Tag Archives: get

Online Video

The Secret to YouTube Views and Subscribers: Poop Frequency

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Save yourself a lot of time, and ditch my eBook about how to get popular on YouTube. There’s one common denominator to getting regular YouTube views and subscribers. It’s a secret possessed by the regular names we see on YouTube’s most-popular videos of the day. People who retain wildly enthusiastic fans who watch, rate, favorite and forward videos. I once did it (more for my own discipline) and didn’t realize how vital it is.

Frequency. Routine. Post daily. Like you brush your teeth, exercise or poop.

It’s a simple thing, really. When my tagline was “Nalts makes a video everytime you poop,” each of my new videos was seen at least 40-50,000 times. Now I’m intermittent and people simply forget to look.

Sure you could argue that there are other factors. Not everyone that posts daily has views, and not everyone that gets loads of views posts daily. But it’s the single biggest common denominator, and therefore I proclaim it a “best practice.”

Take a look at the people that dominate the “most highly rated,” and tell me something they else have in common besides mostly vlogging and not sketch. They are (in no particular order): Shaytards (aka Shaytard), CTFxC (CharlesTrippy), SxePhil (Phillip DeFranco), WhatTheBuckShow (Michael Buckley), KassemG, Livealivalive, ShaneDawsonTV (and various other channels), CommunityChannel, FailBlog, MichelleFan, and a few more. I’m not hyperlinking their name, because you can find them all here sooner or later (most popular videos of the week on YouTube). There are videos that get more views, but these are the individuals that command a vivid audience.

It makes sense. It’s still a social media, and you can’t be very social if you’re out of mind. I don’t mean to marginalize the talent here. These are gifted people, and it’s not fair to write off their success to frequency. But I hold, as exhibit A, the fact that some of these people had more “packaged” content channels, and their daily vlog channels eclipsed their initial presence.

One exception among them: JimmyKimmelLive. Only 60K subscribers, but lots of recent views. Maybe one day Kimmel will grow up to be a YouTube star.

Online Video

Get Seen: Online Video Resource by Steve Garfield

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Steve Garfield was vlogging before there were video cameras or the Internet. I’m not sure what that looked like, but perhaps he just stood in front of Boston houses and talked.

getseen steve garfield online video secrets

So it’s worth noting that his new book has a companion website… check out Get Seen: Online Video Secrets. I’m planning on copying his whole book and changing the cover… and hoping Wiley doesn’t notice when I submit my first manuscript for “Beyond Viral Video.”

Online Video

Boo Hoo. You Didn’t Get a Google Wave Invitation.

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Google Wave Hates You. That’s why you didn’t get an invite.

But that’s not my point. I just wanted to share this video courtesy of Shira Couric. It’s informative and hysterical, and there’s no greater moment of panhandling on the web than a restricted Google beta.

Naturally you’re saying to yourself, “surely Nalts must have an invite.” He’s a YouTube Partner and even painted his office the four colors of the Google logo. No. I don’t. And I’m not begging. In fact if I get an invite I might just RSVP, “sorry- busy on a Yahoo beta right now.”

In the meantime, you can go fool around with other products in Google Labs. Heck- you can even search photos by color preference.

Online Video

The Google Money Tree

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My sister is doing a story on the Google Money Tree, and I thought I’d write about it — if for no other reason — to scoop her and her “big media.”

I hadn’t heard of it before, so I googled it. Seems it’s a scam that locks you into a regular fee, and cost you to cancel. In fact the FTC tracked it down (see official site). The scammers claimed they were with Google, and had a way to make $100,000 in a year. Of course they didn’t tell you you’d be charged $72.21 a month.

Since the Google Money Tree’s website is surely gone (or at least not spidered by Google), here’s all you need to know: The FTC charge.

google-money-tree

You know, instead of trying to get rich from a Google Money Tree scam, I suggest just making a donation to me. You’re guaranteed to receive no service or product in return, but also be free from any scams, additional upsells, or life-time membership dues. Plus if you go for the most-popular “Gold” level plan ($20) you’re likely to receive good luck within 2-3 days.


Nalts Donation



book, Online Video

Simple Tip to Increase Your YouTube Subscribers

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Here’s a simple way to increase your subscribers on YouTube I just discovered (see my free eBook called “How to Become Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent” for more). I can’t prove this works, but it’s fairly obvious it should. It requires that you have at least one video that continues to get a lot of views for reasons you can’t quite explain. I have a few of these.

This technique n is based on the fact that new “grazers” of YouTube don’t really understand that they can “subscribe” to content like they can record a TV show on TiVo or a DVR. So we need to remind them within the content (since they’re already trained to ignore messages outside the content). 

1) Find your most popular video.

2) View the “insights” on YouTube to find the moment that most people drop. If there are two cliffs, you may want to pick the second cliff. 

3) Edit you video’s “annotations.” Place a subtle text annotation at the spot that precedes the cliff. Invite the viewer to subscribe to more videos like this one.

If your popular video is not consistant with your channel’s content, than you may get quantity of subscribers but not good quality. As an example, they may like my farting and “scary mask” video, but not care for my regular family videos. I debated this, but determined that higher subscriber numbers (even if they’re not all quality) results in higher visibility. That increases my odds of finding an appropriate audience even if I will pick up (and lose) some inappropriate subscribers in the interim. 

Obviously it helps to request people to subscribe at the beginning and end of every video, and many popular YouTubers do this. I just haven’t gotten there yet. It seems desperate, although it’s becoming so common that maybe it’s time I get over my concern.

Had a “please subscribe” slate appeared at the beginning of these popular videos, I’m quite certain that would be worth thousands of new subscribers. 

metacafe, Nalts, Online Video, Revver, YouTube

Top Secret YouTube Tricks & Hacks

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Okay maybe “top secret” is an over statement, but most readers of this post will find a few surprises here. I give you some of the lesser known tricks on YouTube to optimize your experience as a viewer or creator…

  1. Find Best Videos on YouTube
    Don’t surf the homepage or most-recently uploaded section if you want to find the best videos. There are two places to go… the “top rated” section and the “most viewed.” I prefer the latter, because the community decides what’s lands there. Note that some creators live on this page because their fans rate them 5 stars without fail, so it’s not all good. There are also a few people that are “gaming the system” by artificially rating themselves 5 stars with sock accounts or autobots (boo, hiss). If you like vloggers, check the “most discussed” section of “People and Blogs.” You can also surf the “most subscribed” creators (by category) and when you find someone good (say, for example, Nalts) be sure to subscribe. Then visit your subscription page first, which is like an RSS for new videos by your favorite creators.
  2. Watch Blocked Videos.
    See previous post on this blog to see how to hack YouTube if a video’s URL is blocked by your ISP.
  3. See “Recently Deleted” Videos.
    Delutube and ReviveTube allow you to find deleted videos if you know the 11-digit URL. Source: ReelPopBlog.
  4. Make Your Videos Upoad Faster.
    Apparently SpeedBit Video VideoAccelorator makes YouTube videos load more quickly. It works for other sites as well (see site details at Accelorator.com).
  5. Upload to YouTube and a Bunch of Other Sites at Once.
    I use TubeMogul whenever I want to upload beyond YouTube on a mess ofwebsites including, currently, Yahoo!, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Revver, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Crackle & StupidVideos.
  6. Reference a Video in Comments Section.
    You can post a URL in the comment section of videos, but you can provide the 11-digit alphanumeric code, and then people can post this before it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
  7. Get More Views on YouTube
    I’ve written a free eBook about how to promote yourself on YouTube (“How to Become Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent“), and there are other books including this 25-pager I haven’t read.
  8. Download YouTube Videos
    This is a post with some tips, but I like VideoBox from tastyapps.com (but it’s Mac only). KeepVid can download videos as FLV files pretty quickly. I’m also using Snapz Pro or Snagit to grab short sections of videos very quickly.
  9. Upload Videos for Best YouTube Quality
    For starters, you gotta export your videos in the best resolution possible — that means making them larger files (mine are 100 megs or more) and ensuring all the specifications are YouTube friendly. Trippy’s blog covers these specs well. Some argue that it’s best to convert it to an FLV per YouTube specifications before uploading, but I don’t like the idea of sending YouTube anything compressed so tightly.
  10. Subscribe to Someone When You Can’t.
    YouTube accounts without videos don’t have a “subscribe” option. To get around this (or to make it easy for people to subscribe to you), use this code, substituting the profile name where I have “Nalts.”
    http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=nalts

What did I miss? I’m updating this!