The nuts and bolts of viral video

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece that highlights some of the ways that Internet videomakers build up big audiences.

There's also a nifty video accompanying it, where Judson Laipply, the guy from "Evolution of Dance," talks about how he's trying to generate revenue with his recently-released sequel.



From the story:

"We have a pop-up at the end of the video that says 'Click here to see all of our other videos and subscribe,'" [Charlie] Todd [of ImprovEverywhere] says. "That's one thing that everyone should do on YouTube." As a result, Improv Everywhere has 105,000 subscribers who receive notifications whenever he posts a new video.

Mr. Todd also promotes his videos to bloggers, and he spends time reading blogs to see which ones would likely be interested in a particular video. But he prefers to do his promotion anonymously, usually by e-mailing a tip to a general blog address. "I think that's probably better than tracking down the e-mail address of the person who runs the blog and will get irritated," he says. "Just send it in and say check it out."