Youtube Videos Pull In Real Money

YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Michael Buckley, YouTube host, at dwelling in Connecticut.

By BRIAN STELTER

Published: December 10, 2008

Making movies for YouTube — for 3 years a pastime for thousands and thousands of Web surfers — is now a approach to make a living.

Michael Buckley quit his day job in September. He says his on-line show is “silly,” but it surely helped repay credit-card debt.

One yr after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to change into “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful customers are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny movies is now a full-time job.

Mr. Buckley quit his day job in September after his on-line profits had greatly surpassed his wage as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show “is silly,” he said, but it has helped him escape his credit-card debt.

Mr. Buckley, 33, was the part-time host of a weekly present on a Connecticut public access channel in the summertime of 2006 when his cousin started posting snippets of the present on YouTube. The comical rants about celebrities attracted online viewers, and before lengthy Mr. Buckley was tailoring his segments, referred to as “What the Buck?” for the Web. Mr. Buckley knew that the show was “only going to go to this point on public access.”

“But on YouTube,” he said, “I’ve had a hundred million views. It’s crazy.”

All he needed was a $2,000 Canon camera, a $6 piece of cloth for a backdrop and a pair of labor lights from Home Depot. Mr. Buckley is an example of the Internet’s democratizing impact on publishing. Sites like YouTube permit anyone with a high-speed connection to discover a fan following, just by posting materials and promoting it online.

Granted, constructing an audience on-line takes time. “I was spending 40 hours every week on YouTube for over a yr before I made a dime,” Mr. Buckley said — but, at the least in some cases, it is paying off.

Mr. Buckley is without doubt one of the original members of YouTube’s companion program, which now contains thousands of participants, from basement video makers to large media companies. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, places commercials within and around the partner videos and splits the revenues with the creators. “We wanted to show these hobbies into businesses,” said Hunter Walk, a director of product management for the site, who called fashionable users like Mr. Buckley “unintentional media companies.”

YouTube declined to touch upon how much money partners earned on average, partly as a result of advertiser demand varies for different kinds of videos. But a spokesman, Aaron Zamost, mentioned “hundreds of YouTube partners are making thousands of dollars a month.” At least a number of are making a full-time living: Mr. Buckley stated he was earning over $100,000 from YouTube advertisements.

The program is a partial resolution to a nagging drawback for YouTube. The site records 10 times the video views as any other video-sharing Web site within the United States, but it has confirmed to be laborious for Google to revenue from, as a result of a overwhelming majority of the videos are posted by anonymous users who might or could not personal the copyrights to the content material they upload. While YouTube has halted a lot of the unlawful video sharing on the site, it remains wary of placing advertisements in opposition to content with out explicit permission from the owners. As a result, solely about 3 p.c of the videos on the site are supported by advertising.

But the company has high hopes for the accomplice program. Executives liken it to Google AdSense, the expertise that revolutionized promoting and made it potential for publishers to put text commercials next to their content.

“Some of these individuals are making videos of their spare time,” stated Chad Hurley, a co-founder of YouTube. “We felt that if we were capable of provide them a real revenue source, they’d be capable of hone their expertise and create higher content.”

In a time of media industry layoffs, the revenue supply — and the prospect of a one-person media company — may be especially appealing to users. But video producers like Lisa Donovan, who posts sketch comedy onto YouTube and attracted attention within the fall for parodies of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, do not make it sound easy. “For new users, it’s a variety of work,” Ms. Donovan said. “Everybody’s combating to be seen online; it's important to strategize and market yourself.”

Mr. Buckley, who majored in psychology in faculty and lives along with his husband and 4 dogs in Connecticut, films his present from home. Each episode of “What the Buck?” is viewed a mean of 200,000 times, and the more common ones have reached as much as three million people. He said that writing and recording 5 minutes’ price of jokes about Britney Spears’s comeback tour and Miley Cyrus’s dancing abilities isn't as easy as it looks. “I’ve really worked hard on honing my presentation and writing skills,” he said.

As his traffic and revenues grew, Mr. Buckley had “so many opportunities online that I couldn’t work anymore.” He stop his job at Live Nation, the music promoter, to focus full-time on the Web show.

There is a symmetry to Mr. Buckley’s story. Some so-called Internet celebrities view YouTube as a stepping stone to television. But Mr. Buckley started on TV and located fame on YouTube. Three months ago, he signed a development deal with HBO, an opportunity that many media aspirants dream about. Still, “I feel YouTube is my home,” he said. “I think the largest mistake that any of us Internet personalities could make is set up ourselves on the Internet after which abandon it.”

Cory Williams, 27, a YouTube producer in California, agrees. Mr. Williams, often called smpfilms on YouTube, has been dreaming up online videos since 2005, and he stated his huge break got here in September 2007 with a music video parody called “The Mean Kitty Song.” The video, which introduces Mr. Williams’ evil feline companion, has been viewed greater than 15 million times. On a current day, the video included an advertisement from Coca-Cola.

Mr. Williams, who counts about 180,000 subscribers to his videos, mentioned he was incomes $17,000 to $20,000 a month by way of YouTube. Half of the earnings come from YouTube’s advertisements, and the opposite half come from sponsorships and product placements inside his videos, a model that he has borrowed from traditional media.

On YouTube, it is evident that established media entities and the up-and-coming users are learning from each other. The newbie users are creating narrative arcs and once-a-week videos, enticing viewers to go to regularly. Some, like Mr. Williams, are also adding product-placement spots to their videos. Meanwhile, brand-name companies are embedding their movies on different sites, taking cues from users about on-line promotion. Mr. Walk calls it a delicate “cross-pollination” of ideas.

Some of the partners are main media companies; the ones with essentially the most video views embody Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, CBS and Warner Brothers. But particular person users are now able to compete alongside them. Mr. Buckley, who didn't even have high-speed Internet access two years ago, said his YouTube pastime had changed his financial life.

“I didn’t start it to make money,” he said, “but what a lovely surprise.”