I am not really a conman but I have always had a sneaky admiration for those who are and get away with it. Thus my recent thread on overcharging on eBay. Y’see, I’m nice, but there are so many marks out there that the need to fleece them crosses my mind almost obsessively. And I’m susceptible to clickbait because I’m bored. I was viewing a YouTube show of 19th century photos pulled off Pinterest of “gay couples” who were assumed to be gay because they were two guys with their arms around each other. Lemme see: twins, father and son, just look like brothers, just look like friends, and a guy who may be Oscar Wilde with a guy whose pants are too tight. One possible gay couple out of ten, but it got views, including mine. How does that get turned into money? I didn’t pay for it.
Then there’s getting views for quack causes and cures for autism. That one is relatively benign since kids, like dogs and adults, shouldn’t take that stuff (I’ve seen the autopsy photos) and I don’t want to give parents false hope so cure ideas are out, but there should be some less awful condition to cash in on. Preferably one that goes away on its own, but is annoying enough that suckers would seek help on YouTube. And how does one make a slide show of stock photos and scary narration?
I don’t quite understand the OP, but yes, to answer the question in your thread title: advertisements. But it takes a lot of followers before you can start making cash. My cousin started a channel years ago, innocuously enough, of her kids hanging out. Now they have 6 million subscribers and are full-time YouTubers.
Just like with Facebook, they make money because advertisers see how many views they’ll get, and she’s paid accordingly.
You can also sell products. I was thinking of replacing a cracked screen on a tablet and saw Youtube videos on how to do this–which linked to the kits needed for screen repair.
There are plenty of channels making money on YouTube for (what appears to be) a fairly small investment of effort - I’m thinking of clickbait channels like TallTanic and BeAmazed - they churn out relatively content-free videos along the lines of “10 ways you’ve been eating fruit wrong” and “15 most painful accidents ever” which are composed of some guy reading a dubious list of factoids, accompanied by a slideshow of (often irrelevant) stock photos with standard transitions and titles.
They’re producing several of these per day; there’s no live footage or fact-checking of the content - the videos get millions of views each.
That’s not to say that it’s easy to reproduce their results - there are also a great many very unsuccessful wannabe clickbait channels too.
DanTDM is currently the most popular and biggest money earner on you tube … and hes just a friendly funny dork who plays pc and videogames …and the odd thing? hes about average in his gaming skills
hes so popular that when he does a live stream the “tips” go to charity at about 15-20 k in cash a month
unofficially I’m told last year him and his fans made up 5% of make-a wish’s yearly budget though donations
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if someone goes to the trouble of making a video that people want to watch, they should get paid for it. If I think it’s lame or stupid, I won’t want to look at any more of their videos; If I think it is really good, I might even subscribe. There are millions of videos out there so I can only watch a tiny fraction of them.
My understanding is that if you weren’t already at least somewhat successful at Youtube with your earlier videos, and at least earning a little bit of money, your first big viral hit will net you little-to-nothing. Youtube’s current polices don’t allow creators to monetize any videos until they hit some minimum threshold of total watch time. If you hadn’t yet hit that threshold when you happen to get extremely lucky with a viral video, that viral hit would of course push you over the top, but it will take significant time to get yourself through all the monetization hoops and only then, after you’re approved by TPTB at Youtube, will future views mean actual money coming your way. 99% of viral hits are yesterday’s news and no longer racking up the views after all that. NOW, you’re finally set to make money off your next big viral hit. Can you do it again?
Which means that what you really want isn’t a clever video; it’s a clever channel. Something where you can keep putting out new content that’s like the content people have already seen and liked, but which is different enough to keep them coming back.
Yeah, it used to be that you needed 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time across 12 months. I believe they have recently changed this so you also(or maybe instead?) have to have a minimum of 10,000 views across your videos, to be included - and yes, if that happens on your first lucky upload, the chances are the views on that video will have peaked before you’ve got the monetization all set up and earning.
The posts above are essentially correct; YouTubers are paid a percentage of the ad revenues depending on the number of “likes” a video gets and how many subscribers their channel has, assuming they have one. That is why at the end of a video you are exhorted to, “click that Like button down here and please subscribe!”
Starting about a year ago there was a lot of hollering from YouTube content providers about the new metrics for how much ad revenue they were getting. Needless to say it was less than before. A good many of them switched to Patreon, which I’m sure skims some off of the top but certainly offers a better income stream than the mills per view that YouTube gives them. Right now, I am paying through Patreon three accounts. One I am paying $2 per episode but since he is putting up an episode every couple months, the cost is minimal. The other two have set up their donations differently, so much per month with perqs being offered for different levels. On both I am at mid-range, $5 per month. One one is putting up at least an episode per week with bonus episodes about every two weeks. The other is posting erotic art rather than videos and puts up something almost every day.
not necessarily. it helps, though, if you have expertise or some other skill or talent that you could turn into a video series. e.g. This guy is a mechanical engineer who started his YouTube channel as a side/hobby gig, and it took a few years for it to grow into something he could rely on full time. if you’ve got something interesting to say, or demonstrate, you can find an audience. But it takes effort and time.
the only “easy” way to make money on YouTube is to be a 15-23 year old white guy who acts like a total shitlord pain in the ass to everyone. That’ll get you an audience of millions of kids.