There is a variety of sites out there which will host your videos for free. I have dedicated a whole page to them on this site, because this method has been such a successful little money earner for me.

First of all, well, the industry's giant is obviously youtube . Youtube will not pay for your videos, but if all you want is to generate views for your site, then it is the definite option. Simply feature your site's address prominently in the video, and visitors will often follow. Of course, your video will have to be eye-catching in order to do well on youtube.

break is another site which will generate many views for your videos (possibly even more than youtube , even). However, things are a little more complicated here: break will also pay you $400 for your videos (if they select them, of course), provided they feature original, non-copyrighted content, but provided also that there are no URLs displayed in the videos. Thus, if you have a very good video which you think could earn money on break , do not include a link to your site. However, for the purpose of generating traffic, break also works very well, and it is an option not to be dismissed.

If you want to earn money from your vids AND generate traffic to your site, then metacafe is your best option. metacafe pays $100 once your videos passes 20,000 views. However, if it does not make it that far, you get nothing... The good thing about metacafe though, is that their front page release system means that a lot of people will view your videos if they are good.

Finally, there are two other main sites that will pay for your videos, based on the number of clicks on adverts displayed within your clips: these are revver , and blip.tv . In my experience, revver works better, as the ads it feature simply seem to be more attractive to the viewers. However, the problem with both revver and blip.tv , is that they will not generate views by themselves. You will need to get your videos embeded on blogs and other sites in order to get views.
Here are a few places to get you started however:
general videos
- http://digg.com
- http://www.boingboing.net/
- http://www.ifilm.com/

tech/howto videos
- Gizmodo
- techeblog
- engadget
- newlaunches
- hack a day
- lifehacker
- instructables

funny videos:
- stumbleupon
- crazy party
- bad videos

photography:
- diy photography

magic tricks:
- learnmagictricks.org

Finally, you can also distribut your videos via myspace, facebook, etc... and hope they will spread virally (which they will, if they are good enough).

Of course, you should embed all your videos on your website, since they will also gain more views there.

Here's what you will need:
- a digital camera/camcorder/webcam
- some free software (I'm going to focus on windows users here, as I am not familiar with Macs)
* Windows Movie Maker (comes free with Windows service pack 2)
* RAD video tools ; will allow to convert avi files to wmv format
* http://www.rehanfx.org/products.htm :nifty plug-ins for Windows Movie Maker
* autoscreenrecorder : a screen recorder that will still enable you to make desktop videos, even if you don't own a camera. Useful for software howto videos.

Also, if you intend to use music in your videos, make sure not to use copyrighted music, as pay video sites will only allow original content.
You can make your own music, using easy music composer , or you could purchase some royalty free music for as little as $7 per song. Stock20 is a good site for this. Use this link: stock20 , and you will get your first song for free.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to use two of my videos as examples, detailing what makes them good, and not so good.
First of all, here is my most successful video:

The main reasons for its success can easily be emulated. They are:
- the title and subject-matter are eye-catching (who hasn't wondered, at some point or other, how this trick was done?)
- the video is relatively short (generally, try to keep all your videos under 2 minutes, or you will loose the viewers attention.
- it combines narration and music to keep things interesting.
- the address to my webpage is prominently displayed.
- a logo is displayed
- it does exactly what it promises.

Now here's an example of a video that was not so successful:

Here are it's main faults:
- no url is displayed (how are people going to visit my site?)
- the title is boring
- origami is not terribly sexy
- the picture quality is a bit iffy
- Though it is not terribly long, it feels like it is.
- no narration
- the songs -though I do like them- are not very modern
- the punch line is spoiled by an explanation of how to make the boat (was it necessary? who doesn't know how to make a paper boat anyway?)

It may well be worthwhile, for an aspiring videomaker, to take a look at the condition-yellow website, to see which videos have been successful, and which haven't...