A Co-operative Video Website?

I have been mulling an idea for a while now.

Video websites like YouTube have been very successful financially by selling advertizing. Meanwhile, most of the people who post their videos on the sites get little or no money for their contribution.

I thought about creating a website for my own videos, where I would get all the money from advertizing. Doing this would be a challenge with my level of internet programming skills.

However, I think the biggest problem would be finding an audience. People go to sites like YouTube looking for videos to watch. They are not likely to go wandering the internet in search of my films. It makes a lot of sense to be on a video website with lots of other videos. People drawn to other videos may very well find yours as well.

I think one way to get around that is to create a co-operative video website.

The website itself would just provide a common front end, links to the videos and a search function. Members would provide their own video, while the co-operative would provide them with templates and advice on setting up their own sites. Members would pay to be on the website, or could volunteer to help run the site instead.

With a co-operative, no one member would need to have all the skills to set up and run the site. There are many details to work out, but I think this could work.