YouTube Producer Adds to Debate Over Partner Revenue Shifts
August 20, 2008 10:38 AM
Creator revenue from YouTube videos is a moving target that changes wildly each month and does not often correlate with views for the videos, according to top YouTube producer Kevin Nalts.
In a blog post yesterday, Nalts revealed that his YouTube income dropped sharply in May and rose only slightly in June.
I’ve been hearing from other YouTube creators recently that their income from the site has become much less predictable in the last few months. A handful of top creators told me that June was way up for them, while others said June was one of their worst months ever.
Nalts said in his post that YouTube partner revenue relies heavily on whether the site was successful in selling overlay ads that play on the lower-third portion of the videos. These are the most remunerative.
Of course, one of the drawbacks to YouTube’s ads is that they play only on videos viewed on YouTube itself, not on YouTube videos embedded on other sites.
Nalts offers these guidelines to creators: Be realistic, don’t count on YouTube partner revenue as your primary income, expect fluctuation and find other ways to earn ad income from your videos.
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Comments (4)
The video revenue sharing model is failing. It failed on Motion.tv, eefoof, Revver, VuMe and a host of other sites. And now it is failing on Youtube. Content creators are starting to feel goofy and abused at spending hours upon hours creating videos that only earn them fractions of a penny per view. You can make more money digging aluminum cans out of dumpsters.
Posted by marquisdejolie | August 20, 2008 5:33 PM
The irony is that every marketer I speak with is bullish about online video. I think the bottleneck is that agencies aren't giving them confidence here. Same think happened with web advertising. Took years before brands realized they needed to be there. I can't decide if contracting marketing budgets will help or hurt this space.
Posted by nalts | August 21, 2008 4:18 AM
You actually read his article?
Posted by sukatra | August 21, 2008 4:52 PM
I read it many many times!
Posted by Daisy Whitney | August 21, 2008 8:18 PM