Hi guys

I think most of us here would like to try and make some money from running a youtube clone site...at least enough to cover the server/hosting costs. I thought it would be good if we could all share ideas.

The 2 most obvious ways is through affliate banners on the site and the other way is through the package feature.

If we are going to make money from the package feature then we need visitors to have something to sign up for, they are not going to sign up for a pay package if they can get the same thing for free and if there is no good advantage to a pay package. One thing i thought of was a clip download feature. here is how it works, under every clip people can watch is a "Download this video" link which when clicked tells the user that to download this file they need to sign up for the premium account package which gives them a big list of benefits and the ability to download every video in the orginal high quaility version (not the FLV). So users can keep videos they like on there computer and have it in a better quaility version to watch when ever they want.

At the moment its possible to download the orginal high quaility version of any clip you want for free simply by looking at what video number your watching and then going to http://www.thesite.com/video/69.avi (or.wmv, .mpg etc) so there would need to be some protections to stop anyone getting the files and so that users cant share the download links with everyone.

admin would this be possible to implement? would it also be possible to have the download keep the orginal filename too instead of say 69.avi?

Does anyone else have any ideas for making people want to sign up for a pay package? or any other ways to make money on your site?