December 25, 2011 in 2minprofile, business profiles, How to
Mark Shea of Overlander.tv is currently traveling the world, producing travel videos and exploring ways to make money while on the road. With the help of a local Malaysian Video Producer, Raj Singh, he will devise a system that any video producer, anywhere in the world, can use to make money doing videos to promote business.
October 21, 2011 in Malaysia, World Tourism
Round the World Travel Video Adventurer, Mark Shea, explains what he hopes to achieve with the World Tourism youtube channel. He wants to establish a location where viewers can view all the best tourism videos from around the world. Filmed at Perak Cave Buddhist Temple, Ipoh, Malaysia.
‘The place to view the best tourism videos the world has to offer’
October 18, 2011 in Malaysia, Youtube
Unesco and Youtube are compiling playlists of videos featuring World Heritage Sites. I have been asked to curate a list featuring Places of Worship. Hope you enjoy the list of videos I have selected from sites around the world
October 8, 2011 in film making, Filming Secrets, How to, Malaysia, travel filmmaking, Travel Videos
Mark Shea of overlander.tv shares four secret lessons of travel filmmaking he learnt from an Aborigine Kurdaitcha man many years ago at the crossroads of a small outback town.
You too can learn these secrets, without fear of losing your soul!
Mark is a documentary and travel filmmaker who in the line of his work has; walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, hopped in the ring at Tent Boxing Show in Outback Australia, and escaped hordes of marauding inbreds looking for fresh genes in the wilds of Tasmania.
Travel Videos downloads -http://www.overlander.tv/products-page/
Round the World Travel Video Adventure – http://www.youtube.com/overlander
Subscribe for more travel videos – http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=overlander
Overlander.tv website – http://www.overlander.tv/
Overlander.tv Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Overlandertv/101016659313
Overlander.tv twitter account – http://twitter.com/#!/overlandertv
August 28, 2011 in How to, Internet Video, online video, Travel Videos, Youtube
I have now been traveling for a month and the realities of filming and editing on the road are starting to set in. I already have a huge back log of videos to edit from Bali and I realise I need to change my style, doing videos I can turn out very quickly such as my latest video below.
And I think this is the best way to build up to a full time income as a youtube partner, produce a large quantity of videos, quickly.
An example of a traveling youtuber who is achieving this is JCVdude. Ex- Construction workers Joe and Cindy have made 4,950 videos and have had a whopping 88,249,442 views.
The video below tells their interesting story.
Demand Media also use the more is best strategy.
Known as a content farm, they pump out as many as 4,000 videos a day and were making a killing by dominating youtube and google search results with sites like ehow and live strong.
To decide on what videos will get the best results with advertisers, they have devised an algorithm that looks at; the most popular search terms, the most sought after advertising keywords, and the level of competition for these words.
Google recently made changes to it’s search algorithm to try and cut the content farm domination of search. Demand media are said to have taken a 20% hit in their search engine referrals.
Amateurs have also taken a big hit with the changes, popular comedy channel Nalts states his views have dropped 75%!
The question is, can an individual filmmaker follow the ‘content farm’ method, without lowering the quality of their videos, and is it still worth it?
June 27, 2011 in About, film making, Filming Secrets, Internet Video, online video, Travel Videos, Youtube
In this article I wish to look at five online travel video success stories and offer prospective filmmakers examples of how they too can get paid to travel the world with their video cameras.
Getting paid to travel the world
In 1760 Samuel Johnson said of travel writing,“Every writer of travels should consider that, like all other authors, he undertakes either to instruct or please, or to mingle pleasure with instruction. He that instructs must offer to the mind something to be imitated, or something to be avoided; he that pleases must offer new images to his reader, and enable him to form a tacit comparison of his own state with that of others.”
I believe this quote to also be relevant to travel filmmaking and a fine example of mixing pleasure with instruction are the videos Natalie Tran produced for the BBC owned, Lonely Planet Brand.
Natalie, Australia’s most successful youtuber, was sent around the world to produce short and sweet location videos that have proved to be very successful for Lonely Planet’s youtube presence, increasing their subscriber base from 15,000 to over 40,000, and leading to over 3 million more video views.
As one viewer commented,‘You make boring History Facts sound actually entertaining’
Getting the television series
Graham Hughes had a dream to not only travel the globe, but to also get in the Guiness Book of Records for visiting the most countries in one year without leaving the ground.
For anyone wanting to see the whole world, but afraid to step foot in certain countries like Iraqi, Afghanistan or Somalia, Graham’s blog makes interesting reading. He has so far visited 133 countries breaking all previous overland travel records.
Graham states, ‘There was always one element missing from my dream of travelling the planet: money. Working as a jobbing director and cameraman, I lived in a cold-water flat in the north of Liverpool and never earned enough money to pay tax, never mind pay off my student loan. But I would come to learn that this missing element was nothing more than an excuse to put ‘it’ off for another year. What I really needed to get started wasn’t money, it was a push.
That push came in the manner of a phone call from Lonely Planet Television. A few months earlier I had sold them the rights to a YouTube video of me jumping off the Nevis Highwire Bungy in New Zealand which, as far as I was concerned, gave me an ‘in’. Then I learnt that the BBC had recently bought a majority share in Lonely Planet. If there was a back entrance to get to The Beeb, this was it. So I made this pitch video (scattered with shots from my previous adventures) and sent it to their HQ in Melbourne.
The initial response was what I was expecting – a pat on the head, well done, let’s discuss this no more. But then… a few hours later I got a phone call asking me to come in for a meeting. Luckily for me, I was in Australia for a wedding so that wasn’t going to be problem – the friend who I was staying with lived five minutes walk from Lonely Planet HQ in Melbourne.
The head of Television Development had just one question: is it possible? I slapped my 30 page ‘how to travel to every country in the world without flying’ document on the table and said YES. I had put this dossier together by flicking trawling through the ‘Getting There And Away’ sections from dozens of Lonely Planet guidebooks – libraries are a wonderful thing.
I had done my research, I had proven I could film and present and I had travelled to many of these places before. Add to that the little white lie that I was going to do this anyway, for Lonely Planet it was a bit of a no-brainer.
But this wasn’t a millionaire’s jolly paid for by the license payer: I didn’t get a team following me around in a 4×4, I had no budget for five-star hotels or slap-up feasts – I was on my own, filming myself with the camera held at arm’s length, with a shoe-string budget and my friends and family supporting me along the way.
I already knew that backpacking was nowhere near as expensive as many people perceive, but with the advent of CouchSurfing, it just got even cheaper. Think about this for a moment: imagine you had to pay no rent or had no mortgage. At all. How much money would you save in a year? Enough to eat street food every day for a year? Of course. Enough to travel around an entire continent for a year? Unless it’s Europe or North America, I’d say so. So long as you don’t go nuts on activities or booze, a year of travel can turn out less expensive than staying at home.
So what are you waiting for? As things turned out, the TV series didn’t make me rich, nor did it even pay my expenses, but it DID give me the push I needed to get out there and DO IT. Honestly: that’s the hardest bit.
Winning the ultimate Youtube competition
Peter Bragiel’s pdrop youtube channel first caught my eye because of it’s production values. Peter was one of the first on youtube to raise the bar in regard to graphics, maps and soundtrack. His style really suits youtube, there is an immediacy about it, that makes you feel you are on the journey with him, and anything can happen in the next scene.
Peter recently won youtube’s nextup competition which is a training program that helps up and coming youtubers to make video production their main source of income. Part of the training also entails getting $35,000 to which Peter is going to use to help produce his next series, boating down the Mississippi River.
It sounds like the dream job, independently producing videos for youtube without anyone telling you how to do it.
BUT, as Peter discovered, even on youtube there are limits to what is allowed to be screened.
I would like to return to the wise words of Samuel Johnson, “He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every nation has something peculiar in its manufactures, its works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs, and its policy. He only is a useful traveller, who brings home something by which his country might be benefitted; who procures some supply of want, or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.”
Honest travel filmmaking informs the viewer of the good and the bad. And in the ideal of free speech, this should not be censored.
Peter made a fascinating video about cockfighting in Central America. Anyone with half a brain, after watching the video, would understand Peter was not sympathetic with the cruelty involved, but just wanted to give an overview of this aspect of local culture.
The video was removed from youtube and can only be viewed on another online video website.
Peter explains,‘As far as my “cockfighting” episode is concerned, YouTube took it down because it was too gory or something along those lines. They straight up removed it and gave me a red flag/strike on my account because it didn’t meet their guidelines.
I have a problem with travel content becoming too much of an advertising game where everything is amazing and beautiful, where in reality “travel” is an adventure which is unpredictable and needs to be broadcasted in the highest of quality. That’s our duty!!’
Producing a viral video hit
Ryan Grassley produces motorbike touring videos on his halfthrottle youtube channel. Ryan is the new breed of filmmaker who does it all himself, filming, editing, the whole shebang.
One of the great things about youtube is the camaraderie that can develop between producers. I’ve got to know Ryan quite well and we are both always discussing how we can do things better.
Ryan produced a video taking the piss out of Harley Davidson motorbikes. He had a feeling such a video could go viral and it has. But I think the main reason it has been so successful is because Ryan worked hard and getting it seen.
Ryan explains,‘Before I uploaded my Honest Harley Davidson Commercial I joined a lot motorcycle forums. Sport bike, Harley, Metric Crusier, Dual Sport, it didn’t matter everyone has an opinion on Harley. So any forum that looked like it had a lot of traffic I joined. Some of them as halfthrottle, others under a false name so the Harley forums wouldn’t know it was me trolling them. I made a few posts saying hello days in advance of the video going online, just to seem more real. When the video launched I had 15 tabs open in my browser all to different forums, and text ready to copy/paste soon as the embed code was ready to go.
Doing this helped me in the obvious way that it got my video in front of a lot motorcycle riders and generated controversy between Harley lovers and haters in the forums. Then something unexpected happened. Several large online motorcycle blogs came across my video in the forums and posted it to their site, and that was when it really took off. When that happened I googled for other motorcycle blogs and sent the link to them.
I spent more time putting that video in places where people would watch it than I did filming and editing it. And it paid off in the days after launch I received 100′s of new subscribers, and after being online a little over a year it has nearly 500,000 views. It’s also one of the first results when people search for, Harley Davidson.’
Doing video profiles for tourism business
I am going to include myself in this list, mainly because I too have the dream to see the whole world and believe I have found a way to get paid to do it.
I recently travelled to New Zealand and through producing business profiles and branded content, I managed to return to Australia with a lot more money than when I left.
Most travel programs on television are nothing but branded content, which can lead to some fairly dull one sided programs, as an Australian comedian recently pointed out.
But I don’t believe it has to be this way. I go about selecting business that are doing unique things so as there is no need to bullshit the viewer. Every business I approach are leaders in their field.
The video I wish to feature is unique in that it is an advertisement, but it is purely documentary in it’s style.
Te Puia asked me to produce a short video that not only explained the cultural significance of their carving school, but also captured the characters of the young men chosen to represent their tribes at the school.
The internet and youtube have offered filmmakers an avenue by which they can not only find a worldwide audience, and get viewership that television programs can only dream of, but also provide a substantial passive income stream via advertising revenue from the ads placed in and around their videos.
The ball is in your court, be proactive, go forth and film the world! 
May 27, 2011 in How to, Internet Video, marketing, online video, Services, tourism, Travel Videos, Video Production, Youtube
So how does a tourism region produce a video that rises above the 48 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute, and harness some of the 3 billion eyeballs watching each day?
Australian travel video producer Mark Shea outlines how to run a successful online video campaign using Australian Tourism and Travel examples
There has recently been some negative press in Australia with regard to how Government Tourism bodies spend the $500 million allocated to them, to market the country.
As someone who has been involved in youtube and online video since their formation, and experienced some viral video success, I would like to inform tourism organisations and business, how best to use youtube as a marketing tool.
I closely follow video tourism campaigns from around the world and more often than not, see big budget productions sink to the bottomless pit of the youtube sea.
So how does a tourism region produce a video that rises above the 48 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute, and harness some of the 3 billion eyeballs watching each day?
“And – dear lord – have you seen the ads? The ‘come to Australia’ ads. OH. MY. GOD. They give me visions of entering the Australian Tourist Board Marketing Department to find a room filled with baboons wistfully daubing the walls with their own faeces.” Graham David Hughes, Adventurer/Filmmaker who set a brand new Guinness World Record™ by visiting 133 countries in one year without ever leaving the ground.
A music video is not tourism marketing.
I recently produced a video for a restaurant in Port Douglas, Queensland, an area that relies heavily on tourism.
Both the business owner and l watched the Port Douglas marketing video produced by the local official tourism organisation. About a minute in, we both lost interest, moving on to something else.
The video looks great, with every shot looking like it came out of a tourist brochure. BUT, if people want beautiful beaches, rainforest etc, they have 100′s of locations like Port Douglas to choose from. AND, with the current price of the Aussie dollar, places that are much cheaper!
Producing a tourism promo that is nothing more than a music video, fails to recognise the important historical formation of youtube as a cultural phenomenon.
Youtube started as a vlogging platform, with people using whatever camera they could get their hands on to upload video. Viewers accepted the degraded video images in this egalitarian new world.
The message became more important than a film school education. For the first time anyone could be a filmmaker and find an audience.
Vlogging changed the media landscape. Viewers now expect honest appraisals and opinions.
A traditional television ad simply does not work on youtube, and if you don’t capture the attention of your audience, by engaging them, they simply click on to the next piece of entertainment.
Jean-Paul Toonen of T36 Media informed me of a study by the University of Leuven (Belgium) that found many marketeers traditionally make the mistake of only using video as a medium of evidence. They believe that if they show the local qualities of a region, it’s superior scenery and sunny beaches, then the viewers will be convinced. But this footage only proves the existence of these hotspots. And not the effect of relaxation, happiness and entertainment. The audience is only convinced by honest testimonials and authentic interviews, in combination with action in the picturesque local environment.
The research lead to the production of a highly successful campaign based on testimonials about living in the Limburg province. Jean-Paul Toonen informs, “Each film focused on one inhabitant from this region and shows their life (work & private) in active shots and scenes. This person is interviewed and tells us about their quality of life.”
So try and work out what differentiates your region from every where else. And find people who can express these key points with intelligence, humor and conviction.
Local Celebrities are Nobodies on Youtube.
Youtube has it’s own star system, based on a channel’s subscriber base and number of video views.
Each channel caters for a particular demographic. Age, sex, country of origin, can all be monitored via youtube’s ‘insight’ statistics.
Unfortunately tourism bodies don’t seem to understand that a local celebrity, such as a retired local league footballer, has no credibility on youtube. The campaign below would have been better off finding an urban family representing their main demographic and feature them exploring the landscape.
Let me give you a recent example. ‘Visit NSW’ recently employed Matilda Brown to produce a number of music videos masquerading as tourism promos.
Who you may ask is Matilda Brown?
Well, Matilda is the daughter of actor Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward. And this fact was promoted as a big marketing plus for the campaign.
If you live in Australia, and are over a certain age, you have probably heard of Bryan and Rachel. But for the rest of the world and youtube community Matilda, despite having studied filmmaking, is a nobody.
This campaign is the antithesis of what youtube represents, a place where anyone can become a star, regardless of their background!
I think the message in the video below is, ‘Don’t eat the mushrooms!’
Lonely Planet, now owned by the BBC, had the foresight to understand their monolithic faceless persona, and went about seducing someone from within the youtube star system, to represent their demographic.
They sent Natalie Tran, Australia’s most successful youtuber, around the world to produce short and sweet location videos that increased their subscriber base from 15,000 to over 40,000, and led to over 3 million more video views. So much do Lonely Planet rely on Natalie to grow their channel, they even use her name in their title keywording!
So if Lonely Planet understands how youtube works, one may ask, why can’t Australian Tourism Bodies?
I think half the problem is there seems to be no accountability for failure. Tourism bodies also don’t seem to understand how cost effective online video can be, basing their budgets on more expensive television advertising models.
In some instances, as with Tourism Victoria, a job is not put out for tender, unless it’s budget is over $150,000.
So for their recent Villages of Victoria ‘music video’ campaign, the video producers were not chosen based on online video success or pricing, but on some more mysterious selection process.
After nearly a year online, most of these videos have only garnered a few hundred views. Each video cost a whopping $10,000, three times industry pricing for a 2 minute online video.
Youtube is owned by Google, so when videos underperform like with the ‘villages’ campaign, they don’t get found on Google.
The Falls Creek video, for example, has currently only had 255 views after 12 months online. Tourism Operators have every right to question Tourism Victoria, when amateurs with cheap handy cams, manage to produce videos that perform better in keyword search! The video below doesn’t even make the first page of search for the term ‘falls creek’.
Make it real
Youtube is a very different beast from the high budget world of television advertising. The audience decides what rises to the top and spending big on a large film crew, may not always be necessary.
Most of the successful channels on youtube are produced by multi-skilled individuals who perform all aspects of production themselves. Viewers smell hubris and advertising a mile away and have grown use to videos that look different from television and films!
The short online video format is a challenging artform and anyone hired to produce your online campaign should already have a strong track record in this arena and preferably bring their own audience.
My experience has found personable truthful appraisals using real people work! Story line is more important than bokeh! And if you do produce expensive films that look amazing but don’t outline the key points that differentiate your region from everywhere else, don’t be surprised when they sink down the plughole of online obscurity.
One of worst and most wasteful examples of tourism video marketing is the $7.3 million ‘Daylesford, Lead a double life’ campaign. For those who know nothing about Daylesford, the video paints a confusing picture, tripping between today and yesteryear, and not really telling the viewer anything about the area!
Oh yes, it’s all very artistic, but with a very average views to dollars spent ratio, it’s a rolled gold failure! So far it has cost the taxpayer roughly $600 per video view, which may well be a youtube record!
More than just a video
Youtube has become a very competitive arena, with both professionals and amateurs vying for global views. Uploading a video is only half the battle.
Keywords, social media promotion, community participation; all these marketing tools require time and patience. Ensure some of your budget is allocated to making sure your video gets found.
So to sum up;
*define the key points that differentiate your region from other regions,
*find someone locally, or from the youtube star system, to communicate these key points, and
*produce a short, entertaining, informative, story-based video that is keyword optimised, and syndicated across various social media channels.
MORE INFORMATION: HOW TO USE ONLINE VIDEO TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS OR REGION
Author Mark Shea runs Overlander.tv, Australia’s most subscribed and most viewed travel channel on youtube and one of youtube’s most popular travel channels. (Statistics from June 14th, 2011)
September 8, 2009 in About, marketing, online video, Youtube
Youtube is the most popular video site on the internet, but with 20 hrs of video being loaded every minute, it is getting harder and harder to get recognised. Below are seven ways to develop a popular youtube travel channel
*Network with other travel channels
Search out other travel video channels on youtube, subscribe to them, add them as friends and even contact them telling them about what you are doing. If they are a partner, they may even feature your channel. Each partner has a branding option that allows them to feature 16 other youtube channels.
*Find an Audience
People who subscribe to other travel channels will most likely be interested in travel videos. Do them a favor and tell them about your channel, send them a message, add them as a friend. Who knows, they might even subscribe to you.
*Get Involved
Youtube is a community – a lot of youtubers visit the site regularly and have favorite channels they follow. Be involved, watch other travel videos, rate them, comment on them and reply to comments on your own videos
*Post regularly
Posting videos at regular intervals helps new people become aware of your channel, it helps place your videos in daily, weekly, monthly statistics such as most viewed, most favorite and most commented. Posting regularly also shows other youtubers you are a serious youtuber and not just a ‘johnny come lately’
*The power of the thumbnail
Believe it or not, both your channel icon and video thumbnail can influence views. One of my most popular videos has a thumbnail of a buxom blonde in a bikini and has been viewed over one million times. Go figure! Also, my channel icon leaves no doubt about what viewers will find on my channel.
*Video responses
If you make a video about a particular location, do a video search for this location, find the most viewed video, and post your video as a video response. This can help people looking for information about this location to find your video.
*Cross post to other social network sites
Spread the love; set up a twitter account, a facebook account, a myspace account, a digg account and cross promote your videos. On facebook for example, there is a travel video group where you can embed your videos and maybe increase your exposure to a whole new audience.
So there you go, seven ways to help develop your youtube travel channel. Some youtubers manage to produce a huge viral video hit and become overnight sensations, but for most, developing a following takes time. Support other travel channels, help develop a network. Viewers love travel related content and by supporting each other we help share culture.
Finally I would like to add two videos that sum up, in a humorous ways, how to have a popular youtube channel. The first video is produced by youtube comedian Nalts, and the second, produced by myself.
August 4, 2008 in Advertise
Youtube is the 500 pound Gorilla of online video. So it makes sense that it is also the place to put videos about your tourism business or region. As youtube is owned by google, there is the added bonus that youtube videos rank very highly in google search.
My time on youtube has taught me some valuable lessons with regard to what people like. By monitoring each video’s ratings, comments, views and the amount of times it has been added to a viewers favorites, I can assess exactly what format and type of story, within the ‘Meet a Local’ concept works. Youtube insight also provides viewer demographics such as sex, age, location.
I believe online video is now the new free to air tv, and that opportunities exist for business like never before. If you place an ad on television, it may well be viewed by 100,000 people, but of that 100,000, how many are actually interested in your product, 5%, 10%? With a niche youtube channel like mine, which features travel videos, I can be fairly certain, everyone who CHOOSES to watch or subscribe to my videos are interested in travel, and my videos are viewed globally.
So an exciting opportunity exists for a travel related company to promote their business or region with online video. This could include getting other local tourism operators to become involved and share the cost.
Teaming up with Overlander.tv allows you to promote your business or region, on an already established, successful highly visible travel video channel which has spent the last year, adapting it’s programming to suit the online 3-5 minute format. This means your video will automatically place well in google search due to number of views and rankings.
Anyway, enough talk, Contact me for more information or give me a call on 
April 20, 2008 in film making, Internet Video, Youtube
As a filmmaker, I have always been disappointed that I haven’t had an instant appraisal of my work, as musicians have during a live performance. I think youtube has changed all this.
I can upload a video to youtube, and be aware, within a couple of days, or even minutes, whether my video sucks or kicks ass, by the number of views, comments, favorites and ratings.
This is both fantastic, and annoying. Fantastic, in that, I can get some idea of what works and what doesn’t. Annoying in that commercial work, or even docos for broadcasters, just don’t cut it anymore. To do a project, that you put so much of your time into, and to get no response, no comments, nada, is just plain frustrating!
I want a reaction! Whether you hate it or love it, I want to know. There is nothing worst that producing something that doesn’t even receive a response!
And this is why I love youtube, because the audience encourages video producers, which has lead to a situation, I believe, where the content produced, is more eclectic and unique.
People are not afraid, to be themselves, and experiment with groundbreaking media content. Youtube is one big social experiment, with new creative voices rising to the top via the ratings system.
Originally people first made use of technology by broadcasting from their bedrooms via webcam. Thankfully ‘bedroom philosophers’ are taking their cams into the world, and producing original engaging content.
A couple of Australian producers I would like to make people aware of are: Wezz84, the angry fisherman and spaceboy productions
Each channel is unique in it’s content, answering to no one, but well aware, that if an episode sucks, they will know first!
What we see on television is such a glammed up version of reality. Lose weight, make more money, vote others out! It’s such a crock!
This is why I love youtube, real people, being themselves.
But still, why do you think this video is my most viewed video? Could it be the thumbnail featuring a blonde in a bikini!!
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