Free entertainment on the internet is a not a new business model. People have received free radio and tv for decades. Money is made through advertising. Nobody is really going to click on the annoying pop-up ads that will then earn you a nickel or whatever but someone will end up sitting through a 10-30 second ad to get to the video they want to see. Thus the success of Hulu. I would suggest adding someone to your crew that is in charge of finding sponsors for your independent work that will stream on the internet.

Have you managed to do that?

Finally some insight. Producing content actually takes skill and financing in order to eat, live somewhere besides a tent and afford the technology to produce the content. At some point someone has to pay (usually the viewer). YouTube, and sites like it, are the HMOs of web video and content production. And while your sanity is in question the sanity of someone who would give you $78K with no hope for a return on investment is even more questionable.

Personally I would have wanted to figure out where the "income" part was going to come from and how it all works. For $78K I'd be wanting to sort out that issue before I "invested" anything, first building a functional prototype if possible.

I'm kinda scared for you. Hope it all works out.

Andrew

Just got this mail from someone running a music upload service:

"I'm sorry to inform that I will close down this site. My reasons to put the online was simple. Let's make money to sell our creations. The money can only be made by selling something to mobiles. When previously you made 1M record sales, I could be an millionaire. Nowadays, you make 1M fans from Google's Myspace/Youtube and start to beg the money? Is that what you artists wan't to do?"

It's like swine fever. One of the reasons we're having a recession is this infectious loss of confidence...