How to make your videos even more profitable

Copyright Dailymotion

There are many ways to generate revenue from your videos but finding the right approach to earn a 'profit' from them is not so easy.

Take a commercial or a music video for example. You've spent a few thousand on making that professional content, but most of the time it's just there to promote a movie, an album or a product. In a majority of cases there is no 'ROI' on the video itself, but there are opportunities out there to make your creations earn you more money and help you sell more products directly to your fans.

Take a look at these areas below and see how you can earn more money from your professional videos, and use them in different ways to create a bigger profit margin. There are of course many ways to monetize videos in general, but this list (which includes format examples) should help you think about how you can take what you've got and increase the sales potential:

Advertising revenue

1. Get yourself a Dailymotion account and register as a partner to get ad revenue for your unique content.
2. Register as a Youtube partner and earn adsense and video ad revenue.
3. You can generate ad revenue from Film Annex, and increase your daily earnings by blogging and engaging with the community.
4. Set up a VOD Channel on Vimeo or Dailymotion to get your videos generating additional sales from subscribers (Suitable for feature-length content).

Calls to action

1. Place your videos within newsletters to create a conversation with your fans and provide them with an overview on how they can get in contact or buy your product/service. This is where you can get your fans to engage with you on a more personal level using video.

2. Create prompts within your videos to make people take specific action while they are taking the time to see what you've got to say. This can be a newsletter signup, social links or even a special deal they can get from you.

3. Use your videos as a way to get people to talk about your expertise.

Example: You've got some unique knowledge about a certain subject. Demonstrate that in your videos and give people an incentive to share i.e One lucky viewer will get a free e-book with all the tips you have. This in turn boosts your following and your audience of customers as well.

Product placement

1. If you've got a niche audience within a specific industry, reach out to companies that want to sell products to your market i.e, you're a filmmaker who talks about cameras, get in contact with manufacturers and pitch to them a marketing offer. You can also contact local businesses and other vendors who sell unique products that tie in with what your channel is about. You can then add those products into your videos and monetize them through a sponsorship deal.

2. Connect your followers to a product you've made or are selling on the web. You might have a channel on Youtube, but at the same time you've written a book but it's somewhere else on the web. Use your videos to tell people about your creations, and give them the opportunity to get a taste of your work, then provide them with links to where they can buy them.

Events

Create live webinars with Google+ Hangouts and speak with your audience and answer their questions. After you've finished, upload those videos to your networks and promote them to your existing customers and fans. Show them what you're about, and give those who haven't participated in the event a chance to see you providing value. You can also add webinars to newsletters or list them on your blog. This is a great way to tie in a product you are selling and this type of video can be promoted through many channels. (You can also edit webinars into different formats and package them for various groups of fans i.e based on location, age, spending habits and so on.)

Edits

Why make one video when you can create short teasers from the same content? There is so much noise on the web that simply uploading a video and sharing it to everyone isn't enough to promote one product or service. However, creating small teasers over a fixed period of time can greatly improve the demand and the anticipation for the final video, product or service.

Conclusion

You can make your videos more profitable by promoting them across different channels and creating different formats to engage with existing fans and new audiences. By increasing the exposure of your videos, and embedding specific CTAs in your content, not only can you earn more advertising revenue, but you can engage more directly with your audience, boosting sales through direct actions.

Check out more film tutorials on the network, or if you want to simply make more money right now with your videos, check out this article to see how to increase your revenue.

Good luck!

film industry network members