Youtube or My Own Video Site?

15 replies
Hello everyone,

I have recently though about making video content based around a niche that I picked.

My question is should I stick with youtube where my channel would have the possibility of being lost in the crowd or should I make my own website where I could get a more targeted audience and monetize the site when the time is right?

Thank you for any replies as they would be a big help in helping me decide.
#site #video #youtube
  • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
    Originally Posted by sflosi34 View Post

    I have recently though about making video content based around a niche that I picked.

    My question is should I stick with youtube where my channel would have the possibility of being lost in the crowd or should I make my own website where I could get a more targeted audience and monetize the site when the time is right?
    Why not keep your YouTube channel and also feature the videos on your own site?
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    • Profile picture of the author sflosi34
      Originally Posted by Frank Donovan View Post

      Why not keep your YouTube channel and also feature the videos on your own site?
      Thanks for the reply. I should have more clear. I haven't made a channel yet. While I like your idea my niche would be gaming and I'm not sure it would work keeping content on separate sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author jduck1979
    Stick with Youtube.... trust me, it's far less expense & hassle with maintenance + nagging from webhosts when it comes to running video* + finding people to take a look at the videos.

    Use a website/blog + other social media to drive people to the Youtube channel.

    *especially if you use cheapo shared hosting instead of a full bells & whistles dedicated server.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    YouTube all the way. Because you will be tapping into a global audience and one of the largest search engines on earth and all the new features on YT are dazzling.

    I find myself getting lost in the features on the site. Stunning really. All for free too. The only cost is learning how to effectively use these techniques and tools but the folks over there are making it easier and easier and easier to do so.

    After you uploaded your videos to YT you can simply start your own self-hosted Wordpress blog and paste the embed codes from the YouTube videos.

    Best of both worlds. You branded yourself properly through your blog yet you tap into YouTube's monster global audience and search capabilities.

    Ryan
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    • Profile picture of the author sflosi34
      Originally Posted by ryanbiddulph View Post

      YouTube all the way. Because you will be tapping into a global audience and one of the largest search engines on earth and all the new features on YT are dazzling.

      I find myself getting lost in the features on the site. Stunning really. All for free too. The only cost is learning how to effectively use these techniques and tools but the folks over there are making it easier and easier and easier to do so.

      After you uploaded your videos to YT you can simply start your own self-hosted Wordpress blog and paste the embed codes from the YouTube videos.

      Best of both worlds. You branded yourself properly through your blog yet you tap into YouTube's monster global audience and search capabilities.

      Ryan
      Thank you for the detailed reply. I think I have a better understanding of which way I want to go. I just need to make sure I do my due diligence before I start.
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  • Profile picture of the author Silentkiller1
    You won't be lost with YouTube if you promote your videos well just like with separate website. Also YouTube provides free hosting for videos and believe me that is really going to save you money unless you have private content. You can put videos on YouTube and then just embed them in your website to get more views.
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  • Profile picture of the author sflosi34
    Thank you everyone for the responses. The only thing I am concerned with is the advertiser boycott that is currently hitting youtube. Not that money is the main goal in putting out videos, but I would like to see some money for the time and I don't know if ad revenue will do that.
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    • Profile picture of the author EelKat
      Originally Posted by sflosi34 View Post

      Hello everyone,

      I have recently though about making video content based around a niche that I picked.

      My question is should I stick with youtube where my channel would have the possibility of being lost in the crowd or should I make my own website where I could get a more targeted audience and monetize the site when the time is right?

      Thank you for any replies as they would be a big help in helping me decide.
      What I do is publish videos to YouTube, then embed then into the articles on my website.

      I don't focus on driving traffic to YouTube, rather I focus on driving traffic to my website pages that the videos are embedded into.

      If you look at my YouTube channel you can see a stark difference in the view counts of videos embedded in my site and videos just on YouTube only. The ones on YouTube only have 20 to 30 views each; while the ones embedded into my web site have 2,000 to 65,000 views each. Quite a big difference. My videos with the highest view counts get their views from my website visitors watching my videos on my website.

      Not many people visit my YouTube channel and watch my videos directly from YouTube, but most of my website traffic watches the videos embedded on my site.

      I think it is very difficult to rank super high in YouTube search results because there are so many YouTube videos being made every day. Whereas, it's easier to rank a web page high on Google search results, and put the video on that page, resulting in the video ranking high, because the site page ranks high.

      I have 600+ videos and only about 100 of them are embedded into my website yet. I have to get to work on embedding the rest, because that really does have a massive effect on view counts.

      Based on what I see happening on my own channel, I think it's far more productive to focus SEO marketing on a website page, and embed your youtube videos into that page. While I have seen SEO marketing work in a few videos, it seems to work far better in website pages, so promoting web pages with my youtube videos embedded into them, is a bigger focus for me, then just promoting the YouTube videos on their own in YouTube.

      Originally Posted by sflosi34 View Post

      Thanks for the reply. I should have more clear. I haven't made a channel yet. While I like your idea my niche would be gaming and I'm not sure it would work keeping content on separate sites.
      Write a quick article about the game, then post your videos at the end, saying something like... "And now you can watch me actually play the game and see for yourself how great it is!"

      That's what I do for my gaming videos.

      So far I've only done it for my Slime Rancher videos.

      I have have a full 500 hour playthrough of Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt going up... one that includes me modded the hell out of the game and turning Geralt into a pink Necromancer Elf and his horse Roach into a glittering purple unicorn that shoots lightening bolts (mods are amazing!)... the witcher senses are pink and purple.... and omg, I figured out how to dye his armour pink.... then I had him run off chasing pigeons and running away from monsters instead of fighting them....and there's and entire section where I decided to see how long it would take to pick 1,000 flowers out in the field... the answer... it took 4 hours. I made a 4 hour long video of hippie Geralt picking flowers for no reason at all. At level 16 I went after a level 30 Basilisk and spent 5 hours dying over and over again... but finally defeated it...

      I turned Geralt into a fruitcake ...

      500 episodes of Geralt acting like he's high on opium.

      I guarantee you've never seen anyone play Witcher the way I do... And that was easy mode... I'm gonna replay the whole thing on Death March...

      Right now, I'm doing something equally as insane... I'm making 500 pages for my website... and I'm going to comment on every single video in the 500 episode mega series of Geralt as drug addicted flower picking, pigeon chasing hippie who runs from monsters.

      In short... I'm gonna do what I do best: write fanfiction... I'm writing 500 pages of fan fiction... and embedding the corresponding video into it. I'm gonna drive Geralt's screaming fangirls from fanfiction.net straight to my website to read Geralt fanfiction where they'll also find my psycho cray pink Geralt on a purple unicorn gameplay videos to watch.

      Hey, it is absolutely, completely, totally, 100% possible to make gaming content for your website and embed your gaming videos into them.

      Think creatively. You can and will find a way to create pages on your website that allow you to embed your gaming videos.

      Originally Posted by sflosi34 View Post

      Thank you everyone for the responses. The only thing I am concerned with is the advertiser boycott that is currently hitting youtube. Not that money is the main goal in putting out videos, but I would like to see some money for the time and I don't know if ad revenue will do that.
      The "YouTube" boycott, doesn't just effect YouTube... ALL of AdSense is being hit hard by it. And it has nothing to do with how much you make per click.

      The $1 per 1,000 view myth, is respun everywhere and has no real basis in fact at all, because Google pays you per ad CLICKED on, not per ad impressions viewed, as the common myth falsely says. Once you get into YouTube you're gonna start hearing everyone preaching the $1 per 1,000 views chant. Ignore them. They haven't got a clue what they are talking about.

      AdSense pays 61% of AdWords bid rate.

      Go to your AdWords account (log in is same as your AdSense, if you have one you have both) click on "Tools" > "Keyword Planner"

      In the Keyword planner, type in any keyword (tag) that you use in your videos. It'll give you a list of relevant similar keywords, tell you how many search it receives each month, and more importantly it tells you the bid rate.

      The bid rate is the cost the advertiser pays per click to AdWords. AdSence in turn pays you 61% of that.

      In other words if the bid rate is $1. That means the advertiser pays Google $1 per click and Google in turn pays you .61c per click.

      Bid rates start at .01c and can go up to several thousands. There exist keywords where the advertiser pays $5,000+ per click. Meaning if you get clicks on your video from that particular keyword, YouTube would pay you $3,050 for ONE CLICK on just ONE VIEW of your video.

      High paying keywords are rare, so it doesn't happen often.

      MOST keyword bids are under .50c per click, MANY are under .10c per click. meaning that MOST often you get paid only .06c to .30c per click. Which for MOST creators translates into about $1 per 1,000 views.

      For everybody who makes $1/1000 there are just as many making .20c/1000 and as many making $100/1000.

      $1/1000 is the AVERAGE, meaning the bell curve center that MOST people can expect, but it also means that there are also lower and higher pays, and some are extremely low or extremely high on the far ends of the bell curve.

      If you are making .50c/1,000 views that simply means you are using low bid keywords to tag your videos with, as Google pays you per click, not per view.

      Most people AVERAGE $1 per 1,000 views, because most people are using low performing keywords that advertisers only pay .01c per click. Yet there exist keywords that pay $100 or more per click. Try using those high bid keywords in your tags and you'll see a dramatic increase in your ad income without any increase in your view counts at all.

      If you want to try to use "Keyword SEO" to target higher advertiser bid rates, you need to use AdWords Keyword Planner Tool, search for your target keyword, filter the search results to show by highest bid rate, and then use ONLY keywords of $1 or more per bid rate, striving for $5 or more keywords (which pay you $3.50 per click) and if you can find them use the $20 to $30 keywords. (Keywords over $30 are rare, but you can find them if you are persistent enough in searching for them.)

      You can increase both your pay and your views, simply by changing your tags and targeting high bid keywords. Try it. It works.

      **SOURCE: I'm a Keyword SEO Internet Marketer; a job I've had since 1997; I do YouTube as a hobby; I have not yet focused on it as an income, though it is something I plan to do this summer, after I reach 2,000 subs. It's pointless to do it until you have enough subs to make it worth your while. Content Writing Using KeyWord SEO is my full time job, AdSense is my full time income. I write daily articles, each one targeting a keyword, drive it to #1 on page 1 of Google search engines. I've written 6,000+ articles this way. I have one article that brings in $200 a month, just that one article, using this method. It works on YouTube as well, I tested it out last month and took an 8 month old video with 300 views to 25,000 views in the space of 3 weeks, doing nothing but keyword targeting it's tags to increase views. I'm about to go through all 600 of my videos and do the same thing with the rest of them.**

      YouTube income is down because 250+ of the top paying advertisers (including Wall Street Journal, Coke, Pepsi, Starbucks, WalMart, AT&T, BBC, General Motors, Chrysler, CNN, Johnson&Johnson, and 250 other companies) just pulled out funding from AdSense and are boycotting Google & YouTube...

      (they are boycotting because the KKK's website had been approved for AdSense and was displaying their ads and their ads got played on a public execution that was live streamed on YouTube; Google claims they didn't know the KKK's web site was being funding by AdSense and have banned it now (March 28, 2017) ... )

      Disney right now is pulling the strings, threatening to pull their ads from Google, Google stocks are plummeting, they've lost $571million since the boycott started (March 2017) and Google is bending over backwards trying to not lose Disney (which they are saying could end revenue for YouTube creators as they claim Disney pays more then 70% of all AdSense income on YouTube) while trying to get the other's back -

      ad income for us content creators is down 88% across the board for every body... NOT just YouTube, but every body with a website or blog that is funded by Google AdSense as well.

      A lot of people are trying to blame AdSense plummeting on their blogs and websites, with the FRED update and in most cases the FRED update had nothing to do with it at all, rather the YouTube boycott is what has sent their AdSense income straight down into the darkest pits of hell.

      In other words, people who normally earn $1,000 a month are right now struggling to reach $200 a month and if Disney joins the boycott those numbers could drop significantly lower. Disney pays 70% of ALL AdSense income to ALL AdSense funding websites, blogs, and YouTube. If Disney pulls out that'll be a 70% drop in income for EVERYONE who has AdSense on their websites and blogs as well as everyone on YouTube.

      The reason income for us is down is because almost all the big bidders (the ones who pay $10 or more per click) have stopped putting ads on Google and have closed down their AdWords accounts to protect Google. Thus only a few small paying bidders are paying for AdWords right now, meaning right now their is a high rate of ,01c per click bids and a low rate of $5+ per click bids, making AdSense income lower for everyone.

      You want to blame someone for low income, blame the Ku Klux Klan. It's that live streaming an execution of a non-white gay man that caused all this. Companies are pissed that they paid for the ads on the KKK's videos, essentially paying the KKK to murder someone. You'd be pissed if YOUR company paid for something like that too.

      Google is standing on thin ice right now and they've got the viscous Mouse King holding a noose over their heads; Disney is viciously attacking YouTube content creators; Buying out the biggest channels and shutting down ones they don't like.

      Disney just bought RevelMode

      -then shut it down;

      Disney just bought Maker Studios

      - then shut it down;

      Disney just took over primary share holdings of Google's YouTube Red

      - then shut down it's biggest shows and replaced them with Disney shows -

      Disney just took over as primary share holder of Google's AdSense Premier Program

      - then shut down tens of thousands of YouTube channels deleting millions of videos in an instant; while simultaneously banning AdSense users left and right

      And all this has happened in the last 2 months

      Google is in financial trouble and Disney is cleaning up the mess - the "family friendly" ToS change of April 8, 2017, is just the first we should expect to see

      We are right now watching the death of Google as dozens more advertisers join the boycott every day. And it turns out, like every other company on the planet, Google can't survive without the Mouse. Who knew the Mouse was pulling so many strings behind the scenes of Google?

      Google is on edge right now, Disney has the upper hand (and waaaaay more money) if things get nastier then they already are, we could see Disney owning Google by the end of the year.

      The two biggest companies on the planet are dukeing it out right now and Google relies on it's advertisers to keep them going, while Disney is fully self funding and relies on no one but themselves... and poor Google, Disney pays 70% of their advertising income...Google is going down and they're going down fast.

      If they can't get Coke, Pepsi, and WalMart back, they may not be able to fight Disney on this.

      Disney wants YouTube and it looks like they are willing to kill AdSense income for everybody to get it.

      I'm waiting to see how this all ends. If Google can recover from this or is Google going to become yet another victim of the Mouse?
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  • Profile picture of the author iwantbreak
    In my opinion, you should focus on sticking to making creatively innovative videos for YouTube that are both informative as well as funny...starting a video site of your own will do no good to you since people are not used to switching to other video sites from YouTube except for a few rare ones like Vimeo or MetaCafe...
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
    You have only one viable solution, matey:

    1. Youtube and
    2. Twitch and
    3. Your own website (embeds).

    Originally Posted by sflosi34

    I have recently though about making video content based around a niche that I picked. My question is should I stick with youtube where my channel would have the possibility of being lost in the crowd or should I make my own website where I could get a more targeted audience and monetize the site when the time is right?
    Originally Posted by sflosi34

    While I like your idea my niche would be gaming and I'm not sure it would work keeping content on separate sites.
    I'm involved in gaming myself.

    You're wondering if, by housing your gaming videos on your own website, you'll be able to stand out in the crowd and at the same time monetize those videos however you fancy. Truth is, sflosi34, you'll be far more lost in the crowd if you stick to your own website. Reason being: the bulk of your core gaming audience hang out on Youtube, Twitch, and Facebook, so unless you have enough money to advertise sufficiently on those platforms, you won't be able to give them a big enough reason to come hang out on your website; and having a separate website with niche gaming videos won't be enough (it would truly have to be one heck of an exceptional website).

    What you need to do, mate, is this (what follows is the plan in a nutshell, the basics, so you'll have to fill in the blanks; I'm a bit short on time):

    1. Know the gaming market in a video context.
    2. Decide on your something special and unique (USP).
    3. Put together a website to capture your audience.
    4. Website should also function to syndicate your media.
    5. Locate yourself on Youtube and Twitch.
    6. Likewise: FB, Twitter, Instagram, G+, Reddit, Pinterest.
    7. Likewise: major gaming forums.
    8. Strong newsletter on your website.
    9. Strong reason for using your website:
    10. Content unique to your website (info, articles, images, gifs).
    11. Also embed your videos.
    12. Monetize (website) with affiliate products & services.
    13. Monetize+ (website) your own merch.
    14. Optimize your videos for internal & external search (Google).
    15. Infuse videos with virality.
    16. Use socials (etc) to syndicate your videos.
    17. Get into live streaming (when you can).
    18. Grow socials.
    19. Grow brand.
    20. Youtube partnership program.

    You've chosen the most competitive market on Youtube, gaming, so for you to have a hope you absolutely must put all of your current energies in figuring out a way to give an audience (an audience, not all of 'em, most likely) what they want, and do so in a fairly unique/ stand out manner. You can't just get into this by hoping to make some Fallout 4 walk-throughs or whatever. It needs to be strategically planned; you absolutely must find your niche.

    Best of luck, matey. You've chosen a fun and thriving area in which to work. I wish you the best!

    - Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author seomental
    upload videos on YT and embed the video on your site with article.it will be great
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  • Profile picture of the author hardworker2013
    Google owns youtube so if you build an highly optimized youtube channel you will get some traffic from both google and Youtube. You can then redirect this traffic to your own website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    You've chosen the most competitive market on Youtube, gaming
    According to whom? The gremlins that live under your bed?

    Not that money is the main goal in putting out videos, but I would like to see some money for the time and I don't know if ad revenue will do that.
    Use your YT videos to get people on your site or an affiliate product site. The best bet is to send people to a squeeze page offering a killer freebie.

    Gaming is a huge, diverse market. I suggest you focus on one particular game to start.

    Also, gaming is populated with a lot of room temperature IQs, hotheads, and idiots. I strongly suggest you not allow comments on your videos or moderate them. I had a gaming channel with over 40 videos nuked because according to YT: "Your channel causes too much discontent within the YT community."

    Idiots arguing in the comments of my videos.
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  • Profile picture of the author IcahStone
    There's so many videos in youtube that were already went viral. I read an article about the video that went viral in just few weeks after it posted. Its a school presentation actually and they decided to post it on youtube. They did not really thought that people will gonna enjoy it but it actually became a big hit to the netizens. Somehow, I can say maybe its also because they find the concept of the video a bit interesting and is unique as well.

    In my own opinion, you should also try your luck in posting more videos. Just keep it natural and also think of other ways or innovate as well so that your videos will click to the netizens.
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