Earn money on YouTube

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 stregthening 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.

Update: Thanks to Philipp Lenssen and Tony Ruscoe for posting it on Google Blogoscoped.

Video abundance, Metacafe envisioning quality in it (DLD07 conference)

Metacafe is a video portal, however the mission is more than that: Eyal Hertzog, co-founder of Metacafe, nurtures the “vision to become the highest-quality video destination site on the Internet” At the moment they have 500.000.000 video views per month, and 20.000 new downloads every day. Ant there are numerous uploads as well. No wonder, after all, 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).
How come YouTube seems to be unresponsive? Can they really be that comfortable in the stregthening 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: video ranking is awful, search results are many times unsuable, if you watch a tween peaks spot, say 4/4 you are not offered 4/5 as the next bit, simply the technology is not behind that.

But back to Metacafe, and its future:
Eyal is saying that they definitely expect growth. That is, continue to grow. They are talking to a lot of people in the industry (there have been rumors on Microsoft’s intentions for a Metacafe buy-up, which must have been encouraged by such industry talks). But, according to Eyal, “they wish to grow as an independent company.” They just started the rewarding program 3 months ago (paying for the UGC) and it is thrilling, “there is a huge growth.”

I guess the future is also about developing what metacafe has been unable to offer so far. OK, they are popular and international. But are they also in national languages? Not yet? Can they offer vertically specializing channels like cooking programs, natural films etc. ? Not yet. As Eyal points out, they should have a reply to the needs he calls the ‘interests, tastes, and soap,’ which is the next step once the site has become popular and international, and localized at the same time (localized is the future). So there is ample space to spear ahead into for all video platforms.

Update: on Jan 27 when Chad Hurley announced to start revenue sharing on YoTube.