Who Needs a Job When You Have YouTube?

by stephanie ~ December 12, 2008

Everyone loves YouTube.  Visitors to the site can spend hours watching anything from the charming home movie, “Charlie Bit Me,” to Britney Spears’ latest music video.  You may have noticed ads in YouTube clips lately (both the Charlie and Britney clips feature such ads).  These ads are a part of a program that has led some popular users to cash in on videos.

Last year, YouTube introduced this partner program that allows its most popular users to add advertisements to their videos.  Google’s YouTube splits the revenue with the video sharer.  These ads are making users thousands of dollars- so much so that some users are quitting their day jobs because their profits are so large.

Michael Buckley reports making over $100,000 a year from these advertisements, placed in his pop culture/celebrity gossip show, “What the Buck.”  Before joining the program, Buckley was spending about 40 hours a week on his YouTube videos.  This time-consuming hobby was transformed into a very lucrative job.

Even more impressive is 15-year old Lucas Cruikshank, who brings in tens of thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue and sponsorship.  He’s bringing in even more money in merchandise sales and licensing his character’s name and image to Hot Topic. Lucas puts my after-school jobs to shame with that kind of money.  Some users are even making money off of product placement and other traditional forms of advertising.

YouTube hasn’t released how much money its partners earn on average, but it is expected that many partners earn thousands of dollars a month.  While this option is incredibly beneficial to the most popular YouTube video sharers, it also helps the problem Google has been facing since it purchased YouTube for over 1 billion dollars in 2008.  Google was having problems profiting from videos, largely due to videos being uploaded by anonymous users who don’t always own the rights to the content they post.  Though only 3% of videos are supported by advertising, it definitely is more financially beneficial to the company.

For more information:

CNBC: YouTube’s Recession-Proof Cottage Industry

New York Times: YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money