Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living.
One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.
Buckley quit his day job in September after his online profit had greatly surpassed his salary as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show “is silly,” he said, but it has helped him escape from under his credit card debt.
Buckley, 33, was the part-time host of a weekly show on a Connecticut public access channel in the summer of 2006 when his cousin started posting snippets of the show on YouTube. The comical rants about celebrities attracted online viewers, and before long Buckley was tailoring his segments, called “What the Buck?” for the Web. Buckley knew that the show was “only going to go so far on public access.”
“But on YouTube,” he said, “I’ve had 100 million views. It’s crazy.”
All he needed was a $2,000 video camera, a $6 piece of fabric for a backdrop and a pair of work lights from a hardware store. Buckley is an example of the democratizing effect the Internet brings to publishing. Sites like YouTube allow anyone with a high-speed connection to cultivate a following, simply by posting and promoting material online.
Granted, building an audience online takes time. “I was spending 40 hours a week on YouTube for over a year before I made a dime,” Buckley said. But, at least in some cases, it is paying off.
Buckley is one of the original members of…