Some lesser-known participants in the YouTube Partner Program are about to get a serious leg up when it comes to promoting their channels.  Late yesterday, YouTube introduced a contest-like feature called "On the Rise" which will grant crowd favorites a spot on the homepage.

The rules are simple.  A post on the YouTube Blog explained, "[E]very month, we’ll pull together a list of partner channels whose subscriber rate has quickly accelerated in the last 30 days but who still have less than 100,000 subscribers.  We’ll winnow that list down to a handful of channels, and then we’ll ask the community to vote on one channel . . ."

Next, as mentioned earlier, the winner will "be featured on the YouTube homepage and get promoted through our social media channels on Twitter and Facebook."

The first four contestants are makeup expert emilynoel83, a golf channel, oddball kalebnation, and toy reviewer optibotimus if you’d care to vote.