More and more YouTube has been cracking down lately on people uploading content containing copywritten music or people uploading entire films/tv shows. However, there is still very much that can be safely done below the radar.

One such trick I’ll tell you I’ve been using lately is to use rare interviews with celebrities and bands. Luckily for me, I have a local shop that sells rare bootlegs of such material where I can find all sorts of great stuff that isn’t yet on YouTube for only maybe $5-$10 per DVD.

Obviously you need a DVD drive and software such as Sony Vegas to import the footage. Then you can either watermark it with a domain you own or maybe just use Tiny URL to drop an affiliate link in the description. If you only use the affiliate link in the description, I recommend of course using annotations to increase your CTR.

How you monetize that traffic is up to you, but you can get a TON of clicks this way.

If you don’t have the convenience of a local dvd shop like mine, you’ll just have to be a little more resourceful. Rare bootlegs can be purchased and in many cases even downloaded for free online.

Time to start snooping around!

Of course, just because this works today, does not necessarily mean it will work tomorrow. Also, you will need to be prepared to sacrficie a bit of audio quality (or at least the integrity of the original audio).

The Solution?

Reverb. That’s right. After all my tweaking of EQ trying to find the right way to skew a track enough to make it unidentifiable, I discovered that getting around the filter was as easy as adding a little bit of reverb. I’m no audio expert, but I’m guessing the reason that it works so well is because adding a healthy amount of reverb seriously alters the digital footprint of the audio file. You can see how different a wav looks after reverb is applied. Basically there is just a bunch of sound data where there wasn’t before, creating a uniqe file. For the user, it just sounds like the song is being played in a large room (depending on the amount of reverb).

My software of choice, Sony Vegas, has this effect built in. I’d imagine that most video editing software packages probably have some sort of default reverb effect, as it is a  pretty common one.

I have so far tested this on three different videos, all of which originally had their audio track disabled. All three have been successfully uploaded and are still live with the reverb-tweaked audio files still in tact.

In some cases, the new sound of the audio will actually complement the video. Personally, I think it sounds pretty cool. I haven’t yet determined the exact amount of reverb that needs to be applied to safely evade the filter, but it’s safe to say that the more you apply, the less chance you’ll have of having any problems.

I know this has been a very frustrating problem for many of you, so hopefully this will make your lives a bit easier! I don’t expect this method to work forever, but until it becomes obsolete, enjoy!

Final Note

In some cases, having your audio match third party content will not cause it to be removed, but rather YouTube will display advertisments on the video that will benefit the rightful copyright holder. This may or may not be a problem for you (the advertisement makes it difficult to use annotations as we’ve talked about here before).

Well, I thought I’d post again about this matter because I have discovered a far easier way to do it, and the quality is actually better. Like I said in the old post, I am far from being the authority on video editing/rendering, but I know a lot of you are having trouble getting your videos to look right in the new widescreen format.

This new method tends to take some time to render (depending on the speed of your processor), but it works like a charm.

• Change resolution in project properties (under the file menu) to the HDV 720-30p (1280×720 29.970 fps) preset.
• Go to “Render as” and select Windows Media Video V9 (.wmv) from the pulldown menu.
• From the “template” pulldown menu, select “4.8Mbps HD 720-24p Video”.
• Render!

I know the first how-to instructions (in the earlier post) were painfully and unnecessarily complicated. This new method should make it a breeze for you to get your videos to appear correctly if you’re using Sony Vegas as your editing software.

Unfortunately, Vegas is the only video editing software that I’m familiar with, so I can’t help you out if you’re using something else. However, I’m guessing the steps needed to be completed in other applications to achieve the same result are probably pretty similar.

Before I go back to playing Guitar Hero (which I’ve gotten exceptional at, thanks to Guitar Hero News, Media and Guides), I thought I’d share my frustration with you folks.

In response to users who have apparently made YouTube self-conscious by claiming that the quality of their videos left something to be desired, the kings of online video decided to introduce a new player with widescreen support.

Trouble is, nearly every video (with exception to those uploaded in the last few days) are not in widescreen format. The result is a bunch of videos floating in the center of a 960 pixel wide player. This is also another problem for those of us that use annotations in several videos.

And if you feel like evolving along with YouTube and want to actually upload widescreen videos, you’ll need to know how to render it as such. If you’re not very familiar with your video editing software, this may not be an easy task. For those of you that use Sony Vegas, I’ll show you how I went about successfully optimizing a video to be compatible with YouTube’s new widescreen format. Please keep in mind that I am by no means an authority on the software, and I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to go about this, but I’d just like to share what worked for me! The following was done in and should work with Vegas Professional 8.0 (may work with other versions as well):

• Change resolution in project properties to something big. I used the HDV 720-30p (1280×720 29.970 fps) preset.
• Go to “Render as” and choose Windows Media Video V9 (.wmv) from the pulldown menu.
• Choose “default template” from the template pulldown menu, and then click “custom”.
• Change video rendering quality to “best”.
• Click the “video” tab at the bottom. For image size, choose “custom”.  Enter a width of 864 and a height of 486. You may want to adjust the slider to 100% quality (but keep in mind it will inflate the file size of your video).
• OPTIONAL: Click the audio tab and change the bitrate to something a tad better. I use at least 128kbps (YouTube will heavily compress your audio, so don’t expect a huge difference).

Hopefully, at some point YouTube will make the widescreen player optional. But for now, it looks like we’re going to have to roll with it. If you check out YouTube’s official blog about the new widescreen here, you can see that the majority of user comments are negative (very negative, in many cases).

While I think it’s a great idea to offer that extra functionality, I think it’s a terrible idea to make every video page load a big widescreen player by default, regardless of whether or not the video is in that format. But I’ve got full faith and confidence in the people over at YouTube, and I’m sure they’ll work it out soon enough.

In case you don’t already know, your video’s default thumbnail image is created from the exact middle frame of your video. You also have the option of selecting the frames found at the 1/4 and 3/4 mark.

For the SUPER noobs: When a visitor is searching YouTube for a video, they see little image previews of videos (thumbnails) that match their search in the search results. When they are viewing videos, they see thumbnails of related videos on the side. When video responses are allowed, they will see thumbnails of those video responses below the video. The thumbnail is the single most influential factor in whether or not they will click through to your video.

Let’s have a look at a couple examples. Neither of the two thumbnails highlighted below are bad, but one is clearly more effective than the other one. Luckily, both videos were uploaded on the same day and on the same channel (which means they probably get an even amount of promotion), so we can trust that it’s an accurate comparison of the effectiveness of each respective thumbnail.

I get this question from time to time from disgruntled internet marketers that aren’t having much luck with YouTube. A lot of them are making the same mistakes that I made when I first started out.

Treat Video Production Like an Assembly Line

That’s the only analogy I can think of that demonstrates the mindset you need to have when scraping/creating (whichever route you prefer) videos. First of all, each video is just another piece of the empire you’re trying to build on YouTube. The only way to actually make decent money with YouTube marketing is with VOLUME. The guys that have hundreds if not thousands of dating-themed videos up with proper keywords are making a nice chunk of change. That is, the ones that have managed to get them to stick without them getting flagged.

I used to get way too caught up in making “perfect” videos. In the long run, however, nobody cares about the audio quality or the font you used in the watermark (okay, the font matters a teeny bit, but not enough to waste 30 minutes searching font sites. Oh wait, there is a fonts.com advertisement over there…um…I take it back).

My bread and butter is dating. Not in real life, because my girlfriend is so closed-minded, but in the affiliate marketing sense. That’s the only thing I really consistently promote on YouTube, mixed in with a little ringtone action and then random things here and there. So, the production value to actual $$$ value ratio might be debatable for some people who are promoting different niches, but in the case of dating, there are only two key factors: 1)How hot the girl in the video is, and 2)visibility/memorability of your link. That’s it and that’s all.

Now let’s critique a random video of this nature that I found on YouTube earlier. Hopefully it hasn’t been removed by the time you come upon this post. Now, this is all in the name of constructive criticism. I have no idea who uploaded this video and I hope they wouldn’t mind a little free promotion in this context.

Those who are less hip with this whole internet marketing thing may have a different (yet still correct) idea of what a watermark is. The most common use of the word I’ve heard offline in my lifetime is when describing the fancy pattern or logo impressed into currency or paper checks to prevent fraud. However, as far as online marketing goes, watermarking has a different, yet similar purpose.

Basically, when you create a video that you intend to use to promote your website, you are going to want to display your URL (or logo that should contain your URL) within the video. Some sites use watermarks to brand their video and prevent it from being redistributed. For us independent internet marketers, the watermark is simply a way to drive the URL of your site deeper into the minds of your viewers and hopefully provoke their interest enough for them to type it into the address bar of their browser.

Now, Sony Vegas is by far my favorite video editing application. I use it for just about everything when it comes to creating/editing videos (I do use Adobe Audition for some advanced sound tweaking on rare occasions). However, you don’t necessarily need it. Windows Movie Maker usually comes bundled with Vista (as well as XP) and can be used to effectively watermark your videos. If you don’t have it, you can download the Vista version for free here, and the XP version here. For Mac users, iMovie will also do the job. However, if you don’t mind paying for a much more advanced program, you can pick up a copy of Sony Vegas here.

At the risk of coming off as lazy, here is an excellent video tutorial by YouTube member badenglish1984 demonstrating how to add a watermark using Windows Movie Maker for Vista. (XP Movie Maker watermark tutorial can be found here).

One VERY important thing I’d like to add is that the positioning of your watermark for your YouTube videos is key.  Many video creators make the mistake of putting their watermark in the lower right hand corner. Why is this a bad thing? Take the above tutorial video for example. What do you see in the lower right hand corner of the screen when you play that video? That’s right, YouTube automatically watermarks all embedded videos (those placed on external sites like this one) with their very own watermark. This means that if your watermark is in the same place, it will be partially eclipsed by YouTube’s own watermark when your video is embedded, potentially rendering your watermark useless.

For this reason, your watermark should be placed in either the top left, top right, or lower left hand corner. Personally, I prefer the lower left hand corner.

Another trick that I implement is removing the watermark shortly prior to the frame that I know I will be using as my thumbnail images. Thumbnails of your video are created from the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 frames of your video, and you can choose which of those three to use. So, let’s say you have a video that is 2:00 in length, and you want to use the frame at 1:00 as your thumbnail. You would then end the watermark (I prefer to fade it out) around 0:58, so that it isn’t present in the thumbnail image. You can then bring it back shortly after (1:02 or so).

The reason I do this is because people naturally don’t like advertisements, and some YouTubers will stray away from clicking videos that appear to have an obvious advertisement placed in them. By removing your watermark at the correct time, your video will not appear to be promotional, and therefore likely receive more views.

That’s all for today! Good luck!