The competition for consumer generated content is about to drive companies to offer rewards for those who offer higher quality content. When companies such as YouTube and MySpace make millions without sharing a penny, some will start to ask the question why aren't they getting paid. “Hey, that’s my content!”
The idea is when there is too much content out there, the quality of content will drop and it will be frustrating to find what you want. The time spent on searching and discovering good content will become longer. Tagging and other human filters will only help so much. The quality of the experience will decline and those who figure out how to filter and repackage content will stay ahead of the game. I think the role of an “editor” will come back, except this time it will be the “citizen editor”. I can imagine there will be a consumer validation mechanism for these citizen editors. This is for those who have shown that they have not violated the trust being placed upon them (something like eBay merchants). All of this assumes that consumers will continue to be willing to play along and create content which I believe is something where there is no turning back. It is a part of the progress of our information society. New distribution economic models will emerge, and it includes cost-per-play and cost-per-sharing etc. Here are some examples:
Cash for consumer generated videos
Break.com: They are the most desperate ones and now offering $400 per video and up to $2000 for animated shorts. You need to get your video on the homepage to qualify first.
Revver.com: Probably the first site to offer an ad revenue split for content creators. They display an ad after your clip, and split the revenue 50/50. This is a proven model and seems to be working. They ae tweaking its model and try to give a larger payout. They expect the impression price ads to go as high as $20 CPMS.
Edfoof: As they pay you to submit videos (not necessarily your own) and drive as much traffic to them as possible, they give you a cut of their Ad revenue.
lMetacafe: They have a payment model based around the no. of views your clip actually receives ($100 for 20,000 views and topping $10,000 for 2 million views). I hear that some top earners make more than $25,000).
Guba: You get $25 for every 100 new sign ups that are referred from your site via an embedded player or via a link in an email.
Flixya: Flixya pays users to repost clips from YouTube, Metacaf, Daily Motion, Google Video and MySpace Video and other sites that offer embedded Flash players. They put ads all around these clips and ask you to drive traffic to them - and you get 50% of the ad dollars.
Cash for consumer generated content, ringtones or just photos
Scoopt ScoopLive CellJournalist: All these sites offer to buy your newsworthy photographs, sell them to media companies and send you a cut of the revenue. Scoopt is receiving the most buzz.
BlogBurst: Blogburst syndicates blog posts to news sites like the Washington Post. The top 100 users get paid between $200 and $6,000 a year.
SpyMeida They sell your photos, and offers “bounties” when you supply photos that media companies are looking for (citizen paparazzi)
PayPerLink: Paid citizen PR. PayPerPost pays you to blog on certain topics suggested by advertisers. You don’t even need to disclose that you’re being paid. The amount can be in the hundreds of dollars per post (not bad).
ReviewMe is similar to PayPerPost but many consider it to be slightly more ethical.
Creamaid is also similar to PayPerPost. They described themselves as a platform to help companies instantly start an online word-of-mouth marketing campaign by stimulating, aggregating and syndicating the buzz from bloggers. Paid citizen PR.
Scooptwords: They offer a button to place in your blog sidebar. Media companies (magazines editors) - can just click to buy your posts on the spot.
lMyNumo: MyNumo is a marketplace for mobile phone content – you can sell your own videos, ringtones and wallpapers and earn 20% of the revenue.
mDialogue: A new comer in user submitted video sharing, based in Toronto, the firm believes the dialogue about the movie is as important as the movie itself. They promsie to provide a better way to store, watch, share and discuss user created videos at DVD quality, safely and securely.
