WPVideoTube is a commercial WordPress plugin that grabs video content from YouTube and posts it automatically to your WordPress blog. From my initial testing, this plugin is easy to use and does exactly what it’s supposed to do without much fuss.

Once you’ve installed the plugin, you can configure it based on keywords, categories or a particular YouTube profile. Then, you can select to publish content every X days / X hours, and also to “humanize” it.

You can assign videos to a particular category, and you can choose to also grab the comments if you want to. This is how ac actual page generated from WPVideoTube will look like:

You can see the actual title and video from YouTube. The keywords used for that video will be imported as “tags” in your WordPress blog. Below is how the syndicated comments will look like:

Should you get this plugin?

Well, that really depends on what type of blogger you are and what you want to achieve. If you’re into niche blogging or autopilot blogging then this plugin will definitely help you either add content to an existing blog, or create a new one from scratch.

You can get WPVideoTube for as little $29.95 for the Lite version, or the developer version for $299. Get more info here.

Displaying and managing video on your WordPress blog is a whole lot easier now than it was just a year ago. WordPress already supports video embedding by default, so when it comes to video plugins for WordPress what you really need is something that give you that little extra.

A whole LOT more extra, if you don’t mind, and Viper’s Video Quicktags is the plugins that fits the bill. Basically, it allows you to embed and configure videos from YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, Vimeo and even FLVhref="http://gobala.linktrackr.com/flvplugin-bs:keywords">FLV videos.

In the setting page for each site, you can also configure how the videos are displayed on your blog. For YouTube, you can also force high-quality playback and edit the border colors, choose to display related videos, and other settings.

You can easily add videos using “quicktags” in the WP post editor. The small buttons are very helpful indeed, just click on the YouTube icon for example, enter the video URL, and publish your post. All videos are also embedded into your RSS feed.

Download Viper’s Video Quicktags here

You should also consider signing up for Traffic Geyser and automating your video submissions to YouTube, Google Video, and about 15 other sites.

I’m not one of the first to try out Traffic Geyser, I admit. But I seem to have started just when they have improved their service tremendously. Traffic Geyser now not only automates your video submission to over 24 videos sites, it also submits your content to 12 podcast sites, 7 social bookmarking sites, and your own custom list of blogs.

The logic is simple.

If you create a video to market your website, then you’ll need to upload to more than just YouTube to get maximum exposure. But the problem is creating all those accounts, managing them, and uploading to each individually. All video sites have different procedures, formats and whatnots.

But with Traffic Geyser, you create your profiles once and your video submission to all those sites are automated. Not too keen about setting up all those profiles?

Well here’s the interesting part.

Once you’re a Traffic Geyser customer, you get this “one-time-offer” where they create the profiles for you with a single GMail account, then send you all the login info. The Gmail account is for you to keep and you can change all your passwords if you want so effectively, this is as good as outsourcing the task to someone else.

I usually reject most one-time offers but this one made sense. So my new profile was emailed to me about 3 days after I signed up.

Different Levels Of Membership

Personally I prefer not having too many options, but if that was the case I would choose the option that made sense and that I am reasonably sure I can maximize. I signed-up for the Gold Membership ($97/month) which allows you up to 3,500 submissions which I think is more than the average market or blogger can handle.

You get all you need minus the high-end home study course about making videos and video marketing. Those aren’t really necessary unless you know absolutely nothing about videos. The exact package may not be what they are offering right now, but heads up – if you try to close the page you’ll be given a second offer, which is the Gold Membership.

(Shhhh… don’t tell them I’m giving you this direct link!). Try Traffic Geyser Gold at $97 here.

Overall Traffic Geyser is very well designed, runs smoothly, and is pretty user friendly, Plus they have a very good help / training section that guides you step-by-step on what to do. There’s a forum too if you want to bounce off your ideas or get opinion from other members.

Here are some other features I should mention..

Built In Slideshow Creator

The built-in slideshow generator is really cool. The easy way to do online video is to play a powerpoint slide with some vocal narration and background music. You can do all that and more with the slideshow tool.

Although you can do it faster if you have a mike, some royalty-free music, and MS Powerpoint. Still, it’s there if you need to use it, and it works.

Built-In Lead Page Generator

With the builtin lead page generator you can easily create your own video squeeze pages. Simple template with the main video, so headlines and text, and an optin box. There are several templates you can choose from and they all look pretty good to me.

The templates are easy to customize, just select the individual elements and enter the necessary text, like the screenshot below.

Customize YouTube Video Quality and Branding

Another cool thing you can do with Traffic Geyser is to customize the appearance of your YouTube videos. You can force high quality playback and also make your video play automatically, as opposed to paused at start. Plus, you can also remove the YouTube branding if you want.

Is Traffic Geyser worth your money? Only if you understand the impact of online video, and plan to use it seriously in your business. Don’t forget after your video is in YouTube you can also use Article Marketing Automation to spread it across thousands of blogs.

I’m not the judge of what’s right or wrong, I’m just the messenger. So don’t shoot me.

With LinkedTube you can use videos created by someone else to make money yourself by promoting related affiliate products or your own products for that matter. Just find a YouTube video you want to use on your site, the use the system to overlay an ad on top of the video, then embed it into your site.

Technically what this means is that someone else does the hard work of creating the video and uploading it to YourTube. You just use their hard work to make money for yourself.

Ethical? A great idea?

As I said I’m just the messenger, I’m just telling you what’s possible. Look at this video for example about Keyword Elite. All I have to do now is find the most suitable video, embed my affiliate links, and use it on my website or blog.

Sorry to the video creator, I’m using your video to show how it works. If you think it’s a great idea, then by all means use it. Videos attract attention and are a good sales tool for affiliate products, building an otpin list, and for selling your own products as well.

Get info: Linked Tube

Please also take this poll:
[poll id="3"]

If you’re thinking of blogging with audio and video, then PodPress is the plugin to get. Available for free, this plugin is perhaps the most complete solution to creating a multimedia-rich blog.

Watch the video as I show you step-by-step how to install PodPress, tweak the basic settings, and add audio to your blog. If you’re interested in creating audio products to sell, or just to create “podcasts” like this one to provide more value to your blog readers, this tutorial will be very useful.

If you want to create interview products and sell them online, take a look also at Easy Audio Products.

I spend a lot of time online every day. Between my freelance writing work and blogging I also read a lot of blogs online. A year ago I firmly believed that video blogging would become the next thing for bloggers on the net but now I have to say that perhaps I had it all wrong.

As far as I know, there are hardly any video bloggers out there and yet video sites like video.google and youtube are growing like mad with people submitting their videos as if they were paid to do so.

So what happened? Why hasn’t video blogging taken off? Don’t we love recording our life for the world to see – judging by the success of formerly mentioned sites and reality programs we do. So how come bloggers don’t bother with having a purely video content blog were they record a span of their life for others to see?

I don’t know these answers and can only speculate. Personally I don’t like to have every person in the world taking a seat on my couch to see what’s happening in the Mundell household. Privacy levels differ between blogging and video blogging. When we record a video we also show every emotion we feel at the time.

But by blogging we can be madly upset, stark naked, happy as chum or silly and nobody would ever know.

So, why have you not considered video blogging?

Google video units are a relatively new way to earn money with from your blog or website. Google partnered with YouTube to allow users to show customizable video units on their blog and earn money with targeted advertising. (Google owns YouTube, but they are still run as two independent companies).In the screen shot below you see how the Google video units look.

But what differs those units from a normal YouTube video are the two ads that are placed strategically on the top and bottom of the video window.

When you place a Google Video Unit on your site, you can choose the video content by the following strategies:

• by content
• by individual content providers
• by automatic targeting to YOUR site’s content

The ads shown on the videos will be relevant to your content as well, which can result in higher click through rates. The ads aren’t intrusive to the overall look of your video screen and you can also customize the color scheme and the layout of your video.

To display and utilize this new joint venture between Google and YouTube, you’ll need to have an AdSense publisher account with Google which is free of charge to you. Most bloggers are already using AdSense in some way or another and if you haven’t got an account yet, then you can sign up now to start displaying video units on your pages.

Notes: At present, video units are only available for publishers located in the United States with English-language websites.

How to Add Video Units to Your Page:

1. You need to link your YouTube account with your AdSense account
2. Sign into your account at AdSense
3. Select AdSense Setup tab and then navigate to video units
4. This will redirect you to YouTube to customize your video unit. It will also ask you to login unless of course you already were.
5. Choose a name and description for your player so you can remember it in the future.
6. Now you can customize the colors and the layout to fit into your blog site. Feel free to play around a little.
7. This step is probably the most important one; you’ll now need to choose the content you want displayed on the player. Remember, you have 3 choices as explained above and need to make sure it is targeted to your site.
8. Once you are happy with the choices, click on generate code
9. Copy and paste the code shown into your HTML source on your blog
10. Click publish

Congratulations, you should now have your first Google video units video playing on your site.

Monika Mundell

Editor of Easy WordPress

Technorati Tags: google video units,videos,google,youtube,you tube videos,adsense

I’m sure someone will come up with the proper device, but till then you got to make do if your’re obsessed about ergonomics: