Live data from Hacker News

How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

blog.bassemdy.com

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you foresee a 5 year span before stable revenue (and indirectly, did you have to alter your ways/work to have better views and workflow) ? Also did you try other platforms ? Kudos on the dedication :)

When I started I studied some other channels in the photography niche. And I saw that you need around 100k subscribers to make a living. I also saw that most of the successful channels in this niche needed around 5-7 years to get there. So yeah this was very much expected. But I’m not doing this for the money. I do it because it is the most fun project I have ever done. I would do it for free. If I go too long withou…

Heh interesting how you monitored the field before doing it.

I understand the feeling of doing something you love. Money is for bills, after that you need something else. I'm currently on a similar quest.

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#142
post #132
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Swan aka long tail. Most people starve. It's not a valid career choice, it's a lottery.

It's not a lottery, there's a direct relationship between the quality of a video and its viewership. Luck is involved, but to a much lesser degree than in fields like music, acting, or startups.

The point of the entire article is that you can't make a living out of it.

But you do you.

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright laws are just there to screw smaller creators, on TV they have agreements with the monopoly license fee holders and they just put whatever they want without asking anybody.

These agreements involve book keeping and money also.

I don't deny that, it's like the mafia, the large companies are never the ones stopped by it, they just pay the tolls.

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#144
post #140
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but there are some that have managed to crack the code, or maybe just right place, right time, but eg kurzgesagt has a team of 60 to run their channel, and also they get a lot of outside funding for their channel. (they have 20M subscribers, but my question is how they got there, not why are they successful now that they are there)

Kurzgesagt has become (or was always?) propagandistic, in my experience, so that may explain where they get some of their funds from.

(Can't edit my comment above now so adding on by reply)

My observation above was just from personal experience. But after making it I searched 'Kurzgesagt' on YouTube (just wanted to see what videos they'd recently produced) and, as well as their recent videos, that search also turned up one called Kurzgesagt: billionaire propaganda, trusting science, and effective altruism [1] which I've now watched and found that my observation has been made by others and analysed in quite some detail. That video mentioned some others on the same subject [2-3], which I haven't watched but also look interesting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGfBV4I8DQI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#145
post #33

As someone who's posted videos for about 10 years, and posted them seriously since 2017, the best period I ever had gave me about £1,500 for a couple of months worth of videos. Usually it's closer to £250 a month or something. This is entirely from YouTube ads, since at the moment I don't use Patreon, sell merch or run sponsorships. And it's for a channel with approximately 33,000 subscribers. So I can definitely bac…

While most of this comment is true, there are lots of youtubers that can make it full-time without getting millions of subscribers. The key is that you can't rely on adsense, you need to get as many different ways of getting income as possible (patreon, sponsors, merch, etc). From my observation, it seems an active base of around 200,000 subscribers seems to be where you can do it full-time. I've even seen people wit…

Yeah this is true. Adsense is a very difficult way to make money on YouTube, and it's stuff like sponsorships, selling merch, selling courses, Patreon, etc that usually keep a lot of creators afloat.

If you can get those working for you, you can definitely get by on a few hundred thousand subs, and I know lots of creators in exactly that situation.

But yeah the challenge there is definitely building enough of a community that people are willing to pay you for that stuff, which is more difficult than just posting videos would be. Especially given that your niche has a huge effect on how easily you can make money from those things, and whether your community is going to be 'loyal' enough to support you that way. Creator focused and topic focused channels have very different routes and possibilities for monetisation...

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#146
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your links show that take home pay is higher in California ($72K vs £55K/$69K), despite higher tax rate.

This is a result of including employee-share payroll tax (FICA) in the California tax total, but not including the UK equivalent (employee share of “National Insurance”), which is listed after the “total tax due”, as part of the UK tax total.

Broadly equivelent to employee part of healthcare contributions in the us

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#147
post #12

Dealing with Youtube's "copyright" department isn't worth the trouble. Also the same content on a Adsense monezited site yields factor 10 earnings vs Youtube. Just one example of their copyright shenanigans: A friend of mine prank called some water cleaning office somewhere in Africa. He was put on hold, while on hold some music played. Youtube wanted to know if he had the license for this "elevator type" music, esse…

Copyright laws are just there to screw smaller creators, on TV they have agreements with the monopoly license fee holders and they just put whatever they want without asking anybody.

That’s a bit of an oversimplification. Smaller creators who are making music absolutely can and do benefit from the fees that pass through the “monopoly license fee holders” - collective management organisations. For example in the UK if a song that you wrote and recorded (and for which you control exclusive rights over the song copyright and the recording copyright) is played on BBC Radio 2 (the biggest national radio station by audience numbers) then you will be paid around £100 per minute.

So each time a three minute song is played you’ll get £300.

Now, obviously, the chances of an independent artist without the mechanisms of big record labels may struggle to get the music into the hands of the gatekeepers who make the decisions about what is played, but it does happen.

I agree though that the copyright implementation around incidental use of what is essentially stock music in a wider creation is something that can seem a bit out of whack. The biggest issue is around metadata and the way information identifying rights holders passes through the digital supply chain. Unless a video creator was able to clearly identify the rights holders in incidentally music then the blunt instrument of “this is copyright material, block/monetise/rev share” is currently really the only thing that prevents “bad actors” exploiting copyright music for their benefit.

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#148
post #36

I run a channel with 85k subscribers and around 10k views per day. My monthly income breakdown is roughly this: - Youtube ads $900 - Affiliate links $2500 - Brand deals $3000 (equates to one sponsored video per month) - Patreon $350 Took me around 5 years of posting a video a week to get here. Now I finally make a living. Started working full time about a year ago. Before that 15-20h per week for years. I talked to s…

Did companies reach out to you for brand deals, or did you actively reach out to them asking for sponsorship?

Re: How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?

#150
post #36

I run a channel with 85k subscribers and around 10k views per day. My monthly income breakdown is roughly this: - Youtube ads $900 - Affiliate links $2500 - Brand deals $3000 (equates to one sponsored video per month) - Patreon $350 Took me around 5 years of posting a video a week to get here. Now I finally make a living. Started working full time about a year ago. Before that 15-20h per week for years. I talked to s…

Did companies reach out to you for brand deals, or did you actively reach out to them asking for sponsorship?

Both. Lately I have started reaching out and it works pretty well!
Post reply on HN