Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 17 April 2008 14:42
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The march to monetise YouTube – for both Google and content creators –
takes another turn with YouTube’s partner program being extended to
Australia, Japan and Ireland – with more countries to come.
YouTube’s partner program, already in existence in the US, UK and Canada, has finally been opened up to more countries, which now include residents of Australia, Japan and Ireland.
YouTube says that “finding a way to recognise users for their creativity and their role in building YouTube is of the utmost importance to YouTube”.
YouTube’s press release continues that: “These original content creators will now have the chance to reap rewards from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube's other professional content partners.”
Of course, YouTube has been struggling with how to monetise the staggeringly enormous traffic it receives on a daily, let alone monthly or yearly basis, and to encourage original content creators to continue putting in the hard yards to come up with new content on a regular basis.
Up until now, many YouTube content creators worldwide had to be satisfied with the fact they had an audience of any size that regularly tuned in to their creations.
Naturally, more successful creators obviously garnered much larger audiences, but given that quality content creation is hard work, YouTube views are great, but they don’t pay the rent or put food on the table.
Until now. The attraction of being able to do what traditional media does – using advertising to pay for and/or subsidise content – is now open to anyone that wants to play the content creation game, with YouTube already distributing well over $1,000,000 (presumably US dollars) to existing members of YouTube’s “Partner Programme”.
Please read onto page 2 for more details of YouTube’s Partner Programme launch, and page 3 for details of what's in it for YouTube marketers - as well as how much money can potentially be earned! CONTINUED
