Best Video Hosting Platform For Your Online Course

Creating & Delivering Content
#1

Check out these 2 podcast episodes I created about hosting premium media, more specifically, videos, in a members-only area and charging for them.

Video Hosting For Your Membership Site

Audio/PDF Hosting for Your Membership Site

If you simply want a place to host your videos, then Vimeo Pro is a great option. And for a large number of videos (which themselves are generally large in size), if you don’t wish to go broke with video hosting fees, then Vimeo Pro is your best option, because you get fixed-price hosting and unlimited views. Plus Vimeo Pro has a cool “domain whitelisting” feature where you can configure the video to only play from your domain. That gives it a bit of added security.

However, just hosting the video on Vimeo and embedding those videos on your web site alone is not going to turn your web site into a pay-for-content membership site.

You will then still need to secure the pages that have the video embed code, so you can make sure that only authorized members (those who have paid for it as part of a video course, or as a single video, or someone who has gained legal access because you gave them access to it, or they purchased a subscription or paid a one-time payment) are the only ones who are able to access it.

You will need to automate payment processing, account creation, enable the ability for them to get a username and password, a page for them to log in, automatically get access to all of the content that they paid for, get a welcome email, be able to send them updates via email, have features like password-reminder and password-sharing-prevention, etc.

For all of that, you will need a full-featured membership platform like DigitalAccessPass.com (DAP).

If you’re on WordPress, there are a number of great membership plugins available, and DAP is arguably the best :slight_smile: (I’m the Co-founder & Co-developer of DAP, but don’t let that stop you from checking out what what the best - aka DAP - has to offer :-).

And if you need to protect more than just videos - like say, audio - maybe insert a audio player on your pages, or provide the link to download PDF or Doc reports, etc, then I recommend you use Amazon S3 for that, and check our plugin that lets you protect videos, audio, PDF, doc, zip, etc, at S3MediaVault.com - Secure Audio Player, Video Player & File Protector for WordPress Sites .

– Ravi Jayagopal
Business Coach, https://SubscribeMe.fm/coaching/ .

#2

I know you use Camtasia to create videos, as I do. So in the production phase, I upload to Screencast.com, where I can password-protect an entire folder.

That gives me the opportunity to customize a video for a number of different clients, and deliver with different passwords.

Is this a low-cost alternative that would work?

#3

@Tim_Prentiss,

That strategy would work in a pinch, especially if you have clients for whom you’re custom-creating content for each one of them.

But it’s not going to scale well, and it won’t work for creating an online course and automating everything from checkout to delivery, for tens or hundreds or hopefully thousands of members.

So even if you only have clients for whom you’re creating custom content, I would still upload it to your own website, and promote your platform, instead of promoting and relying on a third-party platform like Screencast.

Some of the features that you would lose using a manual process like yours, is…

  • Automate account creation after payment
  • Users being able to change password, email and profile info
  • Ability to offer upsells and downsells
  • Ability to drip content
  • Ability to drip emails via autoresponders
  • Ability to send out email broadcasts
  • Prevent password sharing and account abuse
  • Enable your users to become your affiliates
  • All of the content is hosted on your own website
  • Which means, something happening to your Screencast account will not affect your users as you own and host your own content
  • Ability to send people to your own website, and not to some third-party website
  • Customize download and thank-you pages on your own site
  • Ability to track visits, logins, embed Analytics and Google/Facebook Pixels for remarketing
  • Ability to sell more digital products, in different formats (audio, video, pdf, text) and have them all available under one account for your members

I could create an entire podcast series about why you should Own Your Platform - OYP, as I call it.

Oh wait, I have created episodes about this :slight_smile:

In fact, that’s the title of my very first episode of my CutToTheChase.fm podcast:

Own Your Platform (OYP) - #1

Here are a few more from my SubscribeMe.fm podcast:

Udemy vs. Self-Hosted WordPress Site vs. 3rd-Party Hosted Membership Site - Ep #15

Digital Sharecropping, 3rd-Party Marketplaces like Udemy.com - Ep #16
https://traffic.libsyn.com/subscribeme/Digital-Sharecropping-3rd-Party-Marketplaces-Udemy.mp3

Why You Should NOT Use a 3rd-party Marketplace to Host Your Online Course - Ep #17

Video Hosting For Your Membership Site - Ep #23

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

– Ravi Jayagopal