Making a buck from the home made video

The amateur video producer shoots, edits and submits the video to a site like Revver, Flixya, Metacafe, and Atom Entertainment. These sites normally make money through advertising and the video producer gets paid around $4 per thousand views or $1 per click or per view.

The problem is that most videos get less than a thousand views. Not enough to buy that nice new BMW. But, there is always that chance of creating the really big hit and then the money comes rolling in.

There is a lot more about these companies and the business model of revenue sharing in Technology Review. Dick Stroud

Guerilla Video in action

That a brilliant presenter and illustration of Guerilla Video. Rocketboom is a three minute daily videoblog, based in New York that covers al sorts of strange things. As the Web site says

Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs.

Also, Rocketboom is distributed online, all around the world and on demand, and thus has a much larger potential audience than any TV broadcast. However, we spend $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive. While TV programs have traditionally been uni-directional, Rocketboom engages its international audience in a wide range of topical discussions.

.Rocketboom encapsulates every thing that Guerilla Video is a about.As you would expect Rocketboom has its own YouTube channel. Dick Stroud

Video is so effective in telling a story

This guy found himself writing a lot about Web video in Business 2.0 and his blog.

In his own words: It became obvious to me that something fundamental is changing about video on the Web.It is no longer simply about people submitting their own bloopers on YouTube. The Web is fast becoming a viable distribution pipe for regular Web TV shows, produced by a wider range of people than ever before. I thought, instead of just writing about it; why not give it a try myself.

This article has some great examples of the videos he has created and how he made it happen. Real pragmatic stuff. Dick Stroud

Annual growth in online video advertising 39% or higher

This is growth rate that eMarketer.com reckons this market will grow at for the next four years. That’s not a number you can ignore. Dick Stroud

Beet.tv - great blog

Having only been involved in Web video for 6 months (which is a lot longer than most people) I keep finding great new sources of knowledge about the subject.

Beet.tv is a fantastic blog that I have just discovered. The latest posting (as of today) has some interesting insight into Nielsen/NetRating new VideoCensus methodology for measuring activity that combines Web analytics along with an extended ‘panel’ of Nielsen viewers. So, the data is mix of traffic, unique streams and demographics.

As you would expect for a blog about video it has a video interview with Scott Ross, head of marketing at Nielsen Online. Dick Stroud

An easier way of saving Web video

The Wall Street Journal’s Technology Correspondent recently tested the newest version of RealNetworks RealPlayer. The big difference with this video player is that it allows videos to be copied from the Internet onto your PC, as long as they are not protected by a copyright.

This player is released as a beta version and can be downloaded from www.realplayer.com.
Maybe this marks the end of needing to use other bits of software to grab the video stream.
RealNetworks says it will make its player usable on Macs before the end of the year.

The company also says it is working on plans to make these saved videos transferable to portable players, including Apple's iPod. Dick Stroud

Online Video Ads: Just Wait

This is a typical Business Week headline and type of article; loads of quotes, facts and not much critical argument. But, it is worth spending 5 minutes of your life reading.

It really captures the excitement that is building around Web video and although it spends a lot of time talking about advertising it gives a glimpse into the countless other ways that it will change the way we use the Web. Dick Stroud

IAB to Standardise Web Video Metrics

In the US, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is to develop a standard set of metrics and guidlines for measuring web video that should be available in a year or less.

In the absence of any current industry standards, networks which are packaging traditional TV spots with online elements are experimenting with different ways of measuring Internet viewers – by streams, episodes or show starts – to help advertisers understand how much they should be spending to reach online viewers.

According to a June research report from Accustream iMedia Research, the online video market is expected to generate $1.31 billion in ad revenue this year - a 39% increase from 2006. Dick Stroud

The Economist to launch downloadable audio edition

If you are like me and subscribe to The Economist you are likely to have a permanent feeling of guilt that you don’t read as much of its content as you should.

A pile of the past week’s copies sit glaring at me until I pluck up the courage and put them in the refuse (sorry I should have said the recycling box).Now I have even less excuse as the whole of the Economist is available for download. Yep, all 130 Mb of it.What a brilliant idea.

The Economist can now sell an audio as well as a magazine version and enable its customers to engorge themselves on its words of wisdom through another channel.I suspect it is also a bright move when appealing to older people who still want the enjoyment of the Economist’s content but with the resulting eye-strain.

My guess is that the Economist will be the first of many mags to go audio - and very soon video. Dick Stroud

About time.

The ‘Web Video Marketing Council’ has been created and has launched a Web site.

The Council, which is made up of three companies and two consulting firms in the interactive marketing industry, was established as an educational resource for marketers. It was also created in response to the tremendous growth in online video viewing and marketing. “Everyone is addressing it, but no one is specifically focusing on it,” said Jennifer O’Meara, marketing director for WVMC.

Other organizations, such as the Direct Marketing Association, merely included Web video marketing in their repertoire, but O’Meara said they wanted to make it their sole issue.

“We hope to be able to help the industry to define what Web video marketing is, and to help to work directly with marketers to help propel Web video marketing as a marketing strategy”. I think all of us interested in Web video will agree with this sentiment.

This is definitely a site to bookmark. Dick Stroud

A new approach to video transmission

It is thought that video will take-up 98% of Internet bandwidth in the next two years. Maybe the days of free and fast video downloads might be coming to an end?

This new technology from Arootz, an Israeli company, sounds fascinating. Rather than there being zillions of point-to-point video downloads this technology uses the idea of multicasting (sending information simultaneously to many recipients using just one data stream) combined with a large dollop of disk storage.It is something like the TiVo concept.

Read more about it in this Business Week article. I wonder. Dick Stroud

MySpace meets video

MySpace is set to launch MySpace TV. The social network site is going video – big time.

Obviously it trying to emulate YouTube.The dedicated TV service has some very impressive content partners - National Geographic, The New York Times and Reuters. Remember

MySpace owners so you also expect to see stuff from Fox network. This is good article about this subject.If it is to be believed, it seems that Social Networking is taking on a class dimension.

Forget all of this nonsense about the classless society, basically people like being with people like themselves. MySpace is downmarket – FaceBook attracts your better educated types.Maybe this will be reflected in the type of videos that MySpace sources. Dick Stroud