Shenaz Zack, Google product manager, explains in a post on the company's blog that people with videos racking up "lots of views" could get an invite from YouTube to make money from the content. Factors under consideration include the number of views, frequency of the video going viral and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service.

Producers of eligible videos will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to their video on the watch page, as well as in other places in the person's account. Zack explains that once the video becomes eligible, YouTube will sell advertising against the content and pay the owner a revenue share into their Google AdSense account monthly. Those who don't have a Google AdSense account will need to create one.

Individuals are not eligible for many of the benefits of user partnerships, such as enhanced channel features or the ability to monetize other videos in their account, so Zack encourages all to apply for membership into the YPP.

Zack says the delay in offering YPP to individual users stems from a need to develop the proper content management tools and other infrastructures to handle the service. The revenue-sharing platform also means more income for YouTube.

Google continues to struggle when it comes to turning a profit for YouTube three years after agreeing to buy the video-sharing site in a $1.65 billion stock deal.

Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst at Global Equities Research, says Google should have generated a profit from YouTube within three years based on the purchase price. "YouTube should be generating $1 billion in revenue and be profitable for the acquisition to be considered smart and good," he says. "I don't think they generated even $20 million in revenue per year so far. It's a very dumb acquisition. You don't pay $1.65 billion for a lab experiment."

It's not that YouTube doesn't generate high traffic. Nielsen data indicates that 92.2 million U.S. home and work Internet users visited YouTube in July, and each person spent, on average, a total of 1 hour, 19 minutes and 21 seconds.

Chowdhry says expanding YPP to include videos from individuals demonstrates another failed example, because he doesn't believe it will add enough revenue to make a difference. He says growing site traffic doesn't mean anything if it can't earn revenue and generate profit.

This news story is important. I recommend that everyone read it.