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> thousands (millions?) of people are now full-time YouTubers I would guess not millions. All the relevant numbers are confidential, but estimates seem to sug

> thousands (millions?) of people are now full-time YouTubers I would guess not millions. All the relevant numbers are confidential, but estimates seem to suggest that having a million subscribers[0] is probably the level at which you could comfortably make it a full-time job, and there are maybe roughly 20,000 YouTubers with that many subscribers[1]. Bear in mind, YouTube is a global platform, so that number has to be spread across multiple countries. Therefore, other than maybe the US, I'd expect that no country has more than 1000 people whose job is full-time YouTuber. Also, for comparison, Lego has about 20,000 employees worldwide.[2] [0] https://contentcareer.com/blog/average-salary-of-a-youtuber-with-1-million-subscribers/ https://contentcareer.com/blog/average-salary-of-a-youtuber-... [1] https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-many-youtube-channels-have-over-1-million-subscribers-56881000f35a https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-many-youtube-chann... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/292314/number-of-employees-of-the-lego-group-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/292314/number-of-employe...

gfd 5y ago
> I'd expect that no country has more than 1000 people whose job is full-time YouTuber There are probably more than 1000 full time youtubers in japan. I watch vtubers and just hololive and nijisanji alone employ over a hundred streamers. Most of them make enough for it to be a fulltime job, you can find some of their donation earnings on sites like: https://playboard.co/en/youtube-ranking/most-superchatted-all-channels-in-japan-total https://playboard.co/en/youtube-ranking/most-superchatted-al...
muzani 5y ago
Patreon would be interesting to compare to. The stats are vague too, but apparently 200k have at least one patron: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-stats https://graphtreon.com/patreon-stats That's a little lower than I expected. I suspect people make a living from Patreon sooner than they would off YouTube, so your math seems to click.
vanilla-almond 5y ago
Interesting figures, thanks for sharing. The popular coding channel Coder Coder has currently 300,000 subscribers, but 9 months ago the channel host announced they had quit their job to focus mainly on YouTube. It's not quite YouTube full-time but I suspect the combination of: YouTube + sponsorship + freelance work makes up a full-time income. I can imagine that combination works well even with channels with 100,000+ subscribers. Coder Coder: Life/channel update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkzB13xjL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkzB13xjL0

gfd 5y ago

> I'd expect that no country has more than 1000 people whose job is full-time YouTuber There are probably more than 1000 full time youtubers in japan. I watch vtubers and just hololive and nijisanji alone employ over a hundred streamers. Most of them make enough for it to be a fulltime job, you can find some of their donation earnings on sites like: https://playboard.co/en/youtube-ranking/most-superchatted-all-channels-in-japan-total https://playboard.co/en/youtube-ranking/most-superchatted-al...

muzani 5y ago

Patreon would be interesting to compare to. The stats are vague too, but apparently 200k have at least one patron: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-stats https://graphtreon.com/patreon-stats That's a little lower than I expected. I suspect people make a living from Patreon sooner than they would off YouTube, so your math seems to click.

vanilla-almond 5y ago

Interesting figures, thanks for sharing. The popular coding channel Coder Coder has currently 300,000 subscribers, but 9 months ago the channel host announced they had quit their job to focus mainly on YouTube. It's not quite YouTube full-time but I suspect the combination of: YouTube + sponsorship + freelance work makes up a full-time income. I can imagine that combination works well even with channels with 100,000+ subscribers. Coder Coder: Life/channel update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkzB13xjL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkzB13xjL0