It’s all related to water skiing for me. I have been making ski videos for years, and when I figured out you could make a few bucks with videos on YouTube I was all in.

 

Here’s a nice article that gives the basics:

How to Make Money on YouTube

 

The biggest hurdle for me in the early days was music. You can’t just use any song and make money. When you use a popular song the music is automatically matched to the artist, and the advertising revenue goes to someone else (presumably the artist/publisher).

 

So in the long search for suitable music I stumbled across DanoSongs.com. Here was this guy just giving away his music, for FREE! All you have to do is give DanoSongs.com credit in your project. I use a hyperlink in the description of my videos. More and more people go back to his site, and Dano makes money off the advertising.

There are several other artists doing the same thing, and the two others I have had YouTube success with are Incompetech and Audionatix

These artists inspired me to make some of my songs available in the same way at TonyKlarich.com (click Free Stuff), and I have used plenty of my own stuff in monetized YouTube videos.

But perhaps my most important takeaway from discovering guys giving away free music, was the fact that I could do the same with my large collection of water skiing photos. So over the last few years I have been posting photos for anyone to use under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

 

A few of my friends think it’s a little crazy, but I would much rather give my photos away and have them out there in the world, rather than cooped up here in a filing cabinet. And it feels good to share with the world!

You can find my growing collection of Free Royalty Free Photos here: TonyKlarich.com (click Free Stuff).

140721 Free Royalty Free Photos Water Skiing Klarich

I posted this video today using these “Free Royalty Free” songs and artists:

Aces High by Kevin MacLeod and Bit by Bits by DanoSongs.com