In the recent months, I’ve noticed a question that keeps popping up within my ‘tribe’ or network. A lot of people want to know how or where to host their video other than Youtube. The requirements are pretty clear.
- Must be able to control access to the video
- Have a sharp looking player – Youtube is a little unprofessional especially if the video goes on the the sales letter
- Not be hosted on their own web hosting account
The third requirement can be huge because bandwidth can get very expensive if you have a lot of hits on the video and videos are much, much larger which means one simple video can suck up all your bandwidth for the month in a heartbeat.
If you want to DIY – I’d probably say go with Amazon S3. I host all 50+ videos for the Blogging Starter Pack on Amazon S3. You can purchase a nice video player pretty inexpensively from places like FlashDen. However, this still requires a little bit of technical work. Many small business owners I talk to like and want the convenience of Youtube but with more privacy options and a better player is that really that much to ask?
I personally think no but from my research, there seems to be an unserved market here. Video hosting sites that allow business/commercial for small business use (read budget friendly) is pretty hard to come by.
My first stop was Vimeo because I liked the quality of the videos there but alas – this is what I found in their FAQ’s.
So scratch Vimeo. Next, there is Brightcove. This company has many high profile customers but they do not publish their pricing and while this is not a reliable method, it kinda leads me to think they may be expensive like enterprise level expensive and possibly beyond the reach of small and micro businesses.
Finally, after running through several video hosting sites that do not allow commercial use, I re-visited a system I have been testing out – Easy Video Producer. The people who created this tool made it for network marketers who want to use videos as a method of building their list or lead generation purposes. I’m just giving you fair warning that if the video and copy on the sites looks skewed towards that, it is. Actually, they confused me a lot too but I took a chance to get signed up since it is free to check out the video system. While their user interface could be improved, it looks a bit dated and at times confusing, if you focus on the tools itself, this thing is pretty cool.
Here’s what I liked:
If you want to put your video on a squeeze page or opt-in page, they have pre-made templates, some of them fairly nice looking. All you need to do is record your video – you can do this using your normal video recording tools or if you don’t have one, a web cam will work, EVP has a on site video recorder much like YouTube you can record on the fly. Then upload or save it. They do go through an approval process which can be a drag if you’re in a hurry. Hopefully they will remove this or have quicker methods of approval. Once your video goes live, then all you need to do is copy the link to the video, copy the embed code if you’re posting on to your own web pages. Or, you can push the video to a squeeze page template they provide.
Oh and yes, you can make the video private to their network and still embed the video on your own pages which fulfills part of the requirements.
There is just one caveat – they are right now re-launching their web hosting service – a sister site. So be prepared for emails in your inbox promoting that.
Image by Keenan Milligan
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Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them.
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I have also asked that question before. Now, i found the right answer through your post. I am happy to that you make it clear. Thanks.
Most welcome Proimer.