How achievable are the thousands of YouTube and Instagram bloggers and what you need to know before entering this business.
Ukrainian video bloggers make tens and some hundreds of thousands of dollars a month using YouTube and Instagram.
How difficult is it to achieve such an indicator from scratch, and isn't it too late to become a video blogger? What determines the income of a YouTube channel, and what is the difference between earning on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok?
To get answers to these questions and understand the basics of business on the world's largest digital platforms, EP spoke with the CEO of the Ukrainian company AIR Media-Tech (official partner of YouTube) Fedor Skiba, as well as the creators of the TECHNOGUIDE YouTube channels Igor Zubik and IT-Woman Daria Martynovich.
How much bloggers make on YouTube
Published on the EP in 2016 article " Difficult money. EP reveals the top 10 YouTube-channel revenues " for a few days gained tens of thousands of views, some of its most quoted pieces of Ukrainian and some f the Russian media.
The reason for the resonance is that a wide audience of readers saw for the first time the size of the income of the creators of popular YouTube channels. And there it was only about earnings on partnership with YouTube. Probably , on direct contracts with advertisers, they earn tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Source: VSP Group Affiliate Program website vspstats.com as of 5 May 2016. The presented earnings analytics is theoretical. It displays the average earnings if the channel was watched in the United States. Real channel analytics can only be seen in YouTube Analytics on the blogger's channel.
Fyodor Skiba, CEO of the international company AIR Media-Tech, says that some video bloggers earn tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on YouTube.
The company positions itself as an ecosystem for brands and content creators, it was founded 10 years ago and now has 200 employees. AIR Media-Tech develops YouTube channels for more than 3,000 video bloggers, each of which has a channel of at least 50 thousand subscribers.
"Of course, in Ukraine, as in almost any country, there are creators who earn tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars a month," Skiba says.
"Not only on monetization (on the YouTube affiliate program , EP), but also on advertising contracts. For example, the strategic influence marketing agency AIR Brands (a division of AIR Media-Tech) works with tens of millions of dollars of annual influence marketing budgets ," he adds.
To calculate how much money any YouTube channel in Ukraine brings in, Fedor suggests using a simple formula.
FRIDAY, 17 JULY 2020, 10:30 - VSEVOLOD NEKRASOV
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How achievable are the thousands of YouTube and Instagram bloggers and what you need to know before entering this business.
Ukrainian video bloggers make tens and some hundreds of thousands of dollars a month using YouTube and Instagram.
How difficult is it to achieve such an indicator from scratch, and isn't it too late to become a video blogger? What determines the income of a YouTube channel, and what is the difference between earning on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok?
To get answers to these questions and understand the basics of business on the world's largest digital platforms, EP spoke with the CEO of the Ukrainian company AIR Media-Tech (official partner of YouTube) Fedor Skiba, as well as the creators of the TECHNOGUIDE YouTube channels Igor Zubik and IT-Woman Daria Martynovich.
How much bloggers make on YouTube
Published on the EP in 2016 article " Difficult money. EP reveals the top 10 YouTube-channel revenues " for a few days gained tens of thousands of views, some of its most quoted pieces of Ukrainian and some f the Russian media.
The reason for the resonance is that a wide audience of readers saw for the first time the size of the income of the creators of popular YouTube channels. And there it was only about earnings on partnership with YouTube. Probably , on direct contracts with advertisers, they earn tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
Source: VSP Group Affiliate Program website vspstats.com as of 5 May 2016. The presented earnings analytics is theoretical. It displays the average earnings if the channel was watched in the United States. Real channel analytics can only be seen in YouTube Analytics on the blogger's channel.
Fyodor Skiba, CEO of the international company AIR Media-Tech, says that some video bloggers earn tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on YouTube.
The company positions itself as an ecosystem for brands and content creators, it was founded 10 years ago and now has 200 employees. AIR Media-Tech develops YouTube channels for more than 3,000 video bloggers, each of which has a channel of at least 50 thousand subscribers.
"Of course, in Ukraine, as in almost any country, there are creators who earn tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars a month," Skiba says.
"Not only on monetization (on the YouTube affiliate program , EP), but also on advertising contracts. For example, the strategic influence marketing agency AIR Brands (a division of AIR Media-Tech) works with tens of millions of dollars of annual influence marketing budgets ," he adds.
To calculate how much money any YouTube channel in Ukraine brings in, Fedor suggests using a simple formula.
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You need to divide the number of views on the channel by 3. This gives an approximate maximum percentage of commercial views. Divide the resulting figure by 1000, because commercial impressions are counted in a thousand. Then we multiply by CPM (price per thousand contacts). For Ukraine, the maximum is now about $ 1.
As a result, if the video got 1 million views, it can be assumed that 300 thousand views were commercial. Divide by 1000, we get about $ 300 income. 45% of this amount is taken by YouTube.
"It can be very roughly said that a blogger will receive from 100-150 to 300-500 dollars on average for 1 million views, depending on the country, subject matter and language," explains Skiba .
Most profitable niches and countries
The income of a YouTube channel primarily depends on the country for which the content is created and the language of the content. The larger and richer the country, the more and richer the advertisers there, the more money advertisers "pour" into YouTube.
It makes sense that the most money can be made from English-language content aimed at US residents. The article "Hard money. EP reveals the income of the top 10 YouTube channels" describes the experience of video blogger Artem Surovtsev, who showed that the Ukrainian viewer brings in 32 times less income than the US viewer.
In addition, income depends on the topic, content quality and the demand for the audience from advertisers. For example, now, according to Skiba, there is a very high demand from advertisers for video bloggers who create content for a female audience.
"Advertisers are snapping up this inventory the most. The platform lacks female creators and female content," says Skiba .
The most profitable thematic niches are lifestyle, beauty, life hacks, expert videos aimed at girls and a female solvent audience. Companies spend the largest advertising budgets for YouTube in Japan, Switzerland, USA, UK, Australia.
Remarkably, the most important thing about YouTube content is not video, but sound.
"The picture can be of different quality, not necessarily 4K resolution, but the sound must be at a high level throughout the video," notes Skiba .
At the same time, modern smartphones, action cameras, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras provide the necessary picture quality in sufficient lighting.
Differences between earning on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok
YouTube's earning model is radically different from Instagram. YouTube is the only non-tape social network. The shelf life of content is calculated in years.
There is direct monetization here through the Google Adsense affiliate program, so the author doesn't necessarily care about finding advertisers. Once uploaded, content will be monetized continuously. On the other hand, the entry threshold is higher here, creating content is much more difficult and more difficult to gain an audience.
On Instagram, content expires in seconds. You can only make money on Instagram by searching for direct advertisers. The entry threshold is much lower, it is much easier to gather an audience.
At the same time, the audience is partly closer, since Instagram is more used for trusting relationships and tracking the lives of influencers (content author, digital signature).
In Ukraine, advertising for a blogger with an audience of 4-10 thousand people costs on average up to 15 dollars, with an audience of 20-30 thousand - 15-25 dollars, with an audience of 50-100 thousand - 25-50 dollars.
As for TikTok, depending on the region of the world, the network announces a monetization principle similar to Instagram, that is, the ability to set an active link. This opportunity in posts is sold by the authors of TikTok channels. Top authors in the US are already making tens of thousands of dollars a month from brand integrations.
Is it too late to become a video blogger?
Despite the huge number of videos on YouTube and high competition among video bloggers, there is always a lack of quality content on the site in certain niches.
Over time, new content formats appear, and the focus of advertisers changes. "Creators are always needed a lot," says Skiba and adds. "But this job is not at all as easy as it might seem."
In 2018, Mathias Bartl, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Offenburg (Germany), published a study according to which 96.5% of American users who want to become YouTube bloggers will not receive income comparable to the living wage.
3% of popular YouTube channels bring their creators about $ 16,800 a year, which is slightly more than the cost of living in the United States, equal to $ 12,140 for one person and $ 16,460 for two. At the same time, 3% of the most popular bloggers receive more than 1.4 million views per month each.
“If you host your TV show, you’ll make good money. But you can have 500,000 YouTube subscribers and still work at Starbucks,” says Alice Marwick, assistant professor of communications at the University of North Carolina.
How much do video bloggers earn in Ukraine and how hard is it? To answer this question, EP contacted the authors of several YouTube channels. The authors of the channels for 400 thousand subscribers and 3 million subscribers did not respond to the request for electronic signature.
Author of the IT-Woman channel (211 subscribers and 49 thousand views) Daria Martynovich
- Dasha, how long have you created a YouTube channel and what difficulties have you faced in matters of making money on the channel?
- I created the channel a year ago. I mainly make money on advertising projects. YouTube is one of the platforms. In order to make money on YouTube, you need to gain 1000 subscribers and get 4000 hours of video views in 12 months.
The main problem is that without buying an advertisement for your channel it is quite difficult to promote this channel, especially in my topic (gadget review. - EP ), it is specific. They earn more on the topic of lifestyle, fashion, make-up, if the author of the channel is a girl, or they earn on some kind of trash.
The problem I had was that there was no one to shoot the video. I filmed myself, edited for a long time, wrote the text. And then you post the video and get a pretty weak response. If you are creating a non-advertising project, then it is quite difficult to get views.
- What does an advertising project mean?
- For example, an advertiser comes in and says to make a video about one of its services. Then I create content and post it on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and on my website , that is, I sell the content placement in a package.
- Are you making money on YouTube today?
- Yes. There is a lot of competition on YouTube. Even if you take famous bloggers as an example, you can see that they advertise their channels. They are often highlighted at the top as recommended for viewing.
Author of TECHNOGUIDE channel (11 thousand subscribers and 2.7 million views) Igor Zubik
- I have experience of developing a small channel even by Ukrainian standards: 10 thousand subscribers and up to 150 thousand views per month. This experience is relevant for small beginner channels.
- How difficult is it to make money on a YouTube channel in terms of invested time and money?
- There are two types of earnings: the first is the YouTube affiliate program, when you directly monetize through YouTube when it inserts ads. And the second is direct advertising, this is content that you create for a specific advertiser. It can be sponsorship, some reviews on a paid basis, some kind of integration of ad insertions into the video.
In an affiliate program, everything depends on the number of views. In direct advertising, it all depends on how you agree with the advertiser. To earn money on the "affiliate" YouTube, comparable to the salary, the channel must have at least a million views per month.
- How much income from an affiliate program can a channel of your thematic niche bring a million views per month?
- I will not talk about a million, I will say on my channel. The amount of income depends very much on the current economic situation in our country and on the seasonality.
For example, my channel brought in about $ 100 a month from the YouTube partner in December-January. Then the quarantine began and the activity of advertisers apparently dropped, because now this amount is half as much. If you take 1 million views per month, then consider it to be about $ 1,000 per month.
Still, the main income from small channels, both mine and larger ones, is still direct agreements with companies and advertisers. An affiliate program is just like a nice bonus.
- How to make money on agreements with advertisers?
- It is important for an advertiser to clearly understand that your channel is watched by an audience that is relevant to the advertiser's product. If you have a channel concept, if you show a more or less normal number of audience coverage, high-quality, interesting content, then advertisers will come to you one way or another.
- According to your subjective feelings, has your YouTube channel paid for itself?
- Investments are investments in equipment for shooting and my personal time. I don’t have assistants, I don’t need to rent a studio, I rent myself, I don’t have any monthly costs that need to be recouped.
If we talk about investments in technology, they certainly fought back. Plus, the skills that I get when shooting videos for my channel are in demand for advertisers. They come, say that I have a good video and ask to shoot a video for their channel.
- How long does it take to shoot one video on average?
- In my format, these are, as a rule, technical reviews. The first stage is script preparation. You test this or that device, form your own opinion about the device.
Writing a script can take up to one hour. Shooting takes an average of two hours, rarely three. The installation takes about the same time. In general, preparing a video review can take one working day, but more often than not.
- How much can you get from the conclusion of direct contracts with advertisers?
- The numbers are different and depend on the coverage, the larger the channel, the more you charge for placement. Let's just say that you can earn an amount comparable to the salary of an average manager in Kiev and above. But this is provided that you are trying to keep the content quality bar at the highest level.
- Why do you have some videos gaining 1.5 thousand views, and some 123 thousand ?
- I have few regular viewers, so a lot depends on search traffic. Immediately after the publication, the video is gaining relatively few views, as you said - 1-1.5 thousand.
Then it all depends on how much people are interested in this device, how often its name is driven into search engines.
If it so happened that I first went to review this novelty in SERPs ie roller will rotate on the first search page. Then it's really possible to get a lot of views.
- What are the obstacles to the significant growth of your channel in terms of the number of subscribers and views?
- First of all, there is competition, because the niche (review of gadgets, e-mail) is very competitive, there are a lot of fairly large channels working. Such channels have the ability to get the latest devices for video reviews earlier than others.
I can compete with them with the help of reviews of non-top gadgets, which they "don't get their hands on." The niche is very competitive, so it is very difficult to develop a channel in it now.
But since I have had this channel for more than ten years and there is a link to the site, for me now there is no question whether it is worth working further. I love it, it's like a hobby and a job.
If it were not for my hobby, if I was not interested in this personally, then it is not a fact that I would have mastered this particular topic and generally did it.
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