As the meaning of television grows to more and more include web distributed and downloadable video, your free (or, at least, extremely cheap) opportunity to use the world’s new take on commercials is finally here…and it’s yours for the taking, if you know how to get the most out of it.

There are as many ways to get customers from a promotional web video as there are products that are advertised by them, and the path to web video success will take some specifics depending on what you are selling and who you are selling it to. But regardless of your industry and even your market, there are a few universal guidelines to the most successful web videos to promote products.