Category Archives: Revver

advertising, book, Diet Coke, Killer Video, Mentos, Online Video, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Viral Video

YouTube Rival Has Killer App (Advertising Age)

2 Comments

nin.jpgAdvertising Age writer Beth Snyder Bulik called Revver.com a TouTube rival with an model that’s a “kill app.” She describes the $30K profit Steven Voltz and Fritz Grobe made through their infamous “Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment.”

Revver advertisers include Microsoft, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and American Apparel. Larger content creators are contributing to Revver including ZeFrank and Ask a Ninja. The site’s in beta and launches officially in September.

Side note: Mentos bought out the entire inventory of ad space on the popular video. The Coke folks? They sent Voltz and Grobe one t-shirt and a diet Coke cap. Common, Coke. No wonder people are spoofing your approach to online advertising! These guys give you arguably millions in viral advertising and the best you can do is a t-shirt and cap? You guys need a bright, young, energetic online advertising guru to come remind Coke it’s not 1995 anymore.

book, Making Videos, Online Video, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Online Tools, Video Sites, Web 2.0

Marquisdejolie Reviews Pay-For-Content Sites

One of the highest productivity video creators is also the most experimental with various sites and blogs to promote his work. Here’s his comment about some of the pay-for-content sites. To see his blog, click on the link on the right (I have a perpetually link to his video blog.

Revver is king. I’ve made a couple of thousand dollars from it even though it did make me do all the promoting.

Panjea’s damned Flash rips my QuickTime files to shreds. I’m really starting to hate Flash sites.

LuLu wants me to PAY $15 a month to upload on the off chance that I make make $10? That’s Hillbilly math.

eefoof has no embeddable code. How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat? I mean, how am I supposed to promote my videos if I can’t shop them around? And again, WTF is this with the “Does Not Claim Ownership” category?

advertising, BlipTV, book, Online Video, Revver, Video Business, Video Sites, Web 2.0

Wall Street Journal Covers New “Pay for Content” Video Sites

1 Comment

Highlights from a recent Wall Street Journal article on the pay-for-content online video sites…

New Web Sites Pay for Clips
By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
July 12, 2006

In his spare time, Patrick Sell, a 31-year-old marketing analyst, enjoys shooting short videos of well-dressed women strolling along New York City streets, then posting them on the Web. He used to upload his productions — about 180 to date — on the video-sharing phenomenon YouTube, but now prefers a new service called Revver. The reason: Revver pays him.

Revver allows Mr. Sell to pocket a portion of the revenue the site takes in from ads it attaches to his clips — an amount that now earns him about $15 a day. “My issue with YouTube is that even as the producer of the video, I can’t get paid for it,” says the self-styled video auteur, who asks the women for permission to film them and also posts his clips on Idonothingallday.com.

The explosive growth of Internet video is allowing people not only to find an audience for their amateur productions. Now they can actually earn money from them.

  • San Diego-based Eefoof Inc., launched just over a week ago, shares 50% of its profits from text ads and banner ads with users who upload their own online video clips. Shares are distributed based on the number of hits a particular video receives.
  • Recently launched Panjea.com, operated by Aware Media Inc., shares 50% of revenue from the ads appearing on profile pages to which users can upload their own video and audio files. Users can also sell their content via download at a price they set, in which case they earn 85% of the sale.
  • In May, Blip Networks Inc.’s Blip.TV began giving members half of the ad revenue it earns from the still-photograph and video ads that users can have placed at the end of their videos. Revver affixes an ad frame to the end of a video clip and gives the users 50% of the revenue generated when the ad is clicked on, whether the video is accessed from a Web site, shared across instant-messaging services or emailed between friends.
Online Video, Revver, Video Business, Web 2.0, YouTube

Eefoof Compared to YouTube… Like Revver Doesn’t Exist

4 Comments

Interesting that Eefoof — a relatively new site that pays creators for content — is getting billed as a “YouTube competitor.” Check out this CNBC story and this Digg.com post, which raises the question as to whether it will be a YouTube killer. Mashable challenges the business model and calls the site ugly.

I give Eefoof credit for putting together a decent site, and surviving beta mode the best you can. The site has pulled together a forum and is using it to inform content guidelines and advertising approaches. The site has been challenged because the registrations skyrocket after the recent publicity (there were 10K registrants when they did the CNBC story and the forums indicate that 4K registered as a result of this media attention… that’s a significant jump).

I’m a Revver loyalist, but Revver has something to learn from Eefoof’s media attention… Revver is still suffering from one of the worst PR and marketing efforts in the online video space. I won’t name the PR agency, but you know who you are… time for a new account team before you lose the account.

To Revver’s PR Agency: Riding EepyBird’s story and not creating your own news, it’s just lazy PR!

How can Revver be in beta for more than 6 months, and then an upstart like Eefoof can gain media attention, a flood of visitors and a flurry of registrations?

Online Video, Revver, Video Business

IDoNothingAllDay and Revver Get National Coverage

1 Comment

This Wall Street Journal article gave Patrick Sell (creator of Idonothingallday) a dramatic spike in traffic to his website packed with short videos of beautiful women in NYC. Patrick has been doing this for a while, and he’s as humble as they come. Not what you’d expect in a voyeuristic video maker. Good press for Revver too.
Check out his collection: www.Idonothingallday.com.

book, Future of Online Video, Online Video, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Sites, YouTube

Any Theories on Why More Online-Video Sites Aren’t Sharing Revenue With Content Owners?

I’m really perplexed about why more online video sites aren’t sharing revenue with creators. Revver has been around for 6 months or more, even if it hasn’t officially launched yet. If you had asked me in February, I would have told you there would be several imitations and at least one popular site (YouTube, Yahoo, Google) would start paying original content owners.confuseda.jpg

There has not been one person — not even one — that I’ve told about getting paid for my videos that already knew it. And yet almost everyone I know has heard of online videos and YouTube specifically. I did, however, get a funny voicemail from a friend of mine from a big-5 consulting firm a couple weeks ago that said “have you heard of YouTube- you should check it out.”

To ease my puzzled mind, I’m going to draw some theories. I haven’t thought of them yet, but this post will force the issue.

  • Theory 1: These sites are planning it, but it takes a while to implement.
  • Theory 2: People are uploading stuff for the joy of free video sharing. Why start paying them when the market hasn’t demanded it yet?
  • Theory 3: Networks with quality material should be paid, but not amateurs.
  • Theory 4: The income is too marginal yet to attract anyone that’s not an early adopter.
  • Theory 5: Video creators do it for fun not income. They either have day jobs or they make money shooting weddings and corporate videos, and do the rest to entertain themselves and friends.

monkeythrowfeces.jpgI’d ask you to propose additional theories, but I’ve found my loyal fan base is like zoo vititors. You don’t feed the animals. I just flung my feces at those of you reading without commenting.

book, Killer Video, Making Videos, Online Video, popular videos, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Online Tools, Video Sites, Viral Video, Web 2.0, YouTube

Making Money on Your Amateur Videos: Comparing Revenue-Sharing Websites

17 Comments

Now that we’re seeing several online video sites that share revenue with video creators, it’s time for a comparison grid! For now I’m starting with Revver vs. Panjea vs. Eefoof, since they’re the only prominent sites that share revenue. I’ve also included YouTube and Google Video since they’re popular and give us a comparative base on some non-revenue attributes. If I’ve missed a site (and I know I have because there’s one called something like Jeukrurueuz, and I can’t find it) please let me know.

Sorry about the JPEG chart below, but I haven’t figured out how to create a chart using WordPress. I’ll be updating this post (it’s current as of July 8, 2006) so you might want to bookmark it. If you RSS www.WillVideoforFood.com, you’ll know when it gets a major update.

The initial criteria I have included are the following:

  1. Best and worst attributes (example- lots of traffic but won’t accept .mov files)
  2. Revvenue sharing model (per view, per click, etc.). I will soon track how/when they pay.
  3. Ad types (banners, text ads, video ads)
  4. Traffic (this isn’t scientific, but I’ll use Alexa or public Hitwise data later)
  5. Format: Flash or Quicktime (I’ll soon explore video quality more deeply)
  6. Upload-to-live time: (how quickly it’s live after you upload it- very important)

Posts welcome if I’ve missed any good sites that pay content creators, or if you think I haven’t been fair in the ratings.

Note- I’ve excluded sites that are preparing to share revenue but haven’t announced it publicly. If you’re ready (and you know who you are) please let me know.

The Chart:
(to read it on MS Word, click here: Online Video Sites Compared)

videositescompared.jpg

book, Future of Online Video, Online Video, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Sites, Web 2.0, YouTube

Creating the Perfect Online Video Site (Frankenstein Style)

2 Comments

I’m planning on doing a thorough review of the major online video sites, but here’s my first attempt at creating the perfect online video site:perfect-ovs-copy.jpg

  1. It would have the traffic and community of YouTube.
  2. It would have Revver’s advertising-sharing model
  3. It would have Metacafe’s ability to sift the best content
  4. It would have that cute little logo from EyeSpot
  5. It would have amazing indexed search that I haven’t found anywhere
book, Making Videos, Online Video, popular videos, Revver, Video Advertising, Video Business, Viral Video, Web 2.0, YouTube

First Interesting Article on Online Video (in a While)

1 Comment

I’m getting so tired of the hype articles, or the latest story about an instant viral video classic. Finally, here’s an interesting piece.

Source: The Ultimate Middle East Business Resource. Go figure.
On YouTube:

“But this bandwidth is expensive. It’s estimated that bandwidth costs YouTube US$1 million per month. But the investment – YouTube has raised US$11 million in venture capital – is money more than well-spent. YouTube estimates that it could already earn US$10 million a month by putting ads at the start of every video. So far, it hasn’t, because it doesn’t want to alienate viewers. Instead it’s looking for new and creative ways to get advertisers on board.?

On Advertising:

“For advertisers, the beauty of video sharing sites is being able to target highly niche audiences. All videos are tagged with different keywords, from the general “music” “sport” “comedy” to specifics such as “Britney” “golf” “kittens”. Nearly a third of YouTube’s visitors are aged 18-24, a key youth market that is getting harder for marketers to reach.”

Three Lessons:

  • There’s a lot to learn from YouTube. The first lesson is that internet users are desperate for compelling, quirky and entertaining multimedia content. And they are happy to get it in small bites. They may not want to pay for it, but they’ll probably put up with a short TVC or banner ad for the privilege of watching.
  • The second is universality. Anyone, anywhere, on any system – even mobile devices –middle-east.gif download, you don’t need a particular browser or the latest version of Windows. This is going to be a harsh lesson for video sites that try to force users to specific (usually Windows-only) formats. Accessibility is the only way.
  • The third – as NBC has learnt (WVFF editor’s note- poor writer CLEARLY can’t spell), but the RIAA still shuts its eyes to – is not to fear and resist the New Media Revolution, but to embrace it. The internet is here to stay and here to grow. It’s impossible to try and control the machinations of millions of hungry bright minds. If people want to see a video, they’ll find a way to rip it, copy it, encode it. Forget proprietary formats, forget copyright protection – the hackers and crackers will always be ten steps ahead.