How to Monetize Your Videos With SproutVideo

Online video is a lucrative way to grow sales and reach new customers. When video is your product, whether for consulting, fitness, education, or entertainment, selling subscriptions to your videos enables you to grow a sustainable business over time.

SproutVideo makes it easy to share your paid video content securely. Here’s our guide to selling access to your videos.

How it Works

There are two primary ways to sell access to your videos using SproutVideo. The first is to establish a membership website using Wordpress, Shopify, Squarespace, or a similar website hosting platform. Typically, you need to use a plugin or a third party to handle memberships and charge your customers.

The second option is to sell access to a video website hosted by SproutVideo, and issue viewer logins to purchasers. Viewer logins can be created and largely automated using Zapier.

Subscription Video Websites

To set up a membership website to sell subscriptions to your videos, you’ll need a website hosted by WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, or a similar website hosting platform. Nearly any website can be used to sell access to video content.

Popular options include:

WordPress with WooCommerce (you will need the Subscriptions and Memberships extensions), MemberPress, or LearnDash.
Squarespace with SentryLogin, or MemberSpace.
Shopify with BoldCommerce.

Once you’ve picked your website platform, membership management tool, and payment processor, you’ll also need a video hosting provider with the right security tools to protect your content. That’s where we come in.

Creating a Membership Website

The process is generally straightforward. While the specific steps will vary based on the providers you choose, here is an overview of what’s entailed:

Create your website with all necessary public-facing pages, like your homepage, about, and contact pages.
Add secure pages containing your video content. These pages should be gated (require a username and password for access) and be accessible to paying members only. Note: some website providers, like Squarespace, allow you to add your videos as a “product” or “service” and automate certain aspects of this process.
Embed your videos securely by using allowed domains or signed embed codes to add them to your secure pages. Set your videos to private. These settings will ensure your videos only appear where they are embedded, and that the video embed code cannot be copied and republished elsewhere.
Create subscriptions using your subscription or member management tool.
Create a checkout form or cart so customers can purchase subscriptions (might not be necessary depending on whether the providers you are using automate this part of the process).
Launch your website!

Selling Access to SproutVideo Websites with Viewer Logins

The second option is to sell access to your videos through your website, and grant video access using SproutVideo’s viewer logins. Then, direct your paying customers to your SproutVideo website or landing pages to log in and view your videos.

To do that, you need a website, a payment processor, and potentially an integration with Zapier or the SproutVideo API.

How to Charge for Access to a SproutVideo Website

Here’s how to set up your website and SproutVideo account to require customers to pay to access your videos.

Create a website, configure your subscription options, and integrate it with a payment processor. Popular choices include Stripe or PayPal.
Upload your videos to SproutVideo. Set them to login protected.
When a customer completes a purchase, use Zapier or the SproutVideo API to send their contact information to the SproutVideo platform. Create a viewer login for that person, and grant them access to the video they just purchased. Alternatively, if you are handling transactions manually, you can also create viewer logins and grant video access manually.
After purchase, send your customer a link to your video website URL or the URL of the landing page(s) for the video(s) they just purchased. Once they open the URL in their browser, they will be prompted to log in to view their videos.

Viewer logins can be expired after a specific period of time or number of uses, and can also include download permissions (disabled by default). We would also recommend allowing viewers to manage their own passwords (enabled by default).

These are the two most popular methods for monetizing content hosted by SproutVideo. If you have questions about how to set it up using specific providers, we are more than happy to help!

For more information on selling access to your videos, check out these other help articles:

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Section: Selling Videos Last Updated: October 04, 2023

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