Make Money on the Internet
With Your Videos
A guide to the best web
sites that will enable you to convert your video into cold, hard
cash
by Mark
Richards
Are you a
moviemaker or video maker? Have you been
creating and posting videos to sites like
YouTube,
Metacafe
and MySpaceTV video? You have been getting
lots of great feedback, viewers have been
favoriting your videos and sharing them
among their friends, and maybe now you are
thinking, how do I make some money on this?
Or maybe
you are an upcoming video producer, shooter
or editor. You recognize that the web is the
wild frontier of video and film and you want
to get a piece of it. Or maybe you are
running a business and you are smart enough
to recognize that maybe you can make some
additional money by leveraging your products
and services via web video.
Yes, you
can make money in web video. You don't need
to be a big-time producer with deep pockets.
You don't need to have graduated form a top
notch film school. You don't even need fancy
video cameras and video editing gear.
There are
various paths and direction you can take
depending on what kinds of video you are
making and what your goals are.
For the
professional video or filmmaker, the creator
of short videos or independent films, the
best choice is to hook up with a major
content provider that already has a presence
on the web as well as in broadcast.
Companies like
Atom Films,
Break,
Amazon UnBox,
iFilm and the new
My Damn
Channel all buy and license video streaming
content from professional video makers.
These web
video distributors license your videos to
other content companies and also exhibit
your film on their Internet site, sharing
the various advertisings and licensing
revenues they get with you.
Most of
these types of sites runs ad before your
video, as well as a plethora of ads and
banners on the web site. They have money
coming in, and realizing the value of well
made content, will pay you for your videos
and films.
Atom Films
says “We earn good money from those ads and
we share a percentage of the gross revenue
with content creators. That money is paid
out according to the relative popularity of
each movie on AtomFilms — so the more plays
your movie generates, the more money you
make.”
Because
companies like AtomFilms also function as a
source for video content to other media
companies, they can pay you a slice of that
as well. AtomFilms supplies content to
companies like Comedy Central, Spike TV,
Verizon's Vcast mobile entertainment service
and Bell South's web portal. These partners
pay Atom for the content, and from that
revenue they pay royalties to the creators
whose movies are shown.
According
to AtomFilms, many of their film and video
creators earn hundreds of dollars, some earn
thousands of dollars, and the most
successful creators have made tens of
thousands — even hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
There are
some sites that are actually pay per view
and work best for content that is either
informational like “how to do it” videos or
travel videos, or contain “special content”
that can not be easily accessed elsewhere.
Some of the leading sites for this are
Veoh,
Guba.com,
BrightCove,
VideoJug and
ExpertVillage. At
ExpertVillage, you can earn $100 to $1000
for each how-to video. The videos must be
assigned first, focus on a specific topic,
and consist of about 15 segments of one to
three minutes each, featuring an "expert" on
a given subject.
If you are
running a business and want to promote it
via video, you have a few options. You could
use one of the pay per view services to
distribute educational videos that you
produce. You could distribute and re-purpose
your TV and cable commercials by posting
them to one or more of the “free” video
posting sites, or you could actually create
a “viral” video that drives traffic to your
site.
A great
example is the
“Will It Blend” series of
videos by a small company known as BlendTec.
Originally done as a one off joke video
featuring
Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson and his blending
antics, it
turned viral. The company followed up with
an almost endless series of videos of him grinding
up objects of all types and sizes, from
marbles to an iPhone to a rake handle. It
has become a wonderful advertising and
promotional medium for their company and now
almost everyone knows who they are.
FYI - You can buy a DVD with the first
50 of the "Will It Blend videos at
“Will It Blend”
page 2
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Viralcom:
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