Hyperlink Hotspots In Your Videos

Usually, people will simply sit back and watch your videos. But what if they could simply click on certain areas of your video, and then be brought to any web site you choose? That would be a good video marketing tactic to use for the sale of your products, or even in affiliate marketing.

Will this tool cost $97? Well, the good news is you can now easily create hyperlink hotspots in your videos for free. Here's how...

First of all, please don't run away when you see techie terms such as "hyperlink hotspots." That just means there is a spot (or many spots) in a video that people can actually click on. The "hyperlink" means clicking on something will bring you to another web site.

Anyway, the free service is provided by Asterpix, and you can get more information in Kevin Nalts' Creating HyperVideo: Hyperlinks Over Your Video With Asterpix.

Here are a few more tips on how you can succeed with this form of video branding:

1. Use it on videos that you own. If you go off and just use any popular video out there, and start creating hotspots over the faces of those video owners, they will not like it. Moreso if the hyperlink leads to some merchant who gives you affiliate commissions. Yes, those video owners will get angry with you if you use their videos to make money online.

2. Be creative. Avoid the urge to just use your affiliate link. If you sit down and think about it, you can link to other things that can make the whole thing more appealing. Or you can even use the hotspots to brand yourself... in a subtle way.

Some viewers do not appreciate seeing your URL displayed at the bottom of a video. Some folks do not like to see your logo plastered on their screen for the entire duration of the vid.

With hypervideo hotspots, those links will only appear when people mouseover certain areas.

Then again, I wonder if people will get annoyed with those dotted lines that indicate the location of those clickable spots in the video. Here's an example:

3. Use humor. Give your viewers a reason to check out what's hiding behind the hotspot. It should be increasingly appealing, so that as they explore each hotspot, they will want to check out each succeeding dotted square.

4. Be unpredictable. If people can already guess what your hotspot will lead to, they will not bother hovering their mouse over those areas. But if the link or message you present in those fleetingly hidden areas makes people go: "Hmmm... I didn't expect that." then they will look inside all your hotspots.

5. Have a back-up plan. What if people do not bother mousing over those hotspots? Use good old video branding. In the above video, please note the URL branding at the end of the video.

Please note, however, that the hyperlink-spotted video will be hosted in Asterpix. You can't make this video appear in YouTube and still maintain those hotspots.

So if you're going to go for this kind of video marketing tactic, you'll need to monitor the uptime of Asterpix. If they get too popular, well... you know what happens with overly popular vid sites, right?