How does Linus make money? - 2020 Update

Linus tech tips did an enlightening breakdown video of their earnings and YouTube ads make up around 25% of their revenue. I think they have to upload to YouTube because that’s where their audience is (IIRC it’s the world’s second largest search engine). There are lots of channels that I’ve only discovered as related videos to other videos I’ve watched. [VIDEO]

Not quite the same since it's a much larger team but Linus Tech Tips actually just released a video[1] on how they make money and it shows that diversifying your revenue stream as much as possible is key to be successful on YouTube. [1] [VIDEO]

I always thought creators made roughly as much or more from the promos they embed in the videos. See the LTT video about how they make money: [VIDEO] The time code takes you to a pie chart breaking down their revenue. YT ads are 26% and in-video promos are 27%

That's kind of an issue then - YouTube is only partly (probably a single-digit-percent given they dropped the direct share feature[0]) about sharing videos with friends - most people stick around for the recommendations, ie. the endless stream of interesting/intriguing/funny content. Most of that content currently dominating YT (at least, at the quantity that it's produced) is only possible due to these creators making YouTube their full-time job and getting paid to do it. Linus Tech Tips (which also runs Techquickie and Techlinked) attributes 26% of their total revenue to YT Ads[1], and the other categories (like merchandise/affiliate links) aren't something everyone can do if their videos aren't about products available on Amazon or can't grow their merch at the rate LTT does. If PT is just about sharing videos, then you might as well run a nextcloud instance instead since 'no ads' is a huge downside to PT for creators. 0: [LINK] 1: [VIDEO]

So I turned off adblock, but I see no ads, even though you have some ad domains. Is imgflip pro the way you make money only? I tried again and all I saw is one banner ad, sometimes. Do you have more ads more frequently, or is it just a relatively minimal amount in general? What is the revenue split between pro & ads? For linus for example, it's about %26 youtube ads, [VIDEO] How do you deal with moderation? Is it automated, I see you even have comments? Or is it just report buttons and your takedown form? How is the support load? What is your tech stack? PHP? Python? C#? Java? Golang?

A lot of people see the usefulness of PeerTube but don't move because the creators they watch are on YouTube. It's the same for the creators, though - they can't move off of YouTube entirely, because none of their viewers will go to a PeerTube instance just to watch that one creator. Thus nobody moves to PT unless there are other factors (like extremist creators moving because their videos keep getting removed by YT). Another major problem that prevents creators from hosting on PeerTube is that there are no ads - many see direct-from-YouTube revenue driven by Premium views/Ad views generate a significant portion of their income. Even Linus Tech Tips, with their audience of gamers who mostly running an ad blocker, sees YouTube generate 26% of their profit[0], almost exactly as much as they get from sponsors spots in their videos. If everyone were to move to PT, we'd either need an intermediary for ads, or only creators with audiences that could afford to personally finance them (via Patreon or similar) would be able to survive and make a living off of running their channel. 0: [VIDEO]

> Ads is a stable revenue stream for these content creators. Ads are a revenue stream mostly for the platform e.g. YouTube itself. You can have a look at this[1] or any other "how my YouTube channel makes money" video to see that's the case. In-video ads, on the other hand, are indeed a significant revenue stream for creators, but those have nothing to do with the platform and everything to do with the single creator. [1] [VIDEO]

While YouTube still keeps a lot of your money when you pay for premium, you actually contribute more towards a creator if you watch with premium rather than ads[0]. [0] [VIDEO] (Timestamp 6:50)