In recent years, social media has seen a significant surge in full-time content creators, especially on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Now try to think back on your favorite childhood youtuber—with possibly over 500,000 subscribers now, chances are they’re pursuing content creation as a full-time job. But we all know how volatile a career in media entertainment can be, with seemingly no reliable way to earn a stable income and keep their lives afloat. So really…what sort of magic did they use to turn digital flame into a full-time job?
As the saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”; Their main income source? Advertisements — the infuriating wave of digital stop-signs that frequently interrupt our watched videos end up becoming what YouTubers love the most. YouTubers can earn anywhere from $0.01 to $0.03 every time someone watches them and that’s called ad revenue. While it may seem like a tiny amount at first, consider how many views popular YouTubers get for every video they upload—MrBeast, for example, averages 100 million to 200 million views per video, meaning he practically earns upwards of a whopping $1,000,000 for each upload! Now it makes sense how they are able to afford such lavish lifestyles.
As easy as it sounds, though, views don’t just come for free. In a public platform like YouTube with countless videos to click and watch, it’s hard to catch the attention of a user enough to lure them into watching your content, and entertaining videos alone won’t cut it. Thus, creators then compete in what’s called the attention economy (the marketing and branding strategies used to capture your attention in an effort to maintain profitability) to hook viewers. The more time you spend watching, the more they earn.
But how? Well, Thumbnails. It’s their chance to make their video stand out, give users a striking reason to watch it, and thus earn ad revenue from the views.
Most YouTubers seize this opportunity and try to make interesting thumbnails in different ways. An engaging and accurate thumbnail can never go wrong with interesting content to back it up, but the one that works the best? Although it’s the most predatory, I would give the award to ‘Clickbait’; You’ve probably clicked a video with a bright red arrow or a shocked face before—and that’s not by accident. These are psychological nudges, designed to trigger curiosity and make the video irresistible to click on. This is known as the curiosity gap, where our brain feels an urge to close the gap between what we know and what we want to know.
Even with boring video content, an eye-catching thumbnail makes the video impossible to pass up. This deception makes users watch the content long enough, anticipating the impossible, but before they realised the lie upon them, they had already given the creator another portion of ad revenue. With nothing left to watch, we click out of the video with a sigh, regretting that we wasted our time watching the entire thing.
With all these secret tactics within YouTube, surely these creators would earn enough for their career, right? Well, no! Creators only receive 55% of ad revenue earned—YouTube themselves taking the other 45%—so they may need to resort to other sources of income. This is where sponsorships come in; company brands frequently pay creators money to feature their products, which are integrated into videos. This is, hence, why there’s always a small section in videos where it goes off-topic to quickly promote the sponsored products. Depending on how well the creator can promote the product, they can get paid more for better performance (i.e. more products sold), bringing in lots of extra money on the side. This can then either be invested into the budget of future content (which may improve its quality) or be saved for personal use.
With that being said, I hope this provides an insight into how our favourite creators make their money; it’s not easy, and sometimes it’s better to deceive, but it sure can bring in some quick cash! Don’t hesitate to contact us for feedback on our posts, and we’ll see you in the next article!
