People On YouTube Make A Lot Of Money

So, we work with these guys and I can tell you that right now this is definitely low in terms of an estimate of the money they are making.<p>In addition to what they make from ads, a lot of YouTubers will get paid to make videos that involve a product, etc. For some (most?) that is actually a larger source of income than the AdSense.<p>Also there are many many more than 10 YouTubers who are doing very well from their channel.

Watching one episode of The Annoying Orange has taught me that predicting what will be popular content is incredibly difficult.<p>In other words, there's no accounting for taste.

the amount of "niche" hilarious/awesome/interesting video on YT and other video sites is a huge factor (along with blogs and HN/Reddit-like sites) why I don't watch traditional TV anymore. It tends to be better, I'm not forced to watch ads, it tends to be edgier/uncensored, it's more personal and interactive, and it's also more asynchronous and on-demand, easier to time-shift, place-shift and device-shift to suit the moment.

Just be cute (preferably hot), either very smart and/or funny or... very dumb yet funny. But in order of being dumb you must qualify for the first criteria. Yup. CASH!

Red vs. Blue made $250k through Blip.tv

lesson: be very very cute and/or funny and/or creative -- ideally all three; now record yourself and post to YT; profit!

How is that what seems to me to be the worst content is constantly touted as "featured" content? Is this a reflection of what people are actually interested in or is there something else going on behind the scenes?

This doesn't seem like a lot of money to me. If there's only 10 people on one of the top 10 biggest websites in the world who are breaking 100K for creating content, which is the site's value, then the only ones making out are the owners of the site (google).<p>Conversely, take the app store as a content platform. There's hundreds of iphone developers who are breaking 100K. Granted, the skills required are different, but ROI on the iphone platform seems much better.

People On YouTube Make Great Videos.<p>The article just observes the (almost expected) result.

I think it is telling that those are the most popular youtube channels. Hint : if you like watching people acting retarded or treating you as if you were retarded, then you probably are.