I should say, as a warning, that I've had 3 different clients approach me with roughly this idea, since 2007. There is a lot of interest in this area. There is a lot of investment going on. I do not doubt that eventually there will be a big hit in this area, but anyone who wants to get into this area has to be aware that the competition is intense.
Also, attacking this idea from another angle, it should be noted that small-scale content producers are suffering badly in the current environment, and sites pitched to them are pursuing a market where there is, potentially, very little money.
When I was at Bluewallllc.com we started working on iHanuman.com, which sells yoga videos. Although yoga videos represent a very small niche, the goal was to eventually reuse the technology to build other niche focused sites - an infinite range of them.
The ihanuman store offers some basic services to yoga teachers who have videos to sell:
http://www.ihanuman.com/store.php
We worked on iHanuman for roughly 5 months, from April of 2007 to August of 2007. After it launched, the site was written up in Yoga Life magazine. It attracted some traffic and developed a small but steady stream of sales. I stopped working with Bluewall in late 2007. I think they may have had one week where sales got up over $1,000. The site was never well publicized or marketed.
I think the project cost roughly $70,000, but it would be tough to say for sure, since the project was one of many projects that Bluewall was working on, and it would tough to say which expenses belonged to Bluewall and which expenses belonged to iHanuman. At its peak we had 5 people working on the site:
a designer
a PHP programmer (me)
a Flash programmer
an HTML/CSS specialist
a project manager
The site runs on a dedicated server from RackSpace.
The ultimate goal was to build a backend that would allow any yoga teacher to upload their videos and sell them. I think the revenue split, at that time, was 50/50. We got the frontend working nicely, though we never finished the backend.
There was some really cool technology on that project. The Flash programmer was Starrie Williamson and she did an impressive job, utilizing a lot of what was then cutting edge ActionScript 3 techniques. The Flash player could function as a widget on other websites, reading RSS feeds off of the iHanuman site (the RSS feeds were full of data from our database). In other words, it could be embedded, a lot like the YouTube player. Last I heard (early 2008), they were working on adding the ability to sell videos through the player. Very cool stuff. Anyway, if you ever need a really good Flash programmer, Starrie can be reached here:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?goback=.con&viewProfile=...
Some of the yoga teachers sell lectures as MP3s, and we knew we wanted to also use the same software for online music stores, so the Flash player also plays MP3s, and the PHP code handles the sale of both MP3s, FLAC files, and videos.
We also ported the software to the Monkeyclaus.org music store (also owned by Bluewall), and we added in the ability to import hundreds of MP3s at a time, using their embedded meta tags to fill out the info in the database. Out of all the code that I wrote for this software, almost a full year of my life (if you include the time spent on the monkeyclaus music store), this import code is the code that I am most proud of.
The management problems on that project were epic. The owner/designer and the project manager, who were boyfriend/girlfriend, had some strong disagreements with each other about what direction to go, and how much funding was appropriate.
There was, at one point, talk of pursuing a white label strategy, where Bluewall might sell the software to others. However, the code, as I left it, would not sustain a white label strategy. I wrote this code at breakneck speed. There is considerable technical debt. I was told that as soon as the site launched there would be time to clean up the code, but in fact, as soon as the site launched all development on the project ended. Also, Bluewall was very sloppy in its legal affairs - they never sought a copyright agreement with Starrie regarding her Flash player, so she still owns the copyright on it (or at least she did the last time I talked to her, which would have been the spring or summer of 2008).
The PHP code was written using a framework I developed during the period 2003-2007. I have since abandoned that framework and now I use Symfony for all PHP work. If I were going to do a project like that again, I'd probably build it in Symfony (or, if the JVM and Tomcat are acceptable to the project, Groovy/Grails).
Now, this particular project went nowhere, largely due to misjudgements on the part of those in charge. However, my point is that a lot of entrepreneurs have been looking at this space for several years now. There has been a lot of investment. The competition is intense. It might be wise to assume that there is no real profit to be made in this space, since no clear winner has emerged yet. Or you should assume that creating a winner for this space is going to be very, very hard.
I do believe that targeting niches is the correct way to move forward in this field. I do think that targeting indie filmmakers is an interesting and exciting niche. I have a friend who recently finished a documentary about the culture of the workers who worked at a somewhat notorious parking lot, in Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm aware that she is looking for distribution channels. But here is the problem: most indie developers will either be broke, or they will get funding, and if they have funding, they may not need this site.
So I would be wary.
All the same, if someone can go into this field and create a hit company, then they have my admiration.