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Comment by mtmail | Hacker News Reader

Summary:

225k USD from Youtube

She also talks about 'brand deals', I guess that sponsorships or products she shows? She says she considers deals starting $10k. I never watched one of her videos, can't tell how often she does brand deals.

vblog (daily? blogging): 4m views, 35k USD

main channel: 27m views, 40 videos in 2020, 170k USD

medium.com articles: 25k USD, one article was viewed 1m times and and accounted for 19k USD of the earnings. Another article 4k USD, most only 80-300 USD.

Some talk about RPM (revenue per 1000) going down to 5 USD in spring (COVID related), now 10 USD.

Her thinking why Youtube paid out more in 2020 than 2019: (1) two ads instead of one. (2) you could select additional ad slots in the video if it's longer than 10 minutes (thus possibly double revenue), Youtube lowered the limit to 8 minutes.

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A brand deal appears like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9mPTQDF7Ok "This video is sponsored by Tempo."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0nTI-lwU1Q "This video is created in partnership with Nikon."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8Yxw46TBQ "This is a Google-sponsored post"

They seem rare. Maybe only one in 2020.

There are also other potential income sources that weren't mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA9Ww5ffA3I "This is not a sponsored video, but I did use an affiliate link"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J52T748MOI0 "This is not sponsored, but I did use an affiliate link!"

Rare? Half the videos I watch have those ads for Raid Shadow Legends, some random vpn, and a bunch of others that are totally disconnected from the general topics discussed on the channel containing the ad

That's AdSense, described here: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/72857?hl=en

A brand deal occura when a video creator, or her management team, separately signs a contract with an advertiser. The advertisers in AdSense ads are chosen automatically by YouTube, not by the video creator. These ads interrupt the normal flow of the video. The advertising content from the brand deal is integrated directly into the main body of the video, usually by the video creator herself talking about the products. These have to be disclosed to the viewer (U.S. FTC regulations).

A single video can have both a brand deal and AdSense ads.

It's always either Raid Shadow Legends (scam), NordVPN (dubious), or some random gacha game (dubious scam).

The affiliate links are a great source of revenue. There is a YouTube called TechLead that explains his revenue as well and affiliate links were about half.

She makes more money than most software engineers.

She makes more than most pharmacists.

More than most general practitioner doctors.

The only question is: How sustainable is this?

Those other professions are solid, and will continue with its batting average. But a YouTube star, might be a flash in the pan. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Quick everyone. Start up your own YouTube channel.

I'm seeing a lot of reaction videos popping up, especially from 3rd world countries.

I found one in an eastern block country that are uploading a ton of videos just reacting to movies and tv series, so in a week they basically rack up 500k views. Multiplying that to a month and converting to a weaker currency means a lot of money (probably 3x as much as what I'm making as a senior developer, also in a 3rd world country).

Probably for now it's still very viable, but the scene might change quite a bit in 5 years time. Also your entire income is tied to Youtube, just one arbitrary rule change on their side and there goes your whole life.

Her videos have 31 million views.

If you are a software developer making an app used 31 million times mostly by yourself (nobody to split the profit with), i suspect you would make more than her.

I don't know how she ranks among top youtubers, but i'd guess decently high(?) Top 10000 perhaps? (I really have no idea).

The 10,000th most highly paid software engineer definitely makes orders of magnitude more than her. I imagine the same is true for the top 10,000 doctor, pharmist, etc.

> Quick everyone. Start up your own YouTube channel.

More like, quick everyone, be really good at your job. Doesn't really matter what it is if you are near the top.

Top for a celebrity is most certainly is magnitudes higher than a dev. No one is buying your software because your software was good. Maybe different for consultants, but still pool of customers is few companies vs entire population.

Doubt it. Top celebrities make say 20 million per movie, compared to the top devs, like Bill Gates, who make far more.

Lol he’s a founder, dev is a side effect. We’re talking developers who get hired, not self made.

The only celebrity devs I know is Kelsey Hightower, DHH, Carmack. I doubt they get more than few million contracts for dev, not conference work.

Plenty of celebrities are self-made and own their own production companies (or whatever structure is appropriate). The youtube star this story is about appears to be pretty self-made.

Its not like bill gates was only ever a CEO, in the beggining he was a coder. Just because he decided to start his own business which he coded for, does not make what he did for that business in the beginning be any less "coding".

Top 4 out of 5 current billionaires are coders, but obviously they wouldn't make millionth of that if they weren't founders too.

I don't know much about how celebrity industry world work and how much of them are self-made.

Didn't realize medium can pay out that much! Is this writing copyrighted by them? (I.e. can I republish the same content on my personal site after a bit) if so why would anyone not want to put their content there?

Interesting that a big chunk of her money on each vehicle is from a few videos and 1 medium article (I think $18k from 1 medium article, the rest earned around $300). Definitely a power law.

This is still a "hits" business even for those with 1.5m followers.

Most estimates I see for income per 1000 views (cpm) are around 1$. She almost makes 10x as much. Is she an anomaly or are the estimates totally wrong? I guess her videos might be longer than normal?

I have no source for this, but I believe a specially targeted audience (e.g. an otherwise unrepresented age range, gender section etc.) would make her ads worth more to specific advertisers.

I mean to say that it's hard to jump from the given average to its standard deviation.

Her channel targets young women, advertising to young women is a lot more lucrative than any other group.

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