YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing site, on Wednesday said it will start

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sharing advertising cash with users who upload the most popular clips of everything from skateboarding dogs to dancing babies.

The video site, which is owned by web search giant Google, will extend its YouTube partnership programme to allow individuals to make money when their videos are deemed eligible based on the number of views and how widely they are shared.

Until now, users who regularly produced videos could earn revenue from YouTube if they applied to be members of the partnership programme, which YouTube said has earned some video producers “thousands of dollars.”

Under the new system, if a video becomes popular YouTube will email the maker an “enable revenue sharing” message. Executives declined to quantify how popular a video would need to be for its owner to receive the email. YouTube said it will sell ads against the clip only if the user agrees to do so.

One recent example of a clip that became a global phenomenon was the JK wedding dance video, which showed a Minnesota couple’s wedding party performing an entrance dance routine. It was seen more than 10 million times in less than a week. But according to YouTube executives, the makers didn’t make any money from the clip.

The extension of the programme, to be available only in the US initially, is the latest step by YouTube to improve its ability to make money from the thousands of videos that are uploaded to the site every day.