American entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks’ owner, and HDNet CEO, Mark Cuban, has some harsh criticism for Google Inc. with regard to YouTube and its lack of a sustainable business plan.
In a speech at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California on Wednesday, Cuban referred to the videosharing site as “a disaster waiting to happen.”
More specifically, Cuban was referring to the fact that the company lacked a monetization strategy from the get-go. And, despite its many efforts to squeeze revenue out of the mainly user-generated content-filled site, YouTube still struggles to be profitable.
Cuban questioned Google’s logic behind its purchase of YouTube, saying that the company focused on ubiquity rather than making money. “This is a company that is literally subsidizing the bandwidth for the world,” he said.
In that respect, Paul and I agree with Cuban.
(Though we find his disdain of broadband video delivery inevitable given that he owns a cable HD delivery network AND a chain of movie theaters.)
However, YouTube does not look to be going away anytime soon…NOR is broadband video.
In fact, comSCORE Video Metrix service recently reported that in March 2009, U.S. Internet users viewed 14.5 BILLION online videos during the month, representing an increase of 11 percent versus February.
Even more interesting is that YouTube accounted for nearly 40% of that share with 5.9 billion videos viewed by 99.7 million U.S. Internet viewers on the property in just that one month. By the way, second place went to Fox Interactive Media (which is MySpace Video) with a whopping 3% of the share. A HUGE difference!
With all due respect to Mr. Cuban though, we do get his point about needing a PLAN when we approach any business endeavor. Google/YouTube lacked that focus from the start, and now they are scrambling to make up for it. (And we’re confident they will.)
Paul and I always recommend starting out with a plan. In fact, one of the first places we start in YouTube Secret Weapon is by having you determine exactly what you’re in it for. (And yes, we know: We’re all “in it to win it.”) 
Which of the many online marketing benefits do YOU–the business owner–plan to achieve from your YouTube efforts?
In the end, turning a “profit” from your YouTube videos can be measured in a variety of ways:
- Lead Generation and List Building — Attracting new leads and qualified, targeted traffic
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on YouTube AND Google
- Getting your videos to come up in the Google search results with a thumbnail for your top keywords (go search “YouTube Secret Weapon” now to see how this works!)
- Driving qualified, targeted traffic back to your main website/blog
- Higher conversions with the traffic you send back over to my main website/blog
- Using YouTube strategically as part of your overall Social Marketing Plan
- Gaining more exposure for yourself or your cause (music, comedy, political ideas…)
- Higher viewer numbers (which is really not what it’s about, but we understand that
egos are involved here, too)
And then, of course, there are those who aim to make money directly from their YouTube videos by marketing affiliate products. $! (Yes, we teach that, too.)
So what’s your plan for using YouTube as a part of your online marketing efforts?
Sign up for the YouTube Secret Weapon email list off to the right of this post, because perhaps one of our free emails will help you answer that question. And once you get clear on your purpose and intention, the rest is a piece o’ cake…
As a sidenote: One of our biggest goals in marketing via YouTube is to get more traffic to our main sites and blogs. Another source for that traffic is Pay-Per-Click advertising, or PPC.
This weekend in Las Vegas, some of the greatest minds in PPC are getting together to teach PPC, and they are giving everyone access to the live stream for FREE.
Gain 2-Day LIVE Access For Free Here ==>> http://budurl.com/vegasfree
I wonder what Mark Cuban would think of THAT use of broadband video?
Source of Cuban Story: The Wall Street Journal