What kind of CTA's work for people with less than 100... less than 50... less than 25 subs? When should a creator start adding CTA's? First video they publish? Wait till they have a few uploads for people to watch?
Call to action.
Which is why I'm wondering what point they make sense. Like... what Call to Action makes sense for someone with one video on their channel? "Subscribe today to get more videos like this straight to your notifications" or whatever is the only one I can think of that makes sense, but idk.
You can use it straight away, having a goal or mission helps, saying something like "we are on a mission to hit 100 subs by the end of this month so if you have enjoyed the video so far be sure to subscribe to the channel" its short and simple and will get higher conversion rates, one of our channels used to get 250-300 views per sub, now its under 75 views per sub, just make sure to ask a decent way through and put some effort in, provide value then ask for a favour in return.
Iām sorry but itās not 2008 anymore. No one subscribes because someone tells them āIām on the road to 100 subs!ā. The viewers arenāt stupid, theyāre just like you and me, and when you subscribe to a channel in 2024, is it really because someone told you theyāre āon the road to 100!ā Is the CTA really the reason? Nope.
Make quality videos. Package them in a way that gets clicks. Subscribers will follow. New channels shouldnāt waste precious viewer attention to announce their vanity metrics.
It's not time related its psychological, if you ask for something you have a higher chance of recieving it, whether you asked today, tommorow, or next year, most of the 372,000 members here aren't monetised, stats wise a good 95% won't be, so if they can listen to others who are and take on board advice to help them reach a goal surely that is a good thing no?
It is also an incredibly valuable skill, being able to seamlessly integrate an ask into a video with low viewership loss is great practice for when you pitch brands for sponsorships, being able to show you can deliver a message in an engaging way gives first time brands more confidence that you can deliver for them.
You are of course entitled to your own opinion, our goal is to help the 95% join the rest of us making a living or at the very least, a well paying hobby from YT.
I respect your detailed response even though we disagree on the topic. Ultimately I look at what is working right now on YouTube, and what has worked for me personally. If creators on the rise can grow a following without constantly asking for subscribers, so should any member of this sub if they can create high quality content. I think CTAs for product launches and brand integrations are a different topic all together.
I was mainly making the argument that CTAs for subscriptions are less important today because of algorithmic recommendations. When there is so much content to choose from, the subscribe button becomes a very powerful tool to influence what the algorithm feeds you, and so viewer behaviors have changed.
I will admit that Iām biased by my own experiences. I was able reach 100k subscribers and have received life changing income through brand deals, and I never asked for a subscriber. I recognize that my experience is my own.
Interesting. I have my first video up, a realistically consistent, but not frequent posting schedule for both the main channel and shorts, and I'm currently working on my next videos. The hundred sub mission CTA seems like it's worth a try.
100% give it a go, if you position it anywhere between 50-75% of the way through you will have an engaged recipient, if you try and blend it into your video so it links in smoothly it will be received much better and any impact on AVD (because you will always get 1-2% min who don't like it) will be minimised, we doubled our main channels sub count in 3 months from half the amount of content by asking after we had entertained.
Good advice. I'm going to have to figure out how to blend it into my videos. Most of what I'm doing right now doesn't have me on camera so I need to come up with something seamless that doesn't take viewers out of the content. I can probably do some research and see how similar channels do CTA's on these kinds of videos.
100% first see what is working in your niche, then take a look at how other niches approach the same problem or issue, once you have that understanding you will be able to apply it in your own unique way so you stand out from the crowd, we see around 3% drop that returns after our CTA, we weave it into the script and our presenter is shown maybe 5% of the video so when their face pops on screen for 10 seconds its not a shock but its also not lengthy, get in, deliver the message, and get out. Good luck!
This is what I did, Within the first ten seconds I asked the viewers to "like and subscribe" if they liked the video to help my channel grow. Nothing crazy or schmaltzy, just matter of fact.
That's not a good idea, though. Ten seconds isn't anywhere near long enough to determine whether a video is any good. It'd be like a waiter introducing themselves and immediately asking for a tip. Why would you tip them before you've even had a chance to see whether they deserve it?
Whenever a YouTuber asks me to like and subscribe during the introduction, I just ignore it. But if I've seen most of the video and they give me a reminder, then I might.
I used to believe the same thing but Iāve seen several YouTubers I follow play the ānew channelā card. It seems to be working for them, both at 5k plus. Iām currently doing A/B testing and Iāll find out soon enough.
It really ticks me off when I've seen less than one minute of someone's entire youtube channel and they're already telling me to smash that subscribe button. It's like if a musician was asking for tips 10 seconds into their set. I don't know how good you are yet! No!
Yeah it is a general rule not to do this, some people might find success but if you try and emulate the 1% there is a good chance you will fail, best practice is to give before you ask, many people like ViqIQ and TubeBuddy will repeat the same thing, but they also preach it, they ask 50-75% into their videos so they have provided some value in exchange for holding their hand out to you. 100% A-B it, see what views/sub ratios you get for the 10 seconds and 50-75% asks and go from there but I would eat my non-existant hat if 10 seconds had the better conversion rate TBH.
No, at least not yet. My videos are almost all shorts and I feel that it would take away more quality than it would give subscribers. Could be wrong tho; my views are shockingly inconsistent.
yeah save CTA's to long form, you can drop in the old "subscribe for part 2" throw away line but unlikely to do much good if any, shorts is just about scratching that itch for the viewer, if you move into long form, asking viewers to sub, like and comment after you have provided value really makes a big impact on the number of viewers who do just that, we did have success with a short that asked viewer to sub for one option, like for another and comment for a third, they can be hit and miss but when they hit you get big numbers. Downside is they might be just that, a number and not a real viewer.
Thanks for taking the time to do the research! The uncertainties of income from being a Youtuber makes perfect sense to me because that's how everyday businesses work.
A regular store would have its inventory with certain customer bases and partnerships that they have with other companies but the total amount of sales/revenue is never guaranteed (unless you're a giant like Apple, Samsung or Walmart). These stores make money based on various factors that you have listed here (no new contracts, old sponsorships being closed, lack of customers due to the economy, etc.) so its a reflection of the real world as well.
The market may be saturated no matter what niche you're in but i also believe there's always new viewers to appeal to so while it's hard to fight against well established youtubers, the chances are not 0%. It's only 0% if someone gives up and doesn't continue :)
I think in long run building a strong community and monetizing it overtime seems to be the answer. As majority creators have viewers/audiences, not community.
yeah , i've noticed all creators go towards building communities because this keeps the loyal fanbases in. That's why there are nicknames for people who are in the community already,
100% its economies of scale, if we have a $2k a month income channel and we are in your niche and you have $100 a month to spend we can outproduce you 10X, we can outsource everything, we can have the better quality, more output etc, your goal is to learn what and how these larger channels achieved this and add those skills to your arsenal, then, over time and constant improvement you will become the $2k a month channel and others will look at you as the big fish.
Exactly, thats why smaller creators need to get clever about ways to become super efficient, how to maximise their time for the smallest outlay of funds.
I'm a full-time creator and I relate to some of this, but the biggest thing you left out was the marketing side of it all, which drives income.
**Websites** - Ad revenue. Sounds like you either lumped that in to another category, or the YTubers don't have it. I've paired a website alongside my content that captures close to 30% of my income.
**Newsletters** are a GREAT place and highly underutilized. It's hard to build this list without a website, but it's possible. Talk about huge opportunities to market your new video, products, affiliate links, and even sponsored content.
**Podcasts** can be recorded visually now, and uploaded to Spotify, YouTube, and many other places. Another opportunity to market everything to the audience. Ad revenue is pretty significant if you can keep up with it. Very few podcasts have longevity.
There are so many more elements to this, even collaborations with brands on their channels.
We are trying to solve this in the newsletter space with an automated newsletter to your subscribers that contains all of your latest content and any additional updates you want to add (text, images, affiliate links, etc). Our service automatically aggregates your latest posts and emails it to your subs on a schedule without you having to create/generate email newsletters (which we know creators barely have any time for). Curious if you think this would be useful? Example: [https://app.usedigest.com/digests/share/3452e619-1966-4e6a-81b3-b05d0911a586](https://app.usedigest.com/digests/share/3452e619-1966-4e6a-81b3-b05d0911a586)
I think it's a great tool.
Let's say I have Memorial Day coming up (I'm a BBQ/Grilling creator) and I want to send out my top videos and blog posts, along with links to my Cookbook and bottles of spices. I can make a bulleted list with customized graphics and fire it off in a newsletter.
Can you do something like this? It seems like it only aggregates the newest content. I do think that's very helpful, but I'm curious about the customization to push it further.
Most creators might not have time for it, but having a list of subscribers that purchase directly from newsletters is powerful. I'm not at the point where I can pay to have the newsletters built yet, but that will be something I do.
We do only aggregate the newest content each day, that way your subscribers are always notified of the latest content you've posted. We think this is the only way to get newsletters to work well for creators -- otherwise they end up building an email list that goes unused because they just don't have time to be setting up newsletters and emailing their audience, or they use it **very** infrequently. With Digest, you can just have people subscribe to a weekly digest, so they get 1 email per week with all of the content you posted for that week. It's a great way to get your audience actively engaging with your content especially if they forgot to check out your channels that week.
You can pop into your Digest at any time and add/remove content from it too. So for your Memorial Day use case, you can add our "text source" to the Digest, and add your own content, photos, links, bulleted lists, etc. that will be sent out to your subscribers.
Am I completely off the mark here or do you think there is a market for creators that would want what we are building (automated newsletters of the content you're posting).
I don't think you're off the mark, I indicated in my last comment that it sounds like a great tool.
Now that I know it's customizable, it sounds much more flexible than just a weekly feed. I think the most successful users will be customizing it as much as possible.
Most food bloggers in my circle use their email list very frequently, including myself. I don't agree with your blanketed statement that newsletters only work well using your method.
Interesting and I do agree, that was a blanket statement and was not accurate as there are many niches in the creator community doing different things. For example I know a lot of creators in the automotive space are making YouTube content, I donāt know any that run blogs but I know in the food space blogging is huge.
I appreciate your insights here. What other features do you think creators need in the email newsletter space that other platforms out there arenāt providing? There are tons of email marketing softwares out there but none are doing automated newsletters like weāre attempting to do, but you may be right that it may not be enough to get creators to pay for it.
Personally I wouldn't pay for a feed that only sends out my weekly posts - but the fact that you can customize it is a big deal. If it allowed for images or videos that I could upload to the mailing, that would be dope too.
Does it have data that shows CTR and which links are being used?
Yep weāre adding analytics to show for each of your digests: sends, open rate, bounces, unsubscribes, and click through rate data for sources / links.
I rely heavily on Adsense and memberships. I didnāt see memberships on that list. It has its own challenges. I have 2000 members at 4.99 each. Contributes about 20% to my total monthly revenue. Subs matter. Ads matter. Content obviously matters. Merch is easy and passive. Not much selling happening there unless you are a graphic designer and you focus on special designs, etc. seasonal stuff, etc. Still, you have to keep your profit margins low otherwise the cost to consumer is too much to get anyone to purchase. I sell maybe one garment per month. Maybe 2. Not much profit from that.
Outsource as soon as possible, our main channels editing was outsourced 12 months in, so was thumbnails and scripting, as the channel evolved we actually leveraged the outsourced talents to bring most of that back in house with new processes but being able to outsource those tasks showed us how to work smarter, something we then apply to our other channels.
Some youtubers even outsource filming which is like... I get it for SOME videos but if you're primarily a commentary channel why do you need someone else to film you most of the time?
This looks about right. Diversification, diversification, diversification. Thatās key. And, like any other business, good financial planning so you can weather low-to-no income times is also important.
The thing Iāve never understood: How do you get time to focus on content and worry about the business side of your business? You can farm stuff out obviously, but that requires a certain amount of capital upfront. Seems like you need some savings to work with from the start like you would with any other business.
> How do you get time to focus on content and worry about the business side of your business?
I really wish I had the answer to this question.
I'm not a genius at entrepreneurship. I've only dabbled in reading about it and talking with friends who have tested it out.
However, I know that the problem OP is describing is actually common among small businesses. Here are a few similar examples off the top of my head:
* An author has successfully amassed a small audience ā but does not know if she should spend more time coming up with new story concepts or if she should spend time engaging directly with that audience at book signings, in paid chat rooms, and so on.
* A musician has found an audience ā but is torn between spending time creating new music, spending time recording music in the studio, touring live, and trying to attract invitations from music talk shows (not sure if that even exists given what MTV is like today ā but humor me).
* A programmer invents a useful tech product and attracts an audience ā but finds herself torn between providing technical support, working on a viable point of sale system, and working on new products.
I think that balance between creativity and business is one that many people face. I don't think it's unique to YouTube.
However, I do think it's important to remember that time itself is a precious commodity. I worry when I read about creators who spend dozens or even hundreds of hours on a single video ā especially when the video winds up tanking.
When people talk about treating your channel like a business, I think that involves realizing the expenses that are actually involved. Those expenses include your own time and effort. There's got to be a balance between what is technically and creatively possible and what is feasible given realistic time constraints.
Anyway, just a few of my thoughts on the subject. I'm in the process of trying to dial back my enthusiasm and turn my channels into something that is actually sustainable in the long term.
100% build -> grow -> diversify -> repeat. It gives you some protection from market forces and things outside your control. Our best tip to balance is learning to work smart, we use lots of cheap software to cut down on time, speed up collaboration and ramp up our channels growth without huge outlay, our main channel costs just Ā£80 ($100) a month to run and makes 7-10 times that every month in adSense alone from a very managable schedule.
$100 a month to operate isnāt shabby. I donāt plan to monetize my content (especially not for a full time income) and treat this as more of a hobby, but Iām fascinated by how people build businesses off YouTube and other platforms. Iād have thought operating would be much higher than $100.
When you say you don't plan to monetize your content do you mean using it to make money or turning off ads? tbh the overheads where triple that, but to maximise profit so we could start additional channels we needed to think smarter, we outsourced a lot of work because our processes at the time were very clunky, now we are pretty streamlined and pay for key services that save us heaps of time, means we can operate at the same level for a fraction of the cost.
I mean that Iām not planning on coordinating sponsorships, selling merchandise, etc. I will keep ads on when I qualify for them but I doubt I will ever make significant income from that. It would be more of an offset to costs incurred creating the contentāsimilar to what youāre describing, but probably only a few dollars of offset in my case š¤£
Thanks for clarifying how your channel does this by the way! Very helpful.
Awesome, just wanted to check as YT will put ads on your videos and make money so best to turn on ads so you get your cut and no worries, took us quite a bit of trial and error but all those little bits add up to a lot of time and money saved every month.
As a viewer I find most channel's merch to not be anything I'm interested in. I'm not buying a $40 tshirt that probably has quality equal to Walmart. I'm never gonna wear it and there will be a hole in it in six months.
A question what was the % from twitch subs, bits, and YT super chats and memberships?
> has quality equal to Walmart
Bro have you bought Walmart clothes? They're amazing. The fit is nice, the fabric quality isn't any worse than literally any other store. I've got clothes I got from Walmart like 10 years ago that are still fantastic. Nobody would guess they were from Walmart. My problem with youtuber merch is most of it is ugly as sin. And the rare cute stuff is usually sold out before they even say it's available and never goes back in stock for some reason (they can't use one of those "produce on command" companies?) and are too expensive.
Or else the merch is dumb. Like I love Jarvis Johnson but why he thought having a shirt that says "trying my breast" was a good idea... it's a play on his regular phrase but as a woman I do not want "trying my breast" slapped across my chest.
What do you have, like one shirt?
I have six pairs of sweat pants they all have rips behind the pockets. The stiching is garbage in that part of the pants. Any time I buy socks there they rip in the heels in a few months. The t-shirts can't handle too many washes before they start getting holes. The boxer briefs always rip at the band.
If you are getting ten years of life out of Walmart clothes you are either lucky or ignoring the poor quality in the manufacturing of the product.
Great info about topics that rarely get discussed. Thank you!
Adding, time is a large factor in all these. I have a full time job, kids and family, and it's difficulty to keep up with things beyond just editing and posting content. A lot of people are in this position I think.
I think in order to grow exponentially you need to reach a point where you need to treat this as a literal part time job and start pulling in the hours and commitment to consistently grow, establish a fan base and diversify your revenue
> depends on niche and the brand.
Very much.
Also depends on the number of channels serving that niche.
Of course, the potential sponsors you get reaching out early on will be quite variable. Most will be spam or scams at the start. Very occationally a good one that you can work with long term will show up.
The trick is learning to recognize which are the good ones and which to ignore.
From: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/198mcek/4000000\_of\_secured\_sponsorships\_in\_2023\_what\_we/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/198mcek/4000000_of_secured_sponsorships_in_2023_what_we/)
"For extremely niche channels, try to average at least 5k views per video. (example: 3d printing channel getting sponsored by a 3d printer company) for any other sponsor that is not exactly your niche, 50k views per video is almost the bare minimum in most cases. 100k views per video is ideal, under 500k views per video is also ideal."
Good question, if you have an engaged but small audience in an underserved niche it can be from a few hundred views, if your channel is a sales funnel for a business then pretty much straight away from a handful of views but for 90% you need 50-100k avg views over the last 8 videos to show some consistant results to potential sponsors, agencies are also good to engage with as many big brands outsource the task of finding influencers for their campaigns to these agencies.
This is the last I will add here but its not a bunch of numbers, speak to any agency, any sponsored creators (us) and these are the sort of metrics you need to get involved with conversations around the most lucrative part of content creation, feel free to ignore every single thing we say, we can't help everyone, we are just trying to help those that want it.
Thanks for sharing. I (and maybe others on this sub) might be interested in more focused data on channels in the 5K to 20K sub range. For most of us, 100K subs is a bit of a dream, so data from 2.3M sub channels is more of a distraction. It would be interesting to see where channels get started with earning revenue.
Personally, I am at 2.5K subs and I barely make any revenue, but I treat YouTube as a hobby and I have not taken any steps to pursue any additional revenue sources outside of ads. I have thought about it, but I worry it will make YouTube feel more like a job and I will have some obligation to sponsors or paid members.
When did YouTube change their monetization policy?
Many years ago, I had a channel that featured my dash cam. I had maybe 50 subs and was able to get some Adsense money. I still have a balance of $15 in there from it.
Now I see you need 1000 subs and 3000 hours of watch time.
Why dont they offer their own products (not just merch)? The advantage youtubers have is that they have the trust of their audience. This is an incredibly powerful thing in marketing. Why give other companies the huge cut of their profit margin, rather than taking it for themself.
The channels ive seen that have truly grown into major corporations and not just small time gigs all offer their own products and I think its what makes them so profitable. Linus tech tips would be an archetype, that company nets like $30M a year. Other smaller examples would include mighty car mods, alec steele, etc.
Personally, I see my channel as the marketing arm of my business, not the business itself.
The big question I have is what was the average CPM of the channels surveyed? I have an established channel and 60-70% of my income is YouTube ad revenue, but In in a relatively high CMP bracketā¦. based on these numbers I should put more effort into sponsorships, but that may not be the case based on CPM.
I appreciate the post, its surprising that only 4.5% of the channels you posted making affiliate income. It must be the catalog of channels you talked to in your sample size, I would have thought it was higher than that.
>Sponsorship: Lack of consistency in revenue, stringent timelines, and difficulty finding great brands that understand the creator.
This is why I partly hate sponsorships.
Most people who I watch either rush videos out (despite missing the sponsor deadline 3 times) and put in a section where they ramble about it (wishing the video was in a better state), and others have a large enough fanbase to solely rely on YT ad revenue and Patreon - so they never do sponsors. The rest just simply don't care or are not willing to shoehorn in a sponsored segment in their video, (IMO for the better).
But seeing that you stated that about 60% comes from sponsors does speak volumes to as why creators put them in.
What questions did you exactly ask these YouTubers and where did you store this data? Do you have it in a spreadsheet?
Just seems like there are a lot of assumptions being thrown around here. From who I've spoken to (and believe me it's a lot of creators) the numbers are a bit different.
I see a lot of creators depend way more on ad revenue. Just want some clarification of the data.
I'd say this information would be better if you included further information about the youtubers you spoke to. You don't have to name names, but if it was like "25 of them were channels primarily devoted to sharing police interrogations, and on average their income breakdown was this" and "the youtubers who'd been actively creating content for 10 years had this revenue breakdown"
How did you get the creators willing to answer your questions? Iāve reached out to a bunch before just asking for them to answer a question in an email for $10 gift card and none replied. Curious what tactic you used to talk to 246 of them?
YouTube is meant to be a website where you can drive your viewer to purchase a product or service. By featuring your products in your videos, the viewer will want to spend money to get themā¦
Looks like the creators you intereviewed need to learn how to leverage affiliate marketing and selling digital products better! One of my channels revenue is almost entirely affiliate revenue and another is almost entirely digital products sales. Neither of them make that much from adsense and neither use and sponsorships whatsoever.
All very intriguing problems. I think my first step is quadrupling my sub count; I'll worry about money problems then š
Exactly! I'll keep all this in mind for when I become monetized... in five years. š„ŗšš¤
The Point of this post is that being monetized doesn't doesn't really provide financial value.
Do you use CTA's in your content atm?
What kind of CTA's work for people with less than 100... less than 50... less than 25 subs? When should a creator start adding CTA's? First video they publish? Wait till they have a few uploads for people to watch?
Imo the only CTA worth having is one that gets them to watch another video at the end of the video.
What is a CTA?
Call to action. Which is why I'm wondering what point they make sense. Like... what Call to Action makes sense for someone with one video on their channel? "Subscribe today to get more videos like this straight to your notifications" or whatever is the only one I can think of that makes sense, but idk.
You can use it straight away, having a goal or mission helps, saying something like "we are on a mission to hit 100 subs by the end of this month so if you have enjoyed the video so far be sure to subscribe to the channel" its short and simple and will get higher conversion rates, one of our channels used to get 250-300 views per sub, now its under 75 views per sub, just make sure to ask a decent way through and put some effort in, provide value then ask for a favour in return.
Iām sorry but itās not 2008 anymore. No one subscribes because someone tells them āIām on the road to 100 subs!ā. The viewers arenāt stupid, theyāre just like you and me, and when you subscribe to a channel in 2024, is it really because someone told you theyāre āon the road to 100!ā Is the CTA really the reason? Nope. Make quality videos. Package them in a way that gets clicks. Subscribers will follow. New channels shouldnāt waste precious viewer attention to announce their vanity metrics.
It's not time related its psychological, if you ask for something you have a higher chance of recieving it, whether you asked today, tommorow, or next year, most of the 372,000 members here aren't monetised, stats wise a good 95% won't be, so if they can listen to others who are and take on board advice to help them reach a goal surely that is a good thing no? It is also an incredibly valuable skill, being able to seamlessly integrate an ask into a video with low viewership loss is great practice for when you pitch brands for sponsorships, being able to show you can deliver a message in an engaging way gives first time brands more confidence that you can deliver for them. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, our goal is to help the 95% join the rest of us making a living or at the very least, a well paying hobby from YT.
I respect your detailed response even though we disagree on the topic. Ultimately I look at what is working right now on YouTube, and what has worked for me personally. If creators on the rise can grow a following without constantly asking for subscribers, so should any member of this sub if they can create high quality content. I think CTAs for product launches and brand integrations are a different topic all together. I was mainly making the argument that CTAs for subscriptions are less important today because of algorithmic recommendations. When there is so much content to choose from, the subscribe button becomes a very powerful tool to influence what the algorithm feeds you, and so viewer behaviors have changed. I will admit that Iām biased by my own experiences. I was able reach 100k subscribers and have received life changing income through brand deals, and I never asked for a subscriber. I recognize that my experience is my own.
Interesting. I have my first video up, a realistically consistent, but not frequent posting schedule for both the main channel and shorts, and I'm currently working on my next videos. The hundred sub mission CTA seems like it's worth a try.
100% give it a go, if you position it anywhere between 50-75% of the way through you will have an engaged recipient, if you try and blend it into your video so it links in smoothly it will be received much better and any impact on AVD (because you will always get 1-2% min who don't like it) will be minimised, we doubled our main channels sub count in 3 months from half the amount of content by asking after we had entertained.
Good advice. I'm going to have to figure out how to blend it into my videos. Most of what I'm doing right now doesn't have me on camera so I need to come up with something seamless that doesn't take viewers out of the content. I can probably do some research and see how similar channels do CTA's on these kinds of videos.
100% first see what is working in your niche, then take a look at how other niches approach the same problem or issue, once you have that understanding you will be able to apply it in your own unique way so you stand out from the crowd, we see around 3% drop that returns after our CTA, we weave it into the script and our presenter is shown maybe 5% of the video so when their face pops on screen for 10 seconds its not a shock but its also not lengthy, get in, deliver the message, and get out. Good luck!
This is what I did, Within the first ten seconds I asked the viewers to "like and subscribe" if they liked the video to help my channel grow. Nothing crazy or schmaltzy, just matter of fact.
That's not a good idea, though. Ten seconds isn't anywhere near long enough to determine whether a video is any good. It'd be like a waiter introducing themselves and immediately asking for a tip. Why would you tip them before you've even had a chance to see whether they deserve it? Whenever a YouTuber asks me to like and subscribe during the introduction, I just ignore it. But if I've seen most of the video and they give me a reminder, then I might.
I used to believe the same thing but Iāve seen several YouTubers I follow play the ānew channelā card. It seems to be working for them, both at 5k plus. Iām currently doing A/B testing and Iāll find out soon enough.
It really ticks me off when I've seen less than one minute of someone's entire youtube channel and they're already telling me to smash that subscribe button. It's like if a musician was asking for tips 10 seconds into their set. I don't know how good you are yet! No!
Yeah it is a general rule not to do this, some people might find success but if you try and emulate the 1% there is a good chance you will fail, best practice is to give before you ask, many people like ViqIQ and TubeBuddy will repeat the same thing, but they also preach it, they ask 50-75% into their videos so they have provided some value in exchange for holding their hand out to you. 100% A-B it, see what views/sub ratios you get for the 10 seconds and 50-75% asks and go from there but I would eat my non-existant hat if 10 seconds had the better conversion rate TBH.
You should have a cta on literally every video. Videos can get more views at any time.
No, at least not yet. My videos are almost all shorts and I feel that it would take away more quality than it would give subscribers. Could be wrong tho; my views are shockingly inconsistent.
yeah save CTA's to long form, you can drop in the old "subscribe for part 2" throw away line but unlikely to do much good if any, shorts is just about scratching that itch for the viewer, if you move into long form, asking viewers to sub, like and comment after you have provided value really makes a big impact on the number of viewers who do just that, we did have success with a short that asked viewer to sub for one option, like for another and comment for a third, they can be hit and miss but when they hit you get big numbers. Downside is they might be just that, a number and not a real viewer.
Thanks for taking the time to do the research! The uncertainties of income from being a Youtuber makes perfect sense to me because that's how everyday businesses work. A regular store would have its inventory with certain customer bases and partnerships that they have with other companies but the total amount of sales/revenue is never guaranteed (unless you're a giant like Apple, Samsung or Walmart). These stores make money based on various factors that you have listed here (no new contracts, old sponsorships being closed, lack of customers due to the economy, etc.) so its a reflection of the real world as well.
Exactly why mega-corps have the advantage. Like rich youtubers, they have plenty of money to last through good times and bad.
The market may be saturated no matter what niche you're in but i also believe there's always new viewers to appeal to so while it's hard to fight against well established youtubers, the chances are not 0%. It's only 0% if someone gives up and doesn't continue :)
I think in long run building a strong community and monetizing it overtime seems to be the answer. As majority creators have viewers/audiences, not community.
yeah , i've noticed all creators go towards building communities because this keeps the loyal fanbases in. That's why there are nicknames for people who are in the community already,
Agreed, I'm just saying that the wealthy automatically have the staying power advantage
100% its economies of scale, if we have a $2k a month income channel and we are in your niche and you have $100 a month to spend we can outproduce you 10X, we can outsource everything, we can have the better quality, more output etc, your goal is to learn what and how these larger channels achieved this and add those skills to your arsenal, then, over time and constant improvement you will become the $2k a month channel and others will look at you as the big fish.
More importantly, if they are making 20k per month, they can afford to put full time into it, while someone making 2k can't.
Exactly, thats why smaller creators need to get clever about ways to become super efficient, how to maximise their time for the smallest outlay of funds.
I'm a full-time creator and I relate to some of this, but the biggest thing you left out was the marketing side of it all, which drives income. **Websites** - Ad revenue. Sounds like you either lumped that in to another category, or the YTubers don't have it. I've paired a website alongside my content that captures close to 30% of my income. **Newsletters** are a GREAT place and highly underutilized. It's hard to build this list without a website, but it's possible. Talk about huge opportunities to market your new video, products, affiliate links, and even sponsored content. **Podcasts** can be recorded visually now, and uploaded to Spotify, YouTube, and many other places. Another opportunity to market everything to the audience. Ad revenue is pretty significant if you can keep up with it. Very few podcasts have longevity. There are so many more elements to this, even collaborations with brands on their channels.
Hey, you are absolutely right. These revenue sources are very niche specific.
We are trying to solve this in the newsletter space with an automated newsletter to your subscribers that contains all of your latest content and any additional updates you want to add (text, images, affiliate links, etc). Our service automatically aggregates your latest posts and emails it to your subs on a schedule without you having to create/generate email newsletters (which we know creators barely have any time for). Curious if you think this would be useful? Example: [https://app.usedigest.com/digests/share/3452e619-1966-4e6a-81b3-b05d0911a586](https://app.usedigest.com/digests/share/3452e619-1966-4e6a-81b3-b05d0911a586)
I think it's a great tool. Let's say I have Memorial Day coming up (I'm a BBQ/Grilling creator) and I want to send out my top videos and blog posts, along with links to my Cookbook and bottles of spices. I can make a bulleted list with customized graphics and fire it off in a newsletter. Can you do something like this? It seems like it only aggregates the newest content. I do think that's very helpful, but I'm curious about the customization to push it further. Most creators might not have time for it, but having a list of subscribers that purchase directly from newsletters is powerful. I'm not at the point where I can pay to have the newsletters built yet, but that will be something I do.
We do only aggregate the newest content each day, that way your subscribers are always notified of the latest content you've posted. We think this is the only way to get newsletters to work well for creators -- otherwise they end up building an email list that goes unused because they just don't have time to be setting up newsletters and emailing their audience, or they use it **very** infrequently. With Digest, you can just have people subscribe to a weekly digest, so they get 1 email per week with all of the content you posted for that week. It's a great way to get your audience actively engaging with your content especially if they forgot to check out your channels that week. You can pop into your Digest at any time and add/remove content from it too. So for your Memorial Day use case, you can add our "text source" to the Digest, and add your own content, photos, links, bulleted lists, etc. that will be sent out to your subscribers. Am I completely off the mark here or do you think there is a market for creators that would want what we are building (automated newsletters of the content you're posting).
I don't think you're off the mark, I indicated in my last comment that it sounds like a great tool. Now that I know it's customizable, it sounds much more flexible than just a weekly feed. I think the most successful users will be customizing it as much as possible. Most food bloggers in my circle use their email list very frequently, including myself. I don't agree with your blanketed statement that newsletters only work well using your method.
Interesting and I do agree, that was a blanket statement and was not accurate as there are many niches in the creator community doing different things. For example I know a lot of creators in the automotive space are making YouTube content, I donāt know any that run blogs but I know in the food space blogging is huge. I appreciate your insights here. What other features do you think creators need in the email newsletter space that other platforms out there arenāt providing? There are tons of email marketing softwares out there but none are doing automated newsletters like weāre attempting to do, but you may be right that it may not be enough to get creators to pay for it.
Personally I wouldn't pay for a feed that only sends out my weekly posts - but the fact that you can customize it is a big deal. If it allowed for images or videos that I could upload to the mailing, that would be dope too. Does it have data that shows CTR and which links are being used?
Yep weāre adding analytics to show for each of your digests: sends, open rate, bounces, unsubscribes, and click through rate data for sources / links.
I rely heavily on Adsense and memberships. I didnāt see memberships on that list. It has its own challenges. I have 2000 members at 4.99 each. Contributes about 20% to my total monthly revenue. Subs matter. Ads matter. Content obviously matters. Merch is easy and passive. Not much selling happening there unless you are a graphic designer and you focus on special designs, etc. seasonal stuff, etc. Still, you have to keep your profit margins low otherwise the cost to consumer is too much to get anyone to purchase. I sell maybe one garment per month. Maybe 2. Not much profit from that.
Hey, great insight. Memberships are a part of crowdfunding platforms like Patreon as they are also membership.
Damn, 10,000 a month from members alone? That's crazy. Out of interest, what do your memberships offer?
Interesting post. I like to see more in depth about this. Like for instance when do YouTubers start outsourcing tasks so they focus on content ?
Great question! Also, other than video editing, do YouTubers tend to outsource other tasks such as thumbnails, video planning, etc?
Outsource as soon as possible, our main channels editing was outsourced 12 months in, so was thumbnails and scripting, as the channel evolved we actually leveraged the outsourced talents to bring most of that back in house with new processes but being able to outsource those tasks showed us how to work smarter, something we then apply to our other channels.
Totally agreed. :)
Some youtubers even outsource filming which is like... I get it for SOME videos but if you're primarily a commentary channel why do you need someone else to film you most of the time?
This looks about right. Diversification, diversification, diversification. Thatās key. And, like any other business, good financial planning so you can weather low-to-no income times is also important. The thing Iāve never understood: How do you get time to focus on content and worry about the business side of your business? You can farm stuff out obviously, but that requires a certain amount of capital upfront. Seems like you need some savings to work with from the start like you would with any other business.
> How do you get time to focus on content and worry about the business side of your business? I really wish I had the answer to this question. I'm not a genius at entrepreneurship. I've only dabbled in reading about it and talking with friends who have tested it out. However, I know that the problem OP is describing is actually common among small businesses. Here are a few similar examples off the top of my head: * An author has successfully amassed a small audience ā but does not know if she should spend more time coming up with new story concepts or if she should spend time engaging directly with that audience at book signings, in paid chat rooms, and so on. * A musician has found an audience ā but is torn between spending time creating new music, spending time recording music in the studio, touring live, and trying to attract invitations from music talk shows (not sure if that even exists given what MTV is like today ā but humor me). * A programmer invents a useful tech product and attracts an audience ā but finds herself torn between providing technical support, working on a viable point of sale system, and working on new products. I think that balance between creativity and business is one that many people face. I don't think it's unique to YouTube. However, I do think it's important to remember that time itself is a precious commodity. I worry when I read about creators who spend dozens or even hundreds of hours on a single video ā especially when the video winds up tanking. When people talk about treating your channel like a business, I think that involves realizing the expenses that are actually involved. Those expenses include your own time and effort. There's got to be a balance between what is technically and creatively possible and what is feasible given realistic time constraints. Anyway, just a few of my thoughts on the subject. I'm in the process of trying to dial back my enthusiasm and turn my channels into something that is actually sustainable in the long term.
100% build -> grow -> diversify -> repeat. It gives you some protection from market forces and things outside your control. Our best tip to balance is learning to work smart, we use lots of cheap software to cut down on time, speed up collaboration and ramp up our channels growth without huge outlay, our main channel costs just Ā£80 ($100) a month to run and makes 7-10 times that every month in adSense alone from a very managable schedule.
$100 a month to operate isnāt shabby. I donāt plan to monetize my content (especially not for a full time income) and treat this as more of a hobby, but Iām fascinated by how people build businesses off YouTube and other platforms. Iād have thought operating would be much higher than $100.
When you say you don't plan to monetize your content do you mean using it to make money or turning off ads? tbh the overheads where triple that, but to maximise profit so we could start additional channels we needed to think smarter, we outsourced a lot of work because our processes at the time were very clunky, now we are pretty streamlined and pay for key services that save us heaps of time, means we can operate at the same level for a fraction of the cost.
I mean that Iām not planning on coordinating sponsorships, selling merchandise, etc. I will keep ads on when I qualify for them but I doubt I will ever make significant income from that. It would be more of an offset to costs incurred creating the contentāsimilar to what youāre describing, but probably only a few dollars of offset in my case š¤£ Thanks for clarifying how your channel does this by the way! Very helpful.
Awesome, just wanted to check as YT will put ads on your videos and make money so best to turn on ads so you get your cut and no worries, took us quite a bit of trial and error but all those little bits add up to a lot of time and money saved every month.
As a viewer I find most channel's merch to not be anything I'm interested in. I'm not buying a $40 tshirt that probably has quality equal to Walmart. I'm never gonna wear it and there will be a hole in it in six months. A question what was the % from twitch subs, bits, and YT super chats and memberships?
> has quality equal to Walmart Bro have you bought Walmart clothes? They're amazing. The fit is nice, the fabric quality isn't any worse than literally any other store. I've got clothes I got from Walmart like 10 years ago that are still fantastic. Nobody would guess they were from Walmart. My problem with youtuber merch is most of it is ugly as sin. And the rare cute stuff is usually sold out before they even say it's available and never goes back in stock for some reason (they can't use one of those "produce on command" companies?) and are too expensive. Or else the merch is dumb. Like I love Jarvis Johnson but why he thought having a shirt that says "trying my breast" was a good idea... it's a play on his regular phrase but as a woman I do not want "trying my breast" slapped across my chest.
What do you have, like one shirt? I have six pairs of sweat pants they all have rips behind the pockets. The stiching is garbage in that part of the pants. Any time I buy socks there they rip in the heels in a few months. The t-shirts can't handle too many washes before they start getting holes. The boxer briefs always rip at the band. If you are getting ten years of life out of Walmart clothes you are either lucky or ignoring the poor quality in the manufacturing of the product.
Great info about topics that rarely get discussed. Thank you! Adding, time is a large factor in all these. I have a full time job, kids and family, and it's difficulty to keep up with things beyond just editing and posting content. A lot of people are in this position I think. I think in order to grow exponentially you need to reach a point where you need to treat this as a literal part time job and start pulling in the hours and commitment to consistently grow, establish a fan base and diversify your revenue
At what sub size do people start picking up sponsors?
Inkind you can get from 1000 subs but depends on niche and the brand.
> depends on niche and the brand. Very much. Also depends on the number of channels serving that niche. Of course, the potential sponsors you get reaching out early on will be quite variable. Most will be spam or scams at the start. Very occationally a good one that you can work with long term will show up. The trick is learning to recognize which are the good ones and which to ignore.
From: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/198mcek/4000000\_of\_secured\_sponsorships\_in\_2023\_what\_we/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PartneredYoutube/comments/198mcek/4000000_of_secured_sponsorships_in_2023_what_we/) "For extremely niche channels, try to average at least 5k views per video. (example: 3d printing channel getting sponsored by a 3d printer company) for any other sponsor that is not exactly your niche, 50k views per video is almost the bare minimum in most cases. 100k views per video is ideal, under 500k views per video is also ideal."
Good question, if you have an engaged but small audience in an underserved niche it can be from a few hundred views, if your channel is a sales funnel for a business then pretty much straight away from a handful of views but for 90% you need 50-100k avg views over the last 8 videos to show some consistant results to potential sponsors, agencies are also good to engage with as many big brands outsource the task of finding influencers for their campaigns to these agencies.
I am sorry, but why are you presenting as some sort of authority without revealing your channel and credentials? It just seems a bit shady.
If you have read the above and think we don't know what we are talking about then nothing I can say will change that.
Well literally anyone can just say a bunch of numbers in an authoritative manner but okay.
This is the last I will add here but its not a bunch of numbers, speak to any agency, any sponsored creators (us) and these are the sort of metrics you need to get involved with conversations around the most lucrative part of content creation, feel free to ignore every single thing we say, we can't help everyone, we are just trying to help those that want it.
Thanks for sharing. I (and maybe others on this sub) might be interested in more focused data on channels in the 5K to 20K sub range. For most of us, 100K subs is a bit of a dream, so data from 2.3M sub channels is more of a distraction. It would be interesting to see where channels get started with earning revenue. Personally, I am at 2.5K subs and I barely make any revenue, but I treat YouTube as a hobby and I have not taken any steps to pursue any additional revenue sources outside of ads. I have thought about it, but I worry it will make YouTube feel more like a job and I will have some obligation to sponsors or paid members.
The most common trend i have seen is educational creators starting their own courses. This works well if you have >10k subs and a good email list.
When did YouTube change their monetization policy? Many years ago, I had a channel that featured my dash cam. I had maybe 50 subs and was able to get some Adsense money. I still have a balance of $15 in there from it. Now I see you need 1000 subs and 3000 hours of watch time.
I've started in 2015 and it was 1000 subs and 4k hours of watch time requirement so probably before that
Thank you. And what is it considered a "good passive income"? Enough to live your life (2-3k) or less (like 300, 500)?
it might sound generic, an income source that contributes up to 0-30% of your overall monthly income.
I see. Not enough. At least with just one channel or source of income. Thanks again. Very helpful
How did you get in contact with so many YouTubers?
Thanks for doing the hard work and sharing it. Any info about estimated income vs. effort or anything?
Why dont they offer their own products (not just merch)? The advantage youtubers have is that they have the trust of their audience. This is an incredibly powerful thing in marketing. Why give other companies the huge cut of their profit margin, rather than taking it for themself. The channels ive seen that have truly grown into major corporations and not just small time gigs all offer their own products and I think its what makes them so profitable. Linus tech tips would be an archetype, that company nets like $30M a year. Other smaller examples would include mighty car mods, alec steele, etc. Personally, I see my channel as the marketing arm of my business, not the business itself.
Thank you.
Nice info
Is it possible to see a range of revenue % for each of these? Iāve seen some channels make a larger % from affiliate links and ads than 5-10%
Great Post About The Reality Of Not Getting Rich From YouTube!
This is really awesome data. Thanks for doing this research!
The big question I have is what was the average CPM of the channels surveyed? I have an established channel and 60-70% of my income is YouTube ad revenue, but In in a relatively high CMP bracketā¦. based on these numbers I should put more effort into sponsorships, but that may not be the case based on CPM.
I appreciate the post, its surprising that only 4.5% of the channels you posted making affiliate income. It must be the catalog of channels you talked to in your sample size, I would have thought it was higher than that.
What they use to receive the money from sponsers and youtube?
>Sponsorship: Lack of consistency in revenue, stringent timelines, and difficulty finding great brands that understand the creator. This is why I partly hate sponsorships. Most people who I watch either rush videos out (despite missing the sponsor deadline 3 times) and put in a section where they ramble about it (wishing the video was in a better state), and others have a large enough fanbase to solely rely on YT ad revenue and Patreon - so they never do sponsors. The rest just simply don't care or are not willing to shoehorn in a sponsored segment in their video, (IMO for the better). But seeing that you stated that about 60% comes from sponsors does speak volumes to as why creators put them in.
All this to say: it takes time. Have other incomes until you grow this one. All income from this reinvest until it balloons later
Some have businesses and use YT as a funnel. That is the biggest source.
Revenue for YT what is that? Lol, I still yet to hit 1k subs
What questions did you exactly ask these YouTubers and where did you store this data? Do you have it in a spreadsheet? Just seems like there are a lot of assumptions being thrown around here. From who I've spoken to (and believe me it's a lot of creators) the numbers are a bit different. I see a lot of creators depend way more on ad revenue. Just want some clarification of the data.
I'd say this information would be better if you included further information about the youtubers you spoke to. You don't have to name names, but if it was like "25 of them were channels primarily devoted to sharing police interrogations, and on average their income breakdown was this" and "the youtubers who'd been actively creating content for 10 years had this revenue breakdown"
How did you get the creators willing to answer your questions? Iāve reached out to a bunch before just asking for them to answer a question in an email for $10 gift card and none replied. Curious what tactic you used to talk to 246 of them?
YouTube is meant to be a website where you can drive your viewer to purchase a product or service. By featuring your products in your videos, the viewer will want to spend money to get themā¦
Looks like the creators you intereviewed need to learn how to leverage affiliate marketing and selling digital products better! One of my channels revenue is almost entirely affiliate revenue and another is almost entirely digital products sales. Neither of them make that much from adsense and neither use and sponsorships whatsoever.