> But here is the problem: most indie developers will either be broke, or they will get funding, and if they have funding, they may not need this site.
You're right. Most indie filmmakers are extremely strapped for cash. So I was hoping to charge very little (in fact beat out existing services in terms of price), and depend on volume. However one indie filmmaker I know is cash-strapped, but had funding. They still had to find a means for distribution after production, which is where a lot of the money goes to.
I'm banking on being open to anyone, and any video content, and having an ultra-low if not completely zero barrier to entry.
Then you're a video storage service, like YouTube. Video storage services don't care about content, knowing that the more they store the more people will use their service for various long-tail reasons.
You can be video storage, or you can be an internet indie distributor. But I don't think you can be both.
I can imagine that cooking might be a niche that would work. My mom watches a lot of cooking shows. I could imagine her following certain cooks that had videos to sell. But before I would go after the cooking segment, I would find a cook with these attributes:
has some videos to sell
is charming
is ambitious
believes in the idea of the site
If I could not find a cook with those 4 attributes, then I would not go into the cooking niche. I'd look at some other niche instead (skiing? tennis? fishing? hunting?).
I do regard this whole idea as more a marketing play than a technology play. Nowadays, web technologies are so mature, the tech side of this would be relatively trivial, compared to the marketing side of things.
I am surprised that chrischen is "only looking for technical founders". I really think the tech will be (relatively) easy. The marketing will be hard, especially in 2010.
yoga
cooking
travel
political protests
car races
horse races
fixing cars (how to)
fixing up your house (how to)
There is a huge range of niches. To try to do a generic service in 2010, I think you'd $10 million to spend on marketing. But if you take a niche approach, and you do a good job with the code and interface, then you can rely on word-of-mouth among enthusiasts to spread the word.
If I was doing this again, I'd actually pursue something of a franchise model. The core team should mostly focus on the technical stuff: code, interface, servers. The marketing team should consist of 1 or 2 people from the niche that is being targeted.
I said above that iHanuman had poor marketing. Really, its only marketing came from Tilak Pyle. It was crucial that he was part of our team. And it helped, very much, that he was also a yoga teacher with a video to sell:
http://www.ihanuman.com/albums.php?id=48
Since he is basically non-technical, he made a great beta-tester, telling us what would be non-intuitive to a non-technical audience. And since he himself was selling a video, he wanted to see the site succeed, so he went out and tried to spread the word. And because he was a yoga teacher, he brought instant credibility to the site.
The site would have gone nowhere without him. What little success it had was largely due to the marketing he did (though note that my info about the site ended in early 2008).
So, I would take a niche approach. And I would look for the equivalent of Tilak Pyle in each niche that I decided to go after.
If a cook wanted to sell his videos online, what advantages would a cooking themed video selling site have that a generic video selling site not provide?
Why "target" any specific niche. The way I see it, you're selling videos in the end and you'll want to market them, but in the end any targeting is probably going to sum up to just changing the theme of the site.
That being said my main focus right now is a niche: independent films and web series. Although theoretically any video content can be sold.
As for people trying to find niche content, a themed website would certainly help, but that's assuming I'm trying to build a marketplace. And even then, categorizing videos should suffice. At this point I'm simply building the platform: the set of tools to enable people to sell, and the set of tools customized for indie films/web series. The way I see it, people who would discover the content sold on this platform will do it through traditional new web means. Word of mouth, facebook, twitter, Youtube. That's why I want to make it easy for these films to cross upload and maintain their social presence, so they can use the instantaneous communication speed of the internet to help word of mouth spread their films.
I also think focusing on any of the niches you suggested would just narrow the potential customer base (considering content producers as customers), even though it may make stuff easier to find for end users.
As for why I'm looking for a technical founder, just because someone's technical doesn't mean he/she's incapable of other things. But more importantly, having a technical founder frees me from those duties, and allows me to focus more on implementation.
Additionally I know some indie filmmakers. I've worked on an indie film as a production assistant, and I've invested in an indie film. I've also wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 10ish. I didn't simply choose something to start a business with. Creating a service for indie films/web series was the most natural course of least resistance for me.
"If a cook wanted to sell his videos online, what advantages would a cooking themed video selling site have that a generic video selling site not provide?"
This question only makes sense if you reject my thesis that this project will mostly be about marketing (not technology). If you accept that this project is going to be mostly about marketing, then the question answers itself - you take a niche approach because it makes the marketing easier.
The statement "makes the marketing easier" rests on 2 assumptions:
1.) you will have on your team someone from the niche that you are targeting
2.) you are willing to share revenue so as to avoid the expense of marketing
Again, if you have $10 million to spend on marketing, you could take a brute-force approach and try to do a generic site and just market the hell out of it. But if your marketing budget is $0, then lining up partners who are in the niche that you are targeting is a wise move.
Above (in another comment) I listed 4 attributes I'd look for in the partner who is in the niche that I'm going after. The important thing is that they have some videos to sell, and the ambition to want to go out and make the site a monster hit. That way you can leave a lot of the marketing work to them. Again, my reference here is what Tilak Pyle was able to do for iHanuman. His video was the best selling thing on iHanuman, and its sales were an important part of what made that site seem legitimate to the other yoga teachers who eventually joined the site.
You write:
"just changing the theme of the site."
I think that is an astonishing phrase. You are seriously discounting the importance of marketing. You are seriously discounting branding and the value of good graphic design.
You wrote:
"my main focus right now is a niche: independent films"
If I were to try this again, I'd go after consumer niches, not producer niches. I mean, the niche should be defined by the consumer group, not the producer group. The niches I'm thinking of are the consumer niches: cooking, hunting, racing, gambling, yoga, health, stock market trading, etc.
You wrote:
"but that's assuming I'm trying to build a marketplace"
Sorry, I must have misunderstood you. What are you building then? I can not imagine how you would bring distribution to indie film makers without building a marketplace. If you are not selling then what are you doing for them?
You wrote:
"And even then, categorizing videos should suffice."
You may have better luck than what I've seen in the past. I certainly wish you luck. I can tell you, with great certainty, that the enthusiasm that the yoga teachers showed for iHanuman would not have been there had we simply had a generic sell-videos site that just happened to have a "yoga" category. The marketing strategy that worked for iHanuman was "We belong to your community. We are one of you." After all, doesn't Amazon have a digital video sales channel at this point? The yoga teachers could just use that if they wanted some soulless, generic service.
You wrote:
"I also think focusing on any of the niches you suggested would just narrow the potential customer base (considering content producers as customers), even though it may make stuff easier to find for end users."
It seems to me that this is the essence of your business plan, and it is the crux of where you and I see things differently. What you describe is exactly what I think will fail. However, I certainly wish you luck. I've known a lot of good folks who tried to launch similar services and I know it is a tough market to crack. If you can make this work, then you'll have succeeded at a terrific challenge. I do not think it will work, but I wish you well.
Amazon's CreateSpace has a 20-minute length minimum. So unless the Yoga videos are each longer than 20 minutes, this would be a barrier. On top of that I'm pretty sure Amazon takes a 50% cut, and their videos can't be downloaded to a mac because of DRM restrictions.
This is in fact an example of an area I'm trying to improve. You'll get great distribution platforms, but they're bottlenecked by a lackluster post-sale customer experience. So while the mechanism is there for someone to sell a video on a generic site, the mechanism is clogged up with gunk.
So I believe there was a misunderstanding. I'm not creating a marketplace. Not yet at least. So marketing is not my concern. I'm only trying to provide the tools to sell online, make marketing online easier, and a platform that will encourage people to purchase without being tied down to proprietary DRM. I also want to tailor this tool specifically to independent filmmakers. A publisher will create a film, but after they finish it, they're going to want to find a way to get it seen and probably make a return on it. This is where my service steps in. I will provide them an alternative to their current options, and I will provide the alternative via the internet. Already I have several advantages over traditional physical distribution: instant gratification, less overhead from packaging and using a distributor, easier to market because word of mouth spreads at electron speed. And if after all that work creating something and they can't find a traditional distributor, they still have to get it out there somehow. I want to catch those potential customers.
You wrote:
"I'm not trying to sell films for these producers."
but up above you wrote:
"This includes a digital distribution platform Which let's end users keep their purchases in the cloud and let's producers sell their work online as downloads."
You will be in the business of selling videos, regardless of whether you are doing the selling directly, or whether your customers are doing the selling - which means you are indirectly helping them sell. Either way, you are in the business of selling videos.
You wrote:
"I'm only trying to provide the tools to sell online".
That is what I understood your goal to be. That was our goal at iHanuman - we were giving the yoga teachers the tools to sell their videos online. And, of course, we had plans to roll that software out to other markets, and give a lot of other people the tools the sell their videos online.
2 years ago we were using nearly identical marketing text to woo a cook to consider doing a cooking-oriented web site, using our software. Really, this is almost verbatim what we said then:
"A publisher will create a film, but after they finish it, they're going to want to find a way to get it seen and probably make a return on it. This is where my service steps in. I will provide them an alternative to their current options, and I will provide the alternative via the internet. Already I have several advantages over traditional physical distribution: instant gratification, less overhead from packaging and using a distributor, easier to market because word of mouth spreads at electron speed. And if after all that work creating something and they can't find a traditional distributor, they still have to get it out there somehow. I want to catch those potential customers."
We used all of those lines: instant gratification, speed-of-light distribution, world-wide reach. We told them that we were the green alternative to creating DVDs and mailing them out, since we used less resources. Less packaging. Consider some of the text used on the Join page (which hasn't been updated since launch):
http://www.ihanuman.com/join.php
If your service is radically different from that (other than the focus on yoga) then you should explain yourself more clearly.
I think I understood the gist of what you were saying. And, as I said before, it is a very tough market.
Indie filmmakers usually have their own websites. They probably don't need a community to sell their films to. Even if they do, they can target those communities themselves.
Hey thanks lkrubner, I think I just got my answer to the "What are you making?" question.
It's an interesting idea. I wish you luck.
"So marketing is not my concern."
That is an astounding thing to say. How can you possibly launch a new business and not be concerned with marketing?
Obviously marketing the site itself is going to be done. I'm targeting it towards indie filmmakers. I was planning to use my connections in the indie industry to spread a word of mouth campaign.
The gap between free and 1 cent is long and wide, and this will serve as a natural filter blocking youtube style video content.
So I guess I shouldn't have said zero barrier to entry.
I targeted Linux (or Linux like) users: Ubuntu, Fedora, Android. I leveraged existing working and well tested infrastructure used in Linux. It is simple and working well (for Linux users), but I have no money to push it forward any more...
Also, attacking this idea from another angle, it should be noted that small-scale content producers are suffering badly in the current environment, and sites pitched to them are pursuing a market where there is, potentially, very little money.
When I was at Bluewallllc.com we started working on iHanuman.com, which sells yoga videos. Although yoga videos represent a very small niche, the goal was to eventually reuse the technology to build other niche focused sites - an infinite range of them.
The ihanuman store offers some basic services to yoga teachers who have videos to sell:
http://www.ihanuman.com/store.php
We worked on iHanuman for roughly 5 months, from April of 2007 to August of 2007. After it launched, the site was written up in Yoga Life magazine. It attracted some traffic and developed a small but steady stream of sales. I stopped working with Bluewall in late 2007. I think they may have had one week where sales got up over $1,000. The site was never well publicized or marketed.
I think the project cost roughly $70,000, but it would be tough to say for sure, since the project was one of many projects that Bluewall was working on, and it would tough to say which expenses belonged to Bluewall and which expenses belonged to iHanuman. At its peak we had 5 people working on the site:
a designer
a PHP programmer (me)
a Flash programmer
an HTML/CSS specialist
a project manager
The site runs on a dedicated server from RackSpace.
The ultimate goal was to build a backend that would allow any yoga teacher to upload their videos and sell them. I think the revenue split, at that time, was 50/50. We got the frontend working nicely, though we never finished the backend.
There was some really cool technology on that project. The Flash programmer was Starrie Williamson and she did an impressive job, utilizing a lot of what was then cutting edge ActionScript 3 techniques. The Flash player could function as a widget on other websites, reading RSS feeds off of the iHanuman site (the RSS feeds were full of data from our database). In other words, it could be embedded, a lot like the YouTube player. Last I heard (early 2008), they were working on adding the ability to sell videos through the player. Very cool stuff. Anyway, if you ever need a really good Flash programmer, Starrie can be reached here:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?goback=.con&viewProfile=...
Some of the yoga teachers sell lectures as MP3s, and we knew we wanted to also use the same software for online music stores, so the Flash player also plays MP3s, and the PHP code handles the sale of both MP3s, FLAC files, and videos.
We also ported the software to the Monkeyclaus.org music store (also owned by Bluewall), and we added in the ability to import hundreds of MP3s at a time, using their embedded meta tags to fill out the info in the database. Out of all the code that I wrote for this software, almost a full year of my life (if you include the time spent on the monkeyclaus music store), this import code is the code that I am most proud of.
The management problems on that project were epic. The owner/designer and the project manager, who were boyfriend/girlfriend, had some strong disagreements with each other about what direction to go, and how much funding was appropriate.
There was, at one point, talk of pursuing a white label strategy, where Bluewall might sell the software to others. However, the code, as I left it, would not sustain a white label strategy. I wrote this code at breakneck speed. There is considerable technical debt. I was told that as soon as the site launched there would be time to clean up the code, but in fact, as soon as the site launched all development on the project ended. Also, Bluewall was very sloppy in its legal affairs - they never sought a copyright agreement with Starrie regarding her Flash player, so she still owns the copyright on it (or at least she did the last time I talked to her, which would have been the spring or summer of 2008).
The PHP code was written using a framework I developed during the period 2003-2007. I have since abandoned that framework and now I use Symfony for all PHP work. If I were going to do a project like that again, I'd probably build it in Symfony (or, if the JVM and Tomcat are acceptable to the project, Groovy/Grails).
Now, this particular project went nowhere, largely due to misjudgements on the part of those in charge. However, my point is that a lot of entrepreneurs have been looking at this space for several years now. There has been a lot of investment. The competition is intense. It might be wise to assume that there is no real profit to be made in this space, since no clear winner has emerged yet. Or you should assume that creating a winner for this space is going to be very, very hard.
I do believe that targeting niches is the correct way to move forward in this field. I do think that targeting indie filmmakers is an interesting and exciting niche. I have a friend who recently finished a documentary about the culture of the workers who worked at a somewhat notorious parking lot, in Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm aware that she is looking for distribution channels. But here is the problem: most indie developers will either be broke, or they will get funding, and if they have funding, they may not need this site.
So I would be wary.
All the same, if someone can go into this field and create a hit company, then they have my admiration.