Animation: Metacafe - Plisko - Desktop Danceoff

Desktop Danceoff - The most amazing home videos are here

I discovered Metacafe while doing a google search last night at about 2AM my time. I noticed it was a video hosting site with embeddable videos. Since we are in the business of surfing around on video hosting sites like this I decided to take a look around. Then I noticed they had this thing called a "Producer Rewards Program" Intriguing. . . Upon closer examination I discovered that this is another uploading site that will pay people for their videos! I immediately did the upload embedded above to test it out. It's a little doodle I did testing out a free Mac application called Single Framer which makes stop motion or timelapse Quicktime files with a DV camera plugged into your Mac. I have also now included Metacafe as part of our collection of video host links in the right column.

I am a little embarrassed that I have missed them up to now. They have over a million unique viewers per day and it looks like they've been around a couple years already. The way it works is a producer uploads a video as a special submission to this rewards program (they host lots of other stuff too). If that video gets 20,000 views it qualifies for the program and they will pay the producer $100 for the 20,000 views and $5 per 1000 views after that. This is a non exclusive agreement which means you can license the video anywhere else but metacafe will retain the right to use it themselves and market the video to any other media. . . forever. It looks like that means they could distribute it as part of their podcast or any number of other things as long as it is their own use of the material.

As I browse through the videos that get paid it appears like a mix of attention getting schemes like amazing shots of this or that, mechanical stunts, magic tricks etc. There is also a lot of short, how to videos and of course. . woman in bikinis on the grass, women getting wet, women in low cleavage shirts on a bed playing with kittens. . . . you get the idea. There is a martial arts/acrobat that is the highest earner. He did a montage video of his moves that has had over 5 million views and earned over $26,000.

It seems like it may be a challenge for anyone who wants to earn money with videos that are trying to make a difference in the world. It is a lot easier to find a woman in a bikini. There may be room, however, for the John Stewart approach that is grabbing attention and entertaining people while also being informative. It remains to be seen.

Metacafe is also the first commercial video hosting site I have found of this kind where there is actually and adult video category which appears to have nudity of the rated R variety.