

Ask HN: Naïve startup idea? - haks

Several months ago I had the thought of building a video/screencast monetization platform where customers could have their own private label 'site' where they could easily upload videos or screencasts and sell either subscriptions or charge one-time fees for their products, sort of like a shopify for video content.  Recently, I have read posts here and there about making money selling screencasts and there's tekpub.com and railscasts.com, etc., and it's made me reconsider the idea.<p>I have found a couple similar offerings but they're not implemented as smoothly or user-friendly as I would like.<p>So what do you think?  Is there a big enough market of content producers that could make this a viable idea?
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maxdemarzi
The challenge content producers face is not so much on the technical side, but
rather on finding an audience.

I'm sure you've seen this: <http://www.learnivore.com>

Something like that where I could upload my videos and have a (tag based or
provider based) e-mail go out to an audience would be the real selling point.

With content publisher upgrades available for "featured video", or featured
video within a tag. Something like that.

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Rust
Considering the small number of players in this market (zoomwebvideo.com,
wistia.com, jitrinc.com, tikilive.org, veevu.com, etc.), you might actually
find a market for this service. The competition is quite varied in focus
(example: JITR likes subject matter experts, Wistia likes enterprises), so
finding a niche in there and doing it great is, IMHO, worth doing.

