Sure the majority of streamers there are just on for fun with the possibility of someone slipping in a paypal donation here or there, but there are a good amount that treat it like a job.
The catch 22, though, is one can't treat YouTube or Twitch like a job unless they're
already making enough money from those platforms to make it their job.
Someone could go out and build a great PC, get a great camera, lighting, semi-professional mic, mixing board etc., maybe even build a streaming PC, too. Then they quit their job and decide to turn Twitch or YouTube into their job. And what happens? Unless something happens to make them an instant overnight success, which we all know is about a 1 in a billion chance, they quickly will burn through whatever money they have left and have to go get another normal job.
So until one is making enough from one or both of those platforms to turn it into their job, treating it like a job doesn't make it one, nor earn them enough to live off of. One can spend 40+ hours streaming or making videos per week, but if it's not making them any money, is it their job?
Both YouTube and Twitch have a discoverability problem, too. Essentially, the most popular people on those sites constantly get the views, because the sites are set up to ensure they get those views. Twitch puts the channels with the most viewers at the top, so new viewers gravitate there, and almost never scroll down. YouTube constantly puts their top channels in recommended videos side bars and on the home page, so they get more views. So even if someone tries making them their job, puts in the time and effort, the chance of that ever paying out is slim to none. Someone starting out at 0 views on a channel, no matter how much like a job they treat it, will most likely never be able to make any money from it. One could argue this is similar to MFC, where the top camscore models keep attracting viewers, while lower camscore and new models rarely see any growth.
On Twitch and Youtube it's the top less than 1% that can make them their livings. They got started early, got lucky in gaining popularity, and eventually were able to make these platforms their earnings source-- practically nobody was able to just jump in and turn them into their jobs. Both platforms are saturated with millions of content creators, now. Anyone trying to get into them as a main earning source at this point has a worse than snowball's chance in hell of being able to turn them into their income sources, no matter how much like a job they treat them; the platforms, themselves, actively work against them.
Uncle I assume your YT earnings you showed was from lifetime? I don't need a dossier about it but just asking because you cropped that out. I was only on YT making content for 2 months myself. I had about 1,000 subs and made way more than you have. I worked for it though. I treated it like a job and it was paying off. I think that's the difference. YT doesn't advertise itself as a job or work but it's up to the creators how they treat it. Just like twitch and MFC. Also I didn't see if you mentioned it or not in those 96 pages but it's not just $1 per 1,000 views. That money goes up and fast actually. Mine was over $10 per 1,000 views just from having those subs. My views ranged from 50 to over 3k per video. Of course I was just figuring out stuff there, but if I had stayed on I could have garnered more info and went for the more popular stuff down the road. Again not unlike what successful twitch and MFCers do. I'm just saying if you put in the work it won't take you 10 years to make the payout there lol.
Honestly I do think YTers and twitch players most often get on for the hope of making money. More are realistic that they may not but the majority know what can be done if they work at it. Of course there's some who just wanna go on for fun only but if that's the case they don't even bother monetizing. This isn't unlike camming. Most want to make money, most know they may not, some just wanna have fun. All of that is okay. If you want the money though you need to put in the work, time, and have a bit of luck. This is on any site to be successful.
It is lifetime, and it isn't cropped out. It says 2007-2017, but I didn't start ads on videos until late 2011. Again, ad rates pay different, and current CPM is pitiful after the Adpocalypse. A little over 1000 views and almost 3000 minutes of watch time in 28 days has seen me earn 37
cents. Considering I'm a small channel, with only 213 subs, getting that many views in a month is actually considered decent. My channel has over 96k video views, which is actually quite good considering how few subs I have. But besides just CPM, there are other things that go into it.
Ad blockers make Google and the uploader nothing. If people skip ads by clicking skip ad, Google makes its ad impression money, but the video maker makes none. The length of the ad makes it pay more or less-- the normal 15-30 second ads pay the least, while those 5+ minute ads pay more
if people watch them, which is rare. Who the ad is from determines CPM on the ad... so say Coke vs someone's ETSY shop; the Coke ad pays way more CPM than the ETSY shop ad. Dealing with ContentID claims hurts revenue, and until the recent change even if a ContentID claim was won by the video uploader, the person/entity claiming the video still got to keep any ad revenue made during the claim process. This, of course, led to tons of scamming of the ContentID system to make money. Video relevance is part of it, as videos lose their relevancy very quickly; most videos will make over 90% of any ad revenue in the first 7 days of it being uploaded. Google has been secretly demonetizing videos for a few years, and only recently came out in public about it. Etc.
So you making $10 per 1000 views is an anomaly, not the norm. You probably had very good luck on what ads were placed on your videos, few people using ad blockers, and people sat through the entirety of the ads. My highest ad revenue video has made just $12.04 in ad revenue on 16,945 views... so you can see that it isn't even making $1 per 1000 views. It's closer to 71 cents per 1000 views.
It ends up being way more complicated than just views and having ads on videos. YouTube Red is also a thing, but that is pitiful in payout because it is based solely on watch time, which benefits longer videos if the Red subs watch them for their entirety, but hurts shorter videos. Now, if they did it like Amazon with Twitch Prime (linking Amazon Prime to your Twitch account), where you see no ads, but the streamers gets the full ad impression payout (if they are partnered), it would be a lot better. But Google would lose a lot of money with that, since even non partnered Twitch channels have ads on them, but the streamers earn nothing from them, while Google doesn't force ads on every video on YouTube.
I'm just saying if you put in the work it won't take you 10 years to make the payout there lol.
And please don't try to make it sound like I haven't put work into my own stuff. Until you have done the hundreds of hours of recording footage, even longer editing them, plus the writing on the non-livestreamed videos, you don't know how much effort I've put into my videos, in addition to working over 40 hours a week at my job and the buying of equipment and editing software (I'm not using iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, thanks). There is a ton of luck involved in getting videos seen. Some of it is being able to consistently put videos out, yes; but not all of us are afforded that luxury.
And with my heart surgery on Tuesday, being able to make videos/livestream is going to have to be put on hiatus, just like it was after both heart attacks and congestive heart failure incidents over the past few years. Like I said, some of us aren't afforded the luxury of the time to be able to make our content.
) but I think the main difference is expectations.
After a while, I go back to the 1st girl room and it tells me she is online on MFC, I click on her. Viola the 1st girl is naked and riding a giant dildo, can you say NFSW.
Zero warning that I'm about to enter an adult website.
