skip to nav

YouTube shares the spoils

Budding directors can make money out of their videos, says linton chiswick

.

As of last Thursday, British YouTube addicts can now make a little money - as well as, of course, wasting colossal amounts of time - on the net's premier video-sharing site.

By becoming official YouTube 'partners', creators of the most popular material will receive a share of the advertising revenue generated by their videos. The more traffic they attract, the more money they make. Simple.

An invitation-only pilot scheme began in May, before the YouTube Partner Programme debuted properly in America and Canada in December. The official

 

line is that some early testers are earning thousands of dollars a month from amateur video, but it's hard to find actual examples of YouTubers being paid on that kind of scale, and the YouTube team remains cagey about the actual details of the revenue split.

The partner agreement is 'non-

Motorstorm image

exclusive', meaning that partners retain complete ownership of their video material, and can continue to upload it wherever else they like. To be invited, they need to create their own material, and own its copyright and distribution rights. They also need to be regularly uploading

 

ADVERTISEMENT