MediaVidea

Paying users of Web 2.0 sites

Web 2.0 is all the rage. It is a rage created by the Venture Capitalists, I think. On one hand, users are hailed as the new heroes and so forth, but the sites take all the money.

PART 1
First, let us look at the most popular sites that don’t share revenues or share minimally.

Digg
No sharing. Users bring all the news and Digg reportedly earns $300,000 monthly.

Youtube
There are talks about sharing money as Google has bought the startup.

Del.icio.us
Is purely free. No ads as well. As such, users won’t probably ask for payouts.

Flickr
No payouts. However, many photographers, graphic designers post stuff in order to get more assignments resulting from increased exposure.

Myspace
Again, Fox gets all the money - $ 200 million last year, I think. However, Myspace is a haven for musicians who just want the exposure.

Blog Networks
There are too many of them. Some pay salaries and some share revenues with top bloggers.

PART 2

The scene is different in case of pure news-based web 2.0 sites that are seriously working working on payout methods in order to get more people to contribute as citizen journalists.

Google Adsense makes it possible for sites/networks with content providers. The publisher can paste his adsense code into as many sites as he/she wishes.

Michael Hiemstra suggests that news/CJ sites can have each author/reporter record their Google AdSense code in their profile, and then modify the site’s software to use that code for any ads that run along with their stories.


News Assignment has an exhaustive look at news and content sites that pay:


Revver: One of the few video sharing sites that shares ad revenue with users.

BlogBurst: Aggregates and syndicates qualifying bloggers with big online publishers. Bloggers who make it into the top 100 get a quarterly payout from $50 to $1,500. A recent deal with Reuters allows syndication onto print media.

Current.tv: It pays $100 for mobile phone footage to $1000 for a commercial. Most feature programming on Current.tv is called ‘pods’ - non-fiction shorts that are 3-7 minutes long getting $500 - $1000 per piece.

NewAssignment.Net: While citizen researchers will contribute on a voluntary basis, and an experienced editor (or team of editors) will be paid to “bring the project home.”

GroundReport: A new news site. Shares ad revenues with contributors based on the popularity of their articles. Gives Nonprofits 100% of ad revenues for their articles.

Newsvine
Contributors get 90% of the ad revenues created by their articles, with the remaining 10% going to whoever referred them to the site.

OhmyNews
Writers can make money in two ways: by landing a headline on the front page, or through voluntary contributions from their readers and peers via the “tip jar.” Top stories get about $20. Ohmynews is in the news for not living up to its promise and for having no proper business model.

This is an initial list. There are other web 2.0 sites with pioneering business models that I would like to report about.

I would also suggest to the news-based sites to look at others ways to generate and share revenue :
- Classifieds are a great way to start.
- Books are another - posts wriiten in a series fashion , so that later a book may be created.
- Video tutorials can bring in some money.

Update#1 : 27.11.2006
Break.com, a video-sharing site has just announced that it’ll pay $400 for user-generated videos and up to $2,000 for animated shorts.

Update #2: 27.11.2006
Metacafe.com pays $5 for every 1000 views if a video breaks 20,000 views.

Update #3: 6.12.2006
Vplyr is a user generated video online marketplace where creators set prices for their work in a protected media player.

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:24 PM