Interesting post. Monetising video content certainly is an issue that hasn’t yet been properly solved. For us at Techfluff.tv, we’re partly doing this for fun – but are looking at proper monetisation to ensure the show can continue and have the full support it requires.

We’ve opted to go down the sponsorship route, and are looking at how we can incorporate sponsors into the content without breaking an ‘editorial code of conduct’. For Sun Start-up Essentials, who’ve provided us with our initial sponsorship, this has meant choosing, where possible, start-ups on their start-up programme to be interviewed on our escalator pitch. However, we haven’t given them control of who to interview, and haven’t restricted ourselves to SSE members only. Luckily it just so happens that a lot of start-ups in London are SSE members, so it’s not such a difficult task!

We generally think that sponsorship is the best route for us because of the niche audience for the show, at least at the moment (generally the tech start-up community). This is a valuable audience that pulls in a lot of sponsorship money already from corporate service providers for a range of other events and media; this certainly doesn’t apply for all online video.

How this can work with other parts of the show will be interesting, as obviously it is important not to compromise the show itself. Time will tell!

Josh
Techfluff TV