I don’t think it’s the YouTube economy so much as it is the creative economy. If you produce creative content, you are at the mercy of the whims of your audience. Even in profitable or well-funded businesses, there’s a constant existential threat associated with the whims of the audience changing.
Yup. Generally speaking, people value content like this as pretty much having, well, no value at all. They don't want to pay for it, and they'll go out of there way to make sure they pay as little as possible for it.
In fact, I would even go further and suggest that many people feel that all jobs, except for whatever job/industry they are in, as having little to no value and should be done for nothing.
> Yup. Generally speaking, people value content like this as pretty much having, well, no value at all. They don't want to pay for it, and they'll go out of there way to make sure they pay as little as possible for it.
A lot of the blame goes to the content creators, though.
They were the ones who set the expectations for "free content" by giving their creation away for "free". And in that context, making $5k a month is pretty good. If I have a garage sale, put $0 price tags on everything, and end up with $5k afterwards, then that's amazing.
> In fact, I would even go further and suggest that many people feel that all jobs, except for whatever job/industry they are in, as having little to no value and should be done for nothing.
I suspect that my (passive) valuation of entertainment, given the culture that I grew up in, partly stems from growing up with ad subsidized radio. It feels like music is almost a public service, but for buying a receiver, not choosing the playlist, and switching stations when the ads come on. I suspect the availability of a public library inclulcated similar expectations in me. Eventually, I paid for movies and songs. But, youtube and other internet content hosts fit most in that mode whereby I can eat from the buffet to my limit, provided I bat away the promotional posters as I sit down.
This rings true even for clearly necessary fields - I've had clients balk at pricing for a complete revamp of their network. Do you think I googled 'How to setup Company Network Safely' and went to work? Years of knowledge etc; that a lot of these guys don't care to understand
Most people chose to be ignorant in this manner. They'd rather spend as little as possible and denounce your skill rather than understand why xyz costs as much as it does.
Yup. Generally speaking, people value content like this as pretty much having, well, no value at all. They don't want to pay for it, and they'll go out of there way to make sure they pay as little as possible for it.
In fact, I would even go further and suggest that many people feel that all jobs, except for whatever job/industry they are in, as having little to no value and should be done for nothing.