> Anybody know someone making money off Youtube videos?

Yes.

There's been an influx of YouTubers from Cuba, Spain, the USA, South America and even Russia into Mexico.

All are young I'd say between 25 and 35.

They chronicle the lifestyle, culture, cuisine, history, resorts etc. and believe it or not Mexico is wealthy compared to other shythole countries.

Without coming to the USA they also get to experience McCDonalds, KFC, Walmart, Six Flags, American movies etc.

Just with making $1000 a month they can live comfortably.  Living expenses are much cheaper there.

I learned YouTube pays about $7 for each 1000 views for a video.

So they hustle and upload 5 to 6 videos a month.

I don't think with that kind of money they could live here.

wrote:

If so, what topics do they make videos on?

Pretty much any topic.  And not just using conventional monetization.  You can even potentially make thousands just using watermarks if you know what you are doing.

It's been a while since I did any work with YT but for a time I made a couple thousand a month from Youtube alone.

anon user #3 wrote:

Pretty much any topic.  And not just using conventional monetization.  You can even potentially make thousands just using watermarks if you know what you are doing.

It's been a while since I did any work with YT but for a time I made a couple thousand a month from Youtube alone.

not really true. I think Stephan Graham has made a few videos explaining how the monetization works, and certain types of content make a lot more money. For example, videos on finance make a lot of money because they attract sponsors willing to pay more to find new customers in that space. For full time I think you need to build up to at least a million subscribers, which takes a lot of work. At that point you also need a small crew to help with editing and other parts of the business.

It seems to be random -- people start off basically working for free with few views, then some good luck happens (viral celebrity) and suddenly they have a fast growing audience.

Without that luck you are basically fuqedm, and you certainly won't get paid for your time.

Original_Lonely_Guy wrote:

It seems to be random -- people start off basically working for free with few views, then some good luck happens (viral celebrity) and suddenly they have a fast growing audience.

Without that luck you are basically fuqedm, and you certainly won't get paid for your time.

Well at lot of it has to do with knowing the algorithm and what it is looking for.  For instance Youtube used to favor longer videos near 10 minutes.  I believe that was also needed to monetize the video.

Everything is tracked such as percentage of users commenting, how long on average people watch your videos, etc.  The algorithm takes such things into account when determining ranking.

In the old days many would turn to "black hat" and do things like buy views and subscribers to try to manipulate the rankings so they would appear up top.  Generally with the algorithms "success brings success".

Original_Lonely_Guy wrote:

It seems to be random -- people start off basically working for free with few views, then some good luck happens (viral celebrity) and suddenly they have a fast growing audience.

Without that luck you are basically fuqedm, and you certainly won't get paid for your time.

They have the same problem mainstream programming has.

Yes. They become popular and grow with subscribers.

But sooner or later they hit a wall. Their audiences get bored and look elsewhere.

They have to constantly keep the audience captive with new ideas and adventures.

But whereas mainstream programming has a myriad of writers, they are limited to themselves.

They have a much shorter shelf life than mainstream programming.