An American friend told me last week that some of the hottest talk among venture capitalists was about Revver.com, a website enabling you to upload your videos in an easy way and get paid for them. How much you get depends on how many people click on adverts tagged to your submissions. The point is that you keep 50% of any ad revenue generated, with Revver taking the rest. That is a fair split and could open up a whole new world for content-makers.
The revenue split sets it apart from dozens of video sites sprouting up in response to the exploding popularity of digital cameras (including those on phones) and the cut in the cost of storage space. I spotted a clumsily taken, five-second holiday video on my desktop of sea lapping on rocks. It took just over three minutes to upload, after which there was a chance to edit the text and insert tags (France, sun, sea, etc.). This is for the benefit of people searching through the multitude of videos on offer. Tags could also be crucial for attracting advertising revenue. You are given an option to decide if you don’t want certain kinds of ads on your site (I said ”No” to tobacco) before clicking an icon to make it public.
I was impressed with the ease of doing this — although attempts to upload a much bigger file (56MB with a running time of 56 seconds) proved unsuccessful, whether using the standard uploading tool or a more specialised one on offer. Less than a minute after clicking the icon, the site had one view. Two days later it reached 40. That may not sound much but to me it is a world record: it is more views than any photos have had on my Flickr.com site in months.
I clicked on My Account and found that those 40 views of my five second video had earned me 80 cents. Not much, but it is the first time — eBay apart — that I have actually earned any money from the web. The future is just starting.
Browsing around the site makes it clear that some people are starting to make real money. Looking beyond the mild porn that inevitably attaches itself to such websites (despite rules drawing boundaries), you can see the obvious potential. There are quite a few videos with more than 1 000, 2 000 and 3 000 views. A brief 16-second one about a martial arts demonstrator falling down registered more than 250 000 hits. If accurate, then on the basis of my experience (roughly a dollar for 100 hits), this meant a profit of more than $2 500 for the originator.
Similar revenue-generating schemes are emerging for cellphones. Mobile Marketing Magazine reports rumours that a service by three enabling punters to upload videos from their phones for 50p to a website — and get 1p every time they are downloaded — netted one girl £1 300. In this instance the content was not as modest as the payment — but it does show the potential for harnessing creativity as long as controls over unacceptable content are in place.
Although Revver’s early videos are dominated by personal experiences, trailers and narcissism, it is easy to imagine other developments. Wannabe pop stars could trail their songs or put complete tracks on the web knowing they have a 50% revenue share. Sites such as this could spark a surge of made-for-web short films, and provide a bespoke payment system for citizen journalism. Instead of hawking video footage from events they have witnessed, video bloggers could post them on sites such as Revver and watch the money grow.
Put this with the emerging payment systems for content from mobiles and the combination could be explosive. The key is to give content providers a decent revenue share. For too long, companies have been bragging that content is king while paying the providers a pittance. If Revver marks a staging post in recognition of their importance, then there is no limit to the new opportunities. – Guardian Unlimited Â