-
Video on Demand…. how to?
Hello Cow friends:
There are likely more appropriate forums on the COW for this question, but I thought I’d ask my friends in here first….
I’ve always heard that you should never go into business with relatives… but I’m thinking of bucking that advice and joining with my sister on a project.
My sister is extraordinarily gifted in one particular realm. Well, I can’t really think of any reason to keep it a secret, it’s the art of calligraphy (in addition to her deadly accurate impersonation of Holly Hunter in “Raising Arizona,” which is, unfortunately, her natural southern voice). She has not quite risen to the level of Master Penman yet (of which there are only 14 in the world), but she’s up there. When not hand-addressing scads of invitations and such for bridezillas with waaay too much money, she’s in high demand as a teacher, has tens of thousands of social media followers, conducts popular workshops, and has just been invited to join the faculty of the International Calligraphy Conference.
This is one of those worlds that most of us don’t even know exists.
Anyway, we are considering joining forces to create some videos, on-line lessons available (for a fee, naturally) on her website. Some of these already exist elsewhere and are surprisingly apparently quite popular… but from what we’ve seen the content is a bit lacking and by and large the production quality is veeery poor. She’d handle the pen-and-ink side, obviously, with our company doing everything else.
Production, marketing, web… all of that stuff I can handle in my sleep. But distribution, Video on Demand and such, is an area where I’m totally ignorant. I’ve spent the last 25 years producing content almost exclusively for broadcast television, so my knowledge of on-line distribution is pretty much limited to how to put our portfolio videos on YouTube.
Anyone have any advice? Are there vendors that will turn-key handle the VOD portion of one’s website? Any recommendations? I would assume that such a company also handles customers/sign-ups/billing and all that jazz… but it’s just an assumption. Maybe they don’t do that at all.
I hate being ignorant, but am definitely willing to admit when I am.
Any advice or pointers to the direction I need to go would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
15 Replies
-
Amazon is one such, I believe.
-
Are you talking about a paid portal to view the videos, ala Lynda? Monetizing the video?
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Well we are just in the beginnings of figuring out what all it needs to be… but…
We are basically talking about embedded videos on her own website that viewers have to pay to watch. Either such that a viewer pays for a specific video, and then has access to view it for a set period of time (say, 30 or 60 days). Or… in another potential scenario maybe they become a “member” of the site and have access to all available videos… again, for a specific membership duration.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
OK, I will ask around. My wife is a master level weaver and knitter and I know that she belongs to a lot of sites like your sister is proposing. Basically how-tos but what brings them in is a sense of community, kindred hearts.
I can’t imagine people wanting to pay per video, most business models I’ve seen is you submit your credit card for a monthly/annual membership and have total access to the videos. Your sister must prepare herself that a certain percentage of scum bags will rip the video, perhaps pass it around to friends. In sum, I’ll ask my wife and then forward you the links.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Thanks, Ned.
I’ve been trying to educate myself about it. Some is pretty straightforward, some is a little overwhelming.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
I described to my wife what your sister wants to do in terms of membership fee and watching videos, and she said for you to check out these two, perhaps contact them:
creativebug.com
The latter has great, hip videos. I sometimes watch them just to absorb the style. I have a good friend who did my last website but now specializes in
e-commerce in case you’d like to talk with him about setting up the credit card portion.Lastly, I think calligraphy, knowing how damn slow it goes, would be the perfect candidate for aiming straight down time lapse.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
www,bizvideo.com -
Thanks Ned, I’ll give those a lot.
I’ve looked at a dozen or so VOD platform providers today, I don’t think I’ve seen either of those yet, though.
Thanks!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
-
Should be taken care of.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hi Terry,
I hope you’re in Scotland now enjoying the curved slider.
I had a meeting with my buddy who formerly was my web guy, but has moved onto greener pastures specializing in e-commerce for web sites. I asked him if he would consult hourly with you and your sister and he doesn’t do such “little” engagements anymore but from what I described that your sister wants, here’s the take-away:
First, he doesn’t know of any turn key services that provide that but he said you’re needing a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which provides a video vault so only subscribers paying a recurring fee have access through their log in, meaning a database has to be set up. He does this for large companies so he figures there’s so little revenue in calligraphy it would be too expensive.
His suggestion is to produce many short teaser videos for free viewing on YouTube which will then drive curious viewers to your sister’s site where she can sell hard copy DVDs. My wife, against my wishes, buys a lot of these types of tutorial DVDs of the experts in her hobbies. I figure the reason they are using DVD instead of web viewing is that they can control the situation? Plus the cost of setting up a mom & pop CDN. Once on the web anyone with skills can download it, get around the paid access control.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up