online video *isn't* dead

Kent, from Ask a Ninja, wrote an interesting post about a conversation he had with a friend, the friend was making the case that "online video is dead". At least to the extent that no one will ever be able to do what he and Doug did with their show (Ask a Ninja pulls in about $100,000 a month in revenue).

Here are some pieces from the post, the entire post is here...

But there does need to be an adjustment of expectations. This isn’t Silicon Valley. Online video will never make a single show a billion dollars, or even $100 million. If you’re lucky it make enough to pay back your investors and make you a modest middle class income while getting you known as a creator.

All of the companies out there offering to put money up for production are essentially offering horrible deals. If someone is paying you $10k/episode or less (including your creative fees), and they are taking ownership of any part of the copyright or underlying IP, that is a horrible deal.

When we created our business plan in 2005 for our online video venture, we sold 1% stakes in the company for $12,500. We hoped to sell 10% of the company, but we ended up about half of that.

We need more people doing what we did. Raise a small amount of capital, create a show that you’ll be able to build an audience for over a long time frame, raise enough money to live on during this (or have a day job), then use the leverage you’ve acquired to make better deals.

When I first read just the post, I didn't see the friend's point. Monetizing online video is simply about views & traffic - it's like saying that online news is dead. People are watching *more* online content, and reading *more* news online. TV is dying, and print is dying. For better or worse.

But then I went through and read some of the great comments, Steve Woolf, from Epic FU, had this to say:

In my opinion the clock is ticking on one thing with great certainty: the-independent-content-creator with-goals-to-reach-a-broad-audience. That gal/guy is endangered and defensive.

Before we all turn around, an entirely new hierarchy of online video content businesses will emerge in an entirely old model of doing business: the studio. With their collective arrivals the opportunity to make your impact as an individual will be the SAME as it is in movies and tv now. You will have your occasional indie breakout star, but they will be few and far between. And next to none of them will own what they create.

Why, you ask? Because of promotion. It’s one thing to make a great show, but as Rick points out above, without consistent promotion it’s very difficult to maintain viewership levels with new shows these days. And without viewership levels you have only your brilliant ideas, not anything tangible. And brilliant ideas are bought and sold every day in mainstream media. The same will happen online.

And I agree that what Steve describes *is* on it's way - But I wonder sometimes how successful they’ll be - short of telecom companies changing the way the web works, we’ll always have one advantage: we will never *have* to go through them to put our stuff out there.

And also, no matter how hard they try, they’ll never have the same level of interaction and community that indie produced shows have (ie; a 1,000 true fans). They’ll come in with their top-down mindset, they'll blast the hell out of MySpace and Ain't It Cool News, and sure; they’ll make a lot of money. But shows like the ones people are making now, I think, will always have a place online, and always have the opportunity to pull in a reasonable income without selling out.

Our main fear, as content creators, shouldn't be that big media wants to play in the sandbox too, but that they will change the rules of the net to tip the scales in their favor.