how are you making money with web videos

S

steev'sHVX

Well-known member
ive been looking for some extra income and decided to look into online videos. From my research the only way is to have video blogs or have a video go viral. what I don't understand is who pays you? advertisers? if I have a viral or video blog on YouTube how can I set myself up to get paid?
 
i've always been under the impression that if your video is truly "viral" then people will contact you and opportunities will come....either that or once you're a million hits in and growing then you have a good amount of leverage to approach companies and make whatever pitch you have in mind.

to me, this is viral: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk

he didnt have to set himself up to get paid. he uploaded his video, it took off and his phone started ringing. boom.
 
Are you talking about making money off something you post? Or making money after you post something by having people contact you to make stuff for them?

If the latter, make some commercial parodies or something, or a commercial for a fictitious product. I made a commercial for a fictitious real estate company and posted it on YouTube. After messing with the keywords for a month to finally get it seen, I was asked to re-do it for a number of realtors... for which they paid me.
 
DigitalBard said:
Are you talking about making money off something you post? Or making money after you post something by having people contact you to make stuff for them?

If the latter, make some commercial parodies or something, or a commercial for a fictitious product. I made a commercial for a fictitious real estate company and posted it on YouTube. After messing with the keywords for a month to finally get it seen, I was asked to re-do it for a number of realtors... for which they paid me.
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Can we see what you did? I have always wanted something like that done but just not sure how to go about making something factitious.

thx
 
I shot some ENG style footage of some flooding in our area, uploaded it to YouTube and had a couple of thousand hits in about a day. YouTube sent me an email to have the video considered for their revenue sharing program and I ended up submitting it. Google puts pretty ugly ads across the bottom of the video and I get a small amount of money every time they're clicked. It's made $3.85 from 1831 impressions since it was accepted into the program in January. Living the dream, baby, time to retire!
 
AndrewGentle said:
I shot some ENG style footage of some flooding in our area, uploaded it to YouTube and had a couple of thousand hits in about a day. YouTube sent me an email to have the video considered for their revenue sharing program and I ended up submitting it. Google puts pretty ugly ads across the bottom of the video and I get a small amount of money every time they're clicked. It's made $3.85 from 1831 impressions since it was accepted into the program in January. Living the dream, baby, time to retire!
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Dumb question.... I like your footage Andrew.. which cam you shoot with?
 
One can monetize on YouTube not only via ads, but also via pay-per-view. The uploader chooses the price. But he has to be a partner, and with YouTube becoming a partner is not a straightforward process. You cannot simply apply and pay a "membership" fee and consider it done, you have to be accepted which is not guaranteed.

@AndrewGentle: you made my day. I was so upset that my video was legally ineligible for revenue sharing because it has unlicensed music in it, and if I wanted to replace it via YouTube's audio swap it would become ineligible anyway. YouTube has some strange rules, but at least I know that I am not losing millions dollars a day.
 
I was offered that partnership after a video (an amateur photoessay on fruitcarving / fruit sculptures I did in college) got 25k views in about a year. It's now up to 40k+ BUT I used a song I don't have a license to in the video so, judging by the legalities involved, I would be unable to take part in the profit sharing / partnership. Always wondered what kind of pocket change I could be making from that - while I don't expect to get rich from it I love the idea (as all Americans do) of making money while I sit back and do nothing :) 'Mericuh!

Happy hump day,
Adam
 
I suggest looking into other online distributors as well (other than youtube). I worked for a company out of Century City in Los Angeles that shot and sold web series. Pretty profitable if you budget right and make connections with good distribution companies.

If you're looking at doing a web series, here is my advice: shoot a season or two and just upload it to a distribution site, participate in the 50/50 profit share (which can be ridiculously profitable), then eventually approach them about purchasing the next season or two. They will literally pay you tens of thousands of dollars if you have a decent subject that people will watch.

Be sure to know what distributor to go to though. Some are better for comedy, others are better for drama...it just depends.
 
Chris S. Alexander said:
I suggest looking into other online distributors as well (other than youtube). I worked for a company out of Century City in Los Angeles that shot and sold web series. Pretty profitable if you budget right and make connections with good distribution companies.
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Where do they show their series? Sites like Hulu?
adamrahn said:
I was offered that partnership after a video (an amateur photoessay on fruitcarving / fruit sculptures I did in college) got 25k views in about a year.
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Mine is 122K views, and it took it three years. But this is peanuts compared to someone like hotforwords, for example she has 75K views for a video uploaded a week ago! And they produce videos almost daily. With such a schedule YouTube videos may be profitable I think.
 
AndrewGentle said:
I shot some ENG style footage of some flooding in our area, uploaded it to YouTube and had a couple of thousand hits in about a day. YouTube sent me an email to have the video considered for their revenue sharing program and I ended up submitting it. Google puts pretty ugly ads across the bottom of the video and I get a small amount of money every time they're clicked. It's made $3.85 from 1831 impressions since it was accepted into the program in January. Living the dream, baby, time to retire!
Click to expand...
Assuming that number of impressions is in direct proportion to number of views, and amount paid is in proportion to number of impressions (though YouTube may have different formulas for different ads), we can estimate that a video MAY drive about 0.0428 cents per view. For someone else, who joined 4 years ago and now has 603 videos and 418,107,820 views, we can estimate $178,857. $45K a year for YouTube videos is not bad.

P.S. What ugly ads? I do not see any. Oh, I use Firefox with AdBlock and NoScript, so I see no ads on YouTube pages. I guess you will not get 0.0428 cents for me watching your video. But I do not click ad banners anyway, so no loss.
 
Sorry for the delay, didn't check my subscribed threads for a couple of days!

chromeboy007 said:
Dumb question.... I like your footage Andrew.. which cam you shoot with?
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Thanks, Chromeboy. I was just using a Canon HV40 for this video.

Drill Bit said:
@AndrewGentle: you made my day. I was so upset that my video was legally ineligible for revenue sharing because it has unlicensed music in it, and if I wanted to replace it via YouTube's audio swap it would become ineligible anyway. YouTube has some strange rules, but at least I know that I am not losing millions dollars a day.
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Yeah, it's not exactly the fastest way to becoming a millionaire. I signed up with Google AdSense about six years ago now and I'm still waiting for my first cheque. They pay out $AUD when you make it to $150, I'm up to $124.09!

Drill Bit said:
Assuming that number of impressions is in direct proportion to number of views, and amount paid is in proportion to number of impressions (though YouTube may have different formulas for different ads), we can estimate that a video MAY drive about 0.0428 cents per view. For someone else, who joined 4 years ago and now has 603 videos and 418,107,820 views, we can estimate $178,857. $45K a year for YouTube videos is not bad.
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Impressions are 1:1 with views from users who are not blocking ads, I think, and you're only paid for clicks. My video has received 1942 impressions and generated $5.43 from 14 clicks. My click-through-rating is 0.72%, that is to say that 0.72% of all the ad watching viewers click the ads and generate revenue. I am paid approximately $0.388 per click.
If we apply this to your 4 year / 418 107 820 eligible views case, you could estimate that 3 010 376 clicks would be recorded generating $1 168 026 or $292 006 per year. $292k per year from YouTube videos is downright amazing. I wonder if anyone is actually making that kind of money from it?

The problem for the average user is that not every video they produce receives the couple of thousand views in the first few days it needs to become eligible for the program. Even if it is eligible, I know mine isn't going to get anywhere near your hypothetical user's average of 173 334 views per video per year...

Drill Bit said:
P.S. What ugly ads? I do not see any. Oh, I use Firefox with AdBlock and NoScript, so I see no ads on YouTube pages. I guess you will not get 0.0428 cents for me watching your video. But I do not click ad banners anyway, so no loss.
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I hate ads and I also have AdBlock Plus installed on all my Firefox installations. I really don't like subjecting the people watching my videos or reading my websites to ads either. It does cost money to produce them, though, so it's nice to at least get something back.
 
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