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My Youtube earnings

2015 points by tpmx 4y ago

tpmx 4y ago
(Not my blog/channel.)
hijackedt 4y ago
Super interesting - one thing to keep in mind is advertising CPM rate can be wildly different by audience. A quick google shows a range of $0.03/cpm to $13.00/cpm depending on category. https://stashvine.com/most-profitable-youtube-niches/ https://stashvine.com/most-profitable-youtube-niches/
- system2 4y ago
  I hardly trust any "make money" website statistics.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Absolutely. Every auto driver and worker in india ha YouTube on through their entire work shift. I would not be surprised if their ad impression is valued at a thousand times less than an average American moms ad view..
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    > Every auto driver and worker in india ha YouTube on through their entire work shift. Meanwhile in Canada, our wireless telecoms have convinced the government that this level of bandwidth consumption should cost hundreds a month otherwise the cellular network would crash.
    - ramraj07 4y ago
      It is absolutely a great example of monopolies playing havoc. India got a massive bandwidth bump precisely because a new player (Jio) came and gave unprecedented bandwidth at literal pennies per GB and changed india forever. Not saying this company or it’s runners are nice people or aren’t corrupt but it helps even if corruption has a level of monopoly protection I suppose!
    - perryizgr8 4y ago
      > our wireless telecoms have convinced the government What's the government got to do with mobile data prices?
      - Scoundreller 4y ago
        Poor regulation of a public good: spectrum.
      - KMnO4 4y ago
        One example: the telecoms launched an attack campaign demanding the government prevent competition from entering the market. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1316055 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1316055
  - jw1224 4y ago
    The CPM figures are in the blog post: - USA: $6.98 - India: $0.62
    - ramraj07 4y ago
      That’s still the average for HIS audience, which within india also likely varies a lot.
- makestuff 4y ago
  Something interesting I found out during my ad-tech time was that one of the most expensive ads to buy is car companies targeting people who are about to have a lease end and need to purchase a new car.
- majani 4y ago
  What he didn't add is that YouTube will typically seed your content in the country you upload in. The privilege of birthplace continues to be a huge influence in our lives, even with algorithms on the internet running the show
Someone1234 4y ago
So they make around $150K/year but likely pay more tax, higher overheads, and have to fund their own benefits out of that. Depending on where they live this could either be a very good income or only marginally higher than tech wages with much higher risk/stress. That's on 2M-6M viewers too. Makes me wonder how YouTube channels like Linus Tech Tips are able to seemingly hire around one-hundred full time staff? I have to imagine revenue from their other sources (e.g. their merchandise, sponsors, other?) is the majority of their income if this is what we can expect from YouTube. Regardless thanks for sharing.
- blihp 4y ago
  For the larger channels such as LTT, the YouTube ad revenue is likely approaching rounding error compared to their sponsorship/merch/platform revenue.
  - everseeking 4y ago
    I think Linus recently mentioned (probably on LAN show) that they are positioned soon to make more money from merchandise than what their YT channel generates - because of their huge drops of the new backpack and screwdriver.
    - nunez 4y ago
      Simply Nailogical did the same thing as did a ton of the beauty vloggers Christine (host) now sells what appears to be a very successful boutique nail polish line. So successful, she and her SO basically spend more time BSing with their fans (customers) on YT Live and Twitch than making new content
  - modeless 4y ago
    I don't think this is true in general. I think it's a lot closer to 50/50 for most. Obviously a lot of variability between channels, but YouTube ad revenue is not trivial.
  - ColonelBlimp 4y ago
shric 4y ago
This is fantastic information and very sobering for those of us with smaller channels. I had 10-50 views per month until two weeks ago and I got 200k views suddenly thanks to the algorithm, but it's already peaked so I expect I can't make more than a few dollars per month. See what happens though!
- jeffwass 4y ago
  Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? my best video has 8k views, coming in at between 100-1000 per month depending how many impressions the algorithm decides to allot to me.
  - sumedh 4y ago
    > Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? It happens when your video reaches the frontpage of Youtube.
  - shric 4y ago
    > Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? I honestly have no idea, but I doubt it reached "the front page of YouTube" like the sibling post suggested or it would have millions. Somehow it must've got suggested to a few people and maybe it had a high engagement rate (likes and comments?) which was somehow taken positively. I'm purely guessing though. It really isn't an impressive video though it does have a 99% like ratio. I'm a bit embarrassed to self promote here so I'll email you based on your HN profile site contact page.
warent 4y ago
The transparency of this is really amazing; big respect. It's interesting to think that this information was quietly posted to their low-traffic blog with little notice, meanwhile the information contained is actually extremely valuable (and itself would have probably made a highly valuable youtube video itself with 10s of millions of views). I wonder how much other information exists on the web that is extremely valuable yet unnoticed
- PhilosAccnting 4y ago
  I like to think that most of the valuable information is generally unnoticed. Most of the things I make are very valuable to the people who want it, but any one of those things are pretty useless to the majority of people who would find it. A huge part of the phenomenon comes through how fashions form. Hype collects around emotionally-charged things. By their very nature, their spectacle is compromising some of the sincerity and value to maximize reach. The spotlight is power, and power corrupts. HN is a perfect example of this: looks like a chat forum from 1998, but is very much current and edgy with the cool kids.
- Decabytes 4y ago
  I don't think YouTube allows you to make videos showing your revenue, but I could be wrong
  - phphphphp 4y ago
    Many years ago you were prohibited from sharing warnings by virtue of YouTube monetisation being through AdSense but, as far as I know, there’s no longer such a restriction. Lots of people publish their earnings nowadays, very common amongst finance channels.
  - Izikiel43 4y ago
    Linus tech tips did a video sharing their YouTube earnings last year
    - geerlingguy 4y ago
no_carrier 4y ago
Interesting to compare this to SocialBlade, which estimate a range of $55k - $887k per year.
- swyx 4y ago
  technically correct, but a range of more than an order of magnitude makes it hard to use.
tantalor 4y ago
> mostly middle-aged males No, most viewers were 18-44. "Middle-aged" is 45-65.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  65 is only middle-aged if you plan to live to 130...
  - eCa 4y ago
    While 65 is pushing it, middle age does not mean ”half way to death”[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > 65 is only middle-aged if you plan to live to 130... 60 is a more usual endpoint, but... It's a range. The middle of that range is 55, so following that math it would be 110, not 130. But as the other reply points out, it's the middle section of being an adult. So if you take that 45-65 range, and treat it as the exact middle of your adult life, then you get 92, which is a bit high but not crazy. If you take that 45-65 range and assume old age will be the same length, you get 85, which is pretty close for wealthy non-US countries.
- nl 4y ago
  "Modern social scientists generally agree that midlife begins around 35 to 40 and ends around 55 to 60." (Wikipedia) But you are right that his peak earning range was 25-34 (so less than middle age) and his second highest range was 18-24. So yes I'd agree this isn't middle-age.
- altacc 4y ago
  The real error is probably that some fraction of this is children of those men, as in many family homes men are the ones who login to YouTube on the TV or other devices. That may or may not be beneficial depending upon whom the advertisers think they're bidding on.
blacksmithgu 4y ago
$10000/video seems crazy to me, but it makes sense if each video is averaging 10M views for ad-friendly content. It'd be interesting to see how many Youtube channels make it to this size, and if there is anything that differentiates successful channels from obscure ones (beyond quality).
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  To highlight just how crazy things can get, my highest-earning YouTube video has earned well-over $100,000 in AdSense revenue. But that’s not the end of the craziness. About a year ago, that video was suddenly and inexplicably deemed by YouTube as unsuitable for all advertisers. I appealed, but they stuck with their decision. In the year since, that video has brought in ~$80. While I have found success on YouTube, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody who doesn’t have a strong track record of attracting and maintaining a large audience. YouTube is the most saturated market on the planet, and and at the end of the day, you are subject to the whims of a largely-opaque algorithm. It is not possible to succeed on YouTube without significant effort, but significant effort doesn’t guarantee success. Moreover, the connection between effort and reward is unpredictable, and it’s sometimes not there at all. You can be flying high today, only to have it all change tomorrow, without any explanation. People understand that high-quality content is necessary for success on YouTube, but they often lose sight of the fact that it is not sufficient. Not only do you have to create quality content, but you have to create content that people want to watch more than everything else that is available to them on YouTube - which is obviously very, very hard.
  - truetraveller 4y ago
    Very interesting. Link to your video?
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable sharing that. To whatever extent it still is, I prefer to keep my HN identity anonymous.
Garlef 4y ago
Most interesting number to me is the 90$ per hour. Seems like solid money. And since the channel might grow more this might not be the end. But I guess it's hard hard work to grow a channel to this size and also not a guaranteed success.
- tra3 4y ago
  $90/hour is real nice money, but for some reason i assumed a channel with that many subs would make more money. For every million plus channel, there’s probably a million+ channels with no subs. Basically have a day job before you go all in as a content creator.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    Subs on YT don't mean revenue... they're just people who may watch your videos later. It's more a hueristic than anything.
    - jjeaff 4y ago
      And then even if they do watch your video, your topic of choice will strongly affect your revenue per view. For example, a personal finance channel makes a lot more per view that say, a channel about thrift store finds.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      > Subs on YT don't mean revenue... they're just people who may watch your videos later. Right on. I always tell people that I can’t pay my employees with subs and likes. For most videos, an overwhelming majority of views come from traffic suggested by YouTube in some manner (home page, sidebar, after a video). I have millions of subscribers across a few channels. Subscriber notification and feeds invariably account for a very-low-single-digit percent of video views.
- sircastor 4y ago
  It's $90/hour, which is great, but it is also 100 hours per video, and depending on what your release schedule is that could be an insane amount of work. They list 65 uploads, which is a little more than once a month for 5 years.
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
I could be wrong but I don't think YouTube TOS allows publicizing this kind of information. I would be afraid of my channel being de-monetized. I believe they have a similar policy for AdSense.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I think such policy is illegal in many countries. An employer cannot prohibit workers from discussing salaries. This is often a measure to combat against gender discrimination at a workplace. I’m not sure how this affects contractors, but I would be surprised if these laws wouldn’t cover contractors as well.
  - foota 4y ago
    They're not a contractor?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    The YouTube Partner program doesn’t pay people to do any sort of work, though. It is a revenue sharing program. Usually a wage or salary is a payment in exchange for doing something. Which this isn’t. I would imagine most places treat this similarly to the way something like a book publishing agreement works.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    >> An employer cannot prohibit This is my biggest pet peeve with YouTubers. THEY ARE NOT EMPLOYEES OF YOUTUBE. employment laws do not apply to a youtuber, unless they are employed by some other company, but they do NOT have an employment relationship with YouTube, they are not "employees" of YouTube, and Susan Wojcicki is not "their boss"
    - dec0dedab0de 4y ago
      That's an odd pet peeve, and while you're probably right in most places, I wouldn't be surprised if some countries define employee differently. Atleast in regards to wether or not certain practices or fine print is legal.
mdmglr 4y ago
The first video I watched on this channel was the Lego submarine. Quite a cool channel. The format of minimal talking and to-the-point and normal thumbnails is refreshing. Cool that one can make this much on their hobbies.
- amelius 4y ago
  The submarine video looks cool but I think the video speed has been manipulated.
  - sbst32 4y ago
    Well, of course it was, nobody is hiding it - you can see the timer in the pool part and the graph showing seconds in the beginning.
TrackerFF 4y ago
Makes me wonder what those super low-effort channels like Crafty Panda etc. make
makeitdouble 4y ago
The most impressive part is the creator gets to have a probably comfortable living from a channel that grew organically and still 100% depends on youtube’s algorithm. I follow the channel for years now, anyone not familiar should have a look [0]. It’s not “viral” targeted videos with crazy face thumbnails, borderline clickbaity titles, ABtested through a week, no “I got to stick to the schedule” weekly videos etc. The videos are really straightforward and focused, and derive all the entertainment from sheer viewer curiosity and the creator’s humor shining through. When I see the 100h average per video, It looks like they really nail down what actually matters and got to ignore the rest. IMO there’s very few channels that stayed very basic and true to their form while enjoying a comfortable success, I think this is the kind Youtube probably wanted to encourage the most, and hope many more thrive in places I never heard of. [0] https://www.youtube.com/BrickExperimentChannel https://www.youtube.com/BrickExperimentChannel
- system2 4y ago
  Another example is probably the Primitive Technology channel. Last week I was reading his interview and he mentions $1M savings from his channel.
  - _tom_ 4y ago
    It would also be interesting to see what his per hour is, after expenses. I'm pretty sure those videos take a LONG time to make.
    - squintychino 4y ago
      Probably close to 100%. He builds things from nature. And the only editing is cutting video. There's no audio mixing.
  - pojzon 4y ago
    He would make a lot more if not ppl blantly copycat’ing him and his work. Primitive Life, Primitive Tools, Primitive Technology Ideas… Youtube should take those channels down or force them to change name due to how SOE works.
dusted 4y ago
Okay, after watching some of the videos, I think he deserves it, good stuff.
amelius 4y ago
How many % does YouTube keep? Is that comparable to Apple's 30% in the App Store?
- roland35 4y ago
  He states this is the amount that google deposits in his bank account, it is ad revenue not app sales or anything like that
  - amelius 4y ago
    But both are very much comparable since you pay a form of "income tax" to the platform owner.
- clxxx 4y ago
  From my experience youtube takes about half. Around 40-50%
inamberclad 4y ago
How did he spend $20K on film equipment? A few pro-grade tripods and a solid camera shouldn't be more than a quarter of that.
- logicallee 4y ago
  Perhaps the $20,000 he spent on film equipment helped propel him to 2.9 million subscribers, 705 million video views, and $664,000 total earnings by allowing him to produce a grade of video that is better than other lego videos on YouTube.
- ultrafez 4y ago
  Some of the cost might come from buying a computer suitable for video editing, which I can imagine could be a couple of thousand dollars.
  - system2 4y ago
    Exactly. SSD storage alone can cost $5,000+. A nice camera is around $2,000 and lenses around $1,500 each.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
      Oh yeah. I have been producing content full-time on YouTube for nearly 7 years. I have two NASes, each with ten 18TB HDDs and an SSD cache, plus a separate all-SSD DAS that has ten 4TB TLC NVMe SSDs. Video storage is a significant cost that people frequently overlook. And we edit on two M1 Ultra Mac Studios, as well as M1 Max MacBook Pros, all fully-optioned. People vastly underestimate the time and expense involved with “just posting videos to YouTube.” (If it’s such easy money, why aren’t they doing it…)
  - ZhadruOmjar 4y ago
    I'll post this as a reply to your comment because I think other people will have this concern when it comes to content creation. You do not need a really beefy computer to edit videos especially when you're starting out. A Canva Pro subscription is a couple of hundred dollars and will let you upload all your footage and then edit it within the browser meaning you don't need to have a powerful computer. If you grow your channel and your needs change then just cancel Canva and buy that bigger machine you need. Use your phone or something on the cheaper end (of cameras) like a GoPro to record.
dbg31415 4y ago
Now also talk about production costs, staff salaries, and taxes.
- throwaway019254 4y ago
  From the article: > Total expenses are 30400 USD (5% of earnings). That includes Lego parts (7600 USD) and other stuff like film equipment (22800 USD). Such a low expense comes from having a lean video production. I do everything myself: design Lego builds, film, edit, buy parts, do the accounting. No salary is paid to external people. I don’t belong to an MCN.
- MrFoof 4y ago
  >Now also talk about production costs, staff salaries, and taxes. Per the article... "Total expenses are 30400 USD (5% of earnings). That includes Lego parts (7600 USD) and other stuff like film equipment (22800 USD). Such a low expense comes from having a lean video production. I do everything myself: design Lego builds, film, edit, buy parts, do the accounting. No salary is paid to external people. I don’t belong to an MCN." Taxes would be pretty simple to approximate given he lives in Finland and gives a rough average of his monthly revenue.
- cyborgx7 4y ago
  He talks about production costs. He doesn't have a staff. He mentions he pays taxes on the money but not how much. I recommend reading the article before commenting.
layer8 4y ago
For a slightly different Lego experience, I recommend the Brick Bending channel: https://youtube.com/@BrickBending/videos https://youtube.com/@BrickBending/videos
acdha 4y ago
I wonder how often “middle-aged males” means an adult LEGO fan, of whom there certainly are many, versus a parent letting their kid watch YouTube. My son has notably shifted my recommendations towards LEGO and/or trains.
- alvah 4y ago
  This is a good point, YouTube on my smart TVs is logged into my account, my kids are forever mangling my search history with Roblox, Minecraft, squishies & other random things kids are into. I'm sure Google / YT has no idea what type of ads to serve me!
  - sumedh 4y ago
    > I'm sure Google / YT has no idea what type of ads to serve me! I am sure the smart folks in Google will know who is watching based on the videos being watched and show appropriate ads at that time or maybe show generic ads about products which they know parents with young kids want.
    - madchinchilla 4y ago
      That wasn't the case just a few years ago, not sure how it works now since I've shifted my kids to YouTube Kids entirely. Youtube would casually throw in a 3-minute-long beer ad in the middle of a cartoon compilation my 3-year-old watched...
  - majani 4y ago
    Doesn't matter. Even for kids' ads, the parents are the target
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  This channel in particular is less about Lego than mechanics and experiments, so adults have plenty to enjoy from the videos. There’s a video about building a quadcopter for instance, and bricks are used for the frame but he’s also be soldering to have what he needs on the chip. Same for the submarine ones, where the radio control will have nothing to do with Lego. And you’ll see magnets, metal axles, non Lego controllers, survolting etc. Highly recommend for anyone curious about funny practical experiments.
tqi 4y ago
"successful" Lego channels are an avg of 9 years old is interesting. It shows difficult it is for new creators to break in. This is why social networks seem to have a natural lifecycle - new platforms offer an opportunity for a network reset. This was one of the keys to tiktoks rise (also their distribution is much more engagement based).
seanvk 4y ago
I follow a runner on YouTube who just posted his channel's earnings as well: https://youtu.be/QfkUM4hBge8 https://youtu.be/QfkUM4hBge8
baby 4y ago
I find it depressing because I’m in such a niche that I’ll never be able to monetize my channel. I think the path for me is to sell a course online or do a patreon.
- bookofjoe 4y ago
  I use Ko-fi and receive $1.64/month from one recurrent fan who pays $2. It's been that way for about two years.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
Thanks. As a creator with not even 1000 subscribers yet, I find this very valuable
adamgordonbell 4y ago
If you know of other similar yt earnings and stats breakdowns then please share them.
tedmcory77 4y ago
I came here to say that, based on my experience, his RPM is really low, but then he points out that he gets lots of views from India. We get around $4, for a niche, but primarily English speaking niche. It makes me see now more why Mr. Beast is getting his content translated....
- 2143 4y ago
  I'm not a youtuber, but I'm trying to understand the RPM. Based on my understanding, RPM is directly proportional to the amount of money you make. So, how does a lot of views from India cause a lower RPM? In the post the author even says this: > When I see my RPM drop suddenly, it is usually because my videos are being watched a lot in India Like, say you have a billion views, and 200 million of those views were from India. Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead? Why does Indian viewers cause this? I mean, they too see ads, right? Or is it because in India it costs less (??) to put up an ad?
  - sumedh 4y ago
    > Why does Indian viewers cause this? Not a lot of Indians are going to buy your product even if they the cost of the product will probably be lower for Indians so the advertiser makes less money
  - LordAtlas 4y ago
    > Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead? No, that would mathematically make no sense. His average RPM drops because of views from India but he still makes some money from the extra 200 million views. I'm Indian. The reason Indian views make less money is simply that the advertisers who advertise to Indian audiences have lower budgets due to PPP. So the amount they pay to YouTube is less than what a US advertiser would pay. In turn, the channel's share of the revenue (supposedly 55% of it) is also less.
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    Advertisers bid on ad spots, based on the viewer. It's all algorithmic and real-time. Advertisers can target ads based on various demographic info, e.g. age, gender, location. Cookies etc allow for even more targetting. So you can imagine an advertising bidding high for ad spots shown to 20-30 males in London (i.e. relatively rich westerners who can afford your product), and bidding low for poorer nations where people do not have as much money to spend (so are not your target customer - e.g. imagine you are trying to sell iPhones etc)
loveparade 4y ago
The most impressive thing to me is the initial period of 2-3 years, maybe more if the graph doesn't show the full history, with very little traction and negligible income. Of course that's expected, but sticking with it for so long without profits is not something most people can do, both emotionally or financially. Even if you love the topic you're making content on, the time and effort that goes into video editing isn't fun.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  > the time and effort that goes into video editing isn't fun I’ve seen YouTubers comment that they got in to it just because they loved video editing. Not planning to make money, just to share content and work worth the tools to create it.
cweill 4y ago
For reference, most gaming channels in the US have an RPM of $4-$5. I'm guessing their RPM is $1 because the channel owner is based in Europe. I imagine toy channels have higher RPMs in the US.
jongjong 4y ago
Does anyone know any good tricks to bypass visibility filtering to earn that kind of money? When I start to see traction (exponential) on most platforms, I get VFed before I hit 1000. Do I need to go as far as dedicated computer and register new account with fake ID/SIM card or is VPN enough?
- all2 4y ago
  I'd like to hear more about this. What is "VFed"? How many platforms/accounts have you tried? What does 'traction' look like in terms of raw numbers?
tkgally 4y ago
Just a personal note of praise for YouTube itself. I’ve watched videos on YouTube since it began, but it’s only in the past few years that I’ve come to appreciate what a great medium it has become. By allowing people to share content on all sorts of niche subjects and potentially make money at it, YouTube has become a fantastic resource for both education and entertainment. For someone like me who grew up with access only to television, radio, newspapers, and other mass media, it is a great advance. That said, I wish that YouTube had multiple competitors of similar size, both commercial and decentralized. It makes me nervous that access to so much great content is ultimately controlled by Google.
- passion__desire 4y ago
  The most important secret sauce is the recommender system. It takes into account transcripts, color historgrams of frames, actions and activities recognized in videos, frame cuts frequency, key personalities and entities recognized and what not. That's my humble guess.
  - askiiart 4y ago
    Well, all we can really know is that it's a machine learning-based black box.
  - esskay 4y ago
    Sadly that secret sauce has become fairly poor. Recommendation issues is the biggest problem with YouTube right now. I can open YouTube on any given day and will be given recommendations for things I've never shown the slightest bit of interest in. For example, right now I've got: - A clip for the big bang theory - Never watched anything on that show on youtube - "Why does italy have 6000 ghost towns (Hidden Italy)" - Absolutely no idea why it thinks that would interest me, never been to Italy or watched any kind of travel based videos. - "I hitchhiked Onto A Private Jet To Werever It's Going" - Again, I couldn't give a damn - "The Legendary World of Spyro Games - Caddicarus" - I have no idea what that is, or why it thinks it interests me. - "Singapore welcomes 2023 with New Year fireworks at Marina Bay" - Ok, and? Never been there, never watched any content about the place. - "I called every U.S. Representative in the country. Here were the responses I got." - I'm not American, and give absolutely zero f's about US politics. - "I've Been Living In A Ghost Town for Almost 3 YEARS!" - Good for you, I don't care. - "Dark Secrets of the World’s Most Isolated Island" - Nope. It has improved slightly from the looks of things. Usually I get videos about minecraft, or some twat gorping with their mouth wide open trying to make a mundane and uninteresting topic seem like something I should be interested in whilst remembering to smash the like button and click the bell. The platform has so many problems.
charcircuit 4y ago
>I have never done sponsorship, affiliate links, received donations, or anything else. He is leaving a lot of money on the table. Most youtubers make more money from sponsorships that from ad rev.
- Ndymium 4y ago
  In the case of donations, soliciting donations in any way is illegal in Finland for private persons and companies. That also makes things like YouTube's sponsor button, GitHub Sponsors, etc. nonstarters.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Sounds like a birds' home. Respect!
  - tpmx 4y ago
    It's illegal without a permit or a written notification to a police department, it seems: https://poliisi.fi/en/money-collections https://poliisi.fi/en/money-collections
    - Ndymium 4y ago
      The permit cannot be obtained for private persons or companies at all, only for non-profit associations. The "small-scale money collection" that can be done with a written notification is possible for private persons, but also has limits: * Max 10,000 € per round * Max 3 months per round * Max 2 rounds per year * Needs a group of at least 3 persons to organise
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
nunez 4y ago
Wow; I love this. Thank you for posting it! USD$90/hr on making content that you love ain't a bad haul. I wonder how much OP would continue to make from their top 10 most popular videos if they decided to throw in the towel and stop making new content. (I wonder if the USD$90/hr estimation includes 1099 taxes?) Also, 38.5% average retention seems to suggest that people have really crappy attention spans OR there's so much else on the Internet to barely consume!
jccalhoun 4y ago
Really interesting. I have been making videos for a couple years (I review movies. Link is in my profile).I don't want to make it a full time job but even at my much, much smaller scale I see the analytics pushing me to review certain genres of films because those films get more views. If I was trying to make money from it, I would certainly be tempted to pivot into only reviewing a specific genre. So it is no wonder that larger channels end up doing so much clickbait stuff: whatever pays the bills.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
For "how viewers find my videos", what about people who find the videos from subscription? I can't imagine that being too small.. Is it in "other youtube features"? <1.2% seems way too small. Edit: I just opened YouTube Studio myself, it looks they're counted as "Browse features": > Traffic from the homepage/home screen, the subscription feed, and other browsing features.
paulpauper 4y ago
Really good money. Publishers on YouTube making more than ever post-Covid due to surge in insurance , cloud/team software/aps, drug companies ads and other high CPM advertisers.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  I wish.
swyx 4y ago
> There are many, many creators who release Lego videos continuously and have no subs and get no views. Too many. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such creators. It is kind of heartbreaking to see people put so much time and effort for (supposedly) nothing. this is the saddest part. he is in the top 0.1% of his genre and making $90 an hour, but 99.9% of them make nothing. i dont know what drives people to want to make videos when the odds are like that
- runeks 4y ago
  Sad? How is it sad that I don't earn $600k when I put up a video on YouTube of a bird on my balcony? The 99.9% don't earn as much because their content isn't as highly viewed. That appears completely fair to me.
- post-it 4y ago
  They like their special interest + they like sharing it + they like making videos.
- cocacola1 4y ago
  I make lyric music videos with images generated from Midjourney (https://www.youtube.com/syntopikon https://www.youtube.com/syntopikon). I do it because its fun and, as I'm working through Rolling Stones Top 500 Albums list, jives well with it. Maybe one day it'll make money (~1,330 subs, but not monetized), but until then, its a relaxing, fun project.
  - premun 4y ago
    Can you actually monetize this when you don't own the music?
    - cocacola1 4y ago
      I might be able to eventually monetize shorts and video essays, but probably not the lyric videos directly. I made a Patreon for the imagesets used in each video (which are also available for free) and got a $3 Patron, which was surprising but still nice.
petesergeant 4y ago
I am interested by the gender split of viewership here, and wonder how heavily the various factors of intrinsic gender differences in interest, societal perceptions of Lego as a boy's toy, and confounding factors ("Dad set up the YouTube account that child Emily is watching from", Mom has less leisure time) contribute to each of these. I also note that the themes of the most popular videos ("BIG vortex", "tank" "car") are often associated more with traditionally masculine than feminine themes, perhaps making it hard to pull any Lego-specific insights from this. Certainly my nieces are no less interested in Lego than my nephews, and growing up my sisters weren't less interested than my brothers (although there did seem to be a difference in focus in construction vs Sims-like play).
- jdkee 4y ago
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  - zapdrive 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - ipv4dhcp 4y ago
    gender is also biological
madduci 4y ago
Key information here is > But don’t think filming Lego will guarantee you high earnings. There are many, many creators who release Lego videos continuously and have no subs and get no views. Too many. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such creators. It is kind of heartbreaking to see people put so much time and effort for (supposedly) nothing OP got lucky to get a lot of subscribers and made themselves known in the subject, 10 M views per video in average is a good performance.
armini 4y ago
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_tom_ 4y ago
I'd bet his ad revenue is higher than normal. Lego sounds like a perfect subject for ad supported. Inexpensive (somewhat), easy to buy on line, always another kit to buy. Take 3blue1brown. Fantastic content, but what ads relate? (Probably Lego, but that might just be me).
_tom_ 4y ago
$90 is not much for all that. As an employee, that's pretty good, but as someone who probably had to invest thousands of hours before he knew if he'd see any revenue, that's a pretty meager return! It would be interesting to see his revenue graphed over time. Pretty sure he didn't make 12k/mo for the first few years. Which means he's making more Than that, now.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  His content is quite "evergreen" though, so even if he were to stop making content today, money would keep rolling in for quite some time.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    Not necessarily. If you stop uploading, views will fall off a cliff sooner than you’d think. Even for old content that had been consistently attracting views. It kinda sucks.
deleted 4y ago
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hoseja 4y ago
Over 95% of discovery on Youtube is incesutous? Kinda sad to see but I'm sure Susan is happy.
nigamanth 4y ago
Thanks to people like you - and a network like Hacker News people are coming to know the truth and the future of a career like YouTube. This saves people an invaluable amount of time and expertise to finally know whether this is worth it or not. This explains a lot about how YouTube gains most of their money, I mean like for the content you're making they get most of the monetization.
lukeschwartz 4y ago
Is nobody else surprised the amount is so low? If you look at his video catalogue, basically every video is a "hit" even if upload frequency is relatively low. Youtubers making 20 videos a month with <1M views/video make considerably more money, i.e., is better to upload less quality videos and have "moderate" views that to make high quality infrequent videos with a lot of views. You'd think advertisers should pay more per ad on a high quality video than on a trash one. The extreme example of this is Mr. Beast, who makes "high" quality videos (at least in the sense of production) but uploads pretty frequently (specially considering he has multiple channels).
- blamazon 4y ago
  As a YouTube addict, I'm not surprised. There's a whole other advertising revenue stream that BEC is just not doing, because they have the monster viewcounts to avoid it and still make a living: in-video sponsorships. I follow a lot of smaller full time YouTubers, nearly all do sponsored advertising within their videos. That is where advertisers are indeed paying more for quality content highly targeted to their consumers - directly to the creators, not through Google's platform. Those deals can be very lucrative because audiences are more receptive to advertising that comes from, and directly supports, the creators they follow. I've seen creators I respect take somewhat dubious sponsorships and still be supported by their fans. The recent Established Titles controversy was a good example of that. [1] [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna59518 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna59518
- Zopieux 4y ago
  It's not very surprising, as other mentioned on this thread (and in the blog itself) this channel's popularity is only organic growth, they do not do $$$ sponsorships, they do not employ clickbait practices (which work, sadly), and the audience is relatively niche compared to your random trend-setting garbage youtuber like Mr. Beast.
alkonaut 4y ago
> impressions click-through rate: 5.9% What does this mean? That 5.9% of users who were shown an ad, clicked the ad (and thus left the video to pursue catfood?)
- mdrzn 4y ago
  On YouTube impression is whenever the thumbnail is loaded in the user browser, anywhere in the page. Impressions CTR means 5.9% of the users shown the thumbnail/title/video clicked on it. With 10.8m views and a CTR of 5.9%, it means that specific video had about 180m impressions.
ricardo81 4y ago
Adsense was great when it came out (as someone who used it). Passive income, build something and make money in the hours in between when you're not working on it. I wonder how much more money their (or any) channel would make and how long it would take to taper off? I suppose the main reason would be algo changes on recommendations, then age after a number of years, and possibly other channels potentially 'recycling' the content. Perhaps the popularity of lego and YT itself also.
T3RMINATED 4y ago
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RagnarD 4y ago
Very cool and informative article, more of this.
deleted 4y ago
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bambax 4y ago
subscribers: 2.9 million video views: 705 million uploads: 65 total earnings: 664 000 USD Dollars per 1000 views a little under 1 USD. Average number of views per video: 10 millions (!) Views per subscriber: 200-250 (also a lot!) It's a super successful channel, and it's not easy to emulate those numbers...
aczerepinski 4y ago
Love this. As a music YouTuber who can’t stop buying camera lenses and instruments and isn’t yet at the 1000 sub mark for monetization, my earnings are solidly red. Nice to see that black is possible. (I’ll keep creating and sharing either way though)
carlmcqueen 4y ago
Really interesting point but I know I've gotten older when he said 'my audience is middle-aged' but the way I read the chart from google is that most of his audience is between 21-34 with a tail of older than that and a steep drop off after the age of 40. That is older millennials for sure, but is that 'middle aged'? Middle aged traditionally is 40-60.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  With the average life expectancy of a male in the USA being ~75, it makes intuitive sense to call "middle age" 37 +/- some years. The fact that middle aged is defined as 40-60 is weird in the same way that the "mid-western" United States being almost entirely east of Mississippi river is.
danielvaughn 4y ago
This is lower than I would expect. If they make on average about 10K per video, and each video gets about 10M views, that means they only get about 1K in revenue per 1M views.
steveBK123 4y ago
I have to say for the hours being put in (basically full time job) & number of views, the payout is surprisingly low. It seems like the ones that make megabucks need to do brand partnerships and sponsorships type stuff, which is itself a lot of work to launch and manage.
s0rr0wskill 4y ago
The author stated that he doesn't do sponsorships or anything. From what I've read here, are sponsorships that lucrative?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  LTT is way more diversified than other channels, but Youtube’s ads bring in less than in video sponsors for instance. https://linustechtips.com/topic/1270087-linus-media-group-makes-19-million-per-year-in-revenue-explained-corrected/ https://linustechtips.com/topic/1270087-linus-media-group-ma...
- jpk2f2 4y ago
  They can be, and they're certainly more reliable than the variance of views, ad rev, and hoping your video doesn't get demonetized in some way.
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I wish more or this data was publicly available, it really gives you a perspective and understanding which is otherwise extremely hard to get to.
hahamrfunnyguy 4y ago
I have a small channel (7,500 subs) that was quite active for a couple years. I got a bit sick of creating content so now I only publish a few videos a year. It is interesting to see the difference in RPM for different kinds of content. My channel RPM is $3.52, highest video is $7.01. I get around 8,000 views per month for all my videos.
pnathan 4y ago
BEC is one of the best YouTube channels. Not per se because of the legos, but in how the videos assess and iterate. Also, as another HN commentator pointed out, its not "baity", (s?)he doesn't do any of the stupid BS to hype him(her?)self. Yes, I'm in the target audience: middle age male in US. I think this is the perfect example of a niche area with an whale/long-tail distribution. It demonstrates the futility - to me - of doing any serious "YouTubing" as a professional plan - its something you have to strike luck and then build on.
- tpmx 4y ago
  Yes. The cleverness applied in the iterations is unsurpassed. The channel has many clones, but they're not nearly as clever. Sadly, I keep getting recommended clips from these mindless "let's build a big lego technic thing to do something, without much cleverness applied at all" videos. It wouldn't surprise me if they earn much more than this clever channel.
kakoni 4y ago
Any estimates how much is yt/Google generating revenue per bec videos watched?
misterpigs 4y ago
Wow this channel was the first lego experiment videos I watched. I thought this channel was the same (no clickbait, straight to the content, no voiceovers) https://www.youtube.com/@BrickTechnology https://www.youtube.com/@BrickTechnology but I was mistaken!
CarbonCycles 4y ago
I enjoyed this blog...not so much about the topic regarding legos or even YouTube. I appreciated the way the owner used analytics to quickly better understand his demographics and did some very high-level marketing/product analytics.
koneyaya 4y ago
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koneyaya 4y ago
[flagged]

2015 points by tpmx 4y ago

tpmx 4y ago

(Not my blog/channel.)

Super interesting - one thing to keep in mind is advertising CPM rate can be wildly different by audience. A quick google shows a range of $0.03/cpm to $13.00/cpm depending on category. https://stashvine.com/most-profitable-youtube-niches/ https://stashvine.com/most-profitable-youtube-niches/

system2 4y ago
I hardly trust any "make money" website statistics.
ramraj07 4y ago
Absolutely. Every auto driver and worker in india ha YouTube on through their entire work shift. I would not be surprised if their ad impression is valued at a thousand times less than an average American moms ad view..
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > Every auto driver and worker in india ha YouTube on through their entire work shift. Meanwhile in Canada, our wireless telecoms have convinced the government that this level of bandwidth consumption should cost hundreds a month otherwise the cellular network would crash.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    It is absolutely a great example of monopolies playing havoc. India got a massive bandwidth bump precisely because a new player (Jio) came and gave unprecedented bandwidth at literal pennies per GB and changed india forever. Not saying this company or it’s runners are nice people or aren’t corrupt but it helps even if corruption has a level of monopoly protection I suppose!
  - perryizgr8 4y ago
    > our wireless telecoms have convinced the government What's the government got to do with mobile data prices?
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Poor regulation of a public good: spectrum.
    - KMnO4 4y ago
      One example: the telecoms launched an attack campaign demanding the government prevent competition from entering the market. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1316055 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1316055
- jw1224 4y ago
  The CPM figures are in the blog post: - USA: $6.98 - India: $0.62
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    That’s still the average for HIS audience, which within india also likely varies a lot.
makestuff 4y ago
Something interesting I found out during my ad-tech time was that one of the most expensive ads to buy is car companies targeting people who are about to have a lease end and need to purchase a new car.
majani 4y ago
What he didn't add is that YouTube will typically seed your content in the country you upload in. The privilege of birthplace continues to be a huge influence in our lives, even with algorithms on the internet running the show

Someone1234 4y ago

So they make around $150K/year but likely pay more tax, higher overheads, and have to fund their own benefits out of that. Depending on where they live this could either be a very good income or only marginally higher than tech wages with much higher risk/stress. That's on 2M-6M viewers too. Makes me wonder how YouTube channels like Linus Tech Tips are able to seemingly hire around one-hundred full time staff? I have to imagine revenue from their other sources (e.g. their merchandise, sponsors, other?) is the majority of their income if this is what we can expect from YouTube. Regardless thanks for sharing.

blihp 4y ago
For the larger channels such as LTT, the YouTube ad revenue is likely approaching rounding error compared to their sponsorship/merch/platform revenue.
- everseeking 4y ago
  I think Linus recently mentioned (probably on LAN show) that they are positioned soon to make more money from merchandise than what their YT channel generates - because of their huge drops of the new backpack and screwdriver.
  - nunez 4y ago
    Simply Nailogical did the same thing as did a ton of the beauty vloggers Christine (host) now sells what appears to be a very successful boutique nail polish line. So successful, she and her SO basically spend more time BSing with their fans (customers) on YT Live and Twitch than making new content
- modeless 4y ago
  I don't think this is true in general. I think it's a lot closer to 50/50 for most. Obviously a lot of variability between channels, but YouTube ad revenue is not trivial.
- ColonelBlimp 4y ago

shric 4y ago

This is fantastic information and very sobering for those of us with smaller channels. I had 10-50 views per month until two weeks ago and I got 200k views suddenly thanks to the algorithm, but it's already peaked so I expect I can't make more than a few dollars per month. See what happens though!

jeffwass 4y ago
Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? my best video has 8k views, coming in at between 100-1000 per month depending how many impressions the algorithm decides to allot to me.
- sumedh 4y ago
  > Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? It happens when your video reaches the frontpage of Youtube.
- shric 4y ago
  > Wow how’s you get such a huge jump in views? I honestly have no idea, but I doubt it reached "the front page of YouTube" like the sibling post suggested or it would have millions. Somehow it must've got suggested to a few people and maybe it had a high engagement rate (likes and comments?) which was somehow taken positively. I'm purely guessing though. It really isn't an impressive video though it does have a 99% like ratio. I'm a bit embarrassed to self promote here so I'll email you based on your HN profile site contact page.

warent 4y ago

The transparency of this is really amazing; big respect. It's interesting to think that this information was quietly posted to their low-traffic blog with little notice, meanwhile the information contained is actually extremely valuable (and itself would have probably made a highly valuable youtube video itself with 10s of millions of views). I wonder how much other information exists on the web that is extremely valuable yet unnoticed

PhilosAccnting 4y ago
I like to think that most of the valuable information is generally unnoticed. Most of the things I make are very valuable to the people who want it, but any one of those things are pretty useless to the majority of people who would find it. A huge part of the phenomenon comes through how fashions form. Hype collects around emotionally-charged things. By their very nature, their spectacle is compromising some of the sincerity and value to maximize reach. The spotlight is power, and power corrupts. HN is a perfect example of this: looks like a chat forum from 1998, but is very much current and edgy with the cool kids.
Decabytes 4y ago
I don't think YouTube allows you to make videos showing your revenue, but I could be wrong
- phphphphp 4y ago
  Many years ago you were prohibited from sharing warnings by virtue of YouTube monetisation being through AdSense but, as far as I know, there’s no longer such a restriction. Lots of people publish their earnings nowadays, very common amongst finance channels.
- Izikiel43 4y ago
  Linus tech tips did a video sharing their YouTube earnings last year
  - geerlingguy 4y ago

no_carrier 4y ago

Interesting to compare this to SocialBlade, which estimate a range of $55k - $887k per year.

swyx 4y ago
technically correct, but a range of more than an order of magnitude makes it hard to use.

tantalor 4y ago

> mostly middle-aged males No, most viewers were 18-44. "Middle-aged" is 45-65.

jszymborski 4y ago
65 is only middle-aged if you plan to live to 130...
- eCa 4y ago
  While 65 is pushing it, middle age does not mean ”half way to death”[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > 65 is only middle-aged if you plan to live to 130... 60 is a more usual endpoint, but... It's a range. The middle of that range is 55, so following that math it would be 110, not 130. But as the other reply points out, it's the middle section of being an adult. So if you take that 45-65 range, and treat it as the exact middle of your adult life, then you get 92, which is a bit high but not crazy. If you take that 45-65 range and assume old age will be the same length, you get 85, which is pretty close for wealthy non-US countries.
nl 4y ago
"Modern social scientists generally agree that midlife begins around 35 to 40 and ends around 55 to 60." (Wikipedia) But you are right that his peak earning range was 25-34 (so less than middle age) and his second highest range was 18-24. So yes I'd agree this isn't middle-age.
altacc 4y ago
The real error is probably that some fraction of this is children of those men, as in many family homes men are the ones who login to YouTube on the TV or other devices. That may or may not be beneficial depending upon whom the advertisers think they're bidding on.

blacksmithgu 4y ago

$10000/video seems crazy to me, but it makes sense if each video is averaging 10M views for ad-friendly content. It'd be interesting to see how many Youtube channels make it to this size, and if there is anything that differentiates successful channels from obscure ones (beyond quality).

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
To highlight just how crazy things can get, my highest-earning YouTube video has earned well-over $100,000 in AdSense revenue. But that’s not the end of the craziness. About a year ago, that video was suddenly and inexplicably deemed by YouTube as unsuitable for all advertisers. I appealed, but they stuck with their decision. In the year since, that video has brought in ~$80. While I have found success on YouTube, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody who doesn’t have a strong track record of attracting and maintaining a large audience. YouTube is the most saturated market on the planet, and and at the end of the day, you are subject to the whims of a largely-opaque algorithm. It is not possible to succeed on YouTube without significant effort, but significant effort doesn’t guarantee success. Moreover, the connection between effort and reward is unpredictable, and it’s sometimes not there at all. You can be flying high today, only to have it all change tomorrow, without any explanation. People understand that high-quality content is necessary for success on YouTube, but they often lose sight of the fact that it is not sufficient. Not only do you have to create quality content, but you have to create content that people want to watch more than everything else that is available to them on YouTube - which is obviously very, very hard.
- truetraveller 4y ago
  Very interesting. Link to your video?
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable sharing that. To whatever extent it still is, I prefer to keep my HN identity anonymous.

Garlef 4y ago

Most interesting number to me is the 90$ per hour. Seems like solid money. And since the channel might grow more this might not be the end. But I guess it's hard hard work to grow a channel to this size and also not a guaranteed success.

tra3 4y ago
$90/hour is real nice money, but for some reason i assumed a channel with that many subs would make more money. For every million plus channel, there’s probably a million+ channels with no subs. Basically have a day job before you go all in as a content creator.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Subs on YT don't mean revenue... they're just people who may watch your videos later. It's more a hueristic than anything.
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    And then even if they do watch your video, your topic of choice will strongly affect your revenue per view. For example, a personal finance channel makes a lot more per view that say, a channel about thrift store finds.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    > Subs on YT don't mean revenue... they're just people who may watch your videos later. Right on. I always tell people that I can’t pay my employees with subs and likes. For most videos, an overwhelming majority of views come from traffic suggested by YouTube in some manner (home page, sidebar, after a video). I have millions of subscribers across a few channels. Subscriber notification and feeds invariably account for a very-low-single-digit percent of video views.
sircastor 4y ago
It's $90/hour, which is great, but it is also 100 hours per video, and depending on what your release schedule is that could be an insane amount of work. They list 65 uploads, which is a little more than once a month for 5 years.

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago

I could be wrong but I don't think YouTube TOS allows publicizing this kind of information. I would be afraid of my channel being de-monetized. I believe they have a similar policy for AdSense.

runarberg 4y ago
I think such policy is illegal in many countries. An employer cannot prohibit workers from discussing salaries. This is often a measure to combat against gender discrimination at a workplace. I’m not sure how this affects contractors, but I would be surprised if these laws wouldn’t cover contractors as well.
- foota 4y ago
  They're not a contractor?
- kube-system 4y ago
  The YouTube Partner program doesn’t pay people to do any sort of work, though. It is a revenue sharing program. Usually a wage or salary is a payment in exchange for doing something. Which this isn’t. I would imagine most places treat this similarly to the way something like a book publishing agreement works.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  >> An employer cannot prohibit This is my biggest pet peeve with YouTubers. THEY ARE NOT EMPLOYEES OF YOUTUBE. employment laws do not apply to a youtuber, unless they are employed by some other company, but they do NOT have an employment relationship with YouTube, they are not "employees" of YouTube, and Susan Wojcicki is not "their boss"
  - dec0dedab0de 4y ago
    That's an odd pet peeve, and while you're probably right in most places, I wouldn't be surprised if some countries define employee differently. Atleast in regards to wether or not certain practices or fine print is legal.

mdmglr 4y ago

The first video I watched on this channel was the Lego submarine. Quite a cool channel. The format of minimal talking and to-the-point and normal thumbnails is refreshing. Cool that one can make this much on their hobbies.

amelius 4y ago
The submarine video looks cool but I think the video speed has been manipulated.
- sbst32 4y ago
  Well, of course it was, nobody is hiding it - you can see the timer in the pool part and the graph showing seconds in the beginning.

TrackerFF 4y ago

Makes me wonder what those super low-effort channels like Crafty Panda etc. make

makeitdouble 4y ago

The most impressive part is the creator gets to have a probably comfortable living from a channel that grew organically and still 100% depends on youtube’s algorithm. I follow the channel for years now, anyone not familiar should have a look [0]. It’s not “viral” targeted videos with crazy face thumbnails, borderline clickbaity titles, ABtested through a week, no “I got to stick to the schedule” weekly videos etc. The videos are really straightforward and focused, and derive all the entertainment from sheer viewer curiosity and the creator’s humor shining through. When I see the 100h average per video, It looks like they really nail down what actually matters and got to ignore the rest. IMO there’s very few channels that stayed very basic and true to their form while enjoying a comfortable success, I think this is the kind Youtube probably wanted to encourage the most, and hope many more thrive in places I never heard of. [0] https://www.youtube.com/BrickExperimentChannel https://www.youtube.com/BrickExperimentChannel

system2 4y ago
Another example is probably the Primitive Technology channel. Last week I was reading his interview and he mentions $1M savings from his channel.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  It would also be interesting to see what his per hour is, after expenses. I'm pretty sure those videos take a LONG time to make.
  - squintychino 4y ago
    Probably close to 100%. He builds things from nature. And the only editing is cutting video. There's no audio mixing.
- pojzon 4y ago
  He would make a lot more if not ppl blantly copycat’ing him and his work. Primitive Life, Primitive Tools, Primitive Technology Ideas… Youtube should take those channels down or force them to change name due to how SOE works.

dusted 4y ago

Okay, after watching some of the videos, I think he deserves it, good stuff.

amelius 4y ago

How many % does YouTube keep? Is that comparable to Apple's 30% in the App Store?

roland35 4y ago
He states this is the amount that google deposits in his bank account, it is ad revenue not app sales or anything like that
- amelius 4y ago
  But both are very much comparable since you pay a form of "income tax" to the platform owner.
clxxx 4y ago
From my experience youtube takes about half. Around 40-50%

inamberclad 4y ago

How did he spend $20K on film equipment? A few pro-grade tripods and a solid camera shouldn't be more than a quarter of that.

logicallee 4y ago
Perhaps the $20,000 he spent on film equipment helped propel him to 2.9 million subscribers, 705 million video views, and $664,000 total earnings by allowing him to produce a grade of video that is better than other lego videos on YouTube.
ultrafez 4y ago
Some of the cost might come from buying a computer suitable for video editing, which I can imagine could be a couple of thousand dollars.
- system2 4y ago
  Exactly. SSD storage alone can cost $5,000+. A nice camera is around $2,000 and lenses around $1,500 each.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
    Oh yeah. I have been producing content full-time on YouTube for nearly 7 years. I have two NASes, each with ten 18TB HDDs and an SSD cache, plus a separate all-SSD DAS that has ten 4TB TLC NVMe SSDs. Video storage is a significant cost that people frequently overlook. And we edit on two M1 Ultra Mac Studios, as well as M1 Max MacBook Pros, all fully-optioned. People vastly underestimate the time and expense involved with “just posting videos to YouTube.” (If it’s such easy money, why aren’t they doing it…)
- ZhadruOmjar 4y ago
  I'll post this as a reply to your comment because I think other people will have this concern when it comes to content creation. You do not need a really beefy computer to edit videos especially when you're starting out. A Canva Pro subscription is a couple of hundred dollars and will let you upload all your footage and then edit it within the browser meaning you don't need to have a powerful computer. If you grow your channel and your needs change then just cancel Canva and buy that bigger machine you need. Use your phone or something on the cheaper end (of cameras) like a GoPro to record.

dbg31415 4y ago

Now also talk about production costs, staff salaries, and taxes.

throwaway019254 4y ago
From the article: > Total expenses are 30400 USD (5% of earnings). That includes Lego parts (7600 USD) and other stuff like film equipment (22800 USD). Such a low expense comes from having a lean video production. I do everything myself: design Lego builds, film, edit, buy parts, do the accounting. No salary is paid to external people. I don’t belong to an MCN.
MrFoof 4y ago
>Now also talk about production costs, staff salaries, and taxes. Per the article... "Total expenses are 30400 USD (5% of earnings). That includes Lego parts (7600 USD) and other stuff like film equipment (22800 USD). Such a low expense comes from having a lean video production. I do everything myself: design Lego builds, film, edit, buy parts, do the accounting. No salary is paid to external people. I don’t belong to an MCN." Taxes would be pretty simple to approximate given he lives in Finland and gives a rough average of his monthly revenue.
cyborgx7 4y ago
He talks about production costs. He doesn't have a staff. He mentions he pays taxes on the money but not how much. I recommend reading the article before commenting.

layer8 4y ago

For a slightly different Lego experience, I recommend the Brick Bending channel: https://youtube.com/@BrickBending/videos https://youtube.com/@BrickBending/videos

acdha 4y ago

I wonder how often “middle-aged males” means an adult LEGO fan, of whom there certainly are many, versus a parent letting their kid watch YouTube. My son has notably shifted my recommendations towards LEGO and/or trains.

alvah 4y ago
This is a good point, YouTube on my smart TVs is logged into my account, my kids are forever mangling my search history with Roblox, Minecraft, squishies & other random things kids are into. I'm sure Google / YT has no idea what type of ads to serve me!
- sumedh 4y ago
  > I'm sure Google / YT has no idea what type of ads to serve me! I am sure the smart folks in Google will know who is watching based on the videos being watched and show appropriate ads at that time or maybe show generic ads about products which they know parents with young kids want.
  - madchinchilla 4y ago
    That wasn't the case just a few years ago, not sure how it works now since I've shifted my kids to YouTube Kids entirely. Youtube would casually throw in a 3-minute-long beer ad in the middle of a cartoon compilation my 3-year-old watched...
- majani 4y ago
  Doesn't matter. Even for kids' ads, the parents are the target
makeitdouble 4y ago
This channel in particular is less about Lego than mechanics and experiments, so adults have plenty to enjoy from the videos. There’s a video about building a quadcopter for instance, and bricks are used for the frame but he’s also be soldering to have what he needs on the chip. Same for the submarine ones, where the radio control will have nothing to do with Lego. And you’ll see magnets, metal axles, non Lego controllers, survolting etc. Highly recommend for anyone curious about funny practical experiments.

tqi 4y ago

"successful" Lego channels are an avg of 9 years old is interesting. It shows difficult it is for new creators to break in. This is why social networks seem to have a natural lifecycle - new platforms offer an opportunity for a network reset. This was one of the keys to tiktoks rise (also their distribution is much more engagement based).

seanvk 4y ago

I follow a runner on YouTube who just posted his channel's earnings as well: https://youtu.be/QfkUM4hBge8 https://youtu.be/QfkUM4hBge8

baby 4y ago

I find it depressing because I’m in such a niche that I’ll never be able to monetize my channel. I think the path for me is to sell a course online or do a patreon.

bookofjoe 4y ago
I use Ko-fi and receive $1.64/month from one recurrent fan who pays $2. It's been that way for about two years.

vouaobrasil 4y ago

Thanks. As a creator with not even 1000 subscribers yet, I find this very valuable

adamgordonbell 4y ago

If you know of other similar yt earnings and stats breakdowns then please share them.

tedmcory77 4y ago

I came here to say that, based on my experience, his RPM is really low, but then he points out that he gets lots of views from India. We get around $4, for a niche, but primarily English speaking niche. It makes me see now more why Mr. Beast is getting his content translated....

2143 4y ago
I'm not a youtuber, but I'm trying to understand the RPM. Based on my understanding, RPM is directly proportional to the amount of money you make. So, how does a lot of views from India cause a lower RPM? In the post the author even says this: > When I see my RPM drop suddenly, it is usually because my videos are being watched a lot in India Like, say you have a billion views, and 200 million of those views were from India. Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead? Why does Indian viewers cause this? I mean, they too see ads, right? Or is it because in India it costs less (??) to put up an ad?
- sumedh 4y ago
  > Why does Indian viewers cause this? Not a lot of Indians are going to buy your product even if they the cost of the product will probably be lower for Indians so the advertiser makes less money
- LordAtlas 4y ago
  > Would your revenue be higher if those 200 Indian views never happened and your total views was only 800 million instead? No, that would mathematically make no sense. His average RPM drops because of views from India but he still makes some money from the extra 200 million views. I'm Indian. The reason Indian views make less money is simply that the advertisers who advertise to Indian audiences have lower budgets due to PPP. So the amount they pay to YouTube is less than what a US advertiser would pay. In turn, the channel's share of the revenue (supposedly 55% of it) is also less.
- mattlondon 4y ago
  Advertisers bid on ad spots, based on the viewer. It's all algorithmic and real-time. Advertisers can target ads based on various demographic info, e.g. age, gender, location. Cookies etc allow for even more targetting. So you can imagine an advertising bidding high for ad spots shown to 20-30 males in London (i.e. relatively rich westerners who can afford your product), and bidding low for poorer nations where people do not have as much money to spend (so are not your target customer - e.g. imagine you are trying to sell iPhones etc)

loveparade 4y ago

The most impressive thing to me is the initial period of 2-3 years, maybe more if the graph doesn't show the full history, with very little traction and negligible income. Of course that's expected, but sticking with it for so long without profits is not something most people can do, both emotionally or financially. Even if you love the topic you're making content on, the time and effort that goes into video editing isn't fun.

Gigachad 4y ago
> the time and effort that goes into video editing isn't fun I’ve seen YouTubers comment that they got in to it just because they loved video editing. Not planning to make money, just to share content and work worth the tools to create it.

cweill 4y ago

For reference, most gaming channels in the US have an RPM of $4-$5. I'm guessing their RPM is $1 because the channel owner is based in Europe. I imagine toy channels have higher RPMs in the US.

jongjong 4y ago

Does anyone know any good tricks to bypass visibility filtering to earn that kind of money? When I start to see traction (exponential) on most platforms, I get VFed before I hit 1000. Do I need to go as far as dedicated computer and register new account with fake ID/SIM card or is VPN enough?

all2 4y ago
I'd like to hear more about this. What is "VFed"? How many platforms/accounts have you tried? What does 'traction' look like in terms of raw numbers?

tkgally 4y ago

Just a personal note of praise for YouTube itself. I’ve watched videos on YouTube since it began, but it’s only in the past few years that I’ve come to appreciate what a great medium it has become. By allowing people to share content on all sorts of niche subjects and potentially make money at it, YouTube has become a fantastic resource for both education and entertainment. For someone like me who grew up with access only to television, radio, newspapers, and other mass media, it is a great advance. That said, I wish that YouTube had multiple competitors of similar size, both commercial and decentralized. It makes me nervous that access to so much great content is ultimately controlled by Google.

passion__desire 4y ago
The most important secret sauce is the recommender system. It takes into account transcripts, color historgrams of frames, actions and activities recognized in videos, frame cuts frequency, key personalities and entities recognized and what not. That's my humble guess.
- askiiart 4y ago
  Well, all we can really know is that it's a machine learning-based black box.
- esskay 4y ago
  Sadly that secret sauce has become fairly poor. Recommendation issues is the biggest problem with YouTube right now. I can open YouTube on any given day and will be given recommendations for things I've never shown the slightest bit of interest in. For example, right now I've got: - A clip for the big bang theory - Never watched anything on that show on youtube - "Why does italy have 6000 ghost towns (Hidden Italy)" - Absolutely no idea why it thinks that would interest me, never been to Italy or watched any kind of travel based videos. - "I hitchhiked Onto A Private Jet To Werever It's Going" - Again, I couldn't give a damn - "The Legendary World of Spyro Games - Caddicarus" - I have no idea what that is, or why it thinks it interests me. - "Singapore welcomes 2023 with New Year fireworks at Marina Bay" - Ok, and? Never been there, never watched any content about the place. - "I called every U.S. Representative in the country. Here were the responses I got." - I'm not American, and give absolutely zero f's about US politics. - "I've Been Living In A Ghost Town for Almost 3 YEARS!" - Good for you, I don't care. - "Dark Secrets of the World’s Most Isolated Island" - Nope. It has improved slightly from the looks of things. Usually I get videos about minecraft, or some twat gorping with their mouth wide open trying to make a mundane and uninteresting topic seem like something I should be interested in whilst remembering to smash the like button and click the bell. The platform has so many problems.

charcircuit 4y ago

>I have never done sponsorship, affiliate links, received donations, or anything else. He is leaving a lot of money on the table. Most youtubers make more money from sponsorships that from ad rev.

Ndymium 4y ago
In the case of donations, soliciting donations in any way is illegal in Finland for private persons and companies. That also makes things like YouTube's sponsor button, GitHub Sponsors, etc. nonstarters.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Sounds like a birds' home. Respect!
- tpmx 4y ago
  It's illegal without a permit or a written notification to a police department, it seems: https://poliisi.fi/en/money-collections https://poliisi.fi/en/money-collections
  - Ndymium 4y ago
    The permit cannot be obtained for private persons or companies at all, only for non-profit associations. The "small-scale money collection" that can be done with a written notification is possible for private persons, but also has limits: * Max 10,000 € per round * Max 3 months per round * Max 2 rounds per year * Needs a group of at least 3 persons to organise
    - deleted 4y ago
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nunez 4y ago

Wow; I love this. Thank you for posting it! USD$90/hr on making content that you love ain't a bad haul. I wonder how much OP would continue to make from their top 10 most popular videos if they decided to throw in the towel and stop making new content. (I wonder if the USD$90/hr estimation includes 1099 taxes?) Also, 38.5% average retention seems to suggest that people have really crappy attention spans OR there's so much else on the Internet to barely consume!

jccalhoun 4y ago

Really interesting. I have been making videos for a couple years (I review movies. Link is in my profile).I don't want to make it a full time job but even at my much, much smaller scale I see the analytics pushing me to review certain genres of films because those films get more views. If I was trying to make money from it, I would certainly be tempted to pivot into only reviewing a specific genre. So it is no wonder that larger channels end up doing so much clickbait stuff: whatever pays the bills.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

For "how viewers find my videos", what about people who find the videos from subscription? I can't imagine that being too small.. Is it in "other youtube features"? <1.2% seems way too small. Edit: I just opened YouTube Studio myself, it looks they're counted as "Browse features": > Traffic from the homepage/home screen, the subscription feed, and other browsing features.

paulpauper 4y ago

Really good money. Publishers on YouTube making more than ever post-Covid due to surge in insurance , cloud/team software/aps, drug companies ads and other high CPM advertisers.

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
I wish.

swyx 4y ago

> There are many, many creators who release Lego videos continuously and have no subs and get no views. Too many. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such creators. It is kind of heartbreaking to see people put so much time and effort for (supposedly) nothing. this is the saddest part. he is in the top 0.1% of his genre and making $90 an hour, but 99.9% of them make nothing. i dont know what drives people to want to make videos when the odds are like that

runeks 4y ago
Sad? How is it sad that I don't earn $600k when I put up a video on YouTube of a bird on my balcony? The 99.9% don't earn as much because their content isn't as highly viewed. That appears completely fair to me.
post-it 4y ago
They like their special interest + they like sharing it + they like making videos.
cocacola1 4y ago
I make lyric music videos with images generated from Midjourney (https://www.youtube.com/syntopikon https://www.youtube.com/syntopikon). I do it because its fun and, as I'm working through Rolling Stones Top 500 Albums list, jives well with it. Maybe one day it'll make money (~1,330 subs, but not monetized), but until then, its a relaxing, fun project.
- premun 4y ago
  Can you actually monetize this when you don't own the music?
  - cocacola1 4y ago
    I might be able to eventually monetize shorts and video essays, but probably not the lyric videos directly. I made a Patreon for the imagesets used in each video (which are also available for free) and got a $3 Patron, which was surprising but still nice.

petesergeant 4y ago

I am interested by the gender split of viewership here, and wonder how heavily the various factors of intrinsic gender differences in interest, societal perceptions of Lego as a boy's toy, and confounding factors ("Dad set up the YouTube account that child Emily is watching from", Mom has less leisure time) contribute to each of these. I also note that the themes of the most popular videos ("BIG vortex", "tank" "car") are often associated more with traditionally masculine than feminine themes, perhaps making it hard to pull any Lego-specific insights from this. Certainly my nieces are no less interested in Lego than my nephews, and growing up my sisters weren't less interested than my brothers (although there did seem to be a difference in focus in construction vs Sims-like play).

jdkee 4y ago
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- zapdrive 4y ago
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- ipv4dhcp 4y ago
  gender is also biological

madduci 4y ago

Key information here is > But don’t think filming Lego will guarantee you high earnings. There are many, many creators who release Lego videos continuously and have no subs and get no views. Too many. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such creators. It is kind of heartbreaking to see people put so much time and effort for (supposedly) nothing OP got lucky to get a lot of subscribers and made themselves known in the subject, 10 M views per video in average is a good performance.

armini 4y ago

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_tom_ 4y ago

I'd bet his ad revenue is higher than normal. Lego sounds like a perfect subject for ad supported. Inexpensive (somewhat), easy to buy on line, always another kit to buy. Take 3blue1brown. Fantastic content, but what ads relate? (Probably Lego, but that might just be me).

_tom_ 4y ago

$90 is not much for all that. As an employee, that's pretty good, but as someone who probably had to invest thousands of hours before he knew if he'd see any revenue, that's a pretty meager return! It would be interesting to see his revenue graphed over time. Pretty sure he didn't make 12k/mo for the first few years. Which means he's making more Than that, now.

rippercushions 4y ago
His content is quite "evergreen" though, so even if he were to stop making content today, money would keep rolling in for quite some time.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  Not necessarily. If you stop uploading, views will fall off a cliff sooner than you’d think. Even for old content that had been consistently attracting views. It kinda sucks.

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hoseja 4y ago

Over 95% of discovery on Youtube is incesutous? Kinda sad to see but I'm sure Susan is happy.

nigamanth 4y ago

Thanks to people like you - and a network like Hacker News people are coming to know the truth and the future of a career like YouTube. This saves people an invaluable amount of time and expertise to finally know whether this is worth it or not. This explains a lot about how YouTube gains most of their money, I mean like for the content you're making they get most of the monetization.

lukeschwartz 4y ago

Is nobody else surprised the amount is so low? If you look at his video catalogue, basically every video is a "hit" even if upload frequency is relatively low. Youtubers making 20 videos a month with <1M views/video make considerably more money, i.e., is better to upload less quality videos and have "moderate" views that to make high quality infrequent videos with a lot of views. You'd think advertisers should pay more per ad on a high quality video than on a trash one. The extreme example of this is Mr. Beast, who makes "high" quality videos (at least in the sense of production) but uploads pretty frequently (specially considering he has multiple channels).

blamazon 4y ago
As a YouTube addict, I'm not surprised. There's a whole other advertising revenue stream that BEC is just not doing, because they have the monster viewcounts to avoid it and still make a living: in-video sponsorships. I follow a lot of smaller full time YouTubers, nearly all do sponsored advertising within their videos. That is where advertisers are indeed paying more for quality content highly targeted to their consumers - directly to the creators, not through Google's platform. Those deals can be very lucrative because audiences are more receptive to advertising that comes from, and directly supports, the creators they follow. I've seen creators I respect take somewhat dubious sponsorships and still be supported by their fans. The recent Established Titles controversy was a good example of that. [1] [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna59518 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna59518
Zopieux 4y ago
It's not very surprising, as other mentioned on this thread (and in the blog itself) this channel's popularity is only organic growth, they do not do $$$ sponsorships, they do not employ clickbait practices (which work, sadly), and the audience is relatively niche compared to your random trend-setting garbage youtuber like Mr. Beast.

alkonaut 4y ago

> impressions click-through rate: 5.9% What does this mean? That 5.9% of users who were shown an ad, clicked the ad (and thus left the video to pursue catfood?)

mdrzn 4y ago
On YouTube impression is whenever the thumbnail is loaded in the user browser, anywhere in the page. Impressions CTR means 5.9% of the users shown the thumbnail/title/video clicked on it. With 10.8m views and a CTR of 5.9%, it means that specific video had about 180m impressions.

ricardo81 4y ago

Adsense was great when it came out (as someone who used it). Passive income, build something and make money in the hours in between when you're not working on it. I wonder how much more money their (or any) channel would make and how long it would take to taper off? I suppose the main reason would be algo changes on recommendations, then age after a number of years, and possibly other channels potentially 'recycling' the content. Perhaps the popularity of lego and YT itself also.

T3RMINATED 4y ago

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RagnarD 4y ago

Very cool and informative article, more of this.

deleted 4y ago

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bambax 4y ago

subscribers: 2.9 million video views: 705 million uploads: 65 total earnings: 664 000 USD Dollars per 1000 views a little under 1 USD. Average number of views per video: 10 millions (!) Views per subscriber: 200-250 (also a lot!) It's a super successful channel, and it's not easy to emulate those numbers...

aczerepinski 4y ago

Love this. As a music YouTuber who can’t stop buying camera lenses and instruments and isn’t yet at the 1000 sub mark for monetization, my earnings are solidly red. Nice to see that black is possible. (I’ll keep creating and sharing either way though)

carlmcqueen 4y ago

Really interesting point but I know I've gotten older when he said 'my audience is middle-aged' but the way I read the chart from google is that most of his audience is between 21-34 with a tail of older than that and a steep drop off after the age of 40. That is older millennials for sure, but is that 'middle aged'? Middle aged traditionally is 40-60.

mywittyname 4y ago
With the average life expectancy of a male in the USA being ~75, it makes intuitive sense to call "middle age" 37 +/- some years. The fact that middle aged is defined as 40-60 is weird in the same way that the "mid-western" United States being almost entirely east of Mississippi river is.

danielvaughn 4y ago

This is lower than I would expect. If they make on average about 10K per video, and each video gets about 10M views, that means they only get about 1K in revenue per 1M views.

steveBK123 4y ago

I have to say for the hours being put in (basically full time job) & number of views, the payout is surprisingly low. It seems like the ones that make megabucks need to do brand partnerships and sponsorships type stuff, which is itself a lot of work to launch and manage.

s0rr0wskill 4y ago

The author stated that he doesn't do sponsorships or anything. From what I've read here, are sponsorships that lucrative?

makeitdouble 4y ago
LTT is way more diversified than other channels, but Youtube’s ads bring in less than in video sponsors for instance. https://linustechtips.com/topic/1270087-linus-media-group-makes-19-million-per-year-in-revenue-explained-corrected/ https://linustechtips.com/topic/1270087-linus-media-group-ma...
jpk2f2 4y ago
They can be, and they're certainly more reliable than the variance of views, ad rev, and hoping your video doesn't get demonetized in some way.

LoveMortuus 4y ago

I wish more or this data was publicly available, it really gives you a perspective and understanding which is otherwise extremely hard to get to.

hahamrfunnyguy 4y ago

I have a small channel (7,500 subs) that was quite active for a couple years. I got a bit sick of creating content so now I only publish a few videos a year. It is interesting to see the difference in RPM for different kinds of content. My channel RPM is $3.52, highest video is $7.01. I get around 8,000 views per month for all my videos.

pnathan 4y ago

BEC is one of the best YouTube channels. Not per se because of the legos, but in how the videos assess and iterate. Also, as another HN commentator pointed out, its not "baity", (s?)he doesn't do any of the stupid BS to hype him(her?)self. Yes, I'm in the target audience: middle age male in US. I think this is the perfect example of a niche area with an whale/long-tail distribution. It demonstrates the futility - to me - of doing any serious "YouTubing" as a professional plan - its something you have to strike luck and then build on.

tpmx 4y ago
Yes. The cleverness applied in the iterations is unsurpassed. The channel has many clones, but they're not nearly as clever. Sadly, I keep getting recommended clips from these mindless "let's build a big lego technic thing to do something, without much cleverness applied at all" videos. It wouldn't surprise me if they earn much more than this clever channel.

kakoni 4y ago

Any estimates how much is yt/Google generating revenue per bec videos watched?

misterpigs 4y ago

Wow this channel was the first lego experiment videos I watched. I thought this channel was the same (no clickbait, straight to the content, no voiceovers) https://www.youtube.com/@BrickTechnology https://www.youtube.com/@BrickTechnology but I was mistaken!

CarbonCycles 4y ago

I enjoyed this blog...not so much about the topic regarding legos or even YouTube. I appreciated the way the owner used analytics to quickly better understand his demographics and did some very high-level marketing/product analytics.

koneyaya 4y ago

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koneyaya 4y ago

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