YouTube’s First Public Statement About Earning Potential for Creators

by Nalts on December 11, 2007

YouTube is expanding the once-selective* “Partners” program so that more video contributors can monetize their work. We’ve already seen the “requirements”* drop so that amateurs with fewer views have been invited to join in recent weeks. YouTube released this in a press release (and its blog), and the most interesting statement concerned the potential revenue possible for creators that have wildly popular videos (see last bullet).

  • These original content creators will now have the chance to reap rewards from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube’s other professional content partners. Is that to imply that Nalts is not just an original content creator but a “professional content partner”? Because I object to that label.
  • Earlier this year, the YouTube Partner Program began rewarding our most popular and prolific original content creators within the YouTube community by allowing them to earn money from their videos. Users eligible for the partner program have built a significant audience on YouTube (as measured by video views, subscribers, etc.) and consistently complied with the YouTube Terms of Use.
  • Now, anyone living in the US or Canada can apply to become a partner at youtube.com/partners. Partners decide which of their videos they would like to generate revenue on YouTube, and in turn, receive a portion of the revenue generated from ads that run next to those videos.
  • The YouTube Partner Program also benefits marketers. By building out our partner program, we are expanding both the quality and scope of video content available to marketers. As more and more individual content creators enroll in the program, advertisers are now capable of reaching more qualified consumers by targeting their campaigns to user-generated partner videos tailored to the unique interests and tastes of their target audiences.
  • This program will continue to grow in the coming months to several hundred user partners, and will encourage marketers to include YouTube as part of their marketing mix. 
  • Those partners who are regularly producing videos with over 1M views are earning several thousand dollars per month.

Note: I’m confused about this last one, and it’s the first time YouTube has posted any public number on the earnings. Does this mean a total of one million views per month, or several videos a month that EACH total to one million (the latter excludes most of us). I post almost a video per day with an average of about 20-30K views per video. So that’s close to a million views a month. Does that mean I’ll some day get “several thousand dollars per month”?

* Putting asterics around these disputable statements- see first comment from Marquis for some interesting criticism of this program, which appears to many as arbitrary. Certainly I wouldn’t want to be part of a club with such poor judgement as to have ME as a member.

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