

People On YouTube Make A Lot Of Money  - ryanjmo
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/meet-the-youtube-stars-making-100000-plus-per-year-535349.html?tickers=goog,

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ryanjmo
So, we work with these guys and I can tell you that right now this is
definitely low in terms of an estimate of the money they are making.

In addition to what they make from ads, a lot of YouTubers will get paid to
make videos that involve a product, etc. For some (most?) that is actually a
larger source of income than the AdSense.

Also there are many many more than 10 YouTubers who are doing very well from
their channel.

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AmitinLA
I agree from what I have heard from people working with similar YT stars. What
is surprising is the incredible amount of cross promotion done between
seemingly unaffiliated stars in an effort to gain subscribers/viewers. From
the rough description I heard about, it seemed somewhat scammy/gross to me but
I don't know enough to make a definitive judgment. Do you have any thoughts or
information about that?

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char
YouTubers definitely cross promote each other, but it's not nearly as
disgusting as you would think. In many ways, growing a new YouTube channel is
very similar to growing a startup (these people are essentially startups
themselves). At this point in the game, it's almost necessary to know someone
more popular than you in order for your channel to get noticed.

I've worked with many YouTubers (I'm Ryan's co-founder), and can honestly say
that they are nice people who appreciate each other's talents and want to help
others like them succeed. They have a very strong sense of community, and they
all know (or at least know OF) each other. Of course there are a few who do
nasty things to try to get ahead, but those are by far the minority, and
generally don't do well in the long run.

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brianmwang
Watching one episode of The Annoying Orange has taught me that predicting what
will be popular content is incredibly difficult.

In other words, there's no accounting for taste.

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EasyCompany
Lol...just watched one, its was funny. I think its more like we don't know
what will make us laugh sometimes. I don't consider this bad taste, look at
Napolean Dynamite, i really hated it but i have friends that loved it and it
is now one of those cult movies. I would say that there is no accounting for
the extremes of taste.

That being said i will not be tuning in to the annoying little orange again.

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mkramlich
the amount of "niche" hilarious/awesome/interesting video on YT and other
video sites is a huge factor (along with blogs and HN/Reddit-like sites) why I
don't watch traditional TV anymore. It tends to be better, I'm not forced to
watch ads, it tends to be edgier/uncensored, it's more personal and
interactive, and it's also more asynchronous and on-demand, easier to time-
shift, place-shift and device-shift to suit the moment.

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niico
Just be cute (preferably hot), either very smart and/or funny or... very dumb
yet funny. But in order of being dumb you must qualify for the first criteria.
Yup. CASH!

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wallflower
Red vs. Blue made $250k through Blip.tv

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mkramlich
lesson: be very very cute and/or funny and/or creative -- ideally all three;
now record yourself and post to YT; profit!

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reedlaw
How is that what seems to me to be the worst content is constantly touted as
"featured" content? Is this a reflection of what people are actually
interested in or is there something else going on behind the scenes?

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dangero
This doesn't seem like a lot of money to me. If there's only 10 people on one
of the top 10 biggest websites in the world who are breaking 100K for creating
content, which is the site's value, then the only ones making out are the
owners of the site (google).

Conversely, take the app store as a content platform. There's hundreds of
iphone developers who are breaking 100K. Granted, the skills required are
different, but ROI on the iphone platform seems much better.

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TotlolRon
People On YouTube Make Great Videos.

The article just observes the (almost expected) result.

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_delirium
I'm not sure there's a lot of correlation between the two. It seems to have
more to do with networks dynamics and timing than the quality of the video. Of
course, those matter in any market, but YouTube seems to be _particularly_
fickle--- hits are determined by whether you're one day early or late to a
particular trend, by whether the first 5 people to see a submission to reddit
voted it up or down, etc.

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norswap
I think it is telling that those are the most popular youtube channels. Hint :
if you like watching people acting retarded or treating you as if you were
retarded, then you probably are.

