Downtempo LLC: Our Fantastic Blog

I was glancing at my inbox a few minutes ago, and I saw a subject line that *looked* like spam:

“Apply for revenue sharing for your video the zorb rolls down a hill”

But surprisingly enough, it appears to be the real deal, based on a video shot of me a few years ago riding the Zorb down a hillside in New Zealand (it’s great fun, trust me!).

I’ll try it out and see if I earn more than 30 cents off the revenue share, and keep our readers posted. For the rest of our Internet brethren, I thought you’d find it interesting that YouTube is conitnuing to expand their revenue sharing program, even to videos like mine with a mere 32,745 views.

The payment program itself looks pretty straightforward — they’ve tied the payments into AdSense, and there’s a brief tutorial of rules (with a fair number of DO NOT items called out in bold, red text) about what’s allowable. The impression I gathered is that YouTube is extremely sensitive to monetizing any copyrighted content, even mashups or any slightly derivative works of copyrighted content.

It looks like this is part of a recent move by YouTube to expand their revenue sharing program for specific videos, I’ve noticed posts from HyveUp and other blogs also receiving these invitations for relatively medium-to-low traffic individual videos.

Now if only Flickr would launch their *own* revenue sharing program, instead of making me pay them for the privilege of hosting!

Here’s the text of the email I received:

Dear downtempo,

Your video the zorb rolls down a hill has become popular on YouTube, and you’re eligible to apply for the YouTube Partnership Program, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video.

Once you’re approved, making money from your video is easy. Here’s how it works: First sign into your YouTube account. Then, complete the steps outlined here: [URL DELETED]. Once you’re finished, we’ll start placing ads next to your video and pay you a share of the revenue as long as you meet the program requirements.

We look forward to adding your video to the YouTube Partnership Program. Thanks and good luck!

The YouTube Team