5. Bad Titles – The main one I see people making is the titles they are choosing for there videos. Sometimes they put there name on the title or even a un-related name. These videos are either banned or are never viewed once word gets around about the title being misleading.

4. Description Link – I see a lot of people putting there link in the description of there videos which is good but they are not putting the http:// so people can easily click the link. Never forget the http:// on your url in YouTube because it wont be a live link if you dont!

3. No Play lists – Why haven’t you created a couple play lists to help your subscribers find relevant videos? Play lists are powerful and worth creating, comment below if you dont know how and I will make a post on it for you!

2. No Custom Channel Design – You should customize your own Channel so its all yours and one of a kind! I did one for the PixelForLife YouTube Channel and it helped us!

1. Bad Use Of Tags On Each Video – The biggest mistake I see people making is there miss-use or non-use of the tags feature in YouTube and other major video sites. Be sure to use your tags just like you would technorati tags or the meta tags of a website (I know I’m going back a little 1998-ish on that one but trust me, this is how it works on YouTube).

If you follow those mistakes and avoid them you should be a way better video blogger then you were before!

Some of you love them while others say you don’t. One thing I have learned through blogging is that you will get mixed responses to just about everything you do.

However for those of you with questions on how to actually start vlogging…. THIS POST IS FOR YOU!

Hopefully most of your questions will be answered here so I can just refer emailer’s to it in the future.

What Makes A Great Video?

This is probably the most asked question I get, everyone wants to know what makes a good and great video. Answering this is hard because there are so many things to a great video, rather then list the hundreds to you, I’ve picked my top ones that I would focus on if I was starting out.

All the others are small and will come to you in time, anyways… Here is the list of things you should focus on!

1. Make your video short, between 2-5 minutes in length! People don’t want you to waste their time and the 2-5 minute videos always do the best on the net!

2. Make it funny / comical if possible! People love to laugh and have a good time, if you can capture that in a video you should get views easily.

3. Look at the camera! Some many times I see people who do videos not looking at the camera. Its really annoying because it makes me think they are looking past me when I’m watching them. Engage your audience and stare them straight in the face!

4. Make sure your sound is good! I see so many poor quality sound videos because they either don’t know how to compress the audio for a small but good file size or they just have no clue how to edit there sound for better results. Do a little research and take some time to learn your camera and editing apps for audio and video. It will go a long way!

5. Don’t use to many transitions! Believe it or not transitions are of the past, the new way of video editing is to cut it choppy. What I mean is lets say you ask the viewer a question like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” instead of transitioning to the answer just hit them with the answer, cut right in! (You can see an example of this method in nearly all the videos I make, mainly my intro’s).

Where Do I Upload My Video?

There are many places you can upload your videos but the most popular is probably YouTube. Its popular because its easy to use and they don’t plaster you with ads all over the place! Not only that but YouTube has a really big and fairly nice community of vloggers.

You just need to focus on getting plugged in to some of the other like minded vloggers and you will be set!

If your like me, I am more after providing good visible videos to my readers so I have chosen to use Viddler for all my videos because it allows me to upload HD quality videos if I want. YouTube does have a high-def setting but they take hours to get the videos up whereas Viddler takes 20-30 minutes!

YouTube is more accessible though so its a coin flip depending on what your after!

How Do I Get More Views?

This is one of the most widely asked questions I hear. The funny part is that its really not that hard to get decent views on your videos. I guess the main tip I would like to point out here is one for YouTube, not many know about but its actually how a TON of big YouTubers with several thousand subscribers got started.

Video Responses! There is a feature in YouTube called video responses where basically you can “Respond” to someones video with another video. Now obviously this means a little bit of work on your part but here is the basic premise behind this technique.

Lets say I made a funny video about getting a hair cut and I want to get more views on it, well I type in something like “Funny Hair Cuts” on the YouTube search. I find a video that has a medium view count on it already. I then post my HairCut video to that funny video that already is getting views.

Now you may be asking why do I pick a video with Medium View Counts when there are some with way higher view counts? Simple, because you want to get views, the videos with the SUPER high view counts have already been seen by everyone but the second video may not have been seen yet. (Its just basic math people!)

How Do I Get More Subscribers?

This question may even be asked more then the above but luckily for you I’m telling you all my secrets and all you have to do is return the favour by subscribing to my blog!

Anyways…

To get more subscribers especially on YouTube you simply have to ask for them. Yup it is that simple! Go to anyone on youtube with thousands of subscribers and look at what is on the end of nearly ALL their videos?

You will see a message like…

• Please Subscribe
• Subscribe Now
• Click The Subscribe Button

The moral of the story is “Ask and you shall receive”.

If you do any video blogging then you probably have heard and use www.viddler.com to host your high res videos. I still prefer viddler over YouTube because YouTube takes way to long to approve videos these days. Not only that but for me the market of viddler is more targeted for what I do.

With that said I watch a lot of vids on viddler myself and noticed some people had custom powered by viddler images on their videos. I wanted to do the same but I assumed this was only possible for partners of the viddler program.

After searching my viddler account I found where you can make this change. Before I go any further here is an image outlining what I am talking about when a user watches one of my videos.

See that custom image on the lower right of my videos? This is very powerful for branding, think about it for a second and you will realize that anytime someone views my video they now know that its for Infected By Bugs.

That brings me to an interesting point, lets say you run 3 different blogs like I do, well I believe its not only important but imperative that you have multiple video accounts so you can separate your videos by site. If you haven’t done this do it now but if your like me then its already done and you can now have a custom powered-by image on your videos for each site making it that much more powerful!

The ability to do this on your account via viddler just makes me love them more and more, on sites like YouTube you have to already have it on the video and often times it can look nasty and pixelated!

Do you realize the power behind this? Its basically a goldmine to say the least and its time to cash in on it guys, I will talk more about it in the future but for now lets stay on topic to how to actually do it in viddler.

Step 1: OK so your sitting at the homepage of www.viddler.combut your logged in (good o’l cookies). Click on “settings” in the top right of the viddler page.

Step 2: Next you should have a row of tabs including one that says “Player Branding” across the top of the content where your videos normally appear?

Step 3: At the bottom of this player branding screen is the option to upload a new powered-by image. Viddler asks you to show support and add their powered-by viddler image but you don’t have to. Just note that when creating your image if you want to have transparent background like I have done then it needs to be a png with a transparent background (maybe I will create a video on doing that in photo shop sometime).

Step 4: Simply select your image and hit upload! (It will automatically update on all of your videos even the old ones which saves you time and money of going in and doing it by hand!).

Its pretty simple but well worth the time investment trust me!