Here’s an intriguing monetization prospect for content-driven websites, e.g. blogs: iAmplify is a startup online training-video clearinghouse that’s offering distribution channels for selling video content, with sizable revenue-sharing for publishers who host their ads:

Say you run a yoga website. You can pick from a variety of yoga videos on iAmplify’s site. If one of your readers buys, you get 20%. If you blog about gambling and happen to sell poker star Phil Hellmuth’s course on how to play poker in 46 short video lessons, you’ll get $30, your cut of the $150 price. It takes a lot of AdSense hits to equal that.

Or if you have a faith-oriented website, perhaps you’ll sell a subscription to Marianne Williamson’s weekly lecture series, which goes for $20 per month. That’s $4 monthly for you.

Depending on the presentation — I assume they’re a mix of text ads and Flash teasers — this could indeed be pretty lucrative. I know much of the traffic on this blog comes from searches for specific topic-oriented research; and much as AdSense links here attract a fair amount of clickthrus, I’d imagine dynamic links for video would pull in continuation surfing.

The X factor is how determined those searches are: Will they lead to actual purchases of those video pitches? I do know that the market for instructional videos has blossomed via the Web, so this play could be riding just the right trend. The publishing background of iAmplify’s decisionmakers also gives me cause to be cautiously optimistic.

Wonder if they’ll accept blog applications… Could be seeing a new ad widget in the sidebar here pretty soon!