The site’s approach mimcs an idea first pioneered by Louis CK a year ago, when the comedian sold a DRM-free download of one of his live sets for $5 online

The new offering, dubbed Chill Direct, is a self-serve marketplace, meaning that anyone can sign up within minutes. The site offers creators the option to determine their own price for their videos, and charge anywhere from $1.99 to $49.99. Seventy percent of that revenue is handed to the creator, and Chill retains 30 percent, which cover the fees for payment services as well as hosting.

Chill’s new self-serve marketplace.

Chill is launching its new offering with eight titles including the documentary film Thank you for judging by Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie as well as a previously-unreleased comedy special by Maria Bamford.

Louis CK was one of the first prominent entertainers to try his luck with digital direct-to-fan sales late last year, and fans rewarded him with $1 million in revenue in just 12 days. Since then, others have joined in as well: Comedian Aziz Ansari, known for his role in the NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation, started selling a standup special of his own in March. Ansari’s online efforts were powered by VHX.tv, which also has been moving from video curation to direct-to-fan distribution. VHX has since also powered digital sales of Indie Game: The Movie, and this week started distributing the grindhouse classic Miami Connection.

However, there are some differences between VHX’s and Chill’s approach: VHX has been a lot more selective about the creators it powers with, and is also putting an emphasis on selling goods on artist’s own sites. Chill, on the other hand, wants to use its own website as a central hub, and is giving everyone the ability to sign up from the very beginning. “I believe in the idea of self-service,” said Norgard.

This isn’t the first time Chill has tried something new: The company launched in August 2011 as a kind of Turntable.fm for video. It refocused on social experiences around live streams shortly after, and tried to provide group viewing for content from sites like Hulu.com by the end of 2011. In January, it finally moved to its social video curation model. Norgard told me that social video curation won’t go away any time soon, and that both offerings might be more closely integrated in the future.

Check out an interview I did with Norgard a few months ago:

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Chill launched topical collections of videos last week, allowing users to become curators around a certain topic, and co-founder Brian Norgard told me during a meeting in Los Angeles a few days ago that traffic has gone through the roof ever since.

Check out my interview with Norgard below:

Norgard told me that The Ultimate Steve Jobs Collection has been particularly popular; but the site has also seen a lot of long-tail activity for video collections around subjects like track and field or underwater cinematography that are curated by people devoted to the subject. “Everyone is an expert in something,” said Norgard.

Chill raised a $1.5 million round of funding last September. The company currently employs nine people and is located in West Hollywood.

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Chill founder Brian Norgard likened it to the way people interact with content on media-focused social networking sites like Path and Instagram, telling me during a phone call Wednesday: “There isn’t a great networking approach to video.”

The new Chill.com.

Chill has been going through several product iterations since its launch last August: The site started off as a Turntable.fm-like platform that allowed users to curate video playlists in real time, went on to focus on live streaming and eventually brought in content from Hulu.com to allow users to watch their favorite TV shows together in a group setting. Norgard admitted Wednesday that his team may have underestimated the challenges with this model: “To do that kind of scheduled programming around archived content – it’s just hard,” he told me, adding that synchronous interaction around video content may still be a few years away.

The new Chill.com takes some of the social aspects of its old model, but without the need to be watching the same content at the same time. Users are for example being notified if one of their friends watches a video they posted or reshared and have the option to chat with them about the clip – something Norgard called “hyper-addictive.”

Norgard told me that his team hasn’t made a decision yet on the future of its chat rooms, but admitted that the new site was “a major shift in focus.” Chill wants to now see how users react to the new service, and may work on mobile or connected TV apps to bring it to other platforms later.

Of course, Chill isn’t alone in the aggregation space. Apps like Fanhattan and Squrl have been trying to establish themselves as leaders in the social curation and discovery space, and YouTube has been moving towards a more social approach as well with its most recent relaunch that includes a Facebook-like news feed.

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