AFFILIATE NOOB

I need to update what I have said previously of the "big 3" video hosting sites that pay you. Much has changed since I last talked about them as a group. I'll start with the big news.

Revver is defunct. Before you consider posting a video on their website, take a trip over to the forums. You'll see that Revver has not made any payments in months. Members are pissed off. Many people are even having trouble accessing the website at all (myself included).

Not to long ago Revver, along with a few other companies, was purchased by Live Universe. Every one of those companies has stopped making payments. It's not really fair to say this is Revver's fault. But the fact is that they don't pay anymore.

Not to mention that their advertisers are paying squat now. Even if they were paying, videos make on average about 30 cents per thousand views. According to many forum members, there was a time when you could make upward of $5 for that kind of traffic. I won't go into detail about CPM rates here, but ultimately the fault of this is the economy.

Metacafe got nerfed. Previously they paid $5 per thousand views. In an earlier post I called this amount "paltry". And compared with Break's old payment structure, techincally, it was. After doing more research though I have discovered that the figure was actually extrememly high, considering that your video could be about ANYTHING and still make that much.

Things have changed though. Metacafe further tightened their allready extremely scrict terms for video content. Veteran producers are now having trouble getting their videos accepted into the program.

They have also lowered the payment amount. Now they only pay $2 per thousand views. And that's IF your video gets accepted into the program (which it most likely won't).

As if that weren't bad enough, they now only count views originating in the United States. It was stated on their forums that only %30 of Metacafe's traffic is from the USA.

Essentially, producers are getting paid 1/7 of what they were before. Gone are the days when a man could make $100,000 a year producing videos for Metacafe. There will never be another Kipkay.

Break.com pays! Read my previous post for more information.

Youtube has entered the fray. They opened their partner program to the public. Apparently it's fairly easy to get accepted. Alot of Metacafe and Revver refugees have migrated to Youtube, and they speak very highly of it. I have no experience with Youtube's partner program myself, but I have read alot of good things about it.

They use the same payment system as Revver. That means you get paid when viewers click the ads that lay over your videos. The big difference is that youtube's community is HUUUGE! What would have pulled 1,000 views on Revver will get 100,000 views on Youtube. Not to mention that Youtube couldn't give a damn what your video is about. You could post a rickroll of blank screen and you will still get paid for it.


To wrap things up: I believe the "big 3" has become the big 2. I would not recommend that someone new to video production even attempt to make money at Metacafe. SERIOUSLY!!! The pros may have a chance at making some cash, but not your average get rich quick schemer.

Stay away from Revver for now. They might make a comeback in the near future, but for now they don't pay. Don't waste your time.

Break is good for a quick buck. The pros would still benefit by posting videos to Break from an exposure perspective. Videos that don't hit the homepage never clear a few thousand views, but every video that does make it is guaranteed several hundred thousand views, at minimum.

Youtube is probably the best option for everybody, schemers included. They have the largest community and a solid, residual payment system.

Other options include Flixya (which allows you to profit from videos you don't own through Google adsense) and blipTV. BlipTV is like Revver on steroids. I have heard good things about this website, though have yet to check it out for myself.

It's been a while since I last posted! Not that it matters much. It's not like I have many readers here anyways.

I have managed to make $400! How did I do it you ask? Well it wasn't easy. Ok maybe it was, depending on your perspective. The first thing I did was create a profile on Break.com. I posted my x-ray tutorial there, and it performed amazingly well. It managed to collect 4,000 + views before it disappeared into the depths of the "recently submitted" category. This is about 4 times higher then your better videos do. Unfortunately I discovered that Break had changed thier terms.

No longer does a video need 20,000 views to advance to the front page. All a video needs is to be approved by the moderators and it's there. So basically your video has to catch their attention, then make them laugh.

Now I for one am not a good video producer. The only reason I got involved with this in the first place was to make money. So I hopped on Photobucket.com looking for a video to steal. The video had to be both funny and interesting, AND I had to be able to verify that it actually belonged to the owner of the account it came from.

It only took about an hour to find the perfect video. I won't describe it because I don't want to be caught. But I will tell you it was the first video (after reviewing dozens) that made me laugh. I did a quick search on Break and Youtube to see if it had been posted anywhere. Not finding it, I submited it to Break.

2 days later I found out it had hit the homepage. My best friend told me about it over the phone. I was excited. That was probably one of the happiest moments I remember having in a long time. Imagine how you would react if you found out you won 10,000 through the lottery. Yeah, maybe I was a bit over excited, but after getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts by Metacafe, and Revver, it was nice to see there was a program out there that actually DID pay.

Now this video was only supposed to be a test to see if Break actually paid. I wasn't about to invest time shooting and editing videos (it's alot of work!) if the program was a scam. I never intended to actually collect. Having money in front of you kinda changes things though, and I needed it bad.

After a few more days I had to contact Break myself to inform them that my video was on the homepage. I think they were hoping that I didn't know about thier payment program. It was the next day before I got an email with all the paperwork included. I filled it out and mailed it back to them via ups. The following friday, I had $400 in my paypal account.

I told my friend that I had been paid, and that he should try it himself. He stole his own video, submitted it, and a few days later it found it's way to the homepage.

Since then I've tried about 10 more videos and none of them made it. It could be that Break had caught on to me, or that both myself and my friend had just gotten lucky. Regardless, I don't think I'll be submiting any more videos that I don't own because I wan't to avoid the possible legal consiquences of doing that. Though it doesn't take much searching to find users on Break who have had dozens of videos on the home page. None of them appear to actually own these videos. Infact in most casses it's obvious. I don't think Break cares.

Should you take the risk? I say go for it, but be smart about it. And don't be greedy. It's when people don't know when to stop that they get caught.

My final vertict on break.com is as follows:
Break is the easiest way to make alot of money online anywhere on the internet. Most families have atleast one video tucked away somewhere that would be worthy of Break's homepage. Though getting multiple videos there legitimately would take a producer with some serious skill and experience in video production.

The downside of Break.com, as I have said in a previous post, was that you only get paid for your videos once. No additional money comes in as your view count rises.
Also there is no sure-fire method of being successful. It doesn't take long to figure out what kind of videos Break wants on it's homepage, but it's still very hit or miss.

About half of the videos that hit the homepage are obviously not owned by the submitter. Things like funny clips from gameshows, great football catches, nascar wrecks, security footage, etc. I believe break does this intentionally so they don't have to pay out as much.

The bottom line though, is that Break.com DOES pay.

After a lot of thinking, and a couple of months of research, I've come up with a list of ways I can make money working for myself.

Collecting scrap metal:
Seems like it could be lucrative, except for the fact that I drive a 95 Honda Accord. That limits what I can haul. I have the fear that I'll end up spending more money on gas then I'll actually make from selling the scrap. Iron only goes for a few cents a pound, which means months of collecting (and burning gas), or waiting until I find some huge beam or piping that weighs thousands of pounds, and calling the scrap yard to come pick it up. Most people that do this have pick up trucks or large SUV's at their disposal. I have started collecting allready. I've got about 10 pounds of steel, and 3 pounds of copper, valued at roughly $15.

Buying from Craigslist and selling on Ebay:
If you don't know about Craigslist by now, do some research. It's like a free Ebay where you deal locally without entering personal information. People on Craigslist generally sell for drastically cheaper then what people on Ebay buy for. Money could be made for someone who can afford to take a little risk getting started. I have sold a couple of my own item's on Craigslist, though I'm not having any luck with Ebay. I think the trick to Ebay is to list your expensive item for a dollar, and slapping a big NO RESERVE tag on the auction. A little risky, but most of the successful auctions I have seen have been done in this way.

Paid youtube sites:
Theres a dozen or so youtube style websites out there that pay you for getting alot of views on your videos. I'll cover the big 3 that I know most about, and their advantages.

The first is Break. Break offers $400 for getting a video listed on the front page. The videos that make it are hand selected, but all meet the same criteria. Must have 20,000 views in 30 days, and you must own the rights to the video. At $400, you don't get to keep the rights to your video. Which means it ends with break, and it stops making money. You can opt to take $200 instead, which will allow you to keep the rights to your video. The major advantage of break is how much they pay your for your views. $400 is a lot of money compared to what other sites are offering for 20,000 views. $200 is still quite competitive. The only problem is that your video has no chance to make any more then that. Break only pays you for your video once.

Then there is Metacafe. Metacafe is probably my favorite so far, but we'll see how I feel once I start getting paid. Metacafe offers a paltry $5 for each thousand views, or $100 for 20,000. One quarter of what break pays. However, you get $100 for each additional 20,000 views after that. Which means 1 million views pays $5,000! Generally, your million plus viewed videos on metacafe consist of a hot girl demonstrating how to do a magic trick. I have some good ideas of how I might take advantage of this fact, though I'm not telling until I try them first.

Finally there's Revver. Revver is not nearly as large as Metacafe or break, so don't expect to make any money from the views generated by it's members. Revver pays based on ad-clicks. So someone not only has to view your video, but they also have to click on one of the ads displayed. That is the major disadvantage of the site. The major advantage Revver has over the other two is that you can make money without posting videos. If your skills are in promoting rather then video production then this might be the site for you. If your signed up, you can view a video and copy the address in the box titled "permalink". You then share this address to make money. So, find a couple of really interesting vids, and spread the links on your own blog, 4chan, myspace, whatever. Revver could be a SERIOUS money maker for someone with some production talent, because there aren't that many good videos there now. If you were to produce something awesome, other money hungry loosers will spread your link around hoping to make money off your video. You still get %40 of the total income when this happens, and you have to do no work promoting it yourself. Their system is basically a fully automated viralizing machine.

My pick of the 3 is Metacafe, because it seems to have the most straight forward payment system that offers the highest rewards for a good video, and it also has the largest community with over 15 million members. Of course it isn't smart to just pick one. Use all three, and search Google for more. Theres a few more sites out there that pay.



Today I did some promoting of Revver videos on 4chan without much success. I also posted a link to a cool live action simpsons intro found on Revver at nohomersclub, a Simpsons forum. It has gotten some attention though no profits so far. About a week ago I uploaded a video of a bunny humping a cat to Metacafe, which without any promotion has acquired 1500 views in one week. Not phenomenal by Metacafe's standards, but should still reach the 20,000 mark by the deadline, which is 6 months.

I spent 2 months thinking and researching. I've been actively trying to make money for about 1 week now. So far, my total profits are $0!!! But I am hopeful for what the future will bring.