In cyberspace, this star/fan dynamic exists primarily on the ‘platform’ that is Youtube. The world of Youtube – open to anyone with a (free) account – is the third-largest website in the world, and by far the largest, most efficient video-hosting site in existence.
The closest thing to ‘competition’ Youtube has is Vimeo, the 129th ranked site according to Alexa. So, in reality, Youtube has no competition.
When Youtube launched in 2005, it was perceived by many to be simply a place one would be likely to go to watch some ‘funny’ or ‘shocking’ video that had ‘gone viral’, through word-of-mouth, or the mainstream media. However, there was another side to YT (the acronym I’ll use from now on for Youtube): original ‘shows’ created by ‘regular people.’
The pictures displayed above are the 10 biggest ‘channels’ on YT, based on the number of subscribers (the best indication of ‘stardom.) All but 3 of the top 10 most-subscribed channels were created before the year 2010, with half of them created in the years 2005 and 2006. This suggests that many of the top channels benefited from being ‘early adopters’ of the true ‘point’ of YT: offering anyone the chance to become stars of their own creation.
Fast forward to, say, last year around this time: Summer 2011. This point marked what the beginning of what I called the 2nd wave of Youtube, the moment that a wider group of people worldwide picked up on the gist of YT. It is the moment I myself created my most-active YT channel, ‘tookoffskippin’.
My very first upload – May 28, 2011 – was clips from the video game ‘Mirror’s Edge’, set to the song ‘Illusion’, by Kylie Minogue. Why did I do it? Because I liked the game, and felt that the song would fit the imagery. In other words, I did it because I had a strong urge to create something. After that, I felt satisfied, because I had done something I wanted to do. The fact that my ‘mashup’ could be shared with others – perhaps aligning minds to my creation(s) – was a bonus, but not a big one for me at the time. I mean, over one year later, the ‘Mirror’s Edge Mashup’ has only 24 views, probably half of them from times I watched the thing myself.
But the point here is that I had entered ‘arena’ of attention, whether I knew it or not. A video I posted merely 2 days later, the ‘Dallas Mavericks Playoff Mix’, did phenomenally better: almost 3,400 views to date:
The fact that this video – my 8th posted to YT – got a good deal of attention (by my standards) felt good. But I recall being most proud of the fact that my video editing skills had improved significantly from my first upload to my eighth. I had also probably begun to understand the art of ‘riding the (attention) wave’, by timing videos for release at times when attention for their subject would be maximized. But again, my focus was not on getting a video to ‘go viral’ (something that can’t be consciously controlled anyway); I was just ‘happy to be there (on YT).
Michael Goldhaber has written that once the Attention Economy reaches its fullest expression, ‘attention’ will actually replace ‘money’ as the primary means of exchange. Such a concept is still too ‘out there’ for the average person in the ‘developed’ nations to grasp, since money is still very much a valuable thing in this day. But I think Youtube provides some clues as to the way in which attention alone can become the prime motivation for future generations of ‘Youtubers’. We must look at Youtube’s ‘Partner program.’
Basically, the YT partner program is a way to ‘make money’ off of the videos one uploads to YT. The criteria for YT partnership, however, is extensive:
Mr. Sean Schumacher seems to be well-informed about YT partnership, so we’ll analyze what he says is necessary to YT partnership. His first criterion – 1000 views for all one’s uploads – is very difficult to accomplish. It is easier to do the second: get 10k channel views. An unpopular (or dead) channel can have one or two videos that provide views, even if most of the uploads are duds. The third criterion, however, is the most important one: subscribers. I stated earlier that ‘subscriptions’ are the only indicator that people are ‘fanning’ the content creator, aligning their minds to whatever ideas and concepts the creators are presenting. Getting a person to ‘sub’ to one’s channel takes the most skill, since the ‘algorithm’ people use in deciding to sub is dependent on a number of factors: frequency of uploads (steady entertainment) ; consitency of content (channel identity) ; mind alignment ( zeitgeist/worldview)
A glance back at the top 10 YT channels by subscriptions will readily show that all 10 of the contributors are partnered with YT, thus getting some sort of compensation for their uploads. How much? This is reprinted from the blog willvideoforfood:
Exclusive: How Much Money YouTube Partners Make
by Nalts on January 5, 2010
We YouTube “Partners” (or “stars” as I hate saying) are all contractually forbidden to share our revenue. But I’ve given hints and clues over time. For those of you who Googled your way here, I’m both a marketer/advertiser and a creator/YouTuber, so that gives me two lenses into this Da Vinci-Code like mystery. Davinci made me think of “Da Bears.”
I’d estimate there are have at least a few dozen YouTube Partners earning $100K per year. That’s great money if you’re in your 20s or 30s and have minimal costs in production or overhead (like 4 kids and a horrific mortgage). But it’s a rounding error for a professional content creator or network.To calculate a particular Parner’s income, here are some tips:
- You basically take the Partner’s total views for the month, multiply it by a fraction of a penny, and you have a rough idea. TubeMogul‘s Marketplace shows some of the most-viewed people (and their monthly views). But remember: the most-subscribed are not necessarily most-viewed and vice versa. YouTube doesn’t give a hoot how many subscribers you have (although that certainly helps drive views, but increasingly it seems less powerful than being a “related video”). In general, the commercial content is getting more daily views but the amateurs have a lock on subscribers.
- Most ads are placed by advertisers based on total 1K views, but some
is on a per-click basis (CPC text ads placed by Google
Adwords/Adsense). Google/YouTube is usually paid by an agency or media
buyer a CPM (cost per thousand, say between $5 and $25 dollars per
thousand views), then shares some of that with the creator. This can be
highly misleading, because:
- Some views earn nothing (if they’re embedded and no ad follows it).
- And increasingly advertisers are paying a high premium for specific content they commission, target, or hand select. Sometimes this might average a few bucks and others it might be much higher… $25 CMP was the published rate of InVideo ads and I know of specific integrated campaigns that command a higher premium from YouTube. Yey!
- Another confounding variable: potty-mouthed creator turns away advertisers. So watch the ads on your Partner for a while. Are they premium InVideo ads with accompanying display (square) ads? Or are they garbage Adwords/Adsense ads?
- The text ads may SOMETIMES be paid on a per-click basis, which can make them fruitless or profitable depending on people clicking and buying the advertiser’s product (the latter must occur, or a savvy advertiser will quickly stop the campaign that’s raping them of click dollars and not generating business). I was telling my YouTube buds to turn these off because they’re ugly and don’t make much money, but a few of them gave me a stern stare like they knew otherwise. So whatever… maybe they make money and maybe they don’t. I don’t get a breakdown on them, and they’re still ugly.
- Then you have to factor in “sponsored videos,” where a YouTuber promotes a product or service for a flat fee (or variable based on views) via Hitviews or related companies. That can easily be more than YouTube shells out per month for ad sharing. The going rate here is incredibly wide: from $1K to $20K and higher per video.
So in conclusion:
- Do your own math using monthly views on TubeMogul and assuming some CPM (cost per thousand), but recognize YouTube takes a cut and some of the advertising inventory isn’t sold or is driven by keyword Google adsense text thingies. Maybe the creator/partner gets a few bucks per thousand views and maybe more or less.
- Use some of the assumptions above to calibrate your estimate if you’re trying to peak into the W-9s of your favorite “Stars” like Fred. There are now dozens of popular YouTube people that make a full-time living on YouTube revenue, and I’d guess a lot of $50K-$100K per year people. I am not among the full-timers. With a family of 6, I gotta have a day job too. But Shaycarl, Sxephil, Charles Trippy, Michael Buckley and many more… they’re full-time at this. If I was making the bucks I’m making via YouTube after college, I’d probably go full-time too. Fred? Let’s just say he’s got college covered, or a nice nest-egg.
- Before you get excited (or jealous), it’s a long haul to cashville. And if you start with the hope of making money, you’re doomed. You need to LOVE it, and be extremely patient as the road to loads of views is tougher to climb, and requires an ass-load of persistence. Start as a hobby and “just keep swimming.”
- Finally, there are two forces at odds that impact the sustainability of this revenue for YouTube amateurs. First, we’ll probably see continued competition from more professionally-produced content that fetches higher ad dollars because it feels safer to squeamish media buyers (see, I’m not calling them all dense anymore… only the ones that don’t read this vlog). But the good news is that dollars are projected to grow dramatically. Currently, as a marketer, I’d argue that YouTube is selling itself short.
The gist seems to be that, whatever potential profiteers would like to believe, making money on YT is probably not easy. And even if one could catapult oneself somehow to the top of the YT heap in terms of viewership (good luck), even then the monetary compensation is not comparatively large. So, it is probably wise to put ‘profits’ out of one’s mind when getting started in YT content production. There is an art to creating ‘successful’ videos that can really be learned only by experience. That means constantly uploading stuff to YT. And if the main motivation one has for joining the YT community is to ‘game’ the system, and make an easy buck, it is almost guaranteed to fail, since there is no guarantee that one’s videos will resonate with x-number of people. Therefore, it is impossible to set ‘making money’ an early goal when getting involved in YT.
But subscriptions are another story. The biggest obstacle to many YT content producers will arise due to issues concerning ‘copyright infringement’, as corporate entities scramble to protect their ‘intellectual property’ from unauthorized use. Youtube is therefore compelled to keep at arms length anything that can be flagged as infringement, for legal reasons – even if Google couldn’t care less about it. My tookoffskippin channel will never be monetized, since the majority of the videos use content (either audio or video) that I do not ‘own’, period. However, provided my videos are not outright flagged and taken down (as some have been), they are still there to be seen. This alone can align people’s minds to mine, and in effect, I can potentially become just as big a ‘star’ as some of the people ‘making money’ from YT for their content, due to subscriptions.
Subscriptions are the way one says to a content producer, ‘…I see what it is that you are doing, and I want to see more of it. We are of one mind.’ As Goldhaber states:
….if you watch Die Hard I, II, III, IV and V, you’ll be less bored with Bruce Willis
than if you watch Die Hard 1 to 365 every day. Quite possibly, for the average
viewer, Die Hard V watched the tenth time will be less interesting than when
watched the ninth time. Samuelson again: “the law of diminishing marginal
utility states that, as the amount of a good consumed increases, the marginal
utility of that good tends to diminish.”
than if you watch Die Hard 1 to 365 every day. Quite possibly, for the average
viewer, Die Hard V watched the tenth time will be less interesting than when
watched the ninth time. Samuelson again: “the law of diminishing marginal
utility states that, as the amount of a good consumed increases, the marginal
utility of that good tends to diminish.”
Goldhaber agrees: “since it is hard
to get new attention by repeating
exactly what you or someone else
has done before, this new economy
is based on endless originality.”
to get new attention by repeating
exactly what you or someone else
has done before, this new economy
is based on endless originality.”
There you have it. It is a fact that the
variety of topics that are likely to garner much attention from people
will narrow considerably in the next few years. Therefore, what will
vary will be the vantage point one takes when analyzing any
particular topic. As the saying goes, ‘…it’s not what you do, it’s how
you do it.’ That is the logic that drives the ‘subscription’ economy of
Youtube.
I came up with the ’2nd wave of Youtube’
concept as a result of my vidstatsx research. As I went down the list,
from top to bottom, I came to see that in many cases, I could not align
myself with many of the most popular YT channels.
It is telling that many of the top YT
channels are ‘comedy’ oriented. In reality, by ‘comedy’ I really mean
‘generic stupidity’. The videos, if watched, will likely make one laugh,
but they’re more ‘silly’ than anything else. They seem to cater to
‘dilberts’ in cubicles around the world, where such generic
entertainment is consumed as a matter of course, the same way a tv
playing as background noise is a staple of waiting rooms. There is
really no strong ‘identity’ to any of the above videos, with a possible
exception being the uploads from ‘nigahiga’.The ‘stupidity’ formula was
likely the manifestation of a realization that video ‘virality’ has
generally been linked to something funny, weird, gross, or shocking. But
‘funny’ is more easily created consciously; the other types are usually
more spontaneous.
In the ’2nd wave’ of Youtube, channels are
much less generally popular, but their identities are very clearly
defined. Here are a few examples of these 2nd wave channels:
Nikbagtv (3500 subs) is a channel devoted
largely to commentary on stories from the ‘hip hop’ world ; KSIOlajidebt
(440k+ subs) is a ‘video game commentary’ channel, whose popularity is
largely driven by the comedic talents of its host, JJ Olatunji ;
ibeShucks (200k subs) is a comedy/commentary channel; JMPasq (about 900
subs) is a channel that chronicles the performance of individual college
athletes for the purposes of pro scouting.
Compare this second set of channels to the
one of the top 10 channels. The key difference between the two is the
shift from a very generic (corny) sort of content, to content that is
much more targeted to a specific audience. Thus it seems that even in
cyberspace, the ‘audience splintering’ phenomenon driving network tv
into a frenzy, is happening on Youtube as well. This is entirely
logical, since as people begin to sharply narrow their focus, to closely
reflect only the things they already ‘align’ with mentally, channels
like the ones seen directly above will be the type likely to sprout and
flourish in the near future. They will not be able to generate the huge
numbers (5m subs) that today constitute the top of the mountain in
Youtube-world, and they won’t make much money. But they will do a much
better job of creating ‘stars’ whose ‘fans’ are very closely committed
to them, very closely-aligned to them mentally. When this happens, then
the new stars of YT will use Twitter – the ultimate star/fan medium – to
further exploit their influence. This we will discuss in the next
post…….
No comments:
Post a Comment