Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDoc
Trust me... this has already been done, and failed.
My perspective is from a person that has done it. The gateway could be free, it's cost means nothing. However, no 3rd party could bill this - it would have be done on unique merchant accounts, per client, masked over the org site to not violate visa rules.
Taking content, in various formats, sizes, some with dvd's, some with only wmv's, all types of stuff, correcting them, putting them to your system, requiring you to have a team of staff, servers, admins, techs, coders, etc to support such a system - exactly like vod requires.
What your talking about is a modified VoD company, which is an extremely complex business model.
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We seem to be on two separate pages here. First, as for the billing. As mentioned previously, CCBill or similar could handle the billing exactly how they do now. It's exactly the same thing as billing for any other content you license to sell just with different price points.
As for your second point, hardly any of that stuff is required. If the gateway is hosting the content it would be uploaded as is. If it's so horrible that it shouldn't be sold then it would be rejected. I see no reason that the content couldn't remain hosted on the content owners end anyhow. It would just be another billing method similar to hooking up mobile billing on your existing site.
Admins, techs, coders, etc. I'm sorry but there is just not that much involved with anything on the internet anymore. A group of two or three people could easily manage the entire operation and you aren't going to convince me otherwise. I know exactly what things used to cost but they don't cost that anymore. There are websites out there (cough reddit) hosting up hundreds of millions of pageviews per month with a tiny staff and even tinier operating budget. Shit man, there are Tube sites around that were originally founded by one damn person. You trying to tell me a content owner can't upload their own video like idiot surfers do on YouTube?
Also, the most important point I want to make is this. You keep comparing this to a VOD or clip store but one thing your examples miss is the correct price point. $5 to $10 to watch a single video is fucking retarded and those sites should fail hard.
I don't know how so many in this industry can look at what is going on around them and somehow fail to take ANY of it in. RedBox is booming. NetFlix is booming. Hulu takes the combined efforts and millions of dollars of content that the big networks create and offers access to it all either for free or $10 per month.
If you provide VALUE at a reasonable monthly charge people will pay. A reasonable monthly charge isn't $30 per month for content from one jackass with a paysite that is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what's available.
If you provide VALUE at a real micro price point people will pay. A real micro price point isn't $8.99 or even $4.99 for a porn video. A micro price point is one where when someone links you to a 'OMG you have to see this!' video and you see the price you don't even blink before pulling out your credit card.
I have not bought porn in 7 years, even I would pay $1 to watch a video I was interested in.
I have not promoted a standard porn affiliate program in 3 years. Even I would send traffic to a site offering thousands of videos for $1 to $2 each.