
YouTube's top 1,000 channels average $23K each month in ad revenue - vindicated
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/infographic-youtubes-top-1-000-channels-reveal-emerging-power-of-social-video.php
======
nostromo
The channels follow a power law. I got the number of views from here
(<http://socialblade.com/youtube/top/5000>) and plotted them:
<http://i.imgur.com/X6nEL.png>

If the $23k average for the top 1k is correct, then only the top 250 or so
actually make $23k a month or more. At that line are some pretty big channels,
like Husky Starcraft and big bands like Kesha and Muse. In which case, this
doesn't seem like a lot of money.

~~~
rorrr
I charted the LOG(video views) here:

<http://i.imgur.com/WubeX.png>

What's really interesting is that LOG(LOG(video views)) looks pretty much the
same:

<http://i.imgur.com/NnSrA.png>

So I'm not sure what law the distribution follows, but the top players get a
TON more money than the rest. The top 211 players make more than the rest
4789.

EDIT:

It also means that the top player _universalmusicgroup_ makes $485,707/month,
and the 1000th player _playboy_ makes only $7,880/month (assuming payouts are
proportional to the views, which isn't perfectly correct)

Here's the table:

    
    
          universalmusicgroup    $485,707
          machinima              $261,804
          JustinBieberVEVO       $206,638
          RihannaVEVO            $198,898
          expertvillage          $182,052
          LadyGagaVEVO           $160,885
          AtlanticVideos         $147,373
          EminemVEVO             $145,593
          RayWilliamJohnson      $141,569
          IGNentertainment       $139,634
          failblog               $134,727
          UltraRecords           $134,724
          muyap                  $126,330
          smosh                  $124,425
          shakiraVEVO            $122,633
          hollywoodrecords       $121,395
          FueledByRamen          $113,681
          beyonceVEVO            $109,576
          barelypolitical        $104,784
          collegehumor           $103,772

------
InclinedPlane
I'm glad to see more attention paid to this. The idea of the "youtube
celebrity" has been around a while, but to my mind that's less interesting
than the idea of people making a living off of youtube. And the fascinating
thing is just how many people are now gainfully employed making youtube
content. This is a phenomenon that has crept up rather rapidly and hasn't
received very much attention in traditional media channels or even in business
channels. I find it odd that traditional television networks and movie studios
have basically been trying their hardest to pretend that youtube doesn't
exist, or that it is merely a repository of funny cat videos.

There's a real revolution in video entertainment going on right now. And
youtube is still growing at a phenomenal rate. The recent example of the
explosive popularity of the Gangnam Style music video is a perfect case in
point. It's not just "viral", it's a cultural phenomenon, and it's taking
place on youtube whereas in the past you'd expect people to be exposed to
popular music videos through television.

If I were in the traditional TV business I would be all over this. I'd be
snapping up talent off youtube and I'd be setting up deals and producing
content for the internet, etc. But it looks like this is still a case of two
separate worlds. I suspect the "oh shit" moment will come when a more
traditional format TV show or movie published on youtube becomes wildly
successful, and it's really only a matter of time until that happens.

------
andrewvc
In a hits based industry the 'average' isn't very interesting. What's the
variance across those top 1000 channels?

I'm really curious to see some more data here, I have a feeling that the
disparity is severe.

~~~
confluence
Long tail risks makes avg/var/standard distribution stuff useless. Best
measure here would be the median income (50th percentile - or the 50th person
out of 100).

Same thing with wealth distribution and taxes - averages are pointless since 1
rich guy + 99 poor guys will have an average of ~1/100 the rich guy (which is
still a lot of money) - even though the poor guys have $0 in assets (usually
negative equity because of debt).

The median of that distribution would be $0 - hence providing a better
representation of actual probabilistic income/taxes.

------
David
What is the distribution like among the top 1000 channels? Presumably the top
of the top 1000 channels far outproduce the bottom, just like the top 1000 far
outproduce the rest of youtube. Given such a distribution, what are the top
few channels earning? 100,000 a month? 1,000,000 a month? Even more?

Other interesting questions: How much of that is profit? Relatedly, does it
cost a prohibitive amount to have a highly successful youtube channel? Does
amount spent on production each month correlate with amount earned, or do
consumers care much more about the content than the production quality?

What is the median income of the top 1000 channels? What's the overall median
income of active youtube partners? What's the median income of channels
produced (primarily) by a single person?

Some of these questions should be answerable by looking at available stats,
like views for the top couple of channels versus the lower end of the top
1000. (Are the actual channels in the top 1000, preferable ranked, available
somewhere?) I'll see if I can answer any more of them in the morning...

~~~
citricsquid
There are literal kids (teenagers) making 6 figures a month from their Youtube
channels with absolute 0 production costs. The best example would be a guy
called Pewdiepie[1], he makes gaming videos and does something like 5 million
views per day (which is probably around $10k revenue assuming he has a good
deal...). He isn't alone, there's quite a few others approaching his level of
success.

Something a lot of people seem to forget too is for every video they put out
their old videos still get views. It's like investments, the money they make
compounds over time because for every new video that's more and more views. So
as their viewership grows, so does their previous video views and so do their
potential views for the future. Even if someone "only" does 10,000,000 views
from _new_ videos in a month they can still be doing substantial revenue from
old videos. This is how some of the bigger channels work, they produce
incredibly popular videos every couple of months and fill the time with
smaller videos.

A good example of that would be Captain Sparklez [2], a guy that makes video
game music and commentaries, his music videos can do anywhere from 10 million
to 70 million views and he then produces game play commentaries between his
bigger hits.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/pewdiepie> [2]
[http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainSparklez/videos?sort=p...](http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainSparklez/videos?sort=p&flow=grid&view=0)

~~~
napoleoncomplex
There is also the fact that this is only ad revenue. I would wager that people
with good marketing skills make much more from side gigs than from direct ad
revenue.

~~~
JonLim
From what I've noticed on many of the top YouTube channels I subscribe to,
many have merch to sell and other side projects that earn them a little more
money.

Not to mention that several producers have multiple channels, where they use
the success of a single channel to make their subsequent channels just as
successful.

------
ntoshev
Trying to make sense of a power law distribution using average of the head is
an interesting crutch, but a fairly crude one.

What are other ways to intuitively understand power law distributions? Where
are the raw data for this one?

------
kumarm
11.3 Billion Views (by top 1000 channels) 23 Million Ad revenue (by top 1000
channels)

2$ ECPM.

------
propercoil
Nice headline but in HN you need to talk in median terms - people here aren't
that stupid

------
majani
That's odd. I recall several channel owners claiming million dollar revenues,
eg. Jason Njorku from irokotv claimed 1m in annual revenue on this channel for
Nigerian movies:

<http://www.youtube.com/user/NollywoodLove>

The TechCrunch article with the claim:

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/14/you-think-hollywood-is-
roug...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/14/you-think-hollywood-is-rough-
welcome-to-the-chaos-excitement-and-danger-of-nollywood)

RWJ claims here that he earns over a million dollars a year purely on Adsense:

[http://willvideoforfood.com/2011/04/01/ray-william-
johnson-i...](http://willvideoforfood.com/2011/04/01/ray-william-johnson-is-
youtubes-first-millionaire-creator/)

So who's fooling who?

~~~
rplnt
The article talks about monthly revenue. And even if the average was in the
middle (ignoring the "power law" mentioned above) then you would have a lot of
channels making over $83k which equals over 1m annually.

------
willholloway
What strikes me is how little money is being made here. $2 CPM rates will not
support the production quality we all expect in our entertainment. The dream
of the internet supporting a large creative class self publishing is still far
off.

------
anigbrowl
What matters is the median, not the average. Advertising analysts have their
own special circle in marketing hell.

------
sdoering
Well, what I do not understand is the 2$ eCPM, that is thrown in in the
comments.

If the average 23k$ hold true for the Top 1000 and if the 2$ eCPM holds true,
why did the 5.000th channel make an estimated 57,371.70$? (28685850 AdViews *
2$ eCPM / 1000)

What am I getting wrong here?

Edit: The numbers are totals... OK, I get it. ;-)

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KnowledgeSponge
Unfortunately, this invites people to turn the signal to noise ratio to crap.

Case in point: [http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/reply-girls-
yogscast-m...](http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/reply-girls-yogscast-
meganspeaks/)

------
barking
I recently got an email from youtube suggesting that I monetize my channel as
they'd noticed that one of my videos was becoming quite popular. It's had
about 500 (five hundred) views after 4 years! How much would I make?

~~~
brackin
Some YouTube partners I know get paid per 500 views so if you got another 500
you'd make a few dollars.

~~~
barking
I'm amazed that such low numbers could be worth anything more than a few cent

------
supersaiyan
that's a massive range; just in top 1000 sites make millions!

