Zipidee Doo Your Video

Zipidee, an online marketplace for specialty videos and other content, has purchased competing rare video company TotalVid.com. This move continues Zipidee’s strategy of carving out a niche for itself, as a marketplace for rare content. TotalVid’s 5,500 or so videos — typically older video, first offered as VHS videocassettes — include how-to, action sports, travel, anime, martial arts and some 50 other categories. You can rent videos for $1.99 and up, and view them for a seven day rental period.



Combined with Zipidee’s 5,000 or so largely instructional titles, Zipidee now claims more than 10,000 video titles in more than 100 categories, mostly through exclusive licensing arrangements. You won’t find most titles on iTunes or Amazon. The company licenses content from more than 600 content sellers, from independent producers to large media companies.

You can upload your own videos to Zipidee, for sale, but beware -- the videos are higher quality than on your typical user-generated site.

Sellers on Zipidee can set their own prices and distribution models via download, subscription, or rental. Zipidee offers DRM software so a seller could, for example, choose to let a buyer rent a video for a specified amount of time.

Zipidee says it gets more than 300,000 visitors per month.