Category: Income Streams

It’s Only Money and Other Dilemmas

Thursday 23 January 2020 23:15

One of the options I need to consider to earn some money is making video content for a monetised YouTube channel, and with this in mind I’ve spent today delving a little deeper into some facts and figures about Google (owners of YouTube – or rather their parent company, Alphabet, are), and also Facebook et al. The facts are pretty brutal, and the figures are immense.

Even more since all the scandal over Cambridge Analytica and the manipulation of voters using data garnered without anyone’s explicit permission through Facebook, we all know that Google and Facebook and the rest (Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest…) are advertising companies. They harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder to do with what they will. We in our innocence post about our likes and dislikes, our buying habits, our marital status, our jobs, our location, our friends, and by doing so we offer ourselves as the products they sell to their customers: the advertisers, and anyone else – political parties, extremists, criminals, anyone – who’ll pay top dollar.

On all these sites, the users are being manipulated. Where YouTube’s concerned, while the users may be the viewers, the content creators are providing the means for that manipulation, wooed with the promise of some monetary recompense. That presents a dilemma for me. Do I feel I can ethically jump on the bandwagon? The more I read today, the louder the questions grew.

Is it really OK to say, “Everybody else is getting rich, so why shouldn’t I?” Am I happy to take some sort of moral high ground in declaring that I’m deeply suspicious of and concerned about the influence that big business has on our world – and then jump in and say, “Ooh, I’ll have some of that, thank you!”? I haven’t yet come to a definitive conclusion on that one. Maybe it depends how hungry I am.

That brings me to something that has been brought to the fore today too. Not so much a realisation – because I haven’t lived and worked for all these years and not known myself well enough to realise already – but more a reminder: that I’m really not bothered about money.

Oh sure, I recognise the necessity of some money, that’s the whole raison d’etre of this blog, the knowledge that I need to find a way to make some money. But it’s that word “some”. I just want, and I realise I’ve always been perfectly happy with, ‘enough’. Enough to live the life I want – which blessedly is a very simple one – and a bit put by for inevitable emergencies. It’s dawned on me today, that being happy with ‘enough’ can actually render it harder to make it.

So it may continue to cause me a problem that I just don’t have that ‘fire in my belly’ to make money. I have a ‘fire in my belly’ to do the things I love (like writing and drawing and making and teaching), and to do them well, but that fire is barely a glowing ember with regard to making money. It certainly handicapped me in running my own business. There were times when I could have grown the business but I wasn’t interested, and when pricing my services that I would say, “Oh no £X is too much, £Y will be fine.”. It could be mistaken for a lack of self worth, but I don’t think it is, I just don’t have that need to have more than, well, than I need, and neither do I have even a glimmer of need to impress anybody. I have a strong belief that a fair wage should be paid for a job, and would stick to my guns on those grounds, but then that also applies to ridiculously high wages being far from fair.

Being happy with ‘enough’ though, is rather frowned upon in our society these days.

Another strand has come from today’s research, an entirely separate strand concerning a story  – a fiction – that has been calling to me to be written for a few years. I keep ignoring it, not wanting to get swept up in something that I feel is potentially dark and depressing, or worse. It seems to want me to write it though, and today it’s been tugging ever harder at my sleeve. I don’t know if I’ll get away with ignoring it forever, but I’m going to keep trying for now.

On a lighter note – hmm, perhaps lighter – I was rendered speechless when, venturing into YouTube’s ‘For Kids’ app, I found myself presented with videos by, or perhaps it’s fairer to say about, an eight year old rather precocious boy named Ryan, who has joyfully jumped on the bandwagon and has apparently made a great many MILLIONS of dollars from videos about him, his toy reviews, and his life with his very young parents. “Why would anyone watch this?!” I cried, as I was dished up almost 20 minutes of Ryan and his parents on an aeroplane, from their home (the US? Canada?) to the UK; in Business Class. “Look, we’re stepping into the aeroplane.” “Look, this is Ryan eating.” “Look, this is Ryan sleeping.” W.T.F?… I repeated my question to the air, “Why would anyone watch this?!”, and then it dawned on me: probably for the same reason I was – because they couldn’t believe it. Kerching! Gotcha.

You can read more about Ryan in Wikipedia. I find it all truly frightening.

YouTube, Small Spaces and a Cream Egg – Part 1

Tuesday 21 January 2020 20:25

I’ve been looking at possible income streams today, focussing on YouTube. 

I spent many years teaching adults the basics of internet use, and from day one always stressed the importance of remembering that Google is an advertising company, and we, the users of its search engine, and nowadays other products, are not customers, we – or rather our habits and data – are the product they are selling. The same is true of YouTube viewers. You are allowed to watch free of charge, but don’t let that fool you. As with almost everything connected with Google, YouTube makes its money – both for their parent company Alphabet, and in the case of YouTube also for the creators of its videos – from advertising. The difference for me now is, I have to begrudgingly accept there are some benefits to be had if you work at it.

So what have I  gleaned from today’s research? I’ll try to keep it simple and have to stress this is simply my broad understanding of the situation from everything I’ve read today.

For a YouTube creator the first step in creating an income from their videos involves something called AdSense, whereby in simple terms the video’s creator sets in motion a process known as ‘monetising’ their channel, and accepts adverts that are selectively placed by Google’s algorithms to suit the viewers’ interests. Money is paid by the advertiser based on various things including how much of the advert is viewed, and whether the viewer subsequently ‘clicks through’ to the advertiser’s own website. Of the money paid by the advertiser, currently YouTube take 45% and the creator gets 55%. Although the precise amount can vary according to a variety of things, it’s generally reckoned that if an ad gets 1,000 views its creator can make as much as $10, although it could be nearer $7. In this way the video creators effectively become the employees – they create the product for YouTube to ‘sell’ to advertisers, and for doing so they earn a small return.

Another way in which YouTube can be used to make money is by directly promoting products or services within a video. In this case the video’s creator negotiates with the product or service company directly, and YouTube themselves don’t get a look in. Understandably it’s something YouTube don’t actively encourage, as they’re then providing the platform free of charge for others to make money from, but it’s not, yet, forbidden either. Of course it’s also used by companies themselves to publicise their own products and in that case it’s unusual for AdSense adverts to also be run as there would be a risk of a competitor being showcased, so again YouTube lose out. So far YouTube seem to regard product placement videos as a necessary evil to draw in more viewers to YouTube as a whole. Once there, those viewers can then be steered toward videos that do make money for YouTube themselves.

Once a video, and ideally a whole channel, is getting a large number (we’re talking hundreds of thousands, ideally millions) of views, it’s in YouTube’s interest to promote it within the site (remember they get 45% of the ad revenue). However, certainly at the start it’s up to the creators to promote their content like crazy, and that requires a lot work and ingenuity, and a goodly smattering of luck.

So, is this something I want to consider? Maybe.

I wouldn’t attempt to do anything revolving around drawing or indeed writing. My drawing skills are minimal in that respect, and although I am actually qualified to teach, I wouldn’t feel ‘qualified’ to teach something that I don’t have sufficient skill in doing myself. I could use it to create computer skills videos, returning to my previous role as an IT trainer; it’s an option, but it certainly doesn’t excite me (and I can’t see it exciting anybody else either for that matter!).

No, the thing that might be a possibility harks back to an idea I had, and a website I built way way back – I don’t honestly know without looking through ancient backup files, but it’s certainly over 15 years ago, maybe nearer 20. It was all about small living spaces. More of a ‘thing’ now than it was back then, and certainly far far easier to ‘monetise’ now. So I’m wondering… I’ve held on to several domain names for a good many years, not quite sure why I’m paying the renewal fees each year for something that I’m not using, but feeling at the back of my mind that I still want to, one day. Maybe that day is drawing near.

So, my reluctant dive into the world of YouTube monetising may yet happen as a matter of necessity, but for the moment let’s leave it as, ” Watch this (small) space”.

Oh, and where does the chocolate cream egg come in? Ah, you’ll have to read part 2 for that!