What are your kids’ (approximate) ages?
Well, the two biggest reasons for our “success” are timing and
perseverance. We’ve been doing YouTube since 2009, back when there were no
revenue sharing or YouTube Partner Programs or MCNs or whatever. So in
many, many ways we’re not that successful - lots of 2009ers have a million
subs. In our defense, we’re not trying to “go viral” or be big YouTubers -
my wife just likes vlogging and the YouTube community and - this is where
the perseverance comes in - she would be vlogging even if she only had 50
subs.
As for what works and what doesn’t, three simple tricks: 1) experiment a
lot 2) develop a unique voice/POV, more important than even unique content
3) climb the ladder - look at similar channels 1 level above you (not 10),
do what they’re doing, go where they’re going, engage with them directly on
social media, seek out their audience, rinse, repeat.
Also one more bonus one, which this girl is doing and certainly “works”
(though maybe without the revenue, apparently) - act bigger than you are. I
know a couple that started selling merchandise when they had like 6,000
subs which to me was kind of ridiculous, and now they’ve got a million subs
and followers and a reality TV show in the works.
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This is where I not only agree with you but have a serious issue with the ‘but those people aren’t doing any work!’ arguments.
It IS a lot of work, and requires some degree of skill as well.
Meanwhile, it’s not like flipping burgers, greeting at Wal-mart, or a huge fraction of ‘real jobs’ are even fractionally as useful to society as a whole by comparison.
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Oh it’s TONS of work -
The skillset includes but isn’t limited to: event planning
video production
editing, special effects, audio
copyright lawyer
social media platform expert
community relations
PR and marketing
sysadmin and web design and development
dealing with fans, haters, promoters, agents, clients, vendors, huge faceless corporations
While somehow maintaining this somewhat polite fiction that you’re just a 100% ordinary person just sharing their voice with the world. We always compare it to that SNL bit where Ronald Reagan keeps acting like a doddering idiot for the press and then turns into a badass alpha male in the Situation Room.
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If you think you need money to survive, then you are being extorted.
You don’t need money to survive? Tell me how that works.
That said, this idea that people should be able to get rich off the internet is what’s ruined the internet, IMO, bringing all these commercial entities in. Here’s the thing, no one wants to pay for content on the internet. I think people intuitively realize digital has no intrinsic value, since it can, once coded, be endlessly and freely reproduced. And it’s difficult to value things you just click on in your spare time. You can use the internet as a stepping stone, perhaps, a sort of résumé, but it should not be your end-goal. Maybe that’ll change one day - the economics of entertainment certainly will - but as it is, the internet is not a money-maker for content creators.
It is several full time jobs. I admire your work ethic.
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Maybe the free reproduction and distribution actually is its value. It sounds like you are working from a model based upon artificial scarcity.
I see it as a communications medium. Is any communications medium ever a goal in itself? There is some value to the medium itself, but most of the value is determined by the content. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, increases of commerce have resulted in more dilute content.
The notion that eyesballs = cash is a scam, perpetuated by aggregators who somehow get people to pay them to regurgitate work which was somehow not profitable to its creators. There is no clear explanation of how this creates value or wealth, it’s not even commerce, FFS. It’s a pseudo-system devised by a vast minority on the internet which the majority have gullibly internalized. People should be clued in.
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If only they hadn’t bought in to the social construct of the capitalistic weather propoganda of FEMA.
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Possibly the most successful long term restauranteur in the UK is Heston Blumenthal, who is by training a cost accountant. Figures.
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I do not think anybody working in psychology or neurology has ever demonstared the existence of a “survival instinct”. We have a number of built-in behaviours which are the result of natural selection, but to a varying degree we can override them by thinking about it. The idea that there is a tree of instincts with “survival” at the top sounds to me like one of the 19th century misunderstandings of Darwin. Or that ghastly woman Rand.
If you look at single celled animals, they basically have two built in behaviours; they move towards food (by chemical gradient signalling) and perhaps light, and they move away from some other stimuli down gradients of chemicals, temperature etc. The direction they move in is determined by the sum of inputs, like Buridan’s ass.
The problem with human beings is that our brains can come up with conclusions at variance with reality due to the complexity of processing of information, and this, plus abnormal stimuli (like food with high sugar content) can cause us to persist in behaviours with adverse outcomes, like over-eating. The availability of what looks like instant fame and the apparent example of people who have become rich from it can, I think, result in the paradox of someone who is failing but thinks that doing the same thing harder will succeed. Twitter seems to have this business model as the faster it grows the faster it loses money.
The 19th century equivalent was the myth that the side in a battle which committed the last battalion would win the battle. Even Hitler seemed to succumb to it, when in a hopeless situation in Berlin he seemed to believe that “one last push” would cause the Allies to propose a peace deal.
It seems at first sight to be a psychological mechanism, but it is more a case of failing to learn due to working with a flawed model based on a lack of accurate information.
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I thought I did once, but it turned out to be Morton’s neuroma. And, frankly, Morton can fucking keep it.
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One could substitute the word ‘mind’ and still come to the same conclusion. An instinct is more a mechanism than a physical or physiological item.
That’s not to say it doesn’t exist. It exists in spades. Of course, our mental capacity as humans enables us to analyse a situation logically to determine if it’s indeed a survival situation. So yes, in a way we can ‘override’ it to a varying degree, but that’s more a logical analysis that allays that instinct than an override.
Sudden responses, not so much.
I can agree with much of what you say regarding repeating situations with the hope of a differing outcome though.
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Depends on where you are? $60,000 goes much further in more rural, poorer places, with less resources/interconnections, while in many cities this would indeed be just scraping by.
Uh…am I missing something? The title says “stars”, but this appears to be about one person…that lives in L.A? I live comfortably off my job here in my undisclosed location, but would be considered “poor” in L.A.
Just saying.
I hardly know what to do say about this. I don’t want to be a jerk, but it’s a little hard to be sympathetic. I mean, I’m sorry that young people today face high unemployment and crushing student loans, our culture is mighty fucked up in a lot of ways. But if I’m reading this right then either 340,000 followers just isn’t enough to make a living off of or they aren’t doing it right. If the business model doesn’t work, get a new one or do something else. You can always fall back on eating the rich.
I know people who make a living off of twitch with an average of about 1500-2000 viewers but they pander hard for 8 hours a day, putting up subscription goals and cooing every time someone gives them a dollar because that’s the only way to get by.
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I don’t know what you mean by “value” here. We pay money for stuff, usually because we can’t produce it ourselves. I don’t own a record pressing plant, so if I want records, I buy them. The scarcity isn’t artificial.
I do own a machine capable of burning CDs, which cost about a dime, so I don’t find them a value at ten or twenty bucks each. I can freely download anything which has been digitized, and then make as many copies as I like. It may be “valuable” in an abstract sense, but not the kind of thing I’d shell out much money for. That’s what you’re up against if trying to make money off a digital product.
You seem to be assuming that people value the media itself, rather than the content. Most people who I know buy records not because they are vinyl disks from a plant, but because of the music, the cultural artefact recorded upon it. One’s favorite musician or author is not being paid for being a materials specialist, but for specializing in culturally-relevant information. Having paper doesn’t make one an author, and more than having a 44.1kHz audio buffer makes one a musician.
Assuming that the value resides in the container is like buying “a bottle of beer” for the bottle, because you can’t blow glass. Some people might think like this, but I doubt if the reasoning is applied consistently.
Exactly! CDs and DVDs cost pennies, as does internet connectivity. So you can hang out, listen to blank CDs, watch blank DVDs, read empty e-books, watch empty YouTube streams, etc. Then maybe you’d suspect that you could be compensating those who created the content, for creating some cultural work of art, entertainment, knowledge, etc that you couldn’t make yourself. Unless you are a complete polymath, with no interest in others! In which case we are probably enjoying your music, movies, books, etc.
Eh, I do.
So I take it you don’t collect bottles. My favorite is an oblong one from a faux English brewery.
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