Video Curation: Compare Ultimate Video Curator, Viral Video Curator Pro

Bryan McConnahea shows his video curation users How to Create Ultimate Video Curator Posts, Part 1… from Youtube

By Robin Carlisle

I originally wrote this in response to a video curation question someone had on the Warrior Forum regarding whether or not to buy Ultimate Video Curator or opt for Viral Video Curator Pro. After sharing voluminous thoughts on the matter… and if you know me, I can’t have just ONE thought on any matter… I decided to share what I wrote with my local marketing friends here. So here’s an outline of what you’ll peruse if you decide to stick around for ALL my thoughts so far on the matter:

• Hugh Hitchcock and His Viral Line of Video Curation Software
• Bryan MacConnahea and His Ultimate Video Curator Plugins
• Should You Choose Viral Video Curator Pro or Ultimate Video Curator?
• Fearless Wisdom and Talented Timidity Both Create Awesome Must-Have Products
• Slightly Significant Video Curation Packaging Frown-Turners
• My Whisper of Advice for Hugh Hitchcock and Bryan MacConnahea
• My Keeper-Clipper Promotional Award Goes To…
• My Only Video Sales Copy Complaint
• A Note on TroubleShooting, TroubleSharing and Just Plain Trouble

(Just as a disclaimer), I’ve signed on as an affiliate for both video curation products, have bought both, and used both. Both have very different approaches with very different uses and results. If you’d like to skip all my wordy-words and jump over to Bryan McConnahea’s Official Sales Page for Ultimate Video Curator, just click the link below:

CLICK for the Official Page of Ultimate Video Curator

Unfortunately, Hugh Hitchcock’s latest promoters talked him into implementing “scarcity tactics” into his marketing plans for Viral Video Curator Pro, so that sales page is currently closed. I’ll update this page when that changes.

Hugh Hitchcock and His Viral Line of Curation Software

Hugh Hitchcock makes the “Viral” line of stand-alone software products… Viral Video Curator Pro, Viral Image Curator Pro, and Viral Content Curator Pro, with a Sydication Plugin for video that’s a separate charge. The interface of all these looks very similar, so once you’ve set up one and used it, all the rest are pretty much the same so you can jump in with zero learning curve. The good things about Hugh are that he makes his products for his own businesses so he updates them constantly so they actually WORK. No problem here with him making something and abandoning it. He also invites and welcomes comments, criticisms, and opportunities to make each product better. With the Image Curator, he took EVERY single suggestion from his buyers and added them to the product within days of the suggestions. He gets really excited about making good things even better.

As both a software developer and musician, he has great respect for copyright owners and the feeble laws that try to protect their creations, so every suggestion from buyers to help make his products more copyright compliant, he jumped at the chance. So pretty much in each of his products, you’ll find options to pull data, images or videos from public domain sources, creative commons sources, and an option in every case to click on a question mark to take you to the source where you’ll find their original copyright terms of use so you can research it yourself and never be unpleasantly surprised. Of course, Hugh always gives lots of choices and sources for which you to find and choose content, videos, and images, regardless of copyright. In other words, all your best bases are covered here.

So on a trust factor scale from 1 to 10, Hugh’s pretty much a 9.5 in “attempting to help you” stay out of copyright use trouble (unless you deliberately WANT to steal), a 10 on good intentions and the sincere desire to do right by his customers, a 9.5 on his ability to deliver on his promises, a 9.0 on the usefulness of each of his products, and a 10 for the additional benefit of actually taking the posts you create with his curation tools and posting them on Facebook, Twitter and/or Pinterest.

THAT is where the “Viral” part of his product names sets him apart. It’s one thing to be able to curate content (take content from various sources and rewrite according to your desire) and post it to your own blog. It’s a totally separate thing to actually take your curated website post and post it elsewhere with a link pointing back to your original post on YOUR website. So all Hugh’s tools BOTH curate content AND syndicate it with links pointing back to your site. Big difference.

Bryan McConnahea and His Ultimate Video Curator Plugins

Bryan McConnahea, who created the series of plugins he calls Ultimate Video Curator, is also a nice guy. I just bought this product yesterday and spent over eight hours going through it, using it, testing it, etc, but so far it does not seem to have the speed that Hugh’s has on the backend… where we actually need to speed up the curation process.

For example, if you save a video to use later, the entire screen must refresh before you can save another one. I could “favorite” 20 videos in Hugh’s software for later use in the same amount of time.

However, Bryan’s product is extremely useful, and has additional and very valuable functions that others do not. Being able to sort and filter your YouTube search results so you can find the most popular videos appearing TODAY for a given search term or category will let you create a “daily” video blog for your targeted audience that will entice them to return repeatedly.

It’s Bryan’s SORT features in his video curation plugin that make it indispensable, even if the SAVE function is waaaaaaaaaaay to slow. Bryan’s video THEME is also a visual pleaser… simple, uncluttered, very user friendly, and exactly why everyone is sooooooo attracted to this product at first glance. It looks great!

There is a downside… So far I’ve found no way whatsoever to include all the legal pages ALL of us are required to include… disclaimers, privacy policy, FTC disclosures, TOS, etc… and that needs to be fixed quickly. On the other hand, these tired old eyes could just be missing something.

By the same somewhat limiting token, all your written content can appear only as descriptions underneath the titled video. If you want to or need to have stand-alone written content without a video, well… it doesn’t exactly fit in with the rest, even if you can do it.

Another awesome feature in Bryan’s video curation plugin is the ability to add Google Alert feeds for a keyword of your choice that appear below your video, as well as an additional gallery of related videos.

The sidebars also fill with videos you choose by category, using two special widgets that you drag and drop, though one requires you to create an arbitrary Top Videos or Best Videos category to make them appear.

Personally, I’ve been whittling down and deleting all the “extra” tags in my Post-Panda-Penguin blogs, so the strategies Bryan uses to create this special kind of video blog is kind of counter-intutitive to me right now. Instead of whittling out old extras, I’m now having to weave them back in for this theme, which I don’t mind saying is kind of weirding me out and wearing me down all at the same Post-Panda-Penguin time, lol.

But don’t let that stop you, as this is the best method for creating Bryan’s kind of video blog, and he gives you the perfect template to help you make that happen. It’s just that when I tried to make an existing blog FIT into Bryan’s template, it’s just not going to happen.

So BEST recommendation? Use Bryan’s video theme and plugin to start NEW video blogs… ones that fit HIS mold, his template, his way… and that will definitely work and draw the kinds of traffic he claims it will.

Should You Choose Viral Video Curator Pro or Ultimate Video Curator?

So bottom line… which video curation tool to choose? Personally, I see these as two entirely different kinds of tools that do NOT do the same thing at all. But I’ve been doing video since the 1980′s so I have a very, very loooooong view of how things work and how you NEED different tools to accomplish different goals and different tasks, especially with online digital video today.

So if your goal is to start from scratch with a brand new video blog on which you will put nothing but highly targeted, related videos in one niche… definitely get Bryan’s Ultimate Video Curator plugin AND use the separate theme he’s created because it will keep you focused and NOT divert your attention away from what’s important to the viewers you want to attract.

Your goal here is to bring them to your site to watch one video and wow them by giving them a thousand ways to find MORE related videos and keep them going from page to page to page and staying on your site.

Bryan’s theme and plugin will absolutely do this… but so far… I’m thinking YOU are going to have to find a way to monetize that… and do so within the narrow parameters of Bryan’s theme. An upsell OTO has a banner ad holder thangy that’s really cool, but don’t think that will make a huge difference. I think YOU will have to get creative to monetize this. (Please, pretty please, come back here and share your monetization methods with us in the comment box below when you figure this out, as we ALL want to know).

In contrast, Hugh’s products are an absolute MUST for anyone who already has an existing blog or wants to integrate ALL the curation, posting, and viral social reposting and linking functions that Hugh’s products have to offer when you want to create various kinds of posts — written, video, audio, meme, image, etc. These programs are workhorses you’ll end up using daily in one way or another. And you will greatly appreciate the fact that if you ever have even one idea that could make it better, you’ll find a very welcoming Hugh to listen to you, often returning emails in the middle of the night, lol, when Hugh’s been known to still be working or playing his guitar.

Fearless Wisdom and Talented Timidity Both Create Awesome Must-Have Products

So though both guys seem to have that laid back, relaxed, but focused developer’s demeanor, it seems Hugh’s a bit more unafraid to deal with the masses, their fickle complaints, and other stressors, letting all those “difficulties” or “troubles” help him improve his products, making everyone happy… and happier… the longer you hang out with Hugh and his products.

By contrast, I think Bryan may be a bit younger and more prone to letting the masses and both their fickle AND righteous complaints get him down. This is only important when noting that Hugh has lived through losing his livelihood as a computer programmer during the economic downturn like so many other “career” computer techies and spent the necessary life-changing time downsizing to a former music career and making the low-paid rounds playing from gig to gig to gig, then creating music blogs and hitting the sweet spot again, then building that into a money maker using curation products he created, THEN sharing his proven money maker with the masses.

And THAT is the key difference between their products. Hugh built his workhorse products to work his way UP. Whereas Bryan has created a wonderful product, an AWESOME product, but it has NOT yet weathered the internet or proved itself as a moneymaker.

It IS DEFINITELY a product with potential, but you’re going to have to monetize it yourself and take the risks of doing so. It WILL get you the traffic you want, but there’s no built in way to monetize that traffic or to repost it socially and force it to go viral like Hugh’s product does. But then, Hugh’s product won’t monetize traffic for you directly either. Either way, either product… you’ll have to figure that out on your own.

However, if you use your own blog theme with Hugh’s products, you’ve probably already got your monetization methods already worked out. Those same methods, however, may not work with Bryan’s theme easily. In that case, just use his video curation plugin WITHOUT his theme, choosing YOUR own theme instead, and see if you can work up your own template within Bryan’s plugin that will work for you.

With time and a bit of creativity, it looks like Bryan’s plugin could be VERY adaptable for a bit more experienced IMers, but those newbies or less experienced technophobes may get a bit confused trying to figure this out.

For newbies using Bryan’s plugin and theme, it’s best to stick to HIS theme and HIS default plugin template, and spend all your time having fun just looking at and curating your favorite videos — which is his simple and easy point in the first place!

So BOTH are GREAT products. Just very different… and maybe best used by those who can choose their paths well, without a product teaching them how to monetize their blogs.

CLICK to go to Ultimate Video Curator

Slightly Significant Video Curation Packaging Frown-Turners

Let me just add one thing… I’m not sure whether Bryan had first created a bunch of different plugins that worked well together and THEN had a marketer suggest to him that he market them together… or that he created this “group” of plugins and theme intentionally. Either way… it seemed a bit disjointed… or disconnected.

And right when i started to think that, I opened up the installer plugin and saw everything ready to install and activate all at once. Then I thought… OK… I like this. This means I don’t have to install each of these things individually over and over and over again each time I start a new website. That’s a very good thing.

However, as long as he did that, I would have liked for him to add ALL the necessary plugins I need for each website, not just his necessary ones and favorite ones. (That means, when I saw how convenient that was, I wanted MORE of it… and his easy-peasy time savers). When you get this, you’ll see what I mean.

BUT, the big frown-turner for me was when I reached the LAST upsell OTO, offering 6 more plugins/softwares as a package deal for $77 or $147 for developer rights. I wanted ONE — his WarriorPress membership platform — but at that price it was still a bit too pricey.

My Whisper of Advice for Hugh Hitchcock and Bryan MacConnaghea

My honest opinion and recommendation TO both these guys? Stay away from the slick promotional marketers that you partner with to sell and promote your products on WF WSOs, JVZoo, FSO, etc. While Alex Goad did a great copywriting and voiceover job for Bryan, there always seems to be a big disconnect between the promotions for both Bryan and Hugh and their very worthy and useful products.

Their really good products do NOT need the ickyness that some of the their promoters ooze off on them, pissing off customers to no end for one reason or another. Anything that separates these really nice developers from their customers is NOT a good idea.

And perhaps Bryan, because of his age, is the most affected by this over the longterm. I really hope he finds a gentle kindred spirit to help him bring a more personal touch to marketing his products and helping him like his customers and hang out with them more. I fear something has happened that has made him deliberately choose a more more hands-off approach.

As for Hugh, I think he’s better off selling his products through give-and-take WSOs with John Pearce, as his last product was sold through a communicationless hands-off manner that did NOT go along with Hugh’s customer-focused persona. Big disconnect. Wrong promoters or at least wrong promotion strategy.

So whenever buying digital products, it’s best to follow the people behind the promotions to know whether the products will be good ones and supported long-term, whether the developers are trustworthy, and whether the promoters are doing their partners an injustice or earning their hype-filled partner commissions. Induced scarcity is NEVER a good enough reason to volunteer to be a guinea pig with someone’s experimental product, unless you know the long-term reputation behind the scientist who created it.

My Definite “Keeper” Promotional Award Goes To…

One MORE-MORE thing… about Alex Goad… What a phenomenal job you did on the sales materials for Ultimate Video Curator… both writing… video… and voiceover. A consummate professional… to be sure. You will NEVER see a better example of how to create a (static, non-interactional) promotion that sells itself… though he had a great product to work with — Bryan’s Ultimate Video Curator.

Still, I would recommend clipping and saving that promo for a GREAT example of how to write and deliver sales copy for a product. You have BOTH the video to listen to… as well as almost a verbatim written account of what’s in the video… yet both seem totally stand-alone and uphold excellent value on their own without the other.

My Only Video Sales Copy Complaint

My only complaint… really only one… is that without the give and take dialogue below the sales pitch… at least for THIS product… I think it will LIMIT sales for Bryan, instead of enhance them.

This is a GOOD product, especially for experienced video bloggers who will appreciate its worth. For newbies, it’s great, too, but they need the extra bit of explanation in how to MAKE it great for them so they don’t unintentionally get frustrated when trying to make it do something which it cannot do.

Sometimes simplicity is a GREAT thing. Other times, it can frustrate people to no end. Bryan’s created something so simple, so easy to use, that its simplicity may just frustrate the heck out of those who try to stuff it’s very rounded shape into a square hole.

But Alex Goad cannot narrate this for Bryan. It’s something only he can communicate to his users. It’s something HE needs help in communicating to his users… who like Hugh’s users, could become staunch supporters, if only he would loosen up a bit and let them.

Still… Alex Goad… phenomenal promoter, yes? I nominate this one for an advertising promotion award. Great job, Alex… whoever you are, lol.

A Note on TroubleShooting, TroubleSharing and Just Plain Trouble

Okey, dokey, so that’s it from little old me, yall. Both of these products can be winning tools for you, each in their very own ways. While Hugh’s had a bit of a head start on Bryan’s in the area of tweaking out the bugs and turning every glitchy lemon into lemonaide, with a little encouragement and positive feedback, I’m sure Bryan’s video plugins, themes, and tools will do an equally profitable job for you.

But when using these tools or any other, remember the KEY to your success is always YOU. If you can’t get them to do what you want, YOU should ask for help. If you get frustrated waiting for an answer or figuring out how to utilize and implement the answers you get, YOU are the only one who can take a chill pill, put the task away for a better day, and approach YOUR problem again from a different angle.

Perhaps your answer or key to your problem lies on a different site or forum and not with the product creator at all. Or perhaps it’s best for you to write your question in Notepad and copy/paste it into the support desk AND five other forums at the same time where you’ll find users who might can help quicker than the support desk can.

Just sayin’… there’s always more than one way to solve a problem, any problem, that gets in between YOU and your goals.

And always remember, my friends, people gotta sleep. Since I work at night… and I mean all the way through the quiet night till morning… I’ve gained a different perspective and a LOT of appreciation for those empathetic product users who realize that, yes, even product creators must sleep sometime.

Personally, NO ONE is awake when I’m working (except maybe Hugh Hitchcock, lol), at least on my side of the world, so I NEVER expect a “quick” answer to MY questions. I expect them to be asleep, like most normal people are — unlike me (and maybe Hugh).

So, I’m always amazed at how frustrated people get when a question is not answered within 24 hours… especially when not considering that some people actually do NOT work every single day… especially on weekends.

Meaning… CHILL OUT… at every opportunity. Life is too short to let other people’s sleep and work habits twist you up like a pretzel, lol.

So for these products or any others, especially NEW ones that take a bit of patience in the beginning, I recommend you “curate” a multi-source, multi-interactional approach to solving any “user” problem that gets in your way and do so BEFORE you buy ANY digital product. You’ll benefit yourself AND a whole lot of those talented timid product developers we too often just plain scare away with all our “troubles.”

CLICK to go to Bryan McConnahea’s Ultimate Video Curator

Just my thoughts…

Robin Carlisle

Tags: Bryan McConnahea, Hugh Hitchcock, Ultimate Video Curator, video curation, video plugins, video software, video tools, Viral Video Curator Pro