If you are running a business, you must continually think of innovative ways to get your products and services in front of your target audience. Leveraging YouTube for your business is one of the cost-efficient ways to grow it if used as a part of your marketing strategy. The biggest brands and top marketers leverage the platform to stay at the top of the industry. If you have got a YouTube channel that is bringing in a decent amount of viewership and engagement, you must think about turning it into a video sharing platform.
Video streaming is the future and streaming services no longer serve just as a platform for watching movies and TV shows, they have completely transformed consumer demand for video consumption. According to the Digital Media Trends Survey by2018 by Deloitte, over 48% of all United states that over 48% of the consumers in the United States stream videos every day or week.
Here is what average weekly video consumption among consumers from different countries look like.
If the idea of a video sharing platform sounds great, make your own website like YouTube to leverage its potential. If you already have a popular YouTube channel, creating a video streaming platform can be a continuation of what you are already doing. All you have to do is to take videos with more views and engagement from your YouTube channel, organize them for easier consumption, and create a rich video library.
But how can you do it? For example, Tim Milgram, a renowned cinematographer and a dance choreographer who has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube built a standalone video sharing platform to sell his dance masterclasses.
He uses this video sharing platform to teach online dance classes to a global audience for a monthly subscription. The world’s best choreographers join the online classes to teach a wide variety of dance numbers like Jazz, Hip hop, technical styles, etc. from beginner to advanced level.
Why make a website for your YouTube channel?
If you have a couple of great videos ready, starting a YouTube channel is easy and you can have a good number of subscribers as well, all thanks to the widespread popularity of YouTube. Your business marketing success greatly depends on your ability to communicate effectively with the widest possible global audience. With more than 2 billion monthly active users especially tuning in from mobile devices, YouTube is one social platform where your audience is. Not only having a YouTube channel will help you create brand awareness for your individual brand or business, it will also allow you to generate new leads and grow your email list.
While many content creators create the best quality videos with a lot of views, the ever-fluctuating revenue generation programs do not provide a fair share of the revenue creators really deserve. For the same reason, content creators look forward to creating their own video streaming platform and branded websites which give them complete ownership of their content and control over the revenue generated.
Let’s look into more reasons why YouTubers must consider how to make a website for YouTube channel.
Brand customization
Unlike social video platforms like YouTube that offer very little opportunity for branding, video sharing platforms provide a lot of room to popularize your brand and get started with your branding activities. Having a video sharing platform for your business also allows you to run customized powerful campaigns with relevant call to actions, or diverting users to your landing page, and converting to your loyal customers.
Player customization
Running a YouTube channel doesn’t allow you to customize the video player giving the video creator no control of the video recommendations or other aspects that might appear in the video players during or after the playback. However, if you make your own website like YouTube, you can enjoy complete control over the branding and customization of the video player and provide options to publish videos into personalized embeddable players with subtitles and captions according to your requirements.
Content management
Considering how to create a website like YouTube offers you full ownership of the content and provides a white-labelled customizable video solution. These solutions feature content management, which helps in organizing and managing videos, tracking the metadata like title and descriptions more effectively. The content management feature helps in uploading videos, editing, and makes organizing videos simple and efficient.
Analytics
Video sharing platforms come with powerful analytics features that helps you to track all important metrics to measure the performance of your videos. You can get significant insights on bandwidth communication, subscriber count, watch time for individual videos, demographics, user engagement activities, etc.
Marketing
Video marketing is essential for driving sales and growing your business. Engaging customers through videos increases your brand exposure while engaging your users with relevant content. Video sharing websites display and recommend videos based on the browsing history of users, driving them deeper to your video platform to increase your brand exposure, ultimately driving more revenue. Video sharing platforms also feature dashboard, viewer statistics, user engagement activities, audience timeline, etc.
More ways to make money
The end goal of any content creators, freelancers, or businesses is to earn profitable revenue. Video sharing platforms offer more monetization options for content creators than video platforms like YouTube. Here are some of the ways you can make money with your video content.
Subscriptions
While YouTube offers subscriptions that are great for content creators to make money when starting out, the platform often rolls out new YouTube partnership program rules that put restrictions on the revenue share that creators can claim. However, hosting content on your Video sharing platform allows you to run a subscription revenue model where users can pay for accessing your content monthly or yearly. This allows you to have control over the revenue you generate.
Advertisement
YouTube deducts over 40% of the advertising money earned from video ads placed on your YouTube channel which is a lot for beginner-level content creators. However, if you make a website for your YouTube channel, you can keep all the advertising revenue to yourself. You can also implement your own ad types including skippable ads, non-skippable ads, dynamic ads, third-party integrations, etc.
Pay-per-view
You can also implement a pay-per-view monetization strategy where you allow your users to pay just for the individual content they want to watch. This monetization model provides content creators with the flexibility to make more money while offering a satisfying viewing experience to your end-users.
Sponsorships
Content sponsorships can work as a scalable option for making money that can pay out big. If you accept sponsorships for your videos, consider placing relevant ads to give maximum exposure. Video creators can also consider placing sponsor’s logos in the video player to increase exposure.
Content protection
Video sharing platforms feature content protection integrations that offer end-end security with AES encryption, paywall integration, etc. so that you can securely stream your videos over the internet and protect your content from unauthorized third-party access.
Steps to smoothly make the transition from YouTube to your own Video sharing platform
Now that you know why it is important to consider how to make a YouTube-like website, let’s look into the steps you need to follow to make the transition from a YouTube channel to your own Video sharing platform.
Devise clear content plans
When you are transitioning from your YouTube channel to your own video platform, clearly outline the content you are going to offer to your target audience. Your content plan must define the look and feel of the content, how the free and paid content would be, how your content would bring extra value to your viewers. When devising a content plan, there is no one-size-fits-all rule, you will have to customize the plans, according to the requirements of your viewers and your business goals.
As it is your own video platform, you can have full control over the content you create. You can also choose any niche according to your needs and preferences or anything that your viewers will love. When you are creating videos that you are going to offer your viewers for a fee, make sure you offer great value through your videos so that your viewers would be more than willing to pay for your content.
Create a business strategy
This is one of the most crucial steps when transiting from a YouTube channel to your video sharing platform. Before you start migrating your videos that are on your YouTube channel to your video sharing platform, you must have a clear idea of how things are going to work. Migrate YouTube videos with the highest value to your video sharing platform. Include relevant call to actions in your YouTube videos to redirect your videos to your new Video sharing platform. Moreover, white-label solutions give you access to the source code and allow you to customize your solution to suit your unique business requirements to any level. These readymade scripts also come with free trials so that you can try it out before actually purchasing it.
Building your own video sharing platform
With a great business plan, you can ensure that your transition will go as smoothly as possible. Now, comes the most important part-building your video sharing platform. If you have been running your YouTube channel for a while, you might have an idea about how you want your Video sharing platform to look and function like. However, there are differences when it comes to branding and optimizing your video streaming website when compared to your YouTube channel. You can consider creating your own website like YouTube using a white label solution which is the most viable and cost-effective approach. A white label solution allows you to build your Video sharing platform with the features and functionalities you require for the effective functioning of your video platform.
Craft video announcements on your YouTube channel
When making a website for your YouTube channel, you must announce it to your audience. Create an announcement video where you introduce your audience to your new Video sharing platform and how you are going to put up your best videos there.
You can decide how your announcement videos must be, because you know your audience better than anyone else and what they like better than anyone else.
Ensure your announcement videos has the following elements:
- Benefits of your new video sharing platform
- Preview of the videos they can access
- Pricing information of your videos
- Call to action to visit your new video sharing website.
Announcement videos allow building anticipation and desire around your new video sharing platform you are about to launch.
Create a high converting offer
If you want to attract more subscribers to your new video sharing platform, you can create high converting offers to sweeten the deal. Create coupons that provide free trials, and exciting discounts. These best deals can have a significant impact on your sales and help with growing your subscriber base. This makes sense as over half of the people who would sign up for your free trials might convert to your paying customers later. This is a powerful tactic that can offer a high level of value for both you and your subscribers. Try implementing this and see how it impacts your business.
Ready to Start your own website like YouTube?
Conclusion
Converting your YouTube channel to a video sharing platform has tons of perks as discussed in this blog. Considering how to make a website like YouTube is a great step for growing content creators which is even a nice side revenue stream.
Although running a YouTube channel is a good way to make money, dealing with the structural and financial limitations of the platform becomes frustrating and limits your growth. That’s when you need to start thinking about creating a dedicated video sharing platform. Modern technological advancements have brought the initial costs of building a video sharing platform to a practical level and having your own video sharing platform offer full data protection and control over all the aspects of your video site. In short, cutting out any third-party allows content creators to take the lead and it’s much easier to get here you are going in terms of growth.