Original video content creators in India now have a platform to monetise their content with the YouTube Partner program that was officially announced on Tuesday at an event in Mumbai. The program is open to all Indian content creators who make original, high-quality videos on a regular basis and use YouTube to distribute their work online. Under the Partner program, YouTube will share advertising revenue with the popular content creators. The partners will host ads on their pages and the revenue generated by clicks on that ad will be shared between YouTube and the partner, with the latter getting the majority share.
 in conversation with YouTube Partners Hitendra Merchant (second from left) and Saameer Modi (second from right).jpg "David Macdonald (far right) in conversation with YouTube Partners Hitendra Merchant (second from left) and Saameer Modi (second from right)")
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Speaking at the event, David MacDonald, Head of YouTube Content Operations, APAC, said, “YouTube has been a great platform for Indian content as demonstrated by the success of Indian Premier League and our Bollywood studio partners. There is a strong demand for Indian content of YouTube and this program will help original video creators from India to make money with their work.” Statistically speaking, over 75 percent of the Indian content is viewed by international audience and of the 100 million internet users, around 23 million spend an average of 15 minutes per day on YouTube.
Globally YouTube has around 20,000 partners with over 100 partners raking in $100,000 annually and more than thousand partners making $1,000 a year. This program was being tested in India since December 2010 and YouTube has been working with original Indian content creators such as YoBoHo Media (http://www.yoboho.com/) – which has around 600 million views to date across their multiple channels and Jay Hind TV (http://www.jayhind.tv/) – a late-night comedy show broadcast online garnering around 10.8 million views. Apart from this, there are many other tech vloggers, fashion vloggers among others who have partnered with YouTube.
Speaking to Digit, Macdonald further elaborated on the criteria to shortlist candidates for the YouTube Partner program. “For individual creators, we look at how regular the content creator is with uploading videos on YouTube. We have a set of data that we look at such as keeping a tab on audience engagement by the content creator, no. of view of the video, no.of comments on the video, no. of subcribers to the channel, etc. These data points help us understand, how passionate the partner is about not just creating content but distributing it via YouTube. Original content is one of the biggest criteria,” said Macdonald.
The quote about original content piqued our interest, as there are lots of videos which are posted online and later parodied. But the parodies end up getting more views and comments than the original. So would such a creator be considered a partner? The most subscribed channel on YouTube – RayWilliamJohnson (http://www.youtube.com/raywilliamjohnson) for instance (disclaimer: we are huge fans of it too) features reviewing viral videos. To this Macdonald replied, “See RayWilliamJohnson has a tremendous following of over 4.6 million subscribers. He takes viral videos and adds his own creative commentary to them. This also creates a lot of buzz around the videos featured and ultimately increases their views. So that kind of model works very well for both the content creator and YouTube.”
The event also featured live performances by reknowned artists such as Sona Mohapatra (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSonaMohapatra) and Kavita Seth (singer of the famous number Iktara from Wake Up Sid) representing another partner and music channel on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/musickatadka). Even the team from Jay Hind TV presented a comedy show for the audience.
Hitendra Merchant, founder and CEO of Yoboho New Media said, “Every content creator requires an audience and the YouTube Partner program ensured that we had a huge number of viewers and got rewarded well over a period of time. This program over a period of time has helped us grow and move towards becoming a profitable organization.”
To know more about the program head over to: http://www.youtube.com/creators/partner.html
