2dimes wrote:Anyone set one up and get enough traffic to monetize?
I was thinking of giving it a try.
I talked to a guy at EB games who had one and he complained about it being way too tough to get enough hits but his content seems a bit lacking to me.
https://www.youtube.com/user/scooterjabI did give him a couple of views but couldn't sit through too many videos.
His videos are way too long. The youtube audience is lacking on attention span. If he was doing lets play games that were good, and new, he'd do better. No one is going to spend over an hour watching the dude play "Kill all humans 2". I didn't even have to click on a video to see I didn't wanna watch them.
Not only that, he's only been at it for 10 months. He's gotta do a lets play of new games when they come out. His commentary has to be decent as well. I didn't watch any of his vids because they all are of subjects I personally don't give a shit about, but there are "let's play" channels out there already well established he has to compete with. He would have to bring something those bigger channels don't offer.
He could always go with some FNAF vids and he can rack up some views and subscribers.
To monetize you have to get a certain amount of hours watched within a specific time frame, I can't remember at this moment the exact amount, but it's not toooo hard if you are putting out decent content. Once you've met the criteria to monetize it's smooth sailing from there. I see from his views the video with the most views (his first one) is only 93 views. He'll never get there like that. Not only that but his fist vid has the most views and then they just tank afterward which tells me some people took a look and weren't interested enough to watch any more.
Now here is the important part, dimes, and you wanna pay close attention. Assume you've come up with a decent content to create that will generate interest. Lets assume you achieve the criteria to monetize. Lets assume you link a bank account/paypal to a verified account (which you gotta do to monetize) and everything is good to go. You are now able to make money. Ads will be played at the beginning of your vids, from that advertising you end up getting maybe 20% of the revenue (at most) that it generates for google. I can't remember the exact percentage but know that google gets the lion's share.
Vids under 5 minutes can have only one add. Vids over 10 minutes can have multiple adds within the vid, thus generating more moola. You'll make about $1 for every thousand views. That's about the average. Then to make your vids appear in users "recommended channels" list that appears for everyone when they log into youtube, you gotta hit specific keywords and have significant view average. Things like "clickbait" which are obnoxiously disgusting, actually work well to get views, but people will hate your fucking guts for it. Being a smaller channel you could get striked for it as well, but it would do well to understand the youtube algorithms and use that to your advantage in your vid titles and descriptions. Make sure you put a lot of thought into those titles and descriptions because the algorithm uses that to organize and sort your video to auction off to advertisers.
Another important development that is recent to youtube is family friendly content. If you wanna monetize you have to cater to the advertisers who don't want to advertise on channels that curse excessively, have hate speech or controversial content. Even if said content doesn't violate youtube's TOS, advertisers are able to tell youtube what they
don't want to advertise. Youtube recently launched a limited AI that actually "watches" your video the instant you upload it and determines what criteria your video contains in relation to what type of content advertisers don't want to associate with. It goes without saying that this AI isn't too bright and actually demonetizes videos for the dumbest reasons. I would suggest you never saying the word "Nazi" or "Hitler" or a whole host of other words that the AI will instantly flag and thuse negate your content from auction thus you get no advertisers putting their adds on your videos. Your videos can even be demonetized based on this to which you'd have to appeal and youtube would have actual people take the time to watch your video to determine if the AI fucked up.
Gimme a few minutes and I'll post some vids from trusted content creators that can help understand how the youtube system works. I would advise you to watch these videos.
Remember, if you are only doing this as a hobby and don't give a shit too much about how much money you make, then just relax, do your thing. But, if you
really want to make some money, and you can make some money, then you'll have to put a lot of thought, time and effort to create good content. This can and will become a real job. The biggest channel on youtube, in terms of subscribers and views, is probably pewdiepie. He has 55+ million subscribers, a typical video gets over a million views. He makes upwards of $10K a video and he makes a video every single fucking day. He's pulling in around $20 million a year. His subscriber base, to put it into context, 55 million, the NYTimes has a readership of shit at the moment, and the NYtimes youtube channel only has 850,000. They have a total readership/digital subscriber base of 1.2 million. They could only dream of having as big of an audience as pewdiepie. That's probably whey they went after him with their hit piece and fake bullshit news a month or so ago.
I think the second biggest youtube channel is a makeup channel, like how to apply makeup to your face. Seriously. It's all about creating content that people want to watch. Make it an enjoyable experience, and if you can do that, in a year or so, assuming you make good quality content, you just might be able to quit what the f*ck ever job you have now and just do youtube full time.
What kind of content were you thinking of doing?
Oh, and you don't need much to get started. You'll need a fairly decent camera, a good microphone that can be incorporated into the camera or just one you talk directly into and editing software which you can actually get for free on the interwebz. Depending on what you are going to be doing as content. It's not that expensive really, and as you make money you can keep upgrading and getting better equipment. I also have a video in my lists that has a decent sized channel layout on a table what they started with and they are big enough where youtube is now their full time job. It was good enough for them, it'll probably be good enough for you. Or you go spend big time, build a studio, buy top of the line equipment and pray your channel takes off. But I'll post some useful stuff for you in a little bit.
We'll be launching our own channel later on this summer. We are setting it up just like a corporation with a CFO, accounting and HR department, albeit modest to start, but it's going to be a company. And we'll see how it goes.