Those subscribers translate to approximately $192 million in subscription revenues, which is only a partial amount of gross revenues given that the site boasts a robust advertising revenue stream. After expenses, the company claims to have netted $420,000 in total revenues.

These are impressive numbers for the site, which seems to be competing in recent months with YouTube (there was even some speculation that Google — YouTube’s parent company — was looking to buy Hulu). Both sites are seeking to augment their original programming, with Hulu stating it wants to be the first true Internet-based premium television network. Yet Hulu seems more poised for success given its partnership with professional content producers (i.e., its owners NBCUniversal/Comcast, Fox/News Corp., and ABC/Disney). In fact, the site is already pitching advertisers for its upcoming crop of original shows.

Thinkwell, founded by Amy Bryant and Dan Heath in 1997, creates wonderful online video courses covering math and science. When I was talking to Thinkwell’s CEO Carl Tyson, he let me in on the secret to their success.

While the company does a lot of prep to plan and outline a semester-long course in subjects like calculus, they do not prepare transcripts for their instructors. By working with experts who really know their subject, such as mathematician Edward Burger of Williams College, they’ve found that letting teachers speak extemporaneously creates the most lively, dynamic videos, able to hold kids’ attention for more than three minutes (the usual video viewing time–although they do break up the lessons into 10-minute segments).

This is a great lesson for other sites working with experts and video. Don’t be afraid to go a little cinéma vérité. As TV execs have known for a long time, it’ll save you time and money. Although unlike reality TV stars, when you work with expert thought-leaders, you’ll probably get a higher quality product.

Of course, once you create those great online videos, you may want to steal another page from Thinkwell’s creative playbook and upsell CDs, especially if you have an international audience for your education courses. While I initially thought that was an outdated revenue-model, Tyson informed me that they’re very popular with deployed military personnel who don’t have reliable Internet access.

The 6-year-old site provides professional development videos for literacy teachers in over 70 countries and has more than 50,000 paying subscribers. Their key benefit is online videos — while many teachers have stacks of books and VHS tapes with literacy lessons and tips, online videos give them access to up-to-date tips in a convenient platform.

But for those of you who think video is prohibitively expensive, Brenda Power, Editor of ChoiceLiteracy, is appearing at Subscription Site Insider‘s April Summit in San Francisco to prove you wrong. With years of video production experience, Brenda has great tips on when to use a professional crew and when you can do it on your own, the basics of good editing, and what vendor software will best suit your needs. If you’re even considering using video on your subscription or membership site (and all of you should at least be producing a welcome video and site tour video), you don’t want to miss this talk!

One of the tips she gave was to buy the .tv URL for your site as soon as possible. This will allow you to create a dedicated video channel which will have multiple benefits. One, you’ll get lots of free media training by making videos. Two, you’ll create an online video portfolio that will increase your chances to be selected by media outlets for TV appearances. And three, video gets ranked high in search results when done right, so you’ll be driving more traffic to your site.

If you’re interested in more of Lorie’s tips, check out the on-demand video of her Webinar on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider. And if you think video production is just too complicated or expensive, you’ll want to buy a ticket for our April Summit in San Francisco where Brenda Power of Choice Literacy will be giving a talk on how to make video segments on a budget.

Just last week, three companies announced their plans to launch streaming video services. Verizon and Redbox are partnering for a U.S. based subscription service, while across the pond, BSkyB is planning to launch a streaming service that has both a subscription and pay-as-you-go plan.

And in related news, rumors are flying that Apple is planning on creating its own smart TV (it’s presumed it will be called iTV–what else would they call it?).

While this is great news for digital content creators, it also a bit disconcerting because of the lack of regulation in the telecommunications industry. We’ve talked before about how Apple’s bit to control both distribution and content can lead to some unnerving censorship issues. It they can control both the equipment (through iTV) and the content (through iTunes or a similar service), television may also be censored more heavily. For parents trying to eradicate porn in their household, this may not be a bad thing, but since Apple seems to have evolving standards, this may not end well for artists.

BSkyB’s service and Verizon and Redbox’s partnership is less likely to lead to such a monopoly, but since many online streaming services (like Hulu) are now offering original content, one has to ask what the implications are. Can Verizon not broadcast content to its subscribers it doesn’t endorse? Will it block access to competitors like Hulu? Will consumers have to start subscribing to individual networks/channels like BSkyB, BBC, etc?

The last scenario seems unlikely, but then again, the future is very uncertain.

This is quite an about-face for the Google-owned company. Google’s Eric Schmidt has previously praised the virtues of free content, an easy stance to take when your business model is wholly based on user-generated content. Then YouTube started funding its own original content to the tune of $100 million, and suddenly realized that, maybe, artists and writers should get paid for their work.

It also raises some questions about how they’ll index their subscription content. Right now, Google preferences free content in its search and Google News rankings, and tells content creators to make their videos free-to-view on YouTube, frustrating publishers trying to make a dime off their video content (it’s possible to index content behind a paywall, but it takes a careful reading of Google’s instructions).

However, given the companies recent move to preference Google+ information over other social media data, any decision to create YouTube subscription channels will likely preference that content over any other video subscription platform. It’s a bit like Apple’s move to control the content and distribution of iBooks.

Old-school journalism used to believe in the separation of church and state when it came to editorial content and advertising. In the digital age,  perhaps we need to create a separation of content creation tools/platforms (YouTube,  iBooks, Kindle) and their distribution systems (Google, Apple stores, Amazon.com)?

While the Hollywood-backed service has been around for a little while now, it hasn’t really taken off, and Amazon is the first major online video supplier to ink a deal. UltraViolet lets users combine digital purchases from any retailer and store it in a “locker.” More over, it can be used by multiple members of a family, and each family member can personalize their cloud-based list of videos.

This seems like a solid solution to consumers’ desire to view movies on a multiplicity of devices. The problem is that because Hollywood waited so long to provide a digital solutions, online retailers like Amazon and Apple already have their own locker (albeit, not as multi-user or mutli-device friendly). BestBuy and Walmart have endorsed the service but have not made it an active option for their consumers.

Most notably, the service does not require a subscription, which may be bad news for subscription sites. Hollywood hopes UltraViolet will encourage people to go back to buying rather than renting DVDs, which may just happen — if you have a portable locker, downloading favorites and buying one-offs of streaming video may be more favorable. But the service does integrate with subscription sites like Amazon and LoveFilm, so time will tell which way consumers are swaying.

On the other side of the world, Indian telecom giant Reliance recently announced its plans to launch an on-demand movie service at www.Bigflixplus.com, streaming 500+ movies in HD on your PC or mobile device. This is perhaps overdue, seeing as how India has the largest movie industry in the world and most individuals get on the Internet through their mobile phone.

However, movie studios seem to be looking for ways to stymy the growing popularity of on-demand online services. Warner Brothers is poised to announce this week that they will double the delay of DVD rentals online from 28 to 56 days after the DVD is made available for sale in stores. This seems like an echo of the same resistance that got publishing houses in trouble when e-books became popular. It would be nice to see companies work with online subscription companies as they decrease torrenting and bootlegging, and consumers are clearly displaying their preference for them over brick-and-mortar rental outlets or buying DVDs. Don’t they know that, in the 21st century, only the nimble survive?

The main difference vs Hulu is that all of TumTiki’s premium content sales are run through Amazon.com. We presume Frontier has negotiated a much larger cut of the resulting income than Amazon’s normal 7-8% affiliate commission structure.

One other difference between TumTiki and almost every other major site we know of (not to mention Fortune 500 companies), the site’s ‘about us’ page boasts a “100% U.S.-based workforce.”

Here’s the thing — it’s the same audience demographic, the same content, and even the same size on the screen (our video streaming allows our videos to be blown up to full-screen by our members.) The only difference is a webinar is presented “live” and often includes a Q&A session at the end, while an on-demand version is by definition recorded.
One might expect the viewing patterns to be fairly similar.

But they’re not. Not at all. Shockingly dissimilar in fact.

Generally 80% or more of live webinar attendees stay on through an entire presentation. However, when you look at stats for the recorded version of the exact same webinar, boy do they change! A big chunk of viewers bail in the first 30 seconds or so. Then another big chunk bail around the 4-5 minute mark. The ones who stick it out then will generally stay around for the entire video. Perhaps 50% make it all the way to the end.

If you’re selling memberships to your content as we are, your entire business model is bound up in your members finding your content engrossing and valuable. Clearly the live version of the webinar was, but the canned was not so much. I’ve noted these same stats with several different sites, so although it’s anecdotal data, it’s compelling enough to consider acting on.

How? Well, first of all we’re often not using the “live” version of the webinar for our on-demand version. Instead, we’re recording a separate version that’s generally 25-40% shorter. It’s the same slides (now) and same key points, but we hone the delivery so there are fewer digressions and less ‘chatting’. We’re also paying particular attention to the first five minute of the recording, recognizing it’s the “hump” we have to get more of the audience through to carry them to the end.

There’s no more attention for a meandering introduction or gentle build up to the sexiest points of your speech. You have to come in and hook them from the start! That’s not to say we’re perfect at that yet, it’s a video editorial art we’re gradually learning how to do.

So, while repurposing your webinar content for your membership site sounds easily practicable, it’s actually more work than one might suspect. It’s not just popping up an MP4 with a few edits. It’s thinking through, recording and producing an entirely new version. Who said the Internet age would be easy? Well, at least it’s never boring!