Online video consumption has spiked like never before. In fact, the scope for video content has tripled over the last 5 years across verticals with over 83% of the Internet traffic being contributed by video consumption. This rising phenomenal demand has driven video businesses, content owners, and publishers globally to leverage the trend to produce content that fetch amazing engagement and conversion rates. This ideally implies -> hosting a video online is the smartest move of 2024.
Why Should You Host Videos Online?
There are several advantages as to why a video ought to be hosted online and here are a few crucial takeaways.
🌎 Maximize Global Viewership
Publishing a video online and distributing it helps receive great attention from worldwide audiences. While traditional broadcast mediums continue to bag a massive amount of viewership, online videos surpass them in directly reaching online viewers, striking a chord beyond geographical barriers.
🖵 Reach Across Screens
Reach the right target market on a diverse range of screens and devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TV, gaming consoles, etc. This will help amplify the video engagement, ultimately driving better conversions.
🗽 100% Control & Freedom
Even on 3rd party hosting sites, there is complete control and freedom over how a video is streamed, managed, and given access to. As in most cases, there are no hard and fast rules, host videos at your own terms in the digital realm to the audiences who prefer your content.
💰 Diverse Monetization Opportunities
Hosting a video online paves way for various revenue streams such as subscriptions, ads, pay-per-view, sponsorships, donations, merchandise, and more. It helps businesses make both active and passive income and improve ROI effortlessly.
Choosing Video Hosting Sites Over Self-Hosting
So, how does one go about it? Hosting a video online has come a long way from what it used to be before. All the time and effort put to building a streaming platform where you can publish a video is no longer a necessity. Online video hosting sites make this lengthy process a piece of cake. They instantly help businesses get their videos online and make the most out of them hassle-free.
👨🏻💻 No Development Expertise
Unlike building a streaming architecture from the ground up, video hosting sites are easy to start with. Business owners and content creators don’t require development expertise or hire a dedicated team to host videos online. Directly upload and publish videos without coding skills of any kind.
🚀 Instant Launch
Video hosting sites allow an instant launch. There is no waiting time and setup processes to build, develop, and integrate features for hosting. Businesses can quickly launch and reach audiences without almost instantly.
🏷️ Branding & Customization
There is plenty of scope for branding and creating custom elements on video hosting sites. All the branding freedom that can be achieved in self-hosting is now available in 3rd party sites as well, giving content owners all the more reasons to opt for the latter.
🎞️ Faster Video Load Times & Playback
Video hosting sites are solely meant for hosting and streaming, hence the video distribution architecture is extremely well constructed and uses a trusted CDN (Content Delivery Network) for video delivery. This ensures your videos achieve a smooth and seamless delivery with a fast playback.
🔐 Secure Storage & Distribution
There are trusted video hosting sites in the market that protect from illicit users by various levels of security and authentication. In most cases, piracy would be kept to a minimum or at bay ensuring overall security for videos while storage and in transit.
◀️ Adaptive Playback & Bitrate
Video transcoding to suit various resolutions, screen sizes, and bandwidth requirements is very important when it comes to quality hosting and streaming. Adaptive playback is the key to uninterrupted video delivery. It is to be noted that modern video hosting platforms take care of encoding and transcoding to meet new-day needs.
📈 Analytics
Data-driven insights can steer a video business to heights never achieved before. Hosting a video on a well-renowned platform with in-built analytics helps with strategic decision making based on several metrics like total watch time, engagement, revenue, etc.
How to Host Videos Online?
As discussed, there are two different ways to host videos online. You can either self-host it on your server or go for WordPress like CMS to host videos on your site or blog. On the other hand, the easiest way to host videos online is to opt for exclusive 3rd party video hosting sites. Follow these simple steps to take your videos online.
📁 Keep Your Content Ready
Be it producing your own videos or acquiring content or streaming rights from external sources, keep your videos ready in the right format and compatible for distribution online. This will ease your way into the digital realm and free from last-min hassles.
🤝🏻 Choose the Right Video Hosting Partner
Now that you have decided to go with 3rd party platforms to host your videos online, find the most suitable hosting site that aligns with your requirements, content storage costs, streaming efficiency, and most importantly, monetization opportunities.
📤 Create Your Account & Upload
Most video hosting platforms function on a recurring monthly fee basis. Sign up on the platform you’ve chosen for hosting your videos online, create an account and go about uploading your video or a library of content.
🎦 Edit Video Settings
Optimize the video details like title, desc, preview, thumbnail, SEO attributes, etc. Set the target location and audience you want to distribute your videos to. Tweak your video settings for it to be easily accessible and discoverable online.
↗️ Publish Videos Online
Once all the attributes are set and the video is all set to be distributed online, go ahead and publish your content. You can choose to host it privately or publish it for public viewing with access based on the type of monetization you want to opt for.
Diversifying Your Video Hosting Prowess Beyond YouTube
Besides all the new-day and premium features YouTube offers, it is often looked upon as a free video website. It offers great exposure and opens a world of opportunities from global audiences. However, there are certain setbacks to it when it comes to using the platform for exclusive hosting capabilities and video content security.
✔️ Brand Exclusivity
Furthermore, businesses that look forward to acquire new audiences, boost brand presence, convert and retain users require a more exclusive hosting service that will elevate its positioning among niche audiences. While YouTube is a great choice to start with, businesses can expand their online capabilities with standalone video platforms to host their videos online.
✔️ Custom Attributes
Also, since YouTube Alternative Platforms provide a plethora of customization options and branding freedom, it is always a great idea to partner with a trusted video hosting platform in order to exhibit exclusivity.
✔️ Freedom to Monetize
Besides, monetization freedom is a crucial attribute that should be taken into consideration when it comes to choosing a platform for hosting. Rules surrounding when, how, and what to monetize ought to be decided by the business itself and that requires a 100% flexible online video hosting site.
✔️ Privacy & Security
Piracy is a major roadblock that stutters the smooth running of a video business. Besides bringing ownership losses to a brand, digital theft and pirated content takes a toll on the reputation and video revenue as well. Hence, it is vital to opt for a hosting site that is structured with 3-layer security and end-to-end encryption to protect premium content from piracy of any kind.
Best Platforms to Host Videos Online for Your Business
Here’s a listing of some of the most sought-after platforms that video businesses across the world choose to host their videos online.
1. GUDSHO
GUDSHO is a premium video hosting and monetization platform that offers unlimited video hosting capabilities at most cost-friendly plans.
With 4K streaming abilities and 500+ features that support secure hosting and distribution, GUDSHO is the most trusted video platform that businesses and creators across verticals choose to publish their videos on.
Most importantly, the platform has 6+ monetization models that facilitate sustainable revenue generation while all your hosting needs are covered for any kind of premium videos online. Seamlessly upload, host, manage, market, and monetize in one place on GUDSHO.
2. Vidyard
Vidyard is a popular video messaging and video hosting solution provider that clubs innovative features for global businesses.
It is a central platform to upload, manage, and host video content with 360 analytics. Vidyard’s 4K video player is customizable for business needs to drive in more engagement from viewers of any scale.
The platform also allows ample scope for branding, has social media integrations, and other tools for marketing, sales, and enterprises.
3. Wistia
Wistia is a one-stop hub with new-day tools for video creation, hosting, and marketing online. Besides good hosting capabilities, it has tools for video creation as well for recording and editing.
It helps organize and share videos to the world with quality playback and has easy embedding options to drive good viewership.
Wistia supports video businesses of any scale with easy-to-use content management options with secure hosting options.
4. Streamable
Streamable is an easy-to-use video hosting platform that lets creators and video businesses upload and share video content to the world. It offers interesting video editing tools and lets you stream in 4K. Besides safe and secure hosting abilities, there are a number of video sharing and embedding options that content owners can make the best use of. Video management is well simplified as well with Streamable.
How to Host Your Videos Online with GUDSHO?
GUDSHO offers simple navigation options to host your videos online and here we explain how.
Step 1:
Sign up on GUDSHO or directly login if you are an existing user.
Step 2:
With the “Add Video” option available on your dashboard, choose whether you want to upload a video or a series of videos you want to host online.
Step 3:
Select and upload a free video or video with monetization based on how you want to host it with the options given.
Step 4:
While the video is being uploaded and transcoded, optimize the video details and descriptions for easy discovery and rank better in search results.
Step 5:
Place a catchy thumbnail, categorize the video, and add appropriate tags.
Step 6:
Select the appropriate monetization option based on how you want to provide access to it. If you want to offer the video for free, choose accordingly.
Note that you can click on “More Video Details” and include promos, optimize metadata, set geo-restrictions and more.
Step 7:
You are now all set to publish the video. You can either publish it instantly, set as “coming soon”, or schedule it for a later date.
Step 8:
The published video will now be displayed in the dashboard under the category listed.
In Summary,
Bringing your videos online through a proper hosting platform is the simplest way to make the fullest of your content, both engagement and revenue wise. The reach is impressive and helps reach audiences beyond geographic boundaries. Also, video security is a highly crucial aspect of online video hosting and ought to be given utmost importance to. With all these factors considered, online video storage, delivery, and distribution becomes a breeze, especially with platforms like GUDSHO.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Hosting your video online lets you securely store, optimize, brand, manage, and share videos globally. Online video hosting also offers great scope to distribute, amplify engagement, and monetize as per business needs and revenue goals.
Online video hosting platforms let you bring your videos online. Video hosting platforms let you host video content securely, add custom branding elements, manage, share and monetize seamlessly, all in one place based on different plans or for free.
As a business or content owner, you can host your videos privately with restricted access. Several hosting platforms allow private hosting with various security options like password protection or paywall to limit access.
Some of the leading hosting platforms like YouTube, GUDSHO, Wistia, Streamable, Vidyard, etc offer great options to upload, store, manage, and share videos hassle-free with modern-day tools and technologies.
Sites like YouTube offer free video hosting. However, there are certain restrictions and security constraints that might come your way with free hosting, which can be overcome with leading video hosting partners like GUDSHO.
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