How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?
blog.bassemdy.comI run a channel with 85k subscribers and around 10k views per day. My monthly income breakdown is roughly this: - Youtube ads $900 - Affiliate links $2500 - Brand deals $3000 (equates to one sponsored video per month) - Patreon $350
Took me around 5 years of posting a video a week to get here. Now I finally make a living. Started working full time about a year ago. Before that 15-20h per week for years. I talked to some other youtubers, and I think my "path" to making a living from youtube, and my income breakdown, is pretty standard.
Key takeaway here is that youtube is a looong game. You will be unlikely to succeed unless you love making the videos so much, that you are happy to do it almost for free, consistently, for years. And the money is not in adsense, but in brand deals and affiliate links (which are often part of brand deals).
Here's my channel if anyone is curious: https://youtube.com/MicaelWidell
How do you deal with “talking to the void” at the beginning? I speak publicly fairly regular and I get a lot of energy from people in the crowd. I’ve done some YouTube and converted that to podcast format. I can’t seem to get motivated to do it as I can’t see/interact with people. People I know in my niche community will tell me they watched my video or listened to the podcast, I think “oh that’s nice I guess” and I go back home to stare at a camera and I can’t seem to connect making a video with audience interaction. Is this a thing? How do you think I could deal with it?
Yeah in the beginning it definitely felt extremely weird talking to a camera, with no other person in the room. I had trouble talking as naturally as I do to a live audience or even to a friend.
This was actually so hard for me in the beginning, that I avoided talking directly to the camera for a long time. Instead I recorded footage of me doing things and then did a voiceover track to put over that.
But it is mostly a matter of practice and becoming used to, and comfortable with, that situation.
After 1-2 years of weekly videos it didn’t feel weird anymore for me. And nowadays I can talk just as naturally to the camera as to a friend.
But yeah definitely a big hurdle for many people I have talked to as well.
I think what I nowadays do, without thinking about it, is I imagine the camera is a person in my core audience.
Hey Micael. I've been a subscriber for years, love your channel and all things macro photography in general.
Really wasn't expecting you to pop up on hn!
Appreciate that :) In a previous life I was a programmer/CTO, so it's an old habit to visit HN.
Did you foresee a 5 year span before stable revenue (and indirectly, did you have to alter your ways/work to have better views and workflow) ? Also did you try other platforms ?
Kudos on the dedication :)
When I started I studied some other channels in the photography niche. And I saw that you need around 100k subscribers to make a living. I also saw that most of the successful channels in this niche needed around 5-7 years to get there. So yeah this was very much expected.
But I’m not doing this for the money. I do it because it is the most fun project I have ever done. I would do it for free. If I go too long without posting a video I actually start feeling depressed. So for me it is therapy. But it is nice to earn a living from doing something you must do to be happy :) And also it feels nice when people ask what I work with, to mention something that actually earns me a living.
YouTube is pretty much the only viable platform if you make long form content and want to earn money doing so.
Heh interesting how you monitored the field before doing it.
I understand the feeling of doing something you love. Money is for bills, after that you need something else. I'm currently on a similar quest.
I went to check out your channel just to realize I was already subscribed. Well played!
Thanks for this Micael, very helpful info and your channel is pretty cool too!
Regarding the weekly video, are you saying you’d spend about 15-20 hours per week on that one video to get to the status you were at last year?
I’ve heard that regular releases are important for a channel to be picked up properly by “the algorithm”. Is this your experience, and is that a critical to keep up the cadence of one video per week?
I make music videos (basically myself playing keyboards) and have never really gotten a good long-term traction with “the algorithm” yet. Sometimes I get a burst of impressions for a few days with corresponding views and subscribes, but these come and go. I release ever few weeks, though some of my videos are shorts, or just a few mins long for a single song.
I think a weekly release would be a real challenge, but maybe that’s what is needed to get to the next step? For me the real time sink is all the time arranging and practicing to get to a point I’m confident to even film myself playing.
I spend on average around 10 hours per video. (1h ideation, 4h filming, 5h editing+thumbnail). I make at least a video a week, often 2 videos. How much time you spend per video will be up to you. There are successful youtubers who spend just 8h per video, while other successful youtubers spend A LOT more.
I think of every video like a lottery ticket. I know a certain percentage of them will become "hits", ie. give me 100k+ views. And I know the more videos I make, the more of these hits I get. I also know that over time I will get better and better at my craft, and increase the likelyhood of any video to become successful. I never had a schedule, and I don't beat myself up if I don't post a particular week. I just keep working on my videos a little every day, and post the video as soon as it is done. It has resulted in 1-2 videos per week over time.
I know that it is probably best to keep a schedule with strict times, because then the audience will show up once they learn the schedule. But I am always too eager and can't bring myself to not post immediately, and it has worked okay for me :) Most important thing I think is that you don't take long breaks of several months. I think your audience cares about consistency, but not the algorithm.
Thanks for the reply, very helpful.
Well done for maintaining that publishing momentum. That's a good strategy it seems, spending a little time each day, but enough to maintain a weekly video at least.
Will give it a go and see if it helps. Cheers!
I'm not 100% on youtube's algorithm, but I believe one of the points it hammers is that it's no longer about catering to the video but rather the viewer. So rather than think about weekly releases to play into the algorithm, it's generally better to focus on higher quality content that keeps people/your subs engaged throughout.
Schedules are important for fans, it's easier to grasp that they can check youtube at a certain day and see your new video over hoping they enable notifications. However if the schedule is far too much for you to handle, don't force a weekly schedule! There are plenty of channels doing great on a more spaced out release timing, but perhaps it's best to encourage some sort of schedule on yourself just to keep producing stuff.
As you said though you have to get to a point of feeling confident to even film yourself playing. That's your #1 over scheduling. Maybe livestreaming your practices could help with that, on the plus you would also have a bunch of livestreamed content you can edit down into future videos. Doesn't suit everyone and livestreaming is definitely its own challenge/realm, so it's just a suggestion! But I could see it being good for getting over that whole perfectionism angle we get ourselves into.
For music content specifically, it seems a lot of it revolves around the hopes of getting people aware of your content through fan stuff, and then pushing original stuff alongside it. So piano covers of video game music (for example) and then they also release original music; the former is easier to create/tag/practice, the latter establishes uniqueness amongst the sea of channels.
Thanks for the suggestions waboremo!
I never would have even thought to film myself practicing, I would have thought it would be way too boring for any of my subscribers to want to see.
Honestly I feel fairly camera shy, and in life I managed to roll a 3 in charisma :-) Luckily I don't need to speak in my actual published videos. But I'll give it a think and maybe try it out some time.
Yeah I mix it up w/ covers and originals. Every cover is in my own unique style, and has at least some bit of originality in it.
Definitely think a lot of creatives feel the same, that practice is too boring or too raw but it's just a part of the process! Some love seeing that process, and it gives them another way to connect, others don't really care but even just seeing the process on the channel can demonstrate authenticity.
Lots of options even if you don't want to show your face or voice as well. Like short videos on how do play the chorus of (popular media here), with text/graphics on the video to help people.
Don't discount external platforms as part of the entire journey, they can feed into each other. Twitch-Patreon-Youtube combination is really common, TikTok/Insta Reels instead of Twitch is another. Best part of such video-based combinations is content reuse, you don't need to generate new content per platform, fantastic for stretching out periods between intense recording sessions. Then add in platform specific content (like opening up some rough draft originals to Tiktok duets, encouraging people to add their own lyrics), and you've got quite a substantial cycle in place without much serious effort due to all the reuse!
Congratulations, that's awesome.
I'm curious, do you adjust or renegotiate your brand deals periodically based on anything like metrics, value of their new campaigns, etc.?
In general just curious about how those contacts work out for you. Not in the game but have worked around it a lot, away from YouTube.
It is very hard to set a price. But when you are negotiating with brands you soon get a feel for what you are worth. And yeah I increase my rates over time if I grow the average views per video.
Typically the deals are only on a video-for-video basis, even if I had contracts lasting up to 5-6 months at most. So it is easy to ask for a new price when you negotiate the next deal.
Did companies reach out to you for brand deals, or did you actively reach out to them asking for sponsorship?
Both. Lately I have started reaching out and it works pretty well!
How worried are you about copy cats ruining your business?
Not at all. That's the beauty of being an influencer - it is really hard to copy what you do, including personality and all. Also, it takes years to build a following and a personal brand. Sometimes people upload copies of my videos, but youtube has a good system to notify me and take them down.
I started a YouTube channel at the end of 2017 and published on YouTube on a regular basis for a bit over a year. My best year was about $1,500. I've made $4,600 since I started the channel.
At the channel's peak, I was trying to publish a DIY video where I would build something two or three times a month. I started the channel because I enjoy making stuff and thought I would be able to do more of it and maybe get paid to do it.
As I continued, I worked hard to polish my production style and I realized I was prioritizing the video production over doing what I loved. Making videos taking time away from actually making stuff and making the projects take 10X longer. So I stopped.
I still post videos from time to time, but I try to do everything in a single take and not spent more than an hour editing it. Last year I finished a project I was pretty proud of and spent about 20 hours working on a video and it only got 100 views after the initial posting. For me, it takes a lot of self promotion to get the algorithm to recognize the video as a good video and have it be shown to more people. The self promotion part is something I really dislike doing.
YouTube is great for people that love the process of making videos because it's a win whether someone watches your video or not. Editing can be fun, but for me it gets tedious and I prefer doing a lot of other things.
Making videos taking time away from actually making stuff and making the projects take 10X longer. So I stopped.
Check out Kenji Lopez-Alt [1]. He’s an award-winning chef who makes cooking videos by strapping a GoPro to his head and going to work in his home kitchen. He has basically none of the fancy production you see on cooking TV shows. Yet his videos are very popular because he’s a great chef and he tells you the why in addition to the what and how.
I’m pretty sure he’s made his setup just about as close to optimal as possible in terms of minimizing the time he spends on the video production part while still looking great. I think his one bit of fancy production is that he has a nice spot by the window to set a cooked dish for his thumbnail photograph. I think a bunch of his cooking videos also do double duty to supply photographs for his cookbooks, but that’s unnecessary for the vast majority of video creators.
Kenji isn't really representative of the path most people can take.
His reputation is almost exclusively from his superb cooking articles (and recipes). The Youtube channel is a side dish, not the main course.
I said his videos are very popular because he’s a great chef. Nowhere did I imply that you can go from nothing to famous person by strapping a GoPro to your head. I mentioned Kenji because he’s an example of someone who makes great videos with absolute bare minimum production effort. The person I replied to talked about how video production had gotten in the way of the enjoyment of the craft. I think Kenji’s videos are a perfect example of how to avoid that problem. That doesn’t mean following this advice will lead to instant wealth and fame.
Ultimately, there is no formula for fame because audiences are fickle and trends are fleeting.
Even with Kenji's minimal setup he still said recently he spends on average 6-8 hours per video on editing[0].
I think he’s been trying to cut that down very recently. His latest video begins with him not even on camera! I think he’s testing the waters and he’ll find that even with the most rough, sloppy edit his videos will do really well.
Do you reckon he uses the built-in microphone, or an external?
This channel is amazing. I learn best by simply watching others do, and this will surely help me advance my culinary art!
He definitely does not use an external mic. You can tell because of the reverb from his voice bouncing around the kitchen getting picked up on the camera’s internal mic. If he wore a lapel mic he wouldn’t have that problem!
But lapel mics cost money and they can be a pain to wear, especially when you’re cooking and need to keep your hands free without anything dangling into the food or the fire!
I've just watched over an hour of his videos, he's very good.
Apart from the good format I found myself thinking the audio is extremely good
I think DIY content is so hard to make. For me, it usually involves building stuff that I find interesting, but that is usually super niche and doesn’t appeal to a mainstream audience. Thus, less views which makes the whole time spent on making the video feel wasted compared to other projects I could be doing.
On the other hand, I could try to build projects that might be more mainstream for the better views, but then I’m spending time creating stuff I don’t want to make.
As a consoomer I find interesting that the production quality has bigger say over which DIY projects I watch than if the thing they are building aligns to my interest. For example JohnnyQ90 is filming himself creating very high quality RC cars from scratch, and despite me not having interest in machining/rc cars I still watch basically all his videos.
Your interest being niche may not matter as much as you may think.
That’s a good point! Though, I would still argue that things like RC cars are more mainstream then a video about building a RISC-V emulator or re-implementing an existing protocol.
You are right. Such concepts are truly abstract, such for illustrations are hard to make. The matches may not be perfect, but examples in this case come to mind:
[0]braintruffle - took the concept of computer fluid simulation as main topic over detailing specific implementation, few videos a year.
[1]Reducible - His explanation of GJK algo, even after reading papers on it, made me appreciate it.
Both utilise extensive animation skills, mastering meaning of video.
People who are interested in DIY are interested in the process far more than the average person. They want to learn techniques on how to build the things they want.
You can't build a Youtube channel by highlighting what you've built. You have to explain how and why it's built the way it was. The end result is maybe 5% of the value.
> Making videos taking time away from actually making stuff and making the projects take 10X longer. So I stopped.
Isn't that why a lot of YouTubers (or content creators, whatever the name is), hire a videographer to do that work for them?
If you have money laying around, sure. If not - and you aren't really making money - then no. And even then, lots of folks do their own editing.
It isn't all that different from other arts: If I paint, I might be lucky enough to pay a gallery, either through commission (often 40-60%) or through renting space (often, monthly payment plus a lower commission). You might be able to rent space. But most folks just have to do all the small stuff themselves. It isn't uncommon for artists to spend more time doing social media/advertising/mundane stuff than they do creating art, if you are trying to make money.
I'm not as intimate with the music scene, but it seems a lot of folks do similar stuff.
They do, but you need a large following and a decent amount of money for this to be affordable in the first place. I paid someone I know to edit some of my videos for a while, and even at a fairly low price, I would end up spending as much money on the editing as the video paid out to begin with. Same with thumbnails, a lot of big creators get someone else to make them, but the prices there are quite steep too. I used the same thumbnail designer as a few of my favourite 100K subs YouTubers, and it was like $200-300 a thumbnail.
So it's probably like, $1-2K per video if you want someone else to take care of the editing and thumbnail design aspects. Hence you'll likely have to do this stuff yourself for the few hundred thousand or so subs, at least if you don't have FAANG/trust fund money on the side.
So a lot of YouTubers start primarily self editing up until they have enough of a following to hire someone’s services. It can be painful!
I wonder, what would come out, if all these editing things can also be automated and optimized by an AI. Leaving the video intact, but doing the cuts, translation, timestamps, colorizing, densing, audio gaining, lighting, so it all looks compared to things out there.
I really want to get in to video editing and posting on YouTube, but I just can’t come up with something to record as all I really know is programming which doesn’t make for great video content.
Can you educate me a bit here? If you do it in a single take, what do you do in your hour of editing?
Well, you can't build much in the ~10 minutes of a typical youtube video.
So presumably by "one take" hahamrfunnyguy means he:
* Stopped recording driving to pick up materials, placing orders where there's a wait for parts to come in, and suchlike.
* Stopped recording things speculatively, just in case he decides to make a video later.
* Stopped worrying about 'narratives' and 'thumbnails' and 'the algorithm' when working.
* Stopped cleaning off his hands and fussing with camera settings to get the perfect shot of every step on every machine.
* Stopped trying to make point-of-view videos and keeping an eye on the camera screen, so he didn't need the tripod between him and the workpiece.
* Stopped retaking any time he messed something up or flubbed his lines or the audio came out bad.
* Stopped worrying about set dressing like having a picturesque, tidy background for every shot
Then the editing process is just editing several hours of video down to a few minutes and maybe recording a voiceover.
Pretty good summary of all the stuff that goes into a DIY build videos. Now I just show the finished product and talk about some of the design details and problems solved along the way. I think there's a lot of value in this sort of content, but I haven't made enough of them to know if it's something people actually want to watch.
Can't speak for others, but I have several channels I follow where this is effectively the format... It's a bit harder at times where it's just a tripod in the corner, and might be more effective with a headband mounted gopro depending on your work. But other than that, just appreciate enough instruction and video to understand how things are being worked on, usually fast forwarding (in the edit) through the more laborious (time consuming) parts.
But I follow such a wide variety of topics from political, to technical, to PC gaming to food (keto, general, other) and home construction or even electronics DIY stuff. I think YouTube has trouble figuring me out... I tend to get fed too much of one thing over time, and have to go into my subscribe list (a few hundred) and start watching from the more recent, or specific channels depending on what I'm in the mood for.
import the video from your device. cut out/speed up the boring parts. add a voice over or music or corrections to dialog. add intro screens, cut screens, transitions, titles. tweak the audio, censor curse words if required. insert images or screenshots you reference. insert labels/graphics. export it. re-export it because you screwed something up. upload to youtube. fill out their required forms. write description, timestamps, link cards, end cards. create affiliate links if that's what you're doing. follow up on social media. etc. etc. etc.
you're probably thinking of streaming, which involves less work, but you have to do it in real time with OBS or whatever. maybe you're talented and can do it yourself, but sometimes that involves a second person at the controls.
sure you can just upload a raw video straight from your device. but this is exceedingly rare, because you've grown accustomed to at least the basic round of editing - you likely don't even realize what edits have happened. raw video is incredibly boring. will anyone watch it? if not, then what are you even doing that for?
you should try both sometime, it's not quite as easy or fast as it sounds.
I wonder how long it takes before someone makes an AI to do it.
Adobe Premiere, along with special purpose apps are already here. take the raw video, chop it up into pieces, grab the algorithimically determined "interesting" ones, stick a recent audio track behind it. volia! not as good as if you had a team helping you create content, but a whole helluva lot easier.
Thinking a bit more about it, I guess you could have an algorithm that detects the start of a fragment based on speech (e.g. you say "fragment start!") and you could rank the fragments at the end, e.g. "fragment stop score 8!" I suppose you could do that with open source speech-to-text tools. And use ffmpeg to cut and stitch everything together.
This exist, there's a software that will trim any non-talking parts of your video with AI as a smart video editor
Can you share more about these services please?
Editing is boring work because you have to go through hours of video and find the right fragments and stitch them together, then rewatch to see if the flow is right, etc.
Exactly, selecting what to put in the video is incredibly time consuming if you have a lot of footage. That's not evening mentioning editing. Every time I watch a section of video I would find things that can be improved. At a certain point, you need to stop polishing and just finish it.
I checked his YouTube account to see the kind of content he was producing and honestly, not really impressed. None of these have educational value per se and look (at a thumbnail glance) like opinion vlogs.
For someone who's making a full-time living out of this sort of work, I suggest checking out https://fasterthanli.me/ who writes long-form technical articles on Rust, and provides similarly educational and enjoyable videos on his YouTube channel. He wrote about his journey and his decision to go full-time over at https://fasterthanli.me/articles/becoming-fasterthanlime-ful...
I believe firmly that the type of content OP is producing is not ones people find of monetary value. Educational content with a semi-niche focus is the hot stuff if you are interested in generating income. Provide service, obtain funds!
I never heard of that content creator before and I wanted to see by myself as well.
I picked a video on the utility and challenge of test engineers because of all the thumbnails that the subject I had more familiarity with.
The content is good IMO. I can’t tell if great but it’s not garbage.
But you are right that it’s not educational per se. It seems akin to a podcast of Software lifecycle.
I don't think getting into producing educational content is a viable strategy if someone is starting now and their goal is to have a good living. Specially on youtube where you also have to give away some of your privacy to the internet.
For recorded media (ie not streaming on Twitch) you control what you upload, so there's very little exposure you don't want, other than giving your details to YouTube so they can pay you. If that's too much exposure for you then becoming a YouTube star may not be for you.
Eg What do the people that run Kurzgesagt look like? I have no idea, because almost all their content is animated. Other YouTube stars choose to share some things, like what they look like, but most don't give away enough serial to be stalked, and with good reason!
If you get to Mr. Beast level of recognizability, then you have a whole slew of other problems, but you're not gonna get there, so I wouldn't worry about those problems just yet.
As someone who's posted videos for about 10 years, and posted them seriously since 2017, the best period I ever had gave me about £1,500 for a couple of months worth of videos. Usually it's closer to £250 a month or something.
This is entirely from YouTube ads, since at the moment I don't use Patreon, sell merch or run sponsorships. And it's for a channel with approximately 33,000 subscribers.
So I can definitely back up this point from the article:
> Only a handful are getting rich in the process. The drive for many of us is to add value to the world and share our knowledge.
Unless you're in a very lucrative niche (usually finance), you'll need hundreds of thousands if not millions of subs to make a living through YouTube ads and content creation alone. Hell, if you're unlucky enough to be in a field where creating content on a regular basis is tricky or overly time consuming, or where ad clicks are low (usually animation or music), then you may struggle to make enough for a living even then.
Of course, other means of monetisation do make more money than ads alone. If you've ever wondered why ever big YouTuber starts with an ad for Raid Shadow Legends/NordVPN/whatever, that's because those endorsements are a more reliable way of making money than ads alone are. Same with Patreon, donations, merch etc... anything that isn't at the whim of Google is a much more sustainable way of paying the bills.
But yeah, unless you're absolutely huge on YouTube (or have a decently large following in a very high paying niche), then it's not something you'll be able to turn into a realiable day job, let alone a high paying, FAANG software engineer level one.
While most of this comment is true, there are lots of youtubers that can make it full-time without getting millions of subscribers. The key is that you can't rely on adsense, you need to get as many different ways of getting income as possible (patreon, sponsors, merch, etc).
From my observation, it seems an active base of around 200,000 subscribers seems to be where you can do it full-time. I've even seen people with about 100,000 subscribers go full-time.
The trick is that you can't just be making videos, you have to take on a lot of the business parts too. If you just want to make videos and nothing else, then you would probably need hundreds of thousands of views per video to make a living.
Yeah this is true. Adsense is a very difficult way to make money on YouTube, and it's stuff like sponsorships, selling merch, selling courses, Patreon, etc that usually keep a lot of creators afloat.
If you can get those working for you, you can definitely get by on a few hundred thousand subs, and I know lots of creators in exactly that situation.
But yeah the challenge there is definitely building enough of a community that people are willing to pay you for that stuff, which is more difficult than just posting videos would be. Especially given that your niche has a huge effect on how easily you can make money from those things, and whether your community is going to be 'loyal' enough to support you that way. Creator focused and topic focused channels have very different routes and possibilities for monetisation...
I don't disagree, but there are some that have managed to crack the code, or maybe just right place, right time, but eg kurzgesagt has a team of 60 to run their channel, and also they get a lot of outside funding for their channel. (they have 20M subscribers, but my question is how they got there, not why are they successful now that they are there)
Black Swan aka long tail.
Most people starve.
It's not a valid career choice, it's a lottery.
It's not a lottery, there's a direct relationship between the quality of a video and its viewership.
Luck is involved, but to a much lesser degree than in fields like music, acting, or startups.
The point of the entire article is that you can't make a living out of it.
But you do you.
I disagree. There is an algorithm and some people analyze the trends to crack it.
And those people are the 0.01% and many admit they got lucky, and at a certain point fame is close to self sustaining.
Kurzgesagt has become (or was always?) propagandistic, in my experience, so that may explain where they get some of their funds from.
(Can't edit my comment above now so adding on by reply)
My observation above was just from personal experience. But after making it I searched 'Kurzgesagt' on YouTube (just wanted to see what videos they'd recently produced) and, as well as their recent videos, that search also turned up one called Kurzgesagt: billionaire propaganda, trusting science, and effective altruism [1] which I've now watched and found that my observation has been made by others and analysed in quite some detail. That video mentioned some others on the same subject [2-3], which I haven't watched but also look interesting.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGfBV4I8DQI
The most successful content creators know how to brand themselves and make a significant amount off such. I think MrBeast would be the shining example.
I think MrBeast could be compared to a Jay-Z of this content-creator era. What I think is noble about MrBeast, and a handful of other creators, is their trying to give back.
It is the classic & interesting question, but from watching other creators it seems to miss a key variable: Reliability of monetization.
Someone may love making videos, has a reliable core audience and good views from western audience (and thus high pay rate). However if it costs them 1k to make a vid and the algo is hit/miss as to whether it gets demonetized or not then that becomes a show stopper issue. If you make 3 vids a month and are unlucky then you've got a -3k cashflow...so you're not eating that month.
I've seen some move to Twitch as a result since core audience will follow and subs are a bit more predictable (or rather not as all or nothing)
I've seen twitch let's players say they wish they prioritized youtube first because they claimed youtube revenue is larger and more reliable than twitch subs.
But gamers are able to publish a video nearly, a contrast from the kind of youtuber that spends 1k on a video like you mentioned.
I guess youtube has the advantage of potential recurring revenue from back catalog so I can see that creating a reliable stream effect. Depends on type of content I think - some types have very spiky first 48 hours. So either you're monetized there or it's a dud video.
Dealing with Youtube's "copyright" department isn't worth the trouble. Also the same content on a Adsense monezited site yields factor 10 earnings vs Youtube.
Just one example of their copyright shenanigans:
A friend of mine prank called some water cleaning office somewhere in Africa. He was put on hold, while on hold some music played. Youtube wanted to know if he had the license for this "elevator type" music, essentially single tone please hold the line "music". Of course he didn't and he had to edit the video and re-upload.
Who in their right mind thinks that this hold the line music is copyrighted in a way that you couldn't post a conversation containing that music in public? The attraction was what he and them said, not the non-essential music to begin with.
So the same piece of audio on an Adsense site, no issues whatsoever. And 10 times the earnings of the video.
Hold the line music is absolutely copyrighted in a way that you can’t post a conversation containing that music to a channel that you are monetising, without compensating the creators of the music.
Reminds me of how police played copyrighted music so they could avoid being filmed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/12/santa-ana-p...
That sounds absolutely insane, you don't even request that music to be played.
It's time for copyright to adapt to the 21st century.
It doesn't sound like they were blocked from ever sharing the video, just that they can't make as much money off of it.
The music is likely fair use since limited time period and not main use.
But fair use is complicated and there is no way it could be determined by algorithm. YouTube can’t trust the uploader. It doesn’t scale to decide by person. Fallback to DMCA process would be too expensive. Plus, fair use is only US. Easier to just deny copyright material.
The cleaning office didn't requested to prank called either!
Copyright is designed for an industrial content creation context, and it does not have the flexibility it needs to avoid the absurd results it reaches as it's been extended outside of that context.
In this case, it's the same reason that $BLOCKBUSTER_FILM needs to license $HIT_POP_SONG as the montage or mood-setting music for part of their film. It's possible that there's a viable fair use defense in this case, but defending it would likely cost several orders of magnitude more than the lifetime revenue of the video, and to be frank, even the fair use defense ultimately seems weak to me.
YouTube doesn't have to engage in the absurdity at all. They have safe harbor protection. All they have to do is process DMCA takedowns in a timely manner rather that preemptively flagging content on behalf of powerful interests. They do the latter because they're in bed with the corporate media who provide content for their subscription services.
Copyright laws are just there to screw smaller creators, on TV they have agreements with the monopoly license fee holders and they just put whatever they want without asking anybody.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification. Smaller creators who are making music absolutely can and do benefit from the fees that pass through the “monopoly license fee holders” - collective management organisations. For example in the UK if a song that you wrote and recorded (and for which you control exclusive rights over the song copyright and the recording copyright) is played on BBC Radio 2 (the biggest national radio station by audience numbers) then you will be paid around £100 per minute.
So each time a three minute song is played you’ll get £300.
Now, obviously, the chances of an independent artist without the mechanisms of big record labels may struggle to get the music into the hands of the gatekeepers who make the decisions about what is played, but it does happen.
I agree though that the copyright implementation around incidental use of what is essentially stock music in a wider creation is something that can seem a bit out of whack. The biggest issue is around metadata and the way information identifying rights holders passes through the digital supply chain. Unless a video creator was able to clearly identify the rights holders in incidentally music then the blunt instrument of “this is copyright material, block/monetise/rev share” is currently really the only thing that prevents “bad actors” exploiting copyright music for their benefit.
These agreements involve book keeping and money also.
I don't deny that, it's like the mafia, the large companies are never the ones stopped by it, they just pay the tolls.
> Who in their right mind thinks that this hold the line music is copyrighted in a way that you couldn't post a conversation containing that music in public?
Well, me for one. Honestly this sounds like a rookie mistake.
This is entirely anecdotal, but reading the comments here it feels like compensation for the bottom 50% of creators has gone down in the last 5-ish years
I ran a Minecraft YouTube channel in high school in 2014 (I thought I was too late to get big on YouTube and shut it down in 2016!) and made $500 a month with 2,500 subscribers. I happened to have one video that got a few hundred thousand views, which helped
Yes, the event where everything went to shit is called the Adpocalypse: https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YouTube_Adpocalypse
How often did you post a video, and how long were they, roughly? I'm asking because my YouTube channel has about 2,500 subscribers but I've yet to see a penny.
Here I see 116 writers complaining about the near-impossibility of making a living via youtube, a property of one of the biggest big dogs in the technological world. Consider the following:
1. Youtube is a monopoly. 2. Youtube is obtaining unfair advantages from its monopoly status to the disadvantage of content creators, producing woesome despair and exasperation. 3. There are laws that are supposed to prevent this in the U.S. and other large jurisdictions. 4. Preventing this is even one of the rare issues that has visible political support in each of the major political parties of the U.S. 5. Dysfunctional democracies are not. Make them work.
If this problem could be resolved without politics, I would recommend that. If youtube had 4 or 5 significant competitors with competitive markets for both creators and eyeballs, the problem would be minimal. But there is about zero chance that even a single youtube competitor will arise before 99.99% of those now watching their funds dwindle as they produce videos will have given up, despairing and exasperated.
What’s the alternative that you’re proposing? From what Google has published, YT barely makes money even at the current 55/45 cut. Consider what they’re doing —- hosting billions of hours of video, at global scale, 365 days a year, for free. Nobody wants this business because it’s a terrible business.
Despite all the above, YT is still the primary platform, along with Instagram, to which content creators and influencers flock. People that “make it” on TikTok launch YT channels, for example.
Not making a living on YT is not because of YT’s monopolistic status; YT video creation is the best of a bad bunch. The same way most actors go to Hollywood and end up in poverty, most aspiring YouTubers end up with time spent and not much earns.
All the truly big creators make, from what I recall, roughly a third to half the money on Adsense, with the rest coming from other sources (embedded ads, merch, Patreon, donations, etc).
> YT barely makes money
Sure. And the same has been about Amazon in retail. But the scoreboard for the tech companies is not earnings; it is return to shareholders, mostly share price appreciation. If the stock prices are high in relation to income, that suggests that the monopoly power is somehow valuable, probably in expectation that the monopoly can be significantly monetized in the future or used to help other parts of the business.
Monopolies may have multiple downsides even when they do not extract extortionate profits. Google must obtain plenty of positive feelings from the public for providing so much amusement via youtube, maybe so much good feeling that no one even tries to assess the consequences of their other monopoly (search).
Somehow, when I see a huge company like Alphabet (Google) based on a niche like search, which has a single winner, and they offer a service like youtube that looks so grass-roots inclusive inviting everyone to join in and get happy, rich and famous, but only a very small fraction do, where success is based so much on what youtube itself recommends, I suspect that there may be some implicit bias working in favor of unequal results that maybe google has something to do with.
We should be looking for alternative models and finding ways to reverse the trend to single-winner markets. I grew up when all the significant cities in the USA had multiple local newspapers, all of which hired writers, and when very many more musicians made a living than do so now. I cannot think of a good reason why anyone should have expected that vast improvements in communications technology would destroy that or why we should just let that go. Monocultures do not find global optimums.
There's a section about YouTube in this video [1] by Samuri Guitarist called "How Much Money Guitarists Actually Make Might Surprise You". The YouTube money is covered in the "The Content Creator" section.
Overall the video lives up to its title. I was in fact surprised by how much guitarists actually make. The surprise worked both ways--some of the ways guitarists might make money paid much worse than I expected, and some paid much more.
I think this data is subject to change quickly. I think content creation has enjoyed it's "Dot-com Bubble" era. I think it's already starting to change, but will likely very rapidly change if a recession sets in soon, as many prominent economists are expecting.
Content creation payments are fueled by advertising dollars and it's easy to see that the advertising market has started to contract, as evidenced by many of the modern news outlets folding, driven in much part by loss of advertising revenues.
> as evidenced by many of the modern news outlets folding
Which time frame are you talking about here? I had the impression news outlets folded during the last 20 years because ads went online?
YouTube channel is a must if you run a business. Ran $100 of ads and got zero orders. Spent a couple hours on a video and got 10.
“I have made a total of … ~148 EUR from Youtube ad revenue”
From 173,000 views
Yeah approx 1EUR/1000 views which I think is kinda "typical" from what I have heard - the ranges I've heard are approx 1USD to 5USD per 1000 views.
What's idiotic about this market is that you can't set your own price.
You could totally set up your own site and charge people to view it, or strike your own advertising deals for your own site's content.
But then you'd probably not get any of the benefits of being on the YouTube platform (discoverability, advertisers already on board, targeting etc), so it starts to make more sense when you consider what the platform is giving you for "free".
I mean, you could, but the point is that we're forgetting that ads as a monetization model are taking away our freedom to price our products as we choose.
It would be similarly ridiculous if all apps in the App Store were free and you were paid some small amount per app-invocation that you had no control over.
How would you set your own price?
Just not showing content when there isn't enough adds available surely would drive away watchers. And the advertisers are already bidding. Certain types of content get higher pay.
Imagine you are inside a store that has magazines. The magazines are all free, because they are filled with lots of advertisements. Then someone says "It's crazy that these magazines can't set their own prices". And someone else says "How would you do that, nobody would pick up the magazines".
The magazine might be free. But it might set the prices for adds so high that it don't get filled. Or actually make money. And some VC keeps throwing money at it as surely at some point they will corner the market and make money.
And the video makers and article writers can already contact advertisers and ask for whatever price they want.
Not show ads unless price is met
Hmm, that could work. And also Youtube as platform could charge you for delivered content. So set high per impression price and if you get more views than add revenue Youtube would send you a bill. Could work, could work.
Yea I was interested in the article until seeing this. And then:
> and my content went viral several times
Clearly there is misunderstanding of the platform, its scale, and how to use it if you are seeing this as viral.
That said he seems to be off to a good start. It’s just a slog to get going unless you are going to go truly viral with shorts but that won’t happen with topics like software, etc
Yeah it seems odd. 1.73 million views is probably 'viral' for a super niche topic, 17.3 million views for less niche topics, 173 million views for music videos.
173k views though... wouldn't have been viral since at least 2008.
How much did Google make from those views?
The ad revenue split is reported to be 55% for the creator, 45% for YouTube. (Except for Shorts, where the split is the other way around.)
Actually that holds out for all platforms including Medium, but medium seem to actually pay better based on my exp:
1. Monthly hits at 35k 2. Which means that realistically I should be earning $350 to $700. Which in fact happens now!
The key seems to be advertising in sm in the right numbers. When I increase my sm posting to fully daily and multiples using video slide strategy I tend to get the right number of impressions to drive traffic to my medium articles. In my case I need to post 500-1000 postings a month and then I will see my earn per month multiply by 10 to 100.
Impressions will always be the highest but with ads you have it reversed in that you get paid for a distraction which is a different set of metrics. This is good yt creators follow that up with some market product to sell that the yt acts as ad for. In my case my books act as the market piece that my medium articles and yt reels advertise for.
I fully expect to be at 500k in the next 6 months using a modification of GaryVee's content strategy and that is concurrently with my current code and book writing schedule. So yes it is possible even if you have a day job.
And, all while getting my ADHD under control using a modified nootropics approach.
GaryVee's content strategy is to create pillar content then repurpose it.
How do you find the time to post on social media 15-30 times a day and create the extrapolated content? How do you create quality social media content from based on your main content?
I am working FT on a startup and social media has been a stumbling block for me because it takes a lot of time and I am having trouble balancing building the product and marketing/advertising it.
> getting my ADHD under control using a modified nootropics approach.
I'm interested in reading about this
This guy only has 4k subscribers and averages only 1.2k views per video... that's not good.
I run a channel that produces AI content / tutorials and I do better than this only using 2-6 hours per week.
The devrel / dev content niche is hardly a niche anymore - thinking about a market is everything and as others have said building an audience you can market to with brand partners is where most of the $$ comes from these days.
How does half of $2K (over 2 years!) go to taxes? Doesn't that put you in the bracket where the government gives you money?
If you are doing content creation part time you are going to have more income than the 2k. the 50% is likely the marginal rate though and not the effective rate.
You should be able to offset a fair few costs against that income.
Presumably he has a high paying engineering role as well
if you're in Denmark it would be easy to get to the point where half would go to taxes, also some countries can have different rates on what is your primary income and what is income earned from secondary sources that are taxed higher. However in the case of having a business that is generating taxable revenue you are probably also buying things at times you can deduct, so it's probably not as dire as all that - although depending on how things are you might not want to deduct more than you actually earn from your secondary source of income.
Many Americans are surprised to learn how much higher taxes often are outside of America
California total taxes on a $100k income is 28% --- https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#a3rz8...
UK it's 24% -- https://listentotaxman.com/?ingr=79000
1. The California calculation includes state and federal income and employee share of federal payroll taxes; the UK site appears to include only income tax [see EDIT] (the UK has more complicated payroll tax rates, but each of the employee and employer share can be close to as much as the combined US rate of 14.85% below the Social Security cap) [1].
2. The UK has much higher consumption taxes than the US (including California) with a 20% VAT and gas taxes close to $3/gallon, compared to (in California) a maximum of 10.25% sales tax and $0.725/gallon state+federal excise tax on gas.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-rates-letters
[EDIT: Actually, the UK calculation does include “National Insurance”, which is the payroll tax equivalent, but it is after the "total tax due" that the parent used for the comparison. With the employee share National Insurance payment included, the UK total is 30%, higher than the CA amount even before considering the impacts of higher consumption taxes and the higher employers-share National Insurance.]
Your links show that take home pay is higher in California ($72K vs £55K/$69K), despite higher tax rate.
This is a result of including employee-share payroll tax (FICA) in the California tax total, but not including the UK equivalent (employee share of “National Insurance”), which is listed after the “total tax due”, as part of the UK tax total.
Broadly equivelent to employee part of healthcare contributions in the us
not unless you don't get any other money
“And just to be clear...I know exactly what I’m doing”
In terms of monetization I think content creators are better served focusing on leveraging their reach to build up a community to support them instead of optimizing primarily for ad revenue. Platforms like YouTube have continuously shown that relying on automated ad systems is unreliable and puts your ability to monetize subject to the whims of the advertisers. Many established creators have wrongfully received demonetization strikes against their channels threatening their livelihood.
It seems like the biggest asset that creators are creating are the communities that form around them and their niche. The people who consume content within a niche tend to be very likeminded and often times quite willing to rally behind and support the bastions propelling the niches that they identify with. Even for smaller creators, I've seen time and time again that all you need is one or two highly dedicated and engaged fans to make being a creator an extremely lucrative endeavour.
I've been working on a platform to help content creators diversify their revenue streams and offer their communities as one of their product offerings in addition to their content. The hope is to allow creators to better capture their community and monetize from their niche.
I think it's really difficult to answer that because revenue per watch varies depending on the content, because different industries are willing to pay different amounts for advertising.
I imagine if you have a popular channel to with anything around money (banking, gambling, investing etc) or high value/margin goods like makeup, cars, etc. then you make significantly more than niche interest channels.
CPM (clicks per mille) varies greatly per geography and niche indeed.
Even better question:
For people who multiplatform, how does youtube compare to other platforms, and how does monetization differ on those platforms?
Matthias Wandel posted this a while ago, he didn't censor the number of views or earnings (apparently YouTube doesn't like people doing that): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXYd4aZOhJ0
His main channel is about wood-working: https://www.youtube.com/@Matthiaswandel and he has another one where he tinkers with stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@matthiasrandomstuff2221
Is there a specific reason why you have your link structured that way? I'm surprised to see that many tags as subfolders to the content, not sure I've come across that structure before. Just curious!
His content is not good and thats why he not earning that much
I really like your channel, I'm a developer who wants to learn more of the *Ops world in general.
But for me these platforms like YouTube have a big problem, they force content creators to accept that everything in life have a trade off, which in this case is quality x quantity. YouTube values quantity in the end, while it's users values quality in a strange way. Because of this, niche channels like yours, gets less attention than it should be.
Suppose today you go on YouTube and see 10 recommended videos.
There are thousands of videos it could put in these slots, so they'll be ranked and only the very best (based on metrics and your interests) will make the cut.
Video #11 might have been great, but wouldn't get suggested to you merely because it had a few seconds lower average watch time. Because of this I'd expect a 10% better video (like %, watch time) would improve its views by some huge nonlinear factor (maybe double?).
I appreciate your support I'm in it for the long game. In this world the fastest way for growth is riding the waves. An alternative is grinding to build an audience that appreciate the value you offer. The latter takes years of consistent work.
Making non-commercial videos about coding some product is the equivalent of majoring in basket-weaving at Youtube University.
How much you make via advertising is directly proportional to audience size and geographic distribution. Niches with large audiences include video games, superhero movies/IP, makeup, gadget review videos. And even then, ad revenue usually needs to be supplemented by adding affilliate links and in-video sponsorship messages.
Interesting. We could do the same thread for apps on the App Store. I have the feeling that platform owners are painting a picture that is far too rosy ...
Yep. That's exactly why I published this, I see a lot of how "creator X made Y in Z time" and usually it's insane figures. I never saw any realistic figures to gauge what the median might actually look like. This post is it. This is what an average channel performance looks like.
I think I could enjoy uploading videos of me doing things I enjoy. I noodle around with things from oil painting to writing emulators. However, both are mostly me tinkering, researching, “hello world” ing and then maybe producing.
Would be neat if someone else enjoyed it.
Maybe I’ll try.
It's always worth a try! You never know what people will find enjoyable to watch :)
Have some self respect and don't produce "content".
That’s mostly up to YouTube who is opaque and arbitrary about what they will allow you to post and make money from. They’ll drop the hammer when it suits them.
Ironic that the author has a principle of "no clickbait bullshit" but the article uses a clickbait title since it only talks about his personal experience.
Also you're shooting yourself in the foot by not doing any clickbait, considering that clicks = money. So if you want to make more money on YT, you need more clicks.
Thanks for sharing, I think affiliate links to specific apps or products is the right way to go, as YouTube is paying a very low amount for ads.
Easy 10k per month in the finance niche with 4k video quality and descent lighting.
It all depends how many phones you have running in your farm