Hey Cory,
We currently have a monetization program that is run through our parent company, The Enthusiast Network. We have thought about switching back to our own program, but the problem is that video views are down, not just on NS but internet wide.
If we did offer monetization on videos for everyone a couple things would likely happen
1. the people in the program would likely make < $10 a month due to their videos not getting viewed, if you look at the video section most videos get an average of 500 views, usually less, the popular videos do better but mostly because of social media posts.
2. because views are so low, if we share half of the rev with members (think 200 members at $10/mo likely all small numbers but its ads up) then we're losing out on the ad rev we barely make already, which we need every dollar of to survive.
3. offering a true rev program is really tough because about 30-40% of people use ad blockers on NS, with our current program now a video might get 10k views, but only 5-6k started an ad and the people in the program only get paid for ad starts. This ties into #2 that even if we had a system in place, we wouldn't know the actual rate of ad starts, so we would just be guessing and likely losing more money.
The truth is that unless you're youtube or facebook, its very hard to monetize video. We're making every effort we can to rejuvenate the video section, but with instagram having 1 minute videos, people don't make edits anymore, they just post all of their clips on instagram. It's a real problem that only has one solution and that's people changing their habits, we hope the new app encourages more people to post edits vs just posting on instagram.
That's about as transparent I can be about the situation, let me know if you have anymore questions.
