Vogue magazine is trying something very new. They've created a video series called Model.Live which will debut in August.

Unlike your typical YouTube video production, they've paid incredible money for the 12 eight-minute video episodes. Three million dollars. That works out to over $30,000 for each minute of finished video.

Vogue teamed up with IMG to create this series. And they've found a first sponsor (clothing retailer Express LLC) who payed them just over a million dollars for a guaranteed 83 million views on Bebo.com over three months. We'll all be able to watch the videos on Vogue.TV as well as Veoh.com and hulu.com.

This is going to provide the first big competition for FordModels. FordModels.TV was first out of the gate to produce short video clips and distribute them on YouTube. They are the leading beauty/style channel on YouTube right now. And they have been putting out hundreds of videos at what they say may be less than $200 total production cost per video on YouTube for some time now.

Check out the preview of Model.Live in the video clip below;

See a very interesting summary of this new business model for Vogue at the Wall Street Journal.