always use a mobile phone with a good quality camera, a much cheaper and easier option.

So, you have the equipment, now you can start creating your channel. If your company is a large, umbrella corporation, you could have a number of different channels for different brands. For most companies, however, its advisable to just have one channel: think of it as a brand page, which everyone will associate with your company.

Name your channel after your brand, if you can, or as close to your brand name as possible. Use industry keywords in your about section and upload an interesting and original background. Make sure the theme of your channel connects with your business. Manage your tabs. Have your subscribe button and logo prominently placed, with subscriber and view counters in the corner. Don’t forget to put links to all your other websites and social media profiles at the top of the page.

Do you already have an archive of company videos from events or old advertisements? Don’t dump it all on your YouTube channel, select the videos that are relevant and interesting and post them in intervals.

2. The Videos

There are dozens of kinds of video that you can post on YouTube to promote your brand and increase engagement with the public online. Here are a few quick ideas: presentations of products, interviews with staff and experts, a tour of the office, a video explaining your product, a customer testimonial. Another good idea is livestreaming your events on YouTube, advertising them beforehand to ensure a large audience.
Title and tag your videos with relevant keywords. YouTube is a Google affiliate, so videos posted to the site appear high in relevant searches. YouTube itself has the second largest search engine on the web, after Google, so you need to ensure that you optimize your video descriptions with keywords so that they appear high in searches. Tags are especially important to get right, as they affect what videos get displayed in the “relevant videos” section.

YouTube videos can be as long as you want now, but it’s still best to edit your videos down – people have a short attention span on YouTube. Of course, if your video needs to be long, don’t worry: people will watch it if the content and is interesting enough to them.

YouTube allows you to choose between one of three screenshots from the video as the screenshot shown before it plays. choose wisely: the screenshot will effect how much engagement your videos get. Categorise your videos into specific playlists to make it easier for subscribers and visitors to navigate around the page.

3. Engagement

Do you want to allow comments on your videos? I’d advise against it: the majority of people who comment on YouTube are trolling. Of course, you can delete comments at any time, but there may be too many comments to manage.

Get people to engage by asking them to subscribe to your channel. Use annotations to promote engagement with your videos. For example, ask people to click on an annotation to view the product page of a product that appears in an advert you post on YouTube. make sure that your like, share and subscribe buttons are always prominently placed.

Embed your videos on your other social media sites and on your website. Create an introductory video talking about your company and embed it on the front page of your website, or create product videos and post them on your sales pages.

Use Google Analytics to measure the engagement of your videos. See what videos prove the most popular and with who, then optimise your channel and your videos to get the most interaction you can. 

Original article: http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/2013/04/how-to-make-most-of-your-business.html

THE PYRAMID OF MASTERY: SEVEN AREAS OF FOCUS FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE

As achievers we know that whatever we focus on, we will find a way to achieve. The challenge so many of us face, however, is in finding balance.

Even the greatest achievers acknowledge a gap between where they are and where they really want to be. Perhaps our businesses or careers are strong,
but our intimate relationships are lacking. Or maybe our relationships are flourishing, but our personal finances, physical vitality or even our connection with our children is suffering. We all have areas of our lives that demand more focus.

If you want an extraordinary life, there are seven areas of focus you must master. Fulfillment will not happen by doing okay in some, great in another and letting others fall by the wayside. Though there are times when we might need to focus on one or two, each area is never less important than another. They are all interwoven in the fabric of life.

The Seven Areas of Focus

1. Physical Body: The vehicle through which you experience life
2. Emotions & Meaning: The fuel of life
3. Relationships: The ultimate magnifier of human experience
4. Time: How and where you focus your energy
5. Work / Career / Mission: How you make a difference, lead and influence others
6. Finances: A medium of exchange to create, transfer and share value
7. Celebrate & Contribute: A spiritual awareness

While all seven areas of life are important, there is a hierarchy that creates peak performance and fulfillment. For example, if you don’t master your body—your capacity to maximize your health, energy and vitality—all the money, career success or contribution in the world will be worthless. You can’t experience an extraordinary quality of life without the vehicle that’s going to help you create it.

Or, if you spend your time trying to solve all your relationship problems, but you haven’t even mastered your emotions, it’s a recipe for disaster. Without mastering meaning and emotion, you will always be at the mercy of life’s challenges. Having a firm grasp of your emotions frees you to be proactive rather than reactive to changes you face.

Similarly, you must determine how you focus and spend your time in order to create a successful career. Once you’ve discovered how to add value in your work/career/mission, you can create a plan to grow your wealth. Spiritual growth and your capacity to celebrate and contribute are at the top because you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labor until you’ve sowed the right seeds.

Original article: http://training.tonyrobbins.com/2580/the-pyramid-of-mastery-seven-areas-of-focus-for-an-extraordinary-life/#more-2580

STRESSORS & SOLUTIONS: YOUR ESCAPE PLAN FROM ANXIETY

In our professional lives, most of us have some kind of time management system—schedules, lists, an inner clock of daily routines—but how many of us have stress management systems? That is, systems for anticipating and eliminating the triggers of our anxieties?

Remember, it’s in our basic nature to be happy.The thing that makes us unhappy is living in reaction to stimuli from the environment, constantly converting them into causes of stress. What system can you rely upon when this happens? How can you alter your state and surroundings to become stress-resistant, so that, like Teflon, stress won’t stick to you?

Let’s say you’re a businessperson who lives on the road. How could it transform your life if you kept a suitcase—filled with clean clothes, a billfold of money, toiletries, everything you need— packed and ready to go, weeks before a trip is required? When the call comes from your company to travel, you’ll be ready. Rather than getting knocked around by stressors, you’re in charge because you’ve anticipated the obvious and created a system that puts you in the driver’s seat.

Research has shown that most people don’t anticipate stress. Instead, they only cope with it. If you made a list of the things that really bug you, you could certainly re-engineer what you’re doing, or the way you’re doing it, so that things would run more smoothly up front. This is called a fix-it-forever system: creating an ergonomic design for your life by eradicating the little things that cause stress.

Take an area of your life that typically causes you stress—travel, work interruptions, your children’s behavior, for example—and then list the specific situations or triggers that set you off. Now, brainstorm every possible way to preempt conflict, so that this problem would now be “fixed
forever.” A system can be a new set of principles, like teaching your secretary that each day between 1 and 3 PM is your blocked time when you take no calls—a time for creative focus or solving challenges you would otherwise bring home.

If you want to speed up the process of finding a system that really works, model yourself after someone who’s getting your desired results and who isn’t stressed. Ask them how they’re doing it, and do the same. 

How To Monetize Your YouTube Channel

Plenty of people have discovered innovative ways to make money on the Internet. One highly-popular method of generating income from the Internet is to monetize a YouTube channel. Whether you are hosting a video blog, promoting products you sell on a website or trying to get your band some much-needed attention from music lovers on the web, monetizing a YouTube channel is an excellent way to create a strong cash flow, if you do it right. There are plenty of ways to earn money from a YouTube channel: here is a look at a few. 

The YouTube Partner ProgramA highly-effective way to monetize your YouTube channel is to participate in the YouTube Partner Program. This program gives contributors a chance to earn money while building and broadening an audience, and increasing their skills. In order to be eligible and maintain good standing with the YouTube Partner Program, some strict guidelines must be followed. Nevertheless, as long as the rules are abided by, the YouTube Partner Program can be an excellent opportunity for online entrepreneurs.

One of the guidelines for the YouTube Partner Program is to ensure that your content is not sexually explicit, profanity-laden or violent. Other rules include agreeing not to click on ads on your own YouTube channel. The amount of money you earn from the program largely depends on how many views you receive. 

Promoting Your Business or ProductYouTube can also be used to effectively promote your business or product to an expansive audience. Many companies use YouTube to build an audience and promote their products and services. An effective way to do this is to present your online audience with a vibrant, informational video with all the pertinent information, and include a link to your website or blog. By doing this, you are directing your audience to your website, where they can purchase your merchandise and learn more about your services. This in turn increases your potential and growth.

Additionally, if your website or blog is monetized through a service such as AdSense, each visitor who is directed to your site from your YouTube channel will earn you money. By doing this, you are making your YouTube channel work for you, instead of vice versa. For optimal results, you want to make sure that you select a unique title for your video, so that it will be among one of the first hits in search engine queries. 

Expanding Your Potential for Growth and SalesPromoting your content, whether it be a company website, a music video for an unsigned indie band, a blog for a wedding coordinator or any other website, YouTube is highly-effective at expanding brand popularity and growth. With YouTube being one of the most prominent and popular websites on the Internet, it is easy to see why many people are drawn to the website and try to promote their businesses, blogs and other content there. Even if you decide to opt out of YouTube's Partner Program (and do not have a monetized blog or website), by simply diverting viewers to your website, you are helping to increase your site's potential for growth and sales. 

The Bottom LineYouTube is one of many social networking sites that you can monetize. Its members can share videos, build channels, follow others and even promote their own businesses or interests. YouTube offers its members the opportunity to build a strong network of followers and potentially cement their place in the online business world. Communicate with your followers, consider the constructive feedback in the comment section and present a positive online presence.

Original article: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1112/how-to-monetize-your-youtube-channel.aspx 

MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE: THE FIVE ELEMENTS OF A BREAKTHROUGH

There are two types of people:

1. Those who get results and
2. those with stories about why they didn’t achieve what they wanted.

Although we can’t control the events that happen in our lives, we can control how we respond to them. It’s these choices that we make—especially during challenging times when many things seem impossible—that define us.

The people who get results—the leaders and the innovators in this world—are defined by one thing: Leaders show everyone that the impossible is, in fact, possible.

When that happens, it’s called a breakthrough.

Thomas Edison was a man built for breakthroughs. He burned with the passion to create things that no one had before. It took him countless tries to discover the filament—made from Japanese bamboo—that made electric light possible. Lesser men would have given up, but Edison dreamed of a world lit by electricity. He persisted, and his breakthrough made him a household name, revolutionizing our lives by adding hours to our day.

Breakthroughs are the reason people succeed and companies thrive, no matter what’s going on around them.

So how do you create your own breakthrough? It takes a certain chemistry:

1.The first thing it takes is satiation. Plain and simple, you’ve had enough. Enough of your financial problems, enough of your uninspiring career, enough of that extra 20 pounds you’ve been carrying around.

2. The second thing is dissatisfaction. Whatever you’re doing doesn’t work for you anymore. Maybe it’s not profitable and maybe it’s not fun. Maybe you’re tired of not having the energy you know you need to accomplish your desired result.Your current approach might have been successful in the past, but it hasn’t adapted to your current conditions.

3. Third is, you get to a threshold where change becomes a “must”—you’re facing bankruptcy, for example, defeat simply isn’t an option or you’re having a health challenge.

4. Fourth, you get an insight and that creates an opening.

5. Finally, in the fifth stage—and this is the most important—you step through the opening.

Original article: http://training.tonyrobbins.com/2529/making-the-impossible-possible-the-five-elements-of-a-breakthrough/#more-2529

Top Five YouTube Monetization Tips

YouTube has opened monetization up to everyone across 20 different countries. This can be a very
profitable venture for so many content creators that have yet to receive the coveted partner or monetization invitation in their inbox.

Now, you can start making real money from your videos, regardless of whether or not they attract a particularly large audience. In fact, even a small audience can generate a healthy amount of revenue for the content creator.

There are some tricks to the trade that can help you make the most of this feature. Here they are.

Be Patient

Google AdSense has an interesting way of going about paying its content creators. If you haven’t generated $100 or more in ad revenue during a given month, your earnings roll over to the next month and no payment will be made. Often, you may not see a check for three or four months, depending on your viewer counts and click-through rate.

Earning money through ads can be a long-term investment of your time, but with every video comes another avenue of revenue. Simply put, the more good content you create — the better your chances of generating significant traffic.

After a few weeks of making 2-20 cents per day, things can look mighty bleak. Trust me, if you stick to your guns and strive to make the best videos you can, the profits will follow. You never know when one of your videos will suddenly catch on and become the next big thing.

Chris Crocker, famous for doing his “Leave Britney Alone” video, had been making content on YouTube for over a year prior to his one big hit that put his account over the top. The same could be said for just about any “YouTube celebrity” out there. Not everyone hits a grand slam on the first swing.

Practice Smart Pre-Roll Ad Placement

Pre-roll ads are described as TrueView in-stream ads by YouTube. These ads play before your videos. While they offer a great per-view payment, they may also be hindering your ability to attract new subscribers to your channel.

Simply put, no one likes sitting through a 30 second advertisement to watch a one-minute video. Use these ads on long videos that last fifteen minutes or more, or on content that is absolutely exclusive to your channel and can’t be found anywhere else.

For example, if you’re the only person with a video up about how to add a watermark to a video using Final Cut Pro X, then that video serves a needed purpose for the viewer and they may be more inclined to sit through the advertisement to get the information.

You still receive income from Overlay in-video ads, which appear as lower-third advertisements over your video for a brief time. I’ve personally had better luck sticking to just these ads than using both the Overlay and TrueView options.

If you wouldn’t want to sit through it, neither would your potential viewer.

Keep a Close Eye on Terms and Conditions

Terms and conditions are important to YouTube Partners and anyone else that earns money from their channel. These terms set the standard for what you can (and can’t) get away with in your videos if you expect Google to send you an AdSense check at the end of the month.

Often, these changes are minor and don’t really impact you directly. Sometimes though, these changes can mean being able to display your own ads in your videos or not. Either way, you risk losing all of your revenue (and your videos) if you fail to read the fine print before posting.

Are you allowed to sell your own ads in addition to YouTube monetization? Can these ads be tied to the content, or do they have to be still images? How long can these images be on screen in a given video? All of these questions can be answered in the terms and conditions.

As an additional resource, you might want to download the official YouTube Playbook, a step-by-step guide of best practices and tips to help you build your audience without breaking terms and conditions to do so.

Be Honest

Every monetized video comes with a small survey that you’re asked to fill out. This helps Google determine if your video contains anything that may be subject to copyright. Music playing in the background, video game images, screenshots of programs and art that you didn’t make, and considerations need to be documented before you hit that monetize button. If you answer dishonestly, you could have your video removed from YouTube and risk losing your ability to monetize your channel entirely.

Also, if you do use someone else’s work as part of your video (even with permission) you should consider giving them a link in your video’s description or offering an annotation somewhere in your video that sends viewers to the other channel. This could pay off for you in a big way as that person returns the favor and sends their viewers your way. Karma has a strange way of making everyone’s life a little better in the tech world.

The First 10 Seconds are Critical

In many cases, your views don’t count unless your audience watches your video at least most of the way through. Ads don’t always appear at the exact beginning of your videos, either. In fact, many of the overlay ads happen at some point near the middle. In order to get credit for the impression, you’ll want to pay attention to how you tease your video at the very beginning.

Take a few seconds to tell viewers what they can expect later in the video. At the very least, start each video with a compelling pull that catches viewer’s attention and makes them want to keep watching.

The best examples of this I’ve seen can be found on professional podcasts. You’ll notice that they record a brief intro giving hints to the three or four biggest (or most interesting) points made throughout the remainder of the show. This is all done in the first 5-10 seconds, with no delay between the start and the tease.

For Example:

“Hey there YouTube, I’m Matt Ryan AKA the Frugal Geek and I can’t wait until Friday. Friday is when I get to switch on my new solar panel array.”

Could be changed to…

“Hey there YouTube, I’m Matt Ryan and today I’m going to show you how to save money on electricity.”

The hook has to be there at the very beginning, and it needs to instantly relay what the viewer will get out of the rest of the video. Even if you do a silly vlog, make the first 5-10 seconds as interesting and informative as possible.

Original article:
http://www.lockergnome.com/media/2012/04/13/youtube-monetization-tips/

YouToo can earn £100,000 on YouTube

When Howard Davies-Carr uploaded a video of his two children on to YouTube, he thought it would be seen only by his sons' godfather and a few friends. More than 400m views later, it has earned him well over £100,000.

The clip of one-year-old Charlie mischievously nibbling his three-year-old brother Harry's finger, known as "Charlie bit my finger – again!", became a global phenomenon.

Davies-Carr now regularly uploads videos of his sons – satisfying a cooing international audience and earning him money from the adverts YouTube places next to the clips. In his case, they include a leading baby milk provider, Oxfam and Vodafone.

"I've always filmed the boys, but now I make a short extract to upload. I'm grateful to have these snapshots of the boys growing up – the money is a bonus." You would be forgiven for thinking Davies-Carr's story is a fluke – even he puts his success "entirely down to luck". But increasing numbers of people are earning money through the advertising revenue generated by their videos – and not only clips that have gone "viral", such as the one of the man cursing his dog, Fenton, as it chased deer across Richmond Park.

Across Britain, people of all ages are putting their hobbies online and uploading films to an audience which waits with bated breath. Livie Rose, 21, originally from Swansea and now living near Brighton, started filming make-up tutorials in January 2010 after she got hooked on the beauty videos produced by teenagers in America.

"My mother saw the videos I was watching and said 'You could do that', so I did," she told Guardian Money. Rose has deferred studying politics at Queen Mary University in east London to concentrate on her YouTube channel, "liviesays", and has even created a studio from her earnings.

"I don't want to lose the chance to study, but the channel was starting to take me places. I didn't want to miss out on an opportunity." The hobby she describes as her "unnatural interest in make-up", earns her anything from £50 to several thousand pounds each month, depending on the popularity of her videos. "I didn't set out to make this into a living, but it's the best kind of hobby, because I get to make money out of it."

She adds: "The proportion YouTube takes is fixed, but it doesn't actually take that much. Say I earned £1, they would probably take about 10p."

Video makers can earn money from advertising via the site's partner programme, a scheme aimed at regular uploaders with big audiences. Basically, this means you share in the revenue generated when people watch. Partners must agree to YouTube allowing "relevant" adverts to be placed alongside, and even within, their videos and earn money based on a combination of "impressions" (views) and "clicks" (how many people click on the ad). "Pre-roll advertising" – those often annoying ads you have to watch before the video starts playing – can be particularly lucrative, as advertisers are willing to pay more.

All of this means the amount of money you can earn will vary dramatically. However, YouTube insists that "partners will always get the majority of the [ad] revenue".

There are more than 20,000 partners worldwide. While the site wouldn't disclose how many there are in Britain, it claims it has seen a "seven-times increase" in the number of UK partners earning more than $10,000 (around £6,460) a year, plus a 154% increase in revenues received.

Anyone can apply to be a partner as long as they regularly upload original videos that are viewed by thousands of people, and either own, or have permission to use, all the audio and video content, it says. This means videos featuring pop songs, a movie, TV or video game visuals can be problematic.

Shoo Rayner, 55, a children's author from the Forest of Dean, whose mission statement is to teach the world to draw, has been sharing artistic tips for two years, and has racked up well over 2m views. He has his own channel, Shoo Rayner Drawing. "I'm not making an enormous amount but I am hoping to do this full time soon," he says. "I'll have to do other things, as well – I'm starting a course on YouTube for business, and I can do speaking engagements to top up my earnings – but I expect around 60% of my income will come from YouTube advertising."

Rayner adds: "You can't predict the amount you're going to make, although I find January is pretty lean and it starts building from there until Christmas. You can see your earnings ticking up throughout the day, depending on who has watched the video."

Rebecca Flint, who is 16 and from the Isle of Man, has sold language learning books, music CDs and dance DVDs after a video of her dancing to pop songs went viral, propelling her to Japanese stardom. Her stage name is Beckii Cruel, and she now has her own website, beckii.co.uk

"When I first started, I was filming the videos on a laptop in my bedroom and then overlaying the music," she says. "Nothing happened at first but then, suddenly, I went viral. It was a complete surprise. It's been fantastic – I've had the opportunity to travel to Japan eight times and perform live."

But you don't have to go viral to make it, according to Steve Roberts, who lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. His football skills tutorials (available on his YouTube channel, STRskillSchool) have more than 48,000 subscribers. "I judge my success according to how many people come back to watch each week. If you've got something interesting to say, or a hobby to share – put it on video."

So what happens if that clip of your cat climbing into a box ends up "doing a Fenton"? YouTube claims its technology can predict when a video is about to go massive. "We can contact the owner and offer to start serving up advertising, so they can make money from a one-week sensation," it says.

The Fenton clip was reportedly filmed by a 13-year-old boy, and has inspired a range of spin-off items. In early December, the boy's father was quoted as saying: "We won't be buying a Caribbean island just yet." At that point, the clip had been viewed by just over 1 million people. By this week, it had been viewed more than 4.4 million times – and counting.

Original article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jan/13/earn-money-youtube-viral-video