How Much Money Do They Make on YouTube: Exposed
Renetto. Paul Robinette. Remember him? He makes about $55 a day from YouTube, and I once stalked him and shaved my head to assume his persona. He’s one of the guys behind one of the most interesting video website stats and mobile applications you’re bound to love and forget. It’s called MyU2B. See– I had to look at the website just to get that stupid name right.
The good news? If you’re an OCD creator or media buyer, than this is (and you can quote the guy who wrote the book on YouTube) “the crack cocaine of video statistics.” The bad news? The name is so damned forgettable I want to punch Paul Robinett in his branding boob. Half the reason I’m writing this post is so I can find his website searching the many alternative names my brain has given MyU2B: u2be, myu2be, ub40, u2b4, my2be u2be u2bme, and finally “renetto, youtube, stats, website, with, stupid, name.”
MyU2B is my indispensable iPhone YouTube viewing app because it’s incredibly easy to sort by my favorite creator’s (people, channels, accounts, profiles) most recent videos. This is a common but impossible task via the caveman-like primitive search functions on YouTube’s own mobile app, and I call that a “deal breaker” or “functional obsolescence” for any regular viewer. MyU2B tells me exactly how many videos my favorite person or channel has posted since I last checked them. It solved a problem most don’t yet know we have.
The app (free and $1.99) also allows me to “super subscribe” to select people (although I haven’t figured out how to delete people like the incorrect jaaaaaa). There are about 2-3 dozen people I don’t want to ever miss, and for that I prefer this app to using YouTube on a computer. On YouTube I’ve “oversubscribed” like many people, so I miss some fresh videos by my favorite peeps. It really sucks to not be current on some of my favorite creators or friends.
The MyU2B stats site, although new and somewhat buggy, is entirely different (yet shares the horrible name). It gives you some pretty decent estimates of how much money each channel/person makes on could make (per comments below) on YouTube, and even sorts estimated revenue by individual video. That’s badass, even if it’s assuming CPMs (revenue per view) that are impossibly inconsistent and volatile. It’s a cool tool just to track who’s getting views and comments… instead of the somewhat archaic method of tracking subscribers… like on VidStatsx. Vidstatsx is an equally crappy named but remarkably useful website, though the latter is a bit too focused on subscriptions (which is not nearly driver of daily views it once was). And tip from Zipster08, who I never miss (despite the mocked screen shot): allow MyU2B to load completely before searching for someone. (Zipster checks hourly). MyU2B doesn’t yet allow you to bookmark or link to a specific search string, but it does index more than 11,000 individual channels.
See below for an example… are they the potential estimates accurate? I don’t know. YouTube doesn’t give me reporting this precise, but I know for a fact that CPMs by individual videos for the same creator can vary from pennies to dollars — by individual video.
Since we YouTube Partners are all contractually obliged to conceal our revenue, it’s hard to know if it’s over or understating revenue/earnings. But feel free to comment (anonymously) if you want to share feedback on its precision! I’m glad it’s not accurate, because I don’t want people thinking about the money I earn from YouTube (it’s equally embarrassing whether it’s high, low or accurate).
Finally, let’s help these useful resources with their branding. Anything, including the word “pizzle,” would be better.
I did a video review of this website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jykq7UplBAE
I will go and add this review to my video description. Currently Renetto’s site overestimates my daily earnings by 30 percent. However it is kind of fun to know that I am earning more than ArchieWhambulance who once claimed to earn thousands of dollars a month. Now I know it is bullwinkle.
It doesn’t combine accounts.
It’s about 25% off for me.
Um HappyCabbie and Anon I think you both have misread or misunderstood the potential earnings of MyU2B stats. Renetto is not trying to report how much your videos earned he is instead reporting the potential earnings capabilities your videos had. He has no way to find out how many folks have clicked on to the ads in your videos or to tell how many times your monetized videos actually were shown with any of the three forms of advertising or the the payrate of those ads were.
In reality. Paul is not overestimating but instead your videos are under-performing.
1st Rule of Fight Club is ???? 2nd Rule of Fight Club is ????
CrappyCartoons, it’s an underestimate for me…
The subscription tool sounds useful though.
who’s Renetto?
Anon thanks for helping confirm my hunch that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it swim.
I knew as soon as renetto put that out there that there would be folks like you who wouldn’t be able to understand even if it were explained to the them.
I’d be curious to know what sort of assumptions it makes. My (perhaps flawed) understanding of the Google marketplace is that people bid for advertising opportunities…
It underestimates mine by less than it did while he was testing it. During the testing phase it was off by 50%.
I can’t be bothered to calculate though. It’s closer! Also his app has most certainly replaced the “real” one. Renetto is good.
I Branded Renetto “King Of Youtube” With Good Reason!
now if only Google/Youtube would address the cancer Spreading At Youtube that is claiming both Adsense accounts and Partnerships Alike as haters click on a Partners Ad”s over and over again here is a video of me with Renetto talking about MyU2B Stats even before it officially was released
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82h2NTbRMg0
Thanks for the clarification. I’ll update the post per the potential-earnings qualifier.
@Jan Remember that guy that used to edit his videos down to 30 or 40 minutes a pop? One in the same.
Cool! I’m number 3909. Jumpin’ Jebus, Nalts, look at your potential earnings! I could retire to a tropical island and live happily ever after on that. You couldn’t, but I could. Now this is the kind of stuff I hope I’ll find on your blog when I come here. Thanks.
P.S. Your blog, this blog, is the ONLY blog I ever visit more than once or twice.
I branded Casey Nunez “Insane Nutcase of YouTube” a long time ago and, well, everyone agrees! Now if only YouTube would get smart and ban his IP.
Didn’t he have a restaurant? Or maybe a Vloggerheading site?!? Or something like that>?<
Most people I know don’t want what they make out in public even if it’s real or fake. Renetto just pissed off a lot of people in the community. Alas, it really doesn’t matter for me I suppose. 🙂
My own site also includes earning estimates but gives a range using an estimated high and low cpm rate. Check it out if you haven’t seen it before as its a mix of vidstatsx and myu2b and currently tracks more people then both sites do 🙂
http://SocialBlade.com/youtube
Also I’ve said it on this board before but I’ll say it again, unless you guys have some different contract then I do, adsense terms of service do NOT prevent you from disclosing how much you make, they just prevent you from disclosing anything except the gross amounts.
See the TOS for the full paragraph 7 but here’s an excerpt: “You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program”
Oh god, I bought this app and I want my money back and the chance to punch Renetto in the face.
The basic idea is good, but I found it to be buggy and slow. It handles subscriptions better than the built-in YouTube app, but it’s design for the video and channel pages are awful.
I couldn’t even upgrade the stupid thing (and it’s not much use without the upgrade) until I rebooted my iPod. Then when I went to organize the channels I want to see it was horribly laggy and unresponsive. I finally managed to fight through that to whittle down the list of channels I want to follow. I accidentally deleted quite a few that I actually wanted due to the unresponsiveness, so I log in to YouTube on my computer to see what I’m subscribed to that I accidentally deleted on my iPod. Turns out removing the icon in the app unsubscribes you from that channel without any sort of warning! (I did have YouTube sync on, but who’d have though it would do that?) So now I’ve lost probably 50+ channels that I used to subscribe to.
As Kevin mentioned, the name is terrible, the icon is even more forgettable, the app is quite buggy and even when it is working properly, the design and navigation are mediocre at best, and it doesn’t really have any features that don’t already exist in the standard YouTube app (subscriptions and comments are marginally better but overall not worth the headache of dealing with the MyU2B).
Thank goodness I don’t have an iPod!!
@18
Cool!
thaAMAZINGcool has made a TRIUMPHANT RETURN !!!