This past week or so I've been trying to justify the last 500+ days of my life and my shiny new student loans. In March I'll be a self-proclaimed creative with an actual master's degree in business and instead of being productive and furthering my professional life, I've been digging into YouTube and trying to smash together the creative work I do and some of what I've learned in business school.
No question, I spend far more time consuming video content on YouTube compared any other the other streaming platform (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, etc.). We've got an antenna connected to our TV to get the basic channels and it's been at least a decade since we've had any kind of cable subscription.
According to November 2023 Nielsen data, streaming made up more than 36% of the total TV usage with YouTube alone claiming 9%. Having been around before the internet was a thing as well as essentially growing up with it, seeing traditional network TV be eclipsed by streaming is bonkers.
There's also the ginormous advertising revenue YouTube brings in. Back in August I'd posted an MSNBC video here on this blog that went on about changes in TV viewing and advertising revenues amongst some of the social platforms and traditional media outlets. In 2022, YouTube brought in $29.2 billion in ad revenues, completely dwarfing their competition.
So why bring any of this up?
After the boys went to sleep on Christmas Eve, Anne and I wound up watching some old videos of us on my YouTube channel. Before each video started, we'd have to sit through one or two ads on the work I'd created and I'm certainly not seeing any of that revenue. YouTube is a free service and I know they cover their expenses and make a profit from advertising dollars, but dang I'd have liked to pocket even a sliver of that ad revenue.
Right now my YouTube channel is swimming in old videos from 2006 till 2013 when the cool kids left for Vimeo. The golden age of that video platform is way gone, but somehow I'm still paying them $59.95/yr for a Vimeo Plus membership.
If you've been paying attention, you'll know there's some independent YouTube channels bringing in some outrageous revenues. There's a financial YouTuber I watch with 833k subscribers who laid out his numbers and revenue streams recently. That video sent me down a rabbit hole of similar ones from other independent creators: the productivity dude with 5.1m subscribers and the millions he earned in 2022; a music composer with a PhD and 4.71k subscribers; this dude talking about how much money his wife's fitness channel makes.
In considering what it takes to get monetized on YouTube, it's something like 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the last 365 days. Currently I've only got 310 subscribers and 120 public watch hours. Needless to say, if I'm ever wanting to see a dime from those ads in front of my videos, I've got quite a hike ahead. That said, I'm not opposed to the idea.
I'm clear-eyed enough to know this isn't a "get rich quick" thing, regardless of what the YouTube algorithm has fed me. Turns out there's also business models built around buying monetized channels, but from what I've read it sounds like a bad idea. There's so much information available on how to get started doing this nonsense, and plenty of it has got to be just hot steamy trash. Thursday I spent 45+ minutes listening to two art YouTubers – of course that's a thing – with their aptly named "How to Avoid the Artist to Content Creator Pipeline on YouTube."
Surely the world doesn't need another YouTube channel, let alone one with my face plastered all over it. Considering how long it takes me to write a single blog post, would I actually have the bandwidth to keep feeding the YouTube beast? Being on the tail end of my MBA and the 1,600+ hours of studying I've logged since fall 2022, what I know now still seems incredibly small compared to what I know I don't know.
Still, I like the idea of sharing some of the conversations I get to have with people who are much smarter and more interesting than I am. I'm also a fan of attending film festivals as a networking opportunity, but questioning the value of paying film submission fees when instead I could post my project online and use that festival submission budget on a promotional campaign.
Staying self-employed, providing for my family, and helping others are still the main goals. The fact that I've been able to make a living in part due to passive income streams seems like a magic trick compared to the alternative. The tremendous time and effort I've dumped into business school was meant to be a long-term investment instead of simply buying more gear I'd end up replacing a few years later. Surely I can position some of what I've learned in a way that legitimately helps others, covers my expenses, and turns a profit.
Surely the world needs more of this kind of nonsense though:
UPDATE: March 2, 2024
The fact that our six-year-old could barely leave the room as I'm writing this because there's an image of MrBeast on my screen is telling.
Wisecrack is one of the YouTube channels I've followed for quite a while and recently they released a video titled MrBeast and the Toxic Culture of YouTube. It's a long watch and goes deep – it's a philosophy channel after all – but certainly worth your time considering this post. The video goes into depth about a recent Times article, "In the Belly of MrBeast" written by Belinda Luscombe.
One quote from the Times article that I don't remember from the Wisecrack video but is wildly alarming goes into how much time this dude is spending on set.
It all requires an enormous amount of time and effort, especially for someone with a finely tuned need for quality control. Donaldson has 15-hour filming days 20 to 25 times a month and devotes the other days to Feastables. But he’s always been a guy willing to knuckle down if he thinks the payoff will be there.
20 to 25 15-hour filming days a month. For anyone working in production, that's insane and not at all healthy let alone sustainable. It's certainly not an example to follow.
More importantly, there's this line that should raise some major red flags:
“These algorithms are poisonous to humanity. They prioritize addictive, isolated experiences over ethical social design, all just for ads,” he says. “It’s not MrBeast I have a problem with. It’s platforms which encourage someone like me to study a retention graph so I can make the next video more addicting."
I'd mentioned my six-year-old earlier. That 40lb house fire thinks this YouTuber hung the moon. "He helps people." He went on to tell me in detail about several different videos he'd seen where MrBeast gives out life-changing amounts of money to people who could honestly use it. Surely that's a good thing, but how do I approach telling my kid about all the other nonsense involved with making that happen let alone some of the ethical concerns?