this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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I suspect that if you add up all the money Youtubers make, and you divide it by all of the man hours people spent trying to make a living off of Youtube, "poverty stricken PhD candidate" would start to seem like a good financial decision.
It's just like any other fame/luck based career. The top 2% make 98% of the money. Back when blogging was the new hotness, I read that 98% of bloggers would never make a single penny off their efforts. Which seems crazy to me considering how easy it was to build a quality blog and throw AdSense on it, but that was the statistic.
That's why, with any potentially lucrative hobby where success is based mostly on luck, you should only do it for fun while you save enough money to try it out for a month or two to see how you like it as a job. But you shouldn't quit your day job until you have some GOOD evidence that you're not going to be dirt poor if you pivot to doing your hobby full-time. You need a good following and a GREAT safety net before you make the jump.
It was possible to make money with a blog. I had a niche one for years, I didn’t make much, but nonetheless I got money from it.
Then Google changed how Adsense worked and paid.
It then became impossible to make money unless, you guessed it, you were the top x% of bloggers.
I supported my family with my blogs for around 6 years. Then things started changing, and I didn't like what they were changing to. I have zero interest in creating vapid bite-sized blurbs, or YouTube videos. So, I sold the sites and moved on with my life. Granted, the transition wasn't as seamless as I made it sound just now. It got hard, and I was broke as fuck for a while. It ended up working out well for us in the end though.
Yeah becoming popular enough on YouTube to be able to have it be your full time job is like winning the lottery in terms of how many people have tried vs how many have succeeded.
Yep, a close friend of mine managed to be an established content creator with brand deals. I won't go into specifics as it's quite easy to extrapolate who the person are, but many people that are our mutual friends already started to think that “If [redacted] can manage to be a content creator then I must too” and started to clout chase.
Does your friend enjoy the work? People don't appreciate how much work it is, and how difficult it can be to have your channel become successful enough to be a job (especially if you start out making stuff that you enjoy)
Sorry for the late reply, to answer your question is based on my discussion with them regarding their content creation is that they view it as a job now. At first, they worked their ass of producing content. But now they got their own team that helps with content creation. The niche that they're focusing are enjoyable enough but it can lead to parasocial relationships with their followers. It's been to the point that if they have to wear the typical sunglasses + mask + hoodie in order to remain incognito in public.
Luckily they understood that content creating is not a permanent job and has been saving and investing their money so that they can retire a la Pewdiepie.
It seems to rise to the top of YouTube, you have to be a crazed sociopath or just plain idiotic to engage enough people to be able to afford a house. I think college is overrated but still think those that try are better off. Youtubers are not in anyway contributing to the betterment of our world. It's sad how crap content is the driving force for getting monetized.
I think this says more about the dross you watch than anything else. Surely you're not going to argue that someone like Tom Scott, Project Farm, or Torque Test Channel don't add something of value to the world?
No I'm subscribed to Tom Scott and Project Farm in fact! Unfortunately I feel useful stuff like that is in the minority on YouTube. Try looking at the top videos on a guest account. That's all the crap I'm referring to. A lot of mindless drivel
Sure, but that's the case with any type of entertainment. Half of any bestsellers list is either smut, or something like Jack Reacher novels. The Office is one of the most watched TV series ever, and it's hardly high brow entertainment.
Because houses are waaaay to expensive now.
Sadly, the sociopath/idiotic formula does seem to resonate with the algorithms and/or the public. There is a local creator that I know to be a thoughtful, well-rounded person, yet they had to reduce themselves to a cartoon caricature in order to get traction. But that approach seems to have worked out for them, at least initially through Tik Tok and YouTube. Now I see them taking on increasingly sketchy sponsorships as their 15 minutes fades. And of course audience capture indisputably steers media makers into conspiratorial niches they can't escape without sacrificing views/payout. Authenticity be damned.
It's kinda ironic, but the best creators I've come across seem to be ones that aren't in it for the money.
College is overrated? How so?
I think it does depend on the degree but at least here it leaves you with a far better prospect.
Yeah if you’re getting a science degree I think that helps.
If you’re getting a degree in something like french renaissance literature or basket weaving, you’ll probably have a harder time.
Oh, totally agree.
Humanities are treated like shit by our materialist society. It's engineering or being a teacher.
Also, I'm not from the USA so I don't need to get into perpetual dept to study which might be something yo consider.
Looking at my friends kids who have completed college in the last ten years, I can safely say that 70% of them are worst off than if they didn't go. How did I come to that conclusion? Well they are so riddled with debt it's going to take them at least 10 years, if not more to dig themselves out of that due to the college experience. Are they more educated? I would say yes but their outlook on life is so grim compared to the other kids who didn't go to college and jumped directly working into trades. Those kids I see are happier and doing better in life. Again, this is just from my experiences. True it all depends on the degrees and the person itself but still doesn't change my opinion on thinking college is overrated now.
They went into debt for a lot of fucking experience.
No I would like to disagree, they went to college for the opportunity to gain more knowledge. Some of them partied, some of them are idiots but in the end college itself doesn't give you experience needed to guarantee it being worthwhile like it used to be 20 years ago. I say this as a guy who got a BS in electrical engineering and no one wanted to hire me out of school since I had no experience except for the college experience of in itself.
That sucks a lot. As I mentioned on another reply here it's not needer to take any debt in order to go to college. I forgot about how it works on other places, mb.