What Has YouTube Done for You Lately?
Are you making money off the videos you post online?
In my “How Nerdy Are You?” post of August 25th, I linked to Weird Al’s “White & Nerdy” music video. You’ll notice that I didn’t link to a copy of it on YouTube.
For one thing, on YouTube, it is frequently not the original artist who has uploaded their video. In many cases, the videos you see on YouTube are no doubt infringing upon the original artists’ copyrights. Recently, Prince announced his intention to sue YouTube.
For another thing, the artist doesn’t make any money off of their YouTube videos. By contrast, everytime you watch the Weird Al video, Weird Al is seeing some change go into his pocket.
Revver, the site where Weird Al chose to upload his videos, pays the artist for each video view, because of the ads that run as part of the video. As of this past Thursday, they have paid out $1 million to their artists.
How much have you earned from your YouTube videos?
Blogger Justine of Tasty Blog Snack (one of the blogs you’ll find on Blogs O’Plenty) made $5,000, according to a report in USA Today.
Those Mentos/Diet Coke guys you’ve seen on TV made $50,000, according to the same report.
Blendtec made $15,000 from their “Will It Blend?” videos, one of which I linked to in my “iPhone Powder” post of July 16th. Guess they more than covered their costs for the iPhone, no? Wonder if they got their $100 rebate?
In the USA Today report, “Posters reap cash rewards at video-sharing site Revver,” you’ll see that some of these artists put their videos on both YouTube and Revver. YouTube gives them exposure, while Revver gives them money.
You’ll note that Blendtec pulls a triple whammy. They used YouTube to build an audience, but if you look on their own website, the embedded videos are at Revver, not YouTube. Additionally, the videos are designed to promote their blender. So, whether you watch the video on their site or buy a blender, they are making money.
If you create your own original videos and post them online, leverage the audience of YouTube and the payouts of Revver to maximize your potential with your videos. Even if you don’t have a product to sell, you can still leverage the two sites to earn some income from advertising.
That’s another great way to make money. Just like taking photos and selling them to photo sites.
Wow–I didn’t know about Revver. I’ll definitely be using them now for links.
Thanks for the info on Revver.
If it’s good enough for “Weird Al”, it’s good enough for me. Although I don’t personally have any videos to put on Revver (yet), there are some on there that are directly connected to the blog that I co-author.
[...] & Video If you can produce audio and/or video content, do it! Consider using Revver instead of YouTube for videos. To maximize exposure, you could post a teaser video on YouTube, [...]