How is this funded? Mega rich YouTubers

[Cinegain]

You're so out of touch.

 

Hardly anyone rides a Boosted Board anymore. They're all about the OneWheel now. ? Lol, every YouTuber that wanted to be a Casey now is a Peter/Matti. Indeed. A lot of emobility transporters, ripped jeans & coffee. And obviously shooting Canon. Ugh. We do see people pushing their paid LUT packs less now these days it seems. Remember when everyone and their neighbour's dog felt like selling us on their shit LUTs? But it sorta all has become much of the same. I guess they figured 'hey, this person figured out the YouTube algorithm, let's copy & paste the formula'. You know. Back in the day we grew up wanting to become a fireman or astronaut. Now people just want to be instafamous. Why learn a profession when all you need is how to take a good selfie and make a clickbait title pretty much. Don't know. We live in weird times. People should just be themselves, get a solid foundation and job and then just shoot videos if they find it worth their effort and gives them enjoyment... that maybe one day leads to some other oppertunities, but you just don't want to set that as a solid goal I think. People should just stay authentic and not chase what others are doing.

[MeanRevert]

3 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Well, what about driving around in Lambos with a RED?

You can rent those here. Both Lambos and REDs, Lol.

[IronFilm]

4 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I think mega rich was a figure of speech on Andrew's part. But still a lot of YouTubers obviously come from some wealth, especially those that are millenials that are set up in major cities straight out of high school / college. It costs a lot to get set up in Los Angeles or New York; if it didn't a lot of us would do it! 

If you've been following Potato Jet from the start watching all his videos then you'll know he has talked about when he first moved to LA, he was barely scraping by, having to hustle hard, life didn't come to him easy. Any American can move to LA if they wish and give it a shot (although there are probably better places to choose now than saturated Hollywood, such as Atlanta). 

 

 

[wolf33d]

People here don’t realize.
 

I have friends with 100K followers on IG getting paid thousands of dollars for a few stories and a post with product placement. Just from IG they can make good living. We are talking 100K/y. It’s just a matter of having the right brand deals often.

Youtubers with millions of subs are all multi millionaires. They make good already money with views, but product advertised in the videos are what get the most cash.

Casey said himself he once got a $200K deal for one video showing a product, the biggest deal he got, but it shows. As he explains in that poadcast, some companies pay big money to have an Ad on TV that nobody watches and everybody is feeling negative about tv ad. Influencers are trusted by they followers, and they are followers because they share the same day interest. The power of an ad with an influencer that goes to 10M subs is beyond measure so they don’t hesitate to pay dozens/hundreds of thousands.

Generally money topic is avoided as a youtuber, but a few of them used that as a point and openly talked about money, with proof including live video of Google Ads account. Pretending to be open and transparent unlike other youtubers, but doing this to get attention of course. Regardless, shit loads of money. 
 

If your follower count is in the millions as youtuber  and you are not a millionaire, you either completely suck or hit that number five days ago.

As for the guy in the OP video clearly he did not reach that level yet, but with 500K subs for sure he can afford those few MacBooks and cameras. Some of the equipment might be given free of charge and with big $ bonus, as an ad. 
And I didn’t mention affiliate links as well. 
Those few cameras are peanuts. 

[kye]

33 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

Generally money topic is avoided as a youtuber

Potato Jet recently commented that the brand deals all have contractual clauses that say you can't reveal how much the deal was for.

Here's a bit where he shows ad revenue and says you can't reveal sponsor deals:

 

[kye]

5 hours ago, Cinegain said:

Hardly anyone rides a Boosted Board anymore. They're all about the OneWheel now.

Actually I think the Canadians are all about the one wheel (Matti, Peter McKinnon, etc) and the NY crew are still all about the boosted boards (Casey, Sara Dietchy, Sam Sheffer, etc).  I think it's a case of NY having slightly different terrain and conditions.  In Canada I don't see people commuting by EV, so the one wheel is better because for fun you can take it offroad and you don't have to carry it with you as a pedestrian, in NY it's about the commute and so it's about going fast on roads and I think the one wheel isn't so good at going fast.

Here's a video showing Sams board collection and his total miles in Dec 2017 was 7722 miles.  That's more than twice the distance from NY to LA.  Personal EVs are a thing in big cities.

 

[newfoundmass]

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

If you've been following Potato Jet from the start watching all his videos then you'll know he has talked about when he first moved to LA, he was barely scraping by, having to hustle hard, life didn't come to him easy. Any American can move to LA if they wish and give it a shot (although there are probably better places to choose now than saturated Hollywood, such as Atlanta). 

 

 

I'm not trying to downplay his accomplishments or act like he doesn't work hard, cause he obviously does, but moving to LA isn't cheap. I have friends that live in LA with 3 roommates and they still end up paying around $1200 a month in rent. That's about what you'd pay in Vermont for a 3 bedroom house! ?

It's just been my experience that people that move to these bigger cities generally come from wealthier families that can help support them until they get on their feet. Nothing wrong with that, but it does explain why they're in a more advantageous position than other content creators. 

[Zach Goodwin2]

To me, the idea of Youtube paying for you with ad revenue is a myth. Pewdiepie who has millions of subscribers I would say would just have enough to pay for his rent and bills, because of youtube, and he's not like super rich with his own mansion or private condo.

[IronFilm]

@newfoundmass So that's about NZ$400/week? Doesn't sound too bad to me, depends a lot on where they live and what sort of house it and what their room is like. 

Plus factor in that income can be much higher in LA than NZ. 

And there are always other routes to take to living in LA, there are surely cheaper places to live in while you are tying to get your first break. Or you could (for the cheaper rent) live outside Hollywood say in San Diego or Bakersfield, commuting into LA for gigs for a couple of years until you've built up your LA network of contacts and can make the proper leap to moving into LA 

[rdouthit]

I run a channel on YouTube and I have first-hand info on some of the larger channels (1M subs) and what they can bring in. Based on data that’s publicly accessible, Potato Jet could be doing quite well financially with his current views. (I hope he is, I always enjoy his stuff.) It all depends on his fill rate and CPM for those 2.5M monthly views. If those are anything like mine, he’s probably making $10,000 to $18,000 in straight Adsense revenue. He also does brand deals, so I expect he’s clearing as much as $20k if he’s lucky. But if his fill rate and CPM are low it might be just scraping around $10k. Not much for that LA lifestyle, lol. 

Note that a lot of the opinion and drama channels have bigger issues with copyright strikes and demonetization and their CPM can potentially be way worse  than channels that focus on brand-friendly niches like cameras or cars (Potato and myself.) So when trying to figure income for shows like Spill, Drew Goodin or Philip DeFranco you cant use the same math. Their CPM is likely to be significantly lower, but because of their size, the brand deals are more lucrative. 

update: I just watched the video above where Potato shows his revenue on a video (I calculated at $3CPM if 100% fill) and that is ridiculously bad with that level of engagement. Like, so bad, I don’t believe it. So either the camera category is far worse than I expected (unlikely since its a popular category) or that particular video is monetized at the bare minimum and he cherry picked it to use as an example. 

[Cinegain]

3 hours ago, Zach Goodwin2 said:

To me, the idea of Youtube paying for you with ad revenue is a myth. Pewdiepie who has millions of subscribers I would say would just have enough to pay for his rent and bills, because of youtube, and he's not like super rich with his own mansion or private condo.

Don't be worried about Felix, he faires well and makes multimillions... a month. That's not a myth. Homes in Sweden, the UK and soon as well Japan. Look into it. If you are a top tier YouTuber you have no money worries.

[rawshooter]

7 hours ago, Zach Goodwin2 said:

Pewdiepie who has millions of subscribers I would say would just have enough to pay for his rent and bills, because of youtube, and he's not like super rich with his own mansion or private condo.

Ahem, according to Business Insider, his net worth is $20 million:

https://www.businessinsider.com/pewdiepie-youtube-felix-kjellberg-life-career-controvery-2019-9

Of course, that's not how he presents himself as it would damage the public image he created.

[BTM_Pix]

15 hours ago, Cinegain said:

You're so out of touch.

 

Hardly anyone rides a Boosted Board anymore. They're all about the OneWheel now. ? Lol, every YouTuber that wanted to be a Casey now is a Peter/Matti. Indeed. A lot of emobility transporters, ripped jeans & coffee. 

I think this should be de rigueur for travel vloggers *

• You can carry all your gear in it
• It goes 10kmh and has a range of 25km so you quickly can get to the nearest coffee shop even in quite remote areas to do the upload
• It has a power outlet to run the cameras 
• You can put a mount on the handlebars to turn it into a ride on dolly and completely remove the Z axis bounce from your gimbal shots

Plus, of course, you can do the obligatory riding through airports shots without people sarcastically shouting "Hey look everyone, its not Casey Neistat".

Though, to be fair, you won't look any less of a tit.

 

* CONFESSIONAL NOTE

Not just for vlogging really as I can see a use for this in plenty of other video/photo jobs.

 

[Andrew Reid]

11 hours ago, kye said:

Potato Jet recently commented that the brand deals all have contractual clauses that say you can't reveal how much the deal was for.

Here's a bit where he shows ad revenue and says you can't reveal sponsor deals:

 

$180 for 50,000 views

This cow is sponsored to the hind legs.

Does he declare it on the videos? If not, it's breaking the law.

[Video Hummus]

2 hours ago, rawshooter said:

Of course, that's not how he presents himself as it would damage the public image he created.

He makes jokes about it. I think pewdiepie is pretty self aware he makes all this money doing pretty stupid things. But yes, he is a multimillionaire with multiple houses around the world. At least one in Brighton and now one in Japan.

[Andrew Reid]

It's all a bit garish.

[rawshooter]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's all a bit garish.

It's pretty much where the Internet, creative industries and - dare I say the word: - capitalism have nowadays gone...

We live in the Kardashian economy. (Even literally, to mention one Kardashian and social media 'influencer': https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2019/03/05/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/)

[kye]

8 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

$180 for 50,000 views

This cow is sponsored to the hind legs.

Does he declare it on the videos? If not, it's breaking the law.

It would be interesting to see how many videos are sponsored and not declared.  I've seen some (I don't think they were from Potato Jet though) but mostly they do this awkward "sponsor time" kind of insert which I just skip if it goes for more than a few seconds.  I suspect that there's lots of people who don't like the inserts, because many channels now put a count-down timer or a progress bar up, which I think helps with the psychology of people sticking around (I find it makes it easier to skip lol).

In terms of advertising, I'd prefer to be able to watch these guys get paid for creativity and have cameras advertised to me (or website companies, or music streaming services, or power tools companies) rather than be watching a nature documentary on TV and then have some person who sounds unhinged yelling at me that their furniture store is going bankrupt (again, for the 10th year in a row) and there are crazy bargains.

In the end, someone has to pay.  

One of my favourite YouTubers Alex (a French guy who makes cooking and recipe videos) just started a series on making meatballs, and decided that instead of his normal process of learning the classic recipes, breaking them down, then perfecting them, the first video in the series ends with him getting on a plane to the US.  I can't recall if that video was sponsored, but I don't think the economics of the ad revenue he gets from his videos enable him to fly to another continent for a week or two to meet other chefs and get glimpses into their kitchens etc.  He did a series on pizza, where he went to Italy and filmed inside the kitchens of the best pizza places there.  

To me, the quality of the content makes the ad inserts worth it because it's better than the person that has to work a job and can't devote as much time and travel to it, and it's better than the content being interrupted for minutes at a time to be screamed at by crazy people about their bargains, or to have barely clothed people try to FOMO me into buying their slightly-better-but-100-times-more-expensive goods.

The best solution would be to have a subscription network partly owned by the creators where the revenue model is by membership and it's ad-free, and we're starting to see these things with Makers Mob and Nebula, or on the free platforms with Patreon.

[Robert Collins]

Youtube. Seems that people think of little else;;;;

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4532266/75-cent-children-want-YouTubers-vloggers.html

[Cinegain]

Yup.

On 1/11/2020 at 10:53 PM, Cinegain said:

[..] You know. Back in the day we grew up wanting to become a fireman or astronaut. Now people just want to be instafamous. Why learn a profession when all you need is how to take a good selfie and make a clickbait title pretty much. Don't know. We live in weird times. [..]