Get MetroWize TV on your site!

Unless you've been without internet access for a few years, you already know that you can embed videos to any webiste, blog, MySpace, etc, you want. It's not easy to see on our video player, but the videos work just like YouTube and all the other video sites. Just click the Get Code button on the video (see below), and plop the code into your site. How easy is that?

But wait, it gets better - now you can take the whole TV station with you and get all our new videos as we release them. Read on and we'll show you how...

MetroWize TV
To get all of the MetroWize videos on your website, we offer different sized players to choose from. Both of them update automatically when we add new videos, you don't even have to wear out your finger clicking. This is really cool if you have your own site, because it's a constant feed of entertainment and freshness, and it's free. The TV player comes in two sizes, the first one is made to fit into a single column blog or on most community sites, like Hi5, MySpace, Linked In (for business hipness on your resume), etc.

See an example of the small TV player here.

The second sized player is larger and ff you are looking to add a full videos page to your website, this is your answer. The full player is designed to stand alone on a page and displays every video in our catalog.
See an example of the large TV player here.

Importing the Player

Putting either player on your site isn't that difficult if you have the space. In order to do it, you'll be taken to our video partner Brighcove, where you will create a quick account. You don't have to upload a picture or make "friends" and you won't get any Viagra emails by signing up.

Click here for the mini player
or here for the full player.
Once you sign up, you'll get one email from us, confirming your player with all our contact info included. We'll even help you customize it for your site to match colors and theme if you need a hand.

We're psyched to get our videos out there we think you'll like the player too. It gives us a reason to keep checking out the cities, music and events we love.

Send an email to admin(at)metrowize.com if you have any questions. Enjoy.



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Get money for your videos, sites that pay you, Part 2

After posting the first article on making money online with videos, I listed 17 sites offering embedded advertising, contests, google ads, and syndication offers. From some feedback and further research I’ve come up with another article posting the sites I missed the first time around. Some of these are newer sites that you definitely don’t have on your list.

Current.tv: Current has a range of opportunities to make money. You can make commercials for brands, promos for the site and other interesting contest features. It’s a unique site that has managed their brand well. If you are into Current’s concept, you’ll be happy to contribute even if you don’t win money.

SMS.ac: This popular social network offers video uploading with a $.99 fee. Users can place pay video on their home page for a fee and the publisher gets a cut. It won’t make you rich, but many publishers have 300 downloads or more.

Lulu.tv: Offers 80% of revenues to you, 20% to them. They run Yahoo Ads while you watch your videos. Not many users on the site right now though.

GoChongo: A unique approach, producers put up project parameters and cash rewards. Publishers enter submissions, the public rates it, the winner gets paid. For example, “make me a video for our new bands song”. This isn’t really getting paid for your video though, is it? It’s just getting paid peanuts to do work for somebody.

Votigo: This site is entirely devoted to contests. Make a contest, post it, people vote, winner is declared. It’s not seeing too much traction just yet, but that might be a good thing. Some of the corporate contests have very few entries and pretty nice prizes. You might already have the winning material.

Ziddio: This is Comcast’s video site where they post a number of contests in an effort to create interaction with television shows. An example would be the WWE’s biggest fan contest or, lines you won’t hear on the Sopranos. It may be a stretch to call it a money making site, but their plans are to create a channel that you can watch with your Comcast subscription, so I’ll chalk it up to interesting if nothing else.

Clip Syndicate: A network of publishers and content partners. Mostly geared towards news. I could imagine a recurring show, a la Rocketboom or TMZ really taking off. It’s similar to BrightCove and ROO media, but instead of syndicating a show permanently, you can choose individual pieces and quickly embed them into your sites feed. If you’re on the content producing side, you make money.

Cruxy: This site has a focus on bands and artists creating content and selling their projects. One interesting and unique application of Cruxy is the portable player that they have created for Second Life users. Download the widget that you have filled with paid content and carry it around with you in the virtual world. It’s like having a virtual IPOD for your virtual home or virtual person. I think these guys should really cash in and make the virtual player have virtual batteries that run out. Then you have to buy new ones with real money.

Helpful Video: In the How-To UCG video category, this site may find some users. It’s a simple site where you post what you know how to do, charge a small fee and people pay you. If you actually knew how to do something of value, this could be a great way to make money once more of these sites catch on.

I’m sure in a few months I’ll post a part 3 to this article. There doesn’t seem to be any slowing down with new video start ups with more and more sites looking to get you in on the money making game.

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17 sites for making money with online video

If you checked out my last article, (Best embedded video player), you’ll see some other video sites are trying to differentiate themselves from You Tube. Some of them are actually departing from the UGC model all together and moving more towards the Semi-Pro or Pro video submission model. Even in the last year since I really started investigating sites for our website MetroWize, I’ve seen the business models change on a few of the companies I’ve listed below. I think this list once again illustrates the fact that there is no one solution that's right for everybody. Enjoy the list and feel free to add to it.

Contests sites: Contest driven sites are really good if you catch a guy fly off his dirt bike mid-air, or a dog humping a passed out drunk guy. Hey, it gets me laughing, but it’s not the best place for the aspiring artist or touching documentary. Here are 4 that offer you the chance to win money.

Addicting Clips: They’re partnered with Atom Films and award $500 to videos they choose. The choosing of the best video is based on “our own mysterious whims”, so good luck to ya on that.

Break: You get paid $2000 if your video is shown on their home page, $25 if your photo is shown.

VidMax: Pretty much the same as Addicting Clips, $500 if your video gets chosen.

WeWin: These guys reward people for watching movies and uploading movies. You get more points for uploading movies, but it’s a twist on the typical contest format. Prizes are smaller, like Amazon Coupons and $10 items mostly.

Google Ad Words: A few sites out there slap Google Ad words near the videos you submit and then offer you a rev share for the trouble. Here are 3 to watch:

Flixya: The cool thing here is that you can pull your existing videos onto their site and then get a 50/50 rev share on the Ad Word clicks. On the other hand, if you have your own website, why not just run the Google ad words yourself and get 100% of the money? Well, the V2 (now in a limited Beta) will be giving 100% of the Ad revenue to the users. Maybe that will change the traffic levels too?

Blip.tv: At least this company give users a lot of cool features to work with on top of the Ad Words piece. They run a similar model to the other Ad Word players.

Vume: The website formerly known as Eefoof. Their offer seems similar to the others, they run ads on the sides, you get some cash. I didn't understand this site when it was eefoof, and it's only slightly better now.

Selling Your Content: For some companies this is still on the horizon. Others are actually doing it to varying degrees. I know there are many sites selling movies and professional production videos, but I’m not going there this post. This is about places you and me could actually sell our videos. Check out these 4 companies:

Turn Here: Originally this was a more open network, submit your video, it might get chosen, etc. Now, it’s more of a network of videographers matched up with a network of small businesses. If you think you shoot decent video and you’re in Miami, they will know of a pizza store in Miami and they’ll hook you guys up for a cut. It’s like Craigslist, but they take some of the money and Craigslist is free.

Veoh: These guys seem to have the resources to take on everything. They have all the features set up for video on demand but I’m not sure that they are running it a full capacity just yet.

HungryFlix: There will be hundreds of these sites popping up in the next year. Sign-Up, upload your video, charge money, the end. How-to videos are already becoming popular. Also, let’s just take it as a given that I’m leaving porn out of the whole VOD discussion here.

Brightcove: Tremor Media and Brightcove just got together to combined the Ad network with the publishing space. Within their sign up demo, they clearly show people uploading video for sale. Their back end admin features don’t seem to allow the sale of video yet, (or at least I couldn’t find people doing it), but I know it’s on the way. The big question will be whether people will pay for what they seem to be able to get for free.

Embedded Advertising: Pre-roll, Post-roll ads. Here are 3 sites putting ads in video for rev-share opportunities.

Revver: Revver offers 50/50 rev share split when you post your videos with them. Like the other sites that offer embedded ads, they are not focused on getting you crazy traffic. Instead, they kind of make that your job. Try uploading your favorite video you made to 10 sites on the web like Daily Motion, You Tube, Metacafe, etc., they will usually all beat out Revver. That said, it’s one of the most popular money making sites out there.

BrightRoll & AdBite: There are more than two websites offering you the opportunity to embed their ads into your video, but these two are pretty significant players. If you have the next million view video and a decent Blog, sign up for one of these sites, use their video player in your blog entry(Ad Brite has one, not sure about BrightRoll), and go build your financial fortune.

Others worth checking out:

Metacafe: There’s no Ads running on these videos. If you reach a 20,000 views and a decent audience rating, you start getting paid $5 on every 1,000 views (it’s retroactive too). There are a few people that have made good money on this site. Quite a few videos get declined for one reason or another, but you can tangibly see people cashing in. Best of all, Metacafe gets a lot of views, which means, unlike some of the smaller sites, 20,000 views is no problem for something good.

Google Video: I’ve heard lots of stories about their intentions. I remember hearing that users we’re going to be able to set their own viewing price at one point, but I don’t see that. Maybe somebody wants to comment on what Google Video has up it’s sleeve. Right now, nothing in the way of paying people.

ROO Media: Last Friday these guys pulled down another $25 million in funding to further extend their network of publishers and advertisers. If you have some decent content that you are cranking out on a regular basis, syndication is the way to go. Brightcove and ROO offer some pretty good packages if your recurring show finds a few homes on other high traffic websites.

Conclusions: 1) If you have a one-off one of a kind video and you’re looking to score big, I would go with MetaCafe or Revver. If it’s amazingly painful, sexy or immature, post it to the contest sites as well. 2) If you have a long term vision of consistently putting out short clips on a semi-regular basis, use BrightCove, ROO, or another syndicating/affiliate site. 3) If your site gets good traffic already, think about AdBrite. 4) If you want to sell your video, I’d hold out till Google gets around to it, or look into Turn Here.

Hope this uncovered a few sites you didn't already know about. If you can add to this list, please do.



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The best sites for making video players for your blog or website

Here at MetroWize, we geek out on Video start-ups a lot. At the end of the day, some are better at distribution, some claim you can make money, some of them are online mixing stations and some of them just plain suck. The leader in the video market is of course You Tube and if you want measure by pure traffic levels, they can hardly be touched. Youtube is far from the only player in the market though and if you are looking for other features like an embeddable player list for example, there are better places to upload your videos. Here are a few of my favorites and a few that suck and should maybe re-think their service.

V Social: .See the player in action here.

This website has a ton of cool features including a number of ways for the videos to display.I’m a big fan of the scroll bar below where you can advance the videos or play them all. Great looking UI and ease of implementing makes these guys one of my favorites.

Daily Motion: See the player in action here

This is an awesome player and so easy to make. The tabs you see below are just check boxes which create whole line ups either from your account or from the site’s favorites. These guys are based in France (or somewhere in Europe?) so you can load up full movies. I watched the movie "300" on here the other day. I could write another article on why that movie sucked so bad, but it's pretty cool that I got to find out for free. There is a big downside to Daily Motion though (literally). This Jukebox is frickin' huge! Who wants to embed this gigantic thing in their Blog. Does it even fit?

Grouper: See the player in action here

If this article is just about embedded players and nothing else, this doesn’t cut it for me. It’s just OK, but not bitchin’. There was a time when having something like this that simply "worked" was fine but that time has come and gone. These guys need to catch up to the people who are getting it right.

Veoh: See the player in action here.

These guys are in the top 5 on the web today in my opinion. I don’t like everything they have, but from the video quality and the embedded player side of things, they are rock solid. Keep an eye on this company, they “get it” and they will be a big player in the “Internet videos on your TV” game.

Panjea: See them in action here.
These guys can eat a BFD, seriously. They changed their UI and strategy recently and when they did they just erased all the videos and pictures I uploaded on there previously. That's pretty high up there on the "might lose some current users for that one" scale. Now, they've become a completely different company. They scour the major video sites and make you a player from all of them, (but they only have agreements with 4 or 5 sites). There’s another company VodPod that’s doing the same thing (shown later). Wasn’t there some Country song called “That don’t impress me much”? Well, the woman was for sure talking about UGC Video sites that aggregate content from other UGC Video Sites, right?

Brightcove: See them in action here.

Brightcove is great for a lot of reasons, but for most people they are overkill. You pretty much have to take a class on how to use them, but if you’re a semi-serious publisher, they are the best choice, hands down. Now that they’ve hooked up with Tremor Advertising, they are positioned to take it to the next level with monetizing UGC video. Like I said though, this is not the place for you to upload 4 videos of your kid saying hi to grandma or that video you shot of the dog chasing a squirrel and hitting the tree, this is serious stuff here people! I could write another separate article on them (and maybe I will), it’s who we use at MetroWize so we’re obviously into them.

GoFish See this player in action here

Recently this site went through a pretty massive design change. I think their design has a lot going for it. Plus, you can modify the colors, add logos, etc. and it comes in two sizes. I also like the fact that you can custom your url. That doesn't seem like a crazy feature but only a few sites do it.

Vod Pod See the player in action here



I have issue with those smiley faces on the bottom right. Why do I need all those cartoon icons? Also, why do we need another company that scours the web for good videos to put into a player? If they were pulling from every site, OK, I get that. But when you say that the best of MetaCafe, You Tube, Google and Daily Motion can be yours, the differences are only in the search technology, the results are pretty much the same. To their credit, they make it easy to jam your line up into your IPod and that's a decent feature.

Revver

For a major player in this space, these guys could do better. This filmstrip is all you get and its not totally intuitive as to how you make it either. Revver never said they were the end all, be all for features though, their goal is to help people monetize their videos. For those of us that aren't Ask A Ninja though, I see no reason to use this site. The revenue scheme is kinda bullshit, but that's a topic for another post.

You Tube: See the player in action here


See what I mean? If we’re talking pure aesthetics here, this player sucks ass compared to the other ones out there. It’s not surprising though, that's not their game. You Tube is the place where you are gonna see Hasselhoff drunk and eating a burger on the floor while his daughter chews him out (which is pretty frickin funny by the way). These other sites need to pick their battles and if there is a segment that really want to have a cool looking player with 4 or 5 videos on their blog, then they might go with one of the little guys.

… in closing.

There seems to be a never ending amount of video sites entering the game. If you’re looking for a nice player for your site and have some tech experience, go with BrightCove, otherwise Veoh, or V Social. I know there are many more sites putting out cool UI, I just don’t have time to go through them all. Let me know what you think...

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