"Here’s the kicker. After you’ve produced, acted in, rated, programmed, marketed, distributed AND sold advertisements for your own work, they LET you keep 55% of the money.
Thanks YouTube. Thanks for nothing.
What’s left for YouTube to outsource? Well, I suppose they could fire their programming and community staff and farm out the work to Chinese children for five dollars a day.
Perhaps then YouTube could cut a profit."
The continual defilement of everything sweet and pure on the 'net. Google is the Internet version of Wal-Mart. :-/
joseph
· 1 year ago
They provide the distribution platform, convert and host your content for free.
People participate in the site because it is engaging and popular (to a fault, in terms of audience intelligence).
YouTube is vast enough to support a few concurrent revenue models or experiments at one time, and Google has done a far better job monetizing the site than most of video players who have to pay for bandwidth, whereas Google gets it for free by peering directly with backbone providers.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
File conversion and video hosting are both automated activities, as well as scripts easily bought on the open market for $20 or less. Bandwidth is phenomenally cheap right now, and I argue that that without the users and producers, the distribution of YouTube is a moot point.
For the amount of effort it takes for me to carve out a valuable niche of regular viewers on YouTube, I can do that same legwork off YouTube and have no obligation to give half of what I make to Google.
mrshl
· 1 year ago
The market determines whether the deal is a good one (not you). If they decide the terms are poor, or that YouTube doesn't provide a meaningful service, they'll move on.
Right now, the market disagrees with you. Maybe ads aren't working, but people continue to use YouTube as their first-choice platform. And they WERE doing it for free. If people can use YouTube's huge audience to effectively monetize their content, I imagine they'll have lots to thank YouTube for.
Joseph
· 1 year ago
Of course it's a moot point without users. But it has the users and will continue to have them for the conceivable future. Sure, you throw a video into the void of YouTube without promotion and it's likely going to go without notice, but the potential for explosive popularity if fair greater than that of a video hosted on your own site.
Paul
· 1 year ago
If YouTube is a Shell company, then what is Facebook? Get an army of developers to create all your applications, and users to fill in the content, hype the sucker up and you have a business. Come on Mashable, we need honesty in our press!
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
At least Facebook doesn't take half of the developer's profits.
Read back at my criticisms of Project Bac'n. I railed them pretty hard for that debacle, which is the classification of criticism you seem to share with me.
James Eliason
· 1 year ago
Your points are the exact reason why I built FilmFitti.com. Video websites are a shell, they hide the fact that they can possibly make a lot of money on advertising sales.
Entertainment as a form of media on the Internet can only go so far as to having millions of users uploading millions of videos each month. These videos draw a lot of views, curious what the average views are on popular videos on YouTube?
Instead of trying to tie in a advertisers wishes of being placed next to a particular video based on product placement, or even on a YouTube channel, why not give content providers spaces around their video and let the advertisers come to them. Then give the content provider 80% of the revenue.
You must reward advertisers as well, which we have built in by giving them money back on their purchase.
All of this is built, it has been built for over 8 months and I am patiently waiting for intelligent tech writers such as those on Mashable to write about it.
Just think, with YouTubes traffic and the model I have built, it would equate to roughly 3 ad spaces next to each video. With 40,000+ videos uploaded per day that would be 120,000 new ad spaces each day. You then open the market for a bulk sale of those spaces to different online ad agencies. This is really the only way Google is going to monetize YouTube. And the only way ALL content providers make money online.
darkkosmos
· 1 year ago
If you read the whole article is sounds like a conspiracy theory, and at the end you believed yourself even though you said at the start it's just a theory ;)
Andrew
· 1 year ago
wait a minute. it would be a shell company if YouTube actually conducted the other operations right?
Shannon
· 1 year ago
I find the tone of the article to be negative and not constructive. Google has the right to monetize a product that they own as they wish. I think you need to stop jumping to conclusions about the company, and spinning it off as if they are evil.
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
· 1 year ago
They have an absolute right to do what they want. That doesn't make it responsible, nor does it make the deals they are offering to strike with the users and producers equitable.
This is a *very* negative article, you're right.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's very familiar with the marketplace for content producers, and the only time I've been asked to give a company a 45% share of revenues have been when *they* were the ones making the sales.
No video platform on its own is worth giving them half my money if they're not bringing money to the table.
mrshl
· 1 year ago
Again, if you're right, the market will bear that out. Video producers should be fairly sophisticated in their exploitation.
But most of them, I imagine would use multiple platforms and evaluate the revenue potential of each. It's easy to get bogged down in percentages. But consider the video producer who builds his own platform or leverages the more generous terms of a smaller start up, giving him, say, $10x at 80 to 100% of revenues.
What if he could get $50x at 55% of revenues from YouTube? A rational producer will pick the deal that maximizes his return. He won't get pissed about percentages.
jasonfromEPIC
· 1 year ago
Calm down. This is just a point. No "evil intent". You're completely right. They found a way to create an empire on the backs of others. It's happened a few times prior in history. Why not profit from people who are not interested in hosting the content themselves. It's the same as an add network. Each site by itself can't bring enough traffic, just as each persons home video of their baby can't. It's a trade off, and I think it's a fair one.
I'm off to make a dance battle video for Natasha Bedingfield......
All Comments
Thanks YouTube. Thanks for nothing.
What’s left for YouTube to outsource? Well, I suppose they could fire their programming and community staff and farm out the work to Chinese children for five dollars a day.
Perhaps then YouTube could cut a profit."
The continual defilement of everything sweet and pure on the 'net. Google is the Internet version of Wal-Mart. :-/
People participate in the site because it is engaging and popular (to a fault, in terms of audience intelligence).
YouTube is vast enough to support a few concurrent revenue models or experiments at one time, and Google has done a far better job monetizing the site than most of video players who have to pay for bandwidth, whereas Google gets it for free by peering directly with backbone providers.
For the amount of effort it takes for me to carve out a valuable niche of regular viewers on YouTube, I can do that same legwork off YouTube and have no obligation to give half of what I make to Google.
Right now, the market disagrees with you. Maybe ads aren't working, but people continue to use YouTube as their first-choice platform. And they WERE doing it for free. If people can use YouTube's huge audience to effectively monetize their content, I imagine they'll have lots to thank YouTube for.
Read back at my criticisms of Project Bac'n. I railed them pretty hard for that debacle, which is the classification of criticism you seem to share with me.
Entertainment as a form of media on the Internet can only go so far as to having millions of users uploading millions of videos each month. These videos draw a lot of views, curious what the average views are on popular videos on YouTube?
Instead of trying to tie in a advertisers wishes of being placed next to a particular video based on product placement, or even on a YouTube channel, why not give content providers spaces around their video and let the advertisers come to them. Then give the content provider 80% of the revenue.
You must reward advertisers as well, which we have built in by giving them money back on their purchase.
All of this is built, it has been built for over 8 months and I am patiently waiting for intelligent tech writers such as those on Mashable to write about it.
Just think, with YouTubes traffic and the model I have built, it would equate to roughly 3 ad spaces next to each video. With 40,000+ videos uploaded per day that would be 120,000 new ad spaces each day. You then open the market for a bulk sale of those spaces to different online ad agencies. This is really the only way Google is going to monetize YouTube. And the only way ALL content providers make money online.
This is a *very* negative article, you're right.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's very familiar with the marketplace for content producers, and the only time I've been asked to give a company a 45% share of revenues have been when *they* were the ones making the sales.
No video platform on its own is worth giving them half my money if they're not bringing money to the table.
But most of them, I imagine would use multiple platforms and evaluate the revenue potential of each. It's easy to get bogged down in percentages. But consider the video producer who builds his own platform or leverages the more generous terms of a smaller start up, giving him, say, $10x at 80 to 100% of revenues.
What if he could get $50x at 55% of revenues from YouTube? A rational producer will pick the deal that maximizes his return. He won't get pissed about percentages.
I'm off to make a dance battle video for Natasha Bedingfield......