Monday, January 29, 2007

YouTube Sharing Revenue With Users
By Anna Sebestyén

Goo(g)d news. Soon you will start generating money on YouTube.

How soon? We don’t know. But Chad Hurley announced at World Economic Forum, Davos on 27 Jan that they would reward users for self-generated content, saying “We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users.”

The idea is great, and I think it is a strong response to video sharing site Metacafé’s challenge, where revenue sharing already started 3 months ago. Eyal Herzog, co-founder talked about it Digital Life Design conference (DLD07) on Jan 22, so it was only 5 days ago that I aired my criticism “How come YouTube seems to be unresponsive? Can they really be that comfortable in the strengthening competition? Lots of national video sites are mushrooming suddenly. Not only is GooTube lagging behind in building communities, and financially rewarding producers, it is also painfully low-performer regarding technology.”

Of course, it may have been originally timed to be announced at Davos forum, but it may also have been that many of the people at DLD07 in Munich also participated in Davos, and realized that Metacafé is very competitive, and is threatening to take away those precious eyeballs (already boasting 500.000.000 video downloads a month!)

How are they going to define self-generated? What will be the business model?

Will they copy Metacafé in the CPM based earnings? (5 USD/ thousand views) or will it be a more complex calculation including (on top of CPM or CPC)

• viral effect: loads of inbound links from other blogs, and web pages
• number of comments
• number of video responses
• number of shares (CPA)
• number of times favorited
• number of subscriptions, or the monthly growth on it

There are several factors that could be included potentially. How to make it simple?

Metacafé simplified it in the following way:

Producers get 5 USD/ CPM (a thousand views) if the total number of views go over 20.000 (Are you a producer? Just log in, and see how much you have earned.
(Eyal Hertzog)

For YouTube, the good news is that Google AdSense payment model makes it easier to switch into the new business model and send money to content providers. Or even better, that they can count on the excellent technology of YouTube, (pardon my French) Google.

PS: the top earner on Metacafé, is not a simple user but a company: Reel Stunts Action Team, with several candidate films, but only one that generated all that 25.000 USD.

YouTube Sharing Revenue W ... by Anna Sebestyén | Comments (4)

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