According to Wikipedia, at $300,000,000, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is the most expensive movie ever made. (Interestingly, when adjusted for inflation, 1963’s Cleopatra gives Pirates a run for its money at a gargantuan $290,000,000.) The swashbuckling adventure tale clocks in at 168 minutes, meaning each minute of film is worth approximately $1.8 million. Now that’s a whole lot of booty, even for a gang of rum-chugging pirates.

For comparison purposes, consider the now infamous “I Got a Crush on Obama” video, which cost about $2,000 to produce, but continues to draw millions of views on Youtube. (More than 12,309,880 views, last we checked.) And though its catchy song and peppy mise-en-scene will soon be the stuff of obscure pop culture history, one cannot help but marvel at how this relatively simple video managed to attract so many eyeballs in such a brief period.

The lesson: you don’t have to spend $300,000,000 on a video to make it successful. Really, you don’t even have to spend $2,000. All you need is a good idea, a reliable digital camera, some editing software, and a little bit of knowledge of how to optimize your video for various vendors and search engines.

Antezeta does a good job of summarizing a few useful optimization methods. (See especially their 8 Top Tips for Video Search Engine Optimization.) Film it, edit it, optimize it — you never know, maybe you’ll have the next Internet blockbuster on your hands.