I’ve been waiting on a decent challenger to YouTube to come down the pike, not because I’m that dissatisfied with the service (although I have had some issues), but because competition usually makes everything better. While I was hoping for a more outsider-type to be the new representative on the scene, I guess Amazon will have to do. At least I know they have the cash to keep things going.

From Reuters

 

Amazon.com Inc launched a service on Tuesday that allows users to post videos and earn royalties from them, setting up the world’s biggest online retailer to compete directly with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube.

The service, called Amazon Video Direct, will make the uploaded videos available to rent or own, to view free with ads, or be packaged together and offered as an add-on subscription.

Amazon will pay content creators 50 percent of the revenue earned from rental receipts or sale of the videos, according to the company’s license agreement. For ad-supported videos, the creators will get half of the net ad receipts.

Amazon’s fast-growing Prime loyalty program already offers original TV programming and access to digital entertainment products such as Prime Music and Prime Video, as well as one-hour delivery of purchases, for an annual fee of $99.

For the record, I have ad arrangements with both Amazon and Google/Alphabet (the owners of YouTube)…although I get a lot more money from the Alphabet side of things. In fact, I think I’ve made about $20 from Amazon total, although that’s mostly because I don’t spend as much time pimping out the affiliate links. Still, I like the way things look with Amazon’s new video service…so far.

I haven’t gotten the chance to play with it very much, because I still have to enter some bank info and stuff like that. After I do, I might upload an old #Killstream and see how it works. I’ll either paste it down below this article or setup another short post to show you guys what it looks like.

If you want to check it out for yourself, follow this link.

 

UPDATE: OK, I messed with the service a little bit. I gotta say, it’s kind of a headache when it comes to the requirement for certain art assets, etc. I don’t think this thing will be challenging YouTube anytime soon. It seems more like a specialized service for movie makers or people who produce a short series of material. For example, it requires me to have captions, which I simply don’t have the time (or money) to do. So that’s out. If I was selling the content rather than running an ad-based model, perhaps it would work. But it’s just not feasible for me at this point. I might try it out some more if I find some free captioning service, but I’m not aware of one at this time.