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Watch my parodies too!»YouTube paycheck doesn’t pay the rent
written by JoshRimer.com on January 4th, 2011
I’m sure you’ve probably figured this out, but not a lot of people can earn a full living through the YouTube partnership program. Although I was elated to see my first paycheck a year ago, I soon found out that it barely covered my shooting expenses, let alone make for a decent salary. So if you want to go on YouTube and become a partner, don’t expect too much from the revenue stream or you’ll only disappoint yourself. The best parts of being a partner until you’re really big are mainly the branding features – like being able to add extra banners with links that go to other locations out side of YouTube.
Indie rock band “OK Go” pretty much feel the same way about money from the partner program, as they talked about in an interview with NewTeeVee for Gigaom.com. “Being a YouTube partner is a nice additional revenue stream, but it’s not enough to pay anyone’s rent,” says Ok Go’s frontman Damian Kulash. “But for the most part, all of our 10, 20, 50 revenue streams are all small streams that add up to something,” adds the band’s guitarist Tim Norwind – something I totally agree with. For myself, although YouTube is my full-time career, it’s mixed up from a bunch of different YouTube-related things: being a partner on two channels, getting my own sponsors & advertisers (and product placement in my videos), providing consulting, marketing, and optomization for others on YouTube, advertising on this blog, etc.
“OK Go” was invited by YouTube CEO Chad Hurley to be on the video-sharing website back in 2006. Norwind shares that Hurley believed it “was going to be a big thing” for them.
So it’s important to remember that you don’t go on YouTube for quick cash, but to get exposure for yourself or the online brand you’re establishing (whether for business or personal use). If you think that you can get rich on YouTube straight away and that it can replace your job, then you’re most certainly setting yourself up for disappointment and failure. But if you understand that it can be a great vehicle to get you there with a good investment of your time and energy, then you could definitely be on the right track.
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YouTube Comment of the Day:
eyebomber2012 has made a comment on How to comment on a YouTube video:
you should get a new penis i think your other one is way too big
Facebook Comments:
Hey Josh,
What a disappointing news. I have viewed more than one video on YouTube of those who have just been accepted as YouTube partners and they could hardly contain their excitement.
I guess that they didn’t stay excited for long then.
Vance
Ya, it’s kind of like with internet marketing really – you need multiple income streams, and so same with YouTube. It’s definitely nice to get some extra revenue from the Partner program, but especially at the start when you first become a Partner you realize how little money it is (similar to when you first put Google Adwords on your blog).
[...] It’s his full-time profession, but even he is quick to point out that the YouTube paycheck doesn’t pay the bills. You have to be able to parlay your YouTube presence into other revenue streams, because the [...]
Surely YouTube is only more additional stream of revenue to the main IM campaigns? To earn a real stay at home salary you need multipule streams and many different sites.
Interesting article – Thanks for the info!