First, the videos I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢m putting up are around 200MB a piece. The bandwidth distributors I know are charging $.14 or more PER GIGABYTE to distribute those videos. So, that comes to $28, or more for 1,000 downloads (if my math is right).
Wait a second here. We?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢re going to collect $10 in advertising to pay $28 in bandwidth? Who said video is a great business? We?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢re losing money, but I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢m sure we?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ll make it up in quantity. Heheh.
Here’s the thing, I think it’s a similar issue with Podcasting as well. It’s why services such as YouTube are so popular, even with people doing their own video blogs. Revver is the company to watch though: did you know that even ZeFrank’s The Show is on Revver? Yep, despite the inherent risks anyone takes in not hosting their own content (copyright and control are the biggies), most people are using “free” services to host video because the economics don’t yet work properly in hosting it yourself. It should also be noted that it’s also not costing the big free hosting firms the sort of money Scoble is talking about either in terms of bandwidth costs…strength in numbers I guess.
Tags: Robert Scoble, Revver, Zefrank, YouTube
