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Bloggers will be allowed to earn money: VK will support those who create educational content with grants
Any user of the platform can apply for a grant of up to 5 million rubles. RG reported that the funds received should be used to produce entertainment and educational content in the form of long videos. To participate in the grant program, you must submit an application, have the status of a registered legal entity or individual entrepreneur (IE) and run an open VKontakte community with more than a thousand subscribers. Applications will be accepted from October 15 to November 5, 2024. Each applicant can submit only one project.
"The amount of financial assistance per recipient is up to 5 million rubles. The amount depends, among other things, on the number of subscribers in the applicant's community. Participants in the program must use the funds received to produce educational and entertainment content. "This is a horizontal video format of at least 10 minutes in length."
The topics can be anything from science and games to lifestyle and cooking. The main thing is that it does not violate the rules of the site and the laws of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Maria Vorobyova, head of the department for work with the community on VK, explains: “People who create entertaining and educational content in the “how-to” format are more likely to receive grants, and focus groups show this. Such videos are simply in demand among users. We would like to see more such writers,” she says.
Among other things, the content must be free of advertising, and the applicant's community must not contain predominantly commercial content.
The organizing committee of the VK grant program will decide who will receive how much. In addition to a number of VK employees, these include the general director of News Media Holding Maxim Iksanov, designer Artemy Lebedev, video blogger Vlad A4, stylist and fashion blogger Alexander Rogov, video blogger and rapper Eldar Dzharakhov, producers Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov and Zair. Yusupov and others.
Video bloggers can receive grants of up to 5 million rubles, which can be used to create entertaining and educational videos longer than 10 minutes.
VK talks about a comprehensive approach to solving the problem of bloggers earning money on Russian platforms.
"At the end of September, we launched a new monetization program for authors. This allows you to earn money on published content. Now we are introducing a grant program to support special projects that authors wanted to start, but for various reasons it was difficult. We do not have the necessary resources," says Nikolay Duksin, vice president of music and video services at VK.
According to the website, since the beginning of this year, more than 15,000 new authors have started publishing videos on VK-Video. Around the same time, VK launched an expanded grant program to support cultural institutions and writers. The total amount was about 60 million rubles. The finalists of the first stage were 29 applicants from 20 regions of Russia. In the second stage, 41 people from 18 regions of Russia won.
“Grant support is an excellent tool for attracting talented people to the VKontakte platform and developing the already thriving Russian blogging environment,” said Alexey Goreslavsky, head of Iran. IRI actively supports content on blogs and professional online platforms through grants.
According to Goreslavsky, almost half of all projects supported by Iran in 2023-2024 will be social media content, reaching 3.4 billion views as of September. And first place goes to VK. The project supported by Iran was viewed by 1.6 billion people.
“Regardless of whether bloggers switch from YouTube to VK or not, grants are a great opportunity to increase the segments of even longer videos, which have a large audience that watches podcasts, interviews and other videos longer than 10 minutes,” Goreslavsky said. He is confident.
YouTube is an encyclopedia that provides answers to questions about “how to do something,” and this same encyclopedia can really compete with YouTube, reminds Tanya Ivanova, president of the Association of Bloggers and Agencies (ABA).
“The initial strategy was to work only with high-quality works in the short term. The platform had already formed a core of contract authors, while medium and microbloggers were generally outside the scope of attention of the large platforms,” she explains.
Ivanova has doubts about the emphasis on practical content. Videos on how to build or fix something are in demand, but very monotonous. Another problem, in her opinion, is that small and medium-sized bloggers do not always know how to work with grants and how to sell their ideas to grant committees.
"Their projects are more like sketches of ideas without a budget, promotion and understanding of key performance indicators (especially for new sites). So there is a high probability that talent agencies will send bloggers (this is a completely different battle). At the same time, the budget is 100 million rubles for the production of about 20 very small shows (no more than 15, if we are talking about agency production)," adds Tanya Ivanova.
She reminds us that the NUUM platform has NUUM IDEA DAY, where participants can propose original content concepts “so that we can assume the strategy is working.”
However, the expert said: “I would like to see the results of such a program published on the platform.”
Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, representative of ROCIT, calls on the population not to pay attention to the size of the declared budget.
"We have seen comments that 100 million rubles is a relatively small amount and does not compare to the budget that YouTube itself spends on supporting writers. But what is important here is that the platform is fundamentally changing its approach. Instead of relying on a list of short-term star projects and the "grassroots" level (bloggers creating niche but very diverse content), it is precisely with this, and not with expensive shows, that Russian video hosting sites cannot successfully compete now. Foreign," Gorelkin is sure.
According to IAA Telecom Daily, 97% of Russians know about YouTube and 90% watch it regularly. 86% are familiar with "Video VK" and 51% watch it daily. 75% have heard of Rutube, 33% use it. The figures for "Zen" are 68% and 30%, and "Video OK" - 32% and 9% respectively.