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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

#161

Post by PeterisP »

mbg721 wrote: post #95
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? I haven’t seen a single promotion on YouTube telling me I could make a living being a content creator. I think people hype them selves up about it when they see the top 0.5% on YouTube and think they can be the same. Nowhere have I seen YouTube lie or mislead about this. The problem is there are simply too many content creators. We don’t need “generic lets play guy 373628”. There is more than enough conten…

I mean, fine, YouTube doesn't get out with a bullhorn and yell "Make a Living with Videos!", but their incentives make it seem like a path to stardom. "Too many content creators" isn't a problem. "Too much bad content" is.

The solution to "too much bad content" is to ensure that the producers of that content get so little reward that they decide to stop making that content - which is what's happening here.

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

#162

Post by Kalium »

meheleventyone wrote: post #159
Kalium wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't even the problem. It's that to be successful you need to be more than good at your job you need to be great at doing a few other jobs as well. Namely running a business and marketing. And lucky in catching the break the propels you upwards. This sounds like a great description of art as a profession for roughly the past five to seven centuries. It sounds like really very little has changed, except perhap…

For an example of the latter you have the BBC which is deservedly world famous for its choices.

The BBC is widely and justly praised! So long as you like its choices, everything is great. Central coordinators can, as you say, earn widespread praise and acclaim.

What happens if you're an artist that the BBC isn't interested in supporting? What happens when the BBC runs out of budget for the year?

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

#163

Post by JKCalhoun »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #150
devoutsalsa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I agree with your statement. But the grim reality is that good jobs are hard to get. It’s not always possible to find better opportunity. And you may not have the resources necessary to find something better (e.g. I can’t afford to go in a better job opportunity‘a interview, because I can’t get time off my current job, and I need this job to survive. About 10 years ago I was living in San Francisco on less…

sure, but these are not jobs, they are things anyone can do, and might get paid for. If they got rid of the payments all together, people would still do it for free.

So volunteer work.

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

#164

Post by JKCalhoun »

wincy wrote: post #114
mc32 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I suspect he's doing fine. Millionaire? Well, of course not, but he is sort of niche.

But he also sells kits and I suspect that's been very useful to his paying for his ISP. I know I bought his 6502 kit. ;-)

I think the smart "content creators" figure out a way to sell plans, etc. in order to take in a little on the side. (Patreon, in my mind, is the worst way to do that.)

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

#166

Post by sharkweek »

snarf21 wrote: post #121
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 agree, people should think about it as a lottery ticket. How many people spend $10Ks over the years trying to become good at soccer/basketball/baseball/golf/etc. so they can go pro? We know that it is a 1 in a million shot but results in a multi-billion dollar industry. Creators have to decide on their goals. I design board games on the side. I don't expect it to ever break even, let alone replace my salary but I d…

I would say I'm an alright tennis player, have been playing since I was younger, lessons, coaches, the whole thing. Never even got close to playing at a D1 school though.

Mostly out of curiosity, I looked into what it looks like to go pro now. Basically you go into a machine as a young kid, and if you show promise, you get focus from the coaching staff at the academies. Everyone else is basically just a warm body whose parents are paying a ton of money for their teen to be a hitting partner for the academy's golden goose.

THEN if you make the show, you're fighting for rankings through some absolutely abysmal satellite tournaments that you're essentially losing money to go play in. Losing in the first round of a major makes you more money than winning one of these things.

The delta between the 20th ranked player in the world versus the top 150th insane, too, with one worth millions and one worth maybe a small six figure salary, with a notable portion of it going toward travel/training expenses.

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

#167

Post by JKCalhoun »

015a wrote: post #158
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…

There's a strong argument that, when you've got companies like Google/YouTube, Spotify, Amazon/Twitch, Patreon, etc at the top capable of paying their executives and engineers and other employees six to seven figure salaries, on the backs of their creatives who barely scrape by, there's an inequality there which isn't ethical. Twitch and YouTube, I think, are interesting ones in the sense that their system costs are…

Yes, artist coops, rather than corporate, Patreon-like fair is what is needed.

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

#169

Post by Strom »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #160
Strom wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a bizarre take. You're living in San Francisco, one of the most prestigious cities in the world, and yet you're describing your situation as if you're living in Sangvor, Tajikistan. No one in San Francisco is stuck. [1] By skipping a few of those movie tickets and buying months in advance you could get a plane ticket out of there. In plenty of places in the US there isn't even an airport, not to mention…

You're right of course, most can leave. But in leaving you are leaving perhaps your best market (depends on what you do, but as an example, let's say you DJ). And also, by extension, you're sort of suggesting everyone making less than 6 figures leave. I'm putting words in your mouth, I know, and I apologize. But it's the gentrification I am bringing up. So many construction workers that repair roofs, install drywall,…

The housing policy of San Francisco definitely makes lives more difficult than it has to be.

My point is more so around realizing the wealth of opportunity. Yes not every DJ will make it in San Francisco, but as you allude to, in most places in the world zero DJs will make it.

I don't claim that life can't be challenging in/around San Francisco. I'm claiming that it's less challenging than in almost anywhere else in the world.

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

#170

Post by meheleventyone »

Kalium wrote: post #162
meheleventyone wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an example of the latter you have the BBC which is deservedly world famous for its choices.

The BBC is widely and justly praised! So long as you like its choices, everything is great. Central coordinators can, as you say, earn widespread praise and acclaim. What happens if you're an artist that the BBC isn't interested in supporting? What happens when the BBC runs out of budget for the year?

You can't make it because you don't have the budget. Then you start a YouTube channel appealing to the lowest common denominator and die a little more inside each day as you yell "ring that bell" umpteen times whilst pumping out content to avoid losing the favor of the algorithm. But you find success so keep doing it whilst hoping you remain popular and don't get demonetized. You still don't get to make the thing you wanted because you know that sort of content is not successful but eh, it's a living.

Or you pitch your idea elsewhere because people have realized that the strong model of the BBC that allows it to take creative risks can work elsewhere.

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