The videos on youtube contain adverts which pay a very small amount amount per view. So if your video has advertising and it is viewed 100 times it doesn't add up to anything much. But if your video has 10 million views then you're talking tens of thousands of dollars.... all from a single video.
At the beginng of the videos? Their channel has many videos, so they are accumulating views across multiple videos and hence making a decent amount of money from it. They split the profits with the person who submits the video to them - in some cases that has resulted in the original owner of the video making quite a lot of money themselves... so you can imagine how much LS are raking in.
I once got in touch with them to find out about their 'video partner' program, because as far as I was aware if you're making money from video taken in SP parks then you need a license (see section 6.2 of their policy here: http://www.sanparks.org/docs/general/fi ... policy.pdf ). They replied as follows:
We will only publish videos that our contributors have the full license for. So if you needed a permit while filming and you didn't get one, we will probably not be able to upload the video.
I personally can't believe many/any of their contributors have/had a license so I think they are probably sweeping that all under the carpet whilst making a lot of money in the process
