allofthegold

Hi everyone.

Here?s my situation. I?m a programmer who recently got a degree in computer science and have been programming seriously for many years, both on freelance work and numerous hobby projects.

On a whim, some months ago I decided to buy a $200 video camera, pay a model from craigslist, and produce videos for a pretty weird fetish I have, the nature of which is not relevant here. I later did this several more times. I sold the videos I made on a site similar to clips4sale. The videos more than paid for themselves and it?s been a fun experience overall.

Around the end of May I had very little work on my plate and decided to build my own clips store, ie one like clips4sale which would allow users to go on and upload their own clips to sell. I wanted to build my own because I like the business model, and also honestly felt I could do a lot of things better than what?s out there now.

Flash forward to today. My website basically does everything I need it to do from a functionality standpoint. There's a backend interface where stores can be created, and you can upload videos. Preview snapshots are automatically generated from these videos. You can upload a trailer which is automatically transcoded to mp4 for streaming. On the front end stores and items are displayed as might be expected, with a trailer, working shopping cart, etc. Theres a lot of fancy javascript stuff such as drag/drop for files on the back end, and I'm working on using ajax to load new pages on the front end so it seems much faster than normal website.

I've realized that I need a partner in this though. Ideally someone with something to add that might be synergistic to this project. Someone with a lot of industry experience would be great. Or someone that owns a lot of content that can be used on the clip store at launch.

Most importantly, at this point, I need money. I've been working on this full time and would like to continue to do so, but I'm running out of saved money and the reality is I'm probably going to need to get a job within a month or two.

What I have in mind currently is to give up at least 1/3rd ownership in the to-be-established company around this product in exchange for ~$1000 per month to pay for my living expenses. In return I will work full time, at least 40hrs per week, programming the website. Any further responsibilities for the partner aren't strictly necessary from my point of view, but I guess would be good? I also might need some small lump sum. The biggest upcoming expenses I foresee are legal fees, both for the legal establishment of a business and for the stuff pertaining to the nature of the site I'm starting (ie, making sure I'm good on all 2257 exemption stuff or whatever).

Is some sort of deal like this feasible? Considering that I have basically no connections in this industry? Am I just in way over my head here? Is this site a decent place to network/find potential partners and where might some other good spots for that be?

Note: I hope this doesn't come off as me begging for money, I really just want to know if my idea is crap or not at this point. I realize that a lot of burden would be placed on me to prove I'm not some scammer and actually have a legit thing here, and that doesn't bother me because I'm very confident in what I have so far and in my ability to program.

I guess I'm just looking to do some networking at this point so feel free to contact me (icq#: 637974913), an any advice would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to ask me here or on icq anything you'd like to know.