Young, Gifted and Broke

Generali

sequence wrote: »

I think those figures are off a bit. The main problem for them being that they broke copyright so had to use a third party agency to get around their copyright issues who then take a large chunk of their actual revenue. My own figures from youtube are quite a bit higher than those. But I can't make a living from it.

Yeah, they halved their income from the off by using a copyrighted song. I do wonder what the difference between a one-off 'hit' is and a regular series. I can see the latter being more valuable.

antrobus

sequence wrote: »

I think those figures are off a bit. The main problem for them being that they broke copyright so had to use a third party agency to get around their copyright issues who then take a large chunk of their actual revenue. My own figures from youtube are quite a bit higher than those. But I can't make a living from it.

It depends. As I understand it, the revenue per thousand views on YouTube can vary from as little as $0.25 to $4.00 depending on what kind of content is being offered.

ruggedtoast

Generali wrote: »

Yeah, they halved their income from the off by using a copyrighted song. I do wonder what the difference between a one-off 'hit' is and a regular series. I can see the latter being more valuable.

They were trying to use their video as a platform for their ping pong racket racket. But there was nothing on the video that showcased that, or at least not in the bit I watched before I got bored and stopped it.

They did the right things with a blog and a mailing list, but their mistake was that they made a video that people in general liked and shared (along with cat videos and wotnot) but that didn't do much to reach their niche market, or channel anything back to their website. They could have run a social media campaign for people to make their own ping pong videos off the back of that and sold a lot of bats and got a lot more value out of their video. But they didn't hire me to consult them so they will have to remain poor and frustrated.

In terms of revenue as an advertiser you usually have a reverse auction for ads. So if I work for Midrange Motors I might bid to go on a particular channel at prime browsing time at a cost of £0.50 per impression for 1000 ads.

But then Flash Autos outbid me at £1 per ad at the same time for the same number. Then, Skint Steve's Exhausts come along at the back offering Google £0.10 per ad up to 1000.

Flash Autos obviously win and get the first 1000 ads, I come in second and get whatever is left. Probably about 2am 2000 people have had ads pushed to them so now it's Skint Steve's turn. But if only 10 people watch a video before the next paid for slot startson the morning then Google will just return most of his money to him.

More commonly you target demographics rather than nominating a particular channel. So 15-21 year old middle class females with an interest in make up and fashion for example is a specific and fairly high value group to hit, So if you don't bid a fair amount you will probably be outbid, or have ads going out to odd cat and ping pong videos if your demographic turns up.

This is why Zoella is minting it. Advertisers will pay a lot for that demographic in general - which saturate her videos, and even more to be on her channel - as if you get one of those girls when they are 15 then you have a cash cow for life. But, you could buy 1000 ads there every week for a year and never hit the same viewer twice. Google wont tell you. So it doesnt necessarily follow that being on a popular channel repeatedly works for acquisition.

Alternatively if you have millions of subscribers, but they are all sparsely educated teenage boys spamming your comments with text speak and wanting to find out how to frag people on Call of Duty, then you will make much less money out of advertising even if you shift a lot of ads.