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The Wedding Dance Crashers

Published: 11 Aug 2009 18:53:46 PST

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz danced their way to the altar and to Internet celebrity with their recent video "JK Wedding Entrance Dance," which has attracted 18 million views in less than a month. Now, others are starting to make money off its popularity.

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New York-based Indigo Productions produced a spoof called "JK Divorce Entrance Dance," which has attracted over 1 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube on July 29.

Due to the success of "JK Divorce," Indigo has struck a revenue-sharing ad deal with YouTube and electronics maker Ricoh has commissioned five new corporate training videos and a technical school based in New York has requested a recruitment video as well.

"JK Divorce" producer Max Rosen estimates that the six new videos should bring in $150,000 for Indigo. The company had just under $1 million in revenues in 2008.

After seeing "JK Wedding," Indigo was almost certain a parody would attract attention. Rosen pitched "JK Divorce" to a group of students attending a seminar it hosted on viral videos. The students loved the idea.

Indigo got to work immediately, hiring a cast of Broadway actors and dancers. Forty-eight hours later, Indigo uploaded "JK Divorce" to YouTube, forwarded the link to well-connected contacts and students from the seminar, who used social networking tools to further spread the word.

Apple ( AAPL - news - people ), Amazon and musician Chris Brown have also reaped financial rewards from "JK Wedding." Brown's song "Forever" was featured in the dance and an advertisement on the video linked to the iTunes store and Amazon's MP3 store. According to YouTube's advertising blog, the video helped bump up Brown's song, which was then already over a year old, to No. 4 on the iTunes chart and No. 3 at Amazon's store.

"The 'JK Wedding Entrance Dance' was a test case where iTunes and Chris Brown figured out how to make money off user-generated content," Rosen says. "We're the first to create our own content and make money for ourselves and everyone else."