Considering the number of folks who attempt to "self-link", I think this is worth trying out. Why not take their money if they want to take a chance with the Sift?

That being said . . . rules for participating better be understood by these folks. And we know how well the "self-linkers" have observed our rules . . . cough . . . choke . . . cough . . . choke . . .

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

We get contacted by *a lot* of companies looking to get videos on VideoSift. We've always told them to go away till now.

I agree with dotdude. These proposed self linking instructions would need to be perfectly clear and noticing how the giant text at the top of the submit page does not deter people currently I wonder how it would be possible to convey the entire instructions for the pay-per-post channel to the community.
A giant banner to keep self linkers into the pay area and out of the normal queue is out of the question (as I doubt it would help much anyways). But...what about an area on the site where newcomers sign up just for this pay-per-post channel? These pay per post members would not be able to submit to anywhere else except the pay queue thereby eliminating confusion between queues. Maybe we could look into different levels of membership to go along with this? You can pay a monthly rate and submit x amount of self-links, or pay as you go, giving "discounts" where applicable for appeal to pay more upfront.
I'll keep thinking but it's late...

Would it be possible to enter into discussions with the video providers, where you discuss the amount of traffic you are generating for their videos which in essence is free publicity for them (eg youtube)?
possibly a crazy suggestion, but then it's keeping with my form

i miss one point: do you think they are willing to pay to submit a video in a queue containing promotional videos like theirs, nobody watching that queue, and if they don't get 10 votes their money is wasted?

it's a nice idea, but i think you have to put them into the normal queue, if you want them to be intrested. maybe i'm wrong.

@ looris - yes, a separate queue for paid-for content might not find that big an audience. Though if advertisers buy the lottery ticket idea, the audience only needs to be big enough to provide quality control in terms of which ads make it to the front page. What I like about the idea is this: if you don't like the ads that make the front page, you can either become a charter member or start quality controlling the ads yourself, but either way you're providing some value back to videosift. That's quite neat.

@ dag - will the algorithm be the same for paid-for videos as for unpaid? You might find you have to make it a little more lenient as I doubt the quality of paid submissions will be as high...

one idea --

First "comment" area on each individual video page is a custom goole adwords ad based on the title and tags.

You need to really stretch the heck out of ads.

One problem with your proposal. Let's say I'm PR flack JoeKabob. I just get ten people together and say to clients, I can get your video in front of 100,000 people. Then I submit Mustard Ad video, upvote 10 times, done. Rinse & repeat.
Also, who is going to pay for submissions that aren't guaranteed to go anywhere??

What you do is sell video space as ad. An inject the rotating videos into the front page at random. So that is your "submission" queue. Heck, let people browse ALL ads as a channel. And instead of "12 votes" it might have a link to click to the vendor.

I think we can all live with random ads on the front page. Heck, you should have the google ads every 10th video anyways.

I agree with joe that there really are not enough text ads. Even when I wasn't charter I was like where are these ads they talk about? Oh here they are buried away down in the corner. I know adsense and the like have their flaws but I have heard of some people making some serious jack with them.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I have to admit, I have a bit of a bias against Adsense/Adwords. I think the philosophy behind them is flawed.

They encourage a type of site design that makes the ads the primary focus. In the extreme this means that a site's sole purpose is to deliver clicks taking people elsewhere.

I would prefer that the ads bend to our (the community's) will .

I take your point Joe on the potential for vote pimping on ads, we might require a quota of starred member votes to get to the front page.

@scott - we would probably adjust the criteria slightly for what it takes to get to the front page, but our general rules would be the same. I think as a community, we know what quality is - and we would reward it in ads, if it's there.

To drive a bit of action to the Incubator, we could have a "Top 3 New Incubator Videos" panel (non charter visible) on the front. Also, comments would send people to the good ones (and the bad ones )

An idea.

Since probably most of the "paid" videos won't pass, and since nobody would be pleased to pay for something that gets discarded, what about having them pay a minimum fee for just posting them, but paying actually more only if gets published?

You could implement that by:
• making them pay to get "credits"
• use a few credits to post a video - this also "freezes" the credits that will be paid if the post is published
• if it is published, the freezed credits are actually paid
• if it's discarded, the freezed credits are returned back

is it too complicated?

Should the ad videos even have the vote option? Why not just pepper them in to the front page randomly, so then I can randomly ignore them... this would eliminate the paying customers from feeling the need to get friends- or employees as the case may be- to sign up as users in order to vote them outta their own queue... personally, I'd hate to know that there are members here that are member solely because they are corporate whores... rather than contributing members with their own oppinions. Secondly, this would prevent any of them from ever breaking into the top 15, which would suck. Lastly, I would be ever-so-tempted to downvote every freaking one of the them, and I'm sure there are others who share that sentiment... so yeah, who in their right mind is going to pay for an ad that might not go anywhere but the discard pile? Just charge more per and make that the limiting factor on their numbers.

The only problem of course would be figuring out how to limit the ad vids to an appropriate flow of pepperation.

Looris, I'm not so sure that paid videos would have trouble getting out of the queue. Good viral clips still do well normally.

I do like the idea of having charter members being able to opt out of certain types of ads.

ps. I second snipe's idea that these paying ad-members should only be able to post their paid ads... nothing else... that way, self-linkers have a clear cut choice, and when we ban them, we can refer them to the paid-ad-member page... give them a real, easy to understand option... either they play by the rules and gain entrance into our lil' community, or they pay to become ad-pariahs we all ignore.

You could look into operating as a tax deductible entity....like a 501-c here in the US, -proceeds in the form of donations for operating costs, and right-offs for companies.......those who pay to have their work hosted, have a space, non-payers, etc.

If I paid videos were littered in between other videos when I first started visiting the sift, I might not have joined up or even returned. Misleading advertising that trys to represent it self is a turn off.

I still think text based ads, that are clearly labeled as such that accompany a video could work. I see them all day in gmail, and on other sites and I always know they are there and never click. Some people must becuase they appear to generate revenue but they don't bother me. Hell you can even put back my ads since I didn't become charter to remove adverts but to support VS.

This idea.

What assurance is there that the videos provided for would be good enough for anyone in the Sift to actually watch? I understand that there is a need to support VS and such but let's be frank about this, we're all here to watch videos that don't have the crappy ad content. I banned many a self linker in my time, how many of those videos could I really say would have done well on VS if not banned? NONE. Good virals are still a rarity.

It feels like we would be over saturating the pages with content everyone will willingly ignore, or opt out off completely. Furthermore I can't see of any way this would sound convincing to advertisers realistically, there is no assurance of massive exposure or eyeballs on product, there is a voting scheme which could be a form of censorship, users can opt out of viewing my content? etc etc.

I personally think allowing adverts take up a video space between 10 or 5 videos for non-chartered members would actually be a better more viable solution.

I believe alternative means of advertising such as the one suggested by Joedirt would be good to explore first.

quality comment raven!

I personally would like to vote them, because I suppose some of them may be worth. But the risk of having people registering only to vote them to be published... well, of course, as Dag already said I think, you could restrict ad voting only to star members.

Anyway, another solution should be to show just one video ad per page.

why make it complicated? The idea that ad members are NOT community members is a good one.

1.A posting fee on an ad submission page.

2. No queue for paid sifts, they get to go straight to the front page. If it doesn't get say 10 votes in 4 days, or breaks posting guidelines then it's gone.

3. More than 10? Then it stays and customer pays for each view or vote or whatever from then on or until they discard it.

Just figure out how much one vote is worth around here. The posting fee could be whatever you decide 10 votes cost

two words.. Venture Capital!!

ok, seriously, how about sponsorships from advertisers? say you have an advertiser that wants to sell product X they can sponsor one of the top 15 videos, then that video will have it's own special container that will house the ad material and the video. You can then sell up to 15 high profile sponsorships. I guess you could even customize this to work with tags, so if you wanted to cater to advertisers selling food products this container will show around food related sifts.

A separate advertizing channel would not generate much money since almost everybody would ignore it.

Allowing advertizing in the normal queue would make videosift useless. All paid advertizing videos should be clearly labelled as such and should be subject to demolition by our voting system.

How does wikipedia pay for itself?

I would support an optional subscription-based system. It could be set up as a non-profit organization like EFF.

Farhad2000 wrote:
Furthermore I can't see of any way this would sound convincing to advertisers realistically, there is no assurance of massive exposure or eyeballs on product, there is a voting scheme which could be a form of censorship, users can opt out of viewing my content? etc etc.

I think advertisers will probably overestimate the likelihood that their stuff will be voted up. On the other hand there are a few genuinely interesting advertisements. Admins could probably handle banning accounts that are obviously corporate sock-puppets. But then the corporate sock-puppets would just get more devious. On the other hand our model would encourage advertisers to appeal to reason and make things that real members would actually want to vote up. We might be able to get by with allowing paid advertising to be voted up to the Front, without destroying videosift's integrity, if the admins are aggressive enough about cracking down on corporate sock puppet voters.

Look, Dag ignored my non- corporate queue..

But seriously, if the site is to enforce no self-linking, you can't go mixing in videos (that are votable) that are self-link ads in with everything else.

Either just throw them in every 5th/10th video as paid ads, or abandon self-linking. Are you actually going to have some type of voting queue for paid submissions?? really??? And can I downvote those? And how does this model work in the online ad revenue world? ..."so, Bob, tell me what you spent on this website ad campaign? uh, I got to pay for a slot in a queue. So how many pageviews is that? Um, you see, if people like it, then it gets votes and then can move into the regular webpage. Bob, what did you spend my ad budget on again?"

So, clearly you HAVE to conform to the existing online ad market instead of making your own model. How it works is you pay for an ad slot on a website. So it is easy, time of contract, pageviews, percent rotation, link to video.

Once you have PR flacks figuring out how to submit videos and voting and crap, well guess what. They realize if they want to advertise on this site, why pay for it, just DO THE EXACT SAME thing in the regular queue. You trained them even to do it. And trust me we don't have enough sifters to kill all the self link ad crap.

I already told you guys I'm buying a Russian bride! I thought that would be enough funding for at least a year! Oh, and Dag, who do I direct my complaints to if she's not up to expectations? You or James? Or Siftbot?

I agree with JoeDirt.

Let them buy a video space between regular VS content, it would be color bordered differently to clarify that it is an advert. Have no comments or vote buttons, and have them appear between every 10 to 15 videos. Chartered members can opt out of them.

every 5 videos is probably more likely than every 10 - 15. Chartered members would actually have to opt in to see the video advertisements. They will be disabled for charter members from the get go.

Perhaps an option as a perk to advertisers, if they do actually manage to pay for space as well as producing some entertaining eye-candy, a voting booth for their adverts, for a chance at the Big Published Front Page.....where there, we can rip it to shreds. You can't pay for a better plug, up votes and approval from paying members.

Then we can sell them, our copyrighted testimonials, after we have been given a year supply of whatever they sell, to consumer report on ...... some real pyramid scheme potential here as well......

I don't see any reason why people shouldn't be able to comment or vote on ad videos.

Well if they're every five videos, then it wouldn't make much sense to vote on them.

no, you're right karaidl, it has to be one way or the other but not both... either they are paid and inserted every how-ever-many vids... as Farhad and JD has suggested, and I happen to agree with... or they are voted on out of their own queue, which of course runs the numerous risks that JD outlined, and might in the end drive off more advertisers... especially since keeping up with corporate sock-puppet accounts would be impossible in the long run and too many members like me would be tempted to downvote most of them to oblivion, thus ensuring that they never make the page.

Another plus to farhad's model is that by controlling the spacing of the ads straight away you eliminate the nightmare scenario of having a ton of ads graduate from their queue to the front all at once, thereby taking over the front page... not cool by any means.

Quick question - Do all of these paid videos have to be advertising? What if someone wants to post themselves - oh I don't know - playing guitar? Maybe some band wants to get their song out. Could they pay to self-link? Now, that I would support having a spot in the queue. Consider the payment to be a form of insurance that their vid isn't redacted. Maybe we could make one worth more than the other.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

That's a good point karidl, I think these days with the democratization of video, you have to redefine "advertiser". It could be anyone looking for some promotion, and not just traditional TV advertising.

So we could have two payment options - One for insurance, say, five bucks (That's just off the top of my head, don't take the price seriously) and then an advertising option for ten bucks. Insured vids are treated like normal or could be given a special section, and ads are every five videos.

Yeah - *quality point by karaidl. All kinds of individuals/groups/organisations seek advertisement.

Gold Star member gwaan has awarded dag one published post for this quality Sift Talk contribution.

Allowing comments on ad videos will transform advertising from a one-sided propaganda machine to a rational dialog. If some of us buy the advertised product, we can independently investigate and report on the claims made by the advertising and the quality of the product. Ad comments will benefit all users and honest companies, at the expense of dishonest companies.

and open us up to the possibility of libel suits... case in point: I am also a member of http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/ a forum about aquariums, fish, plants, etc... oftentimes members post reviews of products or services... especially mail/internet order plant suppliers... oftentimes these reviews are not always stellar, in the past this has caused problems to the extent that about a year ago one of these suppliers tried to sue several members of the site and the site itself for slander/defamation etc... it was pretty messy... although I'm not totally up on the current situation over at APC (congrats videosift you've stolen me away ) I believe they have had to institute several censorship measures to keep this from happening again. Sad, but true story.

I hate to see libel laws abused to enact corporate censorship of honest reviews. I won't let it have a chilling effect on me. The EFF might help defend people in such cases.

i doubt it

I agree with JoeDirt.

Let them buy a video space between regular VS content, it would be color bordered differently to clarify that it is an advert. Have no comments or vote buttons, and have them appear between every 10 to 15 videos. Chartered members can opt out of them.

I liked this idea, for people scrolling through it would be like an advertising break...that they could choose to scroll right on by. Just make it incredibly visible that it's an advertising slot, let the advertiser put their logo in the spot where we would usually see a vote button.

As for google ads Brian, I don't see them because I'm charter, but back when TayTV had ads I was pulling in a healthy 400$/month - I'm sure with accurate placement you should be able to pull in the same (but for all I know 400$ could be peanuts for ya)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Jwray: Allowing comments on ad videos will transform advertising from a one-sided propaganda machine to a rational dialog.

That's exactly what I mean - it lets us engage with the ads and decide for ourselves what we like or don't like about them. And actually, may provide value to the advertisers who don't often get real feedback on what they're pumping out.

I think this idea is untested and unprecedented, but it might be fun.

As for the libel stuff Raven, we would make sure that submitters have agreed to the terms before submitting. We might need to get a bit lawyered up for that document.

Well if comments are allowed, then it should be made very clear to the advertisers. Make sure it's alright with them first, and explain that there'll be benefits to it.

This original proposal completely embraces 'punk' spirit... call it cyberpunk if you will. That I like. Everyone else wandered in and 'complicated it all up', which is how we do things around here, it seems.

Some kind of corporate sponsorship of the top 15 seems like one avenue (The top 3, top 15, etc., brought to you by - XYZ Corp!) - which would conform more to 'traditional' ad models than the unique proposal you've floated, dag. Consider that too... not saying one's better than the other, just 'easier to understand'.

I just thought of this - if we were to allow people to vote on ads, wouldn't it be reasonable to think that some company would create a couple of puppet accounts to vote their own vids up? That could be bad...

I like joedirt's idea of inserting the ads after every 5 videos. People would get used to it. I'm all for anything that will help fund the sift while not taking away from the classiness (sorry can't think of a better word at the moment) of the sift. As long as there aren't any huge blinking 'punch the monkey' ads I'm all for it .

Jwray: Ad comments will benefit all users and honest companies, at the expense of dishonest companies.

In theory yes. I think the problem is that the people paying for the advertising are often agencies and not the companies themselves. Normally agencies do not want to see negative feedback because they are usually being paid to do promotional work and the negative comments would (perhaps unfairly) reflect badly on them. Because of this I think most big brand agencies are going to be nervous about allowing feedback.

The agencies often know a product, advertising campaign or promotional video sucks before it goes out but they are still paid to promote it.