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What Should I Do With Glimpster?

Here’s my dilemma: More than a year after forming Glimpster, I continue to get requests from people with good ideas for shows, asking if they can join the network. I don’t know what to do about these requests. They’re tempting. Glimpster has four different shows, and only two of them actively produce new content, Paperclipping (my wife’s scrapbooking show) and Izzy Video. With only four shows, and two of them active, I can hardly call this a network and keep a serious face.

I admit that the thought of adding more shows to Glimpster thrills me. I can imagine how fun it would be to develop this into a network with ten, twenty, or more shows, all producing educational content and making it available for free. I think this kind of project could benefit people worldwide.

But the problem is, unfortunately, time. When I think about how strained I feel with only Izzy Video and Paperclipping as active projects, I wonder if I might become overwhelmed by additional responsibilities. Right now Glimpster is a spare-time project. Do I have time to do more? Honestly, I believe I do. But how far do I want to take it? I don’t know the answer to this yet.

I’d like to get your feedback. You are the viewers, after all. What should I do with Glimpster? If I accepted requests to join the network, would you want to participate? How would the arrangement work?

I’m curious to read your responses in the comments.

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  • http://www.kouiskas.com Gilles

    As I see it, having a much bigger network means that you can achieve so much more. Not only can you approach sponsors with a wide variety of shows and a bigger audience as a whole, but you can also share the workload with your fellow network members.

    If you want to keep doing this activity as a not-for-profit, having enough members means that sponsorship income could probably at least fund someone working full-time to manage, promote the network, etc. That someone doing the leg work for the network might not even have to be you, if producing content is what you prefer doing.

    If you keep the bar as high as you current shows for the production value of newcomers in the network, I’d definitely give them a try like I watched your other shows when you started talking about them on Izzy Video.

  • http://www.kouiskas.com Gilles

    As I see it, having a much bigger network means that you can achieve so much more. Not only can you approach sponsors with a wide variety of shows and a bigger audience as a whole, but you can also share the workload with your fellow network members.

    If you want to keep doing this activity as a not-for-profit, having enough members means that sponsorship income could probably at least fund someone working full-time to manage, promote the network, etc. That someone doing the leg work for the network might not even have to be you, if producing content is what you prefer doing.

    If you keep the bar as high as you current shows for the production value of newcomers in the network, I’d definitely give them a try like I watched your other shows when you started talking about them on Izzy Video.

  • Travis

    Have you ever thought of bringing on other individuals with A/V production backgrounds. Not as employees of course, but as resources. It is basic leadership to delegate the tasks that you do not have time to accomplish.

    For instance: Bring on new shows that can produce themselves. Let new shows be stand alone entities that are added to your website for content distribution. They show would benefit by your established audience and server space. You would get a new show. The understanding of course would be that you work as executive producer giving each episode the final thumbs-up before it goes on-line. After all it is your network and you only want content that you approve of airing.

    I feel adding more shows to the Glimpster network is a great idea. But the chance that a person could produce 10 or more on yourself at any steady interval is almost nil. Delegating in order to diversify is a simple way for you to expand your network with minimal headache.

    I hope that helps.

  • Travis

    Have you ever thought of bringing on other individuals with A/V production backgrounds. Not as employees of course, but as resources. It is basic leadership to delegate the tasks that you do not have time to accomplish.

    For instance: Bring on new shows that can produce themselves. Let new shows be stand alone entities that are added to your website for content distribution. They show would benefit by your established audience and server space. You would get a new show. The understanding of course would be that you work as executive producer giving each episode the final thumbs-up before it goes on-line. After all it is your network and you only want content that you approve of airing.

    I feel adding more shows to the Glimpster network is a great idea. But the chance that a person could produce 10 or more on yourself at any steady interval is almost nil. Delegating in order to diversify is a simple way for you to expand your network with minimal headache.

    I hope that helps.

  • David

    My vote is not to expand but maintain the status quo. To be honest if you expand you probably will get overwhelmed with the work involved. Your Izzyvideo tutorials will ultimately pay the price. I have enjoyed learning from your tutorials and would hate to see content and quality suffer because you simply have invested so much time with other peoples stuff you no longer have time for your own. I am sure you would not like to put someone on your sight who doesn’t hold to the same quality standards you do?

  • David

    My vote is not to expand but maintain the status quo. To be honest if you expand you probably will get overwhelmed with the work involved. Your Izzyvideo tutorials will ultimately pay the price. I have enjoyed learning from your tutorials and would hate to see content and quality suffer because you simply have invested so much time with other peoples stuff you no longer have time for your own. I am sure you would not like to put someone on your sight who doesn’t hold to the same quality standards you do?

  • http://www.DreamMeetup.com Kumar

    I think the answer would be generate revenue which can help support you and also free up time for you to dedicate more to the development of your site – I recently read a New York Times article about how Google will start putting ads in Youtube videos that will help generate profit for Google/Youtube. If you can generate profit then you can possibly free yourself from your regular job and dedicate more time to this network. Starting a network of course will go head on with other sites that are competing for viewers and as David said above take away time from educational and valuable endeavors such as Izzyvideo. I recently read the experience of Facebook (Newsweek August 27, 2007), which in order to stay competitive opened up its site to developers to create applications for Facebook members to use. Individual members jumped at the opportunity and created applications such as iLike that recommend music to other members.

    If I remember correctly, Youtube allows profit sharing with individual members who create most watched videos. Youtubers obviously can learn a lot from you on how to create better videos. So how about developing your brand name on Youtube and also direct them to Glimster?

    If there is a dragon in the forest you can either fight the dragon or go for a ride and see where the dragon takes you. The dragon in this case is Youtube.

    Facebook went from college centered website to a something that serves everybody. There is a lot of potential customers and audience for you on Youtube, Myspace, Veoh, etc… Independent video will become the next wave on the internet – notice shows like “i-caught” and “On the Lot”. People seriously need help on how to make better videos and this is where you come in. Hope this helps, Kumar…

    Best regards,
    Kumar….

  • http://www.DreamMeetup.com Kumar

    I think the answer would be generate revenue which can help support you and also free up time for you to dedicate more to the development of your site – I recently read a New York Times article about how Google will start putting ads in Youtube videos that will help generate profit for Google/Youtube. If you can generate profit then you can possibly free yourself from your regular job and dedicate more time to this network. Starting a network of course will go head on with other sites that are competing for viewers and as David said above take away time from educational and valuable endeavors such as Izzyvideo. I recently read the experience of Facebook (Newsweek August 27, 2007), which in order to stay competitive opened up its site to developers to create applications for Facebook members to use. Individual members jumped at the opportunity and created applications such as iLike that recommend music to other members.

    If I remember correctly, Youtube allows profit sharing with individual members who create most watched videos. Youtubers obviously can learn a lot from you on how to create better videos. So how about developing your brand name on Youtube and also direct them to Glimster?

    If there is a dragon in the forest you can either fight the dragon or go for a ride and see where the dragon takes you. The dragon in this case is Youtube.

    Facebook went from college centered website to a something that serves everybody. There is a lot of potential customers and audience for you on Youtube, Myspace, Veoh, etc… Independent video will become the next wave on the internet – notice shows like “i-caught” and “On the Lot”. People seriously need help on how to make better videos and this is where you come in. Hope this helps, Kumar…

    Best regards,
    Kumar….

  • http://animivirtus.wordpress.com Blake

    I’ve been a fan of your shows for quite a while, and I’ve just read the above comments and like the idea that Travis had. I think it’d be great to take the load off of yourself for a little while, but keep the quality levels high enough to compare to IzzyVideo, and then generate a sort of extended network, linking together your show, other people’s shows, and creating more of a network than just Glimpster, but more of a pool of resources that all link to each other through your site. So you’d host the videos, and approve of them before they went up, and then link to the maker’s site, and they to yours. It’d be cross-promotion, give them a break (into the audience and the network) and you a break from working so hard to create the cool content you do. I’d be willing to do some tutorials and whatnot, since it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but that of course would come in time and be up to you. YOu could make a call for entries, choose who you wanted to feature, or just look around online and feature various people every now and then, host their tutorials when you’d usually be updating with your own, and that way you work on this project less while promoting your network on those people’s sites and giving them an extra chunk of audience to watch their videos as well. It seems to me everybody wins and there’s more than one variation of this idea. Hope this helps, even though it was really only expanding on Travis’s original idea. I would say to go the sponsorship route, because that has economic benefits as well, but IndyMogul made a tutorial that was sponsored by the movie WAR, and it wasn’t as good as their usual, true indy stuff. I’d hate to see a cool low-budget show go downhill because of corporate sponsorship. Best of luck, thanks for the great resources, and hope things work out in the end. Keep posting though, I’m interested to see what happens next.

    Blake

  • http://animivirtus.wordpress.com Blake

    I’ve been a fan of your shows for quite a while, and I’ve just read the above comments and like the idea that Travis had. I think it’d be great to take the load off of yourself for a little while, but keep the quality levels high enough to compare to IzzyVideo, and then generate a sort of extended network, linking together your show, other people’s shows, and creating more of a network than just Glimpster, but more of a pool of resources that all link to each other through your site. So you’d host the videos, and approve of them before they went up, and then link to the maker’s site, and they to yours. It’d be cross-promotion, give them a break (into the audience and the network) and you a break from working so hard to create the cool content you do. I’d be willing to do some tutorials and whatnot, since it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but that of course would come in time and be up to you. YOu could make a call for entries, choose who you wanted to feature, or just look around online and feature various people every now and then, host their tutorials when you’d usually be updating with your own, and that way you work on this project less while promoting your network on those people’s sites and giving them an extra chunk of audience to watch their videos as well. It seems to me everybody wins and there’s more than one variation of this idea. Hope this helps, even though it was really only expanding on Travis’s original idea. I would say to go the sponsorship route, because that has economic benefits as well, but IndyMogul made a tutorial that was sponsored by the movie WAR, and it wasn’t as good as their usual, true indy stuff. I’d hate to see a cool low-budget show go downhill because of corporate sponsorship. Best of luck, thanks for the great resources, and hope things work out in the end. Keep posting though, I’m interested to see what happens next.

    Blake

  • andy

    producing the videos is time-consuming I bet – but if you are getting paid what’s the problem?

    if you aren’t getting a reasonable amount for the time invested then why are you doing this?

  • andy

    producing the videos is time-consuming I bet – but if you are getting paid what’s the problem?

    if you aren’t getting a reasonable amount for the time invested then why are you doing this?

  • http://www.creativitytospare.com Chris

    If someone was already producing content. Would you be interested in adding them to Glimpster. They would produce the content/shoot/edit/compress/ all production tasks – then you could work out of more of an execuctive role a shows direction/promotion to build the network of shows.
    I like what you have done. I do agree with you that you were at the right place at the right time (dawn of video podcasting) with a great combination of short to the point shows.
    I’m trying to do something myself, but the real trouble is getting noticed.
    My video podcast is DIY projects for creative individual – Video/Audio/Photography.
    http://www.creativitytospare.com

  • http://www.creativitytospare.com Chris

    If someone was already producing content. Would you be interested in adding them to Glimpster. They would produce the content/shoot/edit/compress/ all production tasks – then you could work out of more of an execuctive role a shows direction/promotion to build the network of shows.
    I like what you have done. I do agree with you that you were at the right place at the right time (dawn of video podcasting) with a great combination of short to the point shows.
    I’m trying to do something myself, but the real trouble is getting noticed.
    My video podcast is DIY projects for creative individual – Video/Audio/Photography.
    http://www.creativitytospare.com

  • http://www.flyingfoxservices.com Todd

    Israel;

    Do what everyone else does, hire an intern. Sell advertising. Find a few diverse broad interest podcast topics with some eager talent and use Izzyvideo style to produce them.

    The investment is in the short front end. The intern will help a lot, epsecially if they share some basic style similarities and can use Final Cut.

  • http://www.flyingfoxservices.com Todd

    Israel;

    Do what everyone else does, hire an intern. Sell advertising. Find a few diverse broad interest podcast topics with some eager talent and use Izzyvideo style to produce them.

    The investment is in the short front end. The intern will help a lot, epsecially if they share some basic style similarities and can use Final Cut.

  • Aaron Kraicshtein

    What to do? About Glimpster? Well, why not compile all your shorts on one DVD in 53 Lessons and sell them as a Boxed Yearly Collection HD Version? I’d purchase it at a reasonable price!
    Come on, make me a price, I’m buying! But a donation? Come-on what are you? Another church?
    Shalom,
    Aaron

  • Aaron Kraicshtein

    What to do? About Glimpster? Well, why not compile all your shorts on one DVD in 53 Lessons and sell them as a Boxed Yearly Collection HD Version? I’d purchase it at a reasonable price!
    Come on, make me a price, I’m buying! But a donation? Come-on what are you? Another church?
    Shalom,
    Aaron