Overnight, it became dead simple to copy and post video to the Internet and everyone started doing it.

Copyright owners wailed and gnashed their teeth. Can you blame them? Suddenly, it was easier to copy and repost their uber-expensive products than it was to make paper copies. (At least you have to pay to make photocopies.)

To get the ball rolling, Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube.  (That lawsuit is still pending I believe.)

In the meantime, someone got intelligent.

A company called Auditude ran the numbers…

It turns out that viewers upload 20 times number of clips that content producers do and viewership of viewer-uploaded videos is SIX times higher than the viewership of videos posted by content owners.

In short, unpaid volunteers were generating more viewers for content owners than the content owners were able to produce for themselves.

MySpace, working with Autitude's technology, can now identify clips produced by Viacom (MTV etc.)  uploaded by MySpace customers and automatically attach relevant ads to them.

How beautiful is this?

Viacom gets paid for its content. MySpace gets paid for access to its audience. Users get to go wild and do what they want to do which is repost video's they like.

Imagine being able to expand the distribution of your product SIXFOLD by just letting people do what they want to do.

For years, "viral marketing" has been the holy grail for marketers. With help from Autitude, Viacom is getting it instead of filing lawsuits to try to stop it.

A genuine viral video

How about 1,234,411 views for one page in September – with no advertising, no SEO, no nothing? Just raw viral power. 

Just in case you didn’t read that right, that’s over ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND views for one page in one month.

Now that I am a genuine viral marketing "expert", here’s what I’ve learned…

But first one more number…

Total views for this video so far: 2,336, 649.

How did I advertise it?

I mailed the address to my list of less than 20,000 once – then again a few months later. And that’s it.

Here’s the real beauty of this…

It’s not a YouTube hit. All this traffic is coming to my site. I’m getting opt-ins. I’m selling clicks with Google.  This one page broke five figures net revenue in September (according to Google’s AdSense accounting program.)

So how did I work this piece of Internet marketing magic?

Two words: Dumb luck.

That’s right. I’m throwing my away my chance to be the next Malcolm Gladstone ("Blink" and "The Tipping Point") by cutting to the chase and telling the truth.

That being said, there are a few fine points I can share about how to profit from an occurrence like this when it happens…some things you can do to enhance the chance it will happen…and the "big secret" behind this and all other viral success stories.

Principle #1: It’s all about the list

Give me the right list and I can put a deranged chimpanzee in the White House. Just a sidebar: Did you know that Karl Rove was, and still is, a primo direct mail guy?

(Note to Bush fans: I did not say "George Bush is a deranged chimpanzee." I could have been talking about Bill Clinton. Or Rutherford B. Hayes.  So don’t rat me out to Bill O’Reilly, OK?)

Anyway, having a "hit" on YouTube is the booby prize.

Yes, it might generate some "friends" but all Web 2.0 BS aside, I don’t want friends, I want subscribers (list members) and I want thousands of them. Preferably tens of thousands of them. (Come to think about it, hundreds of thousands of them.)

You want people to come to YOUR site, not YouTube’s and you want to aggressively go for the opt-in. If I hadn’t done that from Day One – and mailed my list a great new video every day – I would not have had a good sized list to launch the video to in the first place.

Now, because I took this approach, creating a 10,000 – a 20,000 – even a 50,000 + views per video, video promotion is no big deal for me. I can do it in my sleep – to my targeted list.

Notice all the qualifications there…I have a targeted list…I mail them something great and relevant every day…I work constantly to grow the list.

By the way, 100% of my list growth comes from word-of-mouth. Friends tell friends. I do a lot to grease the wheels to make this happen, but that’s it. I’ve never spend one second on SEO. I’ve never bought an AdSense ad. I’ve never sought publicity. I’ve never tried to be viral!

I started with a small existing list of less than 500 active people and a little more than two years later, I’m closing in on 50,000 active subscribers. 

There’s enough room in this particular market for me to hit 100,000 easily, probably much more. But being the "one foot in front of the other" kind of guy I am, I’m not thinking about that. Right now, I’m look at 50,000 and then I’ll look at 100,000 and when I get there, then I’ll start thinking about the next milestone. 

So please, if you want to become "Mr. Viral" (Or "Ms. Viral") realize that it’s all about the list. Passively waiting for the magic to happen…or buying expensive "viral marketing" courses…or reading Malcolm Gladstone books… is not going to make it happen.

Principle #2: If you get up to bat enough times, eventually you will hit a game-winning grand slam home run

Since the summer of 2006 when I started the video magazine site that this super hit is on, I’ve posted 436 videos. Four hundred and thirty six (436.)

My big winner was video #325.

Now please pay close attention to the next thing I’m going to say:

"Not only did I have no idea that this video would take off the way it did, I also almost didn’t post it because I didn’t think it was good enough."

Please read that about 10,000 times and then send me a check for $10,000 because that’s what that advice is worth.

I remember distinctly being tired that night and almost blowing off posting a video that day altogether.

If I had done that…well, let’s just say it would have been a five-figure mistake.

Instead of being able to write about what a marketing genius I am, I’d be quietly grumbling about how much darn work this web site is and how all this Internet video stuff just is a lot of hot air.

What’s the lesson: In addition to being focused on list building, I work my ass off.

A new video every day. Every freaking day. Without fail.  Through thick and thin. For better or for worse. I get up to bat every day.

I laugh when certain people tell me how hard they’re working – and then I look at their sites.  No quality. No consistency. No critical mass of content. No commitment. Of course nothing is happening.

Behind every overnight, viral success story, you’ll find a maniac who is probably working a little too hard

Just to put your mind at rest, I don’t create the videos. I just get them from YouTube or Google video, grab the embed code and put the videos on MY site. Perfectly legit. Google wants you to do it (which is why they give away the embed code.)

By the way, here’s another news flash…I never expected this site to be successful financially. It never occurred to me that it was even possible. I built it first for myself, then for some friends, then for all the strangers who started showing up and were really into the topic. 

You can cut me another $10,000 check for that piece of advice too. I just gave you the formula for risk-free business success.

Bottom line: No one knows in advance where their big "hit" is going to come from. You create a hit by putting lots and lots and lots and lots – did I say lots? – of stuff out there.

Ask 1,000 successful people. I’m sure that in 99.9% of the time, the thing that "made" them was only a tiny fraction of all the stuff they’ve done over the years and in many cases it came as a total surprise.

Principle #3: Play a game worth winning

Getting a million people to watch your video of a kitten in a boot on YouTube is sweet.

It’s also the definition of a booby prize – unless you can somehow extract value from being the guy or gal who got one million people to watch a video of a kitten in a boot. (Good luck on that one. Let me know how it works out for you.)

No, no, no. Numbers alone are meaningless.

Focus on two questions:

1. Is this video helping me build a targeted list?

2. Can I monetize the list?

If 10 billion people watch your kitten in a boot video on YouTube, you may get your fifteen minutes of fame, but that’s it.

If you don’t have a targeted list that you can mail to where you know the people: 1) trust and like you and 2) are interested in the topic you cover – you will not make any money on the Internet.

I know, I know, there are all sorts of exceptions to this. If you can pay your mortgage with the hope of being one of the exceptions, great. Have at it.

On the other hand, if you want to treat the whole "video on the Internet" thing like a business, you will think in terms of building an audience.

(Time to write me another $10,000 check. I just gave you the one thing the Web 2.0 people never talk about. They’re always going on and on about "community." I’m all for community, but it’s audiences who pay my bills.)

There’s a second part to this…go after groups that monetize well.

In other words, if you have a choice of creating content for pan handlers who sleep in doorways or a content for people who are wondering where best to invest their 401Ks, go with the latter, or ANYTHING that results in people buying something.

We’re talking about advertising and publishing. That’s the business you’re in if you’re doing this to make money. 

Google AdSense makes the whole process absurdly simple. Let’s pray that they stay in business, maintain the model as it is, and don’t get insanely greedy.

You send your list members to your new video, you surround it with AdSense ads, a percentage of viewers will click on something, and cha-ching, you’ve got cash.

I know this sounds too easy and too unsophisticated to be of any really value, but I’m sorry that’s how it works. No business plan, no cash flow projections, no pitches to investors. You just get checks and you cash them. How embarrassing.

The size of your check?

It’s a very simple formula – another really embarrassingly simple one that will never get me admitted to the "Captains of Industry Hall of Fame":

"Size of list + relationship you have with list + monetization potential of topic = size of check"

No one – not Google, not God, not George Bush – limits the size of the check.

If you can get the formula right, it can be any size you want.

How to learn more

I’ve shared everything I can easily share with you through a keyboard, but I haven’t shown you: 1) the video, 2) the site it’s on or 3) the software I use to create and manage the site.

If I showed you the page that is getting all these hits, you simply would not believe it – until you saw the stats. It looks like nothing. Remember: I almost didn’t post it because it seemed a little boring.

And the site itself? Well, it looks like it was created by a deranged chimpanzee.  Me in this case. I sketched it out on the back of a cocktail napkin two and half years ago and have never changed it since. It’s ugly.

The software? It’s not magic, but it does let me create, publish and promote a new video page in about fifteen minutes day.

If you want to "get under the hood" and see how it all works, plus get additional words of wisdom
on viral marketing (there are a few other things to know), I am going to be sharing this material in two places… Chicago, this November 8 – 9th and London, UK, November 15 – 16th.

I’ll be offering a full blown tutorial on this as a bonus session at two seminars I’m offering on Internet marketing.

No tape recorders. No cell phones in the room. And you’ll have to sign a formal Non-Disclosure Agreement to attend the bonus session where I’ll be covering this.

Here’s the deal:

You can use the info to start your own business, but if you violate the NDA and teach, publish or otherwise share the inner workings of this system, my attorneys will see to it that you put all my nephews through college.

I have three of them and their parents have their hearts set on Ivy League schools for all of them. Did I ever mention that both my brother and sister are attorneys? For real.

I’ve joked about this, but clearly I’m stumbled on a formula that can create a multi-million dollar business starting with zero capital and needing no employees.

It’s worth a lot…and if you join us in Chicago and/or London (truly smart people will come to both), you
can walk home with it in your gift bag. 

Details:

Chicago: http://www.SmartBeginners.com/bootcamp

London: http://www.TheSystemIntensive.com

Ken

P.S. Even if I weren’t sharing my video publishing and promotion system with you, both these trainings would be worth ten times the tuition.

I’m the only person who teaches Internet marketing who can fill a room with people who started with zero and are doing six, seven and in one case over eight figures a year in online sales.

It’s pretty rare for me to offer a small group training these days and in both cases I’m going to be supported by amazing guest speakers.

P.P.S. I’ve been writing about video on the Internet for as long as I’ve been teaching Internet marketing – since 1994.

Doesn’t it make sense that I’d be the first guy to really "crack the code?"

Remember, if you get up to bat enough times, you’ll eventually hit a grand slam home run.

Here’s to yours….

Chicago: http://www.SmartBeginners.com/bootcamp

London: http://www.TheSystemIntensive.com

A friend asked if I could help promote a video I made for her group on YouTube.

"What category?" I asked.

"News and politics," she said.

"Let me get this straight. The Democrats are right in the middle of their convention. The Republicans are starting their own soon. All the TV news, all the newspaper headlines, all the blogs are focused on the conventions and you want to go up against that?"

(I mean, really. Can you imagine anything more impractical, more pie-in-the-sky, more unlikely to ever happen?)

Then she hit me with the zinger:

"It’s for New Orleans."

"Oh…OK…Let’s do it!"

24 hours ago, we had a zero ranking on YouTube. Now look at where we’re at…On the top line of the highest rated videos, right next to the Democrats and the Republicans.

Let’s see…the candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars to promote themselves. The news media threw in, what, maybe another $100 million worth of free exposure. They have thousands of minions and operatives at their beck and call.

And we’re right up there…for zero dollars…in our spare time…all from a lap top.

That’s Internet power baby. The System Way.

Can your guru do that?  Can they go up against the real world’s biggest media guns, call it, win it and do it in real time?

Sometime next week, I’ll explain how YOU can do this too – and you won’t have to touch your credit card to learn.

Meanwhile, here’s the video. Soon we’re going to get knocked down to the "Weekly" top rated instead of "Today’s" top rated so I’m still hustling for  traffic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k

Check it out: Bottom right hand corner.  It’s called "The Katrina Myth."

Best placement money can buy – but we got it free.

Now Amazon has joined the video age.

Go to Amazon, pick any book and select the "review" option and you’ll be given two options: 1) the standard text option and 2) the new video option.

Just like with YouTube, you get an easy-to-use interface to upload your video to Amazon.

Interestingly, Amazon recommends the PureDigital line of video cameras we first reported on a year and a half ago.  I remain amazed that Google/YouTube hasn’t made a similar deal with PureDigital (or bought the company.)

PureDigital seems to be thriving in spite of their low profile. New cameras with new features. Where’s Apple? Micro video cameras is a cool niche that fits their mission to a ‘t.’

What they really want are real life case studies if they’re business buyers, or product reviews from other customers, if they’re consumers.

When we, the advertisers, say something, or even relate a customer comment second hand in the form of a "testimonial," our much-abused and rightfully skeptical prospects take it with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, when a real person says it, credibility skyrockets.

Since I started my latest round of writing about Internet video in 2005, I’ve often repeated my hunch that one of the slam dunk uses of video was going to be to capture customer reviews. In fact, as far back as 2000, I was making sure that every time I did a live event I grabbed video from customers. This video has been, far and away, my most effective selling tool.

Now the studies are coming in and guess what? About 80% of consumers put more faith in advertisers who present customer reviews than those that don’t.  Over thee out of four customers say it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase.

And not just any old reviews. They want customer reviews and prefer them 6 to 1 over "expert" reviews. 44% of online shoppers say that consumer ratings and reviews are the most useful e-commerce  feature.  No other eCommerce shopping feature came even close.

Another study came up with different but similar numbers.

First, 85% of consumers research big ticket purchases like travel, electronics and cars on the Internet before they make their purchase. And what do 63% of them most want to see on a web site? You guessed it: customer reviews.

In the consumer electronics category, Amazon and Circuit City  are the most trusted vendors, Amazon because it’s familiar and Circuit City because it’s the easiest to use. Less trusted, at least in terms of online buying, are Wal-Mart and BestBuy. Guess who doesn’t provide customer reviews…

But that’s just changed. Last week, Wal-Mart started offering customer reviews on its web site. Wal-Mart’s own self-reported numbers state that 85% of their customers are Internet users. Sounds a little high to me, but then again, Wal-Mart’s got a pretty good record of tracking customer behavior (an understatement actually.)

General Motors is also getting into the act with big media buys at Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers, in case you didn’t now, is one of the granddaddies of user generated content sites. Members ask questions and other members answer them. Yahoo claims 90 million users and 250 million answers posted worldwide. Notice the theme: people talking to people without the mediation of pesky "experts."

In the online video arena, one company is making business of video customer reviews: ExpoTV.com. These guys are harnessing the two biggest forces on the Internet today: consumer-generated content and video.  Currently, the site has over 50,000 product reviews, all provided by consumers who shoot, edit and upload their own videos.  ExpoTV then turns around and syndicates this content to sites like Smarter.com, Buy.com, AOL and Yahoo.

ExpoTV pays its visitors $5 for every video they submit that’s accepted. Interestingly, the company says that  only 5 to 10%   of videos submitted by its users have to be rejected on purely technical grounds like bad sound or lighting. Clearly, huge portions of the world are now not only comfortable watching video on the Internet, they’re also comfortable and capable of shooting and uploading their own videos. (Thank YouTube for kicking that revolution into high gear.)

So what’s the take away from all of this?

1. Are you making it possible for your customers to post reviews of your products and services so other prospects can see them?  If not, you may be missing out on a huge credibility builder.

2. Don’t think that text-only "testimonials" are enough. Consumers are getting used to the idea of seeing video customer reviews.  The first player in your niche to take advantage of this lesson will quickly leave the rest of the competition behind. 

Remember the numbers from the surveys:

1) Prospects value the opinions of customers over "experts" 6 to 1, 
2) Well over half of all Internet users believe that customer reviews and ratings are extremely or very important, and
3) The single most popular feature on eCommerce sites, by a very wide margin, is the availability of customer reviews.

Bottom line: Customers want to get their product information from each other. Not from advertisers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Ken McCarthy

P.S. For a free highlights version of this blog go to:

http://www.InternetVideoMarketingLetter.com

As proof of this, you can hardly find a single big numbers Internet marketer who has not made a serious investment in mastering the medium.

What about you?

I know from first hand experience how expensive and time consuming it can be to sort this stuff out.

That’s why I’m always on the lookout for good *educators* in this field.

Here’s one I recommend very highly:

Jay Douglas.

He may have put together the best, most comprehensive, lowest cost way to get up to speed and fluent in
Internet video fast:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

Enjoy!

Ken McCarthy

P.S. I’m of the opinion that the tools for Internet video production have become so cheap and easy to use that everyone should at least look at the potential of  making their own sales videos.

You wouldn’t hire a typist to write your e-mails and sales letters for you, would you? That would get awfully burdensome.

It might makes sense to run up the learning curve on video, just the way you did on typing.

Here’s a great resource to do just that:

http://www.thesystemseminar.com/jaydouglas/

It’s for Perry Marshall’s new book.

We shot it at System 2007 in one take with no script.

It’s a "content" ad. In other words, it contains content that is intrinsically valuable on its own and the pitch, such as it is, is woven in.

Total run time: 3:50 minutes.

My total time invested in the production: about 8 minutes.

Then I handed it off to an editor who cleaned it up, added titles and uploaded it to YouTube.

Then I uploaded a new page for the video to my System Seminar TV platform (about 2 minutes) and now I’m writing to tell you about it (another 2 minutes.)

My total time investment: 12 minutes.

The keys to achieving this kind of  efficiency:

1. Have a shooter at your events so that when you come up with an idea you can execute it on the spot.

2. Have an editor who knows how to upload video to the Internet waiting in the wings.

3. Have some kind of easy-to-use video publishing platform like a blog or a custom solution.

Once you have these elements in place, producing, publicizing and distributing Internet video is child’s play.

Here’s what the final product looks like…

Enjoy!

http://www.systemseminartv.com/page/118.html

Ken

P.S. For a free highlights version of this blog, go to http://www.internetvideomarketingletter.com/

As useful as this stufy is on one level, ultimately I’d file the study as an example of  "interesting, but missing the point."

First, the interesting part…

The Doubleclick study found that 8% of online video ads generated a measureable user action.

These actions include things like making the video window bigger, altering the video controls, and clicking through to the advertisers landing page.  The most common response was hitting the "replay" button which which the study found takes place in .32%  all impressions.

The study found that, all things being equal, the clickthrough rate for video ads is five times the clickthrough rate for static image ads.

Imagine that. Five times.

The first question that should come to our minds when we see a number like this is "Will this last or are we experiencing a novelty effect which will wear off?" After all, when banner ads were first introduced, they had a much higher clickthrough rate than they do now.

It’s impossible to predict, but at this point I’d guess that the ratio is going to hold steady. In other words, video ads are going to generate significantly more interaction and clickthroughs than static display ads.

However, there will be radical performance differences among videos and those differences will be determined by two things:

1) How well the video is "sold" and

2) How well the video is designed to stimulate a measurable action

These are two skills that direct response advertisers already excel at and traditional Madison Avenue advertisers are generally pretty clueless at. That would include most advertisers who buy banner ad impressions and are happy merely with measuring impressions and clickthroughs.  Their goal is "brand awareness."

Brand awareness makes sense if: 1)  you’re a Pepsi or Toyota and people are already buying what you sell (soft drinks, cars), 2) there’s a well established retail structure for what you sell (supermarkets, car dealers) and 3) you can’t, or choose not to, sell direct to the consumer and can afford the very heavy freight of a brand awareness campaign.

The problem is that the brand awareness model does not work at all for the vast majority of small businesses. Unfortunately, not being aware of the direct response model, they try to emulate what the "Big Boys" are doing and get smashed in the process. 

Small businesses must be response advertising driven which means that every ad – every ad – is designed to generate a measuable action…and not just any measurable action (video replays, changing window size), but actions that are part of the buying process. 

All that really matters when buying is the issue is:

1. How many saw the video?

2. How many played it?

3. How many people clickthrough to the full ad?

4. How many people who did that opt-in or bought?

The Doubleclick study didn’t bother to look at these numbers because their customers, big "brand awareness" advertisers, aren’t asking for them.

But you should and you should do your own "studies" with your the numbers of your own business. That’s the surest way there is to turn Internet video into a money machine.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. I’ve collected some of the best, most immediately practical articles from this blog into a free report which you can get by going to this web site:  http://www.internetvideomarketingletter.com

For the last six months, I’ve spent a week per month down there talking with local rebuilding groups.

One of the groups that really stood out for me is Levees.org, a grassroots organization founded on a kitchen table by New Orleans resident Sandy Rosenthal.

We started advising Sandy on web promotion in December, showed her how to rework her site to maximize opt-ins, and encouraged her to harness the magic of Interner video.

One strategy I suggested was making a "double duty" video: a single video for use on the web site (and YouTube) and for TV. Non-Profits have the advantage of getting free  PSA (public service announcement) time on TV.

The trick is to make the video compelling. One way to do that: enroll a celebrity. Hollywood and TV star John Goodman stood up and here’s the result on YouTube..

Click here to see the video

P.S. What can YOU do with your Internet skills to help a cause that you believe in?

Ken

…a single destination I can send readers to – with confidence – that will give you all the Internet video tools and services and education you need a from one single, reliable source at an affordable price.

I’m glad to say that finally that day has arrived.

Click here and crack the Internet video code