Most of the information below was found on this interview that Brian Clark did with Dave Kaminski of Web Video University.

Tips

Quality is Important

Dave talks about the videos that are getting a lot of traffic online and/or making money. These videos are of higher quality than the average YouTube video.

Video quality consists of two basic things: content and production value.

Add Variety

Dave talks about changing or adding a visual element to your video every 4 seconds. Because of mainstream TV, our brain is conditioned to get bored after a couple of seconds unless we see something new. This could be a cut to a new scene or simply adding captions at the appropriate time.

Write a Script

Most of us don’t have the adlib skills to “wing” our videos. Dave talks about the importance of planning out your video and then writing a script that accomplishes your goals for the video.

Keep Videos Short

Dave gave some statistics. On average, people watching online video only check out videos for slightly over 2 minutes. This means your videos should be less than 2 minutes. Dave actually likes the 30-60 second videos because they are like the TV commercials that we’re used to watching.

Dave was talking about videos that sell. He wasn’t talking about educational videos. I think those can be longer, but it’s probably a good idea to break up longer videos shorter segments.

Equipment

Camera

Dave says that the digital video cameras you can find in Walmart are good enough for online video. The price for a digital video camera can be as low as $250.

Dave recommends getting a camera that saves on tape instead of one that saves on a hard drive using flash memory. Tape is better because you’ll lose some quality due to the compression whenever a video is saved on a hard drive.

Also, make sure to buy a video with an external mic jack. This allows you to use an external mic, which will vastly improve your audio quality.

Editing Software

If you’re a Windows user, Dave recommends Sony Vegas. If you have a Mac, Final Cut Express is the way to go.

Screencast Software

Dave didn’t talk about screencast software. Based on my research, Camtasia Studio seems to be the popular choice among screencast creators. I’ve tried it and it’s definitely a great piece of software.

Mic

Dave likes ATR-35S Lavalier Microphone, which is less than $30 over at Amazon. A lavalier mic is one that clips onto your shirt or tie.

Lightning

Dave talks about buying soft boxes, or soft box lights. These lights will run you around $300-$400. However, if you want a budget option, Dave recommends shop lights at your local hardware store. These only cost around $15-$20. However, make sure to diffuse the harsh lightning of the shop lights with a sheet or pillow case.

Update: Investor Mark Evans posts his thoughts and I think he misses the point completely, saying that the reason it happened is because the VCs had little interest in Odeo and that they were low on money or about to run out. Mark, this isn’t Ev trying to save a sinking ship, it’s him using 7 figures of his own money to buy back control and do what he wants to do, not what his investors think will make the best exit strategy. My comment over there goes into a little bit more detail.

Vox… You Know… For The MySpace Kids
Wednesday also marked the non-beta launch of Vox.com, Six Apart’s new blogging-photo-video tool that not-really-but-yeah-it-kinda-does compete with another Six Apart product, TypePad. Vox is billed as “a free personal blogging service for sharing your experiences with friends and family” but it’s definitely 6A’s product that hopes to allure MySpace users, the kind that have been sharing songs, pictures, and video for awhile now.

I’m not sure exactly why 6A chose to create a totally new product rather than just give TypePad a Vox-like makeover, but maybe Vox is based on a totally new codebase which is something that TypePad desperately needs. As a previous TypePad customer I was constantly frustrated by the slowdowns associated with the service — by the end it took nearly 30 seconds for the stats page to load up, 1 minute to list my recent entries, etc. etc.

I do like Vox from a design and interaction point of view as it’s very well polished, but I just have to wonder what Six Apart is really trying to do here. Their Movable Type publishing software that was the Big Man On Campus just a few years ago is now all but eclipsed by open source WordPress and the thousands of free themes that are offered. TypePad, their once-novel hosted blogging service, now goes up against WordPress.com which offers similar features, greater reliability, and a better price tag of “completely free” which usually makes people happy. Now they release Vox which is positioned up against MySpace and Facebook for the “create your own space on the web, put happy shit in there, meet new people” social publishing/networking niche. In case they haven’t noticed, MySpace is already a noun (“Hey have you got a MySpace?”) and I suspect a lot of paying TypePad users will be defecting to free Vox, so they’re 1) taking on MySpace, and 2) losing their own customers?

Vox is a very cool service but its positioning within the 6A lineup just isn’t clear to me yet. Here’s how I wish 6A’s product lineup looked:

• A free version of Movable Type (or another app) that is as easy to theme as WordPress, can import/export blog entries flawlessly for easy switching, and can easily switch to dynamic publishing without any hassles.
• A “Pro” version of Movable Type that has the features listed above but can also have modified data fields to store/output anything you want and a publishing workflow system built-in, aka, a mini CMS.
• No TypePad, just Vox. Give Vox the same capabilities as TypePad and implement a paid tier that lets you drop your own CSS and templates in. Free for regular users, power users pay $10/mo or something.

It’s nice to dream :)

Although you might be itching to flip the camera on and jumpstart your 15 minutes of fame, please don’t. Here’s a list of things that you shouldn’t be doing because 1) they’re played out, 2) boring, or 3) not innovative whatsoever.

1. Don’t pretend to be Rocketboom
Rocketboom is like lightning in a bottle, once the cap is off the lightning escapes and won’t come back. Don’t pretend to be zefrank either — his delivery and style is unique and immediately recognizable. Make your own style, work at it, and make it popular. Don’t bite others, be original. If you imitate others then you’re just spinning your wheels and not moving your site forward.

2. Don’t do vidcasts just because everyone else is doing them
Too many 1-man media companies think they can make readers think they are larger by doing random vidcasts, which is not a good idea. If everybody else is doing something and you follow suit, they’re already 10 steps ahead and are planning their next move. It’s not smart to be the last company in “a space” that was only formed a few months ago because you’re not innovating, you’re just following. Be a leader and not a follower. How can you be original if you only do things that others have already done?

3. Don’t be boring.
This almost goes along with #2: if you have nothing to say or cannot be interesting on cue, then don’t record yourself doing nothing. If your words are boring, then reading those words in a monotone voice while looking into a camera is even worse. Be interesting, have something to say, do something cool, make your readers’ time valuable by doing something worthwhile in your video. Don’t read a blog post you already wrote, don’t stare into the camera and utter random nonsense, don’t do anything that wouldn’t hold your own attention if you were forced to watch yourself.

So now that we’ve got the Big 3 mistakes that people make when integrating YouTube into their existing online offerings, let’s go over some things that are cool, useful, innovative, or potentially revenue-producing.

1. Use YouTube as supplemental content, not the highlight.
Interjecting YouTube videos into a blog post works if the content can stand by itself and still be interesting. Find cool videos and put them in your already cool blog post and you just increased the value of what you published.

2. Be original, be fun.
In stark contrast to weblogs, if a user is viewing a short video then you have their complete attention — so make the most of it. Don’t just sit there, do something interesting. Make a fool of yourself, sing, dance, run around, get naked, make my time worthwhile and I’ll come back looking for more…. especially if you’re naked ;)

3. Extend YouTube.
YouTube has an API so you can interact with content and deliver it in new and useful ways. On top of your blog’s category archives you could pull in recent videos related to that category or tag, or integrate videos into your site’s search feature, or have a random and topical video rotate on your homepage, or whatever. Get creative with it, add value to your own site’s experience by integrating videos and YouTube content.

Just Like With Everything Else

Whenever something big and new arrives, everyone trips over themselves trying to embrace it and exploit it, be it “Web 2.0″ APIs, RSS feeds, Google Maps, or YouTube videos. Resist the temptation to sit in the echo chamber — lay back and think before you work because at the end of the day, if your mashup or integration didn’t add as much value as you thought then your work is a failure. Don’t do what everyone else is doing, but take it a few steps further and add more value that others haven’t thought about yet. Nobody wants a “me too” attitude, so make sure to innovate at every step instead of just keeping up with the Joneses.

Got any other good YouTube Do’s or Don’ts?

The most common way of finding information on the Internet is search. Google Adwords, and Adsense, are an extremely successful example of putting your advertising precisely in the laps of your target audience. But ads, being what they are, are only marginally successful. There are other ways each and every company doing business on the Web can utilize their own assets, to help advertise their company.

I recently did a small project with a client that sold books. They had snippets of audio for each book available online. They were thinking of allowing full digital downloads of each book, in audio form, at some point in the future, but for now they had small segments of the book broken down into MP3 files. Those files, could be the key to a portion of their success online.

Podcasting is gaining steam with each and every day. How long it will last, what podcasting will become in the future, and how much value is in actually advertising within indy podcasts – are issues that will be debated for some time. Nevertheless, there is huge potential here for almost any company to parlay off of its success.

My client, had the files (enough to publish a podcast once a week for well over a year), and just needed a way to publish them. Although this specific project is not completed (hence no link showing you how it was implemented) I’ll tell you what we did. Using Expression Engine, or WordPress, or Moveable Type, it is possible to schedule posts. Setting up 52 posts, with 52 enclosures, scheduled to publish themselves each Monday at a specific time – and you’ve got yourself an automated advertising service. A 1:30 audio clip, that links back to a way to buy the entire audiobook, or physical book, is really a simple way to generate revenue.

To see something similar in action, take a look at Wine Library TV. The Wine Library is an online, and offline, “wine store”. Wine Library TV is a video cast where the owner of the company takes a few minutes to taste test a few wines. It has built up quite an audience (I have been one since very early), and has made their business go from successful, to booming, online.

Does your company have any assets it can use, online, to help advertise your business?

Wait, wasn’t there another thing that did podcasts? You know, um, I think they were still in beta or something, and they had that cool domain ….. oh man what was their name…

It was Odeo. And I hope that they don’t get trounced by iTunes 4.9′s podcast support because Odeo kicks ass.

I was hand-picked (randomly selected) to tryout Odeo and it freakin’ blew me away. It’s like a combination of all the good things of all the “Web 2.0″ applications like Backpack and Flickr, but rolled into a fantastic user interface with cool functionality attached to boot. It even has a desktop syncing client that interfaces right with your iPod. It’s not public yet (screenshots on Flickr), but I can bet that when it goes public, it will be all the rage.

But will iTunes 4.9 steal all their thunder? Is there a reason one would use Odeo over iTunes to find, subscribe, and download cool podcasts? Is the great Odeo ship dead in the water before it even sailed? I really hope Odeo still survives, because it was a fantastic application, but only time will tell.