Some Insights into successful User generated Video Business

Here again is an article about successful business with user generated content. It is about video business at YouTube, where some people are earning a reasonable income.

YouTube Riches

Short Films and Video Business

I became aware of some nice and new video sites, which are both great to view videos and for business.

At first there is Openfilm, a site dedicated to short films. It is an open place, where everyone can become a member for the purpose of watching videos, reviews or to connect with others to discuss or to do business. But as Openfilm wants to be a place for films of high quality, the content and especially the films are moderated. Film makers may run own channels and earn revenues by of revenue sharing. At Openfilm there are already a lot of well known internet celebrities represented.

Another site with nice short films is Coffee Shorts. They got nice films and are offering uploads and monetization, too. NomadsLand is dedicated to documentary films. It has a similar approach like Openfilm and enables watching and uploads, discussions and business networking.

Video Contest Site combines Advertising with Awards

TubePrize has created a platform to connect video creators with promoters for video advertising by product placement and the like. The service allows everyone to create a video contest and by this to promote a product. The service relies on YouTube and the winner will be the one who generated most views based on YouTube statistics. The latter might be just an example as contest creators are free in the creation of a contest. The service just started and has two contests listed actually.

Interactive Video Features at Overlay.tv

Overlay.tv has added a couple of new interactive video features since it has been covered by the very first post at this blog about interactive video. Also the website has been completely redesigned. As far as I remember the site has been dark and it has been turned into a bright one now. Furthermore videos produced by members now are in the center of the page instead of being placed at the bottom to showcase the interactivity of the video platform. Whereas promoting own products is still a key issue of the site this gives it a video sharing touch.

Some of the new interactive video features are unique as far as I know. These features are amazing and come along with the embedable proprietary video player. At first there is a chat, which is placed directly within the video screen. One may suppose this might be intrusive, but I have not felt like that. It rather improves the comfort and enables to chat without diverting the video watching experience. Technically it is a true overlay feature like it has been shown in some science fiction movies. A second tab at the video player is for information purposes showcasing the author and possible third party sources.

One of the key intentions of interactive video is to represent additional information or products within a video and to enable to shop for represented products. At Overlay.tv this feature has become enhanced by a new bar at the bottom of the player. This is a comfortable step, too, as one now may find presented products easily after watching a whole video.

Furthermore the player now is full screen enabled. Below there is a nice video with product presentations.

Web based Video Communities with Business Opportunity

Business Thursday: Citizen entrepreneurship is a characteristic of social media. People may participate in business by a couple of means like widgets or even running own social media communities and Video is a feature with an own appeal.

Boostcast is a web based service, that enables everyone to run an own video sharing community even at an own domain. This service is customizable to give a unique look to particular communities. For monetization there are several up to date business opportunities offered like in stream advertising and community owners are able to integrate own advertising partners. To acquire new members to an own community this business opportunity may become passed on to attract new users. By this the up to date video community solution comes complete with an up to date business model.

Actually Boostcast already host nearly 20000 video communities. This figure may show that success will not achieved easily. A great concept might be needed and niches mostly are worth a try. To facilitate creativity Boostcast is offering an award to video community owners.

Taboola Video Recommendation Engine with Advertising and Business Opportunities

Taboola is a video discovery and recommendation solution. The system analyses video content and matches it with the user behavior. To publishers Taboola is offering the video discovery platform called ViDiscovery. It is a customizable video recommendation solution to engage viewers and to increase the retention at a website by a personalized video experience. The business opportunity consists of an integrated video advertising solution called DiscoverAd. Further information about the system and for advertisers is available at the website.

Further video advertising solutions and business opportunities are available by the tags below.

Stickam starts Broadcasting Support for Smartphones

One of the pioneers of live webcam communities has started to offer a live video application for video broadcasting using smartphones. It is Stickam, one of the largest live video networks. The service is available to members and linked at the left of the Live Streams Page. This is an interesting case, as Stickam is much larger than other live video services.

Mashable has an article about the launch with a comparison chart with a couple of live video services. It seems that the estimation and description as a niche market made at the first article about live video is true. Nevertheless I think about this as an emerging trend, that will arise with broader adoption of mobile broadband services, better knowledge and broader dissemination of smartphones. Another newcomer, zaplive.tv, that is not mentioned at the chart already has reasonable viewing stats.

Stickam is coming up with another effort to make their service a success. They have launched pay per live, which is in invite only mode up to now. This service will pay people for live streams of events.

Video Business, Advertising and Sources

As internet video emerges so the services for video advertising and video business are doing. Another breed is related to use internet video at ecommerce. Here are a couple of new services and sources.

Cliplister is dedicated to ecommerce and a video platform for product videos, Retailers may obtain videos and manufactures may distribute videos for internet promotion. Cliplister supplies the platform and does the clearing of copyright issues to assure the legal usage of the videos.

Mixpo offers a video advertising platform for small and medium sized enterprises to collaborate with marketing agencies, advertising networks and other market participants like publishers.

ReelSEO is a source specialized in video marketing and search engine optimization for internet video. Beside this there is a broad range of related information available.

Video Breakouts does research and tracking of internet video and supplies a weekly top 100 list every monday. Furthermore there are lists of top movers and widgets to get the latest trends and videos.

Finally some industry information. At first there is standardization, which is a crucial factor because of the various video formats and players that are on the market. Related to this issue the internet standardization authority W3C has launched a group called Video in the Web. Related to video advertising best practices and information about ad formats are available by the IAB at Ad Standards & Guidelines. Last but not least a research paper about internet video and web tv (PDF) by Roland Berger is available. If video podcasting is an issue, the Podcast Downloading 2008 study by PEW Internet might be interesting.