Over a year and a half ago, YouTube launched a new Partner Program that allowed some of its most prolific and popular content owners to make some money from the content they contributed, inviting them to get a revenue share of ads placed against their videos. This was all well and good for YouTube’s cream of the crop, but let’s be honest — most of us don’t contribute all that regularly, and the vast majority of our videos don’t become popular, which means we couldn’t get into the program. What’s worse, even when one of your videos suddenly did go viral, if you weren’t already in the program there wasn’t anything you could do to reap the benefits. Today, that changes: YouTube is launching a new addition to its Partnership Program that will give anyone the chance to make some money when lightning strikes, even if it’s the first video they’ve ever uploaded.
Here’s how it works: YouTube will be monitoring its site for videos that quickly go viral, and will then reach out to the content uploader with an Email invitation to “Enable Revenue Sharing” on that video. If you choose to enable the feature, then YouTube will place ads against the video and will give you a cut, which gets paid into your Google AdSense account. YouTube’s criteria for joining the program are vague — the site plans to look at the number of views a video gets, its virality, and compliance with the site’s Terms of Service, but it has offered no concrete numbers.
YouTube says that participants in the new program won’t get all the benefits of the normal Partner Program (you won’t be able to choose other videos you’d like to monetize, for example), so it encourages users to apply for the program here.
Tom Pickett, Director of Online Sales and Operations at YouTube, said on a conference call today that the move is meant to help expand the reach of the site’s partner program. The company will address not just new viral videos, but also videos on the site that have never been monetized but are extremely popular (Pickett says that many viral videos have quite lengthly lifespans — once you’re popular, you can stay popular for years). Pickett says that the company expects to “increase the number of partners dramatically” up into the tens of thousands of partners (up from “thousands). The revenue share will be the same as what applies to the general Partnership Program, with the majority of the revenue going to the content contributor.
YouTube spokesman Aaron Zamost says that advertisers have actually been requesting a feature like this for a while, as there have been a number of user-uploaded videos that were not being monetized at all, and in turn couldn’t have ads placed against them. Now, provided the content unloader decides to join the program, these advertisers will be able to take advantage of these viral videos.
Oh really now? Why did YouTube snub me for the partner program and have some hokey doke mess to say about something my account was not in good standing about in the past, and hold it against me? Aren’t people supposed to forgive and move on?
Now’s your chance Star Wars Kid. You little fatty.
One little problem is that a lot of those hidden viral videos may contain copyrighted material, etc. A good deal of them are music videos and obviously they can’t monetize those, not legally at least.
I like this new program, but relevancy in advertising is what is going to determine the size of the new partner AdSense accounts.
amazing news, didn’t expect to pull this one out.
didn’t expect them to pull this one out*
metacafe has been doing this for years…
Coolio.
Ya dig?
remains to be seen whether any of this content will actually garner decent advertising – but assuming YT is able to sell enough agencies – this is a great idea.
Cool!
So they’ll turn on revenue sharing *after* the video has gone viral? Does that mean Youtube keeps the revenue off the first, say, million hits and lets me in for the final 100,000?
Seems like a pittance if that’s the case.
You missed the part of the article that explains why they’re doing this, which is that they can’t place ads against your video until you sign up. No money gets made until you sign up, at which point you get your cut.
Do you have to be the originator of the content? Seems like when there’s a viral video, there’s about 20 people with the same video or some variation of it and all getting a lot of hits. What are the criteria?
Youtube should let you claim ownership of all copies of your videos that are uploaded by others. And this should be automatic. And someone uploading someone elses content without consent should get his Google account banned forever and be liable to pay immediate fine under an international copyright infringement law.
Google acquiring YouTube has killed off innovation in online video entirely. They are pushing incremental tweaks. No one else can innovate since the views are all at YouTube, thanks to the rich uncle for the free bandwidth.
I find it really disgusting that YouTube is doing so little and so slow to increase monetization on the site.
Google doesn’t care enough cause they probably think they are making enough money as it is.
THOUSANDS only content makers on this planet are able to monetize their online videos.
FEW ONLY can monetize blogs enough to make a living doing it.
Google needs to wake up and start figuring that they have a responsibility to do much more than they currently are. Just because Google is monetizing much more already than anyone else, they feel this is a global market capitalism and that they shouldn’t be required to increase their revenues and improve.
The fact is Google has the responsibility to make things better for all online content producers.
Youtube needs to provide an “Enable Revenue Sharing” FOR ALL YOUTUBE ACCOUNTS, on all videos, NOW.
Google may check people’s ID, they may control video and audio contents monetized through detailed analog and digital fingerprint detection technologies based on having digitized all available copyrighted contents.
Just like Google allows anyone monetize websites using Adsense, they need to allow anyone monetize videos on Youtube NOW.
Oh good so Butters will finally get some internet money.
I don’t know if you meant “Brookers” but she is already part of the YouTube program.
no no
http://www.sout...om/clips/165192
It’s nice to see Youtube’s revenue program starting to trickle down to the average video uploader, which happens to me most of their user base. The auto-notification is a nice idea, but they should just enable the affiliate program to anyone who wants to sign up like adsense or anything else out there.
Exactly. Google needs to make Youtube Revenue Sharing LIKE ADSENSE NOW.
Anything else is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Thats way cool. Youtube is usually on top of their game!
RT
http://www.anonymity.se.tc
This is good news but I’m wondering what the average cpm rates are like and how much videos like Evolution of Dance (124million views) have made and continue to make.
How much top subscribed channels can earn a month/peer video? It obviously depends how much videos you upload during that month … Is it good money?
I believe you could make $15 per 1000 views. Which can be huge for people like me uploading hundreds of videos and having millions of views on them.
A million video views on Youtube = $15′000 dollars.
Of course, all should depend on how well Google can match up advertisers with the contents on Youtube. But I believe advertisers could make money advertising on any type of video, even user generated content.
It makes no sense to say that it isn’t possible to sell a song when that song is played on a user generated video. As if “pro” productions have a monopoly on what may or may not be monetized.
About time YouTube made the change to help uploaders make a little more pocket change.
Not bad but no Cigar!
It’s a joke to me. Youtube determines what’s funny or worthwhile instead of letting the people decide. This is a slap in the face of Real Youtube people who made YOUTUBE. What happened to the old rating system?
Well now we can add FRED as a millioniare, yeah that annoying guy that acts like a kid.
This is a good new!
This could be helpful for some people who go viral with 1 great video.
Esta es una oportunidad de Negocios, que hay que aprovechar. Esperemos que se pueda expandir para el resto de paises.
Saludos
I’m a youtube partner. I dont have big viral videos but I do get 1,000s of video views a day. Well I just started getting a lot of views after that kanye west tayler swift thing. Looks like this will be a good month for me.
I have a video uploaded, with around 82,000 views so far, They sent me this revenue sharing message. But the video i uploaded is not mine, but a wrestling one. So DAM i cant make no money.