YouTube’s Nichefluencers
With Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, striking an up to $100-million reality TV deal with Amazon, it’s easy to conclude a few things about online video that aren’t necessarily true. One, YouTube is mainly a springboard to bigger things; two, you have to make it big on YouTube to get that spring. (Donaldson has 246 million subscribers.) Certainly some talented artists have graduated from YouTube to larger stardom—ranging from Justin Bieber to the creators of one of my favorite NYC comedies, “Broad City.”
But as contributor Tom Samiljan reports, YouTube is actually becoming a more friendly place for creators with smaller followings—say 180,000 or even 30,000—to make a very good living. (And even smaller audiences can help support middle-class lifestyles.) Google’s video site still has by far the best ad revenue platform: People post to TikTok or Instagram mainly to drive viewers to their YouTube channel. But the real money is in merch—anything from selling cars to offering poker lessons.?
More important than the total number of viewers is their dedication to the content and the presenter. The long tail of the internet—reaching enough people to build a substantial audience even for niche topics—certainly applies on YouTube. And with new investors, tech, and monetization tools targeting smaller creators, the times have never been better to make it kind of big. “The new trend is returning to quality and authenticity rather than virality,” says Jim Louderback, who writes the weekly newsletter “Inside the Creator Economy.”?
People and companies that do go big may require a certain set of principles, Samiljan reports in a second article for Worth's spring issue. In it, he explores the theories of MIT professor Andrew McAfee’s recent book, The Geek Way. McAfee attempts to identify the four key traits or “norms” of successful tech geeks. One of these, “openness,” is where things often go awry, as he recounts how arrogance can send geek CEOs and their companies off the rails. Some, like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have enough resources to survive disasters like its $46.6 billion loss on the “metaverse.” But other companies, like Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s $1.75 billion mobile streaming platform Quibi, quickly tanked.?
In any case, leaders who invite criticism, admit to mistakes, and learn from them are more likely to succeed, according to McAfee. Just as with YouTube, being genuine and connecting with your constituency wins the day.
Genuine leadership and creativity will be required to tackle the biggest tech and business challenge of the foreseeable future—climate change. With energy demand soaring, in part due to the demands of running giant AI models, the world has to redouble efforts to meet the challenge. Techonomy will probe these challenges and hear from top leaders in less than two weeks at the Climate West 2024 conference on April 3 in Silicon Valley. Please join us.
And on May 9, Worth hosts it Groundbreaking Women Summit in New York City to honor women leaders in climate, tech, and many other fields. Registration is open.
—Seán Captain, executive editor
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Creators no longer need millions of subscribers to make a living. Even smaller audiences can sustain people with subject expertise and a head for business.
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