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YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

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Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#241

Post by azinman2 »

sombremesa wrote: post #220
azinman2 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what I don't understand is how they can afford these teams off YouTube wages. My only guess is they've figured out how to make non-platform money off their brand (like musicians playing concerts), but for many of them it's quite non-obvious. You can only sell so many t-shirts...

"Youtube wages" can be ~$5k/1MM views just from Youtube ads, without even getting into monetization via third party sponsorships or merchandise.

According to the article, few hit that.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#242

Post by dusted »

watwut wrote: post #126
dusted wrote: post #2

It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in your spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ? Yeah, I love playing and making games, nobody wants to play them, and nobody wants to watch me do it, because I'm not good enough at it. That's why I have a day job. There's also a limited need for entertainers/creatives (they are needed, but not comparatively very many).. One person can entertain million…

> It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in your spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ? Realistically, people run channels this is about would not do it in spare-time. Making gameplay video that people actually want to watch is not nearly same as playing game for fun. You have to be entertaining for others. It is same difference as between being comedian for money versus being funny with f…

There's comparatively little need for games to be played, even if NOBODY IN THE WORLD played games for a living, the games would still be played, in the exact way that coal wouldn't be mined.

It's a bit the same with other creative work, like music and art, there is a demand for it, but the amount of commercial demand is next to nothing compared to the amound of creative work being done regardless of pay.

The number of guitars being played would be more or less the same even if nobody made money playing them.

The number of paintings being painted would be more or less the same even if nobody ever sold one.

There is some quality to be gained from going professional and devoting your entire time to do something, and part of that is probably a contributing factor why people can earn a living doing it.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#243

Post by shynrou »

young_unixer wrote: post #196
wutbrodo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think YouTubers generally do refer to themselves as content creators, as opposed to Creators (a term promoted by YouTube but embraced by the community).

At least it's less cringeworthy than "influencer".

I would differenciate between the two. A content creator makes first and foremost content and advertises second to fund that endevour. While influencers have often no clear line or almost exclusively make ads.

Imho: Influencer are cringeworthy, they deserve the title.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#245

Post by neuesausfarg2 »

criddell wrote: post #118
unix_fan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to believe the magical internet economy will make you rich. There's a big content creator in my country who's barely earning 5000 dollars from it.

> There's a big content creator in my country who's barely earning 5000 dollars from it. I'm surprised that so many people are happy to describe themselves as content creators . It's an admission that what you create is generic content for some platform to wrap in ads. It's a type of self-commoditization.

It was a sad day when I saw iPlayer describe a video as 'content'.

You'd expect the creator to have more respect for their output.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#246

Post by FalconSensei »

VRay wrote: post #240
FalconSensei wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could rent a VPS for $20/month and serve thousands of people your videos That's considering: - Transcoding for all types of devices - Having apps that work on all those devices - Being one app that people already use/already have an account to it to reduce friction - Being in an environment where people already are, and where they can discover your content without you telling them about it Sounds kind of ok-ish…

Yeah, you give up a lot of those bonuses (but not all of them, considering the state of web video..) On the plus side, though, if your videos start pulling in ad money, you keep all of it. And you don't have to worry about getting locked out of your Google account because of some overzealous bot misinterpreting a tiny scrap of background music or conversation about chess piece colors

Of course! I absolutely agree with you on those points.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#247

Post by chillacy »

michaelt wrote: post #47
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an even more limited need for fraud-promoting bankers, crooked and corrupt politicians, people who spend their entire lives gambling on the markets, and organised criminals, but somehow we never seem to lack for all of those. This isn't some kind of rational market forces issue. Artists and intellectuals have real power. But starving them of cash, branding them "entertainers", and converting their jobs into a…

> But starving them of cash, branding them "entertainers", and converting their jobs into a gig economy scramble guarantees they'll be too distracted to realise it. I'm no fan of the 'gig economy' - but haven't most musicians and writers and singers and sportspeople been getting a shitty deal since time immemorial? Just in the 1980s that meant putting years of unpaid practice into your craft then not being able to ge…

I don’t know if there’s data to back this, but I suspect that musicians might have gotten a better deal before recording technology, since music performances would have to be hyper local, so there would be multiple markets for music instead of the one (almost global) market that exists today.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#248

Post by chillacy »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #80
woutr_be wrote: post #43

Am I wrong to think about “creators” as just businesses? If you’re not making enough money through your business, then maybe you need to reconsider your business plan. You know what you get on Youtube, you don’t have a contract saying how much you’ll be making from creating content for them. Maybe I lack empathy here, but it seems most people saw this as an easy money maker, but were wrong.

The problem is you are thinking about making money as the goal and content creation as the method. Most of these people are thinking about content creation as the goal and making money and an unfortunate side requirement.

Making it big on YouTube requires “selling out” to some extent. For example, clickbait titles and extreme video thumbnails. I’ve seen a handful of channels that had good content in the real estate space go down this route recently and I’m sad about the loss of high quality content, but their views (and thus ad revenue) has never been higher.

Re: YouTube and Patreon Still Aren’t Paying the Rent for Most Creatives

#249

Post by watwut »

dusted wrote: post #242
watwut wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost as if.. Doing stuff that you'd otherwise do in your spare-time, is not a real job for 99% of people ? Realistically, people run channels this is about would not do it in spare-time. Making gameplay video that people actually want to watch is not nearly same as playing game for fun. You have to be entertaining for others. It is same difference as between being comedian for money versus being funny with f…

There's comparatively little need for games to be played, even if NOBODY IN THE WORLD played games for a living, the games would still be played, in the exact way that coal wouldn't be mined. It's a bit the same with other creative work, like music and art, there is a demand for it, but the amount of commercial demand is next to nothing compared to the amound of creative work being done regardless of pay. The number…

> The number of guitars being played would be more or less the same even if nobody made money playing them.

This is not true. The number of people who play music or instruments depends on economy of music. When you could live from it, people did it more often and longer.

> The number of paintings being painted would be more or less the same even if nobody ever sold one.

This is 100% not true.

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