Youtube AMA on Reddit - Makes $3-6k Per Month Recording Video Games

[JAJT]

This isn't my thing but figured some of you guys might be interested in this discussion:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1zitdw/im_a_full_time_youtuber_ama/

 

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[DrkSide]

As someone who would love to do a youtube channel this is awesome. I don't really see myself doing it full time in the niche that I though of but it is something that I would love to do as a hobby.

Thanks for the link!

 

[RHL]

As another YouTuber, I have to caution people to stay away from this niche (edit: YouTube casting of video games), this is a brutal, brutal business to be in, what they typically call a "race to the bottom" business on Shark Tank. Let me explain why:

1. Loads of competition. Everybody and their dog is casting video games now. You know how all the boys in your middle school class said they wanted to be 'video game testers' when they grew up. This is that dream IRL, and just like many "do what you love" enterprises, it's self focused before it's other-focused.

2. Serious copyright/legality issues. Every stitch of their content is owned by the video game companies, and it's only by their fiat that the broadcasts are allowed. Get on the bad side of the game developer, and you could watch your entire "business" vanish in an afternoon.

3. Grinding for days. Because there's not much to these videos, producers often have to pump out content in obscene quantities to stay afloat. I heard the people involved in the moderately successful LAG.TV channel would sometimes spend 20 hours each weekend working on new videos while also working other jobs. You've got to produce new content basically every day to survive on 15k-20k views per video.

4. Woeful payouts. If you're not a full partner with YouTube, which takes millions of views, your pay from adsense is likely to be as low as $1.00/10,000 views.

5. No permanence. You might have read the "grinding" bullet point and said, "so what, that's how all Fastlane plans are." Absolutely right. But, unlike a novel, that will continue to sell for months or years, a video game cast has a shelf life of not more than a month. After that, nobody will care, or come back to it.

And that's the biggest problem of all, that in the end, $3k/mo for endless hours of work of promoting, publishing, tweeting, etc isn't a fastlane. It's just a job.

 

[DrkSide]

As another YouTuber, I have to caution people to stay away from this niche, this is a brutal, brutal business to be in, what they typically call a "race to the bottom" business on Shark Tank. Let me explain why:

1. Loads of competition. Everybody and their dog is casting video games now. You know how all the boys in your middle school class said they wanted to be 'video game testers' when they grew up. This is that dream IRL, and just like many "do what you love" enterprises, it's self focused before it's other-focused.

2. Serious copyright/legality issues. Every stitch of their content is owned by the video game companies, and it's only by their fiat that the broadcasts are allowed. Get on the bad side of the game developer, and you could watch your entire "business" vanish in an afternoon.

3. Grinding for days. Because there's not much to these videos, producers often have to pump out content in obscene quantities to stay afloat. I heard the people involved in the moderately successful LAG.TV channel would sometimes spend 20 hours each weekend working on new videos while also working other jobs. You've got to produce new content basically every day to survive on 15k-20k views per video.

4. Woeful payouts. If you're not a full partner with YouTube, which takes millions of views, your pay from adsense is likely to be as low as $1.00/10,000 views.

5. No permanence. You might have read the "grinding" bullet point and said, "so what, that's how all Fastlane plans are." Absolutely right. But, unlike a novel, that will continue to sell for months or years, a video game cast has a shelf life of not more than a month. After that, nobody will care, or come back to it.

And that's the biggest problem of all, that in the end, $3k/mo for endless hours of work of promoting, publishing, tweeting, etc isn't a fastlane. It's just a job.

You are right, you give up control and time for this model unless you can outsource the videos (which you still give up control). If I was going to do this I have a semi-unique characteristic that I could market to an audience that is under served.

 

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[DennisD]

Everything Enaeka said is true only for people who don't understand business.
The youtube model DOES have permanence if you know how to leverage it properly.

Michelle Phan leveraged her youtube channel which teaches makeup into a makeup brand. The guy from Game Theories is a very well paid multimedia marketing consulting and he built that off of his youtube channel. I see this turning into something bigger. Swoozie turned his professional videogame career into a respectable youtube channel that now has nothing to do with games and I can see it turning into a legit production.

When I was running my Minecraft site, I offered Youtube Channel Yogscast $5K and 50% of profits to promote my product. If they had promoted it we could have grossed 250K easily within a week. (deal was turned down because they "only promote games" and I had an ebook)

Going fastlane is more about the person than the vehicle. You can spin anything into a fastlane business if you approach it the right way....

The trick is getting people off of youtube and onto your mailing list... which is totally possible.

2 years ago I helped a client go from 1K subscribers to 53K. We then took that 50K and turned it into ~5K people on a mailing list who couldn't get enough of her. We then leveraged that into a eCommerce business where she makes a fulltime living. She's only pulling in around 5K/mo right now, but her business doesn't rely on youtube. Youtube could drop off the face of the earth and she'd still be fine. I keep pushing her to expand her product line, but she's comfortable where she is.

I've spent a LONG time studying the successful youtube channels. Most people who fail do so for the same reason any business fails: They didn't work hard enough. They didn't leverage properly. They didn't outsource effectively. They didn't learn complimentary skills. They didn't adapt to a dynamic market. They didn't embrace their customer.

((I've been running some split tests with a handful of personal videos and I've narrowed down on a niche I think has some great potential. I'm not willing to jump 100% into it until what I'm currently doing pays off... I need to narrow my focus a bit. When I start... I promise you I'll break 40K subscribers within 4 months and have an entire backend.))

 

[RHL]

Everything Enaeka said is true only for people who don't understand business.
The youtube model DOES have permanence if you know how to leverage it properly.

You missed the point. YouTube has permanence, what doesn't are videos of gameplay, which have little re-watch value, and will be entirely forgotten as platforms and games evolve. Maybe a particularly astonishing speed run or lucky happenstance of gameplay (5 headshots with one bullet) would see some replay, but most casts sink into the dustbin of history a month or so after their initial launch. You'll notice that all your (very valid) plans to work with YouTube involve funneling traffic from there to somewhere else. There are channels that make enough not to do this, but precious few of them are in video games. The interest is too high, and the barrier to entry is too low. You don't even need a camera.

 

[DennisD]

I agree: If any average kid plays videogames and posts it online, they will be wasting their time.
But that can be said about any business, reall. If any average joe starts an ecommerce store, or a blog, or marketing firm, or whatever they'll also fail.
I think it's a far more useful exercise to figure out the circumstances that it takes to make the average joe succeed. Lets take a closer look:

Competition
Competition is irrelevant. Because barrier to entry is so low, most the gaming channels are HORRIBLE and will only get a few hundred views and sink to the bottom. The only thing you're 'competing' with here is the noise, but if you're CONSISTENTLY GOOD... you only need a handful of shares to rise above 90% of the other gaming channels out there.

If anything, Youtube is significantly biased towards 'lets play' gaming channels. MatPat does a good job of explaning this here:

Quality
A huge problem gamers don't understand is the QUALITY their videos need to be. The successful LetsPlayers are the ones that both prepare for their playthroughs, and effectively adapt to criticism. To the casual outsider this looks like you're just jumping in front of fraps and recording off the top of your head. It's rarely the case.

Youtube Letsplayer "SlowBeef" started a youtube channel of relevance... He watches LetsPlays that suck and makes fun of them:

You can actually learn a lot by hearing someone who knows what their talking about criticize people who suck.

Playing games on the internet (or making vlogs, or ranting about news stories, or ANY OF THAT) is a process very similar to how Saturday Night Live works. There's:

• testing new material
• gauging critical reaction
• analyzing average audience retention
• adapting
• reimplementation.

Sometimes you'll have 'bits' that KILL... Sometimes you'll have bits that bomb... Sometimes you'll have bits that go viral. Long-term success is about taking the characters/style/material that plays well to the audience and iterating on that. While any one particular video doesn't have staying power, the channel as a whole will grow to a point where you get some leverage.

You can't just upload footage of you playing a game and succeed. The people who succeed are the people who evolve. Each new video is more entertaining than the last because they're paying attention social queues. They get better or funnier or every time they record. They make it interesting,

I actually think that forum member @Tommy92l was onto something with his videos. Recurring characters, heavy editing, funny stuff. My only criticism is it may be a LITTLE too 'meta'.. but I think there's a growing market for that. Example:

Good luck man, and props on giving you fans a name "Gooners". Keep up the great content and you'll be able to spin off and step away from gaming if you wanted to... and just make successful videos about whatever.

The Backend
Advertising doesn't make any money. It just doesn't. It's lazy, there's little payoff, and I hate it.
If you want to make money, you ALWAYS have to funnel traffic. To me, just one email signup is worth 10,000 views.
There ARE products and businesses that can be started on a few thousand subscribers in the gaming niche.

Most of these kids ONLY understand gaming. They don't understand business, need fulfillment, marketing, refining the brand, growing as a person,
sticking through the tough times... which is why the average gaming channel stops putting out content before their 10th video.

The goal should NEVER EVER be to make money from "advertising". The goal should always be to unify a sub segment of audience through your content and then use that connection to meet their unspoken needs.

 

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