The New (Free) Wistia Video Solution…
This week I updated some of my products and videos, and in the process, moved them off Amazon s3 and onto Wistia.
Why? It’s so much easier to use. It’s very mobile friendly. Oh, and it’s free.
While many marketers know about Wistia’s awesome video hosting, most don’t realize Wistia offers an incredible free solution as well.
Today I want to show you what you’re missing and how to get in for free…
I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard of Wistia until fairly recently, after all they’ve been around for a few years now. I guess I tuned it out because I thought my video solution was both affordable and sufficient.
Then I found Wistia’s new free solution that lets me have up to 10 gig of video and 50 gig of bandwidth monthly. That’s enough for about 40 videos and 7,000 minutes of viewing time.
Since that pretty much covered my needs, I figured I’d test it out. What I found was amazing.
Their simple, one-click video upload feature worked flawlessly and I was immediately hooked.
I first tested it out with an older flv video I had on my server from one of my most successful students. The video was in flv format, so most mobile users could not watch it. To my amazement, Wistia instantly converted it into a format that played on every platform I tested it on. That included my Windows PC, my daughter’s Mac, my wife’s iPhone and iPad, and my Android Galaxy S4 phone.
This was huge. With mobile web visitors quickly approaching 50% of all traffic in 2014, I needed to get up to speed with all my video.
So next I uploaded all my new training videos for my member site into Wistia. It took me about 15 minutes in total. Then I simply pasted Wistia’s embed code into my WordPress site and bingo — they looked and played perfectly. Talk about simple. Could this really be free?
Yes! At least until I reach my storage or monthly bandwidth allotment. Then I can upgrade to their small business plan for just $25.
Their small business plan adds lots of neat features including…
– Video Engagement Graphs to help you identify trends of high engagement or heavy drop-off for each of your videos using viewing data from across your audience.
– Lead Generation Tools that let you add clickable calls to action and email collection forms to your videos, no coding required.
– Email Provider Connectivity with thumbnails to your email campaigns to improve click-through rates, and track the video viewing activity of your email list.
– Viewer History Tracking to identify the most engaged prospects in your audience.
– Video SEO to help you drive traffic and boost search result rankings.
– Unlimited Storage and 200 GB of Bandwidth Per Month (Approximately 28,000 minutes of video viewing time.
But for now, free is all I need and I love free! So let me share 4 more reasons why I love Wistia, then I’ll share that free link with you.
1. No Leaks
Most free video hosting solutions such as Youtube, Vimeo and Viddler leak traffic. By that I mean you lose a percentage of your audience to their advertisers. That can be a costly loss over time, and most small businesses need all the visitor retention they can get!
2. Easy Embedding and Sharing
Wistia makes it copy/paste simple to embed videos onto your website or share them via social media. They’re even integrated with Twitter to make your videos watchable from within a tweet!
3. Works on Every Device
When you upload a video to Wistia, they automatically encode and deliver Flash and HTML5 versions at multiple resolutions. This means it works on virtually every device, from anywhere on Earth.
4. HD Bandwidth Detection
Wistia’s servers instantly measure each viewer’s connection and deliver the best quality video with the least buffering possible.
OK, I guess this is starting to sound like a commercial for Wistia. But I’m not getting a dime or even a kickback. I’m just getting great, free video hosting, and you can too.
So as promised, here’s that link to Wistia’s new free plan.
I would not blame you for moving your videos at all. You make good points here. Looks like a good choice for you!