How to create your own online TV station

Your own online TV station starts with something more important than the camera: What value can you offer other people? If you simply sit staring into the camera saying something pointless, nobody will want to watch. The content needs to carry your videos.

This follows my video about opportunities to create your own TV channel. There were lots of good questions about how to do it in practice. I rather elegantly skipped over that, so here are my experiences with the technology, marketing and work of building an audience.

I’m speaking from my experiences in October 2010. Equipment, services and prices are those I’m working with or assessing at that time.

Your own online TV station needs something to say

You can market brilliantly and set up beautiful lighting. If the content stinks, you won’t get an audience that stays. So start by asking whom you want to help and what you have to say that those people can use.

Next, find your own style. I think I’m good at improvising and offering something valuable to entrepreneurs and businesspeople. Others work better with a script and time to think things through. Both can work.

By all means look to others for inspiration. I’ve done that too. But don’t simply copy them. Find a way of making video that suits you.

I bought 30,000 to 40,000 kroner’s worth of equipment and barely made anything

When I started, I focused heavily on equipment. I bought a car camera mount, a relatively expensive video camera, lighting costing four or five thousand kroner and wireless microphones. I also bought a new Mac for editing. Altogether, I probably spent 30,000 to 40,000 kroner getting ready.

Then I sat taking notes and preparing everything. But it took hour after hour. A shadow on my face annoyed me, the lighting needed changing, and afterwards I had to edit. I even hired a professional to make a brilliant intro, which I still have and would like to use at some point.

First, I’d spend half an hour to an hour preparing. Then I’d record, redo it three, four or five times and edit it together. I probably spent three or four hours on each video at first.

Eventually, I had to tell myself: Martin, you don’t have time for this at all. And it isn’t you.

I took inspiration from Gary Vaynerchuk, among others. I can find him unbelievably annoying, but he has good points too. One thing that struck me was simply doing it. Why make it so complicated?

So I started making my videos freestyle. That’s where I found my style.

Choose technology that lets you actually get it done

Today, I record with an iPhone 4. Before that, I used an iPhone 3. You can also use another smartphone, a Flip camera or something similar. What matters is your target audience and what suits you and your content.

Of course, I get some flak now and then because the camera shakes or the sound isn’t perfect. I largely choose to ignore that. If I have to prepare much more, I simply won’t make the videos.

I think people who like what I say would rather hear from me two or three times a week with some shaking than get one video a month with all the big equipment set up.

That’s my choice. Everyone is different, and another format may suit you better. But find something you can keep doing.

I use YouTube to get the videos out

My advice is to put the videos on YouTube. That saves your own storage and bandwidth and gives you access to a big video community where your videos can be found and shared.

I know Vimeo and other services can be slicker in some areas. But my assessment is that they don’t have YouTube’s user base in Denmark. That makes achieving the same spread harder.

Create a channel, write about yourself and link to your website. The solution I’m discussing here is free to use.

Think about the words you use too. Who’s your target audience, and what do they search for on Google and YouTube? Use relevant words in the channel text, video title, description and tags you can add.

For example, my Apple iPad review reached Google’s first page in Denmark for a relevant search. It only lasted a week or ten days, but brought good traffic. I could build on that.

You can also link to the video with anchor text describing the subject. That’s the actual words in the link. And if the video is relevant to entrepreneurs, you can put it in a post on Amino. Back then, instructions are available by the little video icon when writing your post.

There may be other relevant forums too. The point is to get the video out where people interested in the content already are.

Your own domain and a WordPress blog bring everything together

The next thing I’ve done is create a WordPress blog on my own domain. I allow 50 to 100 kroner for a domain, and WordPress is free. If you need help, describe the task on Amino Freelancer.

The task could be setting up a WordPress blog on your domain and integrating it with YouTube. If you want custom graphics and everything looking fantastic, at this point I’d guess four to ten thousand kroner, depending on how much needs doing.

A simple setup with a blog and video solution might be done by a helpful soul for some bottles of red wine or 500 kroner. That’s my estimate; you’ll need to ask what people will charge. It certainly doesn’t have to rip the heart out of your budget.

Then record the video, upload it and put it on the blog. I use Wi-Fi because the 3G network here in the US is so poor. It may be better in Denmark, but remember video files can be large. If you pay per megabyte, it can get expensive.

Your own domain gives you a place to collect your writing, videos and audience. But a video embedded from YouTube still lives on YouTube. So keep your own copy of the video file too in case the service disappears or changes in a way you dislike.

Make it easy to follow you and share your videos

People should be able to subscribe to the blog, through RSS for example. I also use FeedBurner to send an email whenever I make a new video. It’s free at this point. It isn’t ideal, but something is better than nothing.

Write good text on your blog so search engines have something to find. And work on spreading awareness of it. Also read E-pusher about my experiences with online sales and marketing.

On YouTube, you can find people in your target audience, follow them or use the service’s contact and friendship options. Then perhaps they’ll discover you and start watching your videos.

You can also tell viewers directly: If you like this video, share it with your friends. They can do that on YouTube. If you edit, you can also add text saying where people can find you and your videos.

Another option is talking to media outlets that need content for their websites. For example, I’ve made an agreement with Jyllands-Posten’s EPN, which takes one of my videos each week and puts it on its site. There’s often a good debate, and it brings traffic to both my website and YouTube channel.

Practise before inviting the whole world in

You need a long-term view of what you’re doing. You won’t necessarily succeed today or tomorrow. And don’t market it heavily before you’ve reasonably got your format sorted.

Start by making the first ten, fifteen or twenty videos and quietly putting them on YouTube. People can watch, but use them above all to practise.

It may take ten, twenty, thirty, forty or fifty videos to find your style. Where should you look? How do you hold the camera? What works best for you? It takes time before you feel at home with it.

If you shout loudly about your videos while you’re still finding your feet or aren’t very good, you can scare your target audience away. That’s a shame.

Once you feel you’ve got a grip on it, start telling more people. Then new viewers also have material to look back through. You can say the early videos are from when you were new and inexperienced and a little messy.

Building an audience that trusts you takes time

If you have something worthwhile to offer and want real success with this, I’d allow two or three years. Making a couple of videos a week, perhaps you can begin to have a good audience after two to four hundred videos.

Gary Vaynerchuk is an example of someone who kept going for a long time before things took off. As I recall, he made several hundred videos before becoming really popular. I remember it as three or four hundred videos and years of work before it took off. And at this point, I believe that after around seven years and seven or eight hundred videos, he has around 100,000 viewers a day. Those numbers are from memory, but the persistence is what’s interesting. Of course, he also works in a much bigger American market.

I’ve been going for around a year and a half myself and made about 160 to 170 videos. I probably average around a thousand viewers per video. That’s not an enormous number, but it’s exactly my target audience.

When I tell them I’ve organised a conference or am appearing at the entrepreneur fair, I experience fantastic conversion. Better than in other media I’ve worked with.

It’s connected with trust. Perhaps you feel I’ve never sat here feeding you lies. I may have said something wrong because I didn’t know better, but I haven’t deliberately tried to mislead you.

When people trust you and feel you have something professional or personal to offer, your recommendation matters. Then you can say you’ve written a new book and perhaps find a large proportion of viewers buy it. I mention 20 per cent as an example of how interesting it could become, not a result everyone can expect.

That was the practical side of online video: Something to say, a format you can sustain, somewhere to collect the material and a long effort to find your audience. I find developments including Google TV really exciting. Enjoy.

Also read about my original expectations for online TV.

Here, I explain how to create your own online TV station and market it.