Sunday, January 11, 2009

Get Rich on YouTube?

"YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money," according to last month's New York Times headline:

Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living. One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site.
It ain't necessarily so, says the Los Angeles Times:

YouTube video creators make money, but not a fortune. In the year since Google's preeminent video service launched its ad-revenue-sharing program with partner users, some have turned amateur video production into a full-time job. But not everyone is having the five-figure-per-month success of Michael Buckley, host of the WhatTheBuckShow, who was profiled by the New York Times.
Why the discrepancy? Apparently YouTubers sign agreements with Google preventing them from publically disclosing advertising income. Google cleared certain partners to disclose financial earnings for the New York Times story -- obviously, the most successful ones.

The big question, we're almost afraid to ask, is how does the quality of video content correlate to number of viewers and, hence, ad revenues?

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