Ever hear of Blip.tv or Dailymotion.com? You should have.
These are free video sharing sites. Naturally, I upload my videos there, among many others. I only post original content. I only post useful and educational material in my videos. I never violate terms of service. I respect others and expect others to respect me. I always respond to comments on my videos. I’m always considerate of someone else’s comments even though I may not agree with them. Well, guess what?
Today I received an abrupt e-mail from Dailymotion telling me my account was immediately suspended for violating their terms of service. They included a link to their terms of service page as a reason for why my account was disabled. I actually took the time to read through the entire thing, and when I came up for air, realized I had violated none of them. Since my account was disabled it took me 10 minutes to try and find an e-mail address for their support page. I then left a question for them seeking a detailed explanation that would account for why more than 150 videos I posted to their site would somehow all of a sudden violate their terms of service. No answer has been forthcoming.
One year ago the same thing happened to me with Blip.tv.
Here’s what happened:
I was going about my business doing what I love to do; creating and uploading educational and informative videos to market my legal practice. One day I got an e-mail from Blip.tv telling me my account was canceled, effective immediately and that the 100 videos that I had on their site would no longer be accessible. My e-mail inquiries asking for explanations were ignored. I finally received a terse e-mail reply from customer support which said:
“You have uploaded too many videos to our site. Have a nice day.”
Well, there you have it. Because I have taken the step of uploading “too many” videos to a free sharing site, I was immediately booted off, never to post video under that account again.
What can you take away from all this?
Remember the saying “Never put all of your eggs in one basket?” The same applies here. You have absolutely no control over any of the free video sharing sites. They can put ads on your videos and they can remove your videos. You better make absolutely certain that your videos are posted on your websites; your blogs and other places, because one day you to may be told “Your account has been disabled because you have uploaded too many videos.”
If you’ve had a similar experience, I encourage you to leave a comment about it.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog!
_____________________
FosterWebMarketing.com
Tom Foster of Fosterwebmarketing had this to say: “Gerry, once again your attitude and your marketing is right on target. It AIN’T ABOUT YOU! it’s about what you can do to help someone, and if your video message answers that question in the clients mind – they will contact you 99% of the time. You are brilliant and I am happy to know you and read your contributions.”
Tom Foster
Fosterwebmarketing.com
Fairfax, Virginia
888-886-0939
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How Really Smart Lawyers Are Using Video On The Web- New Book!
ABOUT GERRY
Gerry is a seasoned New York medical malpractice trial lawyer who has created over 250 informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. To see how Gerry has used video to promote his own law practice, take a look at his New York Medical Malpractice Video Blog.
Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help other lawyers get onto video. To get started with creating video to market your legal services, Gerry offers a simple and cost-effective video creation system where he does everything for you except appear on camera, click here to learn more.
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The same thing happened to me a year ago with bliptv. No response, no explanation. Read the terms of service and found no violation. I had 8 videos there and had the account open for about a year.
Hi Gerry,
Thank you for posting on this topic. In 2008, I was introduced to Traffic Geyser and the Flip Ultra and began pumping out videos. In early 2009, my blip.tv account was suspended for violation of TOS with no explanation. I emailed them over and over and finally received the response that my videos contained captions which self promoted my appraisal business. So, I began another account, toned it down a little but rarely post videos there now. Dailymotion.com has not suspended me. This is why I self host my business videos on my own websites using Easy Video Player with s3 because I don’t want to wake up one day and have my website videos disappear overnight. However, submitting to these free sites is a must for Google indexing. Viddler.com indexes in Google so very well and they have an awesome player.
Also, while posting my videos for my appraisal business, I’ve had 1 free wordpress.com and 1 free blogger.com account suspended for violation of TOS for “self promotion” of my business. So, I have an army of self-hosted WP Blogs working 24/7 on my behalf.
As Always, Appreciate You So Much and Look Forward To Meeting You One Day!
Bill Cobb, Appraiser Video Marketing
That’s lame, Gerry and seems like they have an unstated amount of server storage and bandwidth they allocate to their users. Still, shouldn’t they keep your videos up up to that limit? Or, geesh, how about this? How about they charge for hosting over a certain amount of videos or bandwidth? I’m sure their shareholders would like that.
Gerry, Incredible. Sorry that it happened to you. I really dont understand it. It sounds like a stupid question but when is enough enough. How do you know that the video you add today is the one thats going to do you in. More importantly, do you think there is an inherent bias against injury lawyers?
Bill, I agree with you 100%. Your videos must be posted to the video sharing sites in order to get indexed and show up in the major search engines. I also agree with you that it is vital for you to host your videos on your own server whether it’s with AmazonS3 or other hosting services. Thanks for taking the time to leave a great comment.
Neal,
With the video sharing sites you don’t know, even if you comply with their TOS. There’s very little control you have with the free sharing sites. That’s why Bill was absolutely correct that you must also host the videos yourself. This way your video is always online and nobody can take it down except you.
I had a similar thing happen with Tubemogul when I first started uploading videos there. For a reason that was never fully explained to me, my account was suspended. I talked to a customer service representative and he did not know why it happened. I just made another account and have had no further problems.
One partial solution to this problem is to syndicate to more than one site. I use Tubemogul to distribute my videos to eight different video sites (they currently support 26 video sharing sites). Its almost trivially easy: upload, select which sites to syndicate to, and off you go. They even keep track of some of the statistics of your video so you can get an idea where the video is most popular. Their base membership is free and they have paid accounts with more features. There are other syndication sites but I believe Tubemogul is the biggest (I’m not affiliated with them, just a satisfied user).
I thought I was the only one…
Got the same treatment from blip.tv a couple of years ago – they do not allow any form of marketing/advertisement stuff.
I have never seen this with YouTube, however, I am now leaning towards what has been mentioned above that it is better to host it yourself, and just use the free sites for teasers and duplicate content.
S3 was mentioned. Any other good suggestions for selfhosting? Suddenly becoming popular could be very expensive if you pay for each GB…
Amazon S3 is a great way to host your videos. Very inexpensive and they have TONS of storage.
Myths debunked:
“My video needs to be on a social media site to be indexed in search engines”
No, your video doesn’t need to be on a social media site to be indexed in major search engines – you can do this yourself with a simple Video Sitemap hosted on your own server.
“Tubemogul and Vidmetrix are the only authority who can track video views, downloads, etc.”
Video hits, views, downloads, etc can be measured using Google analytics.
3rd party services/product who can make the sudden choice to boot you without explanation should not be relied on, obviously.
Hi Gerry, After working hard to get some videos out there for Accountants in Kettering in the UK. I received exactly the same message as you. Very disappointed, and like you frustrated with Dailymotion. I have only uploaded 15 videos in total. I may try some of the alternatives mentioned here. Thank you for the blog and information
Andy
Hi Andy,
You’re welcome!
How about sharing some of your knowledge with our group here in the Lawyers Video Studio with a guest post! Would love to have you share with us. Let me know.
Best regards,
Gerry
I had the same experience Viddler which is another free video sharing site deleted my account,channel and videos without even emailing me to tell me first. I found out only 3 days ago when I tried to log in but could not. where do you host your videos now?
Hi Andrea,
I host them privately. I upload to my server and then to the video sharing sites.
I see so you have got your videos stored on a file on your computer. So in case the video site deletes them you have them saved. Then you can just open a new account some where else. I host my blogs on my own domain.But are there any video sharing sites that let you buy a domain,like Blogger or wordpress does?