[quote author="momopi" date=1238413795]I bought a MacBook to do iPhone dev for fun this month, and was playing around on iTunes and Garage Band. It occurred to me that the garage band format can be used for many other things, like on-line video cooking lessons.
Suppose if I want to setup a web site and put cooking videos on it, giving users the ability to submit their own videos, and have the ability to charge a small fee for certain videos, what would be the best way to build such a web site? i.e. software, service, hosting provider, e-commerce, etc.?</blockquote>
For web hosting, go check out godaddy.com (yes, the company that runs the tacky SuperBowl ads), they are the major web hosting service. But I think it would be hard to make a profit running a site showing cooking videos - the bandwidth needs are pretty high, and most people want to see sites for free, and your ad revenue is unlikely to be enough to pay for the download bandwidth of videos.
However, if you really want to make cooking software for profit, you may want to think about an iPhone app - I browsed some cooking apps there awhile ago and they were pretty bad. Also, it'd be nice if there was a how to cook Asian cooking app as well. And it's much easier taking your phone over to the kitchen than running back and forth to your computer in the middle of making something. The infrastructure for billing is all nicely setup by Apple, the software kit is free, and to register and sell apps only costs $99. Something basic, like "The Survival Cookbook #1" www.amazon.com/Campus-Survival-Cookbook/dp/0688050301/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238430133&sr=8-1 but electronic with pictures to make it even easier for total newbies to the kitchen might be nice.