[HN Gopher] How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?
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How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?
Author : Link-
Score : 159 points
Date : 2023-05-06 10:53 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.bassemdy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.bassemdy.com)
| nicksiscoe wrote:
| 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
| mwidell wrote:
| Yes, the event where everything went to shit is called the
| Adpocalypse:
| https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YouTube_Adpocalypse
| bookofjoe wrote:
| 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.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| elintknower wrote:
| 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.
| ZachSaucier wrote:
| 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.
| lakomen wrote:
| 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.
| macintux wrote:
| > 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.
| realusername wrote:
| 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.
| noAnswer wrote:
| These agreements involve book keeping and money also.
| jcranmer wrote:
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 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.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| 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.
| realusername wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| 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.
| noAnswer wrote:
| The cleaning office didn't requested to prank called
| either!
| hiatus wrote:
| 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...
| kachurovskiy wrote:
| 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.
| kamel3d wrote:
| His content is not good and thats why he not earning that much
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| 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!
| dopidopHN wrote:
| 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.
| vasco wrote:
| 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.
| zamnos wrote:
| 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.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Easy 10k per month in the finance niche with 4k video quality and
| descent lighting.
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| paulette449 wrote:
| "I have made a total of ... ~148 EUR from Youtube ad revenue"
|
| From 173,000 views
| gennarro wrote:
| 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
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| 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.
| mattlondon wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| What's idiotic about this market is that you can't set your
| own price.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not show ads unless price is met
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| 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".
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| mattlondon wrote:
| 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".
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| How much did Google make from those views?
| jsnell wrote:
| 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.)
| Havoc wrote:
| 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)
| tester457 wrote:
| 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.
| Havoc wrote:
| 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.
| ryanthedev wrote:
| "And just to be clear...I know exactly what I'm doing"
| amelius wrote:
| 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 ...
| Link- wrote:
| 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.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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.
| Link- wrote:
| CPM (clicks per mille) varies greatly per geography and niche
| indeed.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| 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.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| 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).
| flandish wrote:
| 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.
| Link- wrote:
| It's always worth a try! You never know what people will find
| enjoyable to watch :)
| CM30 wrote:
| 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 PS1,500 for a couple of months worth of videos. Usually
| it's closer to PS250 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.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| 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.
| zamnos wrote:
| 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)
| oblio wrote:
| Black Swan aka long tail.
|
| Most people starve.
|
| It's not a valid career choice, it's a lottery.
| system2 wrote:
| I disagree. There is an algorithm and some people analyze
| the trends to crack it.
| oblio wrote:
| And those people are the 0.01% and many admit they got
| lucky, and at a certain point fame is close to self
| sustaining.
| bleah1000 wrote:
| 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.
| IdontKnowRust wrote:
| 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.
| bemmu wrote:
| 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?).
| Link- wrote:
| 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.
| andai wrote:
| 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?
| gennarro wrote:
| Presumably he has a high paying engineering role as well
| veidr wrote:
| not unless you don't get any other money
| paulpauper wrote:
| Many Americans are surprised to learn how much higher taxes
| often are outside of America
| ta1243 wrote:
| 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
| dragonwriter wrote:
| 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.]
| woobar wrote:
| Your links show that take home pay is higher in California
| ($72K vs PS55K/$69K), despite higher tax rate.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| 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.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| jklein11 wrote:
| 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.
| ta1243 wrote:
| You should be able to offset a fair few costs against that
| income.
| fredgrott wrote:
| 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.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > getting my ADHD under control using a modified nootropics
| approach.
|
| I'm interested in reading about this
| [deleted]
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| 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.
| mwidell wrote:
| I 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
| oblio wrote:
| How worried are you about copy cats ruining your business?
| mwidell wrote:
| 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.
| jeffwass wrote:
| 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.
| mwidell wrote:
| 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.
| jeffwass wrote:
| 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!
| waboremo wrote:
| 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.
| jeffwass wrote:
| 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.
| waboremo wrote:
| 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!
| themodelplumber wrote:
| 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.
| mwidell wrote:
| 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.
| petepete wrote:
| 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!
| mwidell wrote:
| Appreciate that :) In a previous life I was a programmer/CTO,
| so it's an old habit to visit HN.
| agumonkey wrote:
| 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 :)
| mwidell wrote:
| 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.
| dmuso wrote:
| 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?
| naavis wrote:
| I went to check out your channel just to realize I was already
| subscribed. Well played!
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| 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.
| okr wrote:
| 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.
| _davebennett wrote:
| 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.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| 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.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| 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.
| _davebennett wrote:
| 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.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXs_vkc8hpY
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajv46BSqcK4
| chongli wrote:
| _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.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt
| drBonkers wrote:
| 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!
| chongli wrote:
| 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!
| 123pie123 wrote:
| 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
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| 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.
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| psanford wrote:
| Even with Kenji's minimal setup he still said recently he
| spends on average 6-8 hours per video on editing[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOlI6QB0oI
| sebazzz wrote:
| > 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?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| 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!
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| 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.
| CM30 wrote:
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Can you educate me a bit here? If you do it in a single take,
| what do you _do_ in your hour of editing?
| inconceivable wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder how long it takes before someone makes an AI to do
| it.
| zamnos wrote:
| 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.
| b0bb0 wrote:
| Can you share more about these services please?
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| tough wrote:
| This exist, there's a software that will trim any non-
| talking parts of your video with AI as a smart video
| editor
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| 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.
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| 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.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Even better question:
|
| For people who multiplatform, how does youtube compare to other
| platforms, and how does monetization differ on those platforms?
| ImKevinArcher wrote:
| 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.
| jamalone wrote:
| 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!
| dsir wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://sociables.com/creators
| tzs wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Ch7t9KGcOPk
| AviationAtom wrote:
| 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.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| > 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?
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