American entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks’ owner, and HDNet CEO, Mark Cuban, has some harsh criticism for Google Inc. with regard to YouTube and its lack of a sustainable business plan.
In a speech at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California on Wednesday, Cuban referred to the videosharing site as “a disaster waiting to happen.”
More specifically, Cuban was referring to the fact that the company lacked a monetization strategy from the get-go. And, despite its many efforts to squeeze revenue out of the mainly user-generated content-filled site, YouTube still struggles to be profitable.
Cuban questioned Google’s logic behind its purchase of YouTube, saying that the company focused on ubiquity rather than making money. “This is a company that is literally subsidizing the bandwidth for the world,” he said.
In that respect, Paul and I agree with Cuban.
(Though we find his disdain of broadband video delivery inevitable given that he owns a cable HD delivery network AND a chain of movie theaters.)
However, YouTube does not look to be going away anytime soon…NOR is broadband video.
In fact, comSCORE Video Metrix service recently reported that in March 2009, U.S. Internet users viewed 14.5 BILLION online videos during the month, representing an increase of 11 percent versus February.
Even more interesting is that YouTube accounted for nearly 40% of that share with 5.9 billion videos viewed by 99.7 million U.S. Internet viewers on the property in just that one month. By the way, second place went to Fox Interactive Media (which is MySpace Video) with a whopping 3% of the share. A HUGE difference!
With all due respect to Mr. Cuban though, we do get his point about needing a PLAN when we approach any business endeavor. Google/YouTube lacked that focus from the start, and now they are scrambling to make up for it. (And we’re confident they will.)
Paul and I always recommend starting out with a plan. In fact, one of the first places we start in YouTube Secret Weapon is by having you determine exactly what you’re in it for. (And yes, we know: We’re all “in it to win it.”) 
Which of the many online marketing benefits do YOU–the business owner–plan to achieve from your YouTube efforts?
In the end, turning a “profit” from your YouTube videos can be measured in a variety of ways:
- Lead Generation and List Building — Attracting new leads and qualified, targeted traffic
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on YouTube AND Google
- Getting your videos to come up in the Google search results with a thumbnail for your top keywords (go search “YouTube Secret Weapon” now to see how this works!)
- Driving qualified, targeted traffic back to your main website/blog
- Higher conversions with the traffic you send back over to my main website/blog
- Using YouTube strategically as part of your overall Social Marketing Plan
- Gaining more exposure for yourself or your cause (music, comedy, political ideas…)
- Higher viewer numbers (which is really not what it’s about, but we understand that
egos are involved here, too)
And then, of course, there are those who aim to make money directly from their YouTube videos by marketing affiliate products. $! (Yes, we teach that, too.)
So what’s your plan for using YouTube as a part of your online marketing efforts?
Sign up for the YouTube Secret Weapon email list off to the right of this post, because perhaps one of our free emails will help you answer that question. And once you get clear on your purpose and intention, the rest is a piece o’ cake…
As a sidenote: One of our biggest goals in marketing via YouTube is to get more traffic to our main sites and blogs. Another source for that traffic is Pay-Per-Click advertising, or PPC.
This weekend in Las Vegas, some of the greatest minds in PPC are getting together to teach PPC, and they are giving everyone access to the live stream for FREE.
Gain 2-Day LIVE Access For Free Here ==>> http://budurl.com/vegasfree
I wonder what Mark Cuban would think of THAT use of broadband video?
Source of Cuban Story: The Wall Street Journal
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Very good points. I’ve put up a lot of videos on YouTube just as a place to host them for a Cjun Cooking recipe site that I have, and really have not benefited from anything other than perhaps getting some extra visitors to my site. I guess I do not have a monetiztion plan either.
hi julie,
googles decision to purchase youtube even with out a plan was a no brainer. whilst they are paying a heaft bill each month, they have bought the biggest list in the world and they WILL monetize it. remember the even in traditional 80% of new business don’t come into black ink until after the 3 year mark. why would google-youtube “business” be any different.
matty t
melbourne
Mike - I’m sorry to hear that you are not benefiting as much as you could be from your YouTube videos. (Then again, “some extra visitors” is better than no extra visitors.)
It’s possible that with a few tweaks, those “some” could turn into “a lot” of visitors.
Hey, as a matter of fact, I just did a search on YouTube for “cajun recipes,” and one of your videos was the top listing. And searching “cajun recipes youtube” on Google has your turnip greens video coming up #1 (even above an Expert Village video). Nice work!
Not sure if that was intentional or not, but you do seem to have some pretty good tagging and title-ing techniques there. A couple things I might suggest:
1) Add a bit more copy to your channel page discussing what some of the benefits are if they venture over to cajuncookingtv.com. I would also get the link in there a few more times.
2) Consider a custom background image, or perhaps just a custom color scheme to match colors on your main site, to brand the channel a bit.
3) I see you only have 288 subscribers — that’s shocking given how great your content is. Get out there and add some friends, Mike! Friends will led to subscribers, trust me. It’s like magic. Yet you must have a strategy on who to invite. Find a similar channel to your own (if not cajun, then perhaps southern cooking, or just other niche specialty cooking channels) and send friend invites to their subscribers and friends lists. To make it even easier, you can think about a tool that we recommend and have looked into closely. It’s a friend-adding software, yet it does not violate the YouTube Terms of Service (and many of the YouTube Secret Weapon students use it religiously around-the-clock with only positive results). It does cost $7.95 a month and has a $19.95 activation fee, but we forfeited our commission on the activation fee in order to give YouTube Secret Weapon owners a $10 discount. Now, it’s just $9.95 to sign up, and $7.95 a month. I’m happy to pass that savings along to you. Just visit http://www.TubeTrafficStrategies.com. (The tool is called Tube Toolbox, but that link will take you to the page for our discount.) I recommend trying it out for a month — I can almost guarantee that if you put a little strategy behind it’s use, you’ll add 50-100 new subscribers in 30-days.
4) Start posting your videos as responses to other highly-trafficked videos in your niche. They don’t have to be purposely a response — the videos you target could just be great food accompaniment recipes to your own OR something to do with the cajun tradition/music/lifestyle. (By the way, I played washboard/spoons with Jimmy Thibodeaux and his zydeco band on three separate trips to New Orleans. I can play one helluva washboard, Mike.
I’ve still got the one from Jimmy with me, though my neighbors aren’t too fond of me practicing. …LOVE Zydeco.) Anyway, back to my point on the video responses — don’t assume that people who will enjoy your videos know to look for them. Find related videos to related yourself to and try to borrow from their audiences. There are a myriad of other methods for getting your videos to come up in a related videos section next to videos you think will have a good target audience for you, but I can’t spill all the beans here, you know. (Pun intended.) 
5) Check your YouTube Insight statistics to research what keywords people are using to find your various videos. Then take that information, and tweak things accordingly. Some things you might consider doing is getting more of your main keywords into your video descriptions. We find that using a keyword or keyword phrase 3-4 times in a description increases the likelihood you’ll rank high for that term. Also, think about adding more tags to some of your videos. You definitely have the main ones down for each recipe, but there’s each and every video should have “cajun” and “recipe” in there (as an example). Your YouTube Insight data will likely yield some additional keywords you can better optimize for on all or some of your videos.
6) The main key to getting more of these great videos to come up in the Google results boils down to creating more inbound links to both your videos AND your YouTube channel. While you are out the building links to your blog, try creating a few directly to your YouTube videos. Granted, the point is to ultimately get them over to the main site anyway — but there are a lot of community factors on YouTube that contribute to how well your videos rank on the site (and Google). In the end, you’d be far more likely to hit page 1 of Google with a YouTube video thumbnail than you would competing with so many other cajun cooking websites. Therefore, while out building link backs, throw in a few that point directly to your videos AND a few directly to your channel.
7) Playlists, playlists, playlists. Build some. The importance of them is not so much to showcase them on your channel, but rather to get your playlists coming up in the YouTube search results. Lately, playlists are hitting the top 3-4 spots for any given keyword. Don’t let it be someone else’s collection. Create your own.
So there you go — just a handful of YouTube Secret Weapon tips that oughta help you some.
Thanks for stopping by my blog, Mike.
~Julie
Great point, Matty. Paul and I agree that YouTube will find a way to monetize better than it has already. (As will Twitter, for that matter.) If anything, it’s an incredible database they’ve got there. And you know what they say — the money is in the list.
Seriously though, Cuban just feels threatened because broadband video represents such a threat to his HD cable network.
Loved your Cuban Comments!
Like most things having to do with YouTube - you were right on!
My Guess Is that in the future, Google will have click Thru’s on the screen (while the Video Plays) and charge for that - to monetize it. Kinda of Like a Viral PPC campaign.
Just a Guess, But it is better to have something like YouTube and try to figure out how best to use it - than not to have it all!
Have Fun!
Ben
Hey Ben - Thanks for dropping by! Very interesting futuristic look ahead. I like that prediction… seems very viable.
Either way, you’re right — best to figure out how to utilize the tool for its tremendous marketing benefits now!
Best!
~Julie
Julie,
WOW!
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and to give me so many valuable tips!
You taught me more about YouTube in your post reply than I’ve learned in the year or so I’ve been on it!
Thanks again, I really appreciate it!
Mike Stokes
Baton Rouge, LA
Just one word: great!