The recent announcement that YouTube (GOOG) will be paying their top video creators for their offerings, it underscores one of the key elements to building online success.
While the announcement isn't unwelcome, for many of the video stars they're cautious about the whole situation. The reason why is that they know the real money will never come from this type of revenue-sharing deal.
As Christine Gambito said, who has built her one-woman online show called Happyslip, "You can't sell your DVD on YouTube."
When she says that she's really saying two things. First, the whole purpose of someone creating something on YouTube for the purpose of making a living, isn't to rely on them. YouTube should be used for one reason alone, and that's to drive traffic to the place where you can make money: your own web site.
The second thing is her reference to selling her DVD. This is the real foundation of online success: having your own product. I know that there have been some people that can make money by selling other people's products. But overall, the most successful online are those that develop their own product to sell.
These two insights are some of the most important for online marketing success. We need to have our own destination to send people to, and then have a product we've made to sell to them. From there we can develop our own affiliate programs and joint ventures to make even more money.
What will probably happen with YouTube and their revenue sharing, will be that a very few people will eventually come to the fore as making some decent money. Once that happens, a few other people will write or create a product telling everybody else how they can do it to.
I don't think this will be a great revenue generator for a long time to come. The best thing to do is to resist going this route and concentrate on creating your own product, and then using social networking sites and video-sharing sites to drive traffic to what will really make you money.
I have been reading your post on making money with You Tube and agree with your idea that the real money comes from selling your products to the traffic that goes to your site. The next question is how to make it easier to make your products. This is why I wanted to get your thoughts on the company I am with called Bravisa – http://www.bravisa.com
Bravisa is a new online tool for people to earn money by selling a wide range of products without having to buy, stock, ship, or service those products. Simply pick or design your products, markup from wholesale prices to set your selling prices, and link the products to your blog. Bravisa takes care of order fulfillment, payment processing, and customer service. You earn money from every sale without spending anything.
Please let me know if you find this to be useful in your quest to make some money online.
Posted by: Tom | May 9, 2007 3:51 PM | Permalink to Comment