Metacafe Sucks

As well as writing, I like to create video editorials in order to reach a wider and more diverse audience. I started uploading my videos on Youtube because it was the only video sharing platform I had heard of at the time. I had never really even watched videos on Youtube before, but some of my friends were huge fans and I thought making video editorials would be a fun thing to try. A few weeks and many uploads later, I was having a lot of fun and I started reading more about the whole Youtube culture thing. I learned that there are many other video sharing sites, including one called Metacafe that pays you when people watch your videos. People were raving about it because unlike the Youtube partner program, everyone is elidgible, and there is no pesky application process. It sounded intriguing and I thought it would be cool to profit from my hard work, so I uploaded a few videos and waited to see what would happen.

I have quickly come to the conclusion that Metacafe truly sucks, and I'd much rather deal with Youtube's partner program rules and application process than bother with the ridiculousness of Metacafe. At a first glance the Metacafe producer rewards program seems pretty straightforward and the rewards seem very attractive. For only 20,000 views you are paid $100, and the amount goes up from there.

It is almost impossible to get 20,000 views on Metacafe. On Youtube this is easy, you post a video, leave some comments on other people's videos telling them to watch it, post it as a video response, add some friends, etc. It's really not that hard. Good luck getting even 1000 views on Metacafe. First of all, Metacafe is a small community. Even the most watched videos of the week have around 100,000 views. If you try to leave comments or post video responses it will be flagged as spam and be deleted. My first thought to get my videos out there was to get them on the most discussed list. I asked me friends to leave some comments, and in no time in no time I was up to 30 comments. The top video on the most discussed list only had 24, so, great, I thought, I waited for my video to show up on the list and the views to pour in but it never happened. Apparently, as Metacafe explained to me, your video needs to reach a certain number of views before you appear on that list. So you can't get views without being on the most discussed list and you can't get on the list without views.

Another stupid Metacafe is a bizarre video and audio quality stipulation. My videos kept getting declined because they weren't of high enough quality. The catch is that any video you upload has to be under 100 mb, very small for a video. You just can't win. Furthermore, just because a video isn't top quality doesn't mean it isn't a valuable contribution to the community.

Most annoying of all, even if you do manage do get 20,000 people to watch your video, Metacafe reviews your video before they decide to start paying you. Your video is automatically rejected if it doesn't have a rating of 3.0 or higher. They can reject your video for any silly reason they want though, and than they owe you nothing.

Metacafe's philosophy seems to be along the lines of "film something stupid and maybe by a fluke lots of people will watch it and you will make money". Youtube's partner program seems to be about rewarding people who have worked hard to create lots of quality content, and build a fan base. I don't think that people should necessarily be rewarded for filming someone catching a huge fish. (Fishing videos seems to be the most popular type of content on Metacafe). I really have no idea why Metacafe has such strict policies, but I'd advise that you don't waste your time.