Vimsy, which launched back in 2016, lets users create their own video streaming website, also known as a channel on the service, that acts as a portal for you to feature your YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia videos all in one place. You can also choose to require subscriptions for viewers to see your videos, ultimately allowing you to run your own equivalent to Netflix, according to Vimsy.
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Rowan Johnson, CEO and Founder of Vimsy, says that it is a tool to help all creators brand themselves in an effective way, which Vimsy believe YouTube hasn’t been doing because they often favor creators based on their views, since they make more through advertisement. The platform offer an alternative monetization model for creators frustrated with the current state of YouTube's monetization policy. (Read our take on whether or not YouTube pays content creators enough.)
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“Creating engaging video content has always required a significant amount of time and resources. For less established creators, the effort put in rarely matches the income earned from advertising revenue, at least not until the creator is earning tens of thousands of views per video,” says Johnson.
“The concern with YouTube’s most recent changes is that they’re making it harder for new creators, or those with less of a following, to earn anything before they reach a significant threshold. This is why we built Vimsy with the ability to take payments for content … we wanted to provide the tools for independent creators to have their own chance to build sustainable businesses in this way.”
There are a number of ways that you can go about using Vimsy. You can make a website that’s simply a portal where all your videos can be featured, or you could create an entire subscription-based video streaming service where people have to pay to see your videos on a individual basis or as a collection.
Vimsy does offer some customization options to help you make your Vimsy channel look more professional and unique. For instance, you can upload a logo or you can change the colors of your site. However, the big customization option is Vimsy’s support for custom web domain. Everyone on Vimsy starts out with a Vimsy web domain, but you can change that to a personal web domain if you decide, meaning you don’t have to have .vimsy.co in your web address. You can also organize your video library into categories using custom Collections and Sub-Collections.
Additionally, Vimsy gives you insight data so you can see who is watching your videos and how long they are watching it. This is a pretty key feature to any video creator or business, because it allows you to see what people are interested in and how long your videos are keeping their attention.
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When it comes to pricing, Vimsy does have a free version, where you’ll get all its core features, but you’ll be limited to a maximum of 150 videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia and you won’t get the custom domain support. If you want to get a little more, there’s a $15 a month subscription. You’ll have a 5,000 YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia video limit and you’ll get the support for the custom domain. But, if you want the full Vimsy experience, there’s a Premium version that’s $150 a month where you get unlimited video adds and other additional features.
You can learn more about Vimsy at vimsy.co.
