In my last posts I’ve wondered if a video about, say gardening, would rank higher than an HTML file with the same information. I thought I could make a YouTube video and then make a text post using the captions pulled from the movie. Well, I did all this, and found that there would probably be little competition. The video would stand by itself whereas the HTML file would be completely inadequate. That’s because the captions describe what is happening on the screen; they are totally dependent on those moving images. As a text file, without numerous supporting images, the captions do not stand by themselves and are functionally worthless. See if you can follow these five sentences. Would you be able to follow fifty more?

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Dividing Agapanthus

Welcome to thomasfarleyblog.com.

This is the plant that we will be dividing today: Agapanthus africanus, Lily of the Nile. To be accurate, it is not a true Nile resident, it belongs to South Africa — and it’s not a true lily.

Nevertheless, we’ll be able to get four or five divisions out of it. It’s a wonderful blue and white flowering plant.

So let us put it on the concrete and divide it.

This is what a single flower cluster looks like. This is a little too blue, probably Photoshopped. This is more the standard color which is the pale violet, and they all look good in the afternoon shade. This is the white one; these are standard agapanthus and not dwarfs.

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Captions do not make for a source of ready to use content. You’d need to rewrite this base material into a stand alone article. Having done that, you might have a way to better attract an employer. You’d be offering an article along with a video. One would augment the other. Everything I read says that content is king. Offering video as a service is something a freelancer may want to consider. Now, the big question is, how do we get paid for it?

Update on May 10, 2014. The video is past 35 views, much more than this text entry. The video is in fact getting more traffic than my blog. It’s conclusive: add video to your web pages!

Update on August 24, 2014. 363 views! I may add that my success is through YouTube. You may not get the same results if your video is unaffiliated, hosted solely at your website. And it must help that Google owns YouTube.

Update on March 10, 2015. 5,000+ views! First ranking on Google when you look up the phrase “dividing agapanthus.”

Update on November 19, 2015. 21,000+ views.

Update on April 18, 2016. 31,717+ views.

Update on May 29, 2017. 65,000 + views.