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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

#111

Post by abraxas »

npteljes wrote: post #99
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every market where a single provider is able to satisfy unlimited and global demand will be a winner takes all situation. One youtuber can entertain millions of people while one dentist can only work on a few people per day. You may be the 100,000th best dentist but that doesn’t matter because everyone above you is already booked out.

Already booked out, and also locality matters a lot. On the internet, a live stream only takes <1s to reach me, while I have to find a dentist in my own area.

That’s just one dimension of it. If I’m a mega live streamer I can be servicing millions of viewers all at once. As a dentist I’m most likely to be serving 1.

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

#112

Post by mc32 »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

Ryan’s toy reviews I think is the prototypical example of finding a niche and exploiting it.

It doesn’t require elaborate demos or expensive equipment or deep domain knowledge.

It’s youthful exuberance, some theatrics and the right personality.

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

#113

Post by root_axis »

axlee wrote: post #37
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

I can see your argument. On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. That sounds unacceptable to me: I am pretty sure the company employing them can afford them a living wage, and it looks a lot like exploitation.

I think this is a fair criticism of Buzzfeed, after all, they have an employee/employer relationship with said creators; this is not true of independent creators.

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

#114

Post by wincy »

mc32 wrote: post #112
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

Ryan’s toy reviews I think is the prototypical example of finding a niche and exploiting it. It doesn’t require elaborate demos or expensive equipment or deep domain knowledge. It’s youthful exuberance, some theatrics and the right personality.

If deep domain knowledge paid off on Youtube people like Ben Eater would be a millionaire from Youtube at this point[0], his videos are so cool and great at explaining computing. Or Clickspring, the guy who made the Antikythera Mechanism [1]. But honestly even for me being a software engineer and someone who considers himself interested in this sort of stuff, I look at these pages sometimes out of wonder but I often end up watching comedy videos and stuff like that on Youtube. The algorithm recommends it, and I watch.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...

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

#116

Post by TuringNYC »

axlee wrote: post #37
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

I can see your argument. On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. That sounds unacceptable to me: I am pretty sure the company employing them can afford them a living wage, and it looks a lot like exploitation.

That sounds like a criticism of Buzzfeed. Why should YouTube and Patreon step in and subsidize those salaries? Why not that the employer (Buzzfeed in your example) pay a living wage?

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

#117

Post by matz1 »

gambiting wrote: post #52
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not getting paid enough they should stop doing it. If enough of them stop doing it, then the rest will start to get paid more.

It's the exact same argument I keep making about tipping - if only everyone everywhere stopped tipping overnight, this stupid system would disappear. Underpaid waiters and drivers would find other jobs because suddenly without tips they wouldn't be able to support themselves. I am also surprised that no one has seen the wisdom of my words yet :P

Nothing stopping you to not tipping. You don't need to wait for everyone to stop tipping for you to not tip right now.

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

#118

Post by criddell »

unix_fan wrote: post #77
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #25

Why should these creators deserve to be paid more? Making money on YouTube and Patreon is a privilege not a right. Yes the big creators make a lot of money, but that's because a lot of users are watching them. If someone is trying to make a career out of YouTube while only making $10,000 a year then the only problem is the person trying to make a career out of that. Making $10,000 on YouTube at all puts you well far…

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.

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

#119

Post by floren »

paulcole wrote: post #81
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.

> People seem to believe the magical internet economy will make you rich This is the entire founding belief of YC (and a huge swath of “VC culture” and Hacker News in general). Look at how many “businesses” promoted here have no meaningful revenue and no real ideals for how to monetize.

> Look at how many “businesses” promoted here have no meaningful revenue and no real ideals for how to monetize.

They all know how to monetize, it just doesn't sound good to say it out loud: get a bunch of users by offering a free service on VC money, then sell your userbase to a big company.

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

#120

Post by dbbk »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26
WJW wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already free to watch even the smallest channel on youtube, the income from the largest channels subsidizes the servers needed to transcode the millions of videos that will only ever get a single view. The "problem" is that most creators have miniscule audiences. The "transparent and fairly" returned ad profits for someone with ten viewers is never going to be very large. The power law in entertainment has alway…

Except that it's not about profits, it's about culture and quality of life. And pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else reliably destroys both. It's also about closing one of the few paths that the poor can use to stop being poor.

I'm not sure I'm following how what you're saying is applicable to people making money making videos on YouTube?
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