Since it was shared here first, I thought I would write a little bit about what our experience has been like having a home video with over a million views.
One typical Sunday night, Tyler got a message through his youtube account from someone claiming to be from Good Morning America and asking if they could share the video on their show. Tyler and I first thought it was a prank, but everything seemed to check out so we said "sure" - We figured it maybe used as a filler somewhere down the road, if it was ever used at all.
Well... my phone started ringing Monday morning around 7am! "You guys are on GMA right NOW!! Turn on your TV" My mom and dad were up and happened to catch a quick clip right before a commercial break to show what is coming up next. I couldn't believe it. It was so weird seeing the video that I had watched over and over on my little computer screen now up on our TV. It was even more odd to hear strangers comment about us - people I see on TV all the time talking about my family.
The calls kept coming. CBS, Inside Edition, CNN, ESPN, Entertainment Tonight - we started to loose track. There were also many small local news & radio stations wanting permission to share a clip or request an interview. Then, other networks from all over the world started to contact us too! Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England and Saudi Arabia are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. The first 2 weeks were just nuts.
College friends, neighbors and family members were getting phone calls from news shows trying to get in touch with us for interviews or to ask a few questions for clarification. They found connections to us through the internet, phone books, etc. I am so thankful we have such wonderful friends!! No one gave out information, but instead took the info of those trying to reach us and then passed it along to either Tyler or I... we cannot say how much we appreciate that!!
Things have slowed down now and our video has over 1,890,000 views. Emotions were a mix of excitement and reservation as we tried to balance between wanting to share the joy of Aliyah's contagious giggles and worrying about allowing media too much access to her and our family.
It was interesting how different shows would all put their own spin on our video, "camel attacks sweet baby and tries to bite off her head" or "camel cuddles little girl while toddler laughs" This really made me think how much media really does affect emotions behind a story. I always could guess what show aired the video clip as a rush of views and comments would hit our video.
It was hard to read the negative comments at first, but then we had a realization that people don't really know anything about us, the drive through zoo and feel completely safe to say things that they wouldn't typically say to someone's face. It became easy to laugh off the ridiculous comments and cherish the sweet and kind words of friends, family and other strangers.
People have asked us if we have gotten paid for any of the news channels airing our video - I WISH!
I was at Party City buying a bunch of plastic camels after the video had hit 1,000,000 views (my dad insisted that we host a 1 million view party). The teenage boy at the check-out counter made a comment about the massive amounts of plastic camels and so I briefly explained our video. He thought it was cool and asked me to share all of our money with him. Ha!
We are working with a company who is licensing our video. They put commercial ads on our youtube video and give us a percentage of what the commercial companies pay to advertise their products. It isn't a whole lot, but it has been nice to add a little to Aliyah's college account.
Even though things have slowed down, we still see our video pop up on a show or internet site from time-to-time. Just this week Inside Edition called again wanting to use our video in an image campaign. And last month a show from England flew over to the US to interview us and a few other people with popular youtube videos. This has been a crazy and fun experience that will be a story retold for years ahead.
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