I've been seeing a lot of Youtube videos called "Absolutely free [name of product here]" where users are giving away laptops and ipods and things like that. All you have to do to win is to subscribe to them and leave a comment. I was wondering what the point of this is and if these people are somehow making money via Youtube, or if they're just kids who want to be popular?
I guess they are just trying to bait some traffic. Well, it doesn't mean anything with the title. Try to access their URLs if shown and you will get the idea. Anyhow, I don't think they are making money directly with YouTube.
It's called affilate marketing. Webmaster advertises consumer to do some offers in exchange for a product. Usually the webmaster will keep 3/4 of the profit and give 1/4 back to the consumer. It's easy to do but hard to advertise.
People search youtube for "win a free ipod" or whatever. They arrive at you video. You tell them to go to your affiliate link. They complete the offer. You earn around $10 for them completing the offer. Simple really
They don't even make you sign up to enter their contest though. Example: youtube.com/watch?v=qahVEZA82kA just has his link sitting on the side but doesn't require anyone to click it. youtube.com/watch?v=Z1raKpEo3Wk doesn't even have an affiliate link.
The first video you quoted has 17,056 comments. That's a lot. It's probably going to put it to the top of some 'most commented' list on youtube. The traffic he gets from this will (he hopes) click on the "get paid to do surveys" link and he'll get enough signups to justify the free wii. Just a guess.