VideoLook Who Is Monetizing their 15 Minutes of Fame on YouTube

Look Who Is Monetizing their 15 Minutes of Fame on YouTube

Last night, “America’s Got Talent” was was turning Maestro Alexander Bui, a 16-year-old pianist from Egg Harbor Township, NJ, Jackie Evancho, a 10-year-old opera singer from Pittsburgh, PA, and Dan Sperry, a 25-year-old magician from Las Vegas, NV, and Kristina Young, a 22-year-old singer from Spearfish, SD into YouTube stars.

But there are some other YouTube stars who are monetizing their 15 minutes of fame day in and day out. Big time.

On July 30, YouTube increased the upload limit to 15 minutes. And I wondered, “Now, what can you do with the new 15-minute limit that you couldn’t do with the old 10-minute limit?

So, I waited … and I watched.

Joshua Siegel, YouTube’s Product Manager, Upload and Video Management, encouraged users to tag their video with “yt15minutes,” upload it by Wednesday, August 4, and a select handful of people would truly gain their 15 minutes of fame by by being featured on the YouTube homepage in a future spotlight.

That encouraged some aspiring YouTubers to post videos that were 15 minutes long, like “Timelapse – one year in 15 minutes – A new Tower growing like tree, in Tokyo, Japan (yt15minutes).”

It’s fascinating, but it doesn’t look like a big money maker.

But then I found several categories of YouTube partners that were using their extra time to make some extra money. This includes: Beauty Tips, Technology & Electronics, Machinima, Video Blogs, and Gadgets.

Not every beauty tip or gadget demo can be squeezed into 10 minutes. Some need a full 15 minutes to cover every detail. And don’t get me started on the time it takes to learn a sound strategy for getting into high rounds on the COD:WaW Zombie Map Shi No Numa.

So, why does expand a marketer’s ability to make some extra dough?

At SES New York 2010, I interviewed Jordan Blum of Beautychoice.com. He discussed Beautychoice.com’s outreach to the top YouTube channels in the beauty tips category. Beautychoice.com gives products to professional makeup artist’s like Michelle Phan, who then link back to beautychoice.com.

The results have been spectacular, according to Blum. What he called “product placement on steroids” and generated “millions of dollars” in product sales for Beautychoice.com.


Product placement on steroids with Jordan Blum, Beautychoice.com at SES New York 2010

In case you think this is too good to be true, consider this: Michelle Phan’s “Lady GaGa Poker Face Tutorial” has 20,390,627 views and her beauty channel has 209,762,308 total upload views and 869,942 subscribers.

Get it? Got it? Good.

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