Monetize Your 15 Minutes of Fame

The Youtube Partnership Program is an effort by Google to put money in the pockets of people who create viral videos.

It was originally set up for people who operate popular channels on the site, but every so often Google has reached out to people like the dad who recorded “David After Dentist” to share the wealth.

Now, they’re making it an official policy. From now on, the creators of  extremely popular YouTube videos will be invited to set up AdSense accounts and profit off of the advertising from the millions of views they’re racking up.

According to the Google Blog, “These individual video partnerships recognize the role popular “one-off” videos play on YouTube, and have helped many people earn thousands of dollars a month as their videos went viral and endured over time.”

We decided it was time to spread the wealth. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it. To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video’s virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an “Enable Revenue Sharing” message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account.

This is a cool move by Google.

No idea how much money you could actually make off a viral video, but hopefully it was enough to buy David an ice cream or something for his brilliant performance.