Why not something else like MetaCafe or Viddler or other video sharing websites? Why YouTube in particular? Let's have a look at that now.
The First Thing Is That YouTube Is Owned By Google
As I've said before. This has some amazing ramifications for YouTube and for its future. As you might know, YouTube started off as a company that was not owned by Google. In fact, it was only relatively recently that Google purchased them.
If you look at Google and what they're on about, they're in the money-making game. They're interested in making money online. Having a company like Google behind you can only spell good things in terms of success in terms of making money.
That's another thing. Google has deep pockets with money. They can fund a company like YouTube for years to come if they want to. They've decided to back YouTube because they've seen the potential that YouTube has. That's a really clear sign that YouTube is a technology you should keep an eye on.
I think they're the second most-visited website on the Internet right now. I think Google is #1. I've got to double check those stats there, but YouTube is significant.
Google also wants you to be successful. If you're successful, it's going to make them more money as well and make them more successful. So just the fact that they're behind YouTube means that they're working hard to make YouTube as easy for you as possible to be successful.
If you look at the changes that YouTube has gone through since Google purchased them, you can see dramatic differences. You can see it in the AdSense program that's been introduced in the YouTube videos. You can see in the different designs and layouts that they've been working towards. You can see how YouTube videos are ranking much better inside the Google search engines. Having Google on their side is just huge.
YouTube Videos Rank In Google Search Results
So you've got that on your side. If you're only submitting to YouTube, your chances of getting ranked in Google are so much higher compared to all the other video sharing sites.
It's An Incredible Traffic Source
This is sort of an understatement, but if you look at YouTube, they just recently reached one billion views per day. I'm not even sure if we can visualize that number, but imagine one billion coins, you'd probably be able to fill up a whole stadium full of coins. One billion views a day is huge, and this is just from one website.
In 2008 a study was done that showed that there were 71 million unique users in each month. That number has probably been superseded by now, but this is the latest information we have on that particular statistic. It's a huge plus. If you're not using this as a traffic generation source, you're missing out.
I think with the example that I used, FreeMagicLive, we've only touched the surface. We've really just scratched the surface and we're already sitting on 15,000 people on our email list.
It Is A Search Engine On Its Own
Have you ever gone to YouTube and started searching for something, like in the search box right over here? More and more people now are using YouTube as their main search engine compared to Google.
Is this perhaps a trend that's going to continue in the future and instead of people just doing searches on Google, just go to YouTube to do searches? Perhaps YouTube will become the #1 site where people want to search for information.
Think about this. What are the implications? If YouTube is potentially going to become the #1 search engine in the world, what are the implications for your online business?
And would you want to be in the right place at the right time with YouTube? I definitely think so.
YouTube Is Not Just For Teenagers Anymore
This is a question that I've had from a lot of people. They say, "Sure, you were able to get success on YouTube, but your market is only for teenagers." Now that may have been the case when YouTube was just starting out, but now things have changed. Demographics for YouTube are changing and they are changing at a massive rate. It's not just for teenagers anymore, so if you're marketing to other age groups, this is good news.
Teenagers are still the highest number, but as you'll see in some of these statistics, YouTube is great for other age groups as well. Look at this: 85% of the United States population has watched YouTube videos. That's huge. 85% of the whole United States has watched a YouTube video. This is incredible!
But now, look at this. 71% of males between 45-54 have watched a YouTube video. How cool is that? And this is the other thing, look at all these other age groups combined. These are people who normally have money. These are people who have jobs and can afford to pay for something online. If you add up all these people, that's far more than just the teenagers.
And you'll see a similar trend here for the females. Look at these percentages of people who've watched YouTube videos in their lifetime. It's not just teenagers. This is something to keep in mind when you think about using YouTube as a potential traffic source for your website.
YouTube Demographics Are Changing
It's not just for the teenagers anymore. As those teenagers grow up, they become older, they start getting jobs, and they start moving into a different demographic themselves.
What we're seeing here is a typical new technology adoption cycle. You may have seen what's called the S-curve. It looks something like this, and this is a typical curve for new technology that gets introduced into a new market. For YouTube it's no different. They went through a massive growth phase here. I think they slowly started in 2005 and then had this exponential growth. We're sitting at 2010 right now, so this is where we are now.
That means that you still have a window of two years to get your act together and to start doing stuff on YouTube, because this part of the market here, none of these people are on YouTube yet. If this S-curve is true, that means there's going to be a lot of people still joining YouTube, and you want to be in the right position once they're all online and watching videos. You want to have your videos already up there by 2012.
It's critical that you start getting something online as soon as possible, on YouTube in particular. This is where things are at. This is backed up by research done by the YouTube 2009 Report. It's an independent research company that did the research for that.
Let's move on. Think about the implications of these statistics. Think about these demographics and what that means for you as a business online. How can you position yourself so that you can be in the best possible position when this mainstream, people in the US and the UK, hit YouTube and get on YouTube and start interacting on YouTube on a regular basis?
What Are The Implications For Your Business Now?
What do you need to do now to start getting ready for that? Think about that. What does it mean for you right now, and what does it mean for you in the future? There are already things you could do now that could help you get set up in the future for YouTube.
You have an early mover advantage. 2012 is a peak for the mainstream in the US and the UK. I haven't even looked at statistics for places like China or India, and their populations are huge. That's why I think we're really just at the start of the curve still. If you have to combine the whole statistics for the whole world, there's going to be some very exciting things happening for YouTube. That's my prediction.
The "YouTube Beach Head Strategy"
What is all this leading to? I'm a really strong believer in focus. I picked up this strategy. I'm calling it the YouTube Beachhead Strategy. The reason why I'm doing this is because I really believe that you need to focus all your attention on one thing if you want to be successful. Focus on that, get it right, and then once you've got it under your belt, move on to the next thing.
So what is this? In simple terms, the Beachhead Strategy is to find a big ball and roll with it. That's really all it means. It's about finding a big player in the market, someone like YouTube in this case, and just go with the flow with them. Jump on board and use them as your leverage. It's about focused leverage, and focus in this case is focusing on YouTube.
Where did I get this idea from? I got it from a guy called Geoffrey Moore, an amazing thinker. He wrote a book called Crossing The Chasm for the high tech industry. What he talked about was for any new technology, you have this product adoption cycle where it starts with the early innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
This is typical for any new technology entering into the market. What Geoffrey Moore discovered was that with new technologies there's normally what he calls a gap or chasm. This is where most new high tech startup companies fall into this chasm. They get to this point here and they run out of customers. They fall into this chasm and you never hear of them again. They disappear.
He talked about creating a beachhead strategy and it's like a beachhead that you can use for jumping over to the early majority. It gives you this jumping point to get into the early majority. Once you hit the early majority, that's when you hit the tipping point. That's when things go big time for you.
I'm using this idea and I'm saying that if you want to go hit the tipping point for your industry, for your niche, use YouTube as your beachhead strategy. Use YouTube to help you get the early majority for your niche, because it's one of the best vehicles to use right now to help you get major amounts of traffic to your site.
This is what it's all driving towards. I hope you can appreciate what I'm saying here. With the power of YouTube and the fact that they're teamed up with Google, it's just incredible. We live in incredible times.
You can go out and try and spread your attention and use a whole bunch of different video sharing sites, different strategies, on different platforms and things, and end up spreading yourself so thin that you don't show any results, but this strategy has been tested and proved and I'm now just applying it to YouTube. This is why I call it the YouTube Beachhead Strategy. I hope you can understand why you need to get onto YouTube as soon as possible and focus your attention there.
If you'd like to find out how Gideon makes a full time income using online video, check out his powerful video marketing tips here:
Online Video MarketingOnline Video Marketing Tips. Gideon Shalwick's YouTube channel features videos that will help you dominate your niche using YouTube
