Online home video-sharing and MetaCafe- definite money making potential

The online video-sharing phenomenon has spread throughout the internet like rapid fire in recent years. Yet it is not very well known that video-sharing sites also have the potential to earn you a great deal of money - all you need is a video camera and an idea.

Take for example Joe Eigo - this martial arts expert paid hundreds to keep his video, 'Matrix - For Real', running on his own website before deciding to upload it to MetaCafe.com. Since then, he made over $25,000 in just a few months through the sites Producer Rewards scheme. Let me explain how this works, because it is an excellent way to earn a great deal of money if you have an idea or talent that doesn't even need to be original.

MetaCafe's scheme pays producers $5 for every thousand views a video gets on the site. It starts to pay out after it reaches 20,000 views, implying a minimum payment of $100. Now you might think that 20,000 views is a lot, but check out some of the other videos I found on the site and how much money they have made so far:

1. How to X-ray an egg using a candle - 1,520,914 views - $7,589 earned.
2. One back massage technique - 1,433,346 views - $7,167 earned.
3. A card trick - 1,432,412 views - $7,166 earned.
4. How to make a flying paper bird - 614,656 views - $3,078 earned.

So as you can see, it is very easy to get views and cash with videos that are extremely simple. Keep in mind that many of the producers on the site post more than just one video, so they earn even more money - for example, one producer creates massage videos, a different one for each part of the body. He has earned a total of just under $23,000. (5)

I figure that there are three kinds of videos that people want to see. The first is funny videos - not comedy movies with massive plot lines etc, but videos of people doing stupid things, getting hurt, and pulling pranks. The second kind is amazing videos - this category contains people like Joe Eigo doing phenomenal martial arts, videos of unusual occurrences like the Empire State Building getting struck by lighting or a bird getting killed by a baseball in the middle of a game. The last category is educational videos. These are all the movies that help people to learn new things, whether it be massage techniques, magic tricks or computer tricks and so on.

When it comes to choosing an online video-sharing host, I personally would choose MetaCafe.com. Their payout seems to be the highest out of the sites I have seen, and it is encouraging to see that some people are earning tens of thousands through it. Another site worth a look is Break.com. Break offers $400 for videos, and up to $2,000 for animated films. Their goal is to attract quality films from budding filmmakers and not just the cell phone camera antics you frequently see on other video-sharing sites. The typical length is about 10 minutes, so these are really more like film shorts. One more site that I have just recently been told about is Revver.com. This site sticks ads onto user video clips, and then pays the user a share of the profits. The more clicks a video receives, the more money a user can make. When talking about video-sharing sites, of course one has to mention YouTube.com. Although at the moment YouTube does not offer monetary incentives for uploading your videos, there is word that later in 2007 the site will change this by offering video producers a cut of advertising revenue.

Whichever video-sharing host you choose, it will not change the fact that there is potential here to earn a great deal of money on the internet. Perhaps it's time you invested in a video camera.