Is Youtube Dying?
1.3 Billion people have visited Youtube since it’s induction. 300 Hours of video is published every minute, making one day roughly around 8,000 hours or close to a years time of video. The estimated cost of running Youtube in a year is 6.4 Billion dollars, the estimated revenue this year will be around 4.1 Billion with Google looking at a 2.3 Billion dollar gap. That is amazing to think about, really wrap your mind around it. This is the gross national worth of countries like Rwanda and Nicaragua.
Youtube has really hit the skids over the past 6 months. With huge advertisers pulling out because of the off chance their ad would be shown during a hate, sexual or violent video. This not only effects Google but it effects the everyday content creator.
One content creator who runs a gaming channel has roughly 250,000 subscribers. He told me he gets around 1,600 dollars a month revenue from his channel. This guy has a part time job to supplement his income, and tells me he does ok. Last month he only received a little over 400 dollars. This month is looking worse. At what point does he have to go full time to make ends meet? He loves what he does, but he will tell you it is a lot of work. I can confirm this, running my own channel. Will he have the time to continue the channel and work full time? This is just one creator on Youtube among MILLIONS.
The amount of new ways to support channels have skyrocketed over the past year, from native Youtube funding options to 3rd party companies like Patreon. Streaming on platforms like Twitch has always been big, but rumors have it subscriptions will be part of Twitch soon, and people foresee huge changes and issues.
What avenues are left for these content creators? Without the millions of channels, it will greatly reduce the traffic to Youtube, thus resulting in reduced revenue. The real question is; how long can Google run Youtube at such a loss? I want to say there is a back-up plan, I want to say everything will be alright, but right now there is no light at the end of this tunnel… and if there was a light, it would probably be a locomotive running full steam ahead.
