by exolymph on 2/15/25, 9:18 PM with 69 comments
by gkanai on 2/16/25, 5:56 AM
If she had done more of the work herself, it may have meant longer time between each video but more potential for the channel to be profitable.
Profitable channels, and there's not that many of them, usually take many years to get to profitability- or some semblance of being able to live off YT. Without that patience and keeping costs down while income is low, is a recipe for an unprofitable channel.
by ch33zer on 2/16/25, 6:35 AM
I get that the author wants to be a chef and that's fine but I don't think YouTube really rewards high production costs as much as pushing out frequent content.
by jsnell on 2/16/25, 6:04 AM
> My RPM is around $10
> Again: It costs $29 per thousand to run an ad in my videos, and I get $10 per thousand. Where does the other $19 go?
You can't combine those two stats like this. CPM is the cost to the advertiser per ad view. RPM is the payout to the creator per video view. But it's not the case that every video will result in exactly one ad view. Sometimes the viewer is blocking ads. Sometimes there's no ad in the inventory for that specific view event.
by reassess_blind on 2/16/25, 5:26 AM
Surely videos of very similar quality could be made with a fraction of that budget if the fat was trimmed and it was approached more bootstrap-y instead of a full production.
by shabgzer on 2/16/25, 4:34 AM
> If we roll with the average Adsense income, here’s the bottom line: $14k going out. $4k coming in. Net loss, month over month: TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. That’s a lot to sink into a channel that is barely moving book sales and not getting me a TV deal. Simply put, it’s completely unsustainable from a business perspective.
Why carry on doing that for so long?
by sieste on 2/16/25, 10:18 AM
by samspenc on 2/16/25, 4:47 AM
I thought the split was something like 55-45 for Youtube vs the creator. This sounds more like 66-33, is this typical for other creators / influencers as well?
by ageitgey on 2/16/25, 9:07 AM
It used to be that people made homemade videos with the hope of graduating to 'Real' TV'—think Andy Samberg & friends getting picked up by SNL or the guys from Big Brother magazine filming themselves on VHS and getting picked up as Jackass after a bidding war.
15 years later, and now Real TV is a hollow shell. The viewership and ad money evaporated. Outside of sports and news, cable TV is fully dead, showing Pawn Stars on a 24/7 loop. Live news has never had lower production values with the guests Zooming in from their spare rooms and the hosts just showing screenshots of tweets as news.
Check the viewership on your favorite cable TV channel. The numbers are comically low and far below even niche YouTubers: https://ustvdb.com/networks/
TV (and before it, music) used to be INCREDIBLY lucrative. TV shows used to get 10s of millions of viewers on a weekly basis. The ad money was incredible. Everyone had mansions and vacation mansions. Except for sports and news, that is all gone now.
This creator is coming from Bon Appetite and going solo. A monthly budget of $14k to produce 4 cooking shows IS comically low compared to the old BA world. That's $3500 to produce, film, edit, and post a full 30min+ Food Network-style cooking show. $3500 is a shoestring budget for any kind of professional production. It's pocket money.
The response here is that "my favorite youtuber straps a GoPro to their head or films with their iPhone - why should anyone spend more than that?". That take is economically correct. The absolute flood of content is making it unsustainable to produce anything more expensive than that unless you can appeal to a Mr. Beast-sized audience. But that goes for YouTube AND TV.
In the old days, everyone who wanted cooking content would watch Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay. But now there are hundreds of people around the world making cooking content in all shapes and sizes and genres, but the total audience is still roughly the same size. The pie is getting sliced smaller and smaller and the type of content that people want has evolved.
Unless you look at the numbers, it's hard to comprehend how much the media landscape has shifted in the past 15 years. All the subconscience assumptions people still hold are wrong. By viewership, Fox News is just a moderately large Youtube channel that happens to reach a demographic that actually votes and buys products from ads. Many, many Youtubers and podcasts reach a lot more people. Broadcast and cable TV still account for ~45% of total TV viewership, but the vast majority of people under the age of 35 now NEVER watch traditional TV and only use streaming services or social media. The audience for traditional TV is almost entirely 40+, and the entire business is obviously on borrowed time.
The author of this post got out there and tried something to see if it would work, which is commendable. It didn't work. But the problem wasn't so much that they spent too much money to make Youtube videos. Spending $35 per episode instead of $3500 wouldn't have achieved their goals. The problem is that using a Youtube channel to "get a TV show" is chasing a goal that just doesn't exist in 2025. There is no more TV show to get. The people making Youtube videos and the people making Food Network shows are both surviving on shoestring budgets and ever-dropping income. It's just as bad over there as it is over here.
by wiether on 2/16/25, 7:11 AM
I just want quick and clear instructions.
We were used to thousands words long cooking blogs where the actual recipe was buried in personal anecdotes/psychological therapy. 10+ minutes long cooking videos for a simple recipe are even worse.
Someone like @BakingHermann mastered the Shorts : all the instructions are here, few anecdotes, few tips, done. No multiple focus on their face or their appliance. Just the essential. Wunderbar!
The result is they don't need to spend $3500 for each video.
by zoklet-enjoyer on 2/16/25, 6:43 AM
by blitzar on 2/16/25, 8:25 AM
by throw8494499 on 2/16/25, 8:20 AM
There is no hairnet, dogs in kitchen, touching food with face ("most epic BTS ever" clip), tasting sause then putting used spoon back to boiling sause...