[HN Gopher] How history/tech YouTube channel Asianometry reached...
___________________________________________________________________
How history/tech YouTube channel Asianometry reached 270K
subscribers, $5K/month
Author : aseemscreenlace
Score : 347 points
Date : 2022-09-27 08:08 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.screenlace.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.screenlace.com)
| loufe wrote:
| I am a very happy Asianometry subscriber. He has a bit of a
| monotone delivery but the content consists of fantastic dives
| into the world of electronics manufacturing, science, and
| technology in general. He deserves his success.
| DecoPerson wrote:
| I'm a fan of the monotone delivery. My brain understands the
| words better when it's like that.
| gorkish wrote:
| No problem with his style either, but whatever software he's
| using to cut the audio together doesnt duck the cuts properly
| and so they click. Subtle issue, and definitely not a
| criticism, but it's emphasized because of the recording
| style.
| typon wrote:
| It's a welcome break from the exaggerated emotions, fast
| breaks/cuts, and general dopamine triggers that are littered
| in your average youtube video. It's like watching Bob Ross. I
| love Asianometery!
| eru wrote:
| I am subscribed too.
|
| He's sometimes a bit too (economically) left-wing for me,
| but I generally sticks to well-researched facts, so it has
| never been an issue that would impair my enjoyment.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I started a Youtube channel about Dynamic Programming. This was
| out of frustration of doing nothing during the COVID isolation.
|
| To my surprise, I reached 1,000 subscribers relatively quickly. I
| posted my first video on Apr 14, 2020. By Jul 13, 2020 the
| channel had 1k+ subscribers. So, it took 3 months.
|
| The videos have extremely good (IMHO) like/dislike ratio. I
| somewhat proud of it :)
|
| I've never had monetization enabled, so never made a cent out of
| this journey. On the other hand, it was crazy fulfilling.
|
| Since I joined AWS, I barely have time to reply to comments, let
| alone publish new videos. Wish I had more time...
|
| I stopped releasing new videos on Feb 8, 2021. By that time I had
| 4k subscribers. It's passively grown to 4.5k since then.
|
| If anyone is interested, here is the channel -
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClnwNEngsXoIp_tgJ2jZWfw
| andreygrehov wrote:
| The comment received several dislikes. I'm extremely interested
| to know why.
|
| If anyone dislikes, don't hesitate to explain the motivation
| behind it.
|
| The motivation behind my original comment was to throw a
| channel growth data point.
| beiller wrote:
| Maybe it could be interpreted at shilling your channel. I
| however thought it was a perfectly cromulent comment.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Asianometry has become one of my absolute favorite YouTube
| channels. I love it.
| moino06 wrote:
| Big fan of the channel
| nottorp wrote:
| That is ... until google AI bans them for unspecified TOS
| violations.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| "Hurting the feelings of the Chinese people"
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Context for those who aren't familiar with this; It's a
| political catchphrase of the CCP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Hurting_the_feelings_of_the_Ch...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| History channels seem to be _especially_ vulnerable to getting
| brigaded by some offended party.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Amazing how AdSense has been doing this since 2003 and Gg has
| still not fixed it.
| bliteben wrote:
| The best is when they literally ban everything you've ever
| worked on. Love when 6 bans come in at 12:03 am like last week.
| I feel like pretty much anything I ever work on now is at risk
| of google randomly banning it. It sucks that it feels like you
| can't really escape it because a client always either wants an
| android app or google maps integration etc.
|
| I can't imagine a youtube creator is at any less risk somehow.
| Over a lifetime google will certainly find some reason to ban
| the creator. I understand they want to protect their business
| but the way they operate is especially harsh and can literally
| ruin people's lives.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| "I realized that if I wanted to last, I needed to make this
| enjoyable."
| jhallenworld wrote:
| An interesting channel is Will Prowse's Off Grid Solar Channel.
| He was living in his van (in CA, no surprise) until the youtube
| money allowed him to buy a house (in Vegas), which he recently
| paid off.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos
|
| House related videos:
|
| Sets goal:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j1ZVnfjKyM
|
| Buys house:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhtN01Hc95U
|
| Pays off house:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALDuMufycMY
|
| "I paid 34k every month for 10 months to pay off this house. "
|
| Anyway, so it's possible, but you need to have the right topic. I
| think reviews and how-tos of expensive things you are about to
| buy is a lucrative place to be.
| ahsusbzuxbsbe wrote:
| eshack94 wrote:
| I love his channel and his narration style. It's a super
| informational channel with no clickbait and just tons of quality
| content about semiconductors and other technology. Would highly
| recommend.
| anm89 wrote:
| Awesome channel, puts out consistently high quality content and I
| find the narrator to be better than a vast majority of similar
| channels who seem to all have the same annoying voice quirks
| which I think they do intentionally.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Like Wendover? "However."
| loufe wrote:
| Wendover and Asianometry I would expect to both be
| exceptions. Wendover's delivery, especially for informative
| content, is among the best I've ever heard.
| aseemscreenlace wrote:
| Yep always positively surprised by the quality of the research
| done - almost always learn something new
| ekianjo wrote:
| Good channel but a bit lacking when you actually know the topic
| well yourself.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's every channel, eventually.
|
| It's also why I stopped reading The Economist on development
| economics and foreign aid issues.
| treme wrote:
| Did you find better? Do share
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I haven't found this to be the case.
| treme wrote:
| He gets praised consistently for doing a solid job from
| people in the field.
| anm89 wrote:
| Yeah I mean it's youtube. I know nothing about
| Semiconductors. I'm not looking for a doctoral thesis.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I work for a company that makes industrial water filtration
| systems and his video on water filtration systems for the
| semiconductor industry still taught me things.
| ikealampe200 wrote:
| Amazing channel, best of all is his very last advice "Don't do
| gaming."
| echohack5 wrote:
| > Don't do gaming
|
| Rules are always made to be broken
| mapmap wrote:
| What does this mean? Don't make videos about gaming or don't
| play?
| bavell wrote:
| The gaming niche is extremely cutthroat due to all the
| competition.
| o_1 wrote:
| yes to both
| ladyattis wrote:
| I really enjoyed his videos on semiconductor developments since
| it's often hard to parse what's really going on since I'm not an
| electrical engineer, so none of it really makes sense to me. :)
| bemmu wrote:
| Interesting that he is willing to deal with receiving money from
| AdSense, but not willing to deal with receiving money from
| sponsors. Sounds like an opening for an AdSense-like middleman
| except for sponsorships, so he could just receive money from one
| place instead of dealing with multiple customers.
| kiicia wrote:
| please don't do that, those sponsored ads are bad already as it
| is
| omwow wrote:
| Love a behind-the-scenes peak of a creator like this one, it's
| fascinating to see. But yeah, $5k / month for the amount of work
| and talent that went into this seems disproportionate, but then I
| could also see this growing exponentially, where if he keeps at
| it, it will make ridiculous amounts of money that's just as, if
| not more disproportionate to effort invested, except this time in
| his favor. Which is what I wish for him.
| gizmo wrote:
| 5 years and 300+ well researched videos results in $5k/mo
| revenue, mostly patreon. This shows how brutally unforgiving the
| youtube economy is, even when your content is excellent. I fully
| expect this channel to grow to $50k/mo in the next couple of
| years, but still, the stamina required to get there amazes me.
| mizzao wrote:
| Yes...geez, that's an insane amount of work to get to $60k/year
| pre-tax.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Us median income is 30k/year
| eru wrote:
| Yes. But the median person who is as smart and motivated as
| the author of Asionometry makes a lot more.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It is but there is a huge upside to it: no bosses breathing
| down your neck (even if they are nice and hands-off, you
| still have to do what they tell you), no 9-5, no nauseating
| business corporate language, no commuting, interacting with
| coworkers, etc. I am a content creator myself, get paid way
| less than I could at a 9-5 job, and would never go back
| simply because there's nothing better than doing exactly what
| you love without having to waste time doing what other people
| want you to do.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Assuming your time is worth minimum wage - you haven't even
| broken even yet.
|
| This is a very, very long term play.
|
| You have to bank on YouTube still being a dominate market,
| not getting too greedy with it's algorithms or revenue
| sharing, and your old videos continuing to attract a large
| number of views.
|
| If any one of those goes wrong - you're basically working
| for below minimum wage.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >You have to bank on YouTube still being a dominate
| market
|
| No, you can just upload your videos on the next big
| platform. The content isn't exclusive.
| nkozyra wrote:
| And also you'll continue to make money off of previous
| work.
|
| That video you did two years ago will still contribute
| Adsense revenue.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I always wonder what his returns would be if he just
| stopped posting but kept the old videos up.
|
| I realize it probably declines faster than you'd think -
| but imagine over the course of 5 years he'd prob still hit
| 100k in residual value. Which must be a nice safety blanket
| to have.
| seydor wrote:
| Oh the joys of monopoly
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Which monopoly? The video creator is free to host their video
| on whichever machine they want.
| seydor wrote:
| So where else would asianometry content fit?
| eru wrote:
| Nebula perhaps? Or self-hosted?
|
| I'm not sure that makes YouTube a monopoly. Just like
| some games work best on the Nintendo Switch doesn't mean
| Nintendo has a monopoly on console gaming.
| pessimizer wrote:
| By that standard, there's no such thing as monopoly. If you
| think there is one, you're always free to start your own
| country.
| themagician wrote:
| The YouTube economy isn't always unforgiving.
|
| YouTube allows you access to a the world's largest group of
| suckers as well as those in poverty who are desperate. If you
| create content that targets these people, you can make bank...
| and fast. While someone creating high-end education content
| might get $1-$2 CPMs, someone creating targeted scam content
| can make 10x--yes, $10-$20 CPMs are possible.
|
| Content about personal finance, coaching, "selling online",
| affiliate spam, MLM and pyramid schemes, dropshipping, and
| meta-content about being a "creator" all makes unbelievable
| bank.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Getting there is a lot easier if you don't live in expensive
| areas and 1000 dollars per month means you're living in luxury.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is there anywhere on Earth that allows for luxury on $1k per
| month? The price of equipment to make the video is not going
| to be less.
| eru wrote:
| The author's equipment isn't all that expensive.
|
| Taiwan (where the author lives) has lower cost of living
| than the US, but 1000 USD per month isn't quite luxury even
| there.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| removed
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Also, why sink down to 1k/month?
|
| Because the comment I replied to claimed "luxury" for $1k
| per month.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| Not a sunk cost but a fixed cost.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Entirely depends on your tastes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would assume a meaningful definition of luxury involves
| at least abundant space, food, energy, and time. For
| example, working 100 hours per week is not luxurious, nor
| living in a Hong Kong pod, nor having to eat ramen
| because you cannot afford fruits and vegetables.
| xeromal wrote:
| The countryside in peru.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would you have access to broadband internet to upload HD
| video? Clean water? Sewage? Healthcare? Education?
|
| Supposedly, median household income in Peru is $17k, and
| that is skewed higher to urban residents, so let's say
| two earners earning $24k total in rural Peru would be 2x
| median income of the surrounding families. Maybe it can
| be "luxurious", but I would want more proof that you can
| get access to reliably energy, high quality network
| connectivity, and access to other goods/services one
| would normally associate with luxury.
| adventured wrote:
| The median household income in Peru is far lower than
| that figure.
|
| The typical monthly salary in Lima is going to be in the
| $300-$400 range (minimum wage is ~$270).
|
| You could get to that $17k number if you had four incomes
| in one household though.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have no clue, I just quickly searched and found a
| snippet of this website:
|
| https://www.globaldata.com/data-
| insights/macroeconomic/media...
|
| Seemed like a high enough number that would still
| validate my point.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| As someone from Peru I would not recommend this
| trenning wrote:
| What are your thoughts on QoL living outside of major
| cities in Peru?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Having money in the Peruvian countryside is not going to
| make up for QoL because the infrastructure just isn't
| there. 40% of the households in rural areas don't even
| have electricity. No chance for clean drinkable water or
| insulated housing.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Are there compelling examples of youtubers making money in ways
| that can break this cycle? Patreon requires the same grind.
| z7 wrote:
| I recently stumbled over this guy:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/hbomberguy/videos
|
| He seems to release about 2 videos a year and has more than
| 10k patrons. If he gets 2$ on average from each per month
| that makes 240k a year or about one million after four years.
| adolph wrote:
| Does merchandise/outside sales count as breaking the cycle?
|
| This guy (a glimpse inside) talks about how YT became a sales
| lead generator for his woodworking in this video:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKiWVQK-YJE
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| The thing is, when it comes to content this is basically the
| whole game. I once, after a disagreement with a friend of mine
| who is a designer about the difficulty of designing a non-
| doubly symmetric gear icon, burned around eight hours on
| designing some icons and put them up on The Noun Project. I'm
| not a designer, a structural engineer trained software dev with
| a decent eye, but no real training or work experience in
| design.
|
| Over years the money kept coming in. I think I calculated it
| out to about $20 an hour after four or five years. I literally
| could have looked at this as a sort of bond, did the net
| present value accounting on it, and realized better gains than
| with software over the next 70 years of copyright.
|
| This is with no automation or market research or experience or
| training.
| beambot wrote:
| I would love to see some of the better educational YouTube
| channels get picked up by Netflix and the like... And hopefully
| find a good audience & better compensation too.
| grecy wrote:
| His RPM and CPM are very, VERY low. With that much view time he
| should be making 10x what he is straight from YouTube.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Exactly. If these videos were "Asian financial advice" - this
| post would be about how to hire a video production team. The
| crazy good youtube money is in finance: realestate, 401ks,
| investing, etc. You want to be in a market with advertisers
| with deep pockets.
| chii wrote:
| i watch this channel because the videos are not just trash
| topics solely engineered to gain ad revenue.
|
| A lot of his topics in the video are not related to any
| advertising, and thus the CPM is low. I'm glad he's stuck
| through it, because the content is excellent.
|
| i'm glad to hear that majority revenue actually comes from
| patreon - this means people do realize the value of the
| video, and there's enough willing to donate.
| mizzao wrote:
| Yep, CPM for finance/fintech ads are among the highest.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _hire a video production team_
|
| That's a good way to kill the authenticity of a channel,
| and race to the bottom creating flashy but shallow content.
| I don't begrudge a youtuber merely hiring a cameraman, but
| the more people they hire on a permanent basis, the more
| pressure there is to optimize for monetary success. This
| means flashy well produced videos, but very shallow content
| that is more accessible to a wider audience.
| Schweigi wrote:
| He doesn't do paid sponsorships. That would probably double the
| revenue when looking at other creators who published their
| numbers.
|
| As per article it's because of the day job who doesn't leave
| too much time handling those and that the video making is a
| hobby to him - I read from it he doesn't want to make it a job?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > He doesn't do paid sponsorships. That would probably double
| the revenue when looking at other creators who published
| their numbers.
|
| Assuming everything else remained constant. I've seen
| creators comment that adding sponsorships really hurt their
| growth numbers.
| bombcar wrote:
| It depends on the type of content, really.
|
| Someone who is reviewing tools could be hurt by getting
| sponsored by a tool brand, because of the obvious possible
| conflict of interest.
|
| But that same person getting sponsored by one of the damn
| VPN providers might affect it less.
|
| It also depends on where they put the sponsorship and how
| easy it is to skip.
| JCharante wrote:
| It depends on the type of sponsorship. A friend turned
| [cooking in a niche cuisine tiktoker] does sponsorships
| where for example if the cooking step is to fry something
| in a pan, you just include the 1-2 seconds of adding the
| oil so that viewers see what type of oil (and brand) you're
| using. They get stuff sent to them like, use our toaster in
| your video and all you literally have to do is show
| yourself putting the bread in the toaster if you're making
| a video about like avocado toast or something. If they
| scaled it up properly they could easily clear $3k/month
| before counting the amount of growth that comes from
| uploading frequently (they've experimented with how much
| they grow per video but kinda get tired of doing it).
|
| I do see other tiktokers do it poorly, like having a long
| lingering shot on the label that makes you realized the
| video is an ad. Somehow they still get views but their
| videos are really really boring.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I don't think it's the YouTube economy so much as it is the
| creative economy. If you produce creative content, you are at
| the mercy of the whims of your audience. Even in profitable or
| well-funded businesses, there's a constant existential threat
| associated with the whims of the audience changing.
|
| The problem is especially visible on YouTube because so many
| creators are small, and so have a connection with their
| audience but don't have the resources to absorb the costs and
| risks of trying to keep up with a constantly changing audience,
| but it's not a problem specific to or even especially
| pronounced on YouTube.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _I don't think it's the YouTube economy so much as it is the
| creative economy. If you produce creative content, you are at
| the mercy of the whims of your audience. Even in profitable
| or well-funded businesses, there's a constant existential
| threat associated with the whims of the audience changing._
|
| Yup. Generally speaking, people value content like this as
| pretty much having, well, no value at all. They don't want to
| pay for it, and they'll go out of there way to make sure they
| pay as little as possible for it.
|
| In fact, I would even go further and suggest that many people
| feel that all jobs, except for whatever job/industry they are
| in, as having little to no value and should be done for
| nothing.
| jlarocco wrote:
| > Yup. Generally speaking, people value content like this
| as pretty much having, well, no value at all. They don't
| want to pay for it, and they'll go out of there way to make
| sure they pay as little as possible for it.
|
| A lot of the blame goes to the content creators, though.
|
| They were the ones who set the expectations for "free
| content" by giving their creation away for "free". And in
| that context, making $5k a month is pretty good. If I have
| a garage sale, put $0 price tags on everything, and end up
| with $5k afterwards, then that's amazing.
|
| > In fact, I would even go further and suggest that many
| people feel that all jobs, except for whatever job/industry
| they are in, as having little to no value and should be
| done for nothing.
|
| That seems a little far fetched.
| Nzen wrote:
| I suspect that my (passive) valuation of entertainment,
| given the culture that I grew up in, partly stems from
| growing up with ad subsidized radio. It feels like music
| is almost a public service, but for buying a receiver,
| not choosing the playlist, and switching stations when
| the ads come on. I suspect the availability of a public
| library inclulcated similar expectations in me.
| Eventually, I paid for movies and songs. But, youtube and
| other internet content hosts fit most in that mode
| whereby I can eat from the buffet to my limit, provided I
| bat away the promotional posters as I sit down.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| sleepdreamy wrote:
| This rings true even for clearly necessary fields - I've
| had clients balk at pricing for a complete revamp of their
| network. Do you think I googled 'How to setup Company
| Network Safely' and went to work? Years of knowledge etc;
| that a lot of these guys don't care to understand
|
| Most people chose to be ignorant in this manner. They'd
| rather spend as little as possible and denounce your skill
| rather than understand why xyz costs as much as it does.
| tootie wrote:
| Good point. Being a creator is a tough path, but it's
| probably way safer and easier than trying to make it in
| Hollywood.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Right -- YouTube is essentially the only platform that you
| can get "all three": distribution, discoverability & revenue.
|
| People can make creative content and get the first 2 on
| TikTok but all things equal the payout would be way, way
| less. They can make money on Patreon and distribute their
| content through it but there isn't enough discoverability
| there for them to grow.
|
| There's a reason why everyone who blows up on any other
| platform expands to YouTube asap.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If you produce creative content, you are at the mercy of
| the whims of your audience.
|
| More like if you produce creative content, you're at the
| mercy of your distributor. Google is making significantly
| more money off of the channel than the content producers are,
| I wouldn't be surprised if the difference were an order of
| magnitude.
| jonas21 wrote:
| How so? Google gives 55% of the ad revenue to the creator
| and pays for all the hosting and administrative costs
| itself. And none of the Patreon revenue goes to Google.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| In the article it said that the creator makes around 60% of
| their income from AdSense, 40% from Patreon (which Google
| sees nothing from).
|
| A quick search says that Google pays the publisher/creator
| 68% on the AdSense revenue.
|
| So how does Google make an order of magnitude more of this
| channel than the content producer?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I wonder how much they would have made _without_ Youtube. If
| they had to host /stream the videos themselves, didn't have
| magical algorithms to push a % of viewers to them, had to
| market and discover their own audience completely on their own,
| had to sort out ads/subscriptions themselves, etc.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Considering merely having an algorithm not recommend your
| channel is equated with censorship by many producers, I
| assume it stalls your growth and possibly even drops your
| views significantly with existing subscribers.
| seydor wrote:
| 34M video/page views at the very very least, how much would
| it make
|
| You re leaving out the part that without youtube, users would
| be seeking out this content, like they did with blogs before
| facebook.
|
| I think he should do that. Host his own content and use
| youtube for trailers only, a-la onlyfans
| judge2020 wrote:
| > without youtube, users would be seeking out this content,
| like they did with blogs before facebook.
|
| Would they really though? His top viewed videos are "Why
| the Soviet Computer Failed" and "What Eating the Rich Did
| for Japan". If those were headlines for a personally-hosted
| video blog, the biggest group I can see eating that up is
| the Twitter mob, which, all things considered, doesn't
| generate much value and is unlikely to translate into a
| dedicated follower base.
|
| In addition, those are kind of two different interest
| groups: I'd imagine less than 50% of people interested in
| the Soviet Computer topic are interested in viewing/reading
| a pro-"eat the rich" content piece. With YouTube, their
| recommendations allow the user to only be fed the content
| that correlates with what they want to see (and this is
| more apparent in other parts of YouTube, eg. Channel
| Awesome[0] where anything that's not in their Nostalgia
| Critic or Untitled Review Show series tends to get
| comparatively few views).
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChannelAwesome/videos
| seydor wrote:
| > doesn't generate much value and is unlikely to
| translate into a dedicated follower base
|
| It seems to work for 'onlyfaners' who use twitter and
| instagram to advertise their content
| JCharante wrote:
| I think that type of media has a higher conversion rate
| macintux wrote:
| I think you're wildly underestimating the value of
| centralized discovery with a heavy user base.
| seydor wrote:
| Was blog content not being read/discovered before social
| media? IIRC the advertisement CPMs were higher back then,
| which means it sold well, too
| rchaud wrote:
| That was then, this is now. CPMs fell through the floor
| years ago.
|
| Personal Blogs aren't discoverable on the web anymore
| because corporate blogspam knows how to do SEO much
| better and in much greater volume.
| seydor wrote:
| > CPMs fell through the floor years ago.
|
| yet advertising spending did not
| rchaud wrote:
| You're not supposed to be running on the Youtube hamster wheel
| forever.
|
| Build your subscriber base, then try to pitch the idea to a
| network capable of paying to commission an actual show.
| acchow wrote:
| You can make a shit-ton more on YouTube just cracking jokes or
| being a confident liar
| olyjohn wrote:
| Or just buying expensive items and smashing them or blowing
| them up.
| musha68k wrote:
| This is why you need to own the content delivery channel
| itself. Dick Dale preached a lot about this with regards to the
| music industry.
| rchaud wrote:
| You'll also need to own and pay for marketing and
| distribution in that case.
|
| I don't know of any indie consumer video-based product that
| got popular without being on Youtube. Note that I am
| excluding "video courses".
|
| Most people can't do the marketing, it requires too much time
| to learn and implement, time that cuts into video production.
| For a lot of people, it's better to delegate it to the
| platform itself.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Mostly Asian viewers is just not it from an income perspective.
|
| There are other youtube channels who are super successful and do
| niche Asian History content with mostly western viewers and I
| assume make a lot more money.
|
| Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n1OU9p3fhM
|
| If OP is not aware of them maybe he should check them out and see
| what they do better. I have a feeling there's a bunch of things
| you can learn from it.
|
| I enjoy his semi videos but honestly general history should be
| more popular than semis, I think he just has to get their quality
| up to snuff. Don't assume your earlier less popular history
| videos is down to the topic rather than your earlier
| inexperience. The stuff you said about storytelling that you
| learned makes a huge difference.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This is why you learn to code. Because just showing up and doing
| what you're told you make 3 times as much.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Two things:
|
| * his ability to scale is greater than yours
|
| * his work nets income even when he is sleeping
| Joe_Boogz wrote:
| I really enjoy channels like Asianometry & actively share this
| channel with friends.
|
| Any others like it?
| meesterdude wrote:
| I watch every episode! Good for him.
|
| I wish he would stop pumping the newsletter. I like that he's
| promoting his own stuff, but he doesn't understand why i watch
| his channel - it's because they are informative videos, and give
| me something meaningful to watch when i eat dinner.
|
| I'd love a westernamatry channel, or something similar in being a
| sister channel. Maybe shorter episodes. maybe just reading news
| articles and reflecting on them. Lots of formats that could work.
|
| the stories he tells are unique and intriguing - for me that's
| the value.
| Bayart wrote:
| I'm surprised he's got most of his views from Asia. I've always
| thought of Asianometry as being a window on East Asia for a more
| Western audience.
| swyx wrote:
| i think just putting asia in the title turns off most people
| from the west who have no interest. (no judgment, i do it too)
| shmde wrote:
| Having asia in the channel name doesn't make you want to
| watch the videos of the channel ?
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| au contraire, i watch his videos because not a lot of people
| talk about asia in non-confrontational terms
| wongarsu wrote:
| Just like any video about Germany has countless German viewers.
| I think people generally enjoy an "outside" perspective on
| their own culture.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I don't know about his service but I run popular apps for asian
| language learning and have a lot of non-native immigrants /
| westerners who've moved there and are still learning (often
| life long), so you could still be right
| stewx wrote:
| 335k subscribers now, since this article was posted < 2mos. ago
| nix23 wrote:
| Yeah well that's not much for being one of the most informed (in
| tech, history and politics) and kick-ass creators on the net.
|
| A really great channel.
|
| Shame on you Youtube!
| m00dy wrote:
| half of the revenue comes from Patreon. Looks like people want
| this guy to make videos seriously :)
| jasode wrote:
| Since he mentioned the Discord benefit for Patreon, I'm
| guessing the ability to _chat with him_ would be the biggest
| incentive. The audience really likes getting extra access to a
| creator and have 2-way communication instead of just being
| passive viewers.
|
| His other Patreon benefit for the highest tier is early access
| to videos but in observing other Youtube creators'
| explanations, it's the live chat that attracts Patreon
| payments.
|
| I do notice that some Youtubers do the reverse of Patreon tiers
| from Asianometry. E.g. Real Science: least expensive tiers have
| early access but no livestream chat; the highest tier has the
| chat
|
| Everybody's trying to figure out the right mix of incentives
| for Patreon.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I backed a few YouTubers on Patreon, but never did it for the
| benefits, just wanted to give them some extra financial
| support.
| Bakary wrote:
| That exists too but most backers are going to want either
| some sort of privileged access to content or a parasocial
| relationship with the creator.
| seydor wrote:
| I don't think youtube pays its creators well
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I am transitioning to content creation and I already get paid
| for it. I used to just have an engineering job. Yes, I got paid
| WAY more in an engineering job but I look at it this way: the
| much higher salary I got in an engineering job is an exchange
| for having to do the work other people tell me to do, which I
| don't really find intrinsically interesting. It also means I
| have to commute sometimes, interact with others who might be
| incompetent, etc. Not worth the extra money at all.
| seydor wrote:
| that's not an assessment about how much creators should be
| paid though
| eru wrote:
| In some sense it is.
|
| Lots of people want to be content creators. Just like lots
| of people want to be musicians or athletes (or pet vets or
| work with kids.) Or write novels or create video games.
|
| Many of these people are willing to take somewhat lower pay
| in return for doing something they love.
|
| Supply and demand do the rest.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Yt just hosts the creators. They get paid whatever the ad
| market pays for the niche they are in. Plus what they make from
| Patron or Locals subscriptions.
| seydor wrote:
| I believe adsense witholds a sizeable portion of that ad
| revenue. Plus there is literally no transparency in adsense
| about which advertiser paid which channel. We are just
| supposed to take google's word for it
| wdb wrote:
| Social Blade, suggests the channel earns more than that.
| Wondering how incorrect Social Blade is
|
| https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC1LpsuAUaKoMzzJSEt5...
| restore_creole_ wrote:
| $821 to $13,100 per month is a very wide range. The amount he
| actually does makes falls within that range but it would be
| hard not to.
| aseemscreenlace wrote:
| I think SocialBlade just gives a range since RPMs vary wildly
| due to a ton of factors (e.g. geography, niche).
|
| I'd guess Asian viewers in the history/tech niche have lower
| RPMs compared to something like American viewers in the finance
| niche.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The earnings are strictly dependent on the audience
| profile(location, age, gender etc.) and the theme of the
| channel as the earnings are essentially a cut from the ad view
| and click costs.
|
| I've watched some videos from similarly sized youtubers
| disclosing their earnings and socialblade seem to be quite off
| the mark most of the time probably because they don't have a
| good way to estimate the profile of the audience accurately
| enough.
|
| Rule of the thumb is, a finance channel with American audience
| makes 10x-50x more per view than a Bangladeshi channel about
| gaming.
|
| So it's not easy to guestimate.
| csa wrote:
| There are many comments about how little he makes from this
| channel, but it seems like he's not really focusing on maximizing
| his revenue. Specifically:
|
| - he does not do sponsored videos (too much work he doesn't want
| to do)
|
| - he has not monetized with his own product(s) (tried merch, but
| it didn't work)
|
| - he does not promote the videos
|
| After taking a look at some of his video titles, I'm fairly
| certain he could make an absolute bucketload of money just by
| doing lead gen for folks who specialize in Asian trade (either as
| boots on the ground or as advisors).
|
| As an example, a recent video on Chinese semi-conductors has 161k
| views -- that's the high side of his normal range. I can imagine
| finance companies wanting to be connected to the "real" local
| experts on this topic (not the blowhards who are a dime a dozen,
| but the real folks who like to get their hands dirty with the
| details) -- that connection could be worth millions. I can
| imagine chip buyers just wanting to know which consultants will
| give them a reasonable deal. I can imagine finance/investing
| newsletters tripping over themselves for access to local experts
| with specialized knowledge that would provide insights to their
| readers. The list goes on. Being able to facilitate these
| connections would be a huge business, imho.
|
| The problem is that this would require some scut work... but I
| imagine it would be very lucrative scut work, most of which could
| be wrapped into the research phase of his videos.
|
| tl;dr -- I think he could make a lot more loner from his channel,
| but he doesn't seem interested in or knowledgeable about the type
| of work that would generate high levels of revenue.
| draw_down wrote:
| hardware2win wrote:
| I like his semico content
| MrDunham wrote:
| Clicking into the article you see that it was built over the
| course of five years. And from other comments it seems that ~half
| of his revenue is from Patreon.
|
| That means that five years of labor has netted a salary of $60K
| per year (only $30k from YouTube)... Almost certainly that's top
| line revenue and not net profit.
|
| That's... not much for the work involved. The benefit here is
| with this strong presence and smart thinking he can likely turn
| this into significantly more income. Perhaps as an affiliate for
| travel sites or packaging historical vacation packages. But it
| certainly dissuades me from any business model where showing ads
| is the primary revenue driver (unless you on a platform, of
| course, a la Google, Meta, et al.)
| comboy wrote:
| But it scales. If he keeps at it (while keeping the quality - I
| watch most videos), it's likely that each year will bring as
| much revenue as all previous years combined. It may saturate at
| few millions subs but at that point it's not a bad profit and
| revenue from potential partnerships increases.
|
| I'm not saying it's an easy money, but it could be much more
| rewarding than working for big tech. Of course having a yt
| cahnnel is still kind of working for big tech, but he seems to
| be smart about it, heavily promoting newsletter, presumably to
| be able to switch platform if necessary.
| fullshark wrote:
| It also could go to nothing any year, as audiences move on or
| a youtube algorithm change murders his watchtime (Patreon a
| little less risky here but it could shrink as watchtime/new
| audience shrinks).
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| The thing to remember is that it's a two-way door: current
| audiences move on, but we keep making more humans, and they
| keep "discovering" what youtube recommends to them, so
| realistically the threat is "leveling out" rather than
| "losing viewers" if you run a quality channel that isn't
| built on slagging others off.
|
| Plus, we're already seeing alternatives (or rather, in-
| parallels) becoming quite established, most notably
| Floatplane and Nebula as created-by-youtuber(s)-who-wanted-
| an-off-platform-alternative.
| Bakary wrote:
| It's a part time hobby about things he has an interest in.
| There is no employer employee relationship and no alienation of
| labor. Given all that, 60K is pretty damn great.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| 60K is lot for almost anyone who don't leave in America.
|
| Especially as a part-time job.
| ddbb33 wrote:
| That's not true at all!!
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| sorry are you saying that $60,000 is not a lot? Because
| even in the US, that's a lot.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Great channel, but much less focus on general asian history now
| that tech history with economic / industrial policy focus is
| driving the eyeballs. Also sad his brief foray into shitpost
| style humor got slapped down by viewers.
| devteambravo wrote:
| It's amazing that some right wing forum helped you spread
| historical knowledge. Plants can grown on the darn(d?)est of
| things.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Well, he has well researched high quality content with no fluff.
| Totally deserves it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-27 23:01 UTC)