In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the trend of video consumption on the Internet. With the rise of social media platforms and streaming services, people are spending more time watching videos online than ever before.
This trend can be attributed to a number of factors, including the widespread availability of high-speed internet, the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices, and the growing popularity of user-generated content.
As progressive web publishers, it makes sense to move with the times by engaging and monetizing your website traffic with video content. But how?
Humix, an innovative video platform launched by Ezoic, gives publishers a chance to show related video content to people that visit their site, giving you a chance to not only add more value to your visitors but also monetize their attention to a greater extent.
What Is Humix?
Humix (humix.com) is a video hosting platform with a difference. On top of its basic hosting abilities, it also includes advanced monetization features that allow you to monetize both your own content and well as the content of other people.
Humix videos are pieces of content, just like other videos you watch on social media, but the content then has advertisements selectively inserted in the video content to help you make more money from your website traffic.
Humix has been developed by Ezoic and is currently available just to Ezoic publishers, but there are plans to open it up to other publishers in the future.
How Is Humix Different From Youtube?
While Youtube can be a great video hosting platform and a place to try and build an audience, there are some significant risks associated with building and monetizing an audience through Youtube.
When you try and grow a channel on Youtube you are completely dependent on Youtube policies and procedures and are vulnerable to having your channel deleted, de-monetized, or shadowbanned. On top of this, you can only make money from ads that are served within your content.
However with Humix, these risks do not exist, AND you can make money from both your content and the content of other creators. You can categorize videos, and make playlists, and users can easily see a history of videos they have watched previously.
Even if you don’t want to monetize your videos, you can just use Humix as a video hosting service and turns ads off.
How Do You Make Money With Humix?
There are three different ways you can make money on Humix. You have full control over which options you
- Add Your Own Videos To Your Own Content
The most common way Ezoic users are using Humix is to create their own video content and upload this to the Humix platform. In many cases, publishers have an accompanying YouTube channel already, and Humix makes it easy to connect your Youtube channel to mass upload your Youtube videos to Humix.
If you do not have any video content already produced, Ezoic provides another amazing service to their publishers to help them turn their blog posts into videos. You simply provide the URL of the content you want converted to a video and Flickify (the video creation app), automatically generates a video script and images to accompany the video, along with an AI voiceover. There is so much you can do with Flickify that will be discussed in other pieces of content.
- Add Someone Else’s Videos To Your Content
In addition to making money from your own video content, Ezoic provides the option for you to enable the Engage network, which allows Ezoic to show other creators’ Humix content to your website visitors. When this happens any revenue generated from this is shared between you and the video creator 50/50.
- Other People Add Your Videos To Their Content
The Grow network gives Ezoic permission to add your video to other people’s content, and similar to the Engage network, any revenue generated from this is split 50/50. The implications of this are astounding when you think about it. This means that a single blog post can be monetized by the ads on the blog, ads from Humix video views on the page, AND revenue when other sites also use your content.
Matching Humix Videos With Relevant Content
With each video you upload you can choose how that video is associated with your website content. You can specifically connect a video to a specific URL (very useful if your video is a direct summary of your article), or you can give permission for Humix to automatically match videos up with relevant articles, based on the nature of the content. If you wish to maximize monetization you can even give permission for any videos to be added to any content, and let Humix decide.
Can I Use Humix Even If I Don’t Have My Own Video Content?
Yes. Though you can make more money from content of your own (because you keep 100% of the revenue), you can absolutely benefit from the Humix network. By opting into the Engage network you give permission for videos from other creators to be added to your content, and you then share the revenue from any meaningful engagement with that content.
With the Engage network you have the option to choose how closely related a video must be to the theme of your content. The closer you would like the theme of a video to be to your content the fewer videos will be matched and played in your content.
In addition to relevancy, you can also select how you would like the Humix video to be displayed, or not displayed within your content.
Can I Create Videos Using Humix?
Humix includes a video studio to assist with the uploading of video content, but this does not currently have any video creation or editing capabilities.
Uploading a Video To Humix
Uploading videos to Humix is a simple process, guided by an intuitive user interface.
- Log in to the Ezoic Publisher Dashboard and open the Humix App
- Open Humix Studio
- Select “Upload New Video’’
- Upload FIle and Complete Relevant Details
You can add as much or as little detail as you would like. The more you do to optimize the description, tags, and SEO of the video – the greater chance you have of your video being shared on other people’s content (where they have enabled that setting).
Are Humix Videos The Same As Video Ads?
No, Humix videos are pieces of content that people watch, similar to a Youtube video. Ads are then inserted into the video content, based on your settings.
Is Humix A Good Idea For All Web Publishers?
Humix is an Ezoic product, and though it may be available more widely in the future, it is currently only available to publishers in the Ezoic network. In my opinion, enabling Humix on your site is a no-brainer.
Even if you have no video content of your own, you can still enable content from other creators to be displayed on your content.
However, even if you don’t have your own videos yet, Ezoic has another service to help you with that as well!
There is a justifiable concern held by some that too many videos being inserted within and on top of your content could create a negative experience for your website visitors. In my opinion, the best way to work with this concern would be to enable Humix for a period of time (for example 1-4 weeks) and measure your website traffic and engagement metrics to see if there is a noticeable impact.
If there is no negative impact on traffic and engagement it could allay concerns and suggest Humix is a way to make more money from your website traffic, without negatively impacting your audience.
Can I Have A Video Only Humix Channel?
At the time of writing, Humix still needed a website with approval by the ad networks, in order to utilize the Humix platform. There are discussions underway as to whether this might be possible in the future. But for now, Humix is only available to publishers with ad-approved web properties.
Final Thoughts
On the surface, Humix might not seem like a big deal. But when you truly consider its potential for you as a publisher and what it can do for your content, you will understand how exciting Humix is and how it can transform your publishing business.
When connecting with other publishers, it is not uncommon to hear people say that the Humix video platform has added hundreds, and in some cases thousands of dollars of extra revenue to monthly Ezoic income.
If you test it out and find that it has a negative impact on engagement, or the monetization doesn’t justify the impact on user experience, fair enough. But for me, the proposition is strong to at least test it out. There is nothing to lose.
In this post, I talk about the specific impact of Humix on my income, what I have done with the platform, and what I plan to do going forward to utilize and profit from it further.
