The Botez sisters

by Charles Miller

Last week I encouraged readers to investigate YouTube.com because there is a wealth of worthwhile video content to be found there. With about 500 hours of new videos being uploaded every minute, there is absolutely no way anyone could ever see it all. Likewise, there is such a tremendous volume of videos being uploaded that YouTube is not able to vet them to screen out the chaff.

It might be helpful to learn some of what goes on behind the screen and a little of the psychology behind how YouTube communicates with you when you visit the site. As with many things in the world, money is a huge influence on how we experience YouTube.

YouTube is a business. It collects advertising revenues from advertisers, and after taking a commission passes some of this on to the content creators. Thc content creators are paid through various monetization methods, primarily ad revenue, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing. The amounts depend on factors like the number of views and audience engagement.

This is an extremely competitive area. The CTR (Click-Through Rate) dictates a video's success and the advertising revenue it generates. Creators are incentivized to create titles and thumbnail images that trigger immediate emotional reactions: curiosity, shock, or urgency, all of which take precedence over providing an accurate summary of the video's content.

Misleading and deceptive presentations have become prevalent in order to create engagement. Creators work to break the "Three-Second Rule," which is how long most viewers take to decide what video to watch. The human brain processes visual information thousands of times faster than text, so thumbnails with high-contrast colors, exaggerated facial expressions, and such are more likely to grab attention. The psychological phenomenon known as the curiosity gap is also exploited. This triggers the brain's desire for closure, driving up watch time and means fewer viewers leave quickly. That translates into advertising revenue.

The Botez sisters
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Creators can earn a share of advertising revenues based on CPM (Cost Per Mille) which is the amount advertisers pay YouTube for 1,000 ad views. CPMs of $10 or more for "high value" products viewed from US, UK, Canada, Australia; but significantly less for views from developing nations. The CPM can be as low as 1 to 5 cents per 1,000 views for less-popular videos, but those RPMs can still be lucrative for some content creators when there are enough of them.

Alexandra Botez is a Canadian chess player with a very respectable FIDE rating of 2092, and a past winner of both Canadian and U.S. girls' national championships. She is, however, not a Grand Master and not considered to be a strong-enough player to challenge Magnus Carlsen for millions in championship prize money, plus endorsements… but she does have other different millions that matter.

With over 2.7 million followers, the Botez sisters' YouTube channel (BotezLive) typically generates 10–20 million views per month. YouTube does not publish financial information about creators, but it is possible to extrapolate a low-end revenue estimate based on 10 million views at the presumed CPM of $2.00 would render $20,000 per month. A high-end estimate could be in the range of $500,000 to $2 million per year. YouTube keeps somewhere around half of that as its fee, but what is left is still not bad pay for creating and uploading YouTube videos!

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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