Back in May of this year, YouTube began allowing its “most popular and prolific original content creators” to become partners and receive profits from ads displayed alongside their videos, and other revenue sharing models.
These lucky few included such noted contributors at lonelygirl15. Despite promises to bring the program to more of their content creators, for the last seven months there hasn’t been any news on this front.
Today, YouTube announces that they’re opening up the Partners Program to a much broader group of videomakers. Anyone in the United States or Canada can apply to be in the Partners Program now.
The other criteria:
- You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
- You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
- You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
The premise behind the program is simple:
These partners decide which of their videos they would like to generate revenue on YouTube, and in turn, they receive a portion of the revenue generated from ads that run next to those videos. Even in this limited release, the program has been an amazing success – already, millions of video views each week are earning revenue for our partners.
While this issue hasn’t been directly addressed, I would assume that, if YouTube offered InVideo overlay ads on original videos and participating content providers chose that ad format for some or all of their videos, the videomakers would then receive a share of the revenue from that ad as well.
Is it worth it? YouTube reports on their test group:
Many users who joined the program months ago have already seen great success. Those partners who are regularly producing videos with over 1M views are earning several thousand dollars per month.
Another bonus: YouTube doesn’t require an exclusivity agreement to participate, meaning that you can upload videos to other sites even while those videos are on YouTube in the Partners Program.
However, not everyone who applies will get in. At the conclusion of their announcement video, YouTube encourages rejected applicants to “keep uploading and apply again later.” YouTube doesn’t state whether everyone meeting the criteria listed on the partner site will be automatically accepted.
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