How do you setup a feed site?

[Paco]

Btw Bec, why don't you try to get hooked up with someone like Pistol Media? They seem to know what they are doing and have branded feeds with some of the best in the business like Fratmen, Treasure Island, Hot Desert Knights and Raging Stallion.

and Brian a very nice guy!

[Bec]

Btw Bec, why don't you try to get hooked up with someone like Pistol Media? They seem to know what they are doing and have branded feeds with some of the best in the business like Fratmen, Treasure Island, Hot Desert Knights and Raging Stallion.

I'm not for or against the idea of teaming up with a company that already has everything in place. This particular thread is to find out what it takes to do it on ones own.

Having figures in front of you that shows what it will cost to:
1. produce & maintain the site(s)
2. having hack and password trading security in place
3. costs for a server that can stream and handle the load
4. evaluate on whether to use flash movies, allow downloads, or do DRM
5. any special software and software license fees, etc

...and taking all the lease fees for yourself over the years vs taking a % and what the long term "payment" is via signing on under another feed company helps to make decisions about what will or won't be implemented down the road. It's about having the data to make an informed decision based on a lot of variables to determine at what point you'll see a return on your investment.

[gaybucks_chip]

Bec, the pricey software is Windows Media Streaming Server or Helix Streaming Server (RealMedia). Helix is priced based on max # of simultaneous feeds it is supplying; I'm not sure how Microsoft does it but I think it's similar. When

It is obviously possible to serve video without a streaming server, but I don't think you can support Windows variable bit rates and many of the other things you need as a feed provider without an actual streaming server.

And... depending o what other services you are offering (pay-per-minute or pay-per download, etc), you may also need a billing solution. If you are only charging other webmasters for feeds based on bandwidth, then you can probably get by with something built to read logfiles and generate billing data from that, which should not be expensive.

We looked at it in detail almost 4 years ago and determined the financial outlay wasn't worth the potential return... but it's possible costs have come down since then, and/or more off-the-shelf scripting is available, so it might be worth another look.

[shaun]

Colt's done it? Really? Do you have a url of their feeds?

Sure - here: http://www.coltstudio.com/ppv/ppv.aspx

[Bec]

Sure - here: http://www.coltstudio.com/ppv/ppv.aspx

That's not a "feed" site Shaun, but a pay per view site. It looks like they're doing DRM movies with a 72 hour license. Not sure how they've setup the billing and login per movie though.