The Time I Went Viral and everything I did wrong

I went viral and my 15 minutes was fun but here's what I did wrong.

I am an aspiring content creator/youtuber and back in January I stumbled upon a rare and amazing weather phenomenon known as Light Pillars. Basically my kid woke up crying in the middle of the cold Canadian night, I soothed him back to sleep and went to the bathroom and when I looked out my window I saw this:

20170106_012400 (Large).jpg

I raced out side and took as many pictures and videos as I could. You can here me explain it here on my youtube channel:

I posted my video and also posted the images on imgur ( http://imgur.com/a/3HBQC ) and about 3 days later BAM! I struck gold. The CBC here in Canada picked up the story ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/pillar-lights-north-bay-1.3929505 ) and I was on every news channel, news paper and internet blog you can name. Even sites like IFknlovescience, buzzfeed, huffinton post, cnet ect posted the article. I estimate that in January my story was shared in some form over 3 million times. I was struggling to keep up with the emails and interviews and I was wondering if it was ever going to stop... Well it most certainly did, well not completely. I still get the odd email asking for permission to post the pictures.

So, what is my point? Well I guess I wanted to give some words of advice just in case you ever go viral and you want to know how to handle it. It's almost like winning the lottery, the chances seem to almost be as good. Seems like everyone knows someone who was on the news or had a picture go viral on facebook, but what do you do when you actually get that million dollar ticket? Can you capitalize on a viral picture? video or news story? You most certainly can, but as I found out, there are many ways people can take advantage of you in this situation.

#1 Ask for money for your video/pictures - Technically I was the copyright holder of these light pillar images and from day 1 I should have been charging to distribute the images. Looking back I was just happy to have pictures I took of these amazing dancing lights in the sky be viewed by so many, however this was a rare weather event and even if most of the news outlets declined to pay me, I could have made a killing by charging even $100 dollars for access to the images. Over 40 news outlets asked for interviews, or to rebroadcast my story, I could have made thousands of dollars or even sold exclusive rights to one of the bigger outlets. In the end I actually ended up making about $1000 dollars by asking for money, but had I done it near the beginning, once I was sure that this was "news worthy" I could have been rewarded for all the effort I was putting in, all the emails and phone calls I took.

#2 Monitize your video on youtube as soon as possible and understand that even a 1 minute video can make about $1 USD per 1000 views. So when your cat video starts gaining traction on facebook or instagram, don't be afraid to upload it to youtube and set it up for monetization as soon as you can. I know from experience that a viral youtube video can actually net a nice profit, but it does take months to get an ad sense account linked, but you will see real money eventually even if the video only gets 100,000 views, that's 100 bucks in your pocket!

#3 NEVER partner with anyone that offers to help sell your video or pictures. I was contacted by multiple websites that offered to distribute my video for 40% of the earnings. I was foolish enough to partner with a video service called Storyful ( https://www.storyful.com ) as they actually made a compelling case before my video really started to gain traction. Storyful claimed that for 30% of my total earnings, including youtube adsense, they would shop my video to huge partnered news networks and would force other networks to give me back pay on the video. Storyful and other video distribution services are a scam. They basically license the rights to take your youtube adsense money in exchange for "shopping the video around to partnered news outlets" and "protecting the copyrights of your video" but in actuality they did nothing to promote my video and sat back while my video did all the work. Case and point, I "partnered" with Storyful at 30,000 views thinking that the video had lost traction and the video went on to get 350,000 views. I saw profit from the first 30k views in my youtube analytics for over $55 CAD. So the video should have made around $600 Canadian after signing with Storyful, even with their 30% cut I should have received at least $400, but in the end Storyful only ever paid me a grand total of $60 CAD claiming that that's all the adsense money they received from youtube. If that is true that means that by taking ownership of the copyright on my video, it severely lowered the adsense revenue, or they just stole the money from me, which is a huge possibility considering they would never give me proof of the youtube earnings.

... OK So in the end I want to say this. In this age of viral videos, sharable posts and viral images, it is possible to turn a profit, you just have to strike while the iron's hot and know that your pictures and video is your property and as long as it's something unique and news worthy, news outlets will pay for the right to distribute the story. In the end I had 2 separate Europene magazines pay me $500 dollars to print my story and the images in their magazine. When I asked for money they didn't even blink an eye to accept my terms. Had I done this from the beginning my post might have been viewed a lot less, but I might have made thousands of dollars. I don't want to sound greedy either, but I was up late in the sub 40 degree Celsius winter cold taking video and pictures and I was the one answering hundreds of emails, and fielding questions from all over the world and why shouldn't Buzzfeed pay me to do that.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, have you ever been gone viral? I'd love to hear your story or field questions about my experience.

-Timmy Joe
http://www.youtube.com/timmyjoereviewsanything

News Stories:

http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1009651/pilier-solaire-north-bay-aurore-boreale

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/pillar-lights-north-bay-1.3929505

https://gizmodo.com/spectacular-light-display-in-northern-ontario-looks-lik-1791127923

https://petapixel.com/2017/01/12/photographer-captures-light-pillars-icy-night-sky/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/5096bd15-de77-4940-b014-df67a5b338a3

http://mashable.com/2017/01/12/canada-light-pillars-phenomenon/?utm_cid=hp-n-1#OB8Rg9Xo3mqb

http://www.livescience.com/57482-light-pillars-photo-ontario.html

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ontario-man-photographs-bizarre-light-pillars-in-night-sky-163737307.html

https://www.cnet.com/news/light-pillars-north-bay-ontario-star-trek-transporter-beams/