Do you like Duolingo?

[WildGinger10]

YouTube took a loooooong time to turn a profit, and it does so by just being the server, not producing the content. The people who do produce the content don't make any money, and have to beg for loose change on Patreon.

On a side note, this is actually quite wrong. The top YouTubers make MILLIONS of dollars a year, largely via ad revenue and affiliate links. Most YouTubers don't have the amount of subscribers to make tons of money, but the top subscribed YouTubers (think Jenna Marbles or Markiplier or PewDiePie) make INCREDIBLE amounts of money producing content. Here's an article about it: https://millennialmoney.com/how-much-do-youtubers-make/.

The reason it works for YouTube but not for Duolingo (or LiveMocha before it) is because YouTube is a pick-and-mix -- watch what you want, ignore what you don't care about -- but a language course is take-it-or-leave-it; if you don't think the Xish course is well written, you can't just go to another Xish course by a different author. YouTube doesn't lose viewers from one bad video, but Duolingo can lose chunks of their userbase through one bad course.

This is pretty spot on though.

[Cainntear]

YouTube took a loooooong time to turn a profit, and it does so by just being the server, not producing the content. The people who do produce the content don't make any money, and have to beg for loose change on Patreon.

On a side note, this is actually quite wrong. The top YouTubers make MILLIONS of dollars a year, largely via ad revenue and affiliate links. Most YouTubers don't have the amount of subscribers to make tons of money, but the top subscribed YouTubers (think Jenna Marbles or Markiplier or PewDiePie) make INCREDIBLE amounts of money producing content. Here's an article about it: https://millennialmoney.com/how-much-do-youtubers-make/.

When a "life hacker" type like the author of the linked article points to a handful of people to say "you can do it too"... well, you'd be just as well pointing to the cast of Friends with their million-dollar-an-episode salary and saying "you can do it too" and encouraging everyone to give up their jobs and start signing on as underpaid extras for big budget blockbusters; or pointing at Ed Sheerin and saying "all you need is a guitar and a loopstation and you can do it too."

The likes of Marbles and PewDiePie (at least before he embarrassed YouTube with his racism) are useful in that YouTube can point to them and use that to coax more people into generating free content to keep their platform going, but the vast majority of regular YouTubers aren't Marbles or PewDiePie, just as the vast majority of guitarists with loopers aren't Ed Sheerin. YouTube is built on the crowd, not on the exceptions.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Just on these points: I assume you accessed Duolingo through an app. I only access Duolingo via the web version, and have never encountered the Health system you and others describe.

As noted in several points in this thread, the health system is currently only in use in the US, so I haven't seen it either. I can't say for sure whether it's in both versions or not, but I would be surprised if it wasn't. Any US posters want to clear this one up?

The health system is present in the web version in Sweden (English interface) - depending on how you do the lessons. I hadn't seen the hearts for years until the recent makeover with crowns etc, Some poster here inspired me to just do the challenges, where you "Test" yourself and skip lessons. Once again, I encountered the health system.

[WildGinger10]

you'd be just as well pointing to the cast of Friends with their million-dollar-an-episode salary and saying "you can do it too" and encouraging everyone to give up their jobs and start signing on as underpaid extras for big budget blockbusters; or pointing at Ed Sheerin and saying "all you need is a guitar and a loopstation and you can do it too."

I mean, sure, but nobody would claim that (working) actors and musicians don't make money from what they do. It's just a difficult industry to break into. The top earners make way more than the average guy but even the average (monetized) YouTuber is making a few thousand bucks a year on it.

[rdearman]

you'd be just as well pointing to the cast of Friends with their million-dollar-an-episode salary and saying "you can do it too" and encouraging everyone to give up their jobs and start signing on as underpaid extras for big budget blockbusters; or pointing at Ed Sheerin and saying "all you need is a guitar and a loopstation and you can do it too."

I mean, sure, but nobody would claim that (working) actors and musicians don't make money from what they do. It's just a difficult industry to break into. The top earners make way more than the average guy but even the average (monetized) YouTuber is making a few thousand bucks a year on it.

As someone with 2 YouTube channels I can tell you now that very few people are making any money. The average channel has 199 subscribers, you have to have over 1000 before they will pay you anything. You are in the top 5% of YouTube channels simply by having more than 100 subscribers. The 199 average is because the top channel has over 45 million subscribers. 95% of channels has less than 100 subscribers which mean 95% of channels make zero income. The gap between PewDiePie (who is the most subscribed YouTuber in the world, with about 46m subs as of now,) and 5000th on the list equates to displacement of about 45,500,000 subscribers. To get into the top 5000 you have to have over 1/2 million subscribers. Getting paid (over 1000 subscribers) put you in the top 10% of YouTube. Seriously, people are not really making money, which is why most are asking for money via patreon.

[zenmonkey]

Getting paid (over 1000 subscribers) put you in the top 10% of YouTube. Seriously, people are not really making money, which is why most are asking for money via patreon.

So that's something like 2-4 million people that are making money via the Partner's program now? Before YouTube put in place this lower limit, my nephew was making a couple hundred dollars a year posting 3-5 videos a month.

In the language learning area there are a few people we know with more than 1K subscribers.

Heck, Duolingo has 80K subscribers.

At the other end of the spectrum there are literally millions of YouTube channels with 0 public videos.

Personally, the list of the top channels makes me want to cry.

[javier_getafe]

As someone with 2 YouTube channels I can tell you now that very few people are making any money. The average channel has 199 subscribers, you have to have over 1000 before they will pay you anything. You are in the top 5% of YouTube channels simply by having more than 100 subscribers. The 199 average is because the top channel has over 45 million subscribers. 95% of channels has less than 100 subscribers which mean 95% of channels make zero income. The gap between PewDiePie (who is the most subscribed YouTuber in the world, with about 46m subs as of now,) and 5000th on the list equates to displacement of about 45,500,000 subscribers. To get into the top 5000 you have to have over 1/2 million subscribers. Getting paid (over 1000 subscribers) put you in the top 10% of YouTube. Seriously, people are not really making money, which is why most are asking for money via patreon.

I'm afraid that perhaps it is not a proper standview from YouTubers, not offence.
As a worker of an advertising company I know very well how the You Tube marker is going and evolving in the last few years.

Actually, I'm sure that your channels, however interesting they are, are not aimed to increase the volume of followers. A channel needs a lot of work if you want to maintain enough interest in order to gain more and more followers and not to lose neither of them.

The giant numbers of followers that certain YouTubers can table are incredible, and this kind of people earn a lot of money, for sure. Nevertheless, you also need to take into account every local market. There are hundreds of small You Tubers in each country, earning enough money to survive but not become rich, obviously. With only 5,000 followers you can be called for top brands in order to go to events or talk about the brands in your videos or something like that. A whole underground business. As recently as the other day, we hired 3 young You Tubers for a photo session with the client (local market - only Spain), and they earned enough money to pay the rent for one month in only one afternoon.

On the bad side, this kind of people is always completely devoted to his channel, uploading videos one day out of two. They need to maintain the channel on fire every day with comments to his followers if they don't want to fall off, if you know what I mean.

[Cainntear]

you'd be just as well pointing to the cast of Friends with their million-dollar-an-episode salary and saying "you can do it too" and encouraging everyone to give up their jobs and start signing on as underpaid extras for big budget blockbusters; or pointing at Ed Sheerin and saying "all you need is a guitar and a loopstation and you can do it too."

I mean, sure, but nobody would claim that (working) actors and musicians don't make money from what they do. It's just a difficult industry to break into. The top earners make way more than the average guy but even the average (monetized) YouTuber is making a few thousand bucks a year on it.

Yes, but YouTube doesn't just run on the monetised YouTubers -- YouTube runs on all YouTubers. They may not make any direct revenue from non-monetised channels, but it's still part of their value proposition. If I post a video from my holidays and link to it from Facebook, the algorithm will kick in and start recommending what else to watch, trying to keep my friends' eyeballs on YouTube.

While the film and TV industry is exploitative, it's a lot more indirect than that -- actors who don't get money aren't providing value. The same cannot be said of YouTubers.

[Cainntear]

Actually, I'm sure that your channels, however interesting they are, are not aimed to increase the volume of followers. A channel needs a lot of work if you want to maintain enough interest in order to gain more and more followers and not to lose neither of them.

But that work doesn't guarantee that you will gain more followers. Basically, you have to put a lot of work in for the possibility of maybe getting somewhere. And then you've got to follow the rules that YouTube sets out, and try to follow how the changes in the recommendation algorithm affect your viewer base. All the while you're generating benefits for YouTube, while getting none yourself.

Basically, that's a lot of free labour building YouTube's brand.

or talk about the brands in your videos or something like that.

Or "selling out" as those of us not in the advertising business call it.

On the bad side, this kind of people is always completely devoted to his channel, uploading videos one day out of two. They need to maintain the channel on fire every day with comments to his followers if they don't want to fall off, if you know what I mean.

Yes. And that's down to YouTube's algorithms, which force content creators into shovelling a pile of rubbish up in order to please some arbitrary rule.

There was a computer gaming channel I used to watch who would summarise the week's gaming news in a friendly, funny way, taking together multiple sources to synthesise an argument. When the algorithm started rewarding daily uploads, they stopped summarising. Instead, they would spend 15 minutes a day talking about one news story from one source, and listening to them was less informative and less entertaining than just reading the news.
YouTube is a bit rubbish.

[Serpent]

Let's try to get back to Duolingo