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YouTube-Based Businesses Going Down The Tubes
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | January 17, 2008
Any website owners profiting from selling advertising on their websites related to the embedded YouTube videos they’re showing are about to go down the tubes.
Any time you aggregate others’ content to gain traffic and try to profit from it, you have to plan on it being a temporary situation. So all of the “Best of YouTube” and “Funniest YouTube Clips” aggregator sites running ads alongside their embedded YouTube clips are going to be singing a sad song soon.
Here’s the applicable portion of Google’s Terms Of Service:
4. No Commercial Use. You agree not to use the YouTube API for any commercial use. Prohibited commercial uses include, but are not limited to, any of the following actions taken without YouTube’s express approval:
- sale of access to the YouTube API or its related services;
- use of the YouTube API for the primary purpose of deriving revenues from Your API Client, such as advertising or subscription revenue or the sale of copies of the API Client;
- the sale of advertising, on the YouTube website or any third-party website, targeted to the content of specific YouTube videos or other YouTube content; and
- any use of the YouTube API that YouTube finds, in its sole discretion, to use YouTube’s resources, YouTube videos or other YouTube content with the effect of competing with or displacing the market for YouTube, YouTube content, or its User Submissions.
If this is the type of opportunity you chase after, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Nothing lasts forever. (It’s easy to forget that when things are going good.)
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