Online Video: A Small Business Owner's Friend

In December 2005, a small start-up company launched a site that allowed users to post their own video clips. By July 2006, the site had become the web's fastest-growing site, generating 100M video views and 65,000 video uploads a day. In October 2006, the company was bought by Google for $1.65 Billion. That company was YouTube.

Consider the ramifications of the following figures according to YouTube's statistics page:

• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
• YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth

Dealing with Mobile and Devices:

• Traffic from mobile devices tripled in 2011
• More than 20% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices
• 3 hours of video is uploaded per minute to YouTube from mobile devices
• YouTube is available on 350 million devices

Source: http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

Small Business Owners can not ignore the huge numbers of potential clients that online video can bring to your website. One common complaint that I hear from Small Business Owners is that they don't have the resources or the knowledge to create or edit video that they can upload to YouTube. I have compiled a list of Online Video Making Resources. So, why wait? Get out there and create!

Online Video Making Resources

Animoto:
Animoto is a great site that turns photos, video clips, and music into stunning video masterpieces to share. It is very fast and easy. Animoto also offers commercially licensed music that is sellable with a professional license. You can make a 30 second movie for free, but has limited styles and music. You can download your movies for burning to a  DVD or share the videos to YouTube easily.
http://www.animoto.com

Stupeflix:  Stupeflix allows users to create video mixes of photos video clips and music. Some of their features include: Video theme templates, the ability to add photos and video clips from social media or a local computer. Users can also edit text, add maps and use Stupeflix's text to speech capability which makes voiceovers a snap. Users are also able to choose from over 130 licensed music tracks, or they may upload their own music as well. Pricing plans include: Personal $5/month: for unlimited videos, 360 video quality or Personal HD $8/mo.: HD720/360p video quality. Stupeflix offers a Pro version for $39/mo. which allows users to white label videos and use commercial licensing. Their Reseller package is $59/mo. and allows users reseller licensing (sell videos to clients)
http://www.stupeflix.com

Flixtime: - Allows users to create an account, upload pictures, video clips, and music. Users can add cover images for the clip and text slides. Users additionally can choose to save video in either 640 x 360 dimension, or                                                             iPod-friendly 320 x 180, and in either FLV, MP4, or DIVX formats. Videos can be 60 seconds long.
http://www.flixtime.com