Youtube is definitely the 1000 pound gorilla in hosting online video, but there are other options. The main reason to go with other options is video quality. When YouTube recompresses your video, sometimes it can go to fuzz. This should improve now it’s all H.264 instead of Flash video, but, in the meantime- consider some of these options- all allow you to embed your video in a blog.

• Blip.tv
• Viddler.com
• Screencast.com
• revver.com
• google video (which may soon just be youtube since Google bought YouTube)

There are others- you can find some excellent indepth info here: Online Video Hosting

The main decision you have to make is how “findable” do you want your video to be? ALmost everyone looking for video will tend to go to the best known sites. YouTube has the biggest audience, and if you have something viral- you want it there (although it probably will end up there if it’s truly destined for greatness).

If you just want others to be able to link to it- any site will do.

The last issue is how you embed it in your site. We use a plugin called WPVideo to embed social media site video. There are other plugins out there- you can always trust Lorelle to write about a subject like video embedding plugins in depth- and of course she has: Video, Music, Podcasts, Audio, and Multi-media WordPress plugins.

We’ve also tried uploading our video to our server- and then watching the bandwidth suck out of our server, we’re still scratching our head why we ever went this route (other than some of our video was put up before YouTube existed).

Happy video posting!