what with “like and subscribe” on social media?

[Erin]

I saw on one of Eric’s videos where he mentioned people complaining about the whole “follow on facebook, twitter, watch on youtube…” or however that goes. Seen the subject pop up here a time or two also.
Couple things I thought were this –
Eric’s videos are very good, but I imagine the demograph that is attracted to car videos is probably not the same one trying to gain friends on social media.

However, everyone with a channel, any kind of channel on youtube is saying and doing the same thing. “Check out my site, my channel, facebook, twitter, like and subscribe etc… ”

So then, in what ways does it benefit someone to get all these likes or subscribers etc? Is it just a social validation thing? Is there money involved if they get enough subscribes?

Topic

[James O’Hara]

It is money. The way youtube pays out for ads you get fractions of a cent for each like and more so for subscribers. The more subscribers you have can bump you into another tier the higher the tier the more money you get per like and per subscriber.

Works much the same way for other forms of social media.

[Mike]

YouTube is where the money comes from (approx. $3000 per million views last I checked), and all the Facebook/Twitter malarkey is to help reach people who are not going to be on YouTube directly and draw them to YouTube to watch the videos. My YouTube channel, which is not monetized and I do just for fun, has no reason to make references to social media like what you’re talking about. As I understand it, the amount of likes/comments on a video affects it’s standing in search results and how likely it is to be suggested at the end of a similar video. The more “viewer engagement” on a video, the easier YouTube makes it to find, and thus it gets more views and makes more money.

I have a subscriber that shares my videos he likes on Facebook or somewhere, I don’t really know how that works. I don’t engage in social media or have a smartphone, so I’m far out of that loop. If I wanted to try and make money on YouTube, I’d figure I had to also be on social media to promote it. The link in my signature here is the only place that my channel is promoted, and thus my traffic is somewhat low. I actually tried to make a Facebook page for my tool set (like the way people make them for businesses) but I could not do it without having a Facebook for my “person” to associate it with. I guess you don’t get to use Facebook unless you provide them with enough personal info that they can effectively data mine you.

[Erin]

3 grand per million views. Sounds good but also that is a lot of views for the average youtube video maker. Be hard to reach.
Would that pay-out eventually decrease since there are SO many people posting so many videos about stuff?

[Mike]

The revenue is based on the number of ads displayed/viewed. The $3000 per million views number is just for ads that are displayed and ignored. Every time a viewer clicks on a displayed ad, the revenue for that particular view is increased by many times. My research has led me to believe that the payout doesn’t decrease as you suggest because viewers are viewers, regardless of whether they are viewing redundant content.

[Author]

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