Video marketing is a powerful way for businesses to reach out to their customers online. Sites such as YouTube have provided vloggers with the opportunity to make some money from ads too. If you are just getting started on YouTube and do not have a huge following, it never hurts to invest some money to promote your videos. Promoted videos show up on the top of YouTube as people search for keywords. Till now, Promoted Videos were priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis Google is now planning to change that starting today.

Promoted Videos will now be priced on cost-per-view basis. This should be good news for those who have not success getting people to actually view their video ads in the past. Now you will be charged everytime someone watches your video. Google made the announcement on its blog: (more…)

When you talk to people about PPC, everybody assumes that the only networks that matter are Adwords, YSM, and MSN Adcenter. These networks can drive you a whole lot of traffic, and the traffic that you get are more targeted here than some of the 2nd tier networks out there. But there is more to life than just Google Adwords. They are plenty of other ways to drive traffic to a website, and as long as you are in the PPC game, you need to test these methods out to find out which one works the best for you and your business.

Here are some top alternatives to top search advertising networks:

Facebook Ads: a great way to reach out to Facebook community and advertise your business in front of them. You can get a whole lot of Facebook users to come and visit your website, but be ready to walk them through what you have to offer to retain these users and get their business.

StumbleUpon Ads: StumbleUpon is a great way to get your feed wet with social media advertising and drive a whole lot of cheap traffic to your website. Each impression costs you only 5 cents, but if your visitors favorite your site, you are going to get a whole lot of free traffic from the StumbleUpon community.

ClickRiver: ClickRiver is an advertising network that allows you to get your product/services in front of Amazon customers. Amazon is one of the top web properties on the web, and you can’t afford not to test ClickRiver to see how it works for your business.

LinkedIn:LinkedIn Direct ads are another great way to get your product or website in front of more people. LinkedIn is another top social networking website that is worth testing if you are looking for more traffic.

YouTube Ads: advertising on YouTube is a no brainer these days. You’ve got to be ready to test things out to find out whether YouTube is the right market for you to be involved in. You are not going to be short of traffic, so you may as well try.

There are many other places that you can put your ads on to drive traffic to your website. Your goal should be to test all these different networks to find the ones that give you the best results. There is no such thing as too much traffic. The above networks can drive a whole lot of traffic to your website if you play your cards right. You just have to track and test!

As the economy gets worse (and you can expect it to hit rock bottom sometime in the near future), you are going to see folks who are going to sell you Adwords/Adsense things that can, get this, help you make millions out of these networks. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Let’s say, I have lost my job, I have a couple of kids to feed, and I have the year-end approaching fast. What do I do? Simple! I am going to get a book that will show me how to make millions in a year, and if I get 5% of that number, I will be happy.

I am all for learning. You should never stop learning, and one way to do that is by keeping up with blogs and reading books on a weekly basis. However, when it comes to Adsense, you can really learn a lot from watching the best do it. And who’s the best when it comes to using Adsense? I would like to think it’s Google!

There are no two ways about it. When Google bought YouTube, they did it to make money and get their initial funds back. There were other reasons, but bear with me here. So you have the largest online video library anywhere, and you are trying to monetize it for months. Does it make sense for you to put Adsense units that don’t make you money? You tell me!

I am no Adsense expert. I do make a few bucks a day from Adsense, but it’s not really my focus (that does not keep me from checking it every 10 seconds). Now here is the thing. YouTube is a goldmine when it comes to Adsense. You can figure out what formats would work for your niche site. And you are going to learn what Google is spending millions of dollars researching – where to put your ads.

I am not suggesting that Google CEO is actually checking YouTube’s Adsense account to see how much they are earning, but the ad format and positioning should be a good indication on where on your page you can expect to make more money. Each site is different, and your results will probably be different from mine or Google’s. But, you don’t have to read a book to figure out what works and what doesn’t with Adsense.