What is the state of Youtubers and Influencers in 2023?

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I remember Youtubers got a paycut in 2020.
They adapted by going to private paid content, Patreon, selling merch, and books, etc
Seems like the creator market got flooded over the last 3 years.
What is the state of Youtubers and Influencers in 2023?
 
Youtube is alive and well. Pat Flynn (of Smart Passive Income fame) started a friggin Pokemon trading card channel recently (and is clearing $50k a month on it right now:
That's one of ten zillion examples. It's like anything else. If you aren't a dummy you can step into the game leagues beyond everyone else technically speaking, and then if you can get the attention and keep it, it's money in the bank.

They're clamping down on low-effort, programmatically created (AI created) videos in terms of monetization, thanks to the whole "cash cow / faceless automation" junk going on. No text-to-speech crap over a slideshow or over all stock footage. Even if you read your script with a human voice they're still denying some people monetization. So if you get into YouTube plan to do it right with unique content or commentary.
 
YouTube is so much fun, genuinely the first time I've had fun doing IM stuff in years. Highly recommend. Their discoverability is great, and you're rewarded in the algo for making content that people actually want to watch.

Creativity plays a bigger role than paint-by-numbers content sites. Launching channel #2 any day now, it's going to be tied in with a content site and more of an organic search play than my first channel which was pure entertainment virality.

You can do numbers on a small channel, only a tiny % of views come from actual subscribers (in my experience). Like, 100k views on a video on a channel with <1k subs. Wild discoverability.
 
YouTube is so much fun, genuinely the first time I've had fun doing IM stuff in years
What sort of content are you doing?

Youtube is alive and well. Pat Flynn (of Smart Passive Income fame) started a friggin Pokemon trading card channel recently (and is clearing $50k a month on it right now:
Man that guy is a beast! Is Smart Passive Income still killing it?
 
YouTube is doing just fine, especially when it comes to creators who really create something people want to watch. Yes, it's flooded with AI-crap-videos, but these are going nowhere. There are also some niches that are massively over-saturated, like fitness vlogs (but you can still do these with a twist and be successful).

If your videos get real views from real people, you will do just fine. And there are tons of monetization alternatives, not just from views.
 
I noticed a flood of new AI tools for video editing and cutting.
So there is only a matter of time before everyone is going to produce videos for youtube.
I think most people are daunted by the task of editing videos for hours, but there is no need now with AI tools.
 
Fair play to Pat Flyn but I bust out laughing when I looked at that channel. There is just something hiliarious about an old dude pretending to be a young youtube guy with all the edits and music etc.

I think the subject is so young and he looks a lot older than I remember it was comedy.jpg
 
I'm spending less on influencers in 2023. I think the wave of paying for promotions with influencers hasn't turned out like many had hoped. They charge too much, are too disingenuine, its too difficult to reach them and work a deal, and too many accounts are built on doing stupid shit like dances and pranks. That to me = no authority over anything and an audience that isn't very loyal. I'm sticking with ads unless a very rare opportunity arises.

My BEST YouTube influencer came from a real customer who happend to have a big YT account and did the promo for free :smile: - we asked if we could reuse her content for ads on FB/TT and she agreed. Used that content for like 1.5 years and represented some of the most humorous/genuine takes on our brand we've ever had.
 
For those of you making videos, are you editing the videos yourself or paying a video editor? I started making 60 second videos about a month ago and even those take time to make. I'm starting to make longer videos but also looking at upwork on how much it will be per video to outsource it while I continue to get better at adobe premier pro.
 
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