• Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    783·
    16 days ago

    Most youtubers are businesses owned by corporate networks. The person on screen is just the talent pretending to be an organic channel.

  • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
    491·
    15 days ago

    Sometimes I get the impression that social media fame is continuing the narrative of the American dream worldwide: strangely enough, many people assume that it happens regularly that someone steps out of their parent’s bedroom, records a few videos, and overnight, without much effort, becomes a multimillionaire – just like that.

    This is the absolute exception and has hardly happened at all for a long time. Online, it’s long been like the real world economy: without the support of powerful players, it’s basically impossible for anyone to become successful. It’s a tough business with an endless number of competing content producers, from whom influential financiers can choose the content and the faces to go with it and pocket the lion’s share.

    And there is yet another misconception underlying the illusion of quick money: you only earn enough to live on once you have a certain reach – something very few people achieve. Most work hard for ridiculously low income, if they earn anything at all.

    Consumers, on the other hand, persist in the attitude that the internet has taught them over the last twenty years: they expect high-quality content on a daily basis without having to pay anything for that. They assume that the producers of this content earn good money from it, but in the vast majority of cases - and if there is any money made in the first place - this is not true at all, because it is not the creative people who earn big, but those who exploit them.

    Anyone who believes that content producers can finance themselves through voluntary donations is usually completely wrong — Wikipedia’s fundraising campaigns, in which only a tiny percentage of users contribute anything, are just one example of many, even though Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in many countries around the world.

      • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        15 days ago

        Exactly, it’s the American dream that has always been propagated to conceal the true circumstances and thus ensure that everything stays the same.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      41·
      15 days ago

      from whom influential financiers can choose the content and the faces to go with it and pocket the lion’s share.

      How? This kind of doesn’t make sense to me because it seems like some kind of talent manager wouldn’t have a lot to offer in terms of actually increasing someone’s chances of making it big on social media, if it’s a type of content that doesn’t require any special resources to produce and is suited to being made by one person.

      • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        15 days ago

        There are basically two approaches:

        • Social media agencies that manage company accounts on behalf of their clients and have their employees produce content for them.
        • Agencies that operate their own accounts, which are financed through product placement, e-commerce (mostly dropshipping), or affiliate marketing.

        Typically, these companies pursue both approaches simultaneously.

        What they offer the actual content producers, i.e., the (sometimes even pseudo-self-employed) employees, is the following:

        • A salary or at least project-based remuneration
        • A network of contacts to advertising customers and thus lucrative sources of revenue that are pretty much unattainable for individuals without significant reach (they have sales people to protect those contracts from the people that do the content of course - usually these people are called account managers or something tacky along those lines)
        • A network of contacts to other “influencers” in order to gain subscribers, etc. through strategic cooperation
        • Know-how on how to build up accounts
        • Professional equipment (cameras, dongles, drones, video editing applications and so on) as well as social media marketing tools for reporting, planning, and automation, which are not exactly cheap
        • In some cases, substantial advertising budgets for ads to promote new accounts (performance marketing) and, in the case of campaigns for external clients, “seals of approval” from meta and other Plattforms (meta, Google or TikTok “Business Partner” for example — these seals are exclusively issued to companies who spend a significant amount on ads on the respective platform)
        • Opportunities to collaborate with other employees of the company, which can also create network effects.

        There are certainly other advantages, but the key point is the contact with advertising customers, i.e., companies that want to engage in social media marketing. These contacts are only accessible to private individuals if they already have one or multiple successful accounts, which unfortunately only very few of those aspiring to a professional career in this field ever achieve.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          3·
          15 days ago

          but the key point is the contact with advertising customers, i.e., companies that want to engage in social media marketing. These contacts are only accessible to private individuals if they already have one or multiple successful accounts, which unfortunately only very few of those aspiring to a professional career in this field ever achieve.

          I get the impression that you also generally have to already have a successful account to be considered by agencies, which would defeat the point somewhat of it being a way to get over the initial hurdle. I watch vtubers on Twitch and from what they sometimes say about how sponsorships work, much of it is somewhat automated and gated mainly by account popularity metrics, which makes sense because why would advertisers want to pay a premium to another middleman if they didn’t have to? There was a vtuber agency that collapsed recently when it came out that they were insolvent and had been defrauding many people they worked with along with various other corruption and abuse, and given how similar scandals aren’t uncommon and the need for creators to be doing the work of building themselves up as a business regardless, makes it seem like a pretty bad deal to have an all inclusive sort of contract with agencies.

      • [object Object]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        16 days ago

        I was linking to it to show all sorts of things that can be manipulated, but now that I look back to it, it does look like I’m promoting it. Yeah, I’ll remove it.

  • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    15 days ago

    Currently watching a bunch of videos detailing the fall of PirateSoftware. Such a sad person.

      • real_squids@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        9·
        15 days ago

        Stopped reading after “if it’s promoted by YT it’s not worth watching”, that shit is based on your recently watched channels if your account settings aren’t all fucked up.
        If you turn off history - yeah, you’ll get default recommendations and those are cancer. Probably the only good reason to turn history on. Even then, it’s a bandaid on a horrible UI that gets worse every update.

        • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.orgEnglish
          5·
          15 days ago

          I use YT in the weirdest way possible. I’m not subscribed to anyone and my feed and recommendations do all the lifting. It works really well for my needs. I hardly ever see shit i’m absolutely not interested in, and i find new thimgs that i am interested in. But when it logged me out and i saw the default youtube recommendations… Holy shit that is some nightmare shit. It’s just absolute clickbait ass content for children or tiktok adults.