Supplemented by an audio track by the Dixie Chicks, Willey’s self-edited production appeared last week on her channel on YouTube, the video hosting Web site visited by up to 60 million viewers.

“The Internet is a very good resource for people like myself,” says Willey, 27, who has a day job in a hospital and uses video to sell her work and connect with other artists. “You want to put your own little stamp on the world and say ‘Hey, look at me.’ ”

Artists, entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes in Maine are flocking to online video as a form of marketing, networking and just plain self-expression. As technology gets cheaper and access to broadband connections more widespread, the trend will continue, observers say, offering broad opportunities for creative users to carve out a niche for themselves in the online world.

“It’s a way for us to reach a much wider audience at a relatively low cost,” says Gene Landry, executive producer and owner of Persistence Media, a multimedia production company in Portland.

Driving the trend is the proliferation of sites like YouTube, metacafe, ifilm, and others, which offer free hosting of streaming video posted by users. These sites have flourished in an environment where more and more computer users have access to broadband connections capable of handling large amounts of data.

At the same time, the technology for recording and mixing video and audio is getting increasingly affordable.

Willey made her video using a Flip Ultra camera she purchased for $160. She edited the video and soundtrack using MovieMaker, an application that came with her HP laptop.

The video, which runs about 3 minutes and 45 seconds, is one of three that Willey has posted on YouTube since she became a user about six months ago. The two others depict her studio and the production of a commissioned portrait of a pair of newlyweds.

Willey said she went online to get exposure, network with other artists and pick up tips on techniques. The people she really wants to reach are those who own galleries.

“If there are galleries out there nationwide that can see my stuff, they can approach me from seeing my videos on YouTube,” Willey says. No galleries have contacted her yet, but the video has only been up for a month, so she’s still optimistic.

Dave Deschaine also put up video on YouTube recently – in a far different vein. He’s a roofing contractor, and visitors to his channel will find 12 short clips of workers roofing buildings. Most of the video was produced by Time Warner for cable television advertising, but Deschaine said he felt he needed a video presence on the Web, too.

“You seem to remember something better if you see it (on video)” he says. “You can miss a commercial on TV but it’s there whenever you want it online.”

Sugarloaf USA began putting videos online last winter to give visitors updated glimpses of conditions at the western Maine ski resort, says Bill Swain, the company’s communications manager. The clips run from 30 seconds to 1 minute long and feature audio tracks from artists scheduled to appear at concerts on the mountain. Sugarloaf offers the same video on its own Web site but moved them over to YouTube to gain more exposure to potential customers, Swain says.

“Probably like a lot of folks, we’re finding different ways to reach our customers,” he says. “There’s kind of a natural progression to make more use of video.”

Landry, the video producer in Portland, said video hosting sites are opening a broad frontier for people in his business, who were previously dependent on networks as gatekeepers to wide distribution. Now producers can use sites like YouTube...