Most people wouldn't crack the poverty line with their earnings from painting, acting, writing, music, sculpting, etc. YouTube is just another type of art. Like any artistic endeavor, it is extremely helpful to be independently wealthy or have a patron supporting you (parents / spouse / rich monarch). For the rest of us, you do your craft when you can around your primary job, and one day retire so you can do it full time.
Yes, god help you if you want to make a living from entertainment or culture. Simply isn't where the big money flows are in this world. I went the games route, like an idiot, and now I get to read through narrowed eyelids every day about how selling TODO lists to businesses is like taking candy from a baby.
Is it really about the money? Or is it about the abundant supply? There's plenty of money in Hollywood- and also plenty of penniless actors, because everybody dreams of being a movie star. Game companies get to abuse new college grads because everybody dreams of working on their favorite games.
What is this? Could you tell me more? I spend inordinate amounts of time in front of the computer and never heard of this, and a quick search doesn't reveal anything obvious.
It's just my hyperbolic take on the many testimonies I've read by single founders who make SaaS products for businesses and rake in X0,000 per month. And then patio11 shows up and tells them to charge a lot more, so they do, and it works.
That was my first thought too, but if you read the article they compare a million regular views on YouTube with what a regular cast member earn on a not-something-special TV show. And guess what: a million viewers on TV can pay several people above the povert line.
I subscribe to a woman in India who posts awesome Indian food recipes. She has 2+ million subscribers, and I can tell from the upgrades to her kitchen and the traveling she's doing that Youtube has made a significant improvement to her income.
And honestly, if you are producing content that really engages people, YouTube advertisements is the least efficient usage of your brand. Someone like her could probably launch a food book, or patreon, or any number of parallel branding ventures where she would get a much higher cut of the revenue.
If you're someone on YouTube who just puts out viral cat videos, you're probably going to struggle much more with parallel branding.
I agree there’s the potential for a greater audience based on the content, but the audience is an equally important factor. I suspect the vast majority of this creator’s audience is in India - how is the Patreon adoption there? What brands are looking to connect with home cooks of the suncontinent? I don’t know, I’m way outside the market. It might be the case that YouTube ads are her most solid and repeatable opportunity.
But I do hope for her sake that she finds as much success as possible.
As far as I Know there is no patreon/Kickstarter for India.
I suspect this is likely due to banking rules, as well as rules for remittance of foreign currency being difficult.
But this is an educated guess on my part.
The other options could be that this is India and some totally unexpected effect has already taken over the market and I haven't recognized it. Maybe Kitty parties (A type of savings club)
And this is an area where globalism excels. There is a demand for good indian cooking recipes in the US, and a supply of excellent indian cooks willing to share their secrets in india. Win/Win really.
My wife has been watching Village Food Factory on youtube for a while now (The old Indian man with 6 fingers on one hand). You can see where the youtube revenue has increased the quality of life for the content creator. They now have enough money to regularly feed the local villagers.
YouTube don't directly determine how much ad revenue a creator receives. Advertisers bid to place their ads next to content based on keywords and viewer demographics; the creators receive a 55% share of whatever the advertiser paid.
American viewers are generally the most lucrative, in part because of the share of YouTube Red revenues that creators are eligible to receive. A great deal depends on other contextual and demographic factors. YouTube do indirectly influence the revenue that creators receive by tagging certain videos as "not suitable for most advertisers". This is a substantial bone of contention in the YouTube creator community.
Who ever wants to play an ad bits for it against others who want to play ads for the same target group. Youtube takes its share and pays out the share of the content creator based on this price. Higher $ for content creators in the US just means that who ever wants to run ads in the US has to pay more money in the first place.
I've had a YouTube channel for years, and talk with other creators on a regular basis. This article is basically correct, but glosses over the point of sponsorships, side deals, and most of all, Patreon. All YouTube creators that I know personally make more money via Patreon than ad revenue. Just a data point. In the old days, Patreon publicly displayed each Creator's pledge amount, and it could be compared to socialblade.com for estimated ad revenue.
That would be impossible to enforce well and be very manual, which google hates.
I'd expect them to simply integrate patreon like functionality into youtube itself. They have most of the infrastructure for such a system in place already and could add things like patreon exclusive content.
I agree completely. Back when Adsense for Content was a thing they would ban your account if you had advertisers from other providers on your page (in addition to Google ads) as it was against the terms of service.
Given Google is trying harder and harder to make money on something other than search advertising this is what I expect to happen. I expect the Youtubers will find that Google will stop them from pitching products in their video or putting affiliate links in their description. They may also start cracking down on ads that roll in the video that aren't Google placed. Then I expect them to make it a violation of their ToS to receive third party compensation for your videos, and instead to use some Google supplied version (which they will 'tax' at some rate (probably 30% given the Apple precedent)). There was already rumblings of this in September of last year : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiWNSlHG-9Y
No they haven’t. When someone clicks on a normal link (not an ad) they found through google search that ultimately facilitates business, google gets nothing.
If you are speaking strictly of cash from the person clicking you are correct. If you consider the advertisers however, you would be incorrect.
When a person clicks on an "normal link", Google notes the search terms used, the link that was clicked, the time it took you to click that link (which goes to hesitation or not), the IP address from which you clicked that link (which tells where you live), any google cookies (which if you're "logged into chrome" or your web browser can be substantial) and if you land on a web page with Google Analytics and AdSense advertisements they will know if your trip through the search engine ended up paying one of their advertisers or not.
Rather than "nothing" that is actually quite a bit of useful information that Google then resells in a variety of ways to their advertisers.
But you are absolutely correct that the person clicking the link doesn't pay any money to google.
So data from patreon is even more valuable - what content is a user willing to spend money on?
John Doe pays $5/mo on Patreon for a youtube channel that shows how to remodel a home? He is obivously in-market for real estate, remodeling, home decor, tools, furniture, etc. That data could be worth more than $1 (a 20% cut) per month.
What normal links are most people clicking on anymore?
I guarantee you that 90% of people clicking stuff they googled are clicking on an ad (I spent $20 million on Google ads last year). This is even more true as Google provides more and more structured data on the results page without requiring a click.
That's quite a bit of money - just out of curiosity, what do you sell if you don't mind me asking? I personally click normal links and haven't seen an ad on google in years, as I have been a long time user of ublock origin and a different content blocker on mobile since ios9. I think I'm in a decent-sized and growing population in that regard. And as for your guarantee, I'd bet that at least 10% of people who use google don't see ads at all because they use adblock of some form, so maybe 90% of the people who see the ads click those links, but not 90% of all searchers. Does google report the searches that went without an ad displayed?
There's some Youtube-based chat donation thing that Google takes a cut of, but I would bet that Patreon will shoot themselves in both feet instead - they've already tried with the changes negatively impacting $1 pledges. Based on the amount of VC funding Patreon took, they'll need to make more money somehow, and it'll probably hurt creators.
I think they’ll just roll out their own pledge/rewards/etc features at some point if there’s really that much money on the table and just eat Patreon’s lunch in one fell swoop.
Everyone would just change the description of their Patreon page to be "Support me so I can bake delicious cupcakes" or something else unrelated to the videos.
At the end of the day though Google/Youtube has the ultimate hammer, "sorry you can't use our service any more." which, in a similar way, has already killed a bunch of AdSense supported web sites (Dr. Dobbs being perhaps the most memorable to me).
This is the world we live in today, company A has some good or service that company B uses in a structural way (ie without it company B wouldn't exist). Company A decides they want/need more revenue they squeeze Company B for it, generally it eventually kills Company B.
This scenario has played out again and again, and whether it was Company B using Company A's free API, or Company A's copyrighted material, or Company A's community web site, the squeeze happens and company B usually dies.
And this is also often the case even if your money comes through Patreon or similar services rather than YouTube ads themselves. On that site, about 1% of the audience rakes in the cash, then a large portion of the rest basically makes enough for beer money every now and then (if they're lucky).
Still, it's not surprising. Unfortunately, almost any artistic (or sporting) field has the same issue as YouTube and co here, it's hugely profitable for the small percentage that break out to become superstars, and then quickly becomes very unprofitable for the millions with less luck/timing/talent/whatever.
Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not. At the end of the day, the idea of running a YouTube channel as your full time job is just so attractive to so many people that competition is almost always going to be sky high, and with the formula for success being pretty random in general, I suspect it'll always be a field where supply heavily outstrips demand.
Like going to Hollywood to become a film star, or starting up a band in college.
Perhaps if over time viewers and those running YouTube channels migrate to other platforms that give a larger percentage of advertising share to the people creating the content, then the number of people who can support themselves by streaming will increase.
Also, as technology improves and hosting costs go down, the proportion of advertising money that could go directly to the content creator can increase.
I think YouTube's recommendation algorithms are complicit in this, and I can imagine an alternative system preventing the divide between popular and unpopular content. Currently if you watch one video your recommendation feed gets flooded with videos from the same channel, which creates a positive feedback effect for big channels.
But I guess if the incentive for being a successful YouTube celebrity wasn't so great there would be fewer people trying to do it.
Relying on Twitch streaming for income is a hard life. Anyone who doesn't realize this is delusional.
You're talking 10-12 hours _every day_ entertaining people. Successful streamers work 6-7 day weeks at those hours and if they're lucky take 2 weeks off a year -- one of those spent at TwitchCon. Most of them are playing the same game for long stretches of time (months to years). That's really hard!
And if you regularly have ~3k viewers, you'll probably earn $2k-4k a month between ad money and donations. Except for outliers, obviously. The overwhelming majority of streamers are not successful, by the way, or are only successful for a year or two.
It's absolutely a labor of love. You do it because you can't stand doing the alternative.
The catch is that if a story like this is interesting enough to be printed, it's usually also too unusual to actually be representative. No one's going to read "guy quits his job to go to law school".
I think the concept of (optional) subscriptions funding Twitch streamers is an excellent replacement for ads however if you are considering making a living off Twitch you should be aware of the politics. There is a culture of banning streamers (sometimes indefinitely, but rarely upon first ban) for violations in their extremely vauge TOS. Usually no reason is given and there are major inconsistencies between some streamers' moderation and others.
Basically "only 3% of youtubers can make a living doing it," so in other words, if I randomly select 33 youtubers, and put them in a room together, I'll be able to find one who makes a living from it. Furthermore, if I randomly select 100, one of them will be a millionaire? I really hope this is out of people who already making it their dayjob or something, otherwise this article is pretty stupid.
> One in 3 British children age 6 to 17 told pollsters last year that they wanted to become a full-time YouTuber. That’s three times as many as those who wanted to become a doctor or a nurse.
Is this supposed to be alarming? When I was that age my peers might have said NBA player or Hollywood actor but those are not any more realistic.
That's also a really big age range, maturity wise, to group together for such a question. Like 2/3rds of 6 year olds might have said that, but 1/6 17 year olds might have answered the question like that.
Just doesn't really end up being a useful metric the way that the article presents it.
>Is this supposed to be alarming? When I was that age my peers might have said NBA player or Hollywood actor
The difference is that the feedback of your success or failure on those tracks is usually quite rapid. If you've hit a certain age you know whether you're going to be a professional athlete or not.
People who think they might make it on youtube are facing an audience that might as well encourage them to keep on even if they are not making a living. Add to this the idea that youtube and other platforms market themselves to people in this way. ("ditch the old gatekeepers, they're keeping you back!")
People might be able to build up false realities for themselves much more easily in virtual spaces.
Either they will make money or they won't. And if their followers are growing theoretically they are on the right track.
You think no footballer or basketballer was ever caught close to being a pro, and then spent a year or 2 too long on the dream before realising he didn't cut it.
It's exactly the same thing, just a different medium
With a side implication that 1 in 9 kids want to become a doctor or nurse. That's not economically survivable unless medical personnel also take a similar vow of poverty.
An NBA player or Hollywood actor takes years of training and dedication, and hours upon hours of time investment. A youtuber only needs a fraction of that, and how well or poorly you're doing (views/subscribers) is instantly verifiable.
My frustration is NBA and hollywood actors bubbles are quickly shattered by recruiters. You can go so far to study film/tv in college by taking out loans(which is fine if that is your dream), but frankly the bubble isn't burst until you almost 23 for those that choose such a path.
Based on the number of “actors” in a 10 block radius of LA restaurants, I question your premise that Hollywood is good at signaling when “time is up” on the dream. Take that same 10 block radius and now include the total number of screenplays, and if you got them close enough together they’d collapse into a singularity.
“I’ve seen as low as 35¢ per 1,000 views and work with some YouTubers who can earn $5 per 1,000,”
Comparing that to the numbers in the DailyCandy YouTube advertising post from yesterday, it seems video creators aren't getting a lot, advertisers aren't getting a bargain, and so someone is making an absolute mint on the difference..
Note though that the CPM billed to the advertiser is for when their ad isn't skipped, whereas the views for the YouTuber include those that skipped (or blocked) the ad, so the numbers do not compare directly. I'd be curious how large the skip-rates are (Candy Japan mentions 70%, but I don't know how far that generalizes)
I don't doubt making a full time living on YouTube is very difficult. But a few channels I subscribe to at least claim to do it, and are nowhere near the top YouTubers. They all supplement their ad revenue with Patreon. But I would also think doing Patreon is just a standard prerequisite to full time YouTubing now.
I've always wondered if these channels are truly making a living off of just Patreon+YouTube, or if there is more they aren't sharing.
I think it's worth noting that revenue grows superlinearly in views. As channels get more popular they get vetted manually, which puts them in a more lucrative ad share. Also opens up sponsorship deals, etc
Also depends on the specifics of the channel. Specialist ones can get endorsement deals earlier and more reliably even at comparatively smaller (but not small) audiences.
The basic proposition of the article is true (not many people make much money off AdSense from YouTube) but it’s really poorly written and full of misinformation and omissions. One horribly incorrect point:
> Buying the same equipment used by Casey Neistat, a popular YouTuber, would cost $3,780.
Not even close. That would but you one decent professional 4K camera. Not remotely “the same equipment he uses”. He and other top creators use tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. But you don’t need all that to get started, you can get started with your phone as many do.
The big thing this article barely touches on is this; there’s more and more creators who are successful by basically treating AdSense revenue like a Christmas bonus. They rely on Patreon, merchandise (shirts, etc) and sponsorships. You can find sponsored videos on channels with less than 100k subscribers.
The real story to me is if things keep going this way, what’s the incentive to even enable AdSense on your channel? Just stay ad free and earn money elsewhere like James Townsend & Sons channel.
When I was 17, I thought I was really beautiful and I wanted to be a model. By which I mean I imagined it would be easy money and I never seriously pursued it.
I imagine many people who want to be a YouTuber are kind of like that. It sounds like easy money and they aren't ever going to work that hard at learning their craft, etc. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that a lot of them aren't doing particularly well.
On the other hand, I'm a writer and it is the same thing: A few big name stars raking in the dough and a whole lot of losers struggling to get by. And I get told all the time to go get a real job if I want a middle class income.
I don't know where people think these real jobs are. We are seeing the rise of the gig economy. There are fewer full time jobs with benefits and more gigs.
I am medically handicapped. Doing gig work has overall worked better for me than a corporate job. I hit $50k in debt while working a corporate job. I paid a lot of that off while homeless and doing freelance writing and struggling to eat.
I don't know what the answer is. Historically, middle class jobs did not just magically happen. Society designed them that way. Most were designed under the assumption that it was a man supporting a family whose wife would do the cooking, etc, so he could focus on his job. Under that model, you didn't need everyone to make a middle class income. You needed the primary breadwinner to have a good job with benefits that supported his whole family. Society was designed around a nuclear family model and jobs were designed with that in mind.
The world has changed and the nuclear family is not the default expectation. Plus regular jobs are getting scarce.
So I think we need to take it seriously that there are systemic problems here. We are allowing a system to develop with a few big winners, a lot of losers and little or no middle class.
At the same time, we need to accept that not all content is equally worthwhile. However, if we want some form of UBI, I would be much more comfortable with the idea that if you have some kind of YouTube channel or similar, you should have some kind of basic income from it than with "free money for everyone."
I think we need to take it seriously that there are systemic problems here. We are allowing a system to develop with a few big winners, a lot of losers and little or no middle class.
I believe Marxists see this as the inevitable endgame of capitalism... by rewarding hoarded capital, there is no possible conclusion except the centralization of wealth to enormous levels of disparity.
Even for those of us who travel across boundaries, in some parts of the world I personally feel ridiculously wealthy (which objectively I am) whereas I can't afford to raise my kids in the manner and environment in which I myself was raised (which was not considered particularly wealthy at the time).
Politics seems to have failed us on most fronts, and the big problems are really international and therefore beyond the scope and reign of political animals, even naively assuming they cannot be bought out or sidestepped. Perhaps then, fundamentally as individuals we can only analyze the net effects of our actions and try to contribute to positive change instead of perpetuating a self-serving culture.
More snarkily, "Oh, you can't make a good living producing content on the internet with $1000s of dollars of e-toys?" ... this is perhaps something of a first world problem, where others are still down the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy.
At some point rather recently we made the decision to get rid of all the icky blue collar jobs and replace them with service economy job. The people who protested this change were branded as backwards hicks and their concerns were hand waved away along with promises of retraining.
The gig economy is just more of the same but we get told that wages are rising in other countries so we should be happy, as we subsidize some startup with our cars or our houses. But hey, we are getting rid of the 9 to 5 right?
Yes, it's a first world problem. That doesn't mean it isn't a very serious problem. We are seeing stresses that have millionaires scared of where this goes.
If the first world can't figure out how to turn this wealth of tech and knowledge into widespread middle class comforts and devolves into revolution and can therefore no longer send aid to developing nations with "real problems" I think things will get really ugly globally.
On the back of an article pointing out how the well known "starving artist" profession now includes a "starving YouTube artist" category you make an interesting semi-sequitur into the social ill of economic inequality.
The thing is. The world is getting better for pretty much everybody. What is happening is that for the certain differing quantiles the world is not getting better at the same rate. For some quantiles in feels like you are not keeping up with the Jones's and you'd be right, you are in fact very much not keeping up with the Jones's. As global wealth increases who then are the losers and who are the winners relatively speaking?
I know that's hard to believe, but it is only (and I used the emphasis advisedly) the very very poor wherever they live and the lower middle classes in the developed nations that are being left behind. The famous elephant curve† on inequality explains it visually far better than I could.
(I know in my case that I have only maintained my living standard with help from family and for me this is a source of constant shame. I haven't been able to afford to take my kid on holiday in years. If anything goes wrong with the car I can't afford to fix it. Am I to blame though? You judge. I refuse to do many sorts of jobs that I consider too repetitive or boring. I am completing a PhD which at the moment is basically more money out than money coming in. I do this because I want to spend my life doing something I value (philosophy/coding). I have no idea how representative my case is. All the major tech companies are in my country, I could turn my back on philosophy but I choose not to.)
Steven Pinker in his new book Enlightenment Now uses data, stats, charts, diagrams, info-graphics to show that by any reasonable measure life is getting significantly better all the time for vast swathes of the world's population. We in the developed world need to remind ourselves that illiteracy is still a thing in some countries. Child mortality is still a thing. And so on.
But, and this is important, growing economic inequality is a very real social ill. Pinker dismisses economic inequality because globally so much good is being done. This ignores the daily hardship of 100s of millions. It ignores the fact that as the world gets wealthier there'll be _less_ people doing better relatively as they move up the food chain so to speak. If things keep going the way they are going we are going to have a class of 100 billionaires while some people still live without proper sanitation and running water. The situation is already untenable and disgusting, it's only going to get more so.
Jordan Peterson recognizes that social and economic inequality of a truly vicious social problem, one that predates capitalism. (There's a name for these truly intractable problems, it's not coming to me just now.) We need to figure out collectively how to architect a society that isn't punitively restrictive on people's ambitions to succeed but that still manages to redistribute wealth in a manner that is fair for all.
I sympathize with your lot Doreen. For a certain type of person who is unwilling to "play the game" society as it is architected means you do something you hate and keep your head above water or you follow your heart and drown a little bit more every day.
I sympathize with your lot Doreen. For a certain type of person who is unwilling to "play the game" society as it is architected means you do something you hate and keep your head above water or you follow your heart and drown a little bit more every day.
Thank you, though you are missing a key detail: this has been better for me than a corporate job. In spite of being dirt poor, I have been paying down debt instead of running it up.
Nonetheless, I continue to live hand to mouth due to larger forces beyond my control. This is the least worst thing I can arrange and it isn't sufficient.
I suspect this is true for many people. The good jobs are just not out there in abundance. This us not just a personal choice. Society is pushing people into such choices and then throwing up barriers to it leading to middle class stability.
In my country there are many many vacancies in tech and pharmaceuticals to name but two well paying sectors–the education system doesn't produce enough people with these skills and people aren't migrating here quick enough. This is not a counter-argument to your assertion that decently paying work is thin on the ground, I'm just pointing out that industry claims simultaneously that there's a skills shortage.
I'm still not understanding something. Are you saying that there is something about corporate work for you that makes you run up debt? Or are you saying that now that you are "dirt poor" to use your words you have figured out how to pay down debt. Is that because of lifestyle choices? Is this to say that if you went back into the corporate (assuming you decided you wanted to and that you could) that you would start to run up debt again? Help! I'm confused!
> This us the least worst thing I can arrange and it isn't sufficient.
Are you bitter or resentful? I'm getting a sense that you are. I have no idea what circumstances have brought you to where you are now. For me, I am trying to both (a) look positively at life by being grateful for what I have and remembering that the world is a big place and (b) made a pledge to myself that I will think deeply about structural economic inequality.
Individually we are helpless, working together we could move the dial. We have to figure out which levers to pull though so our effort is not a complete waste of time. I think part of it must involve the very well off having both a slight sense of shame and embarrassment and there being permanent social structures put in place that prevent wealth from accruing to a select few but that are also resistant to capture. The first nation to figure that out, wow, I'd like to live there.
Such skill shortages are typically caused by said businesses mooching off education systems or requiring people to pay for very expensive years of education instead of sponsoring it with scholarships (with a proper exclusivity contact).
This is the same as companies riding on basic research done by government.
The fact that creating a middle class improves one's business in no way changes the fact that it was done on purpose and was not some weird freak accident.
Like other posters mentioned, it's crazy hard to make a good living doing what you want artistically. E.g. take photography: the only way to make a living is to shoot weddings, professional headshots, interior/architecture, or products for brands, which isn't exactly thrilling (how many times can you shoot Nike shoes or Ikea chairs before the excitement wears off?).
If you want to shoot the stuff that you want to shoot, maybe edgy dark fashion, or quirky abstract art etc. you will be piss poor, especially considering most invest way too much in gear rather than actually doing the work.
It's not unlike say being in a metal band. 99% of them have to have real jobs, even when they're "famous". It's just too much of a niche and making money with it is not obvious.
At the same time, that seems only fair. Should you be paid more for doing something you enjoy doing? E.g. playing music/videogames/making art all day vs someone stacking boxes at a warehouse all day or an accountant looking at taxes etc. Most people have mind-numbingly boring jobs that pay the bills because nobody wants to do them.
Making a living with the arts without "selling out" is super hard, probably not worth it to most.
From what I know, even without Patreon, YouTubers earn more money as "influencers". Companies pay them to promote their products (brand ambassadors) and influence viewers to buy it.
This article, its headline and its use of statistics is stupid and doesn't deserve a place on HN.
It's a bunch of poorly analyzed and disjointed statistics.
They mention the hourly rate for actors, but don't talk about average yearly earning per actor for acting. I doubt most actors work full time as an actor and most aspiring actors certainly have other jobs.
They talk about the advertising revenue per year for the top 3% of channels, but don't consider the amount of time put in by the creators per channel. What percentage of that top 3% are full time compared to the bottom 97%?
The only actually interesting statistic in the whole article "In 2006 the top 3 percent accounted for 63 percent of all views. Ten years later, the top YouTubers received 9 in every 10 views, he found." completely fails to account for the factors that might be driving this change besides "it's getting harder to make it on youtube". How many of that bottom 97% are active channels still producing content? Does the top 3% of channels actually produce 90% of the videos on youtube?
I think what this article misses is the fact that for some people it is both fun to produce the videos (like a hobby) and that the income is nearly 100% passive.
At least for my dad who has his own YouTube channel both of these things hold true.
He has one or two videos which have gone viral (6 million views for the biggest one). His best ad revenue income was around £700 in a month. Its not give up the day job money but it is definitely better than nothing. I'm sure many of us dream of having a passive income SaaS business generating that kind of money.
> Benjamin spends an hour a day editing his videos and holds out hope his postings could become a career, even after he heard the odds. “I think if I keep uploading, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to make it a career,” he said. He recently hit 100 subscribers, up from 71 at the start of the year.
So can he not do 3rd grade Math, or is he literally insane?
Some forms of revenue from videos in addition to the ad revenue are Patreon as well as product placement / referrals.
Now, consider that even old videos continue to make revenue over time.
In my case, if I was going to use YouTube as a source of income I would see it as passive income to supplement an existing income rather than a full time occupation.
Mass-publishing markets are very strongly given to power-law distributions. We hear that "anybody can be famous" (or successful, or ...), but everybody cannot be famous. Attention and publicity are the ultimate zero-sum games: no matter how large a given talent pool, there will only ever be ten top-ten spots, 100 top-100 spots. All you're doing by enlarging the pool is amplifying the competition for those spots.
There's another side to the equation, though, which is the scope of the audience. Prior to modern technological methods, and I'm including here everything from relatively modern printing (say, 19th century onward), as well as phonograph, cinema, radio, television, and sound amplification, the reach of any given work was small. A book might have a printing of several thousand copies (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ~5,000 initial print run, and the cost at ￡5 was roughly a quarter of a working man's annual wage). A theatre might seat (or stand) a few thousand (the New Globe Theatre: 3,000), and the largest cities had populations of about a quarter million (London in 1600, more or less). Transportation was slow and expensive (Smith again: 2 weeks, by stage coach or horse from Edinborough to London -- that's how he travelled to university himself).
As a consequence, entertainment was strongly local. There might be small touring acts, local musicians, and in rare cases, artists with a noble or royal patron (think Shakespeare himself, after a fashion, or Handel, Bach, or a church appointment (Bach, Telemann, and others). Art as a freestanding business was more-or-less a 19th century creation -- look especially at the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Impressionists, there are several excellent documentaries and biographies of each.
Technology increased the reach (and income) of top performing creators and stars, but decreased the viability of those further down the rankings. Where it used to be possible to eke out a livelihood as a local or touring performer, this became far more difficult. (There's something of a reverse shift in that the overall entertainment budget has increased sufficiently that the field has expanded, but the overall balance holds true.)
By way of quantification, I've been looking at the question of how many actors there are, and how many of those are considered "A-list". For the first:
Based on SAG and AFTRA membership and some adjustments, anthropologist Scott Frank comes up with the figure 108,640, of whom 21,728 are working actors. Los Angeles itself provides about 80% of all acting work, and USBLS data claim 1.77% of Angelenos work in entertainment, more than any other U.S. city.
How many of those are considered "A-List" actors? The definitions are ... fluid ... but generally about ten, no more than twenty. The Ulmer scale is a 100-point model estimating a star's value to a film. The 2009 top ten list, in order, were: Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Will Ferrel, Reese Witherspoon, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe.
Consider that given power law relationships, the earnings of a given star are going to be 1/n of the first-ranked, income falls off tremendously quickly. VSauce has a surprisingly good video on the topic:
Patreon has completely upended these economics. You can make a comfortable middle-class income based on a small but extremely loyal fanbase. If you're dependent on ad revenue, you need millions of subscribers, because you're only earning a fraction of a cent for each viewer. If you're supported through Patreon, you only need a couple of thousand people to chip in a couple of bucks a month.
It's an interesting middle ground between patronage and busking that doesn't have any clear precedent.
I follow Mastodon quite closely. Its creator, Gargron, produces social networking software with roughly 1 million registered users. He has 685 patrons, and nets $3,267/mo income.
That's less than $40k/yr. Though it's a richly diversified income stream and he has no boss (or rather: 685 bosses).
It's an interesting story, and one I'm watching closely. As I get older, I break out in ever-faster cases of hives when someone claims to have "completely upended these economics". You might consider this the New Hives Mind.
You still need a quite sizeable fanbase - small is not the right word for a couple thousand loyal fans who regularly spend money on you; even in the pre-globalized world where the distribution was more fair (less global stars sucking up attention), the vast majority of artists, bands, sports clubs, performers, etc didn't have as many serious fans. No matter what happens, there's only so much attention available, and it's a zero-sum game, most content creators won't be able to make it especially if the number of creators grows and dilutes that attention / eagerness of being a fan.
Patreon take a 5% cut of donations. A band with an exceptionally good record deal might get to keep 15% of CD sales. The numbers are fairly similar in most mass media - under historical distribution models, middlemen kept the lion's share of revenues.
Even assuming that competition for entertainment spending is entirely zero-sum, then the disintermediation of the arts is destroying a lot of jobs for middlemen but is increasing the amount of revenue that goes to artists. Even if the pie is static or shrinking, artists are getting a bigger cut.
I'm not saying that everything is sunshine and roses, I'm not saying that everyone can become a creative professional, but I think that the situation is definitely improving. Barriers to entry are lower and there's a much larger middle-class of artists who aren't internationally famous but are making a good living.
Fascinating response. I think you're dead on the money. Extremely pertinent remarks about the cost of art and literature in days gone by.
What YouTube does, therefore, is allow people to dabble, it makes it easy to upload content and a video format whereas before you'd somehow need to work your way into tv or film assuming that industry was located near you. Now all you need is a decent net connection, a bit of talent, a bit of a work ethic, and you can make a go of it. Will you succeed? Hell, probably no–but maybe you'll be more towards the lucrative end of the power law distribution. But yes, for every PewDiePie there are tens of thousand of also rans.
Look Ma! I've got global reach. But people's attention span is finite and their interests are limited and the way they find out about stuff obeys certain rules. Because of this we get that odd creature, fame.
I think that digital technology and internet and communications technologies have lowered the barriers into the arts and also to consume art. I do fundamentally believe that. That has to be a good thing, doesn't it? But that doesn't mean that art in the digital medium is going to buck social laws.
Could you tell me is there any one or two books I should be reading to glean more of the same information you have provided?
Of your last question: not a short list, though I did put together, tongue firmly in cheek, "Media, Advertising, Sustainability, Externalities, and Impacts: A light reading list" this past December after a similar request:
That should give you a basis for making some initial cuts.
The problem is, or rather, problems are:
1. I'm still catching up on the media / social-elements-of-information field, and have only been reading it in depth for slightly over a year (though I've had quite some years of general awareness). Which means that this list itself is somewhat aspirational (though I've at least taken a good look through most of the references cited).
2. What I've described above is a synthesis from a bunch of sources. I'm not claiming it's unique, mind, only noting that I can't really point you at some specific book and say "here, read this for that".
3. I'm coming to suspect the media field itself is not of one, or even some low-n number of minds, about major elements of these matters.
I think Tim Wu's Attention Merchants should get at much of the focus / diversity / attention element.
I've found Robert McChesney particularly compelling, and his Communication Revolution a strong overview of recent (past 20-40 years) developments in the field, particularly from a political-economic perspective.
Alvin Toffler's Future Shock digs into some of the elements of attention and information overload. It's a bit too popular itself, but should point to more robust literature. Herbert Simon in particular.
Here is where I overlap with you. I've watched the documentary version of manufacturing consent but not read the book. (Don't tell anyone.) I watched The Century of the Self and Hypernormalisation plus a couple of others by Curtis. McLuhan is on my radar but I've never done a deep dive though of course I'm aware of him. I've read The Master Switch by Wu but not Attention Merchants, this man obviously is someone to keep an eye on.
So that leaves McChesney and Toffler. They are now on my radar, thank you. Under general media scholars you mention: H.L. Mencken, I.F. Stone, and perhaps Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. I thought Mencken a critic, Dewey a pragmatist–Rorty rates Dewey very highly, Lippmann I seem to recall to coming across…, Stone, don't think so. Interesting list.
And if I may be so bold. Have you considered The Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset? A prescient work. Somewhat more obscure is The Reality of the Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann, Curtis mentions nearly every cyberneticist and cybernetic theorist bar Luhmann, probably for good reason come to think of it. New media theorists: Walter Benjamin obviously for his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (but maybe others?), The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich, and finally anything by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Wendy Chun).
I gather that media-philosophie is an actual research programme in German-land whereas here we'd call it media studies or communication studies or new media studies and it's looked down upon to the same extent as cultural studies programmes are or courses on semiotics. I'd like to see media-philosophy (what you use to communicate your message) become an actual branch of philosophy like aesthetics/rhetoric (how you communicate your message).
I.F. Stone, H.L. Mencken, and others (see particularly George Seldes) are far more practitioners than theorists, but they've had a significant mark on theory and make many great observations. Mencken's "Brayard vs. Lionheart" (I believe that's mentioned in my reading list) is especially apt, and is short to boot. It describes a large element of the information-theoretic component (though Mencken of course doesn't call it that) through his Gresham's Law reference and dynamic.
Thanks for Gasset, Luhmann, Benjamin, and Chun, as I don't think I've previously run across them.
A notion I try to make ever-more front-of-mind: Read only worthy books.
It's similar to the advice of Henry David Thoreau in Two Weeks on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, much of which in fact discusses books and ideas:
It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (τελεία) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day. The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
It looks like this is disregarding sponsorships tho. My mental model is ~$300 per video for a reasonable sized channel, which(with weekly videos) could well double their income estimates.
Listen to some of the larger tech creators talking about taking sponsorships - you risk driving away your audience if they're too "in your face" or you pick the wrong brands.
It's no worse in discouraging your kids from pursuing YouTube stardom than it is to discourage them from trying to become a famous rapper. The odds are against them. In the end, it's probably not worth it.
If you show just a modicum of creativity as a parent you can use your child's passion for rap or YouTube stardom to teach them lots of ancillary skills that could lead to a useful career.
Never crush a child's passion no matter how 'stupid' it might seem.
Not to mention if ones parents discourage them it may also be because they very well know what it’s like to grow up in poverty and just want their kids not to experience it.
Are they wrong though? I'd say that the streamers that are popular now (Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Rooster Teeth) have a lot of momentum with their audience.
Streaming celebrities are a trend at best, and at some point the talent pool will bottom out.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a soccer player, world famous paleontologist, rockstar, etc. My parents didn't "crush" any of these dreams because they knew I'd grow up.
If your 18 year old is choosing a "YouTube" career vs something else, sure I agree. But if your 6 year old says they want to be YouTube famous (vs rockstar 20 years ago, or NBA player now), why bother arguing with them?
Because you are parent and these discussions are literally how child is learning from you and how they are learning about your opinions. Kids don't change opinions automatically by function of aging, they change them as function of discussions, observations and reading.
It may be you or little classmate Johny or even somebody else. But no, it is not pointless, because that talking about world is child raising.
