Photo: Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg
The number of YouTube creators who are no longer ad-supported for most of their revenue is developing rapidly.
The number of YouTube creators who are no longer ad-supported for most of their revenue is developing rapidly.
Photo: Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg
Photo: Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg
Two days before his first foreigner since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Jerry Dyer was broadcast live to YouTube to discuss his itinerary. Dyer is a middle-aged British businessman who makes a living filming aircraft videos taking off and landing. Big Jet TV, its entertainment company for airplane enthusiasts, has attracted more than 85,000 subscribers committed to YouTube.
Wearing a Big Jet T-shirt and hat, Dyer informed his enthusiasts of his upcoming plans for Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Europe’s third busiest transit hub. He spoke of the complexities of his footprints and met the wonderful goal of the adventure: to set eyes on a juicy Emirates 747 cargo ship. He pointed to a map of the airport. “Look at that, ” he said. “It’s the Dutch, a total car park there, especially for airplane watchers.”
Basically, paradise.
While the chat room audience babbled enthusiastically, Dyer reminded them that the Big Jet videos would only be held for members of their “first class” and “subconsistent” who pay $4.99 or $19.99 according to the month to access special programming of The Big Jet and other benefits. “This is the popular procedure we apply when we move abroad,” he said.
Since December, the number of other people paying for Big Jet TV has more than doubled, from about 1,700 to 4,000. Dyer and his sales manager, Gilly Prestwood, earn nearly $20,000 a month for subscriptions, which earn about $14,000 after YouTube cut by 30%. “We’ve built a wonderful model,” Dyer said.
Not so long ago, looking to rate the audience to watch their videos on YouTube would have been anything else: an end to their careers. He is the largest ad-supported video portal on the planet and enjoyed through its more than 2 billion users, in component because they can watch a loose stream of music, night clips and explanatory videos. But Dyer is a component of a developing race of YouTube creators who now get the most out of their fan subscription earnings.
While advertising remains the main driving force for top creators, in April, 80,000 channels made money on YouTube from select sources, 20% more than last month. Between January and May, the number of participants like Dyer who no longer have advertising for most of their earnings increased by 40%, according to Neal Mohan, YouTube’s product manager. “It’s for our creators to have a diversified portfolio,” Mohan said in an interview.
The accumulation of profit bureaucracy on YouTube, which is a google component of Alphabet Inc., is due to several factors. In recent years, a series of trademark security scandals have forced YouTube to avoid advertising on channels affiliated with topics such as hate speech and pedophilia. Along the way, YouTube has also inadvertently limited ads ranked into thousands of less offensive videos, depriving creators of their main source of revenue and forcing them to look for food.
Some of the disenchanted video personalities have moved to rival platforms such as Twitch, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Twitch, in particular, developed a culture in which enthusiasts made giant donations directly to their favorite personalities, and the proprietary streaming service through Amazon.com Inc. took a small portion of each gift. The result was a thriving art network that relied much less on advertising.
In 2017, faced with the festival’s expansion for the next generation of online stars, YouTube introduced SuperChat, a feature that allows audiences to pay for their posts to stand out in a comment stream. Since then, the company has put new tactics in place for participants to earn cash on YouTube that don’t rely on advertising, such as teams to promote merchandise, bill subscriptions, and encourage small in-app purchases.
The coronavirus pandemic and the upcoming drop in ad spend have only increased pressure on video creators to experiment with new tactics to make money. While some YouTube users have introduced retail brands or signed progression agreements with streaming or television networks, the vast majority of YouTube creators are like Dyer, not well enough to get a Netflix screen or create a fashion line. Regularly engaging your most passionate fans, perhaps five to 10% of your audience, can be a more realistic plan for economic stability.
Some creators also expect to make money through e-commerce. Seth James DeMoor, a professional long-distance runner and YouTuber, sells about $2,000 a month on on-site T-shirts and hoodies. He sees an even greater opportunity in his reviews on running shoes video. YouTube, he said, can simply upload an internal virtual basket of the videos and then distribute the resulting sponsorship gains with the creators. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did, ” he said.
Recently, to reassure some skeptics on Wall Street, Google has begun offering subscriptions and e-commerce as the next step in YouTube’s growth. “What’s nice to see is the role those products have played in taking care of all the uncertainty and demanding situations that creators face,” Mohan said.
Like many YouTube in line with the sound, Dyer fell into the company by accident. About five years ago, his nephew told him that Bruce Dickinson, an authorized pilot better known as the lead singer of Iron Maiden, was flying into town on his plane, Ed Force One. Dyer ran to the airport and got started on Twitter. To their surprise, some other people saw their game consistent with the touchdown game and were extremely happy with consistent performance.
Dyer had spent most of his adult life narrating excessive sports and hard machines, leading a motocross publication called MX Racer and founding DIRT, a magazine dedicated to downhill bikes. He developed a hobby for aircraft from an early age, developing in the shadow of Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport at the time. Periodically, his parents took him to aerial displays where he targeted a giant like the Vulcan bomber, a centerpiece of the Royal Air Force. “The more powerful, the better,” Dyer recalls.
Hooked by the positive reaction to his first touchdown video, Dyer began posting similar live content on Periscope, the streaming platform owned by Twitter Inc. He then switched to Facebook and then to YouTube, where his audience took off.
Soon, Dyer opted for a winning formula. The first 20 minutes of your videos are free. Beyond that, the audience has to pay. Dyer transmits for hours, avoiding only when the tracks are muted, your camera battery runs out or your bladder wants to empty. Its longest current, filmed in Toulouse, France, lasted 11 hours. Most of the audience that pays, he says, sees one minute and two minutes of a show.
During the early days of the pandemic, with the economic crisis and Dyer trapped at home, Big Jet TV lost 400 subscribers. But as soon as Dyer and Prestwood began to return to the box at Heathrow and other local airports, they recovered all lost customers, and then some, adding about 800 more over a six-week period.
“We managed to plow Corona in the style we use,” Dyer said. “Without YouTube, we would have gone bankrupt.”