Two New Video Sites Pay for Content!

Revver has remained the prevailing platform by which people with video content can share their material (like YouTube) but also get paid based on the quantity of people that view it. The funds are generated through advertising dollars, and split 50/50 between Revver and the owner of the content.

Now Revver has two new potential competitors. Here are some highlights from CNET articles sourced below.
1) Eefoof.com is in beta mode, and will offer revenue via Paypal when an account reaches $25.

• Some other highlights from this CNet article:
• A new video-sharing site is offering videographers a share of the advertising dollars that their movies generate, at a time when most video-sharing sites are just trying to eke out a profit.
• “The authors of Internet content should be paid for their work and not have it exploited for others’ gain,” said a note posted Monday at eefoof.com, a site that is still in test mode. “We will send you a percentage of our site revenue via an electronic transfer each month, depending on how well your content has performed.”
• More than 150 such companies are trying to figure out how to make money by hosting homemade movies on the Web. (Do you suppose they count my CubeBreak.com in that figure? Cuz I aint figuring it out).
• The offer goes like this: Once a month the company tallies the number of page views for each submission. The company then looks at overall traffic and calculates what percentage of the page views was generated by each submission. Ad revenue is divided accordingly.

2) Panjea: This site offers content owners to both benefit from ad revenue and sell content (audio and video) according to this recent CNET Blog Web 2.0 article. In an interesting move, Panjea also offers viewers “points” for simply browsing.

• CEO of Panjea, Seth Alsbury, told CNet Author Rafe Needleman that his company offers a more robust content economy than the other services. Panjea pays its users for content in two ways: First, it operates an online store where content creators can sell downloads of the audio and video files (and eventually, tickets to events). Second, Panjea gives users a cut of advertising revenues. And not just from ads in the videos, like most other video sharing sites; Panjea also cuts its content-creating users in on ad revenues from their static Web content (like their profile pages).
• To keep users on the site, Panjea also awards “points” for just browsing. These points can be used like money on Panjea to purchase content from other members.
• From a business perspective, for Panjea itself as well as the artists on the site, it all depends on winning over the advertisers. Panjea is running Google AdWords on its member pages, which is a good way for the company to kickstart the advertising revenues. The video and audio advertising strategy has yet to reveal itself.
• But Needleman still think artists should take a portfolio approach to community sites, and put their content on a bunch of them (YouTube, MySpace, iMeem, etc). You never know where the fans are going to end up.

Bottom line: It’s worth experimenting with the various models since most don’t yet require exclusivity of content. But don’t forget the non-paying sites are currently more popular, so they’re a good forum for “teasing” and “promoting” people to your Revver, Panjea, Eefoof or other pay-for-content site.

Now that there are several of these sites, I will conduct some experiments with some of my content and report back asap.