Banned from TubeMogul

Just received an email from TubeMogul notifying me that my account has been suspended due to uploading of "commercial videos".

I can pay for their service now, but unless I do, I can no longer use TubeMogul.

Interesting, as I was one of their first customers way back when, and the owner called and emailed me on several occasions asking my opinion on things, what I'd like to see, if I like the service, etc.  He clearly knew exactly what I was doing.

And now... cut off at the knees.  Again.  Seems to be a trend lately in the video world... 

 I'm not entirely sure if it makes sense anymore uploading the video to all these sites. In the beginning there was a clear benefit... The video would appear on the first page of the search results. Now it's impossible to accomplish the same.

Do you find it's worth your time, does it produce any tangible results?

I definitely think "prove your business model" is the trend in the online video space these days. For too many years, the online video industry was Venture Capital rich & revenue poor: so many companies were giving away services that should never have been free to begin with. Even WellcomeMat got sucked into this game as, for us, it was a matter of staying competitive regardless of what it took.

But, throughout my history in tech, I've seen what happens to "free" technology companies: they bring in very little revenue > cannot pay great people to work for their companies > go out of business.

The first huge wave of video companies has either run out of cash already or is on their way to running out of cash. They either make money now, or they go away. Glad that WellcomeMat is in the spot that we are in from a business perspective. We can/will be doing a lot better, but don't plan to see us on the ropes.

 It's true... I knew this day was coming....  personally I thought it would have been here a couple of years ago.  It's why I've always laughed at many of these services....  they just didn't make any business sense.  You can't give everything away and expect to be here tomorrow.  Someone has to pay for this bandwidth!

In the video space, you have to be innovative and offer something different and better, because in many cases, you're still competing with FREE (i.e. YouTube and many others).   It's tough...  you have to offer something you can't get with the free services that people also find to be worthwhile and worth paying for... not an easy feat. Everybody is struggling to monetize online video (including YouTube, who changes things up every week!).

It's an interesting game to watch play out.... as long as I don't get caught in the middle!  :)