The Money
Ideally at some point you will have fans engaged enough to happily pay you for something they value. There is a tension between giving everything away for free (that means you just have hobby - fine) and charging for everything. The aim is to give enough value away for free but hold back on stuff that frankly only your fans will really value, and charge for that. Expect inevitable whining occasionally about having to pay. Ignore it.
Example
According to Social Blade, Sam will get between US$5.4K and US$86K from YouTube AdWord revenue per annum. Yes a big range there but that's what is in the public domain. Going back to the idea that the digital assets (videos in this case) are not time-sensitive, it is logical that a percentage of new subscribers will go back and binge watch a load of Sam's older videos, so there is a long tail effect going on here.
In Sam's case he has a few other revenue streams:
In Sam's case he has a few other revenue streams:
- Patreon (he currently has 1,263 regular monthly subscribers, with tiers from US$1 to US$10 - you can extrapolate from that)
- Zines (available to Patreons of a certain level)
- Live performances (given the gear he has, I'm not sure whether this breaks even but it's fun and probably brings on more Patreons and some merch sales)
- Merchandise (the usual like t-shirts etc)
- Physical limited edition stuff such as an outlandish device called the fart box!
- One-off donations via Squarespace
Other revenue streams
Sam has a good set of revenue streams but there are more options, but not all applicable to Sam.
- Affiliate marketing, such as with Amazon. Sam could actually do this with some of the more expensive elements in his project kits. This is of no extra cost to the buyer, Sam would just get a small cut. Obviously the bigger ticket the item, the better the cut.
- Sponsorship. This can work really well or be awful. And of course you need to find a sponsor who will actually want to pay you. The two aspects are:
- Is it appropriate and useful for your audience? So for Sam, an episode sponsored by Moog would make sense, but Uber? Probably not.
- How intrusive is the plug? A short opening and closing plug maybe OK, but a lengthy and dull intro will turn people off, and interrupting the flow to plug it again and again will be bad for your brand.
- Courses. Sam does a few tutorials but they are fast, often actually sped up, and would be difficult for a beginner to follow. On the other hand, all he's doing is filming himself do something, often with a few mistakes along the way included for laughs. There is the option of carefully and slowly filming a tutorial or even a series of tutorials and charging for this. You'd want to test the ground first to see if anyone actually cares!
- eBooks. Another option for Sam would be to write a guide of some sort, for example:
- how to test second hand analog synths before you buy them
- how do analog synths even work anyway
- Physical product. Over and above simple t-shirts, there are companies who will make physical products and ship them direct to your fans. In other words you don't make stuff and hope to sell it, instead the drop-shipping company does that for you and of course takes a cut. For example a photographer on Instagram could offer framed high resolution prints. Sam could offer limited edition builds of some of his gadgets.