Background: I live in Los Angeles and have three VERY close friends who are Youtubers. They’re all in the niche of reviewing gear for amateur heavy metal and rock audio engineers (my singer is one of them).
They have similar subscriber counts (between 200k-350k subs), in a similar space. One channel pulls in $80k a year, one about $200k a year, and one over $200k A MONTH.
This is largly because of outside deals. YouTube CPMs for music content is generally garbage. However, outside deals and affiliate marketing for gear reviews is pretty lucrative. More lucrative is online courses. My friend pulling in $200k+ a month has gone heavy on the online course side.
That being said, this sounds cheesy, but DO NOT do Youtube for the money. You will make FAR FAR more cash in the short term by either: 1. Studying leetcode for job interviews at FAANG companies. 2. Taking up contract work on the side. 3. Being an uber driver. For real.
Youtube is a GRIND. My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. While working full time. Before they had ANY significant traction.
For your first year expect to make MAYBE $10k, if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week.
I’m currently growing my own Youtube channel now, I’m only at one video a week but I do genuinely enjoy making them. I’m also growing my LinkedIn too (organic reach on LinkedIn is BANANAS, I trend every four posts). But again, I ENJOY doing these videos, I writing scripts, I enjoy public speaking.
So to answer your question: it is 1000% not too late AT ALL. It’s still VERY VERY early. There is MASSIVE MASSIVE oppertunity on these platforms. However you HAVE to make content you love or you WILL quit. Hopefully I’m not discouraging you from posting, please post, but only do what you enjoy!
> if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week.
My kids watch kid YouTubers, and I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away.
> I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away.
Wait, it gets worse. If you have a teenage daughter you will eventually have the “25 year old pretending to be 16 year old with a full production crew shilling for xyz makeup brand.”
Assume that most of them have a full production crew.
It's totally worth it. Watch time definitely increases when production quality goes up. However when you're first starting out it's more about building the habits, learning the basics and actually posting content. You have to walk before you run!
For my one friend it started with gear companies reaching out to him offering him free gear. Then he became friends with other YouTubers who told him to start charging. Nowadays it’s a mix between outreach and inbound.
Hahaha, I actually got interested in marketing from reading patio11's stuff back in the day! However marketing is definitely still more of a hobby for me, my main focus and day job is frontend DevOps. I do love treating this whole social media game as an engineering problem though.
I started with video clips of my tech presentations I gave at a JavaScript meetup group in Los Angeles. I now mostly do posts, I have a backlog of video footage I want to re-edit for LinkedIn that I'll get to eventually...
I try to spend 30 minutes a day or so responding to comment threads on LinkedIn on trending subjects. It's a grind, but again, some people play Animal Crossing, some people play LinkedIn hahaha. I got this tip from my friend who grew his Instagram page the same way. When I'm in the writing mood I'll bang out 5+ LinkedIn posts on a Sunday afternoon and use hootsuite to release one a week.
LinkedIn you reallllly gotta focus on the individual conversations and not chase views though. The goal there isn't to get a million people to see something, the goal is to appear in a senior manager at a FAANG company's feed and start a conversation. This happened to me last year and ended up me being able to skip the phone screen for a FAANG interview (I can speak in front of 100 people but I'm still terribly nervous for whiteboard tech interviews). I didn't end up getting the job because I failed the tech screen but that's an example of an opportunity that appeared from nowhere by just posting value adding content.
Do you know how they negotiated those deals?
Do these companies approach you with a big offer if you've got the views, or is it the result of renegotiating upwards over the lifetime of the channel? Always wondered how these big numbers come about...
Every deal is different, some are flat fees over time(an amp manufacturer paid one friend a few thousand to just have their amp in the background of every video for a year), some are paid demos for one off videos, a lot is affiliate marketing (they get a % from every sale they make from an affiliate link).
Honestly it’s about relationships and numbers. It’s not a perfect science. E.g. My friend was able to say ”I brought this online store $450k worth of sales over 6 months so I want $X to do a video.” Also all three of them sell their own online courses on guitar playing and audio engineering and take comissions from one another to promote them on their channels. Out of every source of income the courses have been the highest ROI, but a lot more work then gear demos.
The one I've started is still brand new and pretty small. It took me a few months to build up the courage to actually post anything. I'm just finally starting to get used to talking to a camera hahaha. I've been mostly posting computer science career advice and clips from the technical presentations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ixAoKOp9_E .
I've had quite a bit of success repurposing content on LinkedIn though. A clip on YouTube might get 12 views for me but the same clip with subtitles reaches 2000+ people. More importantly though, LinkedIn has been great because old colleagues/classmates I haven't talked to in YEARS view my profile and that reminds me to reach out to them and chat on the phone.
Hey could you expand on the part of contract work on the side? You mean in tech right alongside your full time job? How can one pull that off if both jobs are 9-5?
This seems to imply that success in this field is randomly assigned rather than being attained through persistence and attention to the audience. For anyone who presumes this to be true, it will be inevitable.
Anyone who produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, pays good attention to how their content is received, continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually.
The people who make it big do all those things.
Those who don't have generally gotten discouraged too early, before they've put enough effort and persistence into those key ingredients.
Sure, natural charisma helps, and can make it look like some creators just "got lucky" with huge growth from the start. But plenty of creators started out seeming awkward and unpolished early on, but over time were able to improve their delivery style and other aspects of their production, and hit it big eventually.
Exactly! That's what people fail to see: it doesn't matter how hard you worked and how good you are - if there's hundreds of people doing the same as you (and I assume for anything that can "explode" on YT and become something worth 200K a month, there always is), your chances are extremely small, even if you actually happen to be THE BEST (which you can never really know, of course), because someone with just a little less talent, or who put a little less effort, might just happen to know another famous youtuber, or come up with slightly better marketing, or by chance get famous on some important forum because a respected poster mentioned their channel, and really hundreds of other things that would keep you from becoming the one taking all the attraction. Once they make it big, they can invest on their channel (buy professional tools, pay professional artists for illustrations etc) and start producing stuff that leaves your stuff in the dust, quickly compensating for their initial "inferiority".
> if there's hundreds of people doing the same as you
If you're disagreeing with me because you're thinking I'm talking about the case of someone doing the same thing as hundreds of other people, then you're reacting to a straw man interpretation of what I said.
You can only succeed if you are doing something unique. That applies to media just as it does to entrepreneurship.
>ecause someone with just a little less talent, or who put a little less effort, might just happen to know another famous youtuber, or come up with slightly better marketing, or by chance get famous on some important forum because a respected poster mentioned their channel, and really hundreds of other things that would keep you from becoming the one taking all the attraction.
All these things could happen to you also, even if you're not the best.
I really don't get what it is about my comment that's counter to general understanding of how people achieve positive outcomes. It's pretty well established that people who stick at a pursuit for long enough, learn as they go and respond to their audience will find success, if they don't quit first.
> What data do you have to back this up?
If your primary concern was precise data, you'd first be confronting my parent commenter, who claimed, without any evidence whatsoever: "For every ten people who did this [i.e., posted three quality videos a week, for 1-2 years], maybe one made it big". That's quite plainly an implausible statistic. I get that it's made for rhetorical effect, not precision, but surely that commenter carries the primary burden of evidence for some validity of their position.
My position is based on what is generally accepted by anyone with experience in entrepreneurial or creative endeavours.
That explains your reaction: you don't seem to understand the difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big". There's plenty of evidence showing that doing what successful people do does not guarantee success.
- produces content consistently for a long enough period of time,
- pays good attention to how their content is received,
- continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants,
- and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc,
will find success eventually.
When all parts of this are met, there is no material difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big".
I understand that not all people will be able to do all of these things to a sufficient level, quickly enough to satisfy their desire for success, and those people will quit before they make it.
But I maintain that for media content creation (unlike, say professional sport), people who really want to find success in that field will be able to work out how to do it given enough persistence and discernment over enough time.
Consider this, there is a hypothetical "perfect youtuber lottery".
To enter it, you must meet or exceed all the requirements you laid out, you then get a ticket.
Tickets are drawn, some small handful are winners.
Everyone who won did all the perfect youtuber things, but beyond that the fact they were successful was entirely based on factors outside their control.
Is this a reasonable approximation of reality? Maybe, it would certainly fit the mold of what makes a successful person in most other highly skewed areas of life where some very small percentage involved are identifiable as really successful like musicians, actors, authors, artists etc.
The problem is that you don't even admit this as a possibility, just the standard refrain of work harder at it and those who fail clearly didn't work hard enough.
Unless you define those who are successful as the only people who "did it all right", which is definitely a circular argument...
Nobody is saying it doesn't take hard work, just don't expect hard work to be enough, and worse still, if any other areas where creative output is used as income are any indication, don't expect being very good, or even the best to be enough either (plenty of examples of musicians, authors and artists who changed history languishing in obscurity their whole lives)
This whole discussion is in response to the claim that you can produce 3 pieces of _good content_ every week for 1-2 years and be good at promoting it, and that only 1/10 will succeed.
I’m really saying this defies the definition of good content.
I’m aware it can seem like a circular argument; I’m surprised people keep disputing what is a self-evident position.
I don’t suggest everyone can do it. I do think most can probably do it eventually if it’s their passion and they choose to make it their top priority, but I’m aware that’s a separate debate that I don’t especially care to thrash out, as it’s not central to my point.
It's very similar to the very reasonable claim that if you put in seven _good_ practice sessions a week every week for five years and are good at deciding what to work on, you've got less than a 10% of getting into the NBA/Julliard/Hollywood A-list.
Claiming that this defies the definition of good practice is essentially narrowing the definition of "good" so far that your original claim is a tautology.
When we're talking about tournament games like those listed above, success isn't that simple. Not everyone is capable of winning every tournament. Some people can't win any highly-desired tournament.
Going full-time as a YouTuber may be easy enough of a tournament that many can do it, depending on native language, physical beauty, finances, etc. I really doubt most can, though. Your personal network is probably highly skewed towards those who can prevail in the YouTube tournament (and at many others, but perhaps not sports-related ones based on your earlier comment).
I can see from your profile that you run a program where people can learn programming languages and frameworks. So you clearly agree that some things can be learned by most people who put their mind to it. Doubtless, it takes a real desire to learn, and, sure, a degree of natural aptitude, but those who have those qualifiers will generally succeed at it.
I think we agree that this is fundamentally not the case with NBA, Julliard, Hollywood A-list, in which success is far more dependent on endowed traits.
My observation is simply that the skills needed to succeed as content creator are more learnable by more people than pro sport, pro music or Hollywood stardom.
The main qualifier for being a successful content creator is having something unique/interesting/valuable to say. And yes, confidence, presentation, production, audience engagement all matter. But all these can be developed or learned with enough dedication. And no, not 100% of the time. But it's true enough that it's worth a try if you're inspired.
Please remember, the claim I'm refuting is that you can do all of these things absolutely right, and still only have a 1/10 chance of success. That's clearly untrue. In the online media world, people with unique/interesting/valuable things to say break through eventually.
For what it's worth, my personal network doesn't conform to the stereotype you presume. Yes it includes highly successful people (including pro sportspeople). It includes people who have great natural ability but lack the confidence or desire to excel. And it includes people from extremely modest backgrounds, including refugees who came to Australia with nothing, but who are building businesses and profiles as creators, learning the required skills as they go, and making great progress.
> So you clearly agree that some things can be learned by most people who put their mind to it.
Absolutely! I think people can learn almost anything. Barring true disabilities, I believe anyone can learn to program, translate a foreign language, play a violin, play basketball, swim or most other things.
But I don't think most people have even a chance of becoming the best.
What you refer to as "endowed traits" affect everything from our life span to our appearance to our level of happiness, personality traits and ability to learn different skills. They affect every possible kind of skill we could choose to pursue and even what kinds of things we're inclined to pursue.
I also don't agree than the skills needed to succeed as an athlete or musician are "less learnable" than others. On the contrary, I think they're extremely well defined and that we have millennia of collective knowledge in how to train them, thus making them extremely learnable.
The perspective I was coming from is the difference between an economic tournament, where wage differences are based more upon the relative differences of individuals rather than upon their marginal productivity.
This is crucial because while almost anyone can learn to play the piano or to repair a house, very, very few people have even the possibility of being one of the top few people in the world at either. The difference is that people doing the latter are paid based on their marginal productivity and those doing the former are paid based on their approximate ranking among all other pianists in the world and in their city.
As a result, repairing houses is a modest career opportunity open to a large number of people with sufficient absolute skill regardless of their relative ranking in the world. Being a pianist, on the other hand, is a fantastic career for an extremely small number of people at the top and an unsustainable one for nearly everyone else. Some teach on the side and pursue their dreams for years.
The question is, "Is YouTube an economic game where rewards are based primarily on marginal productivity or are they based more on relative comparisons between participants?"
> But I don't think most people have even a chance of becoming the best.
Yep sure - it took me to step away from the discussion for a while to realise that's what people thought I was arguing. I wasn't.
My contention was that if you're already producing good quality content (as per the original commenter's comment), assuming it's interesting/unique/valuable, if you persist doing it regularly you'll be able to grow an audience, and probably get it big enough to make some sponsorship income or build your personal brand to further your career (promote your business etc). And most importantly, it won't be purely random "bad luck" that stands in your way.
People seemed to think I was claiming that any randomly selected person – even one starting out with well-below-average video production and presentation skills and little interesting to say – could become as big as PewDiePie if they just stick at it long enough. That's not what I meant.
Re-reading the thread after a night's rest, it seems everyone was getting a bit confused about the main point, myself included. When seen as a simple circular argument like that, you're right, it's pointless.
As I've said several times, the main point I was refuting is that an aspiring creator could create great content and promote it perfectly, consistently over several years, and still be at the mercy of a random chance of (according to the original commenter) 1/10 as to whether they succeed. I maintain that's just not how the world works.
But I understand the issue you and others take with this is that someone could _try_ to do all the right things consistently for many years, but never develop to the point where they can make a career of it. I don't dispute that. I do think the skills required are far more learnable than, say, NBA-level basketball. But just how many more people can do it, or what any given individual's chances are, well of course we don't know.
For any individual to make a judgement about whether it's worth giving it a try, it's like any other career decision, and making decisions about how to invest one's time is a fundamental life skill.
But I always think it's a shame when someone who could have succeeded at a creative or entrepreneurial pursuit decides not to even try because they believe the falsehood that success is random, regardless of your own qualities or efforts.
You are kind of ignoring the question - how do you know this? What it sounds like is you observed a statistically insignificant sample and have drawn conclusions from it.
I wasn't ignoring the question; I think I was mistaken about what people were disagreeing with.
I was making a point I thought was self-evident: that if you're already capable of creating "3 quality videos a week" (in the words of the original commenter I replied to), you'll be able to attract a growing audience for it if you persist with the content creation and audience engagement. I.e., good product + good marketing -> long-term success, which is how creative/entrepreneurial success always happens.
I later realised people seemed to think I was claiming that any person, even one starting with below-average video production abilities, could eventually become as big as PewDiePie if they just "try hard enough". That's not what I was claiming.
> My position is based on what is generally accepted by anyone with experience in entrepreneurial or creative endeavours.
It sounds a lot like what people in that position would correctly observe as being generally necessary for success being mistaken for being sufficient.
I also believe it's survivor bias. Eventually anyone doing all those things without success will drop out but you only see those that remain. There's certainly an element of both luck and talent to it, dedication alone won't cut it.
Yes of course, nobody disputes that. But please carefully re-read what the original commenter and I wrote.
Original comment:
> My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years.
My comment:
> Anyone who produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, pays good attention to how their content is received, continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually.
Sure, plenty of people try to do these things, and soon get discouraged and quit.
But how many of them deeply devote themselves to learning all the necessary skills? To really learning about content creation, and video production, and audience engagement, and engagement analysis? And even to the personal development work required to overcome any confidence issues and performance skills that might limit their ability to speak well to camera?
Sure, you can say not everyone wants to do all that, or has the time to do all that.
But all I'm saying is that the people who succeed are the ones who find a way to learn the necessary skills and overcome the obstacles.
> But all I'm saying is that the people who succeed are the ones who find a way to learn the necessary skills and overcome the obstacles.
I don't think anyone here disagrees that most successful content producers do all of these things.
People are saying that the number of people who do all of these things is much higher than the number of successful content producers, and therefore doing all of these things does not guarantee success.
I am not sure whether you disagree with that assessment or if you think people are saying that consistent production / knowing your audience don't matter and it's all down to luck (which is not what people are saying).
Thought experiment: let's say we took a list of everyone who has uploaded at least 3 videos per week to youtube for at least 5 years, filtered those results down to only those producers who uploaded polished content, and further excluded anyone who didn't change their content based on the preferences of their audience.
I expect that 10% or less of these people would be successful, where by "successful" I mean they make more from their content than they would by working full time as an entry level employee at a fast food restaurant.
There are about 30 million channels on YouTube, and around 1 billion videos, so assuming the standard 80 / 20 distribution holds, we'd expect the top 6 million channels to have a combined 800M videos for an average of 133 videos per top-20% channel. Let's say that 5% of the top 20% of channels meet the "3x per week for 5 years" standard, and 10% of those meet all the other requirements.
That would leave us with 0.1% of channels meeting the requirement, or about 30,000 content creators who should be successful.
My impression is that you need at least a million or so subscribers to make a living on YouTube. Looking at the stats, there are 16k channels with a million or more subscribers.
The estimates are actually within an order of magnitude of each other, which I find very surprising. It is at least plausible that being in the top 1% in terms of amount of content created, and also the top 10% in terms of consistency and responsiveness to the desires of viewers, is largely sufficient for success.
Still, I think if we actually looked at the numbers, we'd find that at least half and probably more of the people who are doing "everything right" and have been for the last 5 years are not successful (which is a big update for me, actually. I would have said 99% before actually looking at the stats). Do you think the success rate would be higher than 50%?
It seems people disagreeing with me are postulating the existence of a huge number of "zombie" content creators, creating good quality, polished content for 3x per week for (in your argument) 5 years but never seeing any success.
I very strongly doubt this zombie army exists. Over 5 years of doing it 3x per week, you either get good at doing it and finding an audience for it, or you quit and do something else. If you haven't found an audience after 5 years, effectively by definition it's not good content.
I don't see how your calculations provide any evidence of the zombie army making 3 good-quality videos every week for 5 years. They seem to rely on big, unfounded assumptions. (Maybe I'm missing something; I'm tired).
> I don't see how your calculations provide any evidence of the zombie army making 3 good-quality videos every week for 5 years. They seem to rely on big, unfounded assumptions. (Maybe I'm missing something; I'm tired).
They don't show strong evidence for the "zombie army", and in fact provide evidence of the possibility that the "zombie army" doesn't exist (side note: I love the name). Before pulling the numbers, I strongly expected them to show that the number of people consistently producing content was so enormously much larger than the number of people who have enough subscribers to make a living that obviously there was no way that all the good consistent content producers are making a living. But then I pulled the numbers and the numbers don't exclude that possibility. I posted the numbers I pulled because it would be dishonest to pull them and then only post them if they supported my intuitions.
I still do expect the existence of somewhat of a "zombie army" because I know a few people who consistently upload videos with shockingly high production value and only a few thousands or tens of thousands of views.
Nobody is advocating wasting 10 years doing something without any indication of progress towards success. Obviously people should be looking for signs of progress and/or success every step of the way. There are plenty of ways of doing this well before someone does or doesn’t “make it”.
This concern people keep expressing over wasting many years of life for zero benefit has little basis in reality, as long as people are able to gauge their progress and build optionality into their life.
This is not a good example. He doesn't even put proper titles for his videos, how are people supposed to find them in an ocean of billions of videos? He seems to be doing it for his own satisfaction.
It seems this person is not seeking to build a big audience at all. He just loves cats, and posts videos of them as part of his daily routine. If he was trying to build a big audience he'd operate very differently.
Agreed, but I don't think you're necessarily in disagreement with your parent. Some people struggle to understand how to improve on their weaknesses and think they're paying attention to how their content is received, adapting to their audience, etc, but in reality they're missing the mark by a mile.
In this sense it's essentially entrepreneurship. The founders who are simply not doing a good job don't always realize it. Some people will continue their efforts for years without knowing it's their own inability holding them back.
The parent commenter wasn't clear about whether they meant success comes mostly down to random chance vs persistence and responsiveness to the audience.
I've expanded (and edited) my comment to try and clarify what I think is an important distinction.
But to be clear, I highly doubt it's true that for every creator who builds a big audience, there's another nine (or even one or two) who put in the same effort, persistence and attention to their audience, over at least 2 years, and get nowhere.
I can believe that many start out then get discouraged and give up early, because they don't know how to gauge their results and improve their product, but that's a different issue.
I agree largely, I'm just not sure that insufficient effort/persistence so heavily outweighs low quality content as a reason for failure over time. I'd imagine there are actually a large amount of "zombie" YouTubers that consistently put out videos that very few people (relatively) end up watching. A lot of startups end up in this "zombie" state rather than shutting down[0].
So I agree most probably just get discouraged and give up early. But I can easily see 9 long-time "zombie" YouTubers for every channel with a big audience.
I guess it's that kind of topic where once you discuss it enough you reach consensus on a position that is neither particularly controversial nor insightful :)
I gather the people who've found my earlier comments disagreeable are assuming I'm advocating that people blindly persist at something for countless years, even if they see no signs of success, which of course I'm not.
My point assumes that by doing something with sufficient dedication for a sufficient amount of time, you'll learn the necessary skills, including learning how to learn, and learning how to gauge success, and learning when it's best to quit and try something else.
I actually don't think it's likely there's huge numbers of "zombie" YouTubers, slogging away for years with no success. Sure, plenty of stuff gets posted that gets very few views, but not by people who are serious about making a career of it. Career-focused people either see signs of success or realise they need to find a new career path.
As for the YC list, I know a lot about that list as my company is on it, as are several others run by people I know. There aren't many actual zombie companies on that list. There are companies that didn't become unicorns, but did become solid small-medium businesses that employ a decent number of people and provide important services to their customers, and will likely eventually be acquired for a decent return to the founders and investors. And there are others that have been abandoned, but provided valuable lessons to their founders, which helped equip them for greater success in the next stages of their career.
My opinions expressed above are from having spent 10+ years running and observing others running startups, and by seeing what persistence and long-term success look like.
I've never seen persistence work out badly for people, as long as they are adequately able to gauge their success along the way.
I get saddened at the thought that people with the potential to do great things might be discouraged from giving something a go because somebody else tells them "you know, for every successful person you see, there are 10 people who failed", when the truth is not nearly that simple or dismal.
Here's the thing though, ten people DO NOT do this.
Most people give up after one video. Or never post anything to begin with. I pretty much gave up for 6 months after trying to make one video and got back on the horse recently a few months ago.
Even if the grind doesn't "pay off" in views, it's paying off in other ways for me regardless. I'm way better at speaking in front of a camera now than a few months ago. My writing ability has improved drastically because I'm writing 1-2 scripts a week now. I've gotten a lot better at video editing, which I always enjoyed a bit anyway.
You can't really lose. Even if you never become "middleclass YouTube famous" you're still building skills that are handy in other fields (especially writing and communication ones!)
If you want to make significant passive income I believe the strategy for 2020 is
* Make 10-15 videos, articles, blog posts, whatever. Make at least $500
* Write a blog post "How I made $500 online". Get some traction. Sell a course on "How to make $500 online". Get more traction. Make $20000.
* Write a blog post on "How I made $20000 by selling "How to make $500 online"". Sell a course on "How to make $20000 online by selling "How to make $500 online"". Make $100000.
* Write a blog post on "How I made $100000 by selling "How I made $20000 by selling "How to make $500 online""". Make $1000000.
Sadly there are already a number of courses which teach you how to make money by making... courses. No joke, it's all circular. People teaching each other to teach people to teach people to teach.
Making web development content is a good idea, but looking to get "passive income" is the wrong tack to take. If you make good content on web development, most of the value you get out of it is likely to be through "networking" - finding a better job, getting freelance contracts, connecting with funding for your own start-up, etc.
Think about the unit economics. Average video view earns you roughly a tenth of a penny in advertising. A connection that improves your career prospect is worth very roughly $10,000. That's a ratio of ten million to one. Whatever audience you manage to generate is worth far more to your career as a software developer than it is as generic eyeballs on videos.
I would state explicitly that building follower base and keeping it by creating videos consistently is far from "passive". When one stops uploading/creating people will forget about him.
Don't know timelines on building following (how fast one can build an audience) but my gut feeling is that one could earn some money after 5 years of constantly pushing good content and building network. I think OP would expect that he could pull it off in couple of months so in that sense he is too late.
It's never too late. But unless the content you are creating is either a passion for you (i.e. you don't care if it makes money) or based on a source of income from outside of YouTube (i.e. you are making the content as marketing for another business you own), you may find sustaining and growing a channel a hard task and somewhat demoralizing, if you don't have patience to stay with it for years without any return. It's best to start creating content without the expectation of any monetization and then seeing where it goes.
Of course you may become a viral hit, but that's a matter of luck.
Assuming you really mean on-demand online video/audio content (which is not limited to YouTube but also includes podcasts, Spotify, Instagram and many other platforms that may or may not yet exist), there is still huge growth potential and limitless opportunities for new content.
If you chronologically relate it to the history of television, on-demand online content is at the equivalent of about 1965.
There's still a huge amount of the global population that doesn't really listen to much of this kind of content passively - e.g., while driving/commuting, working, exercising, etc, as many people still don't even know you can really do this. And mobile data is still expensive in a lot of places in the world.
So, I can easily see the audience scale (measured by hours consumed) increasing another 10-20x in the next 10-20 years.
Even then, I doubt there's anyone, even people (like me) who spend many hours a week consuming online media, who thinks "there's no room in my life for anything other than what already exists".
So, no, it's not too late, and indeed it's never too late. But you need to figure out what is the unmet need that you can fill, then work hard over a long period of time to deliver something special for your audience.
I have a small business where I have partnered with several YouTubers (150k - 300k subs) to create custom merchandise. [1]
We do a revenue split, and I handle the shipping and manufacturing, my goal being for this to essentially be a source of passive income for the content creators.
My observation is that merchandising is an important revenue stream: either physical products, or digital ("for $5 you can have the sheet music that was used to make this video.") Digital merch seems to have a better long-tail and obviously the best margins. Physical merch is cyclical: strong sales at the start, and then they drop off after a few months.
Patreon seems to be an important revenue generator too - exclusive content, or see content ahead of time - which is fed by the videos that the content creators post in order to amass their audience.
Finally, individual video sponsorships seem to be important, and with a popular channel, can earn in the ballpark of $2k/video (don't know the variance here, just using secondhand knowledge.)
The point being, I think that you have to continually be creating content, and it may not necessarily be passive income. And a non-trivial amount of revenue is generated via other means, or partnerships/sponsorships, which is viable after building an audience.
It takes a ton of views to generate meaningful ad income on YouTube. If you're making learning content, consider setting up your own site for monetization with https://teachable.com/
You can put samples from your courses on YouTube to drive in traffic to the full courses on your own site.
I agree. There's already so much content and trash on Youtube that it will be a huge investment to make it worthwhile, assuming you are lucky. Creating structured, high-quality course content in a field not covered well by existing courses on sites like teachable and udemy will still be hard work, but with a higher chance of success.
If you making content for a new or under served niche - maybe - but probably not. There are some good quality channels with 100s of videos after years of work that still only pull in <5000 views per video - I'd be surprised if these channel were earning more than $100 a month, which considering the 1000s of hours that's gone into them, is not economical. A lot of them do it for the love of it - if this is you, go for it.
I considered this too - after doing some research on my own, talking to some other people I know who do YT and chatting to my SO (digital marketing manager) I learned YT advertising alone does NOT generate very much until you are consistently pulling a lot of views regularly (couple videos at a week at 10000+ views each. This can takes years, if ever, especially in the space you are describing - technical content). Profitability on YT is much less about quality and more about quantity and above all consistency, which is very difficult if you are looking to produce high quality content - this takes time.
YT is an exposure platform. It is a good tool for this - you can make your own content and monetize it separately, and use YT as a means to advertise and get exposure. See [0], start-react-native on IH. The founder, William Candellon, also was on the IH podcast, where he described his journey. Basically YT -> generating a following -> release paid content on his own platform and funnel in leads from his YT following.
You could do something like Gary Bernhardt does with his "Destroy all Software" series. A new 10m-15m video a week, and charge for access - either a one-off or a subscription service. I do something similar to generate leads for the course I am working on. [1]
Yes, it’s too late in the sense that your videos and channel won’t passively benefit from YouTube’s growth, because its growth is slowing and that slowed growth is shared by so many other channels.
There is still opportunity, but you’ll have to work hard to capitalize on it. You may never see more than a few dollars after making dozens of videos unless your work is standout.
100% disagree. Organic on YouTube isn’t as strong as TikTok or LinkedIn but it’s still there. I’ve done a two pronged strategy where I direct LinkedIn traffic to YouTube with decent success.
I have another close friend who repurposes YouTube content for TikTok and has had great success. He focuses on heavy metal meme music, and does a vertical video edit for TikTok.
I repurpose YouTube videod for LinkedIn and have had similwr success. I reccomend taking 10-15 minute videos on YouTube and slicing them up, adding subtitles on something like zubtitle.com for LinkedIn if you’re trying to build a funnel to sell courses.
I don’t understand why you wrote you disagree. In your other comment, you said, “ Youtube is a GRIND. My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. While working full time. Before they had ANY significant traction.
For your first year expect to make MAYBE $10k, if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week.”
That sounds similar to my advice. There was a time when that kind of effort was not as necessary. I agree your playbook is a solid approach for people willing to work hard.
I'm not sure if there was a time where this wasn't necessary, outside of a few lucky people. I could be wrong though.
Even if you get lucky and your 3rd piece of content goes viral (which happened to my friend on TikTok recently, 350k views in 24 hours), the only way to capitalize on it is to keep consistently posting afterwards. One viral video won't necessarily pay that much cash and it won't necessarily build an audience over the long term.
You're right, I wasn't clear. What I'll do is post a 30 minute technical presentation on YouTube that I've given, but then slice it up into two minute clips for LinkedIn, change the aspect ratio to make it a square rather than a rectangle (it fills up more of the screen real estate on a person's phone that way), and add subtitles because I know mobile users often times watch videos without listening to the sound.
Reposting other pieces of content you don't own won't get you anywhere, the copyright strike mechanism is crazy extreme. My friends who post guitar covers detune the song by a few percentage points in order to bypass the copyright strike filter, even though they're 1000% within fair use.
No it's not too late, but since you've mentioned you want it to create a passive income a few points:
1) Youtube videos require SEO just like a webpage. You need to create backlinks to your video and maybe send some traffic to it to make it relevant. Brian deen has some very good videos on it.
2) Pay attention to the engagement metrics, bounce rates etc. It matters a lot for getting your video in search results.
3) Invest some time in peripheral things like a good thumbnail, video optimization, etc. The more clicks you get the higher it starts ranking.
4) Last but not least monetising video based on ads is not where it's at. Most successful Youtubers are often making more money with affiliate marketing (most) and sponsorships.
So when you want to create content for Youtube make sure your priorities are clear. Are you doing it to generate income or is it just a hobby. There are very different approach to both.
Seems like there's more money in live streaming on Twitch. I often watch streamers who play chess and they are making quite a lot of money given the low effort involved. People just randomly drop by and "tip" them €10 to €50 for no reason. A few tips per hour is enough to make it a decent salary.
Of course, this requires that you can play chess at a master level or else no one will want to watch. But maybe you can live stream yourself hacking? Deep learning is a hot topic that could attract viewers. I wouldn't tip but I'd watch that.
That’s like saying is it too late to be an A-list movie star. Of course not, but even if you try you’re not likely to become one, so only go into it if you’d be happy with a middling outcome.
If you want passive income, Youtube is a terrible choice. Youtube is not passive income, except maybe if it hitches a ride on your fame and work outside Youtube.
Youtube is hard work. You need to attract a community, and keep feeding that community. A single video is not going to make you much money; consistency is key. It can be hard work, and only a few really succeed. Although the ones who do succeed tend to succeed spectacularly.
1. Create content on websites designed specifically for teaching (MOOC platform and other sites mentioned here). They have right audience and right tools.
2. Create small (< 2min) videos for Youtube and use it as marketing platform for your coursework on other site. This utilizes YT's massive user base but avoids being drowned in all the trash there.
It sounds like this might be something you could ob https://egghead.io - it's specifically built for this purpose, and you have a team working to handle the stuff you don't want to do (marketing, customer service, etc.).
So one space this is super visible is tech twitter, there's a developer I follow who is super positive and just constantly puts out content, he's getting traction now but it wasn't always a meaningful amount.
He's had a heavy snowball effect this year from a small following to being features in way larger educational platforms
if you put out content consistently, and aimed at beginner to mid level with decent videos - high resolution, clear screen / camera / audio / basic editing. You can absolutely get views and traction.
One thing worth mentioning: finding success in the world of education YouTube has very little to do with your technical/coding skills. Instead, once you have the baseline level of knowledge, your channel will grow through your ability to communicate concepts, along with your video editing skills. Both teaching and video production are very deep topics which take years to master. For me, that's part of the fun :)
And to echo what others said, don't expect any meaningful level of passive income from YouTube for many months. I've been making Android videos since October and have earned zero income despite having 2.5K subscribers.
Yes, you can make (good) money with web development on Youtube in 2020. But:
- it won't be passive income
- it will take some time to figure out how to do it
These are the problems you need to solve:
1. Pick a niche
2. Create your audience
3. Build your course
4. Sell your course
Let me share a few tips, as someone who started his own programming Youtube channel in late 2017, and last month made 7k. (https://www.youtube.com/c/eattheblocks)
1. Pick a niche
Web development is a large topic. There are already some very established channels on this, and as a beginner it will hard to compete with them.
What you need is to go for a specialized tech niche. Example:
- React
- Testing
- Java
- Frontend
- Mobile
- Devops
- etc...
You can do some research to see how crowded each tech niche is.
You can also create your own niche by combining a tech and a business application. Ex: Python for finance.
2. Create your audience
You need to create a following of people who really like your content, because later some of them will become your customers.
And to do this you need to publish regularly helpful videos. By helpful, I mean helping them to solve their problems. So it's very important that you spend time to understand in details their problems. And their problems don't necessarily overlap with your own personal interest.
Now, let's get more specific to Youtube. There are 2 source of traffic on Youtube:
- Search
- Suggested videos
As a beginner, you want to focus on search. You will create videos that solve a very specific problem. That way you have a chance to rank for these keywords. You won't have a lot of traffic like this, but it will a good beginning.
Search is good, but what will really make your channel grow is suggested videos. Once you have a small following, you want to start optimizing for this. Youtube will show your videos as suggested videos IF if believes people want to watch them. And it will believe this IF the people who already watched your videos watched a good portion of them. Or better, if they kept watching other videos of your channel after.
To make this happen, you need to:
- Have a good title and thumbnail that make people want to click
- Have a good hook at the beginning of each video. i.e 10-15 seconds where you catch the attention
- A short branding where you explain the value of your channel. Ex "Hey I am X and on my channel I teach Y"
- A good main content, where one part follows logically the previous one. If possible try to teach while telling a story. You can search what is the "South Park rule".
- A conclusion that leads them to other videos on your channel.
3. Build your course
It's often difficult to decide what to put in the course, and what to make free on Youtube.
Here is an easy way to think about it. On Youtube, you will give useful, but very specific help. Ex: How to write a Redux reducer. And in your course, you will teach the whole process. Ex: How to build a Full React application.
There are 2 caveats:
- making the course too long
- making the course too broad
Beginners always think they have to make their course super long to make it attractive. That's exactly the opposite. Think of your course as a shortcut to achieve a goal. Students want to achieve their goal as fast as possible.
And your course also need to be very targeted. If you try to teach too much, and it's just a mix pot of various tips and tricks, it's gonna be harder to sell.
On a practical level, I recommend to use a service like Teachable (that's what I use) to host your course. Think of it like a white-label Udemy. They take care of hosting your videos and billing your clients. Huge time saving.
4. Sell your course
Now to the fun part, making money!
There are 2 main business models:
- subscriptions
- one-time sales
One problem with subscriptions is churn. Students want to learn something at a specific point in time. Once this is done, they might not want to stay.
Another problem is that you have to keep producing content. Which might be overwhelming, since you also have to keep producing content for Youtube.
With one-time sales, you sell a specific course. This is an easier sell: your course will help students reach a certain objective faster and more easily that if they were to do it on their one.
A big caveat is to price your course too cheap, thinking you will make many sales. At the beginning, you won't make many sales because your audience is small. So I recommend to start with an expensive course. At least 100 USD. Yes people for that and even higher. My main course is 250 USD.
To sell a more expensive course, you will need a more sophisticated sell process. Enter the wonderful world of sales funnel. The idea is that you will help prospective students to understand their problem better and better, until you introduce your solution (the course) at the end. Practically, that probably mean creating a sequence of 3-5 emails that will lead to your course. Your Youtube videos should have a CTA to register for this sequence of emails.
My final advice is:
- first try alone for a few month
- and then get help. That's what REALLY made a lot of difference for me. I took a course called 30x500 and that was really eyes opening. And now I hired a consultant specialized in online courses. 2 very good investments.
This advice is perfect. Especially MAKE YOUR COURSE EXPENSIVE. More people will buy a $250 course then a $25 one. Humans are weird, the less you sell something for, the more customer complaints you get.
It sounds like your real question is "Is it too late to start making money by creating content on YouTube?". Which is very different than say "Is it too late to start making content on YouTube for fun".
My thoughts too. Very similar to the “will this 3 month bootcamp help me double my salary?” Questions. What happened to just wanting to learn and teach others with no personal agenda?
For passive income, you will not likely reach a level where you can live off, unless you have incredible tutorials that somehow have consistent views through out many years.
But youtube is still a good platform for content creators for distributing content. It works faster and gives the user a better experience than most other video platforms, and certainly costs less than hosting it yourself.
So my point is that doing youtube should not be from a financial perspective at first. Do youtube for the content creation aspect - you have to enjoy and be capable of doing it. Then, may be you will garner traction, and _then_ think about monetization.
Good content sells. But you need to understand that whether you make it or not, also comes down to marketing - there are TONS of channels on youtube with world class content, but only a few hundred views on each video.
On other hand, there's garbage content / funnel vids with hundreds of thousands of views. Big difference is that the last guy poured all his money on production and marketing.
As the saying goes, takes money to make money.
Other than that - one needs to be somewhat consistent with releasing stuff. You want people to actually follow your channel, and make a habit of watching / looking forward to your vids.
I've generated approximately 400,000 views across 6 videos published in total.
I haven't done anything besides drive referral traffic + create a thumbnail that pops out.
I believe referral traffic is the trick.
YouTube's goal is to keep people on YouTube as long as possible.
Your newly published video is an unknown.
If you can warm up the engagement data with referral traffic, YouTube will begin showing you in a small % of searchers.
As you get more clicks, more watch time, and more comments / likes compared to other videos YouTube could show, you'll begin to be showed more and more often.
I've just started two weeks ago, and so far the response has been satisfactory. Whether it will last in the long run is to be seen, but if you find your niche, with enough persistence and a focus on quality, I don't see why it would be too late to start creating.
Addendum: doing it for the money is perhaps the wrong reason. It's likely that the network of people you'll get as a result will be even more valuable. Plus, you have to enjoy doing it, otherwise it'll be just like any other job.
On this note, even the best have negative comments. So, consider ignoring the negative comments as long as they're less than (about) 10% of your comments.
Though for web development, you have Travis media, and for website development, there are already tons of wordpress-focused channels, for this niche you will definitely have a very hard time, I guess you need delve into at least 1 year before you can see sth.
I would think this is a not-good-enough ROI if you choose this niche.
Have you considered doing some of this content on twitch instead?
You can take the content you make on Twitch (with a change to possibly get affiliate or partner while the science and technology section is booming) and then take that content and post it to YouTube.
You can't earn passive income on Youtube because of how the algorithm works and how old videos have to compete with new videos. If you are an active content creator there is still lots of space left for you.
YouTube is known for promoting content for active channels, and awarding a complete submission to its most recent mechanics. Not for passive income generation.
No, it's not too late. Plenty of people have started successful channels in the last few years, and plenty more are going to become successful in the years to come.
For instance, while Oddheader joined 9 years ago, he only seemingly started making videos in the last 2. Since then, his channel has blasted past 500,000 subscribers and is well on route to a million+.
Others I've talked to who've started in the last few years and done well for themselves include Mety333 (nearly 200k subscribers since 2017), Skip the Tutorial (460k+ since 2017), Ceave Gaming (450k+ since 2016) and various others.
So there's definitely room to succeed there, even if your channel is only starting out today.
But I think you need to keep a few things in mind here:
Firstly, as people say, it's very unlikely your channel will blow up within the first channel. It occasionally does happen (especially if someone's video happens to go viral for whatever reason or a large YouTuber keeps giving them shout outs), but it's not the norm.
So take it slowly, accept your first few videos will probably do pretty bad stats wise (and to be honest, that's probably not a bad thing given their likely low quality) and the chances of making money early on are very slim.
Secondly, you need consistency. As people have said, YouTube is a grind, and you'll almost certainly need to pump out new videos on a regular basis for a year or three before your audience properly discovers your channel. So yeah, pick a schedule, stick to it and try to make sure you have stuff lined up for when burnout/real life issues inevitably interfere.
Thirdly, you really want to have a good niche for your channel overall. Web development in itself is too broad a topic for a new channel in my opinion, and you'll really struggle to gain traction given how crowded the space is right now.
So narrow things down. Think of a particular programming or scripting language you're good at, or a CMS you know how to work with, or a sub topic (like say, usability/accessibility/browser game development/CSS image drawing) that you have some experience with instead.
Finally, remember that having good content and knowing how to market it matters a lot more than your videos' production quality. If you're not saying something people find interesting or that hasn't been said by a million people in the last, even the best microphone, camera or video editing program in the world won't make a difference.
So come up with something interesting, make sure your videos look at least half decent, then invest in building relationships with other content creators, getting an audience on social media sites, etc.
Do that, and you can definitely do well on YouTube, even in 2020.
They have similar subscriber counts (between 200k-350k subs), in a similar space. One channel pulls in $80k a year, one about $200k a year, and one over $200k A MONTH.
This is largly because of outside deals. YouTube CPMs for music content is generally garbage. However, outside deals and affiliate marketing for gear reviews is pretty lucrative. More lucrative is online courses. My friend pulling in $200k+ a month has gone heavy on the online course side.
That being said, this sounds cheesy, but DO NOT do Youtube for the money. You will make FAR FAR more cash in the short term by either: 1. Studying leetcode for job interviews at FAANG companies. 2. Taking up contract work on the side. 3. Being an uber driver. For real.
Youtube is a GRIND. My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. While working full time. Before they had ANY significant traction.
For your first year expect to make MAYBE $10k, if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week.
I’m currently growing my own Youtube channel now, I’m only at one video a week but I do genuinely enjoy making them. I’m also growing my LinkedIn too (organic reach on LinkedIn is BANANAS, I trend every four posts). But again, I ENJOY doing these videos, I writing scripts, I enjoy public speaking.
So to answer your question: it is 1000% not too late AT ALL. It’s still VERY VERY early. There is MASSIVE MASSIVE oppertunity on these platforms. However you HAVE to make content you love or you WILL quit. Hopefully I’m not discouraging you from posting, please post, but only do what you enjoy!