Today's Sydney Morning Herald profiled the Australian online video revenue sharing site Si-Mi:
Victorians David Geddes, 45, Andrew Kelley, 29, and Simone Govic, 30, join an ever-expanding group of entrepreneurs seeking to eat into YouTube's market share by offering to pay budding artists for their work.
The trio's new start-up company, Si-Mi (pronounced "see me"), is essentially an online marketplace in which anyone can upload digital media they have created - such as videos, music, podcasts, images and games - for others to buy.
Uploaders are able to set their own prices, and receive 90 per cent of all revenue generated "after cost", Geddes said.
Read more here. This is an ambitious and interesting business model that distinguishes Si-Mi from other sites, such as Revver, that rely on advertising to generate profits for the content contributors. However, my feeling is that an important part of any viral video hit is that video being embeddable in blogs, webpages, MySpace pages, emails etc. and this model doesn't allow videos to be virally distributed in that way. However, I wish David, Andrew and Simone all the best with Si-Mi. Once again, you can check Si-Mi out here.
