there was a new york times article and multiple posts (here is one) about how video sharing sites are looking for new ways to moentize their service and share the revenues with the users.

the revenue model for video sharing sites is quite straight forward, they can:

• insert video ads into the video clips
• text/banner advertising on the web page where the user views the clip
• offer premium video content (and either charge for it or share ad revenues with the content owner)
• serve as distribution channel for movie trailers, music videos, etc. and charge the content owner

what is new for these video sharing sites (but not the first time it is being done on the internet) is that they are trying to put together a model in which they will share the revenues with the end-users (not those that visit the site, but rather those that submit the videos).

this model makes perfect sense to me and is fair to the end-users, it will probably be abused by click-fraud and spammers, so these sites will have to spend a lot of time fighting it and protecting their revenue stream. i hope this trend will also lead to more reasonable site policies with regard to the site rights with regard to the content (some of these sites, including YouTube, are giving themselves too many rights when it comes to what they can do with the content)