One of the simplest ways to attract more viewers lies in not ignoring a small but larger-than-you-likely-realize segment of your potential market: Namely, those who are still on dial-up. While admittedly a small segment of the global population, their business can boost your sales more than you might think possible.

One of the strongest reasons? You’ll be providing a service 98% of all other video marketers ignore – making your videos much easier to load and view for those to whom a 5-minute video load can often equal over an hour of waiting time.

“Get over it. Get high speed”, is something you hear on forums, if those on dial-up dare to complain about load in times. But the simple truth is, there are those in rural areas all across North America for whom dial-up is still the only available service. Perhaps a tower has not yet been built, or geographic conditions just don’t facilitate signal.

It’s not always about these viewers being “stubborn” or “cheap” – most of them would kill for high speed!

How can you make your videos accessible to those on dial-up?

1. You’ll speed up dial-up viewers’ load in times considerably, if you provide a simple “low fidelity” option. And your high speed viewers can still access your high fidelity version

2. Keep your video segments short. It’s much easier to load in a 3-minute video than an 8.27 minute one. In fact, 3.46 minutes seems to be the cut-off time at which video views drop by half (as you’ll quickly discover, if you spend a day browsing view rates and marketing video lengths on YouTube)

3. Allow purchasers to download video series you are selling in individual zip files, rather than one huge one. It can easily take 6 hours to download a 78 mb zipped video file containing 12 “lessons” for someone on dial-up… and chances are, they’ll sit through that (on the rare occasions they’re dedicated – or foolish – enough to try, only to find that their rural phone line couldn’t sustain the download… leaving them with a corrupt, inaccessible file to show for all that effort. (Nothing is more frustrating!)

4. Let them know your video files are “dial-up friendly”. Mention it in your sales pitch; on your web page; in your blog… or even in your signature! (What’s the use of creating short, low fidelity videos – if nobody knows you have them?)
Believe me, the sort of gratitude you’ll get may not propel you towards a six-figure income, but these dial-up viewers will get high speed eventually – and you’ll have earned their loyalty and dedication for life!