Earn money from YouTube: Hot videos rewarded with ad cash

By Greg Sandoval on 26 August 2009, 1:07pm

You don't have to be a vast media empire or even create a wildly popular character such as Fred to make money from YouTube.

Google announced on Tuesday that its video site is opening the YouTube Partner Programme to the masses -- provided they're pimping a hot video.

YouTube said in a note posted to Google's blog that it will enable users who start accumulating serious hits to generate revenue from their clips -- provided they meet YouTube's terms.

"To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetisation, we look at factors like the number of views, the video's virality, and compliance with the YouTube terms of service," YouTube said in the blog. "If your video is eligible for monetisation, you will receive an email and see an 'Enable Revenue Sharing' message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account."

Once a user says yes, YouTube goes to work selling advertising against the user's video.

Critics have always knocked YouTube's alleged inability to monetise the amateur-made videos on the site. Advertisers were afraid to go anywhere near this kind of content because it was too unpredictable. But that was when people thought YouTube would only serve ads against all of the content on its site.

The programme gives YouTube the ability to choose only the most appropriate material.

"It's taken us some time," YouTube wrote, "to build out the YouTube Partner Programme, our content-management tools and other infrastructure to handle expanding the [programme] to so many individual users and videos."

YouTube did not reveal how much, or on what basis, it pays successful partners.