Truth about YouTube income

[IronFilm]

13 hours ago, DaveAltizer said:

it’s a combination of subs, views, comments, audience engagement that led to getting an agent who lands the brand deals. that’s the majority of my income. half of it is through sponsorships. the rest is all related to ad rev and affiliate

If you didn't have an agent, how much do you think that would impact the brand deals you could land yourself?
 

13 hours ago, DaveAltizer said:

i only make around $900 a month off ad revenue for example.

Wow, that is almost nothing!
(for a channel as good/big as yours that is)

[Dave Maze]

6 hours ago, IronFilm said:

If you didn't have an agent, how much do you think that would impact the brand deals you could land yourself?
 

Wow, that is almost nothing!
(for a channel as good/big as yours that is)

ya if i didn’t have an agent by now i’d be looking for one. almost everyone has one at higher levels. 

i share an agent with kai w, jarad poland, gerald undone, and jeven dovey for example. 

[Video Hummus]

On 2/12/2020 at 2:02 PM, DaveAltizer said:

ya if i didn’t have an agent by now i’d be looking for one. almost everyone has one at higher levels. 

i share an agent with kai w, jarad poland, gerald undone, and jeven dovey for example. 

Interesting....

[newfoundmass]

Had no idea people at the level of Dave had agents! My mind is kinda blown. 

[eleison]

34 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

Had no idea people at the level of Dave had agents! My mind is kinda blown. 

Well, Dave does share an agent with 4-5 other guys so  I'm assuming the cost of an agent split 4-5 ways isn't so bad ;-)

[rdouthit]

Interesting that Dave makes so little relative to his channel size. My channel brought in close to $60k in straight ad revenue last year and I just broke 100,000 subscribers. I have a broadcast syndication agent, whom I’ve worked with for years (any viewers from the Ignition network in S. Africa here? Lol.) But I wouldn’t even consider one for brand deals.

Edit: looked at Kinotika’s (Dave’s) stats and it probably comes down to watch time. I had about 50,000,000 minutes of watch time in 2019. Based on his public numbers his channel watch time was probably a lot lower. (Reminder: subscribers are only one metric, and aren’t the only gauge of a channels reach.)

[IronFilm]

8 hours ago, eleison said:

Well, Dave does share an agent with 4-5 other guys so  I'm assuming the cost of an agent split 4-5 ways isn't so bad 😉

I'd take a wild guess and bet his agent has a few other guys on his books as well? So his costs are even lower

[m43forme]

On 2/14/2020 at 12:44 AM, rdouthit said:

Interesting that Dave makes so little relative to his channel size. My channel brought in close to $60k in straight ad revenue last year and I just broke 100,000 subscribers. I have a broadcast syndication agent, whom I’ve worked with for years (any viewers from the Ignition network in S. Africa here? Lol.) But I wouldn’t even consider one for brand deals.

Edit: looked at Kinotika’s (Dave’s) stats and it probably comes down to watch time. I had about 50,000,000 minutes of watch time in 2019. Based on his public numbers his channel watch time was probably a lot lower. (Reminder: subscribers are only one metric, and aren’t the only gauge of a channels reach.)

Your point about being based on watch time is important. I've got a YouTube channel that's fairly successful in its space and found subscribers really isn't the main driver (though there's usually a correlation). 

Here's some considerations that matter more than subscriber count:

• Type of content (this impacts your CPM rate. Are you in a segment that is very defined that can be specifically targeted? The more defined, the higher the rate. The broader the audience, the lower the rate. Mine is males 24-60 and my CPM is around $8 - after the YT cut)
• Length of content. It's a double-edged sword. YT wants ~7 minute videos. It's the maximum engagement number. Longer videos with great engagement can do multiple ad breaks and still retain the user, which goes against the 7 minute rule.
• Click through rate: how many views per 1,000 impressions? How this performs impacts how much YT will recommend your video. This is why thumbnails are so important
• Retention rate
• Trending topics. Most of my content expires pretty quickly, so it'll be a hot burn. I only have ~23k subs, but when I release a video, It'll do 1000 videos per hour for the first two days. This builds on itself and has YT push your content everywhere. This is where large sub numbers help because you get an initial bump.
• Sponsorships. Getting a real sponsor for a video changes the revenue calculus entirely - and it's why so many people do product/gear based channels. 

Ultimately, if you make good content, you'll get the subs. But you get paid on views and viewer engagement, irrespective of how many subs you have. 

@rdouthit as someone who subscribes to RedLine, StraightPipes, SavageGeese, etc and consumes a ton of car content, I can't believe I've never been recommended your channel. Your work is excellent. Subscribed

[Dave Maze]

On 2/13/2020 at 10:44 PM, rdouthit said:

Interesting that Dave makes so little relative to his channel size. My channel brought in close to $60k in straight ad revenue last year and I just broke 100,000 subscribers. I have a broadcast syndication agent, whom I’ve worked with for years (any viewers from the Ignition network in S. Africa here? Lol.) But I wouldn’t even consider one for brand deals.

Edit: looked at Kinotika’s (Dave’s) stats and it probably comes down to watch time. I had about 50,000,000 minutes of watch time in 2019. Based on his public numbers his channel watch time was probably a lot lower. (Reminder: subscribers are only one metric, and aren’t the only gauge of a channels reach.)

ya exactly. watch time. 

On 2/14/2020 at 1:04 AM, IronFilm said:

I'd take a wild guess and bet his agent has a few other guys on his books as well? So his costs are even lower

yup. my agent goes to square space and says: “i got 10 guys who all will work with you for $X” and then he splits that money up to all of us depending on our size 

[MeanRevert]

1 hour ago, m43forme said:

 

• Length of content. It's a double-edged sword. YT wants ~7 minute videos. It's the maximum engagement number. Longer videos with great engagement can do multiple ad breaks and still retain the user, which goes against the 7 minute rule.

How do you know that 7 minutes is the magic number?  Seems like a weird number.

[m43forme]

39 minutes ago, MeanRevert said:

How do you know that 7 minutes is the magic number?  Seems like a weird number.

Just from a lot of research I've done. Too low and you don't get engagement, too high and people start tuning out. Obviously it doesn't mean you can't monetize a 4 minute video or a 29 minute one. But to YouTube, somewhere in that 7 min range is their sweet spot for most of their content.

[Cinegain]

I thought every creator was trying to hit that 10+ mins mark (sometimes by fluffin' their content with nothingness).

One time Pewdiepie uploaded his content and half/0.5x speed so it would extend over the 10+ mark and viewers would have to 2x speed to get it up to normal pace (doesn't quite work btw) for the 5 min video. He also dropped in words like 'real estate', 'investment' etc into a video once to get the YouTube algorithm to feature higher profile ads with more revenue.

[Oliver Daniel]

I recently enquired to some Make Up Artist Youtubers to feature in a small brand campaign. 

All of them had agents. 

On the lower end at around 100k subscribers , they were on average around £18k to hire for just a 4 hour shoot.

On the higher end at around 18 million subscribers, average £100,000 for the same. 

On top of that, you’re limited to £1k worth of ad spend per campaign and only usage of the video for a month.

Never knew YouTubing was that lucrative, and stringent. 

[MeanRevert]

1 hour ago, m43forme said:

Just from a lot of research I've done. Too low and you don't get engagement, too high and people start tuning out. Obviously it doesn't mean you can't monetize a 4 minute video or a 29 minute one. But to YouTube, somewhere in that 7 min range is their sweet spot for most of their content.

I'm surprised that YouTube wouldn't have an analytics engine that tells you the exact number.

[EthanAlexander]

This is turning into one of the most illuminating threads on this forum. Learning a lot.

[rdouthit]

5 hours ago, m43forme said:

@rdouthit as someone who subscribes to RedLine, StraightPipes, SavageGeese, etc and consumes a ton of car content, I can't believe I've never been recommended your channel. Your work is excellent. Subscribed

Thanks!

In terms of watch time, my focus is always to hit over 10-minutes, however, I'd never stretch a 5-minute video to be unnecessarily long. On some of my weekly videos, it's more a problem of getting it down under 30-minutes runtime. Lol.