By JULIE CRESWELL


In their star turns in James Bond movies, Ursula Andress and Halle Berry perfected the art of emerging from an ocean swim and walking onto the beach in a dripping-wet bikini.

For everyone else? Not so easy. But there are some tricks for aspiring Bond girls, and they involve, among other things, waterproof mascara, Vaseline and double-sided tape. There are some finer points, too, to pull off such a feat, and words can’t quite convey their subtleties.

Sometimes it’s easier to learn from a video.

That notion led a handful of Google and YouTube veterans to start Howcast. com, and jump into the fast-growing crowd of Web sites offering how-to content.

Certainly the demand is there. People like to watch videos, and, in a bad economy, the ranks of do-it-yourselfers are swelling. Already, Howcast has 100,000 videos in its library, some that it has produced itself and many more from others like Playboy, Popular Science, Home Depot and the Ford modeling agency that share in the ad revenue.

The site offers instruction on a range of topics, from everyday issues - fixing a leaky faucet, creating a living will - to the more obscure, like how to survive a bear attack.

Given the ease of posting on sites like YouTube, it takes more than a bunch of short clips to succeed. Part of the trick to winning on the Web is having a distinct personality.

“They understand that video is an incredible medium to share and instruct,” says David Eun, a Google executive who oversees strategic partnerships. “But they also realize that they can use video to provide instruction in an environment that is entertaining, not dry.”

One of the biggest challenges for a site like Howcast is the same one that has vexed old-school media giants and survivors of the dot-com boom: How can content creators turn a profit on the Web?

Howcast’s solution is to partner with advertisers and create instructional videos for their specific products or services.

Blurring the lines between editorial and advertising is a tricky endeavor, of course. But Howcast’s team of young executives argue that they can tapdance along that fine line by making sure that any branding effort is in a supporting role, rather than a starring one, in its instructional videos.

They are even forging relationships with the State Department as it looks for ways to use social networks and other media to communicate directly with people around the world. Among the videos they’ve produced for it are “How to Protest Without Violence” and “How to Launch a Human Rights Blog.”

The videos produced by Howcast follow a set format, using quirky music, graphics and voice-overs, which make them easier to translate into different languages.

Last year, the food company Nestle noticed a peculiar spike in complaints from consumers in a Middle Eastern country about the taste of one of its products, the instant coffee Nescafe Gold.

The company discovered that people in that country - Nescafe wouldn’t say which one - didn’t understand how to make its instant coffee. They were making it like traditional ground coffee, said Rakan Brahedni, a newmedia relationship specialist for Nestle in Dubai.

Mr. Brahedni was already in discussions with the start-up to add videos to Nestle’s Web site. So Howcast quickly produced a video showing how to make Nescafe Gold. The graphics, subtitles and voice-over were done in both English and Arabic.

To help viewers navigate through the 100,000 videos on its site, Howcast divides them into 25 broad categories - such as technology, travel and food and drink - and then divides those into smaller segments.

Viewers can rate the videos (a video teaching how to pick a lock rates disturbingly high). Videos on sex and relationships are among the most watched at the Howcast site. No. 1 is “How to Have Sex in a Car,” followed by “How to Use Twitter” and “How to Kiss Like Angelina Jolie.”

Jason Liebman, 33, Howcast’s chief executive, seems somewhat embarrassed about this playlist. He prefers to talk about the Howcast videos that are the most popular across all the sites that distribute the company’s content, including “How to Quit Smoking” and “How to Do the Moonwalk.”

Mr. Liebman is projecting that Howcast could be profitable by late next year. If he’s right, the company could become the star of a new instructional video: “How to Create a Profitable Start-Up.”


The making of a video on choosing the right sunscreen lotion, for Howcast.