HNer

Hollywood, megavideo and lessons I learned about charging for content online!

I have a popular documentary site which has been around for many years, streaming full length docs for small beer, it pays the hosting costs basically. But what I learned over the years that in order to survive (i.e pay the bills as hosting / streaming content is relatively expensive) is that you have to adopt the Megavideo model, i.e charge for content only after people are addicted to it. They used to force payment after 60 free minutes. I struggled to make any cash with a paywall system and only when I switched to pay in video system did it start making money. Clearly the megavideo model worked as they had 6 million in assets ceased apparently (poor sods).

I built the concept out into a standalone system in Flash and its at karsa.co.uk but for these days it would need to work in html not flash.

I had a nice little company with 30 or so staff, the first employee was a major asset but made a huge mistake when left in charge, ordered 300k of stock in one day from suppliers, then went on holiday and was off sick for some time afterward. The bills wipped out the pre Christmas profits we made and very nearly bankrupted the company. It was a hard slog for a year to get back into the blank, during which time I put him out of the office in final checking and testing. However, after about 8 months of this he landed the bombshell, he was leaving. Despite all pleas for him to stay, (despite his honest blunder he was one of those people you need, would do over and above the call of duty), alas he left. When I replaced him and modernized the management it was less than 16 months later he arrived in my office after I had called him in tears ( I don't cry) explaining the bookkeeper and general manager had scammed me out of over 100k... later I explained why he was 'demoted' I was astonished to realize he was oblivious to the problem he had created, how on earth had I managed to miss that vital information while begging he stay with the company? Being too involved and too busy, along with not trying to have a blame culture is what proceeded those events. My utter shock though at his ignorance to the real problem, and in his boots I guess I would have left too.

why not use online video distribution like http://karsa.co.uk

what do you mean manual entry? does someone have to manaually type in numbers?

Also do you have to already have an existing merchant account or can you provide merchant gateways too?

Are you PCI compliant? If not I can help.

I work in both setting up merchant accounts and offer PCI compliance services. Penetratation testing and something called the SAQ WIZARD which makes the SAQ understandable.

The pain involved is high here are some quick tips:

1) most new startups might as well forget about applying. Unless you have prior trading history which you can prove your chargebacks are < 1% then you will most likely get a NO.

2) The business volume should be at least 5K + per month to make if worth your while (and theirs) and figures below this will probably not be worth their while = a NO.

3) Trying to get a good rate is only going to be possible if your a mum a pop store selling shoes etc., anything online will generally be high risk and have fees north of 3.5 %

4) if your transaction value is high > 500$ + then you will be high risk.

5) anything travel = high risk

6) video, gambling, adult, coupons, gift vouchers, warranties, etc are all a general NO.

7) dating = very high charge backs, block every Proxy IP and non UK non USA. Or all markets you are not targeting.

8) PCI compliance is easy if you use the gateways checkout page, However, if you want to incorporate payments direct into your own site, thus using the API (needed for recurring billing or for repeat clients where you don't want to ask for card number again and again) then PCI compliance is a big task, making sure your servers can pass about 3k5 tests and about 400 questions and standards adopted as part of the SAQ (self assessment questionnaire) + you will need to make sure your app is secure from sql injection etc. etc.

So can html5 continually ping a variable (say a time point) while a video is playing, including other variables back to a third party server (if the video content was embeded via a jsonp wisget etc.) ??

The interesting takeaway I took from this which I loved was his gorilla marketing strategy.

Basically it goes like this, attack your competitors, wind them up in the press as a form of advertising. This creates enormous attention for nothing (people actually read editorial and skip the ads) and often you need an adversary to make something newsworthy.

Be ethical but let the industry know there is battle on and you're fighting for your life, but fight on safe ground!

This is the method I personally used with some success in my former business which was also an electronic hardware, design and manufacturing company. With very little funds for marketing I had to be creative, we made impressive DPS adverts and coupled these with side stories which were often gossip over industry turf wars or other antics I would get up too.

not really as someone who's been in the ring, the same points resonated with me. The experience you are left with is that which will shape your world view and future actions.

Id love to be able to hack a solution to injustices like these.

err, she was also reported to have thrown a party for him after the event...

yes its crazy, he is charged with starting to have sex with a condom and apparently she claims when they finished there was no condom. thats it folks.

Its a major SEO tactic, if you don't get involved someone else will, and as long as you have an interesting perspective on the case and add value to the discussion, you are contributing rather than doing anything wrong.

Take this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1900735 this is something I have just submitted but I am adding value in the article, it is relevant to HN visitors and the case scenario has historical video footage to detail a current event company goes into administration (Video shows the reasons why the company went into administration) which was made 1 year ago and well before these events.

oh :( thought was a nice addition.

citi link were the best when I used them, we sent out over 1 million GBP of stock per year. zero problems, all other companies were loosing stuff all the time.

remote OK?

i moved away from paypal, went pci compliant, got a merchant account, was a pain stetting up but feel so much better on the other side.

This is correct, I offer PCI complaince tools and advice, for recurring billing, you will need to have pci scanning on your servers, if your hosted and not doing sys admin yourselves or if you dont have sys admin skills it's going to cost you dearly. Basic advice, use a linode, get a sys admin who knows about pci compliance, set up pci compliant approved server, check with scanning software, we offer it for 200 GBP which includes the SAQ wizard which will save you days. pcicompliance.org.uk, nightmare process. Best advice, just starting, use Paypal...

I want to patent money too.