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It depends on how he is measuring it. If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine. Then there is also

It depends on how he is measuring it. If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine. Then there is also the fact that it is probably the case that for every one of these big budget videos that don't make money he has several smaller ones that do make money. The big ones bring in the audience and the small ones bring in the money.

ineedasername 4y ago
Yeah, but it’s strange to spinning it like “I don’t even make a profit on many of these but I still do it!” That’s nothing special at all, he simply rediscovered the concept of “loss leader”. He not doing those videos despite their lack of profit, he’s doing the because they’re the reason he has profitable content to begin with. It would be like a shaving company saying “I know it seems crazy, but we lose so much money on these shaving handles, but we do it anyway!” Everyone knows what’s really going on there, what the business model really is.
- Applejinx 4y ago
  That's the business model. If somebody like him is doing things for YouTube and they are not willing to burn the money they earn to do more spectacular things, and he is, he beats them. If he beats them, he gets more money, which he blows in order to beat them again, and so on. The winner isn't him, it's YouTube hosting him. He's lowbrow 'Ow My Balls' guy, but in reality. It's always been like that. If somebody has a platform and they are able to benefit from somebody beating themselves into the ground for attention, they're going to subsidize that behavior, design their system to reward the guy who's willing to win at any cost. He then gets to be the attention winner and be constantly striving to be attention-getting, by any means necessary, and the PLATFORM wins and earns the actual profit. The guy's being rewarded for exactly that behavior.
prepend 4y ago
> If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine. Well this is an odd way to measure profitable. What’s the benefit to this method? Imagine if Google said “we lose money on every search run. Unless you count the advertising, then we make billions. But we lose money on most of our activities.” This just seems naively stupid. Because “most videos” is a dumb metric. Imagine if your VC answered the question “Are you rich from your fund?” with “Well we lost money on most of our investments.” This is either a dodge or just a lucky fool. Mr Beast doesn’t seem like an imbecile so I assume he’s just trying to be humble or deflective. Just from doing the YouTube napkin math if you saw his balance sheet he would have hundreds of millions. Because trust me, the world would know if he donated to charity.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  He’s obviously saying that the views he gets from some video doesn’t always pull in the money it took to create that video which is mostly a point of how much he invests into zany sets, huge giveaways, and such.
  - prepend 4y ago
    But based on the view count and the published YouTube payout rate it’s clear that he’s making bucketloads of money. It’s not pertinent if some of his videos don’t immediately break even. He’s making lots of money from YouTube views alone. Not to mention other markets, sponsorships, etc.

ineedasername 4y ago

Yeah, but it’s strange to spinning it like “I don’t even make a profit on many of these but I still do it!” That’s nothing special at all, he simply rediscovered the concept of “loss leader”. He not doing those videos despite their lack of profit, he’s doing the because they’re the reason he has profitable content to begin with. It would be like a shaving company saying “I know it seems crazy, but we lose so much money on these shaving handles, but we do it anyway!” Everyone knows what’s really going on there, what the business model really is.

Applejinx 4y ago
That's the business model. If somebody like him is doing things for YouTube and they are not willing to burn the money they earn to do more spectacular things, and he is, he beats them. If he beats them, he gets more money, which he blows in order to beat them again, and so on. The winner isn't him, it's YouTube hosting him. He's lowbrow 'Ow My Balls' guy, but in reality. It's always been like that. If somebody has a platform and they are able to benefit from somebody beating themselves into the ground for attention, they're going to subsidize that behavior, design their system to reward the guy who's willing to win at any cost. He then gets to be the attention winner and be constantly striving to be attention-getting, by any means necessary, and the PLATFORM wins and earns the actual profit. The guy's being rewarded for exactly that behavior.

prepend 4y ago

> If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine. Well this is an odd way to measure profitable. What’s the benefit to this method? Imagine if Google said “we lose money on every search run. Unless you count the advertising, then we make billions. But we lose money on most of our activities.” This just seems naively stupid. Because “most videos” is a dumb metric. Imagine if your VC answered the question “Are you rich from your fund?” with “Well we lost money on most of our investments.” This is either a dodge or just a lucky fool. Mr Beast doesn’t seem like an imbecile so I assume he’s just trying to be humble or deflective. Just from doing the YouTube napkin math if you saw his balance sheet he would have hundreds of millions. Because trust me, the world would know if he donated to charity.

hombre_fatal 4y ago
He’s obviously saying that the views he gets from some video doesn’t always pull in the money it took to create that video which is mostly a point of how much he invests into zany sets, huge giveaways, and such.
- prepend 4y ago
  But based on the view count and the published YouTube payout rate it’s clear that he’s making bucketloads of money. It’s not pertinent if some of his videos don’t immediately break even. He’s making lots of money from YouTube views alone. Not to mention other markets, sponsorships, etc.