How to Make Money on a Viral Video

Viral video is the new buzzword in advertising. Everyone wants in on it. In the era of high speed internet, it has essentially become the new “Word of Mouth”, the most sought after form of advertising. Others have no interest in using it for marketing, they just want to make something cool or funny or weird and get people to watch it (and maybe earn a little money in the process).

Everyone knows how to make a video: Record something with your camera and put it online. But not everyone knows how to get people to watch it, and even fewer people know how to make money from it.

Forget all the wishy washy baloney you hear about just making what you like. Yeah, obviously, you’re going to make something YOU want to see, but the trick is making something other people will be interested in, too.

Here’s some solid, practical advice for making money with a viral video...

1- Hot Topics

One thing you can do to guarantee at least SOME viewership is to discuss hot topics, contemporary issues. You know that “Leave Britney Alone!” kid? Would anyone have ever heard of him if he weren’t talking about Britney Spears? Not likely.

Don’t fake it, or it’ll be obvious, but do gear your content towards something people are interested in. If you’re supporting a political candidate, talk about them. If you want to review movies, review not only some of the classics you know and love, but some new releases as well. It’s simple.

And remember, Star Wars is always hot. You could just do a video blog while holding a light saber and double your viewership.

2- Popular Categories

On the video sharing sites, there are certain categories that always tend to do well: Politics, gaming, and how-to videos. Look at the Angry Video Game Nerd. He makes a living pouring chocolate pudding on bad NES games.

3- Know Your Assets

Tits McGee may not be very funny, but she has the word “Tits” in her name, and she has large breasts. If you’re sexy, capitalize on that. If you’re funny, capitalize on that. If you’re willing to embarrass yourself for laughs, capitalize on that. Chances are you have something that not everyone has, something that people will want to watch your videos to see.

4- Be Entertaining

It’s not impossible to create a popular video blog, but there are only a handful of videos that go viral without showing more than someone talking into a webcam. If you can put your statement into the form of a comedy sketch, do so, because funnier videos are the ones that tend to go viral.

5- Keep it Short

When editing your video, cut out every single thing that’s not important. The most successful viral videos tend to have running times well under three minutes.

6- Post Everywhere

Don’t just throw your video up on Youtube and call it a day. Get it out there. Post it on every single video sharing site you can find. Many of these sites share ad revenue, so you might start making some money immediately from them.

7- Market Yourself

Videos go viral when people share them with friends, true, so most of the foot work will be done by people who like your video. But... You need to throw the first stone.

Get on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogspot, everything. Make it known: Your video is out there. Comment a lot, friend a lot of people, and they’ll probably wind up clicking your name and going back to your blog, hence, more viewers.

8- Make More Videos

Most of the people who have a video go viral will produce dozens, even hundreds of videos before one of them racks up a million views. The guys who made Chad Vader already had an extensive library of funny, interesting comedy sketches, but it was Chad Vader that made them known and got them commenting on pop culture on VH1.

Now... How to Make That Money We Were Talking About...

Above, we’ve discussed how to make a video popular, now here’s how to make some money with it...

9- Affiliates, Sponsorships, Ad Revenue and Merchandise

If you run a popular series, something like the Nostalgia Critic, you may find that, once you start selling t-shirts and DVDs, making money will be about as easy as downloading music from the internet. If the video is more of a one off, you may be better suited with affiliate marketing and taking in ad revenue.

On Youtube, you don’t qualify for ad sharing until you’ve already gotten a few hundred thousand views, and at that point, what does it matter? On other sites, you’ll get ad revenue from the very beginning, meaning that you’ll actually see some cash for those first few hundred thousand views.

If you feel like making it a webseries instead of a one off, look no farther than Blip.tv. They split revenue fifty fifty from the get-go, and they have a lot of programs to syndicate your show out to various other outlets.

One more tip before we go: Don’t do something that bores you. You may make money on it, sure, but honestly, it’s hard to get RICH from viral videos, so if you wind up getting stuck doing a video series that doesn’t interest you, you may as well keep your day job. Do something that you would gladly leave your day job for, for the same pay, because that’s about what you’ll be making at first.