Hey guys I've recently just gotten into this whole YouTube thing, embedded a lot of cool vids in my blog, etc. But after going through their site (or some of it) I gott ask: "How the hell does YouTube make money???" They must be spending a ton of bandwidth every day hosting and serving all these videos, right? So does anyone have a clue?
"Founded in February 2005, by early commerce pioneers of PayPal, YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience..." If the owners are early pioneers of Paypal, they are probably just rolling in the dough from when Paypal was bought out by eBay... Good question, though...I can't imagine they would be spending so much in bandwidth, just for the heck of it.
Hmm, I think Shawn is right. I just read where they recently partnered up with MTV to cull free content to their users. Looks like the first year or so was to get people interested, using, and become addicted (I know I have!) to them. Then they spring the ads on them. Probably a little at a time, but man, with their high popularity, they will definitely make a ton of dough when they do decide to sell ad space.
What the hell do you guys think I'm doing with all the free tools and forum? I'm just sucking you guys in so that when I have 100,000,000 users I can make some money with it all.
Haha, dude, I wouldn't blink or give it a second thought if you put a banner or two on the forum. Seriously, go for it. If people bitch and moan, they just don't appreciate DP enough.
oh my VS you should stop now so Shawn finally infests the site with ads, just like all good webmaster sites do!!! /sarcasm]
Yea, I agree they are probably building up quite a large user database that they can eventually make money from. Perhaps once they get a large following, start placing ads on their site or in their videos. They seem to be trying to start a large community like facebook, myspace, etc with a different concept.
uhhh.. Youtube is owned by Google.. Youtube isnt making money yet but Google has the userbase to continue on their plan for world domination.. One day all the youtube videos are going to be hypnotic videos and we will just follow the Big G into the depths of hell... but yeah its the userbase that they really want
I think a big portion of it has to do with keeping costs down. When purchasing bandwidth in vast quantities, it's quite cheap. Example - it's easy to purchase a 1000MB line for $2.50 per megabit, but the cost to purchase a 100MB circuit from the same carrier is at least 3x the cost. The more bandwidth (and drive space, CPU, etc) you purchase, the cheaper it gets. Of course, there's the cost of staff and such, but as it says above, advertising is where they make money, content is what is provided to them (and given away) for free. John C. Young
That's funny! Anyway, there are some pages where you can see advertisments on youtube - I believe, that there is "some money"!
3 years ago, there were no ( at least I don't remember anything like that ) advertisements on YouTube.
YouTube is financed by Google, and as Shawn said the value is in the long-term userbase. Look how many people use YouTube, it's the equivalent of everyone on the Internet watching one video every single day. That's around 500-900 million videos a day, and around $5 million/day in bandwidth and let's say.. Google makes around 10 times that? Google wants to own the web and the market and they will gamble millions for a laugh if they need to.