YouTube is the new distribution channel

"I've never had more than 200 people watch a film that I've made," Mr. Goldenberg, 26, said. "Then we had 150,000 people watch our movie in a week. It's pretty crazy."

Ben Goldenberg, producer of  White Collar Criminals (2nd place winner in Project:Direct)

Some YouTube stats

(vastly outdated: March 2008 from Digital Ethnography) 

Total videos uploaded: 78.3 Million

Videos uploaded per day: over 150,000

Time it would take to view all of the material on YouTube (as of March 17th 2008): 412.3 years

335x150k = 50.2 million since then

Total: 128.5 million

Not just YouTube

• blip.tv (think shows instead of clips)
  • 10 reasons why blip is better than YouTube (subscription services, more formats supported, no video limits
• Viddler (excellent commenting system & branding options)
• Dailymotion, Metacafe, Veoh and Revver also popular (more from Wikipedia)
• The Lee Lefever approach - use them all
  • TubeMogul lets you upload a video to many video sharing and social network sites

Using YouTube

• Create an account/set up a channel.
  • Name it wisely (your business or yourself).
  • Different account types: Director, Musician, Comedian, Guru and Reporter
  • Fill out your profile and link back to your website URL
  • Brand your channel (CBC)
• The watch page (video interface)
  • Embed (customize player)
  • Share & Favorite (expanded share options)
  • Commentary
  • More info (tags & Category)
• My account
  • Set always playback high rate video
  • Fill out your profile

Producing & Uploading

• Optimize your videos for upload (YouTube)
• Handbook for producers (YouTube)
• Learning section  (blip.tv)
• Fill out all the details - catagory, description, tags & include link back to your site.

  

   

• Post-production (YouTube)

  • Annotate and add links within your video (Magic card trick)
  • Audioswap
  • Subtitle and Closed Caption (example)
  • Create custom player (playlist example) and for code monkeys there is an api for YouTube which allows you to create a site like Totlol, a video website for kids built on YouTube videos or Jogli, a music search video.
  • Link to specific point of YouTube video (TechCrunch)

Distributing & Promoting

It's all about the social network and Participatory Media (wikipedia)

• Build a presence on YouTube
• Allow embedding, commenting (Viddler has some great commenting features)
• Cross post and integrate (Twitter, Facebook, your blog), but avoid spamming
• Submit videos to social bookmarking and news sites like Digg, Newsvine and del.icio.us.
• Post a widget with your favorite videos in the sidebar of your blog (you do have a blog, right?).
• Submit your videos to the iTunes podcast directory.
• TAKE PART! Comment on others (and always include a link back to your site, if you can)
• Use stats to track your videos & channels. (Insights)
• Pay for premium spot on YouTube (only US right now)

Advertising & Monetizing

• YouTube Partners channel
  • YouTube Video Pull in Real Money (NY Times)
• Google Adsense overlays (pay per click)
• Viddler uses overlays, pre and post roll advertising (5000 views per month)
• Revver splits ad revenues 50/50

Watch and Download

• 20 tools to download YouTube videos (Mashable)
• Miro - free and open source video player

More information

• Follow YouTube blog