Hello everybody! Welcome to Nate's Take. Today we're gonna be talking about how much money
YouTubers make. And yesterday, I got the perfect email to start off this conversation.
I have a Google alert set up for a few different things, and I got an email that came over,
that led me to THIS page right here. Okay, so first, the title of this article here says
'Famous YouTube stars are barely scraping by' and it's about a YouTuber named Gaby and a friend of hers.
Now, she says that she's 27 years old. She's been building an online following for 10 years,
and a couple years ago moved that over to online video. So she started a YouTube channel
with her friend Allison.
Now get this - between the two of us, the two of them, they have a half million subscribers.
So they've got 500,000 subscribers and it says there and a hungry fan base. So their
fans love them, right? 500,000 raving fans I would call them.
So they, they're going to talk about what they do. They're either producing or starring
in their own comedy sketch, their advice show, they write episodes, they deal with all the
business things and running their company. And right here, get this - 'and yet, despite
the success, we're barely scraping by.'.
So, you know, the first thing that I think of when I hear that they've got a half million
subscribers and they're barely scraping by, I mean, those of you watching this video,
what would YOU do if you have a captive audience of 500,000 people? Do you think you could
do ANYTHING to do more than scrape by? I mean, all you have to do is have a product or a
service, and offer it and you've got a half million raving fans?
You don't need... you don't need too many people to buy that, to do "more than scrape
by", to make a good living with that, right?
Let's look into this a little bit further. If we go down to the last paragraph here,
she says 'the highs and lows leave me reeling. One week, I was stopped for photos six times
while perusing comic books in downtown L.A.'. So people recognize her. She's got some fame
or some celebrity status. She said the next week, she sat faceless in a room of 40 people.
Okay.
Okay, I like this one. 'I've walked a red carpet with $80 in my bank account.'. So,
it's a matter of being strategic. If you build yourself to this level of fame and this celebrity
status, what are you gonna do to turn THAT into REVENUE?
I'm gonna make another video about this soon, but I've, on my, on my desk here, I've got
a list of 11 different ways that you can monetize your YouTube channel. And Gaby's problem here
is she's only using one of those!
She's counting on YouTube advertising revenue as her sole source of income or her primary
source of income, when she needs to come up with some way to build a business around this.
What, what is she offering more than... she's using her YouTube channel to bring IN a great
following of raving fans. They would buy something from her if she offered it, okay?
Just one more thing on this page. It refers to another YouTuber. It says 'musician Meghan
Tonjes...' I'm saying that right? Tonjes? I don't know.
'she performed on Vidcon...' So Vidcon is like YouTube's big convention or a big convention
of YouTubers. The biggest one. '...she performed on MainStage this year to screaming, crying
fans without knowing whether she'd be able to afford groceries.'.
So, isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Let me show you an example of a YouTuber and how
they're, how they're making money on YouTube. So this guy, Marcus Guiliano... I don't know
how to say that. I'm butchering his last name.
Okay, this guy, he's a chef. I recently found him. I watched a couple of his videos. I wanna
show you his best performing video.
So you come over here and you sort it by most popular. Okay, this video right here "Drinking
baking soda for health benefits"... Alright, you see that this video has 1.46 million views
on it. Let me show you the statistics.
And you see that this was not a VIRAL video. This is the type of video that I commonly
make where it starts out flat and it then it eventually grows and builds momentum, and
it ends up being a machine for your business.
Going back for the last 18 months, we see that it's had the same angle of incline here.
So for 18 months, this video has been bringing him in a consistent revenue of a thousand dollars a month.
Now, that's great. That's especially great 'cause it's just one video. But if we go back,
we see that he's got A LOT of videos - and THAT's his best performing one. His second
best performing one has only got about two-thirds of those volume of views. His third best performing
video is significantly lower. It's only got 383,000 views compared to the 1.46. And then
the fourth one has only got a hundred thousand views.
So again, only one of his videos is really doing that. So, if you're only relying on
the YouTube advertising revenue, how can you survive?
You know, obviously, you've got to grow to a much larger subscriber base so you can get
a lot higher views on your videos, but then if you think about... I've got several YouTube
channels, but my main one that focuses on all of my business, I've got less than 2,000
subscribers on it. It'll grow, but as of the recording of this video, I've got under 2,000,
and yet, I'm making a 6-figure income from the traffic that I get on YouTube.
So, let me show you another example. Okay, Devin Super Tramp - this is a really fun YouTube
channel. If you haven't seen it or seen any of his videos, I recommend checking them out.
He'll get always at least get a million views on his videos. In the short term, he'll put
them out and he'll, he'll get a lot of views. 10% of his revenue comes from advertising,
okay? Just 10%. 70% comes from sponsorship's. What do I mean by sponsorship's?
Well this video right here, you see the logo for Point Break? That's a new movie that's
coming out, and they sponsor him to make a video that would target HIS audience, Devin's
audience, and introduce them to the movie Point Break. Yeah, Point Break.
So, they paid him a good chunk of change to film this video PLUS his video on YouTube
makes a little bit of advertising revenue, and the third way, 20% of his revenue comes
from stock video footage. So while he's out on these exotic places, he gets a lot of video
footage and some people hire him for little clips. He told me that for five seconds of
video footage, he charges $1,500. So if it's a perfect shot going over the edge of a waterfall,
or something like that and it's five seconds long, that'll say, no yeah five seconds long
and he charges $1,500 for a shot like that.
So those are the three ways that, that he makes revenue, Devin makes revenue. Let me
show you another one. Now this is one of my favorite YouTubers as well. He makes Science
videos. I don't typically subscribe to a whole bunch of Science channels, but this guy is
also a really good marketer.
Right now, he's got over 3 million subscribers. When I started following him almost two years
ago, he had just barely surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark, and so I've been following
him since then and seen what he's done in the entire time except for this video right
here. In the entire time, he's never promoted his own product or service.
And I've always thought this guy had such a good following, he makes such great videos,
imagine what he could do if he had a business behind it, he had his own product or service.
And so again, I've been following him for, for almost two years and he's NEVER offered
anything. Now earlier this month, he came out with his own product called Snatoms: Magnetic
Modeling Kit for Chemistry. Now I took many Chemistry classes back in my University days.
There were all the balls and stick models that you put those sticks inside the holes
and make your own molecules. Well his are magnetic. It's pretty cool. Anyway, you can
check it out if you're interested in that. But, I gotta show you what he did. He launched
it as a Kickstarter campaign.
Let me hit pause on that video and I'll come down to his... See it says here 'Help me make
this a reality'. He's got a bit.ly link that takes it over to his Kickstarter campaign.
Now, he had a goal. Right here, you see the goal $42,000. In order to make this product
a reality, he wanted to raise $42,000. He did that in the first couple of hours. In
fact, in the first day, if my memory serves me right, he had already reached about a hundred
thousand. Now he's up to $367,000 with still 7 days left to go on this Kickstarter campaign.
Okay, so taking a look at what Derek does on Veritasium here, he's got 3 million subscribers.
Each video that he puts out gets an average of 1.2 million views, okay? So every video
gets over a million views. If you take out this video right here, the one with the basketball
on it, that one has 28 million views. Now, that one went viral, okay? That one went viral
and that's just in advertising revenue, that one video made him over $150,000. But if you
take that one out, the rest of the videos still, without going viral, get over a million
views EACH on average.
And so that's, that's a significant thing... that you can make a video about anything.
He made a video... his first one about a product or service. As of now, it will get a lot more
'cause this is a pretty new video, but it's, it's got 426,000 views. And this resulted
in $367,000 pledge towards this Kickstarter campaign.
Alright, so how much money do YouTubers make??
Well, it obviously depends. And I would say, the biggest factor that that depends on is
what is the business behind it? The YouTube channel itself - yes, the videos CAN generate
revenue, but the biggest advantage, the biggest value of having a successful YouTube channel
is that it's a marketing engine.
It helps to build a platform and build a HUGE following. What are you gonna do with that
following? What's the business or the product or service or system that you have behind
that to TURN THAT into revenue?
So if all you're doing is building a following but you're not doing anything with that following,
then yeah as a YouTuber, you're gonna make only a very little amount, you know? You're...
you're just hoping that a video goes viral so that you can, you know, get 27 million
views and make $150,000.
If you have a REAL business behind it, you can have just a small YouTube channel, but
use it strategically. Build a loyal following. And create a 6 or 7 figure income.
If you haven't subscribed already, make sure you hit the Subscribe button and we'll see you in the next video!