Should you pay to advertise your video on Youtube?

Youtube’s featured videos are a great way to get your marketing video more exposure. However, is it really worth paying the money for this method of advertising? While it might be a good move for someone who has a pretty healthy budget for advertising for the average internet marketer it might not be the best way to get good use out of your Youtube videos.

A featured video works sort of like a google pay per click ad. A Youtube user comes along and types in the search bar the type of videos that they want to see. And based on the keywords you have chosen your video will pop up at the top of their page.

This all sounds like a pretty good idea right? Well it is. I mean technically the service works well for what it is. However, there are a lot of other ways that you can get your video noticed without paying a dime for it!

The best way is of course keyword optimization. By using the right keywords for your tags, in your title, in your username, description and on your channel you can get virtually the same effect as a featured video. Say the keywords you are using are “home based business in California” and someone types those keywords into the search option of Youtube.

They’ll probably see your video and a few others that match. They’ll also probably see a couple featured videos. Now if the prospect clicks on your video you get charged nothing. However, if the prospect clicks on the featured video they get charged.

It just seems like a pretty simple deal to me that if you keyword your videos correctly you won’t need to pay the extra money to get views.

Remember that when you’re picking your keywords you’ll want to make them specific and pretty narrow. So rather than using the term “home based business” which will get you lots of competition you might try “best home based business” or something like that.

When you do this you just narrow the competition so that the prospect is more likely to see your video.

So don’t spend a lot of money on Youtube. Keep it free and still have great results with your video marketing by using keywords.

9 Steps to succeed online in business

1. Determine your goals for your website. How will you drive traffic to your website Plan for this up front, while developing your website. If search engines are important to you, then proceed to step 2.

          2. Allocate a budget to online marketing and search engines. It’s as important as what you spend for designing and hosting your website. The budget you set will instruct these further steps you should take:

          3. Optimize your website during design to perform well in search engines. Make sure it contains the correct density of keywords important in searches.

          4. Make a commitment to keep your content fresh. Augment content as frequently as practicable, because search engines reward rich content.

          5. Devote resources (your time or the money to hire others) to actively work on search engine placement. Monitor your ranking weekly or monthly in the major search engines for key search terms; this can be done manually or you can utilize automated software to produce a monthly or weekly ranking report.

           Even if you plan to focus on free “organic” rankings, plan to set up Pay-Per-Click accounts at Google and Yahoo. All companies that want traffic from search engines should consider PPC a basic cost, as essential as paying your monthly hosting bill.

          The budget can be as little as $20 a month … or much more, depending upon how aggressive you want to be.

          6. Promote links to your website from your trading partners, in directories, through reciprocal links and discrete paid placements. “Link popularity” is highly important to search engine rankings.

          Monitor who links to you, and also who links to your competitors. Get as many links coming into your website as possible. Use viral marketing strategies, like posts or links from forums, bulletin boards, social websites like myspace and more.

          7. Install a good statistics package. And review it frequently so you know what is happening with your website. Statistics will tell you if you are successful in getting people to your website.

          If you are having success in traffic but realizing few sales, that means you need to work on your “conversion” of website visitors by improving your products or improving the functionality and usability of your website..

8. Periodically measure progress in ranking and make adjustments to keywords and content as part of a regular maintenance program - at least monthly.

9. Submit your site URL to as many free sites as possible. Self-promote yourself by writing articles, placing ads on bulletin boards, e-zines, group sites etc.