14 Options for Sharing Premium Video

Video is one of the best ways to reach a market online. In fact, 100 million Internet users are tuning into videos each month, which gives you the opportunity to connect with tons of potential business.

While YouTube is still the default for many small businesses wanting to share free videos, we’re starting to see more premium video content distribution channels. These are ideal for webinars, detailed how-to videos, or tutorial content you want people to pay to access.

Below, we’ve identified 14 options for sharing premium video online that are worth a gander.

YouTube Paid Channels

YouTube wised up in offering a paid version of its video sharing tool. With Paid Channels, users pay a monthly or yearly subscription to get access to your premium content. Adoption is still relatively low (there are just 125 paid channels now), but that’s a great opportunity for you to corner the market with your valuable video content before the competition does.

Viddler Subscriptions

Viddler, which also offers free video content, makes monetizing videos a breeze. There are three ways to make money from your videos: subscriptions, advertising, and reselling. With a subscription, you can create a branded store that looks professional and invites people to give you money to access your great content.

If your Viddler videos already get high traffic, you can optimize that by working with advertising networks and turning views into cash. Or you can resell Viddler services to your clients, if they use online video.

Vimeo on Demand

Here’s a different model: Vimeo has an on demand feature that lets people pay for the programming they want, starting at $.99. You keep 90% of the revenues.

Vimeo claims to offer easy-to-use tools, which will attract those (like me) who are daunted at the prospect of taking, uploading, and editing videos constantly.

Videolla

This up-and-comer claims to be the “world’s first open marketplace for video.” While it’s still in Beta (and still hasn’t generated much buzz online), it could be worthwhile to explore as a potential revenue channel. You set the price for your videos, and they’re distributed to Videolla’s social network.

Viewers have the option to view your video free with ads, or pay to have ad-free streaming.

Easy Webinar

But what if it’s not video you want to monetize? Webinars too, are turning into easily-monetized content, thanks to startups like Easy Webinar and others. With this tool, you can charge for webinars (both streaming in real time and those prerecorded), and get access to analytics that help you understand your audience.

There’s also a cool Social Share Incentive feature that gives viewers a free gift if they share your webinar on social media.

Youreeeka

While Youreeeka is similar in its revenue model (it offers an 80/20 split on the profits), where it does stand out for video monetization is its embeddable Flash player. You don’t have to wait for people to find the content on the Youreeeka site. You can also post your for-a-fee video on your site, blog, landing page, or social media profile.

If you want to drive traffic and profit from multiple angles, this is the way to go.

Gumroad

What makes Gumroad different is its pricing model. It charges just 5% of your video’s price, plus $.25. So if you sell your video for $10, you’d pay just $.75 per sale. When you count on every penny from your revenue, this can make a huge difference. Payments are made every 2 weeks, either to your bank account or Paypal.

This makes for a safe and easy way to venture into monetizing videos.

Sellfy

If you’ve also got ebooks, music, software, or any other digital properties you want to sell, Sellfy makes it easy to sell it all in a single marketplace. You can promote it to your own network, or work with affiliates to spread the word about your videos (and other products) far and wide. Then you can look at your analytics dashboard, see which products are really moving, and put more push behind them.

Pulley

Here’s another channel that helps you sell  digital art, music, videos, photography, fonts, eBooks, software, and other downloadable products in one place. The dashboard is pretty user-friendly, and makes it easy to see which products you’re selling, as well as how well each is doing. You can also customize the emails that you send your customers, providing opportunity to connect for possible additional sales down the road.

Fetch App

With so many startups in this space, you probably don’t want to start on a completely new site to sell your video if it doesn’t have the audience yet. But Fetch App has been around since 2007, and has sold products for people like  Robbie Williams, Beck, Ryan Adams, and David Blaine.

If this gives you confidence, go for it. You can create a slick branded page to sell virtually any type of digital product.

Vidstore

If you’re not sure how to boost interest in your premium videos, Vidstore can help. It offers ample marketing and promotion tools, like SEO, promotion codes, video trailers, affiliate programs, and search engine marketing to drive more traffic — and therefore customers — to your video page.

Learning Cart

More than just a content delivery system, Learning Cart prides itself on offering users more ways to engage with customers, including the ability to create content pages, blogs, offer multiple pricing options, bulk discounts, coupons, and course bundles.

So if you’ve got a series of courses or videos and want to capture your customers and get them to buy more, this is a great tool to do so.

VHX.tv

While it seems to cater more to indie films, VHX is interesting because it supports crowdfunding campaigns on sites like Kickstarter. Videos tend to attract more investors on crowdfunding, and VHX provides users the ability to build appealing branded sites that incorporate their crowdfunding details.

Cleeng

Cleeng isn’t so much a place to upload your video as it is a platform to help you monetize pay-per-view videos. In fact, you can stream via YouTube, Livestream, Ustream, and other channels, and use Cleeng to get people to preregister for your live event. After the event, they’ll even help you sell rentals, bundles, and subscriptions to further monetize.

With so many video monetization tools on the horizon, it’s exciting to think of all the ways we can make money with our content, isn’t it?

Video Photo via Shutterstock

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