Hot on the heels of sites like Revver and Metacafe, Youtube has recently announced that it will attach advertising to user-submitted videos and give their creators a cut of the profits.
Joe Eigo of MultiLevelMovies is one benefactor of the recent pay-for-virals/cut of advertising model that Metacafe employs. Joe Eigo of Toronto has made nearly $26,000 posting his ‘freestyle’ martial arts videos on the Internet (Metacafe), however his main aim was to raise his profile not only on the Internet, but onto TV and into the film industry.
The essential details are scarce: the Youtube revenue sharing system will not be rolled out all at once, but instead will come over the next several months. There’s no word on who would qualify for revenue sharing, or how much that might amount to.
Nevertheless, some believe that the revenue share will be tied to advertising exposure, and will only be available to people who upload videos for which they own the entire copyright.
But they are playing catchup with sites like Revver and Metacafe, whom over the past year have differentiated themselves from YouTube primarily by offering compensation for content creators.
Revver shares “in-stream ad revenue” with users and Metacafe offers “Producer Rewards”, which functions in much the same way. Metacafe manages to set itself apart from YouTube a little bit more by reviewing and filtering content and catering more toward semi-professional video producers.
In my opinion it’s great to see that so many people are benefiting from virals, and they have moved on the from the Flash movies of the early 2000’s to the mash-up, full-blown movies that we see today; not only that – but they are getting paid for it. My only concern is that the spate of viral punch ups, fights and brawls as well as sexual content will be paid the most (well it seems to be very popular with today’s youth), and that would be a very sad thing.
If I had the time, creative output and could convince friends to do it, I would try to have a go at the whole viral scene, and I would – like so many others, go for the whole paid-for-content route – personally I’ve always wanted to make an over-the-top “fight” sequence much like that one in “Police Story 2“, or an out-and-out comedy much like “28 Days Slater” – but that’s a pipe-dream and probably never happen.
I personally enjoy the whole concept of virals, making them, directing them, producing them – it all fascinates me; I wonder how things were done and how things were shot, perhaps this growth of small online virals is the start of something big.
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