So you want to build a video sharing network? Of course you do. Fortunately, it's really easy to launch an awesome and successful video-sharing site these days. A highly placed but necessarily anonymous Internet superstar shares with us the ultimate plan for video fortune. Just follow these 20 simple steps, and you'll be kitting out your own fleet of Gulfstreams in no time.

Step 1. Never forget: If Xeni Jardin uploads videos of herself to Boing Boing with the logo of your company next to the "play" button, you're going to be rich.

Step 2. Ensure that company founders have cocaine problems or eating disorders. You want them to look like they're going to drop dead at any moment. This will help you sign up advertisers.

Step 3. If and when Xeni Jardin videos are only downloaded 300+ times despite being put on a website that claims 2.2 million subscribers, start promoting your open source policies. This is deeply compelling information for the average watcher of web videos.

Step 4. Mention that you run Ubuntu on a Mac. That way everyone will understand up front that you have no idea what the hell you're doing with technology. It will also prepare your "partners" for massive difficulty in opening your email attachments.

Step 5. If your license agreement is incompatible with Creative Commons and potentially puts the entire movement at risk, make sure you do nothing about it.

Step 6. CONNECT! Hire a skanky, 29-year-old ex-raver chick to be the face of your company. This will help you sign up advertisers.

Step 7. Rush your product out of beta in order to raise additional venture cap funding. Spend the money on booze, blow, and a party.

Step 8. Have the ship party first, then ship your product late — preferably while the face of your company is partying at Burning Man. Bonus points if she accidentally uploads Burning Man pictures to the company blog.

Step 9. Ensure that your 1.0 product has fewer publisher features than the beta.

Step 10. Keep your beta product up; that way you get stuck maintaining both.

Step 11. Now rewrite your beta product and release it as open source. This will, uh, help draw attention to your, uh, completely different 1.0 product.

Step 12. Widgets, widgets, widgets.

Step 13. Make sure your website and video player are as ugly and invasive as possible.

Step 14. Get rid of two out of three company founders.

Step 15. Ensure that the remaining company founder retains an email address promoting a previously-failed venture.

Step 16. Manipulate someone in Hollywood into getting you an Emmy nomination despite the fact that you cannot serve a 30-second video without a noticeable glitch at the end.

Step 17. Fail to win the Emmy.

Step 18. Manipulate SXSW into having company employees moderate seminars without disclosing their company affiliation.

Step 19. Never forget: accurate metrics are of no value to advertisers or show producers. "Approximately 400,000" gets you into BusinessWeek every time; pesky facts only screw that up.

Step 20. If Ze Frank is using your service to host his program, make sure he does not appear anywhere on your home page. That space is much better used to promote upskirt videos or your deep belief in open source.

Once you write enough blog posts, and read far too many blog posts, you acquire an instinctive sense for the principle ingredients of an audience-pleasing offering. However, rather than itemize those ingredients, it's far easier to discuss this magical formula in terms of the instinctive emotional responses you hope to conjure in readers. The broadest of those responses are indignation, titillation, stimulation, and affirmation. Hitting any of the buttons is good. Ideally, you pack as many of those responses as possible into your content, even (and sometimes especially) if they're contradictory. Hitting the sweet spot in the center of all four virtually guarantees bloggy nirvana. In honor of indefatigable Silicon Valley guru Tony Robbins, after the jump, you may explore these four spheres and their subspecies by way of a soothingly hued Venn diagram.