[edent]

I like this idea - but I worry about the cost.

YouTube is, essentially, free. Even if I don't want to use them as a host, I can upload a video and a few minutes later download it in DASH and a variety of older formats - again, for free.

If I do use them, I might get a few quid of advertising revenue.

CloudFlare video lets me keep people on my site (damn those distracting cat videos) and possibly gives me a branded player. That's nice - but is the cost of use (per minute transcoding) going to be worth it?

[sbarre]

If you're not willing to pay for the video hosting and serving, you're not their target audience. YouTube was made for you.

[bubblethink]

I think there is some middle ground. It costs very little to host a blog or a static website. If you want to add video to such a site, things change completely, and the main option for most people is youtube. So if you add the ability to self host video with some reasonable pricing (i.e., something without nasty surprises if your video goes viral), it could work.

[usrusr]

The blog will probably stay on embedded YouTube, where the content might even generate some long tail coin if successful. This seems to aim a little higher:

If YouTube is the home tape deck of video streaming and Netflix/Amazon are the major record labels, cloudflare would provide record pressing and distribution services to indie labels. (Do millennials even understand those terms?) The ideal customer would probably be a smaller Disney competitor who wants to try their luck at selling directly but understands very well that they can't hire a team of engineers matching that at Netflix.