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And this is also often the case even if your money comes through Patreon or similar services rather than YouTube ads themselves. On that site, about 1% of the a
by CM30 9y ago
And this is also often the case even if your money comes through Patreon or similar services rather than YouTube ads themselves. On that site, about 1% of the audience rakes in the cash, then a large portion of the rest basically makes enough for beer money every now and then (if they're lucky).
Still, it's not surprising. Unfortunately, almost any artistic (or sporting) field has the same issue as YouTube and co here, it's hugely profitable for the small percentage that break out to become superstars, and then quickly becomes very unprofitable for the millions with less luck/timing/talent/whatever.
Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not. At the end of the day, the idea of running a YouTube channel as your full time job is just so attractive to so many people that competition is almost always going to be sky high, and with the formula for success being pretty random in general, I suspect it'll always be a field where supply heavily outstrips demand.
Like going to Hollywood to become a film star, or starting up a band in college.
- Scoundreller 9y ago“Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not.” YouTube has recently made it worse. Unless your content is the subscribable kind, you now make zero revenue until you get 1000 subs.
- elihu 9y ago> Can anything be done there? Eh, probably not. Perhaps if over time viewers and those running YouTube channels migrate to other platforms that give a larger percentage of advertising share to the people creating the content, then the number of people who can support themselves by streaming will increase. Also, as technology improves and hosting costs go down, the proportion of advertising money that could go directly to the content creator can increase.
- briga 9y agoI think YouTube's recommendation algorithms are complicit in this, and I can imagine an alternative system preventing the divide between popular and unpopular content. Currently if you watch one video your recommendation feed gets flooded with videos from the same channel, which creates a positive feedback effect for big channels. But I guess if the incentive for being a successful YouTube celebrity wasn't so great there would be fewer people trying to do it.