Prominent British youtuber Keith Brown did a recent ‘how much money do I make’ vid. and although he included all sales and commercial work, he’s only making minimum wage.
https://youtu.be/1BdB-c4Cv40
And snce we’re venting, here my pet YouTube hate; all the whingeing moaners who think channels should exist for them, and them alone, because the world revolves around them
So, fun thread, let’s see if I can offer some insight...
The Intro > jingle > content is a strategy shown to be effective in grabbing and keeping attention; this is important because most viewers have an attention span of less than ten seconds before they click away to the thumbnail of the girl in a bikini. Fact of life #1: the whingers who complain about this make up an insignificant percentage of viewers. And they thought they were sooooo special...
WRT the call to subscribe - repetition works. The channels will know via analytics what the subscribed/not subscribed viewership is, and anyone with even a passing acquaintance with marketing will know the power of a ‘call to action’ e.g. share/like/subscribe. Fact of life #2; subscribers are becoming a. harder to come by and b. arguably less relevant, since the changes to the algorithm that pushes content into your feed.
YouTube ads vs Sponsor reads; if a channel ‘monetises’ through ads that are shown, they receive a tiny percentage of the revenue generated - but only if the ad plays fully; skip that ad and the channel receives nothing. Channels have no control over the ads shown, occasionally they’re relevant, frequently not. As an aside, US ad views pay a *lot* more than UK ones, hence the ‘Americanisation’ of a lot of videos... Sponsor reads OTOH are arrangements that the individual or channel has made with a company, and are usually as part of the agreement, the channel owner/operator/ proprietor reading a prepared/agreed script to their audience for a fee. On ‘maker’ channels (seriously, what else would you call them??) this can lead to some odd situations e.g. a lot of blokes with beards pushing shaving products. Fact of life #3; it costs a lot of money to run a YouTube channel, especially so if you make stuff, rather than, say, just sitting in front of a camera for an hour on a Saturday morning chatting about toys. My first year on YouTube cost me £16K and it hasn’t got any cheaper since...
And so to Patreon. Patreon is big in the ‘maker’ space (seriously, what else would you.. oh never mind) less so in other areas. It’s a way for individuals to support the channels and creators whose work they enjoy - a bit like a magazine subscription (if you remember magazines) but for video. In return most creators will offer extra goodies for their Patreon supporters - exclusive content, behind the scenes videos, giveaways, plans etc.. etc.. Patreon BTW is American, and refuses to acknowledge any currencies other than $ and € so if you happen to work in £ you can kiss goodbye to ~20% of funds donated through fees and exchange rates. Patreon engagement levels are extremely low for makers (literally a handful with more than 1% of their subscriber base actively engaged) and are typically around the ~0.5% mark, generating $2 or less per Patreon supporter. Fact of life #4; some folks are extremely generous with their support, both financially and in offering advice, but some seem to expect the moon on a stick just because they’ve pledged to throw $1 in the pot.
Affiliate income is a kind of ‘introduction / referral fee’ where you can receive a small fee if someone makes a purchase through a link you provide. Amazon is the big dog here, but obviously it’s not always the most appropriate place for folks to buy from, and Amazon operates (as many others do) as separate companies in the UK, US, France, Germany, Netherlands etc.. etc.. so if you have an international audience and want to generate affiliate income you need an affiliate account with each different company (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr etc...) and set up unique links for each individual product. Depending on where you are and where your audience is, this can rapidly become a lot of effort for very little return. Fact of life #5; each Amazon company only pays affiliate income in local currency, to a national bank account ie Amazon.com will only pay out to a US bank in $US. So if you’re not in the US you get paid in $US Gift Cards - which are only redeemable at Amazon.com...
So there we are, I hope you’ve enjoyed this ‘mini-rant in reply’, I hope you found it useful. Don’t forget that the best way not to miss one of my mini-rants is to subscribe, and if you do subscribe don’t forget to hit that bell, then you’ll be notified whenever I rant something new. I’d like to take a minute just to thank all of my Patreon supporters, without whom I’d be ranting in the dark as their continued support really helps to keep the lights on here, but that it for this rant, thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time.
Take care...
