by Bruce Bostwick

Created on: November 03, 2009   Last Updated: February 12, 2012

Can YouTube make money? That is the question that is being asked. As it is all ready known, Google owns the name and the web site itself not charging anyone for user membership. It has not made money but then again, with Google being as rich as they are, it doesn't seem to be bothering them. However, the question is can it make money? To be honest, it is actually possible for that happen but do they want to make money with it that is another story.

There are ways that the web site could make money if Google really wanted to do so. At the same time however, they must be sure not to have an angry group of users because when that happens, they tend to leave and look for another web site. It is tough enough that they have to deal with videos being taken down but to make everyone pay would be ridiculous. But, as stated, there are ways for it to make money actually if they ever decide to go that route.

The membership deal would have to deal with specific features that others that can have that regular users can't. For example, here is the idea of having a video that can be downloaded through their service. There should be a link that can download for those members in that group. It will go at a reasonable speed and will not cut off or interrupt while the web browser is open. This could be one potential idea but then again, who knows if they would really want to do so.

That is about the one main thing that they could do if they really wanted to make some serious money from it. There is the download option to cost a certain amount but that's something that would be not used as much. With videos taken down to copyright claims, they would have to strict on what could be downloaded for a small fee. It should be more of a monthly or even a yearly fee so that you can download as much original content as possible.

To be honest, YouTube as stated can make money if they really choose to do so. It most likely would have to be involving creating membership levels such as silver membership and gold for example. In order to justify the amount of money being charged and it should be yearly and not monthly, they would need to come up with a solution to have each membership level different that they can offer than the lower levels cannot. Basic membership can view, upload, and talk in the community for example. Silver could involve having videos possibly longer than ten minutes for accounts that joined after the limit was in place unless they become a YouTube partner. Gold can have that and even put a feature of downloading videos.

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