Boy, 12, makes thousands from 177 online videos posted on You Tube
A 12-year-old boy made it to the front page of the Boston Globe this week after pulling in $3000 in ad revenue on You Tube after posting videos featuring his toy animals.
Video whizz Matthew Tomsicek Globe photo
Matthew Tomsicek has turned his home in Bedford, Mass, into sets for his digital creations starring a blue, wingless hero - one of his 42 toy animals from the video game Angry Birds.
Tomsicek has 177 similar videos on YouTube.com. Together they have been viewed 6 million times . He is, says the Globe, "one of a new class of digital auteurs who are turning YouTube popularity into profits".
But if you want to check out his videos, you'll have to trawl through the Angry Birds file on YouTube. His parents it is understood don't want him identified - and he is posting the videos under a false name.
Tomsicek earned his $3,000 in his first two months in YouTube’s Partner Programme, which places ads on users’ pages and sends them a share of the revenue. More viewers mean more money.
American youngsters are accustomed to setting up lemonade stands in the summer to make some cash.
For younger users like Matthew, says Bing Chen, head of global creator development and management for YouTube, this is “the new age of lemonade stands.”
Chen would not say how much YouTube pays its partners, but says more than 1 million around the world participate in the partner programme. Together the amount theycollectively earn has doubled every year for the past four years.
The number of people who make more than $100,000 annually from the site grew into the thousands this year, Chen told the Globe.
That makes the site a boon for some creators of wacky videos. Along with Matthew — who says his focus is “on how fun it is to make these,” not on the money — Massachusetts YouTube stars include a collector of Japanese toys, a dog trainer, a pop duo , a handful of comedians, and a few online educators. All have cashed in on the video platform.
“It could be a full-time job if I didn’t have four kids,” said Joshua Bernard, whoseYouTube channel featuring reviews of Japanese toys got more than 60 million views and earns a few thousand dollars per month. Meantime he is sticking to his day job as a Web designer for a technology company.
You Tube has 800 million monthly visitors from around the globe.
Dog trainer Eric Letendre, known online as Amazing Dog Training Man, joined the programme in 2008 after being contacted by YouTube, said the Globe. He quickly began receiving checks. “My first check was $150,” Letendre said.
Now, he said, he earns as much as $700 a month from his channel, which includes 275 dog videos with a total of about 9.2 million views.
His most popular video is called “Training your dog to pee and poop on command.” It has more than 600,000 views and about 500 comments,