Have you heard the latest news about the “devastated father who says his 9-year-old son spent $118k on YouTube ads?”
The story broke yesterday. The events apparently happened over the past month. The background:
1. Last year, the kid started a YouTube channel streaming himself playing Minecraft, called Mighty Mike Plays.
2. Ever since, Mighty Mike uploaded a bunch of videos, but he wasn’t getting any views. He complained to dad.
3. Dad had a bright idea, and guided his son through a small $20 ad campaign to get some YouTube views.
4. Dad used his company card to fund this (it’s hard to tell if the dad is a moron or a criminal, and the article I read doesn’t say).
5. A few days ago, dad got called into his boss’s office. “What is this series of charges on the company card, totaling $118k?”
6. Turns out the Mighty Mike had kept running ads on YouTube, using dad’s company card, to the tune of $118k.
7. Two days ago, Mighty Mike posted on YouTube, “I’m in big trouble.”
8. Yesterday, Mike’s dad posted a video on the Mighty Mike Plays channel, explaining how it all went down. He also says it is yet not sure if he will be able to will keep his job or if he will have to repay the money. (Like I said, it’s not clear if he’s a moron or a criminal.)
Assuming that this isn’t just all made up by AI or by clickfarming scammers in some far-off land, it’s a wild story.
The best part is that I went to check the Mighty Mike Plays channel.
It currently stands at 39k subs, meaning that Mike apparently paid about $3 per YouTube subscriber.
I also checked the channel’s videos. The the top few videos are in the 200k views range, and the rest steeply drop off.
Adding it all up, I figure that Mighty Mike’s Minecraft streams didn’t get more than 1M views in total.
I’m not sure if Mike could monetize his channel (I’m guessing not, since he’s a minor, but I don’t know YouTube).
If he could, then according to my AI monkey’s best estimates, his 1M YouTube views, resulting from his $118k ad spend, would have netted him between $2k and $5k.
My takeaway for you is simply, if you think a bigger audience will solve all your problems, it won’t.
That’s not to say that you don’t need a certain size of audience to make a certain amount of money.
But you also need ways to monetize that audience.
Earlier today, I prepared a list of 10 ways to better monetize an email list of 3k+ subscribers. This list is based on things I’ve personally done to monetize my list, and the work I’ve done with consulting clients who I’ve helped to make more money from their email list.
This list won’t be useful to you if you don’t have a list of at least 3k subscribers. If you do, and if you’d like the list, hit reply and I’ll get it to you.