YouTube starts paying 'top' users

After it was announced that YouTube had plans to share revenue with its 'indie' content producers, over three months later, it's finally happening. Only the ad-revenue sharing scheme won't be open to everybody who creates YouTube content. Instead YouTube has handpicked only the most successful 'indie' content producers to be included in the scheme.

So what if you haven't been invited to participate but think you should be?

From the official YouTube blog:

So now that you’ve read this, you’re probably wondering, "How can I get in on the action?" This is only available to the initial participants. But if you create original content, have built and maintained an audience on YouTube, and think you might qualify for this program based on what’s above, you can express interest on our partnership lead form.

So basically what YouTube are saying is, go away and work hard to create great content AND build an audience to win the grand prize which is an ad-revenue deal with us.

Because they have built and sustained large, persistent audiences through the creation of engaging videos, their content has become attractive for advertisers, which has helped them earn the opportunity to participate on YouTube as a partner.

Sounds a lot like a record company to me where bands slog it out for years, usually at a loss, hoping to appear on the industry's radar.

So why not open the scheme to everybody.

Well it seems that YouTube isn't just sharing revenue from 'text links' (adsense), but is selling banner ad space against those chosen shows. This isn't some automated system but is old style media sales.

Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.  

Related post: YouTube to pay for User Generated Content