A Few Alternatives to YouTube

Do a search on alternatives to YouTube and you’ll find as many references to websites that are no longer up though they’re almost as old as links to sites that are hoping to become as big as YouTube but lack the systemic advantages of YouTube. For example, Google owns YouTube and promotes links to that site in search results over others. This blatant censorship and increasing interference in search results will drive both creators and viewers to other platforms.

Here are a few alternatives to YouTube that aren’t going to be pushed far back in the search results, many of which have the name recognition to keep the attention of your audience.

Vimeo was founded in 2004, predating YouTube by two years. In 2011, Fortune Magazine said Vimeo had become a hipster YouTube. As of this writing, the site has around 35 million registered users and nearly 200 million monthly views. It is doing far better than rival Vidme that shut down in December, 2017

The site launched a consumer facing subscription video service to take on Netflix. Creators had the ability to charge a subscription for access to their content before this. Vimeo’s strengths include a large mature user community and a reputation for quality films, since it has multiple built in monetization tools that let filmmakers and content creators make money without relying on AdSense-like advertising schemes.

When someone talks about video on Amazon, most people think about Amazon Instant Video, the portion of the site where you can stream movies and TV shows on demand. What fewer people know about is the “Amazon Video Direct” service. Content creators can earn royalties based on how long it is streamed by members, revenue share for rentals, purchases, subscriptions and ad-impressions. The last monetization method is a potential rival to YouTube’s advertising model.

While there are relatively few how-to videos on the site as compared to short films by up and coming filmmakers, this is a potential way to promote your product or service by answering someone’s question and having a natural tie-in link to where they can buy it – on Amazon.

And you're in a prime location to capitalize on Amazon's massive customer base for streaming media if you're trying to sell content like webinars or documentaries.

Daily Motion gets points for being big, around 100 million unique visitors. It has been around for years, so it is unlikely to disappear like many YouTube-wannabes. If you have a free account, you’re limited to less than an hour video length. That is lifted if you upgrade to the Motion Maker account. Daily Motion can be seen as a rival to Vimeo, since it has a popular video on demand model to let content creators sell shows and movies to the public. If you can create a how-to show and tactfully sell your products in it or just want a place to post review videos Google is censoring, Daily Motion is an alternative.

Pinterest is more than just images. It sees more than 150 million unique visitors per month. It is already tightly integrated with other social media platforms. You can upload short videos if you have a general user account, and the site started offering promoted videos (for a price) to businesses. One of the benefits of Pinterest is the ease with which you can add video marketing segments to your Pinterest page to supplement an existing visual marketing campaign.

Minds.com is advertised as an alternative to YouTube. However, it is so new that I cannot yet recommend it as an alternative to YouTube.

The upside of Veoh is its strong social media functionality and nearly non-existent filtering. The downside is its poor search interface.

This photo site allows you to upload short video clips. It has limited social media sharing and equally limited file sizes (5 MB), but it is a place you can host videos on a well trafficked site that isn’t censoring them. If you want to start just as small for free but may want to increase your memory limit, Flickr is another alternative.

Metacafe may have been supplanted by YouTube in traffic volume (40 million on versus hundreds of millions of monthly views), it is still a solid contender. If you’re kicked off YouTube or tired of its interstitials getting literally in the way of your content, come to Metacafe. You can write your video description and pick the channel it is assigned to so you can put it in front of your ideal audience. As of this writing, it limits videos to eight minutes in length.

The biggest benefit of Livestream is that it lets you upload hours of content and caters to recording and streaming live events like interviews and Periscope. The downside is the price to use it at all.