According to the U.S. Census Bureau,there are nearly six million businesses in the United States. Think about the enormity of that number.That’s billions and billions of dollars in revenue generation every year. That’s also six million businesses that all require the same basic nourishment to survive – marketing and sales.

If you’re one of those six million businesses, there’s no way around one basic fact – if you want sales; you need marketing. There’s simply too much competition in the global marketplace to survive without marketing. Even items like water, a basic life essential that has always been free, is now big business. But water is also heavily marketed. The messages are that it is “the freshest” or the “finest natural spring” water in an attempt to convince consumers to choose a specific brand.

And right now the old (or shall I say, traditional) methods of advertising and marketing are beginning to fade away or take a new shape. For my money, that new shape is online video. However, some of the biggest names in video have yet to fully embrace the medium as a highly effective marketing platform. And, yes, I’m talking about YouTube. You know, that little company owned by the other little company called Google? I target “Goo-Tube” because it’s just not being very innovative these days.

Case in point, Google executives recently came out and said the company doesn’t know how to make money with YouTube. Gasp! Google doesn’t know how to make money? That’s certainly not the innovative company I know.

So here’s my plan for Google to get back some of that innovative spirit it seems to have misplaced – YouTube Business. It’s the innovation YouTube should build if it wants to start making money right away,and at the same time, explicitly lock up almost every business on the planet into a long-term subscription based plan. Sergey, don’t try pretending that the plan isn’t Google global dominance. We all know the score.

There’s no doubt that every company that does marketing in the future is going to find it necessary to have some type of video on its website. Those videos are either going to be commercials or infomercials. Product demonstrations, training guides, video spokespeople and customer testimonials are just a few examples of video elements consumers are beginning to expect from businesses.

Currently, there really isn’t any place for a business to quickly, easily and cost-effectively post their business video content. Companies could invest in third-party hosting, but that requires figuring out how to create a proprietary Flash player to stream videos. But, more importantly, videos hosted on YouTube will definitely benefit from being indexed into Google’s universal search.

The bottom line – even for large companies – is that it’s much easier to have a single site or repository specifically to host business video content. That type of site also solves all the issues associated with the complexities and hurdles of video including streaming, compression, and quality, etc.

It’s All About Subscriptions

But there’s no point in building something that isn’t going to generate a profit. After all, this is business we’re talking about. For the sake of this argument, let’s conservatively estimate there are 1 million businesses ready to sign up today to this new YouTube Business channel (why wouldn’t they?). Let’s say that YouTube Business charged each one of those 1 million businesses $100 per month to host their videos. That’s $1,200 a year per company multiplied by 1 million accounts. That equals $1.2 billion a year. That’s not a bad business model.

So the real question is…would a business pay $100 a month to have its videos hosted at YouTube? I say, yes! They’d pay that in a heartbeat and here’s why:

  • Universal search integration for videos that meet “requirements”
  • The ability to remove the YouTube branded logo on the player allows the business to both stream the video on YouTube, as well as on their website
  • Full HD capability, if wanted
  • Long-form videos (allowing videos up to two hours in length)
  • Maintaining brand equity by segregation from amateurish and inappropriate videos in the general population
  • Unlimited views
  • Trend tracking and analytics
  • Private community
  • Custom-branded business channel pages

I like to think of an innovation as something that is created out of a need. Sure, sometimes innovations “just happen”, but most of the time, someone is trying to solve a problem. In this case, YouTube has a BIG problem. It can’t make money.

It’s time for someone at YouTube to stop worrying about skateboarding videos and start thinking real practical money-making innovations that solve problems for millions of revenue generating, and spending, businesses. It’s time for YouTube Business.

If you’re interested in learning more details or giving me your thoughts, you can read the entire plan at www.JimKukral.com/ytbiz.