MMO GurL

I’ve been making videos for MMORPGs for awhile now, since 2008 according to my first uploaded video which for sentiments sake was on Dream of Mirror Online (linked here bad audio and all!). At first it seemed only the people who were getting really crazy views (1 million +) were able to show ads and attempt monetizing on their work to make and upload videos. Then Youtube started extending the offer to their lower traffic members, like myself with a highest view count of 31k.

I was pretty excited to actually make money on my videos. After all I had put in a lot of money up front buying several different recorders before I found the right one, buying microphones, video producing software, as well as the countless games I’ve purchased and subs I’ve paid over the years. All of this straight out of my pocket because I enjoy making these videos.

It was disappointing when I realized I would not receive a payment until I had reached a balance of $100 and even more upsetting when I figured it would take 3 years to ever see a payment at my current rate of about $2.60 per month. Not to mention the fact that Google is able to give advertisement space to people for free that I’m sure they charge for up front (ie the people who pay to show their advertisements). So Youtube is getting a great deal out of me! I pay all my own fees and they don’t ever have to pay me until I reach a $100 minimum all the while collecting payment from their advertisers and paying me nothing.

Then there is the fact that when I first went to monetize all of my videos that Youtube just decided not to let me monetize about half of them. One, my Perfect World Character Creation video which was one of my bigger view counts at 26k. Although Youtube did decide that they could advertise on my video without giving me the credit for it. As you can see they are showing a Lord of the Rings ad on MY video for which they already denied me the right to profit from.

On your video manager screen, you can see which videos are monetized by whether they have a little green square with a dollar sign in the middle or not. As you can see, my Perfect World video is not monetized and yet they are advertising on it. This pisses me off even more then knowing they just aren’t letting me make my measly 7 cents per 100 views or more!

Then there is their piss poor explanation as to why they decide a video is not enough of your own property to profit from based on this little bit of information. This makes no sense to me because this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3SLfIeDEIM) was allowed for monetization and to me it is more of a simple gameplay video. I don’t talk as much because I’m playing the game and I barely explain much of what I’m doing. While in my character creation video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpLNLYBfhV4) I spent almost 40 minutes explaining all of the customizations to every single race and sex! And so that doesn’t qualify while the other ones does?

I do understand that these games belong to the people who develop them and take millions to produce. But at the same time the videos I make are free advertisement for the games they showcase. And it is cheap as dirt advertisement compared to what they would pay for up front. I’m adding my own voice to all of these videos from my computer with my software which should fall under fair use and add some of my own intellectual property to the video. Without me these videos wouldn’t even exist. Yet it seems Youtube just decides at the drop of a hat to deny certain videos even when they fall under the rules.

I’m going to go unprofessional here and say this SHIT pisses me off big time. I’m honestly considering deleting half of my videos especially if someone else is now monetizing off of them. Perhaps I should just give it up all together. I’m really not sure at this point. Anger does tend to cloud judgement so maybe I should sit on it for awhile.

How would this make you feel? What would you do about it?