Make a living on Youtube (or die trying)

[EEVblog]

Here is my talk from the 10th Ignite Sydney conference.
Huge thanks to Hunting with Pixels for the filming and video editing.
I’ll probably do another text blog post on this in due course talking about what went into, and the not-so-polished rehearsal video!

[Bloch]

Dave you kick ass 

[EEVblog]

The other 14 videos on the night for those interested.
I closed out the first group of 5 presenters.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNCkBYNm9NxlbpgGqr7u7UxfamDkYw60w

[EEVblog]

BTW, that was my first time ever on stage giving a prepared speech/presentation.

[ju1ce]

Your statement about cats was a bit uncomfortable. I know it was a joke, but I think the cat lovers in the audience started to hate you at that very moment 

[ecat]

That was informative and fun thanks for the link.

BTW, that was my first time ever on stage giving a prepared speech/presentation.

Doubly impressive then, you looked quite natural - if natural can be judged from the EEVVBlog videos.
 
Do you think your past experience talking to camera helped? Conversely did you take anything away from your, err, public exposure that you feel would help in your videos?

[EEVblog]

Your statement about cats was a bit uncomfortable. I know it was a joke, but I think the cat lovers in the audience started to hate you at that very moment 

That was the intention, it's called riling up the audience 

[EEVblog]

Do you think your past experience talking to camera helped?

I don't think so.
Entirely different ball game.

Conversely did you take anything away from your, err, public exposure that you feel would help in your videos?

Once again, not really. Off-the-cuff videos shot in private are entirely different to "performing" in front of a large live audience with a very strict 15 second time limit per slide.

[digsys]

My new company motto ... " I would hit you with a tea spoon till you die ... " LOVE IT :-)

[SeanB]

Wonder if the post office will deliver you a few dozen kittens...................... Just have to figure out how to get them there without the parcel dripping cat pee.

Very nice presentation there, well done and you got it down pat.

[dcel]

Great video/presentation Dave! I thought you did very well given how nervous you looked at the start.
Never knew you where that funny. 

Thanks for the videos.

Chris

[EEVblog]

Great video/presentation Dave! I thought you did very well given how nervous you looked at the start.

Yes, quite nervous at the start (but not before I walked on) until I got to the 2nd slide and knew I was in the rhythm.

[Lightages]

I have a question? When do you ever see your audience?!

Great presentation Dave!

[hairykiwi]

Fantastic presentation Dave! Sounds like you built good rapport with the audience really quickly.

Good to see all the numbers to put ad based online-income generation in perspective too.

Look forward to seeing more video of you at live events - hacker days, etc.

[EEVblog]

My new company motto ... " I would hit you with a tea spoon till you die ... " LOVE IT :-)

It was very impressive insult, I must admit!

[Memphis]

...The know how video. Thanx for the statistics. It means really lot of work and knowledge to make some money on youtube.

I think the biggest problem is AdBlock plugins, which drops the advertisements out and the video is still playing. That means that no money is going from the video.

I dont know how is it in your country, but in my region, I calculated that 1000 views generates 1$ to your pocket. Means if you wanna live and dont wanna die you need at least 2000-3000$ so a 2-3M views/month. This can be done only with viral videos (without any sense, even cats cant help ). And thats the problem too, normal, educational video will never get such numbers.

Or am I wrong? 

Anyway, love the work you are doing. Still learning so much...

[jmc2000]

Dave, you have a very colourful, creative personality which adds strings to your blog. I hope your blog goes the same way as Tom's Hardware in starting out as a hobby, and being sold off for millions   

[nitro2k01]

I don't think the problem is educational per se, but the level of the education. Let's take a look at Dave's video sorted by popularity:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=p

Soldering tutorial
Soldering tutorial
World's most expensive hard drive teardown (Viral type video)
Soldering tutorial (Notice a pattern?)
PCB design tutorial
Amazon Kindle 3 teardown (Viral type video)
How to set up an electronics lab
PICkit 3 review
Exploding capacitors
The DS1052 video (actually expected it to be higher up in the list)
$50 multimeter shootout
PIC vs AVR

It's easy to see the pattern. People (the masses) want simple topics they can understand. Preferably things they search for naturally, such as soldering tutorials. The more technical audience, or core audience is much smaller. Now, a real challenge for Dave would be to continuously make videos that apeal to a larger audience, without pissing off the core audience. ANother thing that might generate a tiny bit of revenue might be to add annotation links to other "popular" videos in the end of popular videos. Say, a link to the exploding capacitor video, as well as "how to set up an electronics lab" and the PCB design tutorial, in the end of the soldering tutorial videos. Might at least make give you another video view here and there.

[Bored@Work]

I dont know how is it in your country, but in my region, I calculated that 1000 views generates 1$ to your pocket. Means if you wanna live and dont wanna die you need at least 2000-3000$ so a 2-3M views/month. This can be done only with viral videos (without any sense, even cats cant help ). And thats the problem too, normal, educational video will never get such numbers.

Or am I wrong? 

You don't have your videos going viral. You "only" have to have simpler topics for another kind of audience. Best would be absolutely content free, short, no longer than a few minutes videos, like https://www.youtube.com/user/JennaMarbles/videos?view=0 (don't ask how I learned about this one ...), becoming a role model for your audience.

Dave, can you find someone to hit you over the head with a rubber mallet, until you are ready to do videos like this?

[EEVblog]

It's easy to see the pattern. People (the masses) want simple topics they can understand. Preferably things they search for naturally

Search is actually the key there.
The only reason those videos are popular is because they have magically filtered their way to the top of Youtube's search term ranking system, and soldering is a very popular "how to" search term. A couple of other soldering videos have over a million views each.
This took quite some time to happen, and doesn't happen with all videos or search terms of course.
You can't just do a new soldering video and expect it to get a 100K views, it takes a long time and a lot luck wiht Google magic algorithm.
I wanted to talk about this in my talk, but it got the chop along with a lot of stuff.

, such as soldering tutorials. The more technical audience, or core audience is much smaller. Now, a real challenge for Dave would be to continuously make videos that apeal to a larger audience, without pissing off the core audience. ANother thing that might generate a tiny bit of revenue might be to add annotation links to other "popular" videos in the end of popular videos. Say, a link to the exploding capacitor video, as well as "how to set up an electronics lab" and the PCB design tutorial, in the end of the soldering tutorial videos. Might at least make give you another video view here and there.

A lot of people won't even get to the end of my lengthy soldering videos!

[EEVblog]

Dave, can you find someone to hit you over the head with a rubber mallet, until you are ready to do videos like this?

I know a guy with a tea spoon 

[The_Penguin]

... starting out as a hobby, and being sold off for millions   

Dave, would you sell your eevblog? 

No way! EEVBlog IS Dave. It just wouldn't be the same without "Aaaahh Hopeless!!" and "Half a Bee's-dick" 

[vk3yedotcom]

I don't think the problem is educational per se, but the level of the education.

I sort of agree (and Bored@work has a good point too).

I'm in a smaller niche than EEVBlog and only 1/20 as popular.  I find the following themes work:

* Super simple that's sometimes not much more than connecting two wires together.  In radio that's the old topics of Morse keys and antennas, etc even though its' been described many times before by others.  Everyone needs them, they're simple and building's still cheaper than buying.  In electronics it may be very basic circuits, which merges in with below.

* The old classics.  Simple projects many started off as a kid.  In radio it's crystal sets and regenerative receivers.  In general electronics it would probably be simple 555 timer circuits, 2 transistor multivibrators and Science Fair electronics sets.

* Newish stuff that the crowd is doing (or is thinking about).  Eg software defined radio in radio.  Especially if it's cheaper/simpler than others and uses basic parts despite the performance trade-offs.   In general electronics I'd suppose Arduino and Raspberry Pi would be in that category.   

These 3 sorts of videos are timeless traffic generators - eg still popular despite being out there for 3 years or more.

There's differences between viewership and comments.  'Crazy' videos, eg destruction/abuse of electronics, tripping over, April fool spoofs get lots of comments but are only moderate in attracting long-term views.   Ditto for stray dogs knocking something over and silly public comments eg talking to aliens (the local beach being a common backdrop).   Although having said that these videos still attract more than more worthy educational content on circuits, etc.

It's also no secret that frequency of posting is critical (like blogs).  1 x 5 min video per week beats  1 x 20 min video per month.  People are attracted to your channel and sniff around for other stuff.  And there's 4 times as much exposure for advertisers so it's in their interests as well.