• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 2, 2011

Devin Graham began making YouTube videos as a hobby several years ago. Now he has turned his passion into a business. The most recent video, Smashing Pumpkins In Slow Motion, garnered nearly 300,000 views since Oct. 26. A favorite video, Human Slingshot -- made for Vooray, an active apparel line -- became one of the first to test product placement in videos. It gained 2.5 million hits in the past year.

Ironically, the top five videos on Graham's YouTube channel feature water. The top three videos have about 3 million hits each. Garnering multimillion views requires Graham to research keywords each before deciding on a subject. He follows YouTube's blog to learn the top videos of the day, and taps into trending topics on Google to find the most searched-on words. He also goes to devour.com, which serves up lists of the most-watched videos.

Graham, a self-proclaimed creative producer, also signed on as a YouTube partner. He said that enables his videos to serve up higher in the search engine results on query pages. It may seem like that, but a Google spokespeson said becoming a YouTube partner does not mean by default the videos will serve up higher in the search ranking. Partner videos are generally better optimized for search.

He does such as good job, the videos Graham makes for fun tend to get him hired out as a professional for companies such as Mountain Dew and Red Bull. "I have a meeting with Red Bull this week because I'm hitting their demographic," he said. "They are reaching out to me because I hit their demographic and it hits their branding. Mystery Guitar Man did the same thing with several videos for Coca-Cola and McDonald's."

The company Jetlev did not use any form of social media or video marketing before Graham came along and made the video for the startup for free. It appears that these videos, even when it comes to highlighting a new artist on iTunes, continue to change the perception of product placement. Not only creativity -- but optimization content and the ability of Graham and artists like him to understand the fine art of production and entertainment.