Here’s something for web publishers in the YouTube/Adsense partnership program. It belongs in the Johnny Carson, “I DID not KNOW that!” category and is a follow-up to my earlier article: Can You Make Good Money in the YouTube/Adsense Partnership program?

I was vaguely aware when I signed up for the YouTube/Adsense partnership program that not only would I make money on clickable ads placed on my YouTube video logs, but when others would embed my video units on their site there would also be a three way revenue sharing. But I had forgotten I would make money this way until I started seeing money show up in this strange category on my Adsense page called: AdSense for Content Host.

I am seeing a considerable spike in my Adsense income since I started the YouTube/Adsense partnership program. Although this started out slowly, August’s income in this category more than tripled from the previous months’ averages and it has stayed consistent since then. From my understanding of the program, YouTube partners are paid by impressions and not just clicks on ads shown on YouTube pages. But Google is very secretive and publishes no statistics on the YouTube partner ads, so I am not 100 percent sure how this works.

But hold the phone!

Last month, my AdSense for Content Host category started spiking and this month it is spiking even more. I had to Google what the term, AdSense for Content Host, actually meant and I found a plethora of people who were puzzled by this sudden spike in their earnings as well.

This income comes from my YouTube videos that are embedded on other people’s websites. Here is how YouTube explains it:

In AdSense Reports Overview, ‘YouTube’ refers to revenue earned on your channel at www.youtube.com.

AdSense for Content Host refers to revenue earned from embedded videos ads and AdSense for Video Ads. AdSense for Video ads can run both on your videos on YouTube.com, and on your videos on an AdSense publisher’s website. These ads consist of text overlay ads contextually targeted to a combination of signals in your videos and on the site.

In other words, I am making money from ads on my YouTube pages, which is a separate category, but I am also making money from “video units” — that is, my YouTube videos shown on other websites.

In fact, if the trend I am seeing this month continues, the income from YouTube may top my regular Adsense income from ads on my website.

A friend of mine who does web development for a living first implored me to try AdSense in 2006. Around the same time, he suggested that I use YouTube to stream my videos. This was a few months before YouTube’s jump in popularity. I had complained that I had more video I wanted to show than I had server space. I was kind of shocked that YouTube allowed me to stream video for free. I got into it not even thinking there could ever be a profit in it on my end.

I have to learn to take such suggestions more seriously, no matter how esoteric and impractical they may sound to me at first. It’s the curse of being a genius: No one understands you at first, but people who do may end up cashing in on your brilliance.