Thumbs Down. VIMEO deletes my account without warning

I got the same thing.  Several hundred videos vanished in one keystroke!

I've been cautioning people for a year though about using sites like this to host videos that are NOT real estate specific, as they are doing this type of thing more and more often.  Not a big deal for me as I only upload to that site - I'm not using their videos on client sites or MLS or anything like that, which would be an absolute disaster for me if I did!

This is not the first....   iFilm (now Spike), Blip.TV, and several others have done this exact same thing in the past year.

Again.. host your OWN videos so you have total control, or use sites such as WellcomeMat.com, Zipvo.com, etc. that cater specifically to real estate videos.

However... (the big 'however'), you also need to be aware of the one simple fact (one which many people disagree with me on!):

These sites are a business.  They need to make money or they will not exist for long.  Many have VC money, but that will dry up if they don't show how they intend to make money.  It's simple business.  

As of right now, I don't see ANY of these video sites as a viable business!  NONE have a mechanism for generating income.  NONE.  The only thing some have are some (very) small and lame ads, none of which are generating anything close to what needs to be to run sites like these and the bandwidth it takes to run them.

I haven't seen ONE of these sites that makes business sense to me - not one.  There is even talk about YouTube going away because they can't make money on this investement... YouTube!  

So, your videos could disappear in a cloud of smoke for many reasons, none of which you control.  The only way to totally control it is to host them yourself.

All of these sites/ companies are scrambling around trying to figure out a way to monetize this business, but don't be fooled.  If they do not make money, they will not be around for long.  It's just that simple.

Honestly, I don't know the answer to that question...  hard to tell how many are actually viewing.  I own my own server, so bandwidth just isn't an issue for me.  If you're on a commercial shared server...   I really don't know.  I'd say start small and monitor it and see how it goes.  You may be surprised at how few people are actually viewing the entire videos...I don't think real estate videos are a hot commodity like Mentos exlpoding in soda bottles!  Of course the size of your market would have a lot to do with that as well.

Also... don't forget the ONLY people viewing a video hosted on your server is thru your MLS, through Realtor.com and through your personal website.. plus maybe a few oddball sites that may link to it.

How many people... honestly... are viewing that video?  Probably not as bad as you think.  However... probably a much more qualified viewer than one who stumbles on it through Vimeo or YouTube.  But of course, videos on your server won't get indexed like they would through YouTube... 

I upload (and will continue to upload) to about 12 video sites..  I guess what I'm saying is don't rely on those sites for important locations, such as the MLS, where the real meat and potatoes are.  Yes, hundreds of my videos have been deleted from Vimeo.  I'm not thrilled, but it's not impacting me in any way (other than being a little annoying as to how they did it!).  All of my listings are still intact.