On November 11th 2009, I was invited to be one of several YouTube Partners at the YouTube Community Roundtable. The idea was for YouTube Partners who make original video content and are compensated by Google for the traffic those videos generate to meet the staff that helps us. It was a fantastic idea because much of our contact with YouTube is via email and messages on the site itself. We don’t get to see the faces behind the names.
Well, until that meeting.
The event was one part meetup and another part tech support and the third part new product roll-out. We saw YouTube’s 3D and High Definition initiatives as the new product end of the meeting. But what was cool was just access to the team. Finding out how others are using their channels and ideas they have to revenue generation and content development.
As I understood it this was the “West Coast” Roundtable Meeting; there was a meeting in New York as well. Our meeting turned into a “sharefest” where I quickly learned that many YouTubers were faced with the same problem: comment spammers and flamers.
“It’s part of the territory”, was the eventual conclusion all of us came to and that perhaps it was a badge of honor to sustain such attacks and keep on churning out content on a regular basis. We also learned how to make full use of all of YouTube’s “channel branding” features and got to chime in on what changes we wanted to see in YouTube.
One of the changes we asked for was implemented almost immediately. The “Insight” features that gives traffic updates is now more detailed with respect to time frame. I still want to see more a real time traffic measurement system, but what they have is a great start.
Finally, we were made aware of some of YouTube’s vital stats in a kind of “annual report” presentation. For example, YouTube has over 1 million uploads each day, but there are only about 2,500 people who are YouTube Partners who are paid for their efforts via traffic generation. Of the YouTube Partners, some make over six-figures per year and have as many as 40 million views per month.
Amazing.
And on the way out, I took my Flip Video Camera for a ride down the Google Slide. Check out the video above to ride with me!
I encourage you to start vlogging and work to become a YouTube Parnter. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.