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11 Comments

Hosting paid videos on YouTube?

I am creating a course on "Ruby on Rails 6" with 18+ hours and 140+ lectures of video content, an I am hesitant about the best way to host it on my own (without a platform).
To me "YouTube Unlisted" feels a little like cheating:

  1. Hosting premium content on a free platform - not very professional?
  2. If one person access an Unlisted video he can share the link with anybody
  3. It's easy as pie to download from YouTube

Do You consider it OK to host paid course videos on YouTube? Or what approach would you take?

  1. 4

    I know that @adamwathan used Vimeo for his course. It does seem like a great option. You will like have to pay a little for that much content, but it is still multitudes cheaper than Wistia.

    1. 1

      Vimeo does feel more premium and has no ads. But doesn't it have a similar problem as Youtube Unlisted? (anyone with a link can access)

      1. 2

        Vimeo has domain restriction, so only people on your website hace access.

        You can go the full way, and use Amazon S3 that also has different privacy settings

        1. 1

          domain restrictions? now that's interesting!

  2. 1

    In my opinion, it's not ok on a free platform to host paid videos. I am also a content maker on youtube and people like me have several options to make money, like native ads and the money you receive for views so for us it's ok that for platform to remain the same and I think that youtube makes sufficient money as to not take money directly from consumers. More than that I think that youtube may make an app that will help people download for free youtube videos, that will help a lot of content makers to improve their videos, fortunately for me, I found this site https://youtube-mp3.me/fr/fr-2/ that solved it for me but I think that youtube could make this too.

    1. 1

      Half a year has past, and now I agree totally. I'm using AWS S3 and Vimeo for different video content now

  3. 1

    Hosting on S3 with an URL with expiry token that get refreshed for an interval while students are on the site? This could prevent sharing the URL problem but can't prevent downloading.

    Is it too much hassle? I have never tried it though.

  4. 1

    I don't think YouTube is the right answer for this, especially because of points 2 and 3. Just sent you an email

  5. 1

    Technically, it’s feasible for you to use the Youtube API and keep the videos as private, while giving video access only to the premium payers.

    It might still be challenging in practice, as their email would also have to be the email they use to access Youtube.

  6. 1

    I believe most famous platforms for that are Udemy and skillshare

    1. 1

      I know about Udemy, Skillshare, Teachable. I was specifically interested in alternative options - without a platform

  7. 3

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  8. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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