Not sure what to make of this. Is it legit or a possible "scam"?

[TYTD]

Well if a YouTuber doesn't think he's been offered a fair price, he/she has 2 choices. 1) Turn the offer down. Or 2) Try selling their videos themselves directly to the buyers and cut out the middleman of break.com - But yeah good luck with that. They wouldn't even know where to start. The buyers (huge media companies and TV stations) wouldn't even take their call. They're not to going to waste their time dealing directly with the (literally) millions of Youtubers trying to sell their cat videos or Minecraft lets plays or whatever. They'd be inundated with calls. That's where companies like break.com come in. They filter out the crap and they have the contacts and are able to aggregate content in bundles and so save everyone time and money. That's their added value. Plus they bear all the risk. Sure sometimes, they'll be getting good margins on the videos they manage to sell, but that'll be offset by all the content that no-one wants.

It'd be a scam if they offered someone $350 and then only paid them $100 but that's not what's going on.

^
I completely agree with what you've said there more or less and I understand that business is business...I just personally find it a bit ethically and morally gray if the payment for a clip is say...30% or less of the price it made from being sold on...a fair price for someones content (Even if its technically worthless if it isnt sold) shouldnt be that difficult of a task for a company to achieve while still making a meaty profit...thats all im really trying to say...then again im the kind of stubborn sod who'd turn down cash on my content if I didnt think it was enough. id rather have nothing than feel im being fleeced xD

 

[Tropical365]

Thanks for the replies. I should have googled before starting thread... upon first glance to the email I received I did not not realize Break was a "real" company hence why I was thinking it might be a possible scam. Anyhow... I won't be dealing with them either way because it's not worthwhile for me to sell video for pocket change because keeping the video is more beneficial and what they are offering is certainly not what I would call a "good deal". Keeping the video is helping grow my channel... even if just a little bit I'll take all the help I can get in that department [DOUBLEPOST=1508506354,1508502529][/DOUBLEPOST]This is interesting... I just got another email but this time it's from Junkin Media. I guess I'll be getting lots of various similar emails to the below.... so it seems for now best thing is to just ignore them. I'm new to all this so I have no idea what I'm doing.


I work for Junkin Media. We are a TV production company and the largest viral video marketing company in the world, with over 70 million fans across our properties (such as Jukin Video, FailArmy, People are Awesome,The Pet Collective).

I saw this video: (I removed link). Who was holding the camera to film this?

We are interested in representing your video for licensing and promotion to the TV and media networks we work with across the world. Some of these include The Ellen show, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Discovery, NBC, ABC, BBC among many others. We also have deals with The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, The Chive, Yahoo, and many more. Videos we represent have ended up in ads for such brands and products as Google, Cheerios, Honey Bunches of Oats, Hallmark, Hasbro and Kit Kat. Our partners can pay thousands of dollars to license a video like yours, and all this comes at no cost to you, and you retain full ownership of your video.

We will pay you more than any other company, so don't sign or give other organizations (such as Ladbible, America's Funniest, Viral Thread, ViralHog, etc) permission to use or share your video before speaking to us. You may think they are just sharing it, but they may be getting exclusive rights, limiting your video's potential for promotion and licensing tremendously!

We represent some of the largest and most viral clips on the internet such as-

 

[Swiss Cheese Gaming]

Definitely a scam.

 

[Tropical365]

I told BREAK I consider selling my video for $5,000 LOL. They replied with the below.... what do you guys think of their response? To be honest at first I felt my "viral bird video was helping me get new subscribers... but it really isn't... for the past entire week I only got 3 new subs! .. so maybe the below isn't a bad deal or is it? My bird video I feel will definitely eventually have 1 million views... it's still getting thousands of view each day... and now has over 100,000 views and growing...


Hey,

Unfortunately $5000 is simply an unrealistic number for the video when it comes to our evaluation and I'm still not entirely sure where you received your numbers from. And to be quite honest, we're not entirely interested in buying the video outright from you to begin with. Instead, what we often offer is a partnership system where we can pay you an advance for the clip, and then share a percentage of all future revenue we can generate, through YouTube ads and TV licensing. We will represent the video to our media networks, whether that be through our various YouTube channels (Break, Break clips, Smosh, etc -60 million subs total between all our channels) or to external networks -TV shows like Ellen, Good Morning America, Ridiculousness, even news channels like CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC etc -both nationally and internationally

As long as you are the person who filmed the footage and haven't uploaded the footage anywhere else (For example, America's Funniest Videos, Unilad, etc), or given anyone permissions to use it exclusively, we can offer you an advance payment of $100, and we will 60/40 split future revenue from ads on YouTube and any licensing deals with television networks (or the like) Essentially, we will be doing the work in representing and promoting your clip, and you'll be getting a 60% cut. You maintain ALL copyright ownership to the video.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Also, please let us know if you have any information regarding permissions by other outlets - have you given out any clearance to any other agency? That information would be helpful to have on hand for us.