5 ms·

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/e

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 do it because I enjoy it for it's own sake.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
A lottery ticket? It's not that at all. Sadly (or is it?), it's like the real world. Marketing, image, having a product people want is still important. That's not luck, that's paying attention to the market and adjusting accordingly.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  I agree. I don't think YouTube is a lottery ticket. If you have a decent idea, understand how people in your niche consume content and are willing to put in the work then you can do alright. Having a meteoric rise might be lottery, but mostly it's recognizing what people want and knowing how to "market" it to them. The hardest part is putting in the work. Being your own motivator and then working away at something is very difficult in the long run. I'd also like to add that $10k a year in numerous countries is decent income.
sharkweek 6y ago
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.
- handmodel 6y ago
  Meritocracies always produce the biggest difference in outcomes of results.
- clifdweller 6y ago
  that's one of the failings of the youtube system it relies on the creators to self evaluate their success whereas in sports its pretty obvious when you hit the wall. a few will push through by paying lots of money for private coaching but most are naturally weeded out. content creators though have that constant carrot of if they try a bit harder or make more varied videos the algorithm may bless them with millions of viewers.
- mrkstu 6y ago
  Yep. I had a neighbor growing up that got all the coaching, was a great player and did well as a doubles player- but he had exactly one good run in a major tournament at singles- quarterfinals at Wimbledon. He didn't have that next level of extreme athleticism- he could make every shot and was very proficient and earned a good living on tour, but if he hadn't come from good money he never would have been there in the first place, because he didn't have the native talent, never getting into the 60s in ATP rankings. Doing great as a coach though.
evo 6y ago
While I agree that an individual should look at it as a lottery ticket, as a society we should be careful about macro trends towards new lotteries. Many big tech companies arise from disintermediation plays--finding some market that has high overhead and figuring out a way to transact it more cheaply. This is great: it lowers barriers to entry and liberates a new surplus, but it's not clear who then captures this new surplus, the market participants or the marketplace? I would posit that the lottery system is a mechanism to enable the excess surplus to be siphoned away from the market participants towards the marketplace. Humans are _terrible_ at estimating the expected value of low-probability high-impact events, and dangling a few rags-to-riches stories lets your participants imagine they're going to make it. In reality, it bifurcates the market and drops the median outcome (presumably, this surplus is captured by the transaction fees of the marketplace). As an example where this could play out, I might look at restaurants--if delivery apps and shadow kitchens lower the clearing costs for me to find a dinner, does that then mean the "best" restaurant in town can now scale up, to the detriment of the second or third best? (On the other hand, the physical limitations make this story a harder sell than purely digital goods.)

JKCalhoun 6y ago

A lottery ticket? It's not that at all. Sadly (or is it?), it's like the real world. Marketing, image, having a product people want is still important. That's not luck, that's paying attention to the market and adjusting accordingly.

Aerroon 6y ago
I agree. I don't think YouTube is a lottery ticket. If you have a decent idea, understand how people in your niche consume content and are willing to put in the work then you can do alright. Having a meteoric rise might be lottery, but mostly it's recognizing what people want and knowing how to "market" it to them. The hardest part is putting in the work. Being your own motivator and then working away at something is very difficult in the long run. I'd also like to add that $10k a year in numerous countries is decent income.

sharkweek 6y ago

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.

handmodel 6y ago
Meritocracies always produce the biggest difference in outcomes of results.
clifdweller 6y ago
that's one of the failings of the youtube system it relies on the creators to self evaluate their success whereas in sports its pretty obvious when you hit the wall. a few will push through by paying lots of money for private coaching but most are naturally weeded out. content creators though have that constant carrot of if they try a bit harder or make more varied videos the algorithm may bless them with millions of viewers.
mrkstu 6y ago
Yep. I had a neighbor growing up that got all the coaching, was a great player and did well as a doubles player- but he had exactly one good run in a major tournament at singles- quarterfinals at Wimbledon. He didn't have that next level of extreme athleticism- he could make every shot and was very proficient and earned a good living on tour, but if he hadn't come from good money he never would have been there in the first place, because he didn't have the native talent, never getting into the 60s in ATP rankings. Doing great as a coach though.

evo 6y ago

While I agree that an individual should look at it as a lottery ticket, as a society we should be careful about macro trends towards new lotteries. Many big tech companies arise from disintermediation plays--finding some market that has high overhead and figuring out a way to transact it more cheaply. This is great: it lowers barriers to entry and liberates a new surplus, but it's not clear who then captures this new surplus, the market participants or the marketplace? I would posit that the lottery system is a mechanism to enable the excess surplus to be siphoned away from the market participants towards the marketplace. Humans are _terrible_ at estimating the expected value of low-probability high-impact events, and dangling a few rags-to-riches stories lets your participants imagine they're going to make it. In reality, it bifurcates the market and drops the median outcome (presumably, this surplus is captured by the transaction fees of the marketplace). As an example where this could play out, I might look at restaurants--if delivery apps and shadow kitchens lower the clearing costs for me to find a dinner, does that then mean the "best" restaurant in town can now scale up, to the detriment of the second or third best? (On the other hand, the physical limitations make this story a harder sell than purely digital goods.)