Making Money with Online Video Content

Online video is a fast growing industry. In fact, according to this eMarketer article, it is one of the top effective emerging media according to US Advertising Executives. So, it’s not surprising that a lot of people would like to find ways to cash-in on this.

When I started my own “online video channel” – FreshWave.TV – two years ago, there weren’t very many free video hosting sites around just yet. In fact, there weren’t many video hosting sites at all. I had to host the videos of FreshWave.TV on my server and hand-code video files to begin with before I found a place who offered free hosting and Flash encoding for me. But, even then, the project created enough interest that someone was even willing to pay for a short ad in the young programme, as long as I made a video that catered to this person’s business (any content that had something to do with work-at-home mothers). I didn’t go ahead with that sponsored video content request due to resource limitations at that time.

And, besides, my friend and I didn’t start FreshWave.TV for fame or fortune. We were just two women interested in making videos as a creative outlet. And, because I was in to blogging big time, I thought an online video blog is one good way to explore this new media.

Now, not only are there several web video resources, some of them even offer ways to compensate video content producers. Inside Online Video recently pointed me to a report at Light Reading (Online Video: Show Us the Money) that explores this money making avenue.

Even before I read the report, I have already been thinking about online videos as a way to make money on the web. So, of course, even if FreshWave.TV didn’t start off as a money-making venture, I thought I’d use it as some kind of an experiment / case study anyway – maybe as a part of the $100 Challenge. I’ll let you know how it goes.