This 6year old did not make $11M. His parents did. His parents edit the videos, maintain high production value, market the channel, make a constant stream of videos starring Ryan.
It's a pretty weird situation. It is kind of insane how much money his parents are raking in because of this
"The parents did not make $11m. The kid did. The kid is on the screen, the kid plays with the toys, and is willing to continue appearing on camera."
The effort, and thus the payoff, was on the parts of the parents, no?
Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content?
I would say that you can hire out editing in a lot of cases or even video planning, but some people are just more magnetic than others.
It's a somewhat uncomfortable truth but some kids are more... endearing than others? That is to say, there are some channels with kids that other kids would quickly bore with.
The parents are much more important for the business. They are true sales people, they do a ton of marketing, they optimized the revenues perfectly and they edit the videos accordingly.
potential is the easy part
For every fad there are a few people who benefit the most I guess.
There might still be a business case if there's evidence that tbad search results are reducing YouTube stickiness and ad revenue, but that may not be evident in clear data even if it is true.
There's a lot of YouTube junk out there that's seductive and, for some groups, infinitely watchable. Sadly that's where the gold is these days.
The kid goes to Youtube and only watches vacuum-cleaning videos. For hours.
He also believes every TV is (or should ideally be) touchscreen interactable. He likes boping the people on the news. He thinks they're puppets.
He's a healthy, normal kid. What I'm trying to express is that we don't know how normal kids react to Youtube and its effect on them. It can be surprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bil...
(I'm not arguing, but it is an interesting discussion to have)
Good job Google! Great ad targeting!
/s
/s
It's kind of sad that this clickbait is already sitting the the top of HN.