For those making Youtube videos...

I've often wondered about the type of people who make a living out of this, but even more so about those that don't and do it anyway.

You can spend a decent chunk of money and several hours editing a video and still end up with only a handful of views. So what is the attraction? If you were genuinely making money from it, I'd understand - my most popular video has over 120,000 views but that is accrued over the space of six or seven years - but when you're not then it just seems like a lot of time and effort for very little, if any, reward at the end of it.

So what is the appeal? Is it simply a fun hobby, something to reflect on later and feel good about doing?

It's fun to do, it's fun playing a game and giving your thoughts and sharing your experience. Of course it sucks that not many people might see it, but it's still fun to do.

That said, the editing part can be somewhat tedious. even though actually editing a video doesn't really take that long...the things that take up time are rendering it out of your editing program and uploading to youtube, but you can do other stuff while that's happening.


It's definitely nice if you have monetization on and you see that money rolling in though, on my previous channel my best month I made like 700€. And that was after the MCN took the 40% cut.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

It's fun to do, it's fun playing a game and giving your thoughts and sharing your experience.

I guess that's pretty much what I was looking for.

Quote :

It's definitely nice if you have monetization on and you see that money rolling in though, on my previous channel my best month I made like 700€. And that was after the MCN took the 40% cut.

Now that would be very much worthwhile.  Out of interest, how many views did your videos need for you to get that 700 euro?

To be honest, part of the reason I ask any of this is that it's something I've been considering putting some time and effort into doing; I know a couple of guys who have their own channels and literally earn a living from that alone, but they're very coy about what they actually make.

I don't monetize my videos since I don't get much in the way of traffic anyways from when I actually started to make videos last year after actually having the time to make playthrough vids and occasionally other stuff anyways.
I just make them to make them and kill time for different things since I have no real care for profit or popularity.
In my eyes; the former can be found through paying jobs, and the latter doesn't really matter to me at the end of the day.
Just me having fun and sometimes guiding people on things.
That's about it, really.

I average like 1 view per video, and I put up videos all the time. Why do I do it? Well, these videos come from live streams I do, so I like to have them archived on YouTube. One of the main reasons I started in the first place was to improve my on-camera speaking and also it has helped my public speaking a little bit, or so I've noticed.

My dad died, and yeah thats actually the reason. It was a slow horrible death and thats how I remember him. I dpn't want my kids to have to remember me like that. I'm hoping that when I go my kids can be like oh thats how he used to be.

With my current health issues I don't really go out much so i can't be doing the whole vids while out things, so this is something I can do now. I'd also rather do this thing before I'm too old and boring.

Also there's like no effort put into my vids I don't edit I only do one take like Calculon. This point is poroved in one of my later videos when the phone rings and like well screw it I'm still recording.

SimianWonder wrote:

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

It's fun to do, it's fun playing a game and giving your thoughts and sharing your experience.

I guess that's pretty much what I was looking for.

Quote :

It's definitely nice if you have monetization on and you see that money rolling in though, on my previous channel my best month I made like 700€. And that was after the MCN took the 40% cut.

Now that would be very much worthwhile.  Out of interest, how many views did your videos need for you to get that 700 euro?

To be honest, part of the reason I ask any of this is that it's something I've been considering putting some time and effort into doing; I know a couple of guys who have their own channels and literally earn a living from that alone, but they're very coy about what they actually make.  

I think i had about 1500 views per video, but i uploaded at least 1 video a day back then...

*spits out coffee*

You made how much, I completely overlooked that comment earlier. Damn maybe I should look into an MCN.

But seven hundred Euro with fifteen hundred views with a video daily on average?
Holy shit on a stick, that is something fucking else.

't was a good month, had high CPM all the way through.

EDIT: I guess it won't hurt to give you some insights on the analytics..

here's a pic of total earnings of my best month:




here's one of the ad performance during that month:




and a final one of all time earnings/views/etc :

numbers are before the 40% cut by the way.

If i'm not mistake it says you got 200,000 views though lol.  Yeah i'm not going to get anything near that.

To put this in perspective i've probably got less than 3000 views and thats me uploading around 50 videos LMAO.

well, that is 200,000 from october 2012 till now.


At one point I had about 200 videos too.

Ah ok still that seems pretty nuts.

I think i'll see my statistics come mid march and then join one if i'm not happy with my performance.

I've managed to get a decent amount of popularity my channel has surpassed 10000 views, which is what i was aiming for by the end of March. I missed my other target only getting 65 subscribers, I was hoping to have 100, but you win some you lose some.

Guess I'll have to take this more seriously now people are actually watching.

You got a youtube channel Buu? Cold blooded man!

Is this channel welcome video ok?

Might need to be a bit more enthusiastic, but it's fine as it is.


Maybe somewhere down the line change it to a compilation which shows some of the different games or things you do.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

Might need to be a bit more enthusiastic, but it's fine as it is.


Maybe somewhere down the line change it to a compilation which shows some of the different games or things you do.

Lol thanks I had to rerecord it about 10 times as I kept messing up my lines lol, i think thats why i sound so monotonous >_>. I'll take your advice and reshoot it later.

Well, apparently my youtube channel has been deleted.

I have no idea why or how, thinking some person with bad intentions has gotten into it somehow, I doubt youtube itself would just go and delete it without any warning...

Not sure what to do yet, I'm hoping I can get it restored and if not, I guess I'll just have to make a new one... *sigh*

Maybe the title offended some couch potatoes and they complained about how insensitive it was until Youtube bowed to their demands.

lol, good one.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

Well, apparently my youtube channel has been deleted.

I have no idea why or how, thinking some person with bad intentions has gotten into it somehow, I doubt youtube itself would just go and delete it without any warning...

Not sure what to do yet, I'm hoping I can get it restored and if not, I guess I'll just have to make a new one... *sigh*

That sucks.
I would be kinda pissed if that happened to me, here's hoping you could find a solution.

That completely blows, maybe you should setup, two step verification.

Well, i did receive an email on an other email address i had, saying it was deleted, with a link in it to restore the channel, but it looks like it's not really working out. Cant seem to restore it.

Contacted support, see if they can help and if not, i guess i'll just make a new one..