YouTube Experiment

David10K

It's been really interesting watching you update your stats.
I hope it's going well!

TriviaDuck

David10K said:

It's been really interesting watching you update your stats.
I hope it's going well!

Thanks!   I started this as a 'how easy is it to start a youtube channel from scratch and make a bit of side income' type thing, and The short answer to that is "it's not!" - but it's certainly do-able if you put in the time and effort. Unless of course you get lucky and go viral or something!

I'm now at 90 views and around 400 watch hours since I started this back in late March.  To put that into perspective, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours to even be considered for monetisation.  So I'm a long way off, but the positives are that I'm enjoying what I'm doing, I've built a small but loyal fan base who I interact with often and I'm learning new things all the time. I fully intend to carry on!

Montysmam

Really fascinating to read how you are progressing - Good luck, love a great quiz!

TriviaDuck

Montysmam said:

Really fascinating to read how you are progressing - Good luck, love a great quiz!

Thanks!

mrsyardbroom

This is really interesting.  I've had a YouTube channel for several years but I've only really used to save my videos. In the last couple of months I've done some vlogging and I'm finding it great fun.  I haven't really set out to make money from it, I just like talking to the camera.  There's no-one else in the house to talk to only my dogs and the fish.  It's cost me a fair amount of money.  I bought a camcorder that a lot of the popular vloggers use and a separate audio recorder.  I use Windows Moviemaker to edit the videos.  I'm currently using a laptop but if I wanted to go full steam ahead and make the best quality videos I would invest in a desktop computer that can handle larger high quality videos.  My camcorder is capable of recording 4k but I can't play the videos back or edit them as I don't have the computing power when using a laptop.  I really only vlog for a few friends and family but maybe I'll think about monetising.  I already make a small but useful income from my website.  I'm retired so not looking for full time work.  I know some vloggers are doing this for a full time income and they're putting in more than full time hours.  My channel mostly concentrates on dog agility and on my dogs.  I'll watch this thread with interest and maybe look at some how to sites and find out more about monetising. 

Lil306

As someone who used to do this very thing (and looking to start up again), yes it's possible but the earnings you get now aren't as close as to what they used to be. 

The main problem I encountered was when Youtube changed their policy. Being a partner with Youtube used to be a privelege, very few people were given monetisation. Which meant you actually made good earnings. Over the years, when Youtube changed the rules so it allows anyone (even new people) to be monetised, the content went rubbish because people were making videos just for the sake of trying to make money and it made the quality overall very poor. 

Youtube then changed the algorithm again, which made it even worse and I lose my monetisation status I think due to too few hours watched. 

My advice, if you intend to pursue it

 - Focus on the quality of your videos, HQ quality - good sound and video editing. Video editing takes a lot of time, but makes it look amazing. Look at channels like DevinSuperTramp I followed him when he first started and he's amazing, the work he does when edits is unreal (Puppy Xmas for example)
 - Viewer engagement - Try and get viewers to interact. Make sure they comment + like as it help builds up the Youtube algorithm and shows you more in search
 - Quality of videos, This is the same as above, the better your quality of video (content wise), the more people will interact

You've found your niche. 

As for earnings, it varies really. My channel used to make me around £60-100 per month (500 subs about 50k views per month). I used that to help drive traffic to my website. I stopped using Youtube because of how rubbish the moneitsation got. I'm developing my website more now, since I'm partnered with affiliates on my site, the sales are there but my commission is rubbish.

gingeralan

Great thread, looking forward to following

OldBenKenobi

What do YouTube pay out for this level of subscribers/viewers?