After analyzing different genres and different types of content that relates to me, I decided to settle on this genre of video that are half comedy, half informative/history.
This video by Bill Wurtz is incredibly popular with over 160 Million views. The main appeal of the video is that it’s fast paced, highly edited and very funny. In the video he explains the entire history of the world in a way where you learn and still however find yourself laughing along at the ridiculous editing and obscure humor. From this video he has amassed 5 million subscribers on YouTube which is obviously very impressive and his videos still gain around 1 million views consistently even 6 years after the release of “history of the entire world, i guess”.
As you can see from the timeline below, the yellow spaces are adverts on the video which means Bill is part of the YouTube Partner Program so he will be making money off of this video and given the amount of views the video has and his consistent views even today it is probably fair to say he has made a sizable amount of money off of YouTube.
This video here was created by “The Game Theorists” or better known by the creator who has been running the channel for over 10 years, MatPat. MatPat is known on YouTube as a super-nerd who knows the antilogarithm on YouTube better than most YouTube employees. While this isn’t his most popular video, it still has 11 million views which shows the level of his content and how his audience of 19 million subscribers are committed to his content and interesting theories. This video very much fits into my theme of both comedy and history as he is explaining the lore, or story, for the game “Five Nights at Freddys” which is very similar to the idea and type of content I have. This video and creator is a massive example of how this type of content can be successful.
This video uploaded by “Crog” is a brilliant example of the last 2 videos but in a much shorter format. I will be making my video a similar time of 10 minutes as it is shown in recent years, especially with TikTok, that short form and fast paced content does the best with peoples attention spans. The video has 7.4 million views which isn’t as impressive but seeing as Crog is a smaller YouTuber with only 33.4 thousand subscribers it shows that this content combined with the short form approach of TikTok shows that it can be extremely successful on its own and has given Crog somewhat of a platform.
Monetization
The YouTube Partner Program is a monetization system that allows creators to make money from making content on YouTube, helping them become financially independent and help them thrive making content instead of maybe doing it part-time and taking a job on the side so they can stay afloat.
Through this program, creators mostly make their money through advertisements on their videos. This is measured by a YouTube channels CPM, or cost per 1000 impressions, which is the cost an advertiser needs to pay on YouTube for every 1000 impressions their ads receive on your video. CPM does vary depending on the genre of channel and how much an advertiser pays to display their ad. However, there is a lot of other ways of monetization that goes over looked. There is also channel membership, popularized on twitch and other streaming platforms, viewers can pay a monthly fee to the creator and gain special perks such as exclusive badges, emojis, and members only content such as videos and live streams. Some other examples of monetization on YouTube include YouTube Premium Revenue, selling merch through YouTube, Super Chats and YouTube Shorts Fund.
Unfortunately for creators starting out, the Partner Program isn’t available to everyone and you have to meet a certain criteria to be eligible for the program. The criteria is 1000 Subscribers and either 4000 public watch hours in 365 days or 10 million (Yes, million) YouTube Shorts views in the last 90 days. Unfortunately, this criteria is quite hard to hit for a brand new channel as YouTube doesn’t tend to push the newer channels and it can be a struggle to have the time and money to start making content on YouTube, which turns a lot of aspiring creators away.
Of course, this isn’t a creators only form of making money and there is actually many other ways outside of YouTube that can boost a creators revenue. For example selling your merch on your own store, placing your own adverts within your own YouTube video, going to special events as a guest and much more. There is also Patreon which is a membership platform where creators can receive recurring payments from their fans, typically on a monthly basis. It’s a much better alternative to YouTube memberships for starting out creators as it’s free to join for anyone unlike the YouTube alternative where you have to meet several milestones to unlock.
In summary, the YouTube Partner Program is a brilliant way to make money for already established creators. However, for creators starting out it is very hard to reach that milestone of YouTube monetization so alternative like selling your own merch and Patreon are brilliant to give you that head start to financial freedom on YouTube.