YouTube has finally done the honest thing and announced that regular, everyday average Joes could be paid for their hard work with a share of the advertising revenue generated alongside their videos.
Officially, YouTube is doing this by extending its partners programme which shares revenues with its most loyal 'power' users. And with the 100 new partners announced alongside this, that means the legendary Tay 'Chocolate Rain' Zonday finally seeing some money from all that YouTube traffic he's been hustling.
The partners programme is only open in the US and Canada for now, and YouTubers need to be approved for the scheme before they will see any cash, presumably to stop people trying to chuck illegally copied music videos on the site for a quick buck.
"We feel it's important to reward our most dedicated community members: those who are regularly uploading original content to YouTube. In evaluating applications, we will focus on the users who have built a significant audience on YouTube (as measured by video views, subscribers, etc.) and who consistently comply with the YouTube Terms of Use."
As Read/Write Web points out, this might put an end to criticism that YouTube's founders made themselves rich off the back of other people's creativity and hard work (not to mention the piracy), but also show that the site is managing to monetise its impressive traffic. Those data bandwidth costs don't pay for themselves, but maybe this is a sign that advertising is starting to pay off.
Source: Read/Write Web
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