Online video is having a bad time with some of the largest media companies pulling out of streaming video, namely Stage6, 'voluntary' shutting down (after loosing 12 million USD in 12 months), Google Video halting uploading and some pretty major implosions such as Veoh burning through 70 Million USD and filling for bankruptcy, to name just a few.

The problem being that the video vertical is a very difficult one to make money from, given the CPM from advertising is almost worthless and bandwidth costs are so high.

Enter The New Flash 'Payer' Application:

The traditional approach which attempted to solve the 'free dilemma' has been to put premium content behind pay walls, this has resulted in piss poor results for all who have experimented as openly published by this New York Newspaper.

The reason for such miserable failures being simply that people don't miss what they never had and usually only pay for something once they are hooked on it (crack for example). This is where the 'Flash Payer' comes into the picture solving the most difficult problem, that of getting users hooked. The widget and application works by allowing viewers a limited amount of free daily viewing time (decided by the publisher), then once their free bandwidth has been used viewers are paused. At this point the system opens a new page where they can choose a payment option, 1 day, 7 days, 90 days, or 365 days. Viewers pay the price indicated (decided again by publishers) and then the viewers can go back and continue watching where they left off.

In my own trials with the Flash Payer on my popular documentary video porthole Doc-Film-Net sales increased by more than 90% over the pay per view (premium pay-wall model previously implemented). This is a site which has had many near death experiences and is now off death watch and is now being placed into the party ward with all the living, breathing and thriving with the help of the Karsa Flash Payer widget and application.

What this application does is take care of all the technical hurdles, building the Flash widget, the management system and taking the payments, making it possible for video publishers to profit from their content without having to set up their own complicated processing systems and who can now start profiting with no technical knowledge or investments and immediately implement this system on their own sites and start profiting with no costs or technical hurdles to overcome.

The other players in this space include the JW player by Longtailvideo who offer a flash player which can be used freely for GPL use and a licensed version is available for commercial use. Also there is the FlowPlayer who also offer a similar concept as JW player. Both of these latter players rely upon advertising as the source for generating income for video publishers.