According to Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, people have never paid for content. They have paid for access to content. You’re paying to read this blog post right now. Unfortunately you’re not paying me but instead you’re giving your money to your Internet service provider.

The lesson for product strategists: make more content available, on more devices, in the most convenient ways possible and
“If you want to win, help people get access to content and you will be amazed at their willingness to pay.”

Read more of James analysis at his blog: http://blogs.forrester.com/james_mcquivey

At the All Things Digital conference Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interview Mark Cuban about web video and how Google (GOOG) has messed if up for you by subsidizing bandwidth and not monetizing YouTube.

Cuban says that Hulu may very well set the standard for online video monetization.

What do you think?

Is Google the reason you are not making money with your online video business or is it something else?

If you are making money and YouTube were to start charging for bandwidth would you be out of business?

Are you looking to quit your day job and sell your online video series to traditional television?

You might want to think twice about how you structure your deal.

If you Google “Dirty Jokes” one of the top searches you will find is Eli’s Dirty Jokes which is now on Cinemax. Not Showtime, Cinemax – you know the cable and satellite tv channel?

I caught up with James McFadden and Tyler McFadden of GoPotato.TV and they told me how they got their web series Eli’s Dirty Jokes (Animated by Doug Bresler / DoogToons) on Cinemax.

Did they sell their web videos to Cinemax? No. They did a licensing deal.

What does that mean?

I’m glad you asked.

A licensing deal means that Cinemax paid a fee to GoPotato to have the exclusive rights to Eli’s Dirty Jokes on Cinemax for 1 year. After that one year is over GoPotao has the right to license Eli’s Dirty Jokes to someone else and make more money. That means they can make and sell DVDs of Eli’s dirty jokes, they can license Eli’s Dirty Jokes to overseas / international television or to DirecTV or DishNetwork for a pay-per-view deal, deal with HULU or any other way they can think of exploiting it.

Do you want to sell your web videos? You might want to think about licensing them instead.

One way to watch Internet videos on your TV is with Boxee Boxee gives you a true lean back entertainment experience to watch movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Hulu, Netflix, ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and flickr.

I ran into Gidon Coussin on the trade show floor at NATPE and he gave me a quick demo of Boxee. Unfortunately I had to get really close to him to hear what he was saying.

How Do You Watch Internet Video on Your TV?