Video hosting is one of the last things on people's mind when they are creating their first online course.
The common advice is to never use Youtube for premium (paid) content.????
But what if I told you there that advice was completely wrong. That there is a rock solid way to protect your Youtube content and get other benefits from using it for your premium content?
This information could save you hundreds of dollars per year off your digital marketing stack, and yield tons of benefits throughout your business.
Let's dive in.
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What is Free Video Hosting?
Video hosting is essentially the computers that store all the video content you put online. These computers are constantly connected serve your video files to anyone who goes to your specific videos.
Youtube is the most popular example of a free video hosting platform. In fact, 300 hours of video content is uploaded to Youtube every minute! That's incredible!
Youtube is fantastic for generating traffic to your website and building a loyal community. But there are some fatal flaws with using Youtube for your premium content that we will discuss below.
But don't worry, there's a solution 🙂
Before we get there, let's also give mention to the most popular paid hosting solutions that are common for premium content:
The Best Paid Video Hosting
There are also several well known paid-hosting platforms that are commonly used for hosting premium content:
- Vimeo
- Wistia
The pricing for Vimeo is going to run about $7/month if you upload a small amount of content, or $20 per month if you upload up to 20GB per week. Since HD resolution is everywhere today, 20GB per week is not a huge amount.
An hour of iPhone footage at 1080p is over 12gb, so if you are uploading some serious content, you may hit the limits quickly.
It's an even tougher sell with Wistia when it comes to pricing:
Wistia will be setting you back $99 per month, plus $0.25 per each video uploaded after the 10th video.
A rather strange pricing model in my opinion, but it must be working for them!
If you're just launching your first online product, you may be looking at these price tags and choking a little bit...
$99 per month to host a product that may or may not sell??
Not fun. But the common advice has always been to avoid using Youtube for premium content. But why?
Why You Should Never Use Youtube For Premium Video Hosting
Youtube has a feature where you can make videos unlisted:
Unlisted videos cannot be found by searching for the title in Youtube. They are essentially hidden videos in the background that can only be shared by embedding the videos in websites, or by sharing the exact link with someone to access the video on Youtube.
So this begs the question:
Why can't you use unlisted Youtube videos to put premium content online?
And it's a great question, because you are SO CLOSE to being able to do just that.
But unfortunately, there's a wee little problem with this idea. Every Youtube hosted video allows you to get the direct link from any video, no matter if it is public or unlisted:
Right clicking on any youtube embedded video will allow you to get the video URL or any other information about it.
If you host your $1,000 course on Youtube, you will certainly have a small portion of your students purchase the course, copy the URLs of all the great video content you share, and immediately request a refund. Not nice.
And since online courses are on a boom (to be worth $325 billion by 2025), you can begin to see how the premium video hosts can command such a high price.
Ever had your video stolen from Youtube? Use this one tool to prevent them from ever taking your content again! And it's a cheap lifetime deal right now...
How to Protect Your Premium Youtube Content?
If we think about it, if there was only a way to prevent users from finding the video URL, you could protect from the lazy pirates who just want to take your content for free.
Pirates will be Pirates
Of course, at the end of the day, anyone desparate will find a way to steal whatever they want. I hate it, but it's true. So the solution I am about to suggest will work for 95% of people who aren't going to try anything too crazy. At the end of the day, keep providing value and don't worry about the minority of people who are dishonest.
I've discovered a tool that allows you to put a mask on top of your Youtube videos and prevent users from finding the URL of the video.
It's called PressPlay2.0, and it connects into Youtube and provides some pretty interesting additional functionality to your videos:
Here are some of the things you can do with PressPlay2.0:
PressPlay2.0 Features
While there are several interesting features listed, the one that I really care about for this article is the last one.
With this feature, now people will not be able to find the URL of your video simply by right clicking on it:
With PressPlay2.0, the only way people can see your videos is on the actual page that you embedded it on.
No more $99 per month simply to protect video content. But that's not the only benefit.
The Benefit of Hosting Premium Video Content on Youtube
I'm assuming your Youtube channel will have a mixture of public and unlisted videos.
Your public videos will be a form of content marketing, where you are building a brand to help you sell your products. And your private videos will be the actual content people need to pay for.
What if I were to tell you that you are actually hurting your traffic by using hosts like Vimeo or Wistia?
It's true. Youtube rewards channels that have good watch time and view duration.
And guess what happens with your premium content that people pay for?
They watch a lot of it and stick around until the end!?
By using PressPlay2.0 to protect your videos, you can improve all your watch time statistics in Youtube, helping you build an even stronger channel!
Now that's what I call a virtuous cycle!
Now, is Youtube the Best Free Video Host?
Do I have you thinking? The gears turning upstairs? They should be. I'm super excited to transition my paid video content back over to Youtube, save money every month, and improve my view duration at the same time.
If you want to give PressPlay a try (they have a 30 day money back guarantee), check them out below:
Try PressPlay 2.0!
Get Lifetime Access to for only $67
Free Unlimited Video Hosting: Is there a flaw?
I think this is a game changing solution. Increased protection for your premium content, AND improving your Youtube channel.
But I'm a humble guy and I've been wrong before, so let me know in the comments if there is a fatal flaw behind this free video hosting solution.
Hope this was helpful!