Cashing In on Your Hit YouTube Video - NYTimes.com

Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. Here's some advice from NY Times article: Cashing In on Your Hit YouTube Video - NYTimes.com

Here is reprint of part that deals with youtube posting:

"GET MONEY FROM YOUTUBE ADS. If your video is on the road to viral success, YouTube, a part of Google, is eager to make money from you. It will send you an e-mail asking if you want to become a partner. If you give your permission, the site will run ads alongside your video and share more than half the revenue with you, sending you a check each month.


"Some of the people behind viral videos, like the father of the boy coming down from dental anesthesia in “David After Dentist,” have made more than $100,000 from YouTube ads. Ms. Clem has made $3,000 in three weeks and stands to make much more because Disney wants to use her video in a TV ad.

"Early on, YouTube would sign people up as partners after videos had been watched more than a million times. But it has since developed an algorithm, which it calls reference rank, to predict whether a video will go viral when it has had as few as 10,000 views.

"The most important element is whether influential Web sites post the video. When Reddit posted Mr. McEntee’s video, for instance, its views jumped from 1,000 to six million in three days. YouTube also analyzes other data, like the number of viewers, how many times a video is shared on social networking sites and the rate at which people comment on the video.

"Protect the video with a YouTube program called Content ID, which gives video owners the right to block others from using their videos or to be paid when they do. That helps to prevent people from creating copies that might be watched instead of yours. Parodies, translations or autotuned song versions, however, tend to add to the original’s traffic.

"YouTube does not offer live customer service for viral video creators. YouTube said it would be impossible to talk to millions of video creators but it has help forums for people to ask questions."

FURTHERMORE, Another NYTIMES article discusses how youtube ads generate revenue for the content provider.
Here is that link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/technology/03youtube.html

Steve Jobs' quotes

"You can't connect the dots looking forward: you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

"You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path - and that will make all the difference."
(Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition; they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
(Stanford U commencement address, June 2005)
"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

"That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."
(Business Week interview, May 1998)

After dropping out of college, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn what makes great typography great. "It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the firts computer with beautiful typography."
 (Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarressment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ...Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
(Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)


Articles for further reading:
NY Times -- Steve Jobs: Designer First, CEO Second
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-designer-first-c-e-o-second/
Washington Post -- Steve Jobs and the Idea of Letting Go
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/steve-jobs-and-the-idea-of-letting-go/2011/10/05/gIQAWxNqOL_story.html
NPR To The Point show on 10-6-2011
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp
Stanford U commencement address June 2005 (via NPR)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/10/06/141120359/read-and-watch-steve-jobs-stanford-commencement-address