YouTube Video Producers Making Good Money
By Anna Johnson on December 16th, 2008Last year YouTube invited video producers to become ‘partners’ and share in advertising revenues. The New York Times reports that various YouTube video producers are now making 6-figure incomes from running their videos on YouTube and making money through the partner program.
Essentially YouTube’s partner program allows Google to place advertisements within and around the videos of its partners, in return for splitting the advertising revenue.
An example of a video producer who has turned this into a full-time income is Michael Buckley. Mr Buckley hosts a celebrity chat show on YouTube.
Another example is Cory Williams – known as ‘smpfilms’ on YouTube – who counts about 180,000 subscribers to his videos, and earns $17,000 to $20,000 a month via YouTube.
Indicating the scope of opportunities available to YouTube video producers, just half of Mr Williams’ income derives from YouTube’s advertisements. The other half comes from sponsorships and product placements within Williams’ videos.
Currently only about 3 percent of the videos on YouTube are supported by advertising, but Google presumably sees this percentage growing as more YouTube video contributors – and advertisers – embrace the partner program.
Of course, to earn significant ad (or sponsorship) revenue, YouTube video producers still need to do what all ad supported content producers must do, whatever the medium: deliver compelling content to consistently attract audiences.
That’s no small feat, but it does seem, at least, that there’s advertising income to be made running videos on YouTube.
Source: Brian Stelter, “YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money,” The New York Times, December 10, 2008
