This Web Stuff Starts to Pay Off

May 29th, 2007

I earn most of my income helping other people make movies. It pays well and most of the time it’s exciting. But like most people, I want to have some control over what I do every day. So I’ve started a number of web-based ventures. I put all my movies online, I sell Obey Saget merchandise, and I manage a TV blog. Today I’m on the cusp of two milestones. First, I’m about to cross the $100 payment threshold for Google Adwords. The money has been accumulating in tiny increments for a little over a year, and in a few weeks I will earn enough to actually have Google transfer that money into my bank account.

Ok, that’s not a lot of money considering the amount of time it took to earn it, but it does nearly cover my actual expenses. It certainly doesn’t pay for all the work that’s gone into these things, especially TiFaux, which accounts for the bulk of the Adwords income and includes three other people writing dozens of posts every month. That sort of thing adds up, and will most likely never earn any of us any money.

Revver paid me for the first time last month, and I’ll earn enough this month to get paid again. That’s all thanks to the 1-year-later surprise success of “Truth @ 15 Frames Per Second.” My older, less web-friendly movies aren’t pulling their weight. This week Today! the Truth@15fps videos will reach 1 million combined views on YouTube, which is totally astounding, but it doesn’t earn me a dime. Granted, most of the traffic on the 15framespersecond.com site comes from YouTube viewers, so it does indirectly earn me money, but it would be nice if YouTube could figure out a way to pay legitimate content creators directly.

And finally, the Obey Saget merchandise provides the most income out of all these ventures, and takes almost no time at all to maintain. It’s a lesson for the kids out there.

Entry Filed under: News,Web Video