YouTube Economics
Added 2017-07-22 23:04:43 +0000 UTCHey everyone! Here’s a “behind the scenes” post about the business side of FilmCow, which might help explain why I (and other YouTube creators) make some of the decisions we do. You’ve probably heard people talking about how YouTube isn’t super viable as a platform for scripted content anymore. Well, here’s some of the reasons why!
Let’s start with a cartoon of mine, “Spatula Madness: The Pen”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibAWS2KFIFU
This was a pretty average video in terms of how long it took me to make, and how well it did. It took about a week to put together (I started working on it August 24th, 2015 and finished August 30th, 2015), and since release it has received 294,817 views. Not bad! How much revenue have I earned from the video? $148.59 over its life. I put about 50 hours of work into the cartoon, which works out to roughly $2.97 an hour.
Let’s look at another project, “Detective Heart of America: The Final Freedom”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F1YyDPZLX8
This was a feature-length movie I created with funding from Kickstarter. Here’s why Kickstarter was so important for the project: since release, it has earned me $632.54 in revenue. It took 19 months to complete (while working on other stuff, of course.) There is no way I could have made that movie without funding it up front - the revenue earned doesn't even cover how much I spent on eagle statues ($824.)
In May I put some iMessage stickers up for sale on the iOS store. They took me about a day to create and upload. Since then, they’ve earned $1,640 in revenue. That’s more money than I’ve earned from every single video I’ve released this year combined.
The truth is, the only reason FilmCow can continue at all is because of Patreon and merchandise sales. I can’t even come close to breaking even with just YouTube revenue. Sooooo… thank you! I truly, genuinely could not keep my channel going without your support.
