YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts

What This Book Promises

If you're smart (and you are smart, because you picked this book), talented (and you are talented, because this book attracted you and this book is about talent and vision), and have some good ideas, you'll make quality art and have a damn good chance of getting your work seen. Other than that, it's up to the universe. Viral marketing can't be created on demand, at least not at a corporate level, although many professional consultants are willing to lie to you, take your money, and say it can be done. There's no guarantee since computer voodoo and chance are not sciences. But viral marketing is something that can be given a good chance of happening. It can be "incubated".

This book will, however, show you everything you need to know to have a good chance. That's more than the other YouTube books will give you. We've read them all and use most of them to hold down piles of paper near windows and hold up wobbly legs on old tables.

Note

Viral, as in viral marketing and viral videos, in the context of this book has nothing to do with computer viruses. It means "videos that are passed from one excited person to another via email and YouTube—by Internet "word of mouth"—and spread like a thought virus. Alan has had a lot of videos "go viral." You want your videos to go viral. The main goal of this book is to teach you everything we know about going viral. You want to go viral.

Most of those other YouTube books are written by people who don't have many (or any) subscribers on YouTube. They're written by either marketing weenies, college dorks with mostly theoretical knowledge, or tech writers who were assigned the project, then signed up for a YouTube account, and tried to get "up to speed" so they could write the book.

My writing partner on this book, my good friend Alan "fallofautumndistro" Lastufka, is a rock star on YouTube:

www.youtube.com/fallofautumndistro (URL P.1)

Alan may not be in the top 5 percent on YouTube and he's never been featured on the Leno show or parodied on South Park, but he's pretty well known. He has many thousands of subscribers, makes money on YouTube, and has been featured many times.

Figure 1. Alan "fallofautumndistro" Lastufka.

(Featured means spotlighted by the people who run YouTube.) Alan's had features on the front page of YouTube.com, and most of his videos get many thousands of views. Some get upwards of a million views. He was even invited to write and direct Lisa Nova in one of his past YouTube videos. (LisaNova is huge on YouTube, was a regular on MADtv, and got that gig through her YouTube work.) Alan knows what he's talking about, and you should listen to him.

Alan also has a long history in the punk scene, which totally transfers to YouTube. The type of drive-by D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) marketing and distribution that Alan did with his CD/zine/book/video distro company, and currently does on his large indie T-shirt printing company, are like grad school for social networking environments like YouTube. It's experience you can't get in college. And there are currently some very successful YouTubers who are in the top 5 percent offering Alan a good salary to leave his cold, small town in Illinois to move out to Southern California, be set up with a place to live, lie on the beach, and do their YouTube marketing from his laptop. That is not the case with the folks who wrote those other YouTube books.

Alan is very active in the YouTube community. The community is mentioned only in passing in the other books, when it's mentioned at all, because the people writing those books are outsiders. Alan is all about the community and so is this book. Community is the key to YouTube. It's how you go viral.

Note

Alan is calm, driven, and meticulous, but still damn lively. I'm hyper and in your face. The mixture works because we're both detail-oriented, meticulous, efficient, and professional. And we'll teach you how to be all of this yourself. There's no other tech book like this. This is less like a textbook and more like two friends hanging out with you and explaining things. We think you'll enjoy the process.

I have fewer YouTube subscribers than Alan: www.youtube.com/user/Kittyfeet69 (URL P.2) but still more than any of the other people who've written books on the subject so far. (I've checked their YouTube pages, at least the ones who even have YouTube pages.) I, too, have been featured by the editors of YouTube, and some of my videos have gotten thirty thousand views. I've also toured the world in a punk band named Bomb: www.hitsofacid.com (URL P.3)

Bomb was on a major label (Warner/Reprise) and on several indie labels. I have decades of D.I.Y. marketing experience from that, and it transfers to doing things on YouTube. I also have a serious background in filmmaking. I've made two feature documentary films: Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow (narrated by Robert Downey Jr.) and D.I.Y. or DIE: How to Survive as an Independent Artist: www.blockbuster.com/catalog/movieDetails/217632 (URL P.4)

Both films have distribution and make money from DVD sales. I've traveled the U.S. and Europe showing them and doing Q&A in person. Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow was favorably reviewed in the high-end Hollywood trade paper Variety. I was flown to France to premiere the film in a major film festival: www.variety.com/review/VE1117928194?categoryid=31&cs=1 (URL P.5)

Most of the people writing YouTube books haven't made a feature film. I wrote the book $30 Film School: www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598631896/ (URL P.6), published by Course Technology, 2002, 2008.

You can go buy one of those other YouTube books, if you'd rather be told fun things like "You'll be famous, get rich, and find a mate on YouTube if you buy this book." We don't guarantee any of that. (But Alan met one of his previous girlfriends on YouTube, and she's really smart, funny, and beautiful.) $30 Film School is taught in many colleges. So, you should probably listen to me too.

If you want to hear the truth, set realistic (yet very cool) goals and hang out with two guys who know what you need to know, sit back, grab your favorite beverage, kick up your feet, and absorb the wisdom of the 'Tube, from two cats who live it.

Here's a picture of me.

Figure 2. Michael W. Dean.