Hank Green, as he is wont to do, has authored a new blog post on Medium sharing his thoughts about the YouTube community. This time, the man who makes up one-half of the Vlogbrothers is taking on the topic of advertising rates. How can content creators improve their cost-per-thousand views (CPM) rate and make a living online? The answer, says Green, is two words long: “Just ask.”
In the first section of his post, Green compares the advertising rates videos receive on YouTube to the per-thousand-view figures garnered by TV shows and movies. As you might expect, the latter two media bring in more revenue, but more importantly, they are also more efficient. “If advertising is perfectly economically efficient, then we should be able to say that a YouTube video is 32× less valuable to a viewer than a TV show and 250× less valuable than a movie,” writes Green. “I do not think we can say this. If you do, then you’re not going to care for the rest of this article…here’s a link to some cat videos.”
Green’s opinion on the relative merits of TV, film, and Internet projects is certainly based on his own prominent position within the online video industry. At the same time, he is right to say that advertising has not proven to be an efficient moneymaking tool for YouTube content creators, and that is where “just ask” comes in.
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With those two words, Green is primarily referring to crowdfunding sites that serve creative people. The most notable example is Patreon, which pays out more than $2 million each month to creators and recently acquired Green’s own crowdfunding site, Subbable. He notes how, if each fan paid a dollar for each video they viewed, it would lead to a $1000 CPM, which would allow fringe content creators to make a living online. “That’s not crazy,” he writes, “it’s iTunes.”
That comparison doesn’t quite work, since a one-dollar purchase on iTunes (which, if the success of Spotify and music videos on YouTube is any indicator, is already an unfavorable exchange for many listeners) gives the purchaser unlimited plays. But even if creators aren’t going to earn $1000 CPMs any time soon, there are still many of them who have used crowdfunding options to make a living on what would otherwise be an insufficient amount of views. Green cites Molly Lewis, Das Valdez, and Lindsey Doe as three creators who using Patreon and Twitch’s built-in crowdfunding features to turn their careers into full-time jobs.
Therefore, even if you think Green might be a bit biased when it comes to trumpeting a crowdfunding model, you must at least agree that the moneymaking philosophy he ascribes works for a lot of aspiring creators, and more importantly, it allows them to focus less on view counts and more on producing great work:
“What excites me most about the “Just Ask” model is that it encourages a different kind of content. Instead of challenging creators to figure out how to get the highest view counts, creators have to puzzle out how to make the most valuable content. How can I create something that someone will watch and say, ‘I would feel better if I had paid for that.'”
That’s not an easy task, but hard work has always been central to the DNA of the online video community. Can that community successfully shift their industry toward a more profitable model? It won’t be easy, but if Green’s hypothesis holds water, video fans will be eager to provide a helping hand.
