Friday, May 16, 2008
www.beet.tv
Oo La La: "French Maids" Are Cleaning up with "How to" Videos

So, we've been talking with some clever independent Hollywood Web producers about making money out of Web video by creating entertaining, sponsored content.

Tim Street, producer/director/writer, has developed a hit with his show French Maid TV which gets millions of streams on YouTube and other sites.

Having developed the franchise, he is using the "maids" to demonstrate how to use company products and services, who sponsor the show natch.

The "how to" video sector is really growing, as reported in the Wall Street Journal last week. One way to commercialize these videos is through sponsorships. But Tim reminds us of a drawback: while the show segments live on forever on the Web, the sponsors don't always.

Case in point: One of Tim's best and most popular clips, which has 4.3 million views on YouTube, is a "how to" for uploading and sharing photos. Problem is it's for a photo sharing site called Tubes, which seems to be defunct. I've pasted the episode below.

Tim told me he hopes to find a way to dynamically swap out sponsorship messages in his show. That would be great.

Oh, and by the way, the maids are not French, but I bet you figured that out.

-- Andy Plesser