A Business Week article explores the mixed blessings of getting paid by video distribution sites like You Tube. As writer Catherine Holahan says:

“Video-sharing sites are a valuable asset, but the slice of the ad revenue they dole out to successful producers isn’t how you really want to cash in on the Web. In fact, for the truly successful content creators, such sites threaten to steal audience from what really pays the bills: building your own site.”

The BizWeek article lists other sites for video display, including Revver and notes that sharing site “Metacafe gives $5 per thousand impressions to any video creator whose piece has been seen more than 20,000 times.” But indie videographer Ze Frank tell the magazine:

“What some people are finding is the crappiest situation is to be popular on these massive platforms,” he says. “There is a big value to having your own site that is under your control because that is the easiest space to sell ads against.”

That is, if the videographer can sell ads.

Disintermediating designers? Wannabe bloggers have Blogger, Moveable Type and Word Press from which to choose as blog platforms. Surely I’ve missed others. Now comes Weebly, a blog platform that says adding non-print media types to its blogs is as easy as “dragging . . . videos, pictures, maps, and text . . . from the Weebly bar to your webpage.”

Now the fledging tool site is getting $650,000 in angel financing according to Dan Kaplan who writes in a VentureBeat piece that:

“Weebly, its rival SiteKreator and others represent a move towards the commoditization of basic website design. All of them are in the early stages and do not have wide reach or a robust business model. But they represent a growing, potentially critical threat to web designers not versed in the cutting edge of the art.”