Let's turn Hype = $$$

hectohertz · May 28, 2011

Dumb title. It's late. There are a number of video upload sites now that let you keep all or some of the ad revenue they generate. Most of us seem to upload our vids to youtube, and we as a community, spend a lot of time watching smash vids on youtube. Generating ad revenue for youtube, which is nice, but youtube is doing fine, we could use the money.

I say, we all agree to use a site that allows us to collect the ad revenue, and every so often, we use the money generated as the pot for a tourney. The more hype we generate, the more obsessively we watch our favorite videos, the more money we'd end up having for some sick tournaments.

this may be jumping the gun a bit, but if people are interested I could definitely whip up some scripts to harvest youtube links and turn them into links on a site we agree on. or maybe just have a little script that when someone is linking to youtube, reminds them that they could be generating prize-money/hype for a tournament instead.

here's a site that lists a bunch of these ad-revenue sharing sites:
http://socialmediatrader.com/resource-list-100-revenue-sharing-sites/

tl;dr: videos make ad revenue. if we keep the ad revenue, we could use it to increase the pot of a tournament

Dimitris · May 28, 2011

Youtube is where all the viewers are though. You'd be shrinking the number of new people finding Melee footage (and getting interested) to a fraction of what it was.

hectohertz · May 30, 2011

eh, i don't think there are that many people finding this stuff through youtube. i feel like we have a very dedicated fanbase.

also, we could still keep some videos up on youtube.... or replace them with links to the new site

Zodiac · May 30, 2011

I've been trying to get people to do this forever, But for some reason they just dont want melee up on machinima.com's youtube channel with ****ing 2,594,374 subscribers. (Which btw I get paid for and would GLADLY donate every penny to tournament expenses)

Dark Hart · May 30, 2011

Smash kinda needs YouTube....

MasterShake · May 31, 2011

Community effort from a super lazy community...

Would be nice though!

hectohertz · Jun 2, 2011

fair enough, but what if we leveraged that laziness in our favor

a little scripting could harvest all the youtube videos we link to and post them on a revenue-sharing site. from there its pretty trivial to redirect outgoing youtube links to a revenue-sharing site (if we have a copy up)

Zodiac · Jun 2, 2011

Its hard to get them to do this stuff, Like I said I've offered multiple times. I might be in on this if I happen to record any worth while matches here, every now and then we get eggz vs...someone not as good as eggz. And I say might cause I have my own method of revenue sharing.

Eggz · Jun 2, 2011

If someone records my characters, I've been wanting to make myself a DK/Mario combo video and a Fox combo video. That'd generate mad views

Mr.Jackpot · Jun 2, 2011

Zodiac said:
I've been trying to get people to do this forever, But for some reason they just dont want melee up on machinima.com's youtube channel with ****ing 2,594,374 subscribers. (Which btw I get paid for and would GLADLY donate every penny to tournament expenses)

What people? Machinima or the community?

hectohertz · Jun 3, 2011

so who is actually in charge of smashboards to the degree they could let some scripters (me, zodiac, whoever else) actually make the change we're talking about.

Zodiac · Jun 3, 2011

Eggz said:
If someone records my characters, I've been wanting to make myself a DK/Mario combo video and a Fox combo video. That'd generate mad views

I'll be at Lost4Life with my recording equipment...most likely, feel free to record all the combo video footage you want on it.

Mr.Jackpot said:
What people? Machinima or the community?

The community, the last time I offered the general consensus was that I was going to horde all the money generated from the videos for myself.

And tummy, I post videos to machinima.com's youtube channel which I then get paid for. I don't know how to script or anything :/, but embedded views work for revenue sharing with m.com

Ryuker · Jun 3, 2011

Interesting idea. Too bad you lose the youtube community features on these sites tough which is a big reason for smashers to stick with youtube I think.What's the quality on these sites?

You could always upload to youtube to so we maintain the exposure there. Then suggest that they watch these links first before they check the youtube link.

edit:Browsed through that article. Which sites would you be considering. From what I can see most require you to pay a subscription etc or set a price for you content.

edit2: Blip.tv looks interesting but I don't know if they'd allow smash vids.
This article gives some insights in advertising on these sites and if putting vids on there is worth it: http://bradwelltv.com/bradley/is-bliptv-ad-monetizing-worth-while/

I wonder if Nintendo would allow this though. I your generating revenue then they'll probably disallow it (MLG had issues with broadcasting rights for example).

username12345678 · Jun 3, 2011

^ i think the exposure that youtube gives smash is well worth it. thats how i got into smash.

Zodiac · Jun 3, 2011

romkca said:
^ i think the exposure that youtube gives smash is well worth it. thats how i got into smash.

It is well worth it. But why not make money off of it and help players/tournament hosts? Either of these methods will work. Since it seems like people have a better understanding of it now I'll leave me offer on the table.

Ryuker · Jun 6, 2011

I made a thread about this in the europe boards. http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=12823646#post12823646

@ Zodiac: What about broadcast right? As far as I know MLG had issues with broadcast right. What's different about machinima?

Zodiac · Jun 6, 2011

Ryuker said:
I made a thread about this in the europe boards. http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=12823646#post12823646

@ Zodiac: What about broadcast right? As far as I know MLG had issues with broadcast right. What's different about machinima?

they're not livestreaming this stuff. But Im not sure what they do differently but as far as I know they have a general agreement with the big game companies on the distribution of their content, and in many cases have direct contact with them.

hectohertz · Jun 7, 2011

afaik, we should be fine w/r/t broadcast rights as long as we're not livestreaming

and yes, i too offer my programming abilities to script this, now who's approval do we need

Ryuker · Jun 9, 2011

I would not be so sure about that.

Here's youtube's videogame en software content policy

And here is a post from Waffles asking about partnerships

Zodiac · Jun 9, 2011

Ryuker said:
I would not be so sure about that.

Here's youtube's videogame en software content policy

And here is a post from Waffles asking about partnerships

thats why machinima.com is a good solution to this.

hectohertz · Jun 11, 2011

if machinima can do it, we can too

just not through youtube

t3h Icy · Jun 11, 2011

Why doesn't someone just build a machine that when it's in a hyped atmosphere it prints money or something?

smakis · Jun 12, 2011

You don't really need permission from smashboards to post the videos on other sites, I guess you would have to ask the people who uploaded the matchets in the first place.

Also what stops you from simply posting the videos on both youtube and a different site, that way we will still have the exposure from youtube and people who have been here a while can watch the matches on the new site.

hectohertz · Jun 13, 2011

we can totally do that, i was just hoping for a little more organization. also i don't want to just start ripping and stealing waffles/other peoples videos and promising them that I'm going to help out and give the money back to the community, after pound v's umm interesting ending people are paranoid (rightly so)

so i think we should have some "piece" of the community in on this, even if its just a name that everyone knows (*cough* hmw *cough*), or maybe someone from the backrooms

Blea Gelo · Jun 13, 2011

this is a really good idea.

Ryuker · Jul 16, 2012

Has anyone done anything with this idea yet?

Eggm · Jul 16, 2012

You can use youtube to accomplish this goal. Simply instruct all the people via smashboards to click on the ads on people's youtube accounts and they will get money through ad sense. Simply put all the vids on the same youtube account.... like the way the account MeleeAtlanticNorth combined all the north east big uploaders into one account, and then when everyone clicks the ads on those vids you can trust someone reliable with the revenue from all those clicks and vote how to put it back into the community best.

Ideally you could have all the smash community agree on one account to upload all tournament footage, but if that's not possible then having one account per region would work.

Edit: This is a copy/paste from the OP's link. "Most of the sites on this list are based on sharing revenue from Google Adsense."

This is the same ad service that youtube uses... so why not just do it on youtube?

KrIsP! · Jul 16, 2012

Dimitris said:
Youtube is where all the viewers are though. You'd be shrinking the number of new people finding Melee footage (and getting interested) to a fraction of what it was.

That and youtube does pay out it's uploaders for their ad revenue. You just have to sign up to allow ads on your videos and sign some contracts and ****. I think you also need a certain viewcount before they let you. The idea is good but not any smasher would make money, ad revenue isn't that much if your not pulling in over 1k views on each vid. I see high level smashers playing and the view count can sometimes be at 37. Some like strife could upload a bunch of Apex vids and probably get a good amount for ad revenue...maybe.

Streams also give ad revenue too...I think every region should just work on building a good stream and upload rate and (hopefully) make some money.

Zodiac said:
thats why machinima.com is a good solution to this.

Oh I forgot to make a thread about this... BUT ITS POSSIBLY IMPORTANT AND DEFINITELY RELELVANT.

Machininma is soon going to be opening a competitive gaming channel. Once it's up you need to sign up to be a director and give them the videos you want to upload. Once your a director with them, follow their rules and they can take care of the legal stuff and you DO get paid. Again, we can't just have every smasher making money, but at least the more active regions are definitely viable and can give back by putting money into pots or buying out better venues/lower venue fees/ better stream equipment.

EDIT: Damn, it's already up but they don't seem too interested in tournaments. More interviews and tutorials than anything. More than that, it doesn't seem like they're looking for directors so I don't know if they'd care for competitive melee directors. Here's the channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MachinimaVS?feature=watch
and the program if anyone wants to try signing up at respawn or something.
http://www.machinima.com/directors-program

Ryuker · Jul 17, 2012

KrIsP! said:
That and youtube does pay out it's uploaders for their ad revenue. You just have to sign up to allow ads on your videos and sign some contracts and ****. I think you also need a certain viewcount before they let you.

I looked this up last year. Our smashnl account has gotten the invite a couple of times to turn on adds on our vids but we didn't due to the following:

from video game software and content - youtube

Without the appropriate license from the publisher, use of video game or software user interface must be minimal. Video game content may be monetized if the associated step-by-step commentary is strictly tied to the live action being shown and provides instructional or educational value.

Videos simply showing a user playing a video game or the use of software for extended periods of time may not be accepted for monetization.

We don't have commentary on our vids yet so I figured we wouldn't qualify. For the same reasons we're not generating revenue from google adsense but if your saying addsense wouldn't be a problem eggm then it might be interesting.

KrIsP! said:
The idea is good but not any smasher would make money, ad revenue isn't that much if your not pulling in over 1k views on each vid. I see high level smashers playing and the view count can sometimes be at 37. Some like strife could upload a bunch of Apex vids and probably get a good amount for ad revenue...maybe.

I don't expect the revenue to be huge but small amounts can add up quickly and building up a small reserve is better then not making any money at all.
Example: AJP's channel nearly doubled it's view count in a year (going from 437.235 views to 868,031 views). I dunno how much revenue that would have made.

KrIsP! said:
Streams also give ad revenue too...I think every region should just work on building a good stream and upload rate and (hopefully) make some money.

Generating revenue through streams seem to be safe of any copyright issues. You have to be accepted as a partner though but if your channel is professional enough this shouldn't be an issue. http://nl.twitch.tv/p/partner_faq

Anyone that became a partner that can share some of their experience with the partner program?

KrIsP! said:
Machanima stuff

Interesting, might be worth looking into, although I'm hesitant of giving our vids to someone external.

standardtoaster · Jul 17, 2012

I know peef is a partner with twitch.

KrIsP! · Jul 17, 2012

@Ryuker
the problem with machinima is that they decide if your videos are worth uploading. You don't have to worry about videogame copyrights with them though.

I suppose the pros would be getting paid, having a large amount of viewers open to your videos and not having to worry about videogame commentary copy rights.

The cons would be if they decide to only upload some if not none of your videos and paying you less than you would make as a youtube partner. Also, their competitive gaming channel isn't currently looking for directors to give them videos nor do they have anything other than MLG interviews...because of that I tweeted one of the machinima workers about uploading melee tournaments and he replied saying that he'd bring it up at work. Hopefully he does, it'd be cool.

Juggleguy · Jul 17, 2012

Ryuker said:
I looked this up last year. Our smashnl account has gotten the invite a couple of times to turn on adds on our vids but we didn't due to the following:

from video game software and content - youtube

This. I don't think Smash accounts on YouTube can actually qualify for the ads / Partnership Program / whatever they call it now. Smash definitely needs YouTube, like someone said earlier. That's where the views are, you can't expect the community to migrate to any other media streaming site at this point in the game's life.

Strong Badam · Jul 17, 2012

You have to partner with Machinima if you want to monetize with just video games. My buddy DsS does Sonic speedruns and he gets $ from his views via his partnership with Machinima.

Ryuker · Jul 17, 2012

KrIsP! said:
The cons would be if they decide to only upload some if not none of your videos and paying you less than you would make as a youtube partner. Also, their competitive gaming channel isn't currently looking for directors to give them videos nor do they have anything other than MLG interviews...because of that I tweeted one of the machinima workers about uploading melee tournaments and he replied saying that he'd bring it up at work. Hopefully he does, it'd be cool.

Those are pretty big cons though. I read the information on the directors program but it's to vague. Interested to hear what their real requirements are. I don't like the thought of them reviewing all our vids before they are accepted, would delay the rate of vids getting released after a tourney.

Agree with Juggleguy that migrating to another site would be a really bad idea. Youtube is where it's at and it will be for some time untill a more accepted streaming service comes along.

Eggm · Jul 17, 2012

Juggleguy said:
This. I don't think Smash accounts on YouTube can actually qualify for the ads / Partnership Program / whatever they call it now. Smash definitely needs YouTube, like someone said earlier. That's where the views are, you can't expect the community to migrate to any other media streaming site at this point in the game's life.

I've made like $5.00 off the clicks on my vids, and I only have smash vids on my channel.

Ryuker · Jul 17, 2012

Eggm said:
I've made like $5.00 off the clicks on my vids, and I only have smash vids on my channel.

So you just enabled your account for monetization and agreed on the folllowing and that's it?

I have read and agree to the terms above.

I agree that I will not click on the Google ads that I’m serving through Google’s products and services in order to fraudulently increase income.

I will not opt-in any content for monetization for which I do not possess sufficient rights.

Eggm · Jul 17, 2012

I think they sent me a request for a partnership or something, and I just signed up and then on my videos was a "enable for monetization button" and I clicked it for a bunch of my vids.

I made $5.00 and I haven't uploaded anything in like a year, so I could see the big uploaders making some big bucks on this, especially if everyone knew that the person getting the money from the clicks was going to put it back into the community and therefore were more inclined to click the ads.

And yeah I agreed to those terms. I have never clicked the ads on my own vids, and I was approved to have sufficient rights for some of my smash vids but not others (I don't know why) I just gave them all a shot for approval.

Edit: Some of my vids don't have the enable for monetization button available, so to me that meant youtube was cool with me enabling them on the vids the button was available, but apparently only some get approved anyways.

Edit2: the process they use to select which vids are approved to montization must be automated... otherwise it would be impossible to keep up with the amount of requests coming in every day. If someone can figure out a way to get 100%, that would be great. I've seen other smashers with ads on their smash vids, so maybe they can shed some light.

Ryuker · Jul 17, 2012

Thanks for sharing your insights Eggm. Your channel has a pretty huge view count so that might be a reason why they accepted your channel.

I wonder how many clicks thats $5,00 is made up off. Not uploading a lot doesn't mean your old vids didn't gain a lot of views the past year. You can check this in the analytics feature of your youtube channel so if your willing to share your rise in views we might be able to find the average amount per click.

So after you enable the monetization button for your channel you get an enable for monetization button for each vid? Any shared characteristics of the vids that were enabled for monetization?

I haven't attempted it myself since I'm afraid my account might get banned if I try(my first account got banned years ago and only featured smash vids but the reasoning is unknown to me). I would never enable it for our official youtube channel without general consensus from the rest off the dutch community.

Edit: Found a vid that shows the partnership interface and some insight on CPC (costs per click) and RPM. Apparently sharing that info can get you banned though.
The guy makes about $1,00 per 1k views. Adds up to about $50,- in a month for about 70k views.

Eggm · Jul 17, 2012

There are 17 clicks on my youtube vids. The amount you get per click varies a lot. I've gotten like $1.50 off one click, and as low as like $0.10c on a click. I think it's based on the amount of impressions in-between clicks.

Edit: Clicks on the ads on my youtube vids, not on the vids themselves.

unknown522 · Jul 17, 2012

Eggm said:
There are 17 chicks on my youtube vids. The amount you get per chick varies a lot. I've gotten like $1.50 off one chick, and as low as like $0.10c on a chick. I think it's based on the amount of impressions in-between chicks.

Edit: Chicks on the ads on my youtube vids, not on the vids themselves.

I was like 'Dayum! Eggm be Gettin *****es!'

Let's turn Hype = $$$

Smash Ace

Smash Ace

Smash Ace

Smash Master

Rejected by Azua

Smash Lord

Smash Ace

Smash Master

Smash Hero

Smash Lord

Smash Ace

Smash Master

Smash Lord

Smash Apprentice

Smash Master

Smash Lord

Smash Master

Smash Ace

Smash Lord

Smash Master

Smash Ace

Smash Master

Smash Ace

Smash Ace

Smash Lord

Smash Lord

Smash Hero

Smash Champion

Smash Lord

Tubacabra

Smash Champion

Smash Grimer

Super Elite

Smash Lord

Smash Hero

Smash Lord

Smash Hero

Smash Lord

Smash Hero

Some guy

Information

Network