More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel about the site

Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by kalleboo on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @01:24AM (#14693710)

> So he's making what...about $500 per video? Let's say all in it takes two or three days to fully produce a video, that's about $20/hr. That's honestly pretty terrible

One thing that may be worth adding is that for Dave Jones in particular, he has other lines of income such as selling hardware (project kits, branded multimeters, T-shirts, etc) and ads on his popular webforum. The YouTube channel works as advertising for those businesses. So even if you don't make a good living off of the YouTube revenue, it may still make sense as a way of building a loyal customer base.

A lot of YouTubers also make a good chunk of their income on Patreon now as well.

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by jdietrich on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @10:43AM (#14696129)

Dave Jones is also taking $3500/mo on Patreon. Each of his individual revenue streams is fairly paltry, but they add up to a comfortable middle-class income. That kind of diversification is very healthy.

https://www.patreon.com/eevblog

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by yellow_postit on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @01:52AM (#14693813)

Source on the Patreon claim? I watch a lot of frequent YouTube channels and my anecdote is that < 10% have Patreon.

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by kalleboo on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @01:56AM (#14693825)

I guess it depends more on the niche than I assumed. I follow a lot of electronics channels, and YouTubers like techmoan and bigclive make $2,000+/mo on Patreon.

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by sndean on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @02:30AM (#14693944)

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, CGPGrey is making ~$20000/video on Patreon [0]

[0] https://www.patreon.com/cgpgrey

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by Applejinx on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @06:11AM (#14694825)

Beware, it's a power-law thing. I'm in the top 3.5% of all Patreon myself, and I'm barely making $650 a month from it. It's really dangerous to consider that as any more plausible than YouTube ad revenue: everything about it is set up as just another lottery ticket. I've been keeping track of the numbers for a year. The amount that constitutes the '1%' mark has been steadily declining even as the total population grows.

With Patreon, it's more properly considered as just another payment processor: the hope is that you'll build a functioning business and use it to handle people's credit card interactions.

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by wlll on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @06:42AM (#14694960)

Apparently (according to one YouTube channel I watch) the $/video figure is rather misleading as it doesn't take into account people's monthly spend caps.

So while CGPGrey might be making $20k/video for the first video, anyone with a (say) $5/month cap that paid $5 for the first video now pays nothing towards any videos released later in the month, potentially dropping the income substantially as more and more spending caps are hit as the month rolls on.

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Re:More than a decade later, how original YouTube stars feel... by kalleboo on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @02:27PM (#14697451)

Heck even Mr Carlson's lab is making nearly $4,000/mo! https://www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab

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