I think Leo is doing good over at twit.tv

I thought it would be dead simple because I’m just doing interviews, but editing video takes forever. I have to import the video, cut it, export it, upload it. And, unlike text, if I make a mistake with video, I can’t erase just that one portion. I have to redo the whole thing.

As you can see, with this kind of process, there’s no way to be first news.

Plus, for all that work, I don’t get any SEO credit. Search engines can’t see it. And even though I try to keep my videos short, most people online like to zip through information. Asking them to sit through even 2 minutes of video can be a big request.

There are many positives to video–for example, it creates a tighter connection with viewers than text–but it’s a tough beast.

Video is tough biz to be in. Vlogging started with a ton of hype and excitement, myself included.. I think I still own VlogTV.com and never ended up using it because of time and I saw first hand that in 99% of cases, making online video doesn’t pay. There are a ton of people who do a really great job with creating video, but monetization has always been difficult.

You mentioned that video advertising is a fast growing segment of online advertising.. true. But that has a lot to do with amount of “professional,” for lack of a better word, video coming online. Even still, when you watch hulu, you’ll see a ton of PSA’s on there because they’re not selling through their inventory. That said, until video is cheaper to create and publish online, pre-rolls aren’t going to pay the bills for videobloggers.

About the only thing that can pay the bills is brand integration, and I worked at a video ad network before my current job that dabbled in that… and it was a nightmare. You have to sell a sponsorship before the content is created which is a HUGE risk for advertisers.. I can’t imagine anything like that happening in this economy.

So my answer to your question would be, it isn’t necessarily in trouble because the people still doing it, do it for their love for it. However, they shouldn’t quit their day jobs anytime soon.

Totally agree with everyone’s 2 cents above – and the main issue is – labor intensive! Unless you are doing a live web cast video such as a Ustream.tv – where there is NO editing of the event or a WYSIWYG type of video – forget it!

Remember that 10 second video you wanted? The amount of editing time to get that to look good – would have been hours for 10 seconds. I only volunteered because I have a rig set up – stand alone computer – that is optimized for video/audio production.

If you don’t have one of those, sure you can edit video and audio on any decent machine, but also unfortunately, you’ll run into a ton of issues and slow downs when that awful word of “rendering” comes into play.

Anyways, video amateur here dropping in my 2 c!

Rex

I think you raise a good issue and Andrew thanks for sharing you experience as well. The economy is obviously part of it. I think part of it is that the smart folks making a lot of these video can make more money doing something else and many of them are doing just that.

However, I think the biggest factor is that we have not yet solved the issue of web video in the living room. Boxee seems to be the lead in this category but it is years away from being in a relevant consumer hardware solution. When web video in the living room is main stream, I think video blogging we see a major uptake and we will see the rise of many new startups. I can already see the need for living room media aggregation services. This to me along with the coming adoption of mobile video streaming with change the tide for vloggers.

Kipp

I was going to mention all the point you made in my own comment, but you did such a great job of pointing out the inherent problem of working with video, all that’s left to do is complement your comment. Thanks, you really nailed it, and you have the personal experience to back it up.

BTW, I have watched some of your video’s and I think they are very good. I’ve never felt that they run too long either, but you’re right about the attention span of the average internet viewer. It’s very short indeed.

To answer Allen’s question of a news show that’s doing well and is profitable, is my favorite Beet.TV

PS Allen you’re ignoring me again on twitter… gonna cry ;)