Noble man makes money posting videos online

The Norman Transcript

March 04, 2007 12:48 am

— By Julianna Parker
Transcript Staff Writer
NOBLE — Posting videos online is increasing in popularity and one local man has turned this hobby into a lucrative business.
But he’s not ready to quit his day job, yet.
Zack Scott, 25, of Noble, has earned more than $12,000 since October by posting videos on Metacafe.com.
The original video-posting Web site, YouTube.com, launched December 2005. It serves more than 100 million video views per day and is receiving more than 65,000 video uploads daily, according to the site.
Users can now post their videos on a myriad of Web sites that have sprung up in the wake of YouTube’s popularity. Although YouTube is free, many other sites now pay users for the best videos.

Journey of a
video freelancer
Scott got involved in the online video trend last year. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2004 and now works as a contract employee for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Always an avid Internet user, he never seriously considered making money off his videos until a friend convinced him it could happen.
Metacafe, where Scott has made most of his money, begins to pay posters per number of views once the video passes 20,000 hits.
Scott said he’s made money by getting involved on the site early on and following the trends in audiences.
For example, he began by posting videos of his cat, then posted computer how-tos and riddles he’s known since childhood. Feats of strength and magic tricks also have been popular on Metacafe, but Scott said he’s no good at those.
“I just kind of focused on entertainment, just trying to make videos I enjoy and that other people would watch,” Scott said.

But why doesn’t
he just go read a book?
Scott said his favorite aspect of posting videos online is “user feedback. Finding out what people think about my video.”
Although he’s had a lot of positive feedback, there have been a few people who hated one of his videos enough they went to his personal Web site to tell him how they felt.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a video that was so lame foundationally and in execution that I was compelled to visit this site to write and say how lacking in humor and talent you are. Seriously, stop,” one visitor to Scott’s site said.
These types of comments are few and far between, however, and Scott said he really enjoys the community that develops with people who watch his videos frequently.
This is one reason he hasn’t abandoned YouTube entirely, he said, because the audience there is more interactive.
Another reason Scott said he enjoys online videos is the flexibility it allows viewers. People can watch things that would never make it on television, and they can do it whenever they want, he said.
“People want to see things when they want to see them,” Scott said.
Media conglomerates have jumped on the bandwagon, with companies like NBC sponsoring “channels” on YouTube and allowing viewers to watch TV shows and clips on-demand at their Web site.

And that’s why they
pay him the big bucks
Payment for high-traffic videos seems to be expanding. In January, YouTube’s co-founder, Chad Hurley, said the company would in the coming months begin sharing advertising revenue with contributors, according to the New York Times.
Metacafe has always believed producers should be compensated for good content, Allyson Campa, vice president of marketing for Metacafe, said in an e-mail.
Metacafe’s Producer Rewards program, which began in October, has paid creators more than $300,000 in the last four months, she said.
She said the chances of qualifying for payment are good if: “The poster owns all rights to the content, the content is suitable for all audiences and the video is interesting to total strangers.”
“We launched Producer Rewards last October to support a new breed of semi-professional producers who are creating higher-quality video content,” she said. “The video market is clearly following our lead in moving towards supporting quality, or ‘elevated,’ user-generated content.”
Scott agreed video sites would continue the profit-sharing trend in the future. He also said marketers will probably use video-posting sites more in the future.
Scott made $2,000 by making an online commercial for Mentos. The company saw how much cheaper it could be to advertise on the Internet by paying video posters, or “vloggers,” to produce ads for them that would then circulate in online communities, he said.
Although some famous vloggers have made a living by producing online content, Scott said that would require more work and commitment than he’s willing to give.
“I think it’s a bit early in the game of online videos to quit my job and jump in,” he said.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.