Pay Up! Vimeo Adds Rentals, Downloads.
Vimeo is a much smaller video site than YouTube, so it tries to compete in other areas. It tends to emphasize videos that are artier and more ambitious than dogs on skateboards, for instance. And it has very few ads.
Newest selling point: It is giving video owners the ability to sell their work.
There are lots of places to buy or rent videos on the Web, including YouTube, but here Vimeo is trying to stand out in a couple different ways: Its service is designed to let any kind of content owner — not just the big studios — hawk their stuff. And it is giving content owners a bigger cut of each sale.
Most video sites usually let content owners keep 70 percent of each sale, but Vimeo is offering 90 percent. The catch here is that the 90 percent comes after Vimeo handles credit card/PayPal fees, which means the real split will be something less than 90 percent.
So, what’s the real number? That’s going to vary a bit. But I asked Vimeo to sketch out the fees for a hypothetical $4.99 sale: They estimate transaction costs of $0.33 — 6.6 percent, which leaves $4.66 to split. If the owner takes 90 percent of that, it’s $4.19, or 84 percent of the gross.
So here you go, David Carr and friends: If you want to sell or rent the gag reel from your SXSW presentation this weekend, instead of giving it away, you can do it!
Meantime, everyone else should watch this, because it’s pretty great:
Geeks Telling Jokes from Gabe on Vimeo.