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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Each of those laser array chips is ~$300 when bought as a factory reject from China.

He has 9 of them...

Is YouTube really profitable enough to spend $2.5k just in parts, not to mention the other components and a few days to assemble test and film this?

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Have you seen the insane studio and production value of MKBHD?

They use better cameras than what some theater releases are shot on.

I definitely can't work out the budget of a youtuber either, but there is money to be made.

Speaking of which, does anyone know if Mr. Beast is actually giving away wads of cash and expensive cars on his channel? The only TV show I can think of that gave away more money was when Oprah gave everyone in the studio a car.

Using the old $1-$3 per 1000 views rule of thumb, Mr. Beast could surely afford doing that, especially once you consider sponsorships, merch, and other sources of revenue.

Mr Beast is 100% giving away everything he claims too. There are a few videos of him talking about the process, which basically involves convincing sponsors to bank roll the giveaways.

The MKBHD studio tour was very entertaining to watch and definitely taught me that I have no idea about YouTuber economics. They have a permanent fixed multiple thousand dollar camera just for those topdown shots.

This video has 1.7 million views. Old estimates, before YouTube cranked up the ads to an unbearable level, were $1-$3 per 1000 views, and that's just for ads, not the sponsorship.

Besides, it's also his hobby. I have no doubt his channel is at the very least financing his hobby.

If you look at even more popular Youtubers, yes, YouTube can be extremely profitable and justify immense production values.

You've probably spent that on a vacation. Is your life so profitable that you can spend that money on a vacation? Get some perspective. This is also his hobby.

It's of course dependent on a lot of factors, but after the twitch leak a video game content creator released a video about his revenue via YouTube and twitch: https://youtu.be/0DtTwGFwcQs

Plus he has utilized them for several videos which helps amortize the cost.

Prime subs make up almost half his revenue. It might seem like that is expensive for Amazon, but it is almost impossible to watch a stream without the streamer talking about Amazon Prime multiple times throughout the stream.

It must me the most heavily advertised in-stream / in-content thing of all time! Advertisement time for VPN's got nothing on Amazon Prime!

You didn’t watch it to the end, did you?

Not knowing the man hour seen on twitch and youtube, I don't know how I'm supposed to begin comparing those numbers.

>138K yt subs, most popular videos around 220K

And this isn’t even that high! It almost hurts, smh.

It seems you aren't aware but he has 1.8m subscribers, he probably makes enough that he does not need a full time job as with most youtubers that size

Maybe he earns money elsewhere too. Tips, side gigs. The dude is highly educated he probably figured out various schemes to fund his passions.

quick googles says $4.18 per 1,000 views

and that has 1.4M views so maybe it looks like it? Not to mention the cool brand building etc. I mean youtube is the new tv shows and maybe they want to make videos for a long time so why not.

There is no average CPM that can easily let you calculate revenue from AdSense from view count alone. It’s often cited by youtubers that their individual rates vary vastly: https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-creators-say-ad-reve...

> YouTube creators are paid a certain rate for every 1,000 views, which varies depending on a variety of factors.

I have no idea if true but I've heard a heuristic is 1 subscriber equals $1/year.

Styropyro has been making videos with high view counts for around ten years.

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