YouTube to share ad money with posters
Bedroom YouTube broadcasters will soon be able to share in the profits that the video-sharing website makes from advertising, after the site extended a partnership scheme to the UK.
Among the first to benefit will be Panacea81, whose tutorial showing how to perfect an eye make-up look inspired by the singer Leona Lewis has already been watched more than 643,000 times. As will 18-year-old Jimmy Hill, who delivers wryly amusing riffs taking in the royal family, Creme Eggs and celebrity from his studio - a bedroom in Staffordshire.
The Google-owned website opens its partnership programme in the UK today. The programme was launched in the US last year and Google said some partners were earning several thousand dollars a month from videos on the site.
Hill said he had already been recognised in the local supermarket, where he is working during a gap year before university. He said he spent most of his spare time thinking up new topics for his webcam monologues.
"I did it because it was there, really. I'd never considered doing anything in the media, but I thought I'd give it a go and my popularity spiralled," he said.
James Provan, a musician and filmmaker from Scotland, has already become a YouTube phenomenon with his short films that mix music, animation and live action. The 25-year-old computer studies student, known on the site as GIR2007, will also benefit from the new programme.
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday January 31 2008
guardian.co.uk
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Bedroom YouTube broadcasters will soon be able to share in the profits that the video-sharing website makes from advertising, after the site extended a partnership scheme to the UK.
Among the first to benefit will be Panacea81, whose tutorial showing how to perfect an eye make-up look inspired by the singer Leona Lewis has already been watched more than 643,000 times. As will 18-year-old Jimmy Hill, who delivers wryly amusing riffs taking in the royal family, Creme Eggs and celebrity from his studio - a bedroom in Staffordshire.
The Google-owned website opens its partnership programme in the UK today. The programme was launched in the US last year and Google said some partners were earning several thousand dollars a month from videos on the site.
Hill said he had already been recognised in the local supermarket, where he is working during a gap year before university. He said he spent most of his spare time thinking up new topics for his webcam monologues.
"I did it because it was there, really. I'd never considered doing anything in the media, but I thought I'd give it a go and my popularity spiralled," he said.
James Provan, a musician and filmmaker from Scotland, has already become a YouTube phenomenon with his short films that mix music, animation and live action. The 25-year-old computer studies student, known on the site as GIR2007, will also benefit from the new programme.
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday January 31 2008
guardian.co.uk
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
