How much it costs to build your own video site
Four bills, none of them large on its own. The one that grows is streaming, and it grows with your audience.
By The Generated Worlds editors · Published · Updated
For a small AI-drama studio, expect roughly $35–$80 per month before anybody watches: $10–$20 a year for a domain, $20–$40 a month for website hosting, $0–$25 a month for a database and accounts, and about $15 a month to keep fifty hours of finished drama online at $5 per 1,000 minutes stored. Delivery is charged separately at about $1 per 1,000 minutes watched, so the bill grows with the audience rather than with the catalogue.
How publishing on GW works
GW publishing facts reviewed 2026-10-10. Platform comparisons below keep their own source-check dates.
- Free publishing on GW
- The free Creator plan supports 1 new series a month, up to 100 episodes each. A paid studio site is optional.
- Your independent studio site
- Launch your own branded streaming site on Starter for $39 a month. Starter supports 3 new series a month. Publishing on GW and launching this site are separate steps.
- Review
- Episodes publish on GW as soon as they upload. GW reserves the right to take down any content, or suspend an account, that doesn't pass its review or the Community Guidelines. All published work remains subject to content and rights rules.
- Paid episodes
- Creators choose which episodes are free or paid. GW sets paid episodes at 10 tokens. The standard creator allocation is 80% of net episode revenue after processing; payouts start at $25. This is separate from brand-deal fees.
- Discovery and returning viewers
- Viewers can discover your work on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and GW. Send interested viewers to a recognizable series or studio destination where they can return for the story.
This page is about running costs for a site you build and own. It excludes the one-time cost of designing and building it.
Typical costs
| Component | Estimated cost |
|---|---|
| Domain | $10–$20/year |
| Website hosting | $20–$40/month |
| Database/accounts | $0–$25/month |
| Video storage | $5 per 1,000 minutes kept online (~$15 for fifty hours) |
| Video streaming | $1 per 1,000 minutes watched |
| Starting total, before anybody watches | $35–$80/month |
How video is priced
Video is billed by the minute, in two parts: the minutes you keep online, and the minutes people watch. As an example of typical pricing:
- Store 1,000 minutes of video: $5/month
- Deliver 1,000 watched minutes: $1
- Encoding and bandwidth are included
So if you have 50 hours of finished dramas, storage is only about $15 a month. The bigger expense comes when people watch, not from keeping the videos online.
What it costs as your audience grows
So your approximate monthly cost might be:
| Audience usage | Video cost | Total site cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 viewers × 10 minutes | $10 | $45–$90 |
| 10,000 viewers × 20 minutes | $200 | $235–$280 |
| 50,000 viewers × 30 minutes | $1,500 | $1,535–$1,580 |
The pattern matters more than the exact figures: the part of the bill that scales is the watching. A series that finds an audience raises your costs on the same day it raises your revenue, which is why what you charge and what you pay are worth planning together.
What the budget above leaves out
- Designing and building the site itself, which is a one-time cost, and the time to keep it running afterwards.
- Taking money: a payment provider takes a percentage and a fixed fee per charge, and somebody has to build the checkout, the accounts and the rules about what each viewer may watch.
- The work around the video: encoding settings, subtitles, thumbnails and keeping links alive.
Or skip the build
A Generated Worlds studio site includes the pages, hosting, streaming, viewer accounts and per-episode payments, so none of the lines above are yours to run. Publishing episodes is free and 80% of net revenue is allocated to you; the site is from $39 a month, with an allowance of minutes watched on the site included in each plan.
Common questions
How much does it cost to run your own video site?
Roughly $35–$80 a month before anybody watches: $10–$20 a year for a domain, $20–$40 a month for website hosting, $0–$25 a month for a database and accounts, and about $15 a month to keep fifty hours of drama online. Streaming is charged on top, at about $1 per 1,000 minutes watched.
What is the most expensive part?
Streaming. Storing 50 hours of finished dramas is about $15 a month, but every minute watched is billed: 50,000 viewers watching 30 minutes each is about $1,500 a month in video cost alone.
Does that include building the site?
No. These are running costs only. Designing and building the site is a separate one-time cost, as is the work of keeping it running.
Is it cheaper to use a platform?
At a small audience the difference is small either way. What a platform changes is what you have to run: on a Generated Worlds studio site, hosting, streaming, viewer accounts and payments are included, the site is from $39 a month, and publishing is free with 80% of net revenue allocated to you.
Keep reading
Publish here
Publishing is free: open your studio and upload your drama, and it is live on Generated Worlds right away with its own page and link. 80% of net revenue from viewer unlocks is allocated to you. When you want your own streaming site, launch your studio site on Starter for$39 a month.
Want the terms in full first? How publishing on Generated Worlds works