You may be wondering whether there’s a way to make money with video content on YouTube. The honest answer right now is “kindof”. At present, YouTube is strictly a free video sharing community and members should expect to upload and share their content without any anticipation of a profit. YouTube currently makes all of their profit from ads on their site, and there is no real mechanism for users to generate revenue directly from the videos that they upload. But that’s all expected to change soon.

In January 2007, Chad Hurley (Co-founder of YouTube) announced at the World Economic Forum that Youtube is planning on sharing some of its revenues with its community of users. According to Chad, YouTube is working on including audio fingerprinting technology that would collect royalty fees from music used within user videos, allowing labels to claim content and generate revenues from the site. This would open up a completely new market for labels (and hopefully anyone else producing and uploading original content) that’s never existed before. Chad also mentions that YouTube is moving towards a model where users will be compensated for the content that they upload. This will most likely be on a per-view basis, and include short clips and ads shown before each video, similar to other video site profit sharing systems, but he doesn’t say for sure.

If you’re biting your nails waiting for news about YouTube’s upcoming profit sharing program, you can check out their Press Page for the most up-to-date information on YouTube’s strategy. For now, check out this clip of Chad Hurley at the World Economic Forum.

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