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Can I realistically have a career as a YouTube content creator?

Can I realistically have a career as a YouTube content creator?
Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment

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We’ve all thought about doing it: Quitting your job and becoming YouTube sensation.

YouTube money

That’s exactly what Nick a.k.a. Sacred/SacredAlmighty decided when he was 16.

“I just remember watching old let’s play-style videos back in 2009 and thought ‘I could do this too,'” Nick said. “I was always fond of video games and ended up meeting friends real quick once I started.”

At the age of 22, Nick has about 150,000 subscribers on his main YouTube channel, and more than 22,000 followers on Twitch. His content is focused on gaming with a heavy concentration on Pokémon games.

SacredAlmighty

Although being a content creator wasn’t Nick’s first choice of career, he can’t imagine pursuing a different career at this point in his life.

“I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and I know everybody has a normal job, but I genuinely don’t see myself being happy working and doing anything else for right now, at least,” Nick said. “I used to always want to be a police officer growing up but lord knows where that road went.”

No guaranteed success

Nick does not have a job outside of being a content creator. He supports himself through the money he makes from YouTube and Twitch.

“Being able to pay bills and buy gifts with money is something that I didn’t expect to have in the first place,” Nick said. “I didn’t see YouTube or Twitch becoming a thing at 16, but here I am.”

Although Nick has found success in his career, he does stress the unlikelihood of becoming the next sensation.

“No matter how much money or time you put into this you’re not guaranteed to become the next PewDiePie or Markiplier,” Nick said. “You can’t quit your job and blow up; that’s not the case at all. There are so many other people that have put hours into this, more than me, and haven’t gotten a scrap of anything. I spent the past six to seven years doing this and I just now hit where I am, and there’s so much work to do. “

According to estimates in a Medium.com post, less than 1% of content creators can financially support themselves solely off their channel.

Learning how to make videos

Content Creator

Some channels with millions of subscribers have content teams who help out with production. However, most of them started as solo efforts. A great example would be JonTron.

The work that goes into building a channel includes audio recording, video editing, and even marketing. This makes just picking up becoming a content creator a bit difficult to do.

“There are so many things you can do in Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere that you just can’t pick up immediately,” Nick said. “You have to sit down for hours and pay attention to frames, transitions, and making sure the video is presentable. Audio always has to universally be sound enough for every device that YouTube is on so everyone hears it correctly. ”

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How much money can I make?

The actual money you can make is not quite as high as you might imagine. Your average content creator is making about $0.0042 per view. This money comes from advertisers. Let’s say you publish a video that gets about 50,000 views.  On average, you will only make maybe a few hundred dollars for that video.
Reaching 50,000 views per video is a nice goal, but it probably isn’t going to happen for your first few years on YouTube.
Even if you make a video that gets hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, that doesn’t necessarily mean your video will make thousands of dollars.

Abiding by YouTube

In order to become a partner on YouTube and monetize your channel, you need to abide by the company’s rules: 

Becoming advertiser-friendly is easier said than done.

Even if you are allowed to have ads on your videos, you aren’t really making a killing. If a viewer stops the video before a certain point or has ad block enabled, then the content creator makes nothing from advertisers.

“However many views the ads on your video get decides the pay,” Nick said. “Some people expect to quit their job, work towards monetization, and make big money but that’s not the case. There will be slow days and you’ll inconsistently make money. For some people, that’s the scary thing versus their normal $10 an hour job.”

Back in 2017, YouTube experienced what many have since dubbed, “The Adpocalypse.” During the Adpocalypse, several advertisers boycotted YouTube after their ads automatically played on a racist video. Afterward, YouTube began demonetizing videos that weren’t deemed advertiser-friendly. YouTube did release a video teaching how to remain advertiser-friendly, but many content creators are still having issues to this day:

 The problem is that many videos are being flagged without having any non-advertiser-friendly content. One person even commented on this video saying that their gardening videos were flagged.

Here’s where things get a bit hairy. Becoming advertiser-friendly might not be what your audience wants. When the first Adpocalypse hit, H3H3 Productions released a video talking about how their videos weren’t being monetized. The things that led to their videos being demonetized were types of humor that attract their millions of viewers. Removing the humor means losing those viewers.

In this comes the debate of what YouTube needs to do. Channels like H3H3 don’t have PG content. However, their content is not toxic/racist, so they should be allowed to have advertisers. Gaming content is similar. Playing a game from the Mortal Kombat franchise can attract viewers, but the amount of blood and gore can get your video demonetized.

What YouTube should be doing is monitoring videos for toxic/racist content, but allow YouTubers to exercise creative liberties based on things like content and comedy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that change is coming soon.

Basically, if you aren’t planning on having PG content, then you need to explore other platforms to help earn money.

Partnering with Twitch

Twitch

Because YouTube pay is both sporadic and unreliable, many content creators also stream on Twitch for some added income.

Twitch partners can make money from sponsors, fan donations, paid subscribers, and ad revenue. A Twitch subscription costs $5 per month, but Twitch takes 50% off the top.

Those numbers may still sound better than YouTube. You may be thinking, “Why don’t I just become a Twitch partner and forget YouTube altogether?” Well, that’s not the best idea. For many content creators, YouTube is their biggest platform where they have their biggest audience. Even Pewdiepie who has nearly 100 million subscribers on YouTube has only about a million on Twitch.

If you have a YouTube channel, but you want to gain additional revenue on Twitch, plugging your Twitch stream on YouTube is your best bet.

How long can I realistically do this?

Old people using a phone

YouTube is a young platform that has already undergone so many changes. The website launched 14 years ago. In that time it went from being a place to share “fail” videos, to the supporter of full-time careers.

Some may think that being a YouTube content creator isn’t a viable option for later in life, but that’s not necessarily the case. As YouTube grows older, so does its audience. In fact, a July 2016 statistic shows that the average YouTube viewer is an adult with kids. 

“I always think about when is it my time to gracefully bow out, or maybe that won’t be the case and I become some huge, rich YouTuber,” Nick said. “Maybe I can hire someone that can manage full time, hire some editors, or whatever. It just depends on the decisions I make now that set me up for that point in time.”

So should I do it?

Sacred Kingdom Hearts 3

If you are going to start, start young. It is much easier to put in the time and effort when you are still in high school and you don’t have adult bills to pay. Starting when you’re older means that you need to do this along with a fulltime job that pays the bills.

“If you’re looking to get rich and spend money then just don’t bother,” Nick said. “This is a creative space, an escape for some, and overall a place where everyone is trying to be the next big thing. If you’re gonna come here, prepare for trial and error and accept that you might not get really big, but have fun while you’re doing this.

Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment is the assistant content editor for Softonic. He's worked in journalism since high school, and has been a fan of all things technology and video games his entire life. He is a 2016 graduate of Purdue University Northwest.

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