Social Media Strategy & Engagement Marketing by Karl Long

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Jun 18, 2006

Content Will Follow The Money

YouTube may be an upstart but it is going to get killed if it doesn’t find a way to compensate the content creators, because the content creators will follow the money in a heartbeat.

The Diet coke + mentos team has made $15,000 from it’s viral video being viewed on revver.com, as reported on PaidContent.org. Why? Because revver has figured out how to monitize viral videos by sticking a one frame ad at the begining of movies it serves and it splits the money with the content creator (update: people that share the movie on their blogs or on myspace also get paid)

Their may not be a big sucking sound yet, but why would people like askaninja and the like give their shit away and drive traffic to youtube, and have to resort to selling t-shirts? Seriously Askaninja, i’m asking, why would you stay with youtube if revver can ply you some cash?

Update: Holy crap, they’re also paying people to share the content, say goodbye youtube, your days are numbered

Revver Pays To Share Viral Content

UPDATE: Not only is there an issue of compensation, but youtube retains quite a few rights over the work that content creators should look at:

Not only does YouTube retain the right to create derivative works, but so do the users, and so too, does YouTube’s successor company. Since YouTube has all the hallmarks of a very shortlived business - it’s burned through $11.5m of venture investment (Sequoia Capital is the fall guy here) and has no revenue channels - this is more pertinent than may appear.

The license that you grant YouTube is worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable. The simplest way to terminate it is by withdrawing your video.

from the register.co.uk - YouTube Owns YourStuff

5 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Kent Nichols

    Because YouTube.com has flash as it’s delivery method. More installed user base. and it’s real easy for our end users to just press play on our site.

    We’re making our money from ads, t-shirts, licensing, and soon premium subscriptions (three day early access).

    When we looked at Revver a while ago it was still a little immature. I’m sure with future projects we’ll look at it again to see if it will serve our needs better.

    Cheers!

    -Kent Nichols, http://askaninja.com

    Jun 18th, 2006

  2. karl long

    Thanks Kent,

    Great point about the flash. I do like the fact that folks are getting paid for creating great content.

    Man, I wish a real ninja had answered my question :-(
    Cheers,

    Karl

    Jun 19th, 2006

  3. Paul Whitakaker

    DUDE…

    AskANinja actually resonded to your question. You are soooo l33t. I can’t believe I know you. Wow, my friend got to talk to a Ninja, that’s saweeeeet!

    Seriously though, that’s pretty cool.

    Jun 19th, 2006

  4. nalts

    Interesting- I was beginning to think I was the only person in the universe that was having trouble with YouTube’s sustainabilty in the “pay for content” era. I love YouTube, but if I were the founders I’d sell that puppy so fast. It will never be worth more than it is now because it’s popular and white hot. Revenue? Well, let’s do the math. They spend about $1 million on hosting/serving a month. Add the 30 plus salaries. Revenue? Chump change from Adsense. It’s probably non trivial because they get so much traffic. But it’s about the ridiculous ad model I’ve seen in a site with that much traffic. I get 2500 people a day to CubeBreak, and I’ve had more interesting offers for advertising than Adsense.

    Jun 21st, 2006

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