Awaiting the Merger of Popular and Profitable Sites

A week ago today I made one of my most annoying videos yet- GoogleHeads. Here's Googlehead on Revver.com. Here's Googlehead on YouTube.com.

I point this out for three reasons:

1. Blatent self promotion
2. So you can see the difference between Flash and Quicktime- quality and speed. For best results click the ad after the Revver version. 🙂
3. Most importantly, note the difference in views. By recent count, more than 13,000 people had viewed it on YouTube. On Revver only 350 (which is actually a pretty good number for Revver considering the low traffic).

Right now it's hard to say what 350 views is worth to me on Revver is but let's say conservatively it's about $4. If YouTube's model had a similar content creators I'd be enjoying a few hundred bucks. However YouTube neither optimizes advertising nor shares it with content contributors.

YouTube apparently fears that inserting ads might upset their "community," so they're mostly running very low-profit syndicated ads from Google Adsense and other sources. Google Adsense is decent way for bloggers and small site owners to make marginal cash (I've made a whooping $50 on Revverberation and CubeBreak since I started). CubeBreak is far more profitable from affiliate income from Revver.

But Adsense is crazy for a site that has been drawing 14.5 million a month. If I were their venture capitalist I'd be pushing for more profitable video ads (maybe 15 second ads every third video), or at least I'd be partnering with a player like Advertising.com or Doubleclick for rich media ads until I built my own salesforce. The YouTube "community" represents 45 percent of the online video viewing so I doubt people would flock away to another site. It's still desirable content for free.

One day the profit-sharing sites and popular sites will merge. And that's when this space will get fun for amateur creators (who can make decent money) and viewers (who can start seeing something more interesting than people rambling about their day on the webcam). Eventually people will lose their appetite for low-budget cheesy stuff like Googlehead, but hopefully not before I've made a lil' cash.