Revver grosses $1 million, contributors get $40
Steve Safran September 13th, 2007
This is exactly what I mean when I say “In the aggregation game, the only people who win are the aggregators.” Revver is announcing that it has now paid more than $1 million to people who have posted their videos on its site since last September. (PDF here.) Indeed, there are a few big winners, as the Long Tail would predict - the Diet Coke and Mentos guys grossed $50,000. But the million bucks (paid as a 50-50 split, along with a few other considerations) is spread out over 25,000 people - that’s an average of $40 per person. More than you’ll make from YouTube, yes, but just keep in mind that what you’re really doing is making money for Revver. The company is the only part of the equation that can reap significant cash.
3 Comments Add your own
1. Eric | September 13th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
It’s all a tradeoff. The guy who cleaned up on the Mentos clip would have gone broke trying with bandwidth bills if he’d hosted it himself and didn’t line up paying sponsors in advance. And those sponsors would have had to agreed to an open-ended commitment based on number of plays for him to stay afloat.
2. baker | September 14th, 2007 at 6:37 am
i guess i’ve never heard you say, “in the aggregation game, the only people who win are the aggregators.” are you being critical of revver or not, hard to tell - or perhaps intentionally ambiguous because you’re not sure?
could the position of “in the syndication game, the only people who win are the syndicators,” be applied to the content creators who have the potential to make $40 or more from dozens of sites (including revver) and therefore make some dough in aggregate? and i would argue that “significant cash” is a relative term.
content creators can’t put all their eggs in one basket. they gotta hustle and market themselves, distribute their content anywhere they might make a buck and find some viewers, something i’m sure you agree with.
3. Safran | September 14th, 2007 at 6:56 am
I’m not being critical of Revver. What happens is that I hear from professionals that they’re considering all sorts of rev share deals, and I like to point out that aggregators tend to be the big winners in those sorts of arrangements, not the individual players. This is just an example.
I agree with you, as per usual, on the issue of content creators and how they market themselves.
And Eric is, likewise, insightful about the bandwidth costs. But I’d hazard a guess that the Diet Coke and Mentos guys weren’t thinking “Business Model!” when they shot their clip. And people I work with think “Business Model” when they hear about 50/50 splits. I’m hoping to discourage that.
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