Getting Paid To Make Short Films!?

Lets get paid to make short films! Ah what a refreshing thing to hear. Well before I continue, let me just say, that almost nobody makes money from short films. That's right, I just got your hopes up to crush them. But with that said, there is still some hope and I'm going to tell you where that glimmer of hope resides.
For starters I'm not talking about Pixar animated cartoons that get nominated for Oscars. Animated short films have a huge potential for profit when they are done by a huge company, with some of the most talented people in the business, and connections galore. And those short films are awesome! So they deserve everything they get and more.
But I'm here to talk about short films that most of us make and can put into film festivals if we decide to. Typically these short films are 3-5 minutes or 8-10 minutes in length. For the record, 30 minute short films don't usually make it into film festivals. If I was going to make a 30 minute short I would turn it into a TV show pilot instead and make it like 24-26 minutes in length to leave room for commercials. But that's just me. The other option is lengthen it to feature length but you better have the budget for that. But we're here to talk about shorts. You can win big at TropFest and other film festivals that have cash prizes but in all likely hood you wont win, especially if you knew how many short films don't even make it into these film festivals. But if you do win in a film festival that has a cash prize, then you will have a potential calling card to work on bigger productions like a feature not to mention your short film could move on to a bigger film festival and win more cash. Most of us are not going to win one of the biggest cash prize film festivals that are entered by tons of professional production companies that are taking it very seriously.
So what's your best bet? Well at the moment the best bet for your short film to make money is YouTube. YouTube has Google AdSense that pays you based on the number of views you have and whether or not people click on the ads they play before your video. You pretty much have to go viral to make money and potentially any profit from this. But if you continue to make shorts and build an audience on your YouTube Channel then in time all your videos could go viral. Then your talking money. There's YouTubers now that make a living from just making YouTube videos every week. FreddieW is one that I have been following for a long time and I have heard that him and his partner Brandon make gobs of money. If you have seen the videos that they crank out, then you would know they have earned every penny.
So those are the main glimmers of hope for our short film babies. You could also get creative and find companies or products that are interested in paying you to involve them and or their product in your short film for a price but I have never done that. Some examples would be you show a restaurant's sign and then a scene takes place in that restaurant and they pay you for the exposure. A fancy car place pays you or just allows you to showcase one of their cars in your video as long as you show the decal that promotes them. A product pays you to make a short film about the product and if you are creative enough then you wont make a commercial. These are a few ways to make money with short films or at least help funding.
What I am doing now is raising funds for my upcoming short film here http://igg.me/at/steven-dct/x/3755616. If I'm lucky enough to raise the funds needed, then I will likely still spend more than my budget and not make money when its all said and done. But I will lose less with the crowd funding website. If I don't raise the funds needed then instead of hiring a bunch of professionals I will likely go ahead and make the short film myself with the best people I can find that will work for free and the short film will likely suffer some. Oh, and cost me more money to make as well. So these crowd funding campaign websites are great and maybe you will have better luck raising funds then I am having so far.
The last glimmer that I am aware of is a site that has not started yet but its called http://www.project-lightbox.com/ and apparently it will be a place like YouTube specifically for filmmakers. Will see how this pans out and I'm sure there's sites like this one that I'm not aware of but I think YouTube with its larger amount of viewers is a safer bet still.
So please if you have any comments or glimmers of hope you would like to add to this then don't be shy. Hope this helps and lets keep making short films and finding ways to make money from them or at least lose less.