WebProNews

YouTube has announced that it will start paying some of its more popular independent video contributors starting today.

 From the YouTube blog post: "Now some of your favorite YouTube members, including LisaNova, renetto, HappySlip, smosh, and valsartdiary, will begin to participate in the same revenue sharing and promotional opportunities that are available to YouTube's other partners."

The company says that the initial video contributors have been selected because they have been successful at building and maintaining a consistent audience, offering unique videos as well as producing content that is attractive to advertisers.

So how will the advertising and monetization work? "Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create."

"Once they've selected a video to be monetized, we'll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work."

Om Malik points out that YouTube is late to the revenue sharing game as competing sites such as Revver and Metacafe already have a program in place to share the wealth. He writes, "The move shouldn't be a surprise, though one has to wonder what took them so long."

"At one point, some YouTube stars up and left for promises of payment at competing site LiveVideo. And creators such as Lonelygirl15 and Ask a Ninja actively promote their Revver uploads as opposed to their YouTube ones because Revver viewings earn them money."

If you are wondering if you could participate in YouTube's revenue sharing plan, the company says that currently it is only available to the initial participants. They add that if you have created a sizeable audience and think you qualify, to check out their partnership lead form.