The nature of their content varies wildly, but all of them attract followers in droves – and some of them make a decent income too. Dylan Jones meets the Kiwis behind four successful YouTube channels.
For decades our celebrity icons were made on the big screen and the small screen. Now, the most famous entertainers in the world tend to make their names on the very smallest screen, the smartphone, a portal to an online space where stars are born. Coming up to its 20th birthday next February, YouTube is well established as a platform that enables anyone to share their videos with the world, attracting views, subscribers, and sometimes revenue But is it really a viable way to earn a crust?
With over 2.5 billion monthly active users and NZD$50 billion in ad revenue last year, YouTube is certainly making money – and some of that is shared with the people who host the 114 million active channels on the site. Content creators receive revenue for every viewer who watches the ads (or, ad views) at the start of their videos. But it's far from easy money. It’s estimated a content creator could get up to NZ$6000 for a million views, but this isn’t guaranteed. Several factors influence payment, such as viewers using ad blockers or skipping ads partway through. Location also affects ad view revenue, with ads viewed US and Australia yielding the most valuable viewers.
Some content creators also get paid by companies to feature their products in their videos. Content creators can give fans access to additional content through paid monthly memberships either on YouTube or on third-party sites like Patreon or Ko-fi. When it pays, it really pays. Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) reportedly makes US$700 million per year. But what's it like for the rest?
From magazine queen to pro YouTuber
The Style Insider (aka Leonie Barlow)
Started in: 2012
Theme: Fashion and beauty
Subscribers: 263,000
Most popular video: How to colour your hair at home, 1.2 million views
After 20 years in the media industry editing some of New Zealand's biggest women’s magazines (New Idea, SHE, Fashion Quarterly, Cleo, Australian Woman's Weekly) Leonie Barlow made the leap to become a fashion YouTuber in 2012.
“I remember saying to my boys, who were little at the time, that I wanted to get a silver play button award from YouTube,” says Barlow, 57.
“They were like ‘how embarrassing, that’s never going to happen’, because that’s for 100,000 subscribers.”
Barlow turned their doubt into the incentive she needed to give it a go.
Initially, she juggled YouTube content with freelance PR work to pay the bills, all while raising two boys as a single mother.
One of Barlow’s early videos that gained traction was about a fashion trend at the time, with the majority of viewers coming from the US. “I thought, I’ll just double down and do more of the same and see how that pans out,” she says.
It panned out quite well. Today, across all of her different social media platforms, Barlow doesn't say specifically how much she makes per year, but says it's twice the amount she made as a magazine editor (which would suggest an annual income in the vicinity of NZ$200,000.)
“What gave me a kind of unique factor was the fact I had a strange accent," says Barlow who still bears the vowel sounds of Australia where she spent the first half of her life. "And I was significantly older than the other faces on YouTube that were talking fashion and beauty." But it’s more than just being unique that has got her to where she is today. Barlow puts it down to hard graft, following fashion trends and being a savvy businesswoman.
“From the get-go it was about how I could continue to make money from this or add an extra revenue stream,” she says.
Most of the videos on The Style Insider are sponsored by the brands featured in them, and every product that a viewer buys from the description below the video generates a small commission for Barlow.
She also creates content beyond videos, like a digital 50-page summer style guide for NZD$8. This year it sold over 2,000 copies, and also included product links that would bring in commissions.
The big thing for Barlow as a YouTuber isn’t the money, though. It’s the flexibility she has to spend time with family. “I can still work doing YouTube wherever I am. The last two years my son’s been in the US, I’ve been able to spend five months with him,” she says.
And, with over 200,000 subscribers, she’s well and truly earned that silver play button award her sons didn’t think she’d get.
Twenty-five million views and counting
Viva La Dirt League
Started in: 2011
Theme: Comedy skits about gaming and nerd culture
Subscribers: 6.66 million
Most popular video: The power of stims in PUBG, 25 million views
It took two filmmakers and an actor a couple of attempts at comedic video game content before their channel gained momentum.
“Back in the early days [we were] making Starcraft [computer game] parody music videos for sh**s and giggles, that kind of petered out and just fell apart,” says Rowan Bettjeman, the trained actor of the trio that makes up Viva La Dirt League.
Then in 2014 they started making a sketch series that’s still going today, following the antics of employees working in an electronics store.
A couple of years later, the men decided to jump into creating YouTube content full-time.
“It was a dangerous call because we weren’t making enough money to pay our rent. But we saw the upward trends of the views and the subscribers, and thought surely if we commit to it, then those graphs will just accelerate. Luckily, they did,” says Alan Morrison.
Today, the channel more than pays their rent. It also pays the wages of 15 full-time staff including producers, editors and an art and wardrobe department.
“It’s changed a little bit, hasn’t it? We’re a production company now,” says Bettjeman.
This interview took place in a replica medieval pub, one of three custom-built sets Viva has at their multimillion dollar production studio in Henderson, Auckland. $2.5 million of the purchase and setup costs came from their fans in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2022.
“We still pinch ourselves. At the end of a day I just wander around here with a cup of tea thinking, what is this? How is this ours? It’s bizarre,” says Morrison.
Viva now makes videos that include topics such as video game logic, tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons, and their own original storylines that branch out from gaming into dodgy property managers and ADHD.
“At this point we’ve got dozens and dozens of scripts just waiting to be filmed. The longer we’re doing this, the more the ideas just keep coming,” says Morrison.
“We have a website now, where our hardcore fans can come over and support us. They get exclusive content, early access content. That’s become our new primary revenue stream.”
They say their own website provides a more reliable income because it doesn’t depend on what Bettjeman calls the “ever shifting landscape” of YouTube. “The algorithm could go, hey you get half the views now, and your revenue is halved,” he says.
Despite this, YouTube remains their biggest platform, providing some income as well as a space for new fans to find them.
“Once we get a billion subscribers I’ll finally be happy,” Bettjeman says with a big laugh, before becoming quite serious. “It’s about gratitude. Realising that you’re never going to get to that next milestone and then be happy. You’ve got to be content and find happiness now. We’ve got so much to be grateful for.”
'I can't stop coming up with ideas'
Tibees (aka Toby Hendy)
Started in: 2006
Theme: physics, maths, astronomy and science
Subscribers: 1.23 million
Most popular video: This is what an astrophysics exam looks like at MIT, 5.2 million views
As her love for maths and science has grown since her teen years, so has Toby Hendy’s YouTube following. With videos ranging from “Square roots explained Bob Ross style” to “Neural networks and chill,” the 29-year-old turns the topics she loves into engaging 15-minute explainers.
“I’m showing off things that aren’t easy to access or understand, or that you wouldn’t ordinarily come across in your day-to-day life, but that might inspire you to pursue science or be more interested in science.”
Raised in the Bay of Plenty, Hendy completed her Bachelor of Science at the University of Canterbury. She began a PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra, but dropped out in 2018 to focus on her rapidly growing YouTube channel.
“It became a big enough hobby to actually put some serious energy into, and actually became my full-time job,” says Hendy.
Hendy has also collaborated with other content creators, including competing on a travel game show called Jet Lag.
“On my own channel I can’t veer too far from talking about physics and maths. But when I’ve done collaborations like Jet Lag… I can show off different sides of me,” she says.
So how much money does she make as a full-time YouTuber? Hendy doesn’t give a number, but says that it’s not for those that want the security of a consistent paycheck.
Because payments from YouTube are based on the number of ad views, and some videos will be more popular than others, it’s hard to predict how much Hendy might make each month. “I probably make less than you’d expect, given my subscriber count. What matters more than subscribers is getting views on your recent videos, because that’s where the advertising dollars are."
Beyond ad revenue, the science YouTuber also has a Patreon account, where fans pay a subscription to receive extra content. For $10 a month, 44 top tier fans are included in the credits at the end of her videos, which is currently bringing in an extra $440 monthly.
Hendy is also occasionally sponsored by companies. This means she releases a video like normal and is paid for promoting the company at the end of it. Her deep dive into the life of 19th century astronomist Maria Mitchell finishes with a plug for an educational website, with Tibees fans receiving 20% off access to it.
“In terms of sponsors, I’ve been quite lucky to be approached by a lot of brands that aligned with the message of my channel, so they’ll be educational brands, making products to do with learning and self-improvement,” says Hendy. “I’m hoping to diversify my income a bit more by the end of year with self-publishing some of my own books. I’ve got a co-authored science fiction novel that’s being edited, and then one non-fiction book about the maths of the fourth dimension.”
What does the future look like for Hendy and her channel? “The [YouTube] landscape might look different… but I do hope that I’m still making content because of one simple reason. I don’t think I can stop coming up with ideas... I don’t know what I’d do with those ideas if they didn’t get turned into YouTube videos.”
Mining subcultures for stories
The Department of Information (aka Louis Macalister, Noah Ferguson-Dudding and Gryffin Cook)
Started in: 2021
Theme: Guerilla documentaries about subcultures
Subscribers: 57,500
Most popular video: JPEGMAFIA interviews strangers, 674,000 views
While the Department of Information doesn’t officially have millions of followers, Louis Macalister, Noah Ferguson-Dudding, both 22, and Gryffin Cook, 23, are seeing the views on their videos increase exponentially.
Cook is a cousin of Ferguson-Dudding, who met Macalister while at Auckland University. They were involved with a student radio station and wanted to introduce video content to their show, but their producers said no.
“We were like, we should just do it ourselves, so we went and bought some cameras and started doing it,” says Ferguson-Dudding.
Their first documentary was a visit to one of the biggest anti-COVID mandate protests at the Auckland Domain in December, 2021.
“We’re just trying to tell interesting stories from subcultures and niches,” says Cook.
“They’re often people or communities that aren’t usually represented authentically, so the whole ethos is to have a conversation with them. They’re not that different, everyone’s pretty human.”
Some of those subcultures include Otago university students, graffiti gangs, and dance parties in the Australian outback.
A number of their documentaries have over four times as many views as they have subscribers - a sign that their content is starting to go viral. In other words, they produce videos that the YouTube algorithm predicts will be popular, so it recommends them to more people beyond only channel subscribers.
What’s their secret to tapping into the YouTube algorithm? Macalister puts it down to being intentionally awkward to connect with their audience.
“We play up the ‘fish out of water’ so someone watching who hasn’t been in that community or experienced that kind of event can put themselves onto us,” he says.
The channel doesn’t make a lot of money for them, mainly because most of the content isn’t eligible to be monetised. Some of the videos contain copyrighted music, which means the artist behind the song gets the royalties instead.
On top of that, some documentaries like “New Zealand’s Biggest Illegal Skid Meet” don’t fit YouTube’s monetisation policies around unsafe and illegal activities being shown.
“We make, like, $1000 every couple of months,” says Macalister.
“People pay a couple of dollars a month on Patreon, which basically covers our editing software licence and petrol to drive to somewhere like Hamilton,” says Cook.
“It covers itself, but we haven’t made any money out of it,” says Ferguson-Dudding.
The trio is now working across the world, with Macalister doing joinery in Wellington, Ferguson-Dudding working at a London pub, and Cook setting up an artist residence in Ireland. This has resulted in some international deep dives, including a look at druidic rituals at Stonehenge.
Ferguson-Dudding says the plan is to keep creating content that resonates with their growing community.
“If we keep making good stuff, hopefully more people will support us on Patreon, or we’ll try to sell some more T-shirts or something.”
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