[Music] Ben: Hey, what's up homosympions and welcome back to another episode of Simply Podlogical, a Simply Nailogical podcast Cristine: Whyyyy
Ben: You didn't like that?
Cristine: Nooo Ben: It's like homosapiens
Cristine: I under.. i understand
Ben: Would Holosapien have been funnier? Cristine: Ben
Ben: Today's episode is brought to you by Holo Taco! Do you have boring nails? It's not a problem anymore uh Holo Taco just did a little mini drop of three new creme polishes, we've got Duct tape Gray Green screen green
Cristine: No just green screen
Ben: Banana hacks and a reformulated Royalt-ea blue Which came out in the original launch collection almost two years ago It's been reformulated with a wider more easy to use brush and a smoother more self-leveling formula
Cristine: That's right but still the same amazing bright royal blue color yeah
Ben: That's right
Cristine: What's your favorite shade of the new cremes? Ben: Well i don't want to start with an argument, Cristine But uh
Cristine: Oh it's not that kind of relationship cast Ben: You release a banana nail polish
Cristine: yeah Ben: you call it banana hacks
Cristine: yeah
Ben: you don't you don't name it after me, your muse? Cristine: i've i saw all the comments you know being upset on Ben's behalf that it wasn't named Benana or Beyynana um i thought about it.. i that was one of my ideas Ben: Is there someone else? Are we breaking is there something i should know?
Cristine: Yeah it's Troom Troom actually. Troom Troom won. No.
Ben: Put a banana in your ear Cristine: It's not a problem anymore
Ben: Yeah
Cristine: yeah um just we didn't name it after Ben because i thought if you know the average person was shopping on the Holo Taco website it would make literally no sense so that's why Ben: the average person, not like a simply uh fan
Cristine: yeah but the banana hacks also should you know remind us of some Simply Nailogical nostalgia
Ben: It's an inside joke too Cristine: Yeah it's internet nostalgia banana hacks you know bananas, life hacks will solve all your life's problems or just use some duct tape gray you know to fix things that are broken and that's it Ben: It's ok. One day i'll forgive you It's funny like the other day you, i don't can i talk about this like Cristine's like hey can i take some pictures of you wearing nail polish Cristine: yeah, why is that weird?
Ben: Well i don't know i haven't seen them any, are you gonna put them on uh instagram or something right Cristine: Oh you'll find out everyone shall find out in due time Ben: I shouldn't have let you. All right anything else to say on Holo Taco Cristine: Uhh nope, just you can go to holotaco.com if you want to see what we have these days i'm really proud of Holo Taco for growing its collection of cremes like something you'd never thought that i would say but... Ben: yeah it's not really something we thought we would do a lot of but uh yeah
Cristine: But the people want cremes and the people want good cremes, not drugstore runny cremes that take 17 coats
Ben: That's right Cristine: So we've worked really hard to get these cremes to be like amazing and like as unique color cremes as possible you know what i mean? Like the cremes you want to have, we have and that we're going to continue rolling out throughout the year i don't want to be just the average shade in the drugstore so that's kind of where i'm coming from Ben: And people will see more cremes this year uh some you've already seen Cristine leak way too early
Cristine: Oops i'm sorry
Ben: All right on to today's topic we're talking about youtube youtube money. Here's how it works. First you get the youtube Cristine: And then you get the money
Ben: Then you get the money, then you get the power Cristine: No it's not actually that's not how it works but funny
Ben: Then you get the boxing match no so we we had a whole other podcast just on sponsorships, how much youtubers make from sponsorships but we've noticed you know you get questions and a lot of people uh don't even really understand how youtubers get money just from Cristine: just from making videos
Ben: Just from making youtube videos in the first place, you know, without sponsors so we opened the floor to questions from the the simpions the simp squad the super simps so let's see what they want to know Cristine: I just want to preface this before we get into it with the disclaimer um i normally don't like talking about money and like in the sense of sharing you know what i make or whatever but the only way we can do this podcast is to talk about our own experience obviously because what else do we don't know the bank accounts of other people um or other youtubers rather but i just like we're choosing to do this because i understand why people are interested and what the reason why i've been reluctant to do this kind of thing in the past is because i never want to sound like oh i'm bragging or i'm talking about money in this way and trying to make other people feel bad so i really hope people just see that from that perspective and know that like i'm sharing this because there is a valuable interest in knowing kind of the background to this business and how people make money because i also find that there's some youtubers that are um not very transparent about it and not that everyone has to disclose their full income what they get but we have seen sometimes youtubers kind of uh bend the truth of the matter when like i know for a fact they have 10 million dollars
Ben: you do? Cristine: and they basically and like they act like they don't and they need help and some of that really rubs me the wrong way so i also feel like there is value in being just like transparent. If you have money you have money Ben: yeah i guess our perspective is we think an informed audience is a good thing people should know how much money people are making uh but like no one owes you like you wouldn't just go up to a person and demand to know what their salary is either right i don't think people necessarily owe you that if they're begging you to sign up to be a member or give them money directly and they're saying they don't make a lot of money maybe the onus is on them to sort of be more transparent but a lot of youtubers used to say or you would see this a few years ago where they would say that youtube doesn't allow them to share how much money they make on youtube and i think audiences just sort of accepted this right i'm pretty sure that was never true like if you sign up for an adsense account which is how you get paid there is a paragraph on confidentiality and it says you can't share confidential information from google so if you sign up as part of a pilot program or something like that you're not supposed to talk about it i think it even mentions things like click-through rates or things about specific videos that you're not supposed to disclose publicly but it specifically says in that clause that you are allowed to talk about gross revenue you make on youtube so not only does it not say you can't share that information it explicitly says you can share how much money you're making on youtube
Cristine: so when youtubers have said to their audience oh i'm not allowed to tell you how much i make from youtube that was just...
Ben: this has been the case for at least a few years, maybe it wasn't the case way back in the early days but Cristine: And i have to say when i heard youtubers make that statement and i was an up-and-coming youtuber i was like oh i guess i'm not allowed either like i didn't really look into it or question it i was like oh i guess that makes sense i think Ben: But it's part of that thing, like the strategy a lot of youtubers are like oh i want to be relatable how relatable is it to be like i made a hundred grand off of youtube videos last month
Cristine: Right exactly
Ben: yeah Cristine: so to be clear, youtubers are explicitly allowed to report their gross earnings Ben: You can share your gross revenue earnings from adsense
Cristine: Just there's a they don't owe it to their audience
Ben: No
Cristine: But there is a reason why they they don't want to.. yeah
Ben: All right Questions!
Cristine: Oh god Ben: All right first one from dizzy by the daisies uh how do ads actually work? Do we have to watch the entire ad for you to get money? What happens if we skip the ad after five seconds? So yeah obviously people know that you often get skippable ads on youtube this was probably the most common question we got this stuff about youtube premium, i guess just super high level how do ads actually work uh if your channel or content is eligible to be monetized you sign up for an adsense account you're part of a youtube partner program they call it and youtube puts ads on your video and shares the money they make from advertisers with you i think it's you make 55 percent
Cristine: Correct
Ben: of the revenue share so that super high level that's how you make money off of someone watching a video that has an ad on it uh do we get money uh if you don't watch the entire ad or if you skip the ad uh a lot of people ask this and it's actually not a straightforward answer because it depends how the company uh bought the ad Cristine: So the advertiser
Ben: The advertiser yeah so there's a way of buying ads on youtube on like a cost per view basis where if someone they only have to pay for the ad if the person viewing it clicks on the ad or if they watch uh 30 seconds or more of it i think because sometimes you'll see like a skippable ad that's like three hours long as soon as someone has watched 30 seconds of that it still counts you don't have to watch the full hours many hours of the video but people can also purchase ad space that is skippable uh in a way where you're they're only paying for the impression so as soon as a viewer watches i think two seconds of the ad that counts as someone having been having the impression of the ad so they're just paying for that so the the answer is it kind of depends sometimes yes sometimes no
Cristine: But i think that's why, just to simplify things you'll hear youtubers say please don't skip my ads because then that ensures that regardless of the way that the ad was purchased by the advertiser there will be a benefit to the youtuber Ben: i mean i wouldn't know..
Cristine: in theory
Ben: if you skip the ad Cristine: yeah yeah just don't...
Ben: i mean if you're going around youtube just thinking i want to make sure the person i'm watching is making money yeah don't skip the ad or watch 30 seconds of it or whatever just to be safe i guess but please use use these services in a way that.. Cristine: In a way that suits you.. exactly
Ben: yeah uh all right next question from Gryla when does youtube allow you to add ads and do they earn you more money the more subs you have? You want to take this one, Cristine? Cristine: So, well things have changed. When i started on youtube anyone with a youtube channel could basically get monetized. Right? In 2014
Ben: Yeah i guess you just have to apply for adsense
Cristine: You just had to apply for adsense but there wasn't very much of an application process in terms of someone like screening your content if you didn't get any views then there wouldn't be any payout anyways i think you had to reach a minimum threshold of like a hundred dollar balance in your adsense account to actually get paid out right. But now as of a few years ago they introduced new qualification requirements to even apply to be monetized on youtube. So i think you need a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours Ben: Yeah
Cristine: Which is a lot. And i i couldn't like i couldn't conceptualize what does that actually mean because i don't i don't think of my stats and watch hours so if someone like me posting the videos of my length of 10 to 18 minutes it would take about 40,000 views
Ben: To get the 4 000 watch hours
Cristine: To get the 4000 watch, yeah Ben: All right yeah that puts it in better perspective no one's thinking in watch hours Cristine: Right and it really depends on the length of the content that you upload but you and you have to have that amount in a 12-month period i believe
Ben: oh okay
Cristine: And even if you reach those criteria um you still then have to apply and from what i remember uh from a few years ago when they introduced this there was a quite a long delay in them even processing applications so they still have to manually like a human has to accept you into the monetization program these days Ben: So these changes were a product of uh some controversies about what sort of content was getting ads on youtube. The adpocalypse as they called it what was that was that back in 2017? 18?
Cristine: I think so yeah
Ben: I can't remember exactly but like basically very obviously not advertiser friendly content in some rare cases were ending up with ads on them so you would see like a coca-cola ad on a video that like was by like some like violent extremist group or something like that and there were articles about that in like the washington post and it was getting mainstream media attention and it was you know youtube had to make uh a decision in the long term interest of its business and ability to attract advertisers that had a really detrimental effect on the ability of smaller channels to get ads at all and a lot of people saw their uh their earnings like drop to like 10 percent of what they were before that happened
Cristine: And even if you are um eligible to apply for monetization that doesn't mean that youtube may not have put ads on your videos before that point because recently they started something called the right to monetize i think so they have a right to put ads on any videos on the platform even if you're not part of the partner program and i did see some upset over that
Ben: That is pretty strange
Cristine: So that was a recent development so if you're a newer creator in your smaller channel and you're trying to reach that threshold and you see ads on your video that is a thing right now even though you may not have been accepted into the partner program yet that's a recent development
Ben: okay and just quickly the second half of this question do you earn more money the more subs you have? Cristine: So this is a really common question i get all the time and subscribers do not directly correlate to your income That being said the more subscribers you have usually means the more views and the more people are watching although that changes over time with like attrition and so on Ben: Having subscribers that don't watch your content aren't worth anything from a financial perspective right but it's definitely definitely valuable to have subscribers especially if they're receiving notifications if they've turned on notifications they're much more likely to watch the video be notified there's a new video and the performance of a video early on that has a lot of people actually clicking on it and actually watching it has a lot to do with how successful and how many views that video could get especially when it's first released
Cristine: So yeah so just to paint an example if a youtuber has two million subscribers and they get a hundred thousand views on every video and then there's another youtuber that has a hundred thousand subscribers but they also get a hundred thousand views on every video if all things are controlled with content in the number of ads they make the exact same amount of money Ben: Yeah hypothetically, like if anything watch time is a metric that could uh be an indication of getting better ad rates and more revenue
Cristine: Right there's a lot of variation in how much you'll make based on the quality of the ad or how much the advertiser is paying for the type of ad like unskippable ads cost advertisers more and as a result the youtuber will get paid more for unskippable ads
Ben: yeah and if you're in a small group of channels that gets a lot of views or not views it gets a lot of watch time from viewers on youtube in general it used to be called uh
Cristine: Google preferred Ben: Google preferred, right? Now i think it's called youtube select but basically like there's a roster of channels that are getting much higher cpm payouts much higher advertising rates and more revenue on the average monetized view on their channel Cristine: yes you get paid more for the same ad potentially on the same number of views Ben: Well I think just uh Cristine: or maybe you get the advertisers that are paying more
Ben: Advertisers are paying more to be on the content of those premium channels let's say Cristine: yeah so SimplyNailogical is in that group but my other channels aren't, which is interesting Ben: uh next one from Krista, do you get to choose what type of ads will or won't be shown in your videos for example if you don't want a brand or type of business to show ads can you disable those ones? Cristine: So this is one of those things that isn't as straightforward it's not really yes or no in general the youtuber doesn't have a choice to be like i want these ads and these ads like you don't get to pick Ben: It's not like a buffet
Cristine: Right, yeah like the advertisers are the paying customer in this situation so they're the ones who are saying you know what channels what types of channels we want to be on that we're paying for so as a youtuber like i don't actually see any of this information i have no idea sometimes
Ben: you don't participate Cristine: I don't participate in that process, i don't see even what ads are playing on my videos in like a list Ben: Yeah but you sorry be very clear though you can control if you see an ad you don't like...
Cristine: Right
Ben: you can specifically like take the url of that ad go into your settings and say i don't want this ad to appear on my channel Cristine: Right so that happened to me recently there was a very specific political ad campaign that was showing up and so long as people gave me that unique url like there was a url associated as long as they gave that to me and i could copy and paste that and go into my adsense settings i could actually block that particular url from showing up as an ad. But that's not the same freedom of as like me saying i don't want any ads about toys or something
Ben: Well not..
Cristine: Well there is a category Ben: Well there is another mechanism to say i don't want ads of these topics i think the concern there is usually you don't want to exclude a whole category of ads like maybe you do and you just don't want to see any political uh affiliated ads appear on your channel i'm pretty sure that is one of the categories you can select and just not have at al,l but like who knows how sensitive those are and what you're sort of limiting i think it's easier and most people just think of the fact that like if there's a bad ad going around i'll just pick that url and put it on my exclude list
Cristine: So i've done that a couple times
Ben: Yeah they're... i mean leading up to uh an election let's say this this was pretty a lot of people were commenting if they were seeing ads about politics or certain politicians on content and again this is one of those things where a lot of youtubers were really mad at youtube about it when it's totally in their control if they want to remove it from their channel and i've...
Cristine: It's not all well it's sometimes it's sorry it's most of the time it's in the youtubers control if they are independently operating their youtube channel some youtubers sign over uh access and like basically ownership of the monetization of their channel to networks and the reason they do that generally speaking is because the network is offering them better ad rates so they sign over like permissions to monetize on my behalf control my advertising on the channel in exchange they get more money if you've given up that right to a network it's not up to you you don't have the decision power anymore to say like i want to block this ad the network now has that power so i did see in some cases youtubers who were upset that they couldn't block ads couldn't do that because they no longer had control over their adsense but that was a result of their choices
Ben: Yeah but like for those people to be mad at youtube because they gave up the right to monetize their channel to a network is completely unreasonable and i'm just i'm sorry there were definitely people who were just kind of like.. Cristine: making it Youtube's problem
Ben: virtue signaling and trying to blame youtube for certain ads showing up on their videos
Cristine: Like i'm trying to see both sides i get it and like i roll my eyes too but i also think those youtubers who sign on with the network didn't necessarily see the unintended consequences like this when they made the decision to sign up for for that monetization program Ben: yeah i'm glad you brought up networks we should briefly touch on the fact that yeah like for a long time networks would approach youtubers and try to lock them into contracts and say hey we can get you more ad revenue or a lot of the time it was a pitch of uh like not every time someone clicks on your video are they gonna see an ad before it right so a lot of the time the networks would be selling you on this idea that we can sell more ads on your video so more of the time when people click on a video they are going to get an ad that was like defy media, i remember i talked to a guy at defy media one point because he reached out and said we will guarantee you can make x percentage more money and have x percent more monetized views Cristine: And that sounds like a very attractive pitch to most youtubers and a lot of youtubers i know are part of a network for that reason and there's other reasons like they provide you with like funding and resources and hook you up with merch or podcast programs and there's other reasons to sign with a network but one of their primary selling points to youtubers was like we'll get you more money for ads
Ben: yeah defy media is an interesting example though because when they went bankrupt they just sort of shut their doors while they owed a bunch of youtubers a lot of money and not just the extra money they made them since to sign up with them you had to give over the monetization of your channel Cristine: yeah
Ben: so a lot of people's just base adsense earnings for the last few months they were with defy just sort of disappeared into thin air
Cristine: And that's awful
Ben: i mean that sucks but that's also kind of the risk Cristine: it's part of the risk, yeah Ben: Like i'm not trying to be callous but like you signed up with someone with the hopes of making more money in ad revenue but the risk is you're doing it with some third party who you know isn't google doing it for you essentially Cristine: That's why i'm so conservative and i don't give up power to anyone or anything i'm i'm way more on the conservative cautious side when it comes to that and like that is just an example of one of the reasons why i would prefer to have the control even if i don't get maximum dollar
Ben: yeah it's the same reason uh sorry just before i forget like uh if you see an ad like the jimmy kimmel show it's owned by abc my understanding is that the ads you're seeing on that channel like abc has an ad department or i guess jimmy kimmel has an ad department they're just selling the ad space on that channel themselves directly too so that is something else you'll see and that even explains in some cases i think at one point like jimmy kimmel had a video about like a tragic news event and it was monetized but when other random youtubers were talking about that event all their content was getting demonetized and people were really upset about this i'm pretty sure the answer was well the jimmy kimmel show was selling ad space on that video it wasn't being done through the youtube partner program Cristine: That's a really good point and i think that's why you you'll see that kind of thing only on specific channels that have that infrastructure to build out that kind of extra ad revenue
Ben: yeah not many channels are just trying to sell their own ads Cristine: The average youtuber like like me doesn't have that kind of thing in place Ben: No. All right uh rand cash uh when was the first time you made more money from a youtube video than from your real life job? Cristine: the real tea
Ben: the real Cristine: Wait, is my boss watching?
Ben: maybe i don't know, do you care? You've been pretty transparent about the fact that youtube is much more lucrative Cristine: yeah
Ben: like our government jobs uh like you can look like if you work for the government in canada our salaries are are public, like publicly available if you know what our position is right? Cristine: they have to post them as a part of like uh government transparency so it literally says on the internet how much you make, well not us like it doesn't list our names but just you know employees of this group and level
Ben: yeah Cristine: um so i had to look this up because i i didn't actually remember because as we'll explain youtube income is very volatile you never make the same amount on a monthly basis it's not like my regular government paycheck where i know exactly what to expect it's not like that at all so it is harder to exactly pinpoint and be like as of this date i was always making more because it kind of went up and down uh but based on the analytics as of november 2015 which was a year and four months into my channel i was in that month i made more than i did in my job in that month
Ben: so it's not a coincidence it's november any youtuber will know that uh cpm ad rates the amount of money you're getting per view is going to be much higher in the holiday season when when advertisers are paying more money to advertise their products for people christmas shopping Cristine: great point, because if you fast forward like two months later my revenue dropped from youtube and i was then making less than my day job
Ben: so how many subscribers ish did you have at that time?
Cristine: so in november 2015 i had 270 000 subscribers Ben: okay, that's a okay that's a good number Cristine: yeah
Ben: yeah
Cristine: but that is crazy to think that at 270 000 subscribers, remember the subscriber number doesn't matter but it just kind of situates my channel in terms of like how, how big was i, what was i doing? To think that early on i was making like the equivalent of my day job um and i guess we should for those maybe who are just tuning in uh we work as crime statistics analysts for the canadian government, the salary i think at that time was like 60 or 70k Ben: something like that, yeah
Cristine: annually um Ben: yeah
Cristine: yeah so that's um..that's crazy Ben: It put things into perspective for us, you know Cristine: it just made me be like what is life like what is life? um and then one other thing i'll point out is in november 2015, just to situate this on the life of simply that was before polish mountain Ben: that's right
Cristine: so i i was popular on instagram like i was pretty big on instagram in the nail art community at that time um but i was not a big youtuber by any stretch like i didn't have a youtube partner manager that's something interesting like i wasn't in google preferred i wasn't that important to youtube whatever Ben: yeah there's some stories there
Cristine: it was before anything of mine went viral so yeah
Ben: there you go. All right uh next one from jennifer reynolds uh do you have to file any personal taxes in the u.s? i heard something about youtubers that live outside the u.s now have to file since they are receiving income from the us. So yeah this is actually a very recent development. Any creator outside of the u.s should have gotten an email about this that's uh basically youtube is changing the way earning changing how they characterize earnings paid out to non-us creators and considering them royalties under tax law now and what that means is that it's very likely that it's subject to a withholding tax Cristine: So what's a withholding tax, Ben?
Ben: i want to be clear, i'm not your lawyer, i'm not your accountant, i'm not telling you what to do but basically the argument is you are making uh you know you have u.s source revenue you're making royalties that's what they're calling the money you make off these views now uh specifically from viewers in the united states is what this applies to right so the portion of views on your channel coming from u.s viewers are what we're talking about, so to the extent that those sales are happening in the u.s the irs's position is that you should be paying taxes on that Cristine: and let's just be clear it's not like canadians or people youtubers in other countries aren't paying taxes they have to report that income from youtube and then pay the taxes to their own country so they're still paying taxes just not to the states, until now Ben: yeah in a lot of cases it's just ordinary income and you're just paying all your tax wherever you live and tax taxation is mostly determined by your your address where you are right Cristine: your residence Ben: In this case uh so like if you were just paying taxes on royalties in the u.s i think your tax rate would be like 30 percent so the withholding could be as high as 30 percent hypothetically what is usually the case is countries usually have tax treaties so that someone in canada for example can conduct business in the u.s without paying double tax, we should be eliminating double taxation it just doesn't doesn't make sense it's not fair so in canada for example if you earn royalties in the us there's a tax treaty between canada and the usa that says a canadian person or business shouldn't be paying any more than a 10 percent tax for that income in that other state so if you're making royalties uh there should be maybe uh 10 percent withholding tax on those earnings held by youtube from you you get the rest of the money and then you'll pay your corporate canadian taxes on the rest of the money and youtube or any other payer of those royalties at the end of the year should give you a tax form that says this is how much money we withheld from you to pay to taxes in america Cristine: so just to simplify it um sorry
Ben: Was that complicated? Cristine: no no that was a great explanation but just like the average person's be like so what does this mean in the end am i paying more in taxes? If i'm a canadian creator and now this is a new rule Ben: you shouldn't be..
Cristine: So no?
Ben: Well... Cristine: presumably no
Ben: so if you get that form that says how much tax is withheld in most countries i think it's fair to say you should be able to claim those as foreign tax credits
Cristine: So it's like a credit yeah Ben: for because you've already again the whole point of these treaties is that you're not getting doubly taxed
Cristine: okay
Ben: so as long as you're sort of the amount of tax owing for you back in canada or wherever you actually are paying taxes is less than what was withheld and you can sort of claim those credits you you sh you're not going to be doubly taxed your tax filing might look a little more complicated this year than it did last year and i know there's been a lot of confusion about this point uh and you should get a legal opinion from someone real or talk to an accountant about whether this withholding even applies to you because it's not like there's a one size fits all answer here
Cristine: right and there's some people who operate their business as like a corporation like we do and other people just aren't at that level yet they're just operating as a personal uh personal income, so different things apply as a result but what would you say to people because i think the biggest point of confusion is people saying for example i'm canadian why am i paying taxes to americans i live in canada i literally never go to the states Ben: oh you want me to take a...
Cristine: i just what's what's the answer to that? Ben: uh you're making that money from that's u.s source revenue right but here's the thing like we're going to see a lot of changes in tax laws in the next 10 years i'm guessing because different countries are trying to figure out how you make money with a digital economy yeah so right yeah we're this is very much an evolving space
Cristine: this is new for youtube youtube for the past 12 years has never this is new right?
Ben: yeah
Cristine: this is the first time that at least we're seeing this as canadians Ben: And youtube also can't tell you like how to file like it's not their job to tell you how to pay your taxes either right Cristine: it's just it's unfortunate because i feel for the smaller creators like the small creator in canada listening to this right now and like they're not hiring expensive tax lawyers who are cross-border experts to like figure this out so i i understand why it's really frustrating and there's no clear instruction because youtube legally cannot give that to you because it's different for everyone's situation Ben: all right that concludes tax talk for today
Cristine: i hope that was helpful though Ben: all right next one for bail from bailey how much difference is there when you have a mid-roll ad with no sponsorship versus a sponsored video it seems like it's like a significant one. I think we talked about this in the sponsorship podcast but typically people are probably making much more money from sponsorships than ad revenue uh like well...
Cristine: It depends
Ben: if you have like an ad from youtube on a video and a sponsor in a video there's a pretty good chance you should be charging the sponsor for that video more than you're making from the..
Cristine: and the the reason why is i think it's easiest to appreciate it as like if i'm talking to you and telling you buy this product i'm using it right now then you're seeing me someone you chose to click on someone you subscribe to maybe and watch like talk about it so the ability or the the effect the effectiveness of that advertisement of it coming out of my mouth is higher and presumably better than just it coming up as like a skippable ad before any video
Ben: yeah Cristine: so that's why a youtuber would presumably make much more money from uh a sponsor paying them directly to promote a product rather than just like a quick ad coming up before the video or a mid-roll ad Ben: sure and this is like a one-to-one comparison because i guess there's nuance here right maybe you like insert 10 ads into your video Cristine: Good point Ben: compared to one sponsor or maybe like here's an interesting thing sometimes like an offer comes in from a sponsor and they say you can't monetize your video maybe ever or maybe just for a certain period of time right, so you have to calculate in their head is what they're offering you worth more than your ability to monetize that video over that period of time too Cristine: and then another point i just want to add about mid-roll ad specifically uh the creator can choose as long as the video is eight minutes or longer i think is the current rule
Ben: yeah Cristine: The creator can decide where they go and how many there are and just as an experiment last night uh i went and to see how many i could add i like picked an old video on the simply channel and i and my videos are no longer than like i don't know 18 minutes and i could add like 20 of them to the point where there were so many little lines in the footage of like where an ad break was that like i couldn't do it anymore and then i just got tired of this experiment so i stopped and i deleted them but like in theory you can add so i don't know the limit Ben: yeah there must be some limit where it sort of crashes but i'm sure trolls have sort of played..
Cristine: Tried it Ben: yeah and i've i've clicked on a video before and you see like a stupid number of yellow lines showing the ad breaks right
Cristine: But i just want to be clear that like i've heard some people say it's out of their control how many ads play on their videos and i think that's true if they're they don't have the right to monetize and youtube is overriding them but if they have like 16 ads and there's little yellow lines everywhere they put those there or their network put them there
Ben: Well no to be fair when youtube lowered the threshold to eight minutes to have multiple ads on videos Cristine: But they added one mid rule, from my understanding Ben: But they retroactively went back and automatically added that to people's content without them having made a choice right Cristine: But they added one was my understanding not like 16 yeah Ben: yeah that's funny, i mean on a long video it's pretty fair like on these podcasts they're usually about an hour long there's what maybe three ad breaks usually something like that Cristine: Three to four that's usually what i'll put yeah
Ben: yeah and remember like on television what's the line this hour has 22 minutes or i think it's like a half hour episode of television would typically only have 21 minutes of content or 22 minutes of content Cristine: that's a really good
Ben: the other eight minutes are ads
Cristine: so youtube is so much better because ads are no longer than like 10 seconds, 15 seconds Ben: i would say so
Cristine: i would much prefer that Ben: Ads are much more effective on youtube than they are on tv too, i think the data backs that up as uh next one from pixiedust, does paying for youtube premium benefit your channel or does it hurt it? i like paying for downloads so i can listen offline in my commute from work it's also great not having ads this is another question that doesn't have a very easy answer uh it could depend on a lot of factors the money you make someone making youtube videos still makes money from people who pay for youtube premium watching them. Youtube premium just means you pay a monthly fee to watch youtube videos without ads and you have the ability to download stuff offline and things like that right the way creators get paid out for people watching that way is it's like a calculation it's not entirely clear but it's basically it's proportional to how much other youtube content that person consumed let's say so if that person is only watching you and only you and they're paying 10 dollars a month or whatever it costs these days then there's a good chance you're making more from that youtube premium person if youtube premium people watched like one video of yours for like 10 seconds and clicked out and then watched hundreds of hours of content from other people really good chance you're not making much from them at all right
Cristine: It, what that does is the more content you watch as a viewer it dilutes your contribution to the youtubers that you were watching, if that makes sense Ben: And this also this question is also entirely dependent on how much the youtube creator is making from just regular ads on their channel because like we already sort of indicated some people are getting paid a lot more per view than other people like if you're in youtube select and you're a premium channel that gets good ads there's a good chance that could be the difference between you actually making more money on ads than on the subscription model Cristine: i hope that everyone watches in the way that is best for them and if you watch a ton of youtube and hate ads, youtube premium might be the best solution for you i have youtube premium on Simply Nailogical but actually only because youtube just like forcefully gave it to me because it was part of being in the google program Ben: They offered it to you
Cristine: but like i don't think i had a choice it's like i can't toggle it off
Ben: oh really?
Cristine: it's just part of yeah it's just part of the channel now um so when i'm watching and i'm logged into that account i don't get any ads but all of my other logins are i have not purchased premium in major part because i want to see what kind of ads are being delivered on youtube just as someone who like works on this platform i think it's important for me to see how are things being monetized what kind of ads are going on on the platform so that's my personal choice and i also know that watching with ads does seem to help the creator so i don't mind seeing ads when it's on a video that is someone that i support Ben: All right next one from gb i've always wondered if youtubers can see when people click off their videos and what counts as a view the first second of video or the percentage of watch time? uh we can see when you click off right? Cristine: yeah
Ben: yeah i do this more for the podcast than anything when i'm uploading the audio version if i look back at last episode previous episodes i can see a chart of when when it drops like when people are likely to click off right Cristine: so there's always a retention metrics that kind of shows you a survival curve and it's usually pretty steady and it's slowly over time there's attrition of people clicking off but on some videos where there's like a big reveal coming like a you know there's a big suspenseful moment that's gonna happen at minute eight and then it happens you see a huge drop it depends yeah
Ben: yeah yeah so that's interesting uh in terms of what counts as a view i'm actually not entirely sure but from the monetization perspective uh two seconds is what counts Cristine: Two seconds of watching and ad? Ben: if you start watching an ad and you click x or back before two seconds it's not gonna count as if you watch that ad Cristine: okay
Ben: i'm not sure if that same logic is applied to how video views are counted but from a monetization perspective i don't think it matters right because if if the ad was delivered i don't think it if someone's watching an ad and then the video starts and they click out i don't think it really matters right because the ad was still delivered Cristine: I doesn't matter to them financially but it might matter i don't know that might not count as an actual view in their metrics for like views
Ben: i'm not saying a lot of people are going around watching commercials and then not watching the content uh next one from Antononun, would you say that monetization system got better or worse since you'd started your channel? would it be as profitable if you launched it in 2021? Cristine: that's a really tough question Ben: It's impossible to answer, right?
Cristine: Yeah, I'd be 32 starting youtube, i mean i was 26 before still old
Ben: youtube was a very different place in 2015 2016
Cristine: mostly life hacks Ben: Early on when we talked to people in the industry we got the impression that we were a little late to the golden age because there was a time when there were very few youtubers and you know with less less people to divide it between some of those people were doing very well just because there wasn't like saturation of the marketplace
Cristine: that's the point
Ben: Um cpms were good when when you started then all adpocalypse and all these drastic changes happened and ever since then it's been a pretty steady recovery and you know the kind of money you're getting paid proportional to your views on your channel now is really good i would say even compared to when you started too so Cristine: yeah it's it's the same but i think it will differ depending on the youtuber because i am generally family friendly or at least not totally offensive let's say um i have i have the advantage of not being demonetized frequently let's say so i am in the pool of people that are like approved for ads so i think maybe there was some benefit to those people after adpocalypse Ben: yeah
Cristine: yeah
Ben: speaking ohhh oh no no next question do you still get revenue on older videos or does youtube eventually place a cut off on when a creator can earn from that video? Cristine: so this is a really interesting question um and i like over the past few years when i've looked back at older stuff i'm i'm pretty shocked at how much revenue is or how many views are still being incurred on videos i posted like two years ago
Ben: it's those residuals right? Cristine: yeah
Ben: this recently came up in a tiffany ferg uh just published a video about why youtubers take breaks Cristine: shout out to tiffany, because i did i took a break a year ago Ben: yeah you came up in the video actually, a lot of it was about Safia because Safia published a very eloquent blog post explaining her uh decision to stop posting as much last year but yeah sorry in the video when one of the concluding sections you know she she does tiffany does a very good job outlining a bunch of different reasons for it hypotheses but then at the very end one thing she considers is a lot of these big channels that take these breaks if you look at their analytics the amount of money they're making just based off their back catalog is likely very significant still so maybe that contributes to someone's willingness to take a break as well right Cristine: yeah and um can i give a specific example?
Ben: i mean you don't have to give exact numbers but do you want to... Cristine: So Simply Notlogical is not a completely dead channel but it's i don't upload there frequently it's my second channel i used to upload there more when i had outtakes um but there was a period in the last few months where i hadn't uploaded in like six months or something and i just looked at it and it said the estimated revenue was like a couple thousand dollars Ben: Even though it had no content for a long time
Cristine: even though there was no new videos posted in the past six months Ben: And that is even a second channel right like if we were to do the same thing with Simply like even on a given month uh the number of total views you get in a month from simply let's say i would say only a small fraction of those are coming from the new content generally speaking a lot of them are coming from that older content and if you look in your analytics at like top earning videos it's funny that some will pop up that's just like Cristine: yeah
Ben: a dollar store video from like three years ago for some reason yeah
Cristine: it's kind of interesting to think about because i don't think many youtubers see the creation of their videos as investments themselves because the most of the revenue comes when you first publish the video and most of the views are incurred but if you have like a whole inventory of hundreds of videos across multiple channels all of that work is an investment in a way in your future and i don't think the average person thinks about it that way Ben: It really depends on the kind of content too right like some content is evergreen and some content isn't you know, if you're covering like current events how many people are really going back and watching that old content probably not but if it's just a video that is evergreen is relevant all the time it's nail hacks and
Cristine: yeah
Ben: someone five years from now might just be searching for nail hacks on youtube they're still likely to find that
Cristine: That's a really good point. Yeah so my nail hack videos my um how to grow your nails videos and some of my makeup videos
Ben: yeah
Cristine: are some of the top uh who still get views today even though they're three years old yeah it's interesting
Ben: next one from simplysock, have you ever been disappointed in the amount of money you received or thought a video would do better? Cristine: Disappointed in the money, yeah no Ben: i mean how do you, what do you think Cristine: I am never disappointed in the idea that i can paint my nails and do silly things and get paid to do it at all so compared to what i do in my day job which i consider to be very serious work that i worked for seven years in school to to to qualify for i went through several competitions at work to get where i was to me it is the idea of being disappointed in how much money i make on youtube is um unfathomable given my other life story of uh of my day job work i don't know how else to put this Ben: No i think i know what you're saying like uh you have a certain perspective a lot of people dont
Cristine: I wonder if like big youtubers would argue well you have the security of your day job to fall back on so you don't need to worry if your youtube revenue dips and i think while i completely understand that if you're like a smaller creator and your monthly earnings really are necessary for like your livelihood if you're in the similar tier as me in terms of like views and revenue on youtube like you're good and it's just the attitude sometimes i see from people of my tier acting like uh you know when they're demonetized it's the worst thing ever and saying things like how would you feel if your boss cut your revenue in half Ben: i get that okay and i guess what you're saying is like at the kind of success you have and the you know a small number of people have in a matter of a couple years two three years are, if they're smart with their money they'll have made more money than a lot of people working for 30 years until retirement will have ever made right
Cristine: Exactly
Ben: so that sort of puts things in perspective i don't want to like obviously we're touching on like demonetization people complaining about demonetization i will say like this affects smaller channels too right
Cristine: yeah Ben: And even bigger channels i think there's some legitimacy in complaining about it especially when you see people trying to cover uh news or like not even controversial topics but like there should be a way of talking about serious stories on youtube without getting demonetized if i'm a guy like Phil Defranco i understand why it drives him nuts that he's just trying to cover current events and his his uh his videos are getting flagged as not advertiser friendly and i could turn on cnn and they're putting ads in between coverage of like some mass shooting you know what i mean like i understand how frustrating that is Cristine: And i wasn't targeting those people at all like yeah, not at all
Ben: we usually play the other side of this argument so i'm just i guess trying to...
Cristine: trying to balance it, I understand I'm coming from the like where i feel like a lot of the audience is coming from i think that's mostly my position of this kind of frustration that this person is being just so unreasonable and entitled and that's the vibe i get from some people not not every youtuber i just want to be clear just occasionally like i get that vibe and i roll my eyes and i think a lot of the audience feels that way too Ben: yeah especially if they have like if they have memberships on their channels if they are reading out ad reads on their videos if they're doing all of this and they have merch and they have all these things and they're still complaining about like some of their videos are getting flagged or claimed it's like yeah i mean it is still frustrating but it's like i think you're doing okay based off everything else and like the smart advice to give youtubers especially as they're becoming successful is to not just be reliant on adsense right
Cristine: diversify Ben: absolutely... yeah uh all right next one from nailify life when you get demonetized what does youtube tell you? is there a way to reverse it if it was wrongfully demonetized?
Cristine: [ horn like sound] Ben: [womp womp sounds]
Cristine: i use that sound effect
Ben: you have some experience some of your videos have been flagged is it always obvious why they were flagged? Cristine: so sometimes the i have a couple videos on Simply that were demonetized they were almost all demonetized in that 2017 period of the adpocalypse and they were demonetized like a year after i'd posted them they'd been up on youtube for some time fully monetized and then i got an email and sometimes i didn't even get an email i just like checked in my settings and all of a sudden there was a yellow icon instead of green and i'm like what's going on here
Ben: But does it say like why it's yellow? Cristine: so it gives you a high level category that could be something like profanity or sensitive events or discussion of something else like it's it's very high level but it doesn't tell you the time stamp in the video like where like copyright will tell you which time stamp in the video there was audio that was you know not yours or that was claimed um so i struggled sometimes with like understanding exactly why some of my videos were demonetized and the only reason i found out why they were because it wasn't obvious because like sometimes i you know said shit in a video or i said fuck this and like it was all jokes but i didn't know if that was causing it is i had emailed my partner manager which i only have because i'm in google's special program and had him specifically contact monetization people and like dig into it and ask why, so that i could get feedback to know what it was specifically so that if i could prevent it in the future that i would take that information and do that so one of the examples i remember was um i had a thumbnail that said wtf and i think it was bubble nails like where i put gum on my thumbnails so that that video was posted in like 2015 twenty Ben: On your thumbnails are on your real nails? Cristine: On my real nails and my thumbnail, and it was demonetized like two years later Ben: yeah so in that case you were able to just take wtf out of the thumbnail Cristine: I changed the thumbnail and then i resubmitted it and then a human reviews it when you appeal and resubmit
Ben: this process is somewhat available to people not in the top creator program or whatever
Cristine: oh yes yeah there is still an appeal process you can appeal the demonetization and there are ways to make edits to your videos on the backend and they have like an editor and of course you can you can change your thumbnail if it's a time if it's a thumbnail or a titling thing that's very easy to change but i understand why people have said that it's kind of frustrating not knowing exactly what was demonetized and i in some ways i understand why youtube isn't spelling it out every single time because a lot of the time things are demonetized it's an algorithm picking something out and it's really hard to specify like well you said shit at exactly this minute but maybe it wasn't that one word maybe it was the accumulation of like you said the word shit 17 times and no he like they're not gonna waste their time typing that out and explaining and giving context to it
Ben: well if it was done by a machine they might not even necessarily know the exact thing
Cristine: Right
Ben: sometimes youtubers just sort of learned rules like a lot of people know now not to swear Cristine: In the first 30 seconds Ben: the first 30 seconds of a video
Cristine: So that's why we can swear now but not the beginning of the podcast Ben: yeah so people just sort of gradually started to learn what sort of things were triggering uh algorithms let's say i think what's really frustrating is when things are manually reviewed and still coming to strange conclusions which you hear examples of this once in a while, and it's because you know
Cristine: well it's frustrating if you didn't get the feedback to know exactly what to fix so if you try and fix it and you think you fixed it but you didn't ultimately know Ben: But also like okay you're a tier creator that you know you're you have a contact there so you can ask questions if you're just appealing through a very generic process like hey why was this video flagged your content if it's being reviewed by someone else for a manual review... who knows who is actually doing that and who youtube contracts out or how they manage that process and you know it's not always going to be a perfect conclusion they necessarily come to right? Anyways let's knock out a few more uh hokage hana, is there a video of yours that you were really surprised got demonetized? uh what was it demonetized for? Cristine: so polish mountain number two
Ben: the clear the clear one Cristine: The clear adventure was demonetized during adpocalypse and that is because and we confirmed in the beginning i go through comments like in a comedic way i'm going through comments of the first polish mountain and it was a lot of like people saying what the fuck is this yeah? this is fucking stupid Ben: it was there was a lot of profanity
Cristine: there was a lot of profanity even though it was joking and not like said against others or in a harmful way uh youtube still decided that was not advertiser friendly so as a result my most popular most viewed video which is polish mountain number two is no longer monetized
Ben: which speaking of residuals, that video was making you a significant amount of money still years after the fact until it was demonetized right
Cristine: yeah really good point so oh we should say that being demonetized doesn't mean zero dollars, it actually means
Ben: well if you're actually demonetized yes, if you're getting the yellow symbol not advertiser friendly...
Cristine: but people usually youtubers will say i've been demonetized and it's the yellow symbol but that actually means limited or no ads most of the time, if it's a yellow symbol but that specificity is not something that that audience really cares about but what i know from having my icons turn yellow is that it says limited or no ads and i still see like a few bucks come in from those videos because limited ads are being served and i think what that means is there are some advertisers that have chosen to be okay with videos that are not suitable for most and they're like i don't care i'll i'll pay for ads on that so there is still the possibility that a creator is making a little bit uh but pretty much like not very much compared to if they were fully monetized
Ben: someone brought this up at a youtube event once they like it was a Q&A and someone asked like why doesn't youtube just you know you know ask advertisers if they're willing to advertise on quote-onquote adult content? Because there's probably a lot of advertisers that don't really care if their video is appearing on Cristine: well this is that but i think most advertisers just think maybe it's too much of a risk and they're like i'd rather be safe
Ben: I think youtube has put a lot more emphasis on like sort of family-friendly safe content more than they've appealed to advertisers about here's some channels for you that talk about like edgy things and swear a lot right Cristine: yeah
Ben: i'm not saying they need to appeal to that but it is interesting that like i wonder if you'd ever see it would be like the opposite of a youtube kids it would be..
Cristine: Youtube adult
Ben: like hey advertisers are you willing to advertise on these uh edgier channels
Cristine: i'm gonna upload polish mountain two to it so controversial
Ben: you used to swear a lot more in videos particularly uh there's a period of time where your videos got like really profane i don't know if you were just like angry about something in life around that time but... Cristine: i don't know i just did and i just changed um but yeah
Ben: yeah anyway uh dominique uh pasarelli what simply video has made the most money? are we going here, simply?
Cristine: I did look it up... and surprisingly ironically it was the dollar store nail art video
Ben: so not polish mountain Cristine: not polish mountain!
Ben: because it was demonetized, right?
Cristine: No no polish mountain 2 was demonetized polish mountain number one which is my second most viewed video still didn't make as much as a top earning video because it was before i was in the google premium or whatever
Ben: oh your cpms weren't as good Cristine: and it was before uh there was mid-roll ads or multiple ads Ben: yeah you were...
Cristine: I'm pretty sure
Ben: yeah
Cristine: because i didn't have those on at the time yeah so i think that's why so when dollar store came out that was in 2018. Ben: okay so the money you've made on it since it was uploaded in 2018 is the most
Cristine: correct
Ben: of any video okay Cristine: i've made like over 50k on that video it's just funny that it's the dollar store one Ben: uh how important are thumbnails actually? says the gaelic garlic girl i'll never forget going to vidcon the first year and we sat in on a seminar and a really popular uh vlogger uh got up there and said i spend more time on my thumbnails than i do making my videos and we looked at each other like like Cristine: confused
Ben: that's crazy like, really?! because at that time you were like still to some degree you you often make your thumbnails kind of at the last minute
Cristine: I make them the morning of, usually
Ben: Right? But yeah like i don't know maybe unfortunately thumbnails are super important
Cristine: so let's explain why like why are thumbnails so important to getting views? Ben: because people click on the thumbnail Cristine: because it's the first thing you you see, right
Ben: oh okay oh this is like a trick question or something
Cristine: no it's it's the the quality of the video although it doesn't preclude like really well-made videos from from doing well of course and being promoted through an algorithm, but the first point of contact is the thumbnail so if you're you know attracted to some rainbow crazy eyeballs sticking out of your head like thumbnails more more people are gonna click on that and that's why a lot of the life hack over saturated thumbnails and like just like troom troom style thumbnails, five minute crafts it's just like ridiculous why... Ben: offensively bright
Cristine: why is there a glue stick inside your mouth? But i wanna click on
Ben: I need to click on that video
Cristine: Yeah, so it's thumbnails like that that got people the views and not necessarily the video itself, that doesn't mean that there there's tons of effort in troom troom videos let me just say, it's amazing quality Ben: defensive...
Cristine: [inaudible] Ben: but yeah they are very important
Cristine: and i should spend more time on my thumbnails but uh and last question from rosey michelle what are your views on subscription services like patreon that give people exclusive content? Cristine: so it's not something i have currently um Ben: there is an equivalent on youtube now like there's memberships for channels Cristine: yeah that started a couple years ago and i have the option to turn it on, i think most.. do all youtubers have that option now? i'm not sure actually
Ben: I'm not sure
Cristine: to turn on memberships um but i i don't turn it on because i have no reason to turn it on and i also don't think i'm giving the audience anything of that there's anything additional i can give the audience of value for that 4.99 or whatever it is i guess you pick what it is
Ben: yeah i guess if you if you were to turn it on you would want to know that you're actually delivering value to those people in addition to what you're just doing for everyone right?
Cristine: Right
Ben: So i guess that's where we mostly just have a bandwidth issue and we're like don't really know what that would be uh i would say this these models make a ton of sense particularly for smaller and emerging creators
Cristine: Yeah Ben: If there's you know a tiny creator out there you like they're probably not making much money from sponsors from adsense Cristine: yeah Ben: and you know like if for the cost of a cup of coffee a month you're willing to support them in that way i think that model makes a ton of sense i always feel a little weird when you see giant creators doing it particularly if they're not really.. like at the end of the day it's your money like you can spend it however you want and wherever you find value right but yeah i always feel weird when you see giant people doing it and not really delivering much additional value for that thing Cristine: And i think that for me personally it just hasn't been the right fit but if i ever did start something like streaming i think that's where it makes more sense because you're delivering that content in a live live chat way and there is a mechanism for uh like paying members to be able to have highlighted comments or things like that that are of more meaningful value when you're doing things in like a live stream or a live chat method but that's just not what i've done up to date Ben: yeah, all right apologies to Tiffany Ferg
Cristine: You keep saying this people are going to think like it's real like we ask people Ben: yeah well she couldn't come on i guess she's too busy for us like i was a little insulted honestly Cristine: He's lying
Ben: She's taking i or she's she's not taking a break from youtube, she's just talking about other people
Cristine: other people taking a break from youtube yeah
Ben: All right thank you for tuning in Cristine: i hope this was interesting
Ben: I hope we didn't share any confidential information
Cristine: We're cancelled by youtube all our videos are demonetized now Ben: that would be funny, not really. All right but thank you for tuning in see you next taco tuesday
Cristine: thanks so much for watching see y'all later Byeee [Music] you
