How to Make Bank
According to the statistics page of YouTube, more than a billion unique users visit YouTube each month, and within that time, over 4 billion hours of video are watched. Also, there are thousands of advertisers using TrueView in-stream advertisements and millions of others who are advertising through Google's ad platform. Lastly, since the YouTube partnership program opened in 2007, more than 1 million users are subscribed to the service and are earning money with their videos. With numbers like these, it couldn't help to learn a little about using YouTube and different ways to gain money from it. It was stated in a published article that since YouTube, along with many other internet mediums, are "[characterized] largely by `user contribution', `sharing', `decentralisation' and being `free'," they are "gaining phenomenal popularity and success on the Internet." (Liu 75). Since YouTube has no almost no constraints on who can sign up, what users can upload, and since the service is completely free, other video publishing companies have not been able to keep up with the competition.
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One way to make money from using YouTube is to use the system, or use the actual services provided by the website. The YouTube partnership program was created in 2007 to help encourage users to continuously produce original content. Since the creation or original content or documentary, as opposed to copies of other videos, is important to the spirit of YouTube, they work with the users and the advertisers to provide an environment in which creativity is encouraged. Some of the successful original content includes mini web shows about news and current events, e.g. YouTuber Philip DeFranco, or video game play-throughs and commentary, e.g. James 'Nova' Wilson and friends.
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Another not-so-straight-forward way of using YouTube to indirectly make money is to be lucky enough to upload a video that goes viral, or gets spread across the internet to millions of viewers. A video that gets thousands or millions of views on YouTube alone has a good chance of attracting advertisers who would pay the uploader of the video each time their ad is clicked on. Even if the majority of the views don't come from YouTube alone, having millions of people see one video is a great way to get discovered or establish connections. According to an article from the Huffington Post, the korean pop-star Psy made almost a million dollars from the advertisements on his YouTube video that reached over a billion views (Isaacson). Alternatively, another article tells the story of a man, Ted Williams, who went from Homeless to star in 48 hours because of a YouTube video that gained over 4 million views in less than two days (Sullivan). This man had an amazing broadcasting voice, but could never find anyone to who wanted his talent. Going viral on YouTube helped him to get discovered and in about two days from when the video was posted, he had plans to narrate a Kraft commercial as well as announcing for the Cavaliers.
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Advertising is a great way to promote a product or service, but it no longer has to be sent out in the traditional way between tv shows, in newspapers, or even on the sides of web pages. However, taking advantage of YouTube's large amount of viewers could make an advertising more successful while cutting the cost of advertising. Volkswagen's famous superbowl commercial featuring a little child dressed as Darth Vader was uploaded to YouTube a week before it aired on television and gained over 8 million views just online in that time. Also, as stated in an article from NBC News, the advertisement is the most shared and most viewed advertisement of all time (Inbar). Similarly, Blendtec blenders advertise their products through a comedy series on YouTube "Will it Blend?" This series appeals to people's curiosity and sense of humor while advertising their product at the same time.
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