Video clip website - hosting advice please

[TomW1]

Hi all,

I'm in the early stages of creating a website that will provide 15ish second clips of sports related clips.

The issue I have right now is what to do with regards to the hosting and database side of the site. I have plenty of hosting space on godaddy to 'store' the clips if we host them, but others have mentioned uploading the videos to YouTube and hosting the links (rather than the actual videos) on our site.

- what are the pros and cons of hosting every video on my site vs hosting them on YouTube or other video hosting service. My preference right now is to host on our site but my business partner has the opposite stance. We're both open to reconsidering.

Thank you so much in advance

P.S I appreciate this may or may not be more suited to a different part of the forum - I assumed this area made the most sense.

Tom

 

[use]

Hi Tom, Sounds like a great venture on your hands.

I guess there's pros and cons with what ever decision you make. If you decide to host them on a third-party site like YouTube or Vimeo then you'll be introducing them straight to an online audience which could possibly improve your traffic ranking and presence - however having a website with hosted videos and maybe the possibility of video upload then it gives a much more individual and unique approach to the whole idea.

Always make sure you choose a host with unlimited bandwidth and disk-space, you don't want to get penalized with usage.

Will you be using a platform like Wordpress to host them? I think various plugins are available which enables you to upload them to your website aswell as YouTube etc.

Let us know how your project develops. Good luck.

 

[StartUpC]

Additionally to own-site hosting: when your content will be streamed / viewed internationally then the YouTube solution seems better. The international bandwidth of the internet providers are much more limited than the domestic - so there would be a huge delay to start the actual playback outside your home (or your provider's) country.

 

[Paul Murray]

I'd just YouTube host the vids and let them worry about serving/streaming the videos. It's one less thing for you to worry about, plus you're likely to get more long-term interest in your YouTube channel as people can just subscribe and YT will tell them when you have new content online.

YouTube allows users to easily embed and share your videos too. Just be sure to have a watermark or VERY short intro clip with your website address on every video.

 

[TomW1]

Thank you all so much for your replies!

Yes we intend to use a Wordpress Theme. I'm aware there are plenty of plugins and themes available for what we are doing - I guess it's just a case of selecting the best one.

From the answers and my own research it seems that it would make sense to use YouTube or similar for now;
- huge audience readily available / subscription element too
- no worries about hosting as its all with them
- international growth element supports the use of YouTube vs. our own hosting

Perhaps a question for a more technical forum, but from a traffic/potential revenue point of view, if we host videos on YouTube and display them through our site (playing from YouTube), I'm assuming hits on these videos on our site still count as hits for us/potential revenue hits for us? The answer seems an obvious yes as the viewer would see banners and the like if they are on our site, but I'd just like to confirm that too. Is someone able to confirm my assumptions are true?

Thanks again all

Tom

 

[use]

From what I understand, the hits or "Views" as YouTube calls it are recorded when a video is played via the YouTube website/app however if a visitor clicks on an advertisement within the clip while watching it on your website then the AdSense is still recorded. But don't quote me on it!

 

[Paul Murray]

I think the YouTube hits are counted whenever a video is played, even if it's embedded on another site. The Adsense banners will still work on your site since you're embedding the whole video object, unless the viewer has an ad-blocker installed of course.

 

[TomW1]

Thanks again. That all sounds great - I wonder then if there's a double hit for us...I.e. The viewer watches a YouTube clip of ours on our website and sees the banner on our site (one page hit) + the short ad on our YouTube video on our site (one viewer hit) = 2 hits per 1 hit, if that makes sense. Of course I'm wondering whether this is the case rather than stating, please do correct me if this is complete rubbish. But if it is only half true even I think it's pretty clear using YouTube for our videos, at least as we begin, is most likely the way forward.

Once again thanks for all your advice

 

[Paul Murray]

I'm not sure I get what you're saying? Are you talking about a banner ad on the page, plus a banner ad on the actual video that's embedded in your page?

In Adsense you'd probably have to set up a separate ad units, one for the videos, plus one for the video, though they now have responsive ads that adjust to the size of their container when they're loaded, so you could in theory use one ad unit for both sections.

 

[TomW1]

Paul,

Essentially yes that is what I am suggesting/questioning, though instead of a banner on the YouTube video it might be one of those 5 second clips I often see at the start of YouTube videos. Thanks for that additional bit of knowledge about Adsense.

By the way, I appreciate the negativity often associated with users and adverts of any kind, so I'm not necessarily going down this exact route with various ads but it is more a case of I'm seeing what is possible.

 

[Paul Murray]

Personally I'd hate to have to sit through a 5 second advert to watch a 15 second-long video. It would infuriate me having to wait 5 seconds to skip an advert every few videos.

 

[TomW1]

You're not the only one! I'd soon click away too - like I said I wouldn't consider for this, I'm just curious to understand what might be possible. I think any form of advert on the short video itself would be annoying to say the least.

 

[Paul Murray]

That's true, but if the bulk of your subscribers start watching through YouTube rather than your site, you'll lose revenue. You could counter this buy having 'sponsored' links in the product descriptions.

So rather than having a banner advert on the video, you instead have a banner on the site, and a link in your YT description, along with a short piece of text telling viewers about a product or service that might benefit them.

Ensure that the link is highly relevant though, and I'd charge a flat rate for this rather than being paid per impression/sale, at least at first.

 

[Faevilangel]

If you want to commercialise the videos you may need to host them on a private host such as Vimeo pro (removes the ads etc) and you can brand the video to your needs.

YT is great for small videos but they do add adverts all over them so might be worth paying to use another host.