Friday 2 May 2008

I have not violated YouTube!

When you're a YouTube Partner you have the option to submit your videos for revenue sharing. The trade of is this: you may see some small financial return if your viewers avail themselves of the contextual advertising the mighty Google ad-engine provides, provided your content is squeaky clean.

This is a funny one because in many ways there is nothing wrong with YouTube demanding you only post videos that adhere to their terms of service. At the same time, scare stories surface all too frequently of users who have video removed which they maintain were 'clean' with no recourse. Partnership is both carrot and stick for good behaviour. By drawing the editor's attention to your work it you could be hastening its removal from the site.

YouTube likes its cloak of secrecy over all things Partner related but I'm sure I'm allowed to say have two channels covered by my Partnership agreement. One I use a lot, the other I post weekly updates about my weight and fitness activity on. A couple of nights back I decided it was time to submit these video to 'the Program'!

I'll confess it's scary braving the 'if your videos violate...' warning. You consider the prospect of your channel going dark, you check everything's properly backed-up, you hope! And about two days later you notice ads appearing next to your videos, pushing the nice banners you worked so hard on down the page. But at least you haven't violated YouTube!

(Want to know more? Zipster talks about the YouTube Partner beta. Yeah, he had a salary!)

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