If you didn't already know, YouTube is indeed the second largest search engine in the world right after Google the almighty. Yahoo trails at the number three spot. The video craze and social media hype and all that stuff has been going on for a few years now with MySpace and Facebook and all the rest of the other social networks but when Google acquired Youtube towards the end of the year in 2006 for $1.6 billion it kinda solidified everything that was going on with the social networks meeting the next big thing which has a bright future; videos.
So naturally as a SEO (search engine optimization) expert and fanatic I am all about experimenting and staying up with the latest trends, trying to catch the next big wave and what not in the advertising world when it comes to web search. Sometimes it is a lot of fun to try out something new but sometimes it is a real pain in the ass but it is part of the job... Usually I stay away from the stuff that is just taking off or seems to be hyped up. Twitter for example I only started using a month ago. I still don't get it much or see how I am going to do a lot of business on it, draw in traffic to all of my web sites or whatever.
So anyways, with Google investing loads of money in YouTube... I decided that it was indeed time to get serious about video search optimization and we should try to make some money off of YouTube and all of the traffic that it has. Perfect timing. Lets rock and roll. Now this was right around the end of the year in 2006. I spoke to some of my partners and we came up with some very interesting and creative ideas that we could attract a lot of traffic from YouTube as well as other social networks to our videos. Now, everybody knows... Sex sells! So naturally.. We didn't try to reinvent the wheel or do anything that hasn't been done before that would be risky. We kept it simple and went with what we were pretty sure would work and be a good start. Without a doubt... It had too. Hmm... Yea, so we thought!!!! Please note that here is some *ADULT EXPLICIT* content below. Please leave the website right now if you get easily offended.
So we recruited a young sexy model and offered her a short term contract to work for us exclusively for a few month's as well as an extension if things work out well few month's down the road at double the pay... We paid really well too for starters compared to others in the biz! We start producing lots of "content" of her. It was all for SexyViky.com (we nicknamed her Sexy Viky) which was setup at the time as a solo porn website. Nothing hardcore. Just model/glamour type stuff, totally nude of course but she was the only one in all of the content, the star.
We wanted to generate lots of traffic from YouTube and all the other social networks by posting just various sexy videos of her every few days and whatever else... Call it "previews" and what not. No nudity of course. Just lots of hot and sexy videos that everybody can watch. We figured that we can generate lots of interest and hopefully some sign ups to the site too. But nope. It didn't work out like that... Unfortunately. ** The blurred out body parts were not blurred out on the actual website. I modified the screenshots just now **
We spent a significant amount of money over the period of approximately 3 month's producing in-house all this original content and tons of energy on emphasis on quality pro stuff. Tens of thousands of dollars poured into that alone. Countless hours of editing and marketing and other stuff too. Lots of man hours on different fronts. All in all we probably spent about six month's total on this new "venture" from beginning to end... This project or experiment or whatever you wanna call it and over $100,000 minimum. It failed pretty miserably. We didn't really make any money or meet any of our goals. Grr.
Sure, we generated lots of traffic to our videos... I personally posted some of the videos to YouTube, Metacafe, Heavy, Break and all the dozes of other video portals / video sharing sites and within 24 hours the video would get hundreds of thousands of views... But no sign ups to our web site! Bastards. All of those visitors were just freeloaders. Nobody wanted to pull out their credit card and spend $29.95 for a monthly membership on this hot piece of young ass. Who would of thought?! We generated a lot of buzz and interest about "sexy viky" from myspace to facebook and youtube and had tons of fans and whatever... But does that translate into profits? No.. In our case it sure didn't. In most cases it doesn't either from what it looks like. I found this out later on. Doh :)
These social media sites and social network traffic in general is totally garbage. Even the operators of those sites have a hard time of monetizing it. Sex sells, they say... But not off of social networks I guess. LOL! It's mostly younger teens on all those sites anyways... No credit cards and no money to spend on anything. We did a lot of things right, and learned a lot along the way. But we will never again invest in anything that has to do with social networks or social media. It is totally hopeless... For now. When and/or if they do figure out how to monetize all the billions of searches and hundreds of millions of visitors that visit on those sites.. They can have a really nice thing goin. But for now... Even two years later --- I still see them as just bullshit. They are fun.. But where's the money??
We shut down the sexy viky site in early summer of 2007 and sold off some of the content materials semi-exclusively and other assets to a couple of companies. One of them was Too Much Media... You probably heard of them and if not... Well, they are the guys who created NATS; The Next-Generation Affiliate Tracking Software. All of the top porn affiliate programs in the world use their affiliate software to manage pretty much their entire business operations. Anyways, they created a solo site as well with all of our content and are doing the whole social networking campaigns on MySpace and YouTube and so on. I don't think they are doing any better than we did. But hey... Everybody trys this stuff!! It looks so cool and it's fun too. Until you go broke :p
Live and learn. Even seasoned professionals fail. I did. They already did or at the least will sooner than later. It's life. Everything looks very nice and solid on paper but when you put it in motion... A lot changes and there is really only one way to find out. So, don't believe the hype. Believe me we tried to make it work with that sexy viky porn site and social media traffic but it just didn't work. It is nice to experiment and all but you really have to be prepared for the consequences. This was just one small side project of ours at that time, sure it sucks that it didn't take off but we learned a lot of valuable lessons which we have been applying in the rest of our businesses. That is the way it goes fellas.
My only advice to you, if you are thinking about getting into a new business venture... Start small. When you are entering unfamiliar territories and up-and-coming markets you really need to see some success and results first before you continue with your investments and participation in it. Telling yourself that it is going to work is not actually going to make it work although positivism does help with being more productive. It's ok to fail regardless. We all do. It is part of business and life. It wasn't the first time I failed and it won't be the last but it is all about what you take away from it.
As a consumer, I love YouTube and use it daily... As a businessmen, I can't stand it. I just don't get it... I am tempted daily to try to advertise on there and so on and so on but, arghhh... I am still traumatized. I don't think that traffic is worth a single cent! I'd love to be proven wrong on this though. So anyways, if anybody is interested in acquiring the sexy viky content materials exclusively... All the pictures and videos. You know where to find me! It is for sale and would love to get rid of it. Bring all offers. You know you want it! :)
Articles at WannaDevelop.com
05/08/2010: Dozens of exact match product / shopping related sites at auction now @ Latonas.com 03/19/2010: All domain development = $99 per domain... Pretty good deal, don't you think? 02/18/2010: New year.. New products... New prices.. New staff... Lots going on in the development biz! 02/06/2010: Must see auctions at Bido! Five days, back-to-back all this week.. Over 100 keyword domains priced to sell! No offers will be turned down 12/01/2009: Domain Stryker pre-registration now officially open... Launch date set for later this month!
