I’ve heard some lamenting lately that ad revenue sharing on YouTube is only open to those producers who consistently crank out the hits. I know more than one producer who feels their videos create good traffic from time to time, but that the YouTube Partnership Program’s criteria put revenue sharing out of reach. Until now you had to meet certain consistency and hit count requirements across your whole channel in order to participate, but that is about to change.
According to a post on the Google blog this morning, individual videos with high hit counts will now be eligible to participate in the YouTube Partnership Program on a one-off basis.
Participation is still based on traffic and is by invitation only, which makes sense since the ad revenue has to support the incremental cost of administering each additional revenue share in addition to making money for YouTube and the producer. According to Google’s post today, once you’re in with a single video or two it may increase your chances of participation across your whole channel. This is great news and the real key for web producers trying to make a go of this. Channel-wide revenue sharing means that your videos have a chance to cross-promote one another and create a snowball effect.
While this new development is a great turn of events for anyone who happens to capture a popular video by chance (Charlie Bit My Finger, Otters Holding Hands), it remains to be seen how it might work for those who are trying bootstrap webisode production or a whole channel through ad revenue.