You watch people on YouTube every day, but what do your favorite stars get up to when they aren’t creating content. Everyone sees YouTube channels with huge subscriber accounts, tons of video views, and a high amount of engagement. What you don’t see is what it took them to get there. There is much more involved with doing YouTube full-time than just creating and editing the videos.
YouTube beyond video
So, you already know that YouTubers need to create content. They have to film all their videos and spend hours editing it to make it perfect. That alone is not enough to provide revenue and create a steady stream of income that they can live off of. You’ll notice that videos will often have ads, but with people able to opt-out of ads and skip them, often, the YouTubers don’t make as much as you’d think from them. On top of that, YouTube takes 50% of the ad revenue themselves. CashLady has a full-list of the highest-grossing YouTubers so that you can get an idea for whose bringing in the most revenue.
YouTubers turn to brand partnerships, sponsorships, and affiliate links to make the majority of their revenue. When a YouTuber links to an affiliate product and one of their viewers purchases it, they will receive a commission. For brand ads, YouTubers can directly promote products in their videos, and the company will pay them a lump sum for doing so. Depending on the brand and the YouTuber in question, they could make tens of thousands of dollars for one ad.
Another way that YouTubers make their money, beyond their video content, is through third-party platforms like Patreon. Patreon allows fans to support their favorite content creators by making donations, which in turn will enable them to access exclusive content that no one else can see.
Inside the lives of YouTubes most famous stars
If you’ve ever been on YouTube, then you likely have heard of Dude Perfect. They’ve had a YouTube channel for over a decade and now have over 51 million subscribers. So, how did they get to where they are today?
The five dudes of Dude Perfect all met when living together in college and decided to start making videos of trick shots for fun. They use basketballs, water bottles, hockey fucks, cards, boomerangs, and just about anything you have lying around the house to create comedic videos of trick shots.
What you don’t see is the hours and hours spent trying to get the shots right. They rarely get them on the first try. They’ve also spent their career being strategic about who they partner with to retain their Christian values, such as not partnering with alcohol brands or men’s magazines.
Although they have over 11 billion views on their videos, they aren’t billionaires but claim to make enough to support their families. You will see five young guys having fun and messing around, but three of them are married, and one has a small child. They put in tons of work behind the scenes to keep creating content ideas that their fans will love and even had a TV show for three years, first on CMT, and then it moved to Nickelodeon.
