
‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty - mcone
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-27/-success-on-youtube-still-means-a-life-of-poverty
======
seibelj
Most people wouldn't crack the poverty line with their earnings from painting,
acting, writing, music, sculpting, etc. YouTube is just another type of art.
Like any artistic endeavor, it is extremely helpful to be independently
wealthy or have a patron supporting you (parents / spouse / rich monarch). For
the rest of us, you do your craft when you can around your primary job, and
one day retire so you can do it full time.

~~~
psyc
Yes, god help you if you want to make a living from entertainment or culture.
Simply isn't where the big money flows are in this world. I went the games
route, like an idiot, and now I get to read through narrowed eyelids every day
about how selling TODO lists to businesses is like taking candy from a baby.

Games: More than 0.99 is a psychological barrier

B2B: Why not quadruple your prices?

~~~
st26
_Simply isn 't where the big money flows are_

Is it really about the money? Or is it about the abundant supply? There's
plenty of money in Hollywood- and also plenty of penniless actors, because
everybody dreams of being a movie star. Game companies get to abuse new
college grads because everybody dreams of working on their favorite games.

~~~
Feniks
I think its incredibly difficult to find success without a huge marketing
campaign. Launch against Zelda or GTA and you'll need a miracle.

------
subpixel
I subscribe to a woman in India who posts awesome Indian food recipes. She has
2+ million subscribers, and I can tell from the upgrades to her kitchen and
the traveling she's doing that Youtube has made a significant improvement to
her income.

Edit: what the hell, I'll show her some love. This recipe is killer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVzT1AQcGqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVzT1AQcGqk)

~~~
dangerboysteve
I've read that YT changes the $ on the views based on country. USA being the
highest amount paid for viewers from that country.

~~~
jdietrich
YouTube don't directly determine how much ad revenue a creator receives.
Advertisers bid to place their ads next to content based on keywords and
viewer demographics; the creators receive a 55% share of whatever the
advertiser paid.

American viewers are generally the most lucrative, in part because of the
share of YouTube Red revenues that creators are eligible to receive. A great
deal depends on other contextual and demographic factors. YouTube do
indirectly influence the revenue that creators receive by tagging certain
videos as "not suitable for most advertisers". This is a substantial bone of
contention in the YouTube creator community.

------
bkraz
I've had a YouTube channel for years, and talk with other creators on a
regular basis. This article is basically correct, but glosses over the point
of sponsorships, side deals, and most of all, Patreon. All YouTube creators
that I know personally make more money via Patreon than ad revenue. Just a
data point. In the old days, Patreon publicly displayed each Creator's pledge
amount, and it could be compared to socialblade.com for estimated ad revenue.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I expect at some point that Alphabet will require that 30% of your Patreon
pledges be sent to Google in exchange for them providing you a platform.

My reasoning is that Google has always gone after all revenue that was
facilitated by something they did or provided.

~~~
prklmn
No they haven’t. When someone clicks on a normal link (not an ad) they found
through google search that ultimately facilitates business, google gets
nothing.

~~~
ChuckMcM
If you are speaking strictly of cash from the person clicking you are correct.
If you consider the advertisers however, you would be incorrect.

When a person clicks on an "normal link", Google notes the search terms used,
the link that was clicked, the time it took you to click that link (which goes
to hesitation or not), the IP address from which you clicked that link (which
tells where you live), any google cookies (which if you're "logged into
chrome" or your web browser can be substantial) and if you land on a web page
with Google Analytics and AdSense advertisements they will know if your trip
through the search engine ended up paying one of their advertisers or not.

Rather than "nothing" that is actually quite a bit of useful information that
Google then resells in a variety of ways to their advertisers.

But you are absolutely correct that the person clicking the link doesn't pay
any money to google.

~~~
soared
So data from patreon is even more valuable - what content is a user willing to
spend money on?

John Doe pays $5/mo on Patreon for a youtube channel that shows how to remodel
a home? He is obivously in-market for real estate, remodeling, home decor,
tools, furniture, etc. That data could be worth more than $1 (a 20% cut) per
month.

------
CM30
And this is also often the case even if your money comes through Patreon or
similar services rather than YouTube ads themselves. On that site, about 1% of
the audience rakes in the cash, then a large portion of the rest basically
makes enough for beer money every now and then (if they're lucky).

Still, it's not surprising. Unfortunately, almost any artistic (or sporting)
field has the same issue as YouTube and co here, it's hugely profitable for
the small percentage that break out to become superstars, and then quickly
becomes very unprofitable for the millions with less
luck/timing/talent/whatever.

Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not. At the end of the day, the idea
of running a YouTube channel as your full time job is just so attractive to so
many people that competition is almost always going to be sky high, and with
the formula for success being pretty random in general, I suspect it'll always
be a field where supply heavily outstrips demand.

Like going to Hollywood to become a film star, or starting up a band in
college.

~~~
elihu
> Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not.

Perhaps if over time viewers and those running YouTube channels migrate to
other platforms that give a larger percentage of advertising share to the
people creating the content, then the number of people who can support
themselves by streaming will increase.

Also, as technology improves and hosting costs go down, the proportion of
advertising money that could go directly to the content creator can increase.

------
dr_ick
TwitchTV is the new shiny.

People are quitting their jobs to stream full time, and making a living off of
it.

This guy had a good teaching job, and now streams full time instead.

His peak seems to be around 4k-5k viewers.

[https://www.twitch.tv/chocotaco](https://www.twitch.tv/chocotaco)

[https://kotaku.com/guy-who-just-quit-his-job-to-stream-
battl...](https://kotaku.com/guy-who-just-quit-his-job-to-stream-
battlegrounds-expla-1820309727)

~~~
maxyme
I think the concept of (optional) subscriptions funding Twitch streamers is an
excellent replacement for ads however if you are considering making a living
off Twitch you should be aware of the politics. There is a culture of banning
streamers (sometimes indefinitely, but rarely upon first ban) for violations
in their extremely vauge TOS. Usually no reason is given and there are major
inconsistencies between some streamers' moderation and others.

------
imhelpingu
Basically "only 3% of youtubers can make a living doing it," so in other
words, if I randomly select 33 youtubers, and put them in a room together,
I'll be able to find one who makes a living from it. Furthermore, if I
randomly select 100, one of them will be a millionaire? I really hope this is
out of people who already making it their dayjob or something, otherwise this
article is pretty stupid.

~~~
sien
It would be interesting to compare to what percentage of 'actors' would make
that?

Or the percentage of musicians, writers or game programmers.

------
paulgb
> One in 3 British children age 6 to 17 told pollsters last year that they
> wanted to become a full-time YouTuber. That’s three times as many as those
> who wanted to become a doctor or a nurse.

Is this supposed to be alarming? When I was that age my peers might have said
NBA player or Hollywood actor but those are not any more realistic.

~~~
gizmo385
That's also a really big age range, maturity wise, to group together for such
a question. Like 2/3rds of 6 year olds might have said that, but 1/6 17 year
olds might have answered the question like that.

Just doesn't really end up being a useful metric the way that the article
presents it.

~~~
mratzloff
Seriously. I wonder how many in this sprawling 6 to 17 age bracket said they
wanted to be a dinosaur when they grew up.

------
petercooper
_“I’ve seen as low as 35¢ per 1,000 views and work with some YouTubers who can
earn $5 per 1,000,”_

Comparing that to the numbers in the DailyCandy YouTube advertising post from
yesterday, it seems video creators aren't getting a lot, advertisers aren't
getting a bargain, and so someone is making an absolute mint on the
difference..

~~~
detaro
Note though that the CPM billed to the advertiser is for when their ad isn't
skipped, whereas the views for the YouTuber include those that skipped (or
blocked) the ad, so the numbers do not compare directly. I'd be curious how
large the skip-rates are (Candy Japan mentions 70%, but I don't know how far
that generalizes)

------
city41
I don't doubt making a full time living on YouTube is very difficult. But a
few channels I subscribe to at least claim to do it, and are nowhere near the
top YouTubers. They all supplement their ad revenue with Patreon. But I would
also think doing Patreon is just a standard prerequisite to full time
YouTubing now.

I've always wondered if these channels are truly making a living off of just
Patreon+YouTube, or if there is more they aren't sharing.

------
SQL2219
My Son's youtube channel got 606,595 views in past 28 days. Estimated
revenue=$221.49

~~~
Eridrus
I think it's worth noting that revenue grows superlinearly in views. As
channels get more popular they get vetted manually, which puts them in a more
lucrative ad share. Also opens up sponsorship deals, etc

~~~
AstralStorm
Also depends on the specifics of the channel. Specialist ones can get
endorsement deals earlier and more reliably even at comparatively smaller (but
not small) audiences.

------
ebbv
The basic proposition of the article is true (not many people make much money
off AdSense from YouTube) but it’s really poorly written and full of
misinformation and omissions. One horribly incorrect point:

> Buying the same equipment used by Casey Neistat, a popular YouTuber, would
> cost $3,780.

Not even close. That would but you one decent professional 4K camera. Not
remotely “the same equipment he uses”. He and other top creators use tens of
thousands of dollars of equipment. But you don’t need all that to get started,
you can get started with your phone as many do.

The big thing this article barely touches on is this; there’s more and more
creators who are successful by basically treating AdSense revenue like a
Christmas bonus. They rely on Patreon, merchandise (shirts, etc) and
sponsorships. You can find sponsored videos on channels with less than 100k
subscribers.

The real story to me is if things keep going this way, what’s the incentive to
even enable AdSense on your channel? Just stay ad free and earn money
elsewhere like James Townsend & Sons channel.

------
DoreenMichele
When I was 17, I thought I was really beautiful and I wanted to be a model. By
which I mean I imagined it would be easy money and I never seriously pursued
it.

I imagine many people who want to be a YouTuber are kind of like that. It
sounds like easy money and they aren't ever going to work that hard at
learning their craft, etc. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that a lot
of them aren't doing particularly well.

On the other hand, I'm a writer and it is the same thing: A few big name stars
raking in the dough and a whole lot of losers struggling to get by. And I get
told all the time to go get a real job if I want a middle class income.

I don't know where people think these real jobs are. We are seeing the rise of
the gig economy. There are fewer full time jobs with benefits and more gigs.

I am medically handicapped. Doing gig work has overall worked better for me
than a corporate job. I hit $50k in debt while working a corporate job. I paid
a lot of that off while homeless and doing freelance writing and struggling to
eat.

I don't know what the answer is. Historically, middle class jobs did not just
magically happen. Society designed them that way. Most were designed under the
assumption that it was a man supporting a family whose wife would do the
cooking, etc, so he could focus on his job. Under that model, you didn't need
everyone to make a middle class income. You needed the primary breadwinner to
have a good job with benefits that supported his whole family. Society was
designed around a nuclear family model and jobs were designed with that in
mind.

The world has changed and the nuclear family is not the default expectation.
Plus regular jobs are getting scarce.

So I think we need to take it seriously that there are systemic problems here.
We are allowing a system to develop with a few big winners, a lot of losers
and little or no middle class.

At the same time, we need to accept that not all content is equally
worthwhile. However, if we want some form of UBI, I would be much more
comfortable with the idea that if you have some kind of YouTube channel or
similar, you should have some kind of basic income from it than with "free
money for everyone."

~~~
contingencies
_I think we need to take it seriously that there are systemic problems here.
We are allowing a system to develop with a few big winners, a lot of losers
and little or no middle class._

I believe Marxists see this as the inevitable endgame of capitalism... by
rewarding hoarded capital, there is no possible conclusion except the
centralization of wealth to enormous levels of disparity.

Even for those of us who travel across boundaries, in some parts of the world
I personally feel ridiculously wealthy (which objectively I am) whereas I
can't afford to raise my kids in the manner and environment in which I myself
was raised (which was not considered particularly wealthy at the time).

Politics seems to have failed us on most fronts, and the big problems are
really international and therefore beyond the scope and reign of political
animals, even naively assuming they cannot be bought out or sidestepped.
Perhaps then, fundamentally as individuals we can only analyze the net effects
of our actions and try to contribute to positive change instead of
perpetuating a self-serving culture.

More snarkily, "Oh, you can't make a good living producing content on the
internet with $1000s of dollars of e-toys?" ... this is perhaps something of a
first world problem, where others are still down the bottom of Maslow's
Hierarchy.

~~~
themaninthedark
At some point rather recently we made the decision to get rid of all the icky
blue collar jobs and replace them with service economy job. The people who
protested this change were branded as backwards hicks and their concerns were
hand waved away along with promises of retraining.

The gig economy is just more of the same but we get told that wages are rising
in other countries so we should be happy, as we subsidize some startup with
our cars or our houses. But hey, we are getting rid of the 9 to 5 right?

------
BadassFractal
Like other posters mentioned, it's crazy hard to make a good living doing what
you want artistically. E.g. take photography: the only way to make a living is
to shoot weddings, professional headshots, interior/architecture, or products
for brands, which isn't exactly thrilling (how many times can you shoot Nike
shoes or Ikea chairs before the excitement wears off?).

If you want to shoot the stuff that you want to shoot, maybe edgy dark
fashion, or quirky abstract art etc. you will be piss poor, especially
considering most invest way too much in gear rather than actually doing the
work.

It's not unlike say being in a metal band. 99% of them have to have real jobs,
even when they're "famous". It's just too much of a niche and making money
with it is not obvious.

At the same time, that seems only fair. Should you be paid more for doing
something you enjoy doing? E.g. playing music/videogames/making art all day vs
someone stacking boxes at a warehouse all day or an accountant looking at
taxes etc. Most people have mind-numbingly boring jobs that pay the bills
because nobody wants to do them.

Making a living with the arts without "selling out" is super hard, probably
not worth it to most.

------
garethsprice
Presumably not for the creators of YouTube, though. Content creation on closed
platforms = modern-day sharecropping.

------
vatotemking
From what I know, even without Patreon, YouTubers earn more money as
"influencers". Companies pay them to promote their products (brand
ambassadors) and influence viewers to buy it.

------
shkkmo
This article, its headline and its use of statistics is stupid and doesn't
deserve a place on HN.

It's a bunch of poorly analyzed and disjointed statistics.

They mention the hourly rate for actors, but don't talk about average yearly
earning per actor for acting. I doubt most actors work full time as an actor
and most aspiring actors certainly have other jobs.

They talk about the advertising revenue per year for the top 3% of channels,
but don't consider the amount of time put in by the creators per channel. What
percentage of that top 3% are full time compared to the bottom 97%?

The only actually interesting statistic in the whole article "In 2006 the top
3 percent accounted for 63 percent of all views. Ten years later, the top
YouTubers received 9 in every 10 views, he found." completely fails to account
for the factors that might be driving this change besides "it's getting harder
to make it on youtube". How many of that bottom 97% are active channels still
producing content? Does the top 3% of channels actually produce 90% of the
videos on youtube?

------
VBprogrammer
I think what this article misses is the fact that for some people it is both
fun to produce the videos (like a hobby) and that the income is nearly 100%
passive.

At least for my dad who has his own YouTube channel both of these things hold
true.

He has one or two videos which have gone viral (6 million views for the
biggest one). His best ad revenue income was around £700 in a month. Its not
give up the day job money but it is definitely better than nothing. I'm sure
many of us dream of having a passive income SaaS business generating that kind
of money.

------
tytytytytytytyt
> Benjamin spends an hour a day editing his videos and holds out hope his
> postings could become a career, even after he heard the odds. “I think if I
> keep uploading, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to make it a career,”
> he said. He recently hit 100 subscribers, up from 71 at the start of the
> year.

So can he not do 3rd grade Math, or is he literally insane?

------
partycoder
Some forms of revenue from videos in addition to the ad revenue are Patreon as
well as product placement / referrals.

Now, consider that even old videos continue to make revenue over time.

In my case, if I was going to use YouTube as a source of income I would see it
as passive income to supplement an existing income rather than a full time
occupation.

------
dredmorbius
Mass-publishing markets are _very_ strongly given to power-law distributions.
We hear that "anybody can be famous" (or successful, or ...), but _everybody_
cannot be famous. Attention and publicity are the ultimate zero-sum games: no
matter how large a given talent pool, there will only ever be ten top-ten
spots, 100 top-100 spots. All you're doing by enlarging the pool _is
amplifying the competition for those spots._

There's another side to the equation, though, which is _the scope of the
audience_. Prior to modern technological methods, and I'm including here
everything from relatively modern printing (say, 19th century onward), as well
as phonograph, cinema, radio, television, and sound amplification, the reach
of _any_ given work was _small_. A book might have a printing of several
thousand copies (Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ , ~5,000 initial print run,
and the cost at ￡5 was roughly a quarter of a working man's _annual_ wage). A
theatre might seat (or stand) a few thousand (the New Globe Theatre: 3,000),
and the largest cities had populations of about a quarter million (London in
1600, more or less). Transportation was slow and expensive (Smith again: 2
weeks, by stage coach or horse from Edinborough to London -- that's how he
travelled to university himself).

[https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-
of...](https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-of-
london.jsp)

As a consequence, _entertainment was strongly local_. There might be small
touring acts, local musicians, and in rare cases, artists with a noble or
royal patron (think Shakespeare himself, after a fashion, or Handel, Bach, or
a church appointment (Bach, Telemann, and others). Art as a freestanding
business was more-or-less a 19th century creation -- look especially at the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Impressionists, there are several excellent
documentaries and biographies of each.

Technology increased the reach (and income) of _top performing_ creators and
stars, but _decreased_ the viability of those further down the rankings. Where
it used to be possible to eke out a livelihood as a local or touring
performer, this became far more difficult. (There's something of a reverse
shift in that the overall entertainment budget has increased sufficiently that
the field has expanded, but the overall balance holds true.)

By way of quantification, I've been looking at the question of how many actors
there are, and how many of those are considered "A-list". For the first:

How Many Actors are in L.A.?

[https://hollywoodsapien.com/2012/07/05/how-many-actors-
are-i...](https://hollywoodsapien.com/2012/07/05/how-many-actors-are-in-l-a/)

Based on SAG and AFTRA membership and some adjustments, anthropologist Scott
Frank comes up with the figure 108,640, of whom 21,728 are working actors. Los
Angeles itself provides about 80% of all acting work, and USBLS data claim
1.77% of Angelenos work in entertainment, more than any other U.S. city.

How many of those are considered "A-List" actors? The definitions are ...
fluid ... but generally about ten, no more than twenty. The Ulmer scale is a
100-point model estimating a star's value to a film. The 2009 top ten list, in
order, were: Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, George Clooney,
Will Ferrel, Reese Witherspoon, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell
Crowe.

[https://www.webcitation.org/5mnRWTArh?url=http://www.ulmersc...](https://www.webcitation.org/5mnRWTArh?url=http://www.ulmerscale.com/Mainarticle.html)

Consider that given power law relationships, the _earnings_ of a given star
are going to be 1/n of the first-ranked, income falls off _tremendously_
quickly. VSauce has a surprisingly good video on the topic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE)

Upshot: We're not all going to fame our way to wealth and riches. Or even
subsistence survival. It's _not_ a creators world.

~~~
jdietrich
Patreon has completely upended these economics. You can make a comfortable
middle-class income based on a small but extremely loyal fanbase. If you're
dependent on ad revenue, you need millions of subscribers, because you're only
earning a fraction of a cent for each viewer. If you're supported through
Patreon, you only need a couple of thousand people to chip in a couple of
bucks a month.

It's an interesting middle ground between patronage and busking that doesn't
have any clear precedent.

~~~
PeterisP
You still need a quite sizeable fanbase - small is not the right word for a
couple thousand loyal fans who regularly spend money on you; even in the pre-
globalized world where the distribution was more fair (less global stars
sucking up attention), the vast majority of artists, bands, sports clubs,
performers, etc didn't have as many serious fans. No matter what happens,
there's only so much attention available, and it's a zero-sum game, most
content creators won't be able to make it especially if the number of creators
grows and dilutes that attention / eagerness of being a fan.

~~~
jdietrich
Patreon take a 5% cut of donations. A band with an exceptionally good record
deal might get to keep 15% of CD sales. The numbers are fairly similar in most
mass media - under historical distribution models, middlemen kept the lion's
share of revenues.

Even assuming that competition for entertainment spending is entirely zero-
sum, then the disintermediation of the arts is destroying a lot of jobs for
middlemen but is increasing the amount of revenue that goes to artists. Even
if the pie is static or shrinking, artists are getting a bigger cut.

I'm not saying that everything is sunshine and roses, I'm not saying that
everyone can become a creative professional, but I think that the situation is
definitely improving. Barriers to entry are lower and there's a much larger
middle-class of artists who aren't internationally famous but are making a
good living.

------
H4CK3RM4N
It looks like this is disregarding sponsorships tho. My mental model is ~$300
per video for a reasonable sized channel, which(with weekly videos) could well
double their income estimates.

~~~
voltagex_
Listen to some of the larger tech creators talking about taking sponsorships -
you risk driving away your audience if they're too "in your face" or you pick
the wrong brands.

------
yhavr
Move to a cheap country and problem is solved.

------
monsterwimp
I can tell you that these figures are extremely low and not accurate. Channels
that are nowhere near the top 3% making 50k/m easily.

------
leggomylibro
>Do your children dream of YouTube stardom? Do them a favor: Crush that
ambition now.

Ah, Bloomberg - always full of good parenting advice.

~~~
zeppelin101
It's no worse in discouraging your kids from pursuing YouTube stardom than it
is to discourage them from trying to become a famous rapper. The odds are
against them. In the end, it's probably not worth it.

~~~
dagw
If you show just a modicum of creativity as a parent you can use your child's
passion for rap or YouTube stardom to teach them lots of ancillary skills that
could lead to a useful career.

Never crush a child's passion no matter how 'stupid' it might seem.

------
CyberDildonics
I'm not sure something that has only been around for 10 years can mean a
'Life' of poverty.

~~~
kazinator
"Life" doesn't refer to just the span from birth to death; it also refers to
"day to day existence".

