Interesting philosophy for why selling the LC250

[ryanjl]

My question is and always has been, how do any You Tubers make enough money reviewing anything to cover the light bill?

I understand there are a few guys and gals who have been in the You Tube game since its inception and have millions of viewers/subscribers/etc. and get good enough exposure for companies to pay for advertising as long as they keep pulling viewers.

However, how much income can you net net net even if you have say 1M subscribers or so? Even running a "channel" has overhead as a one or two man show. Additionally, you have to prepare content, write, edit, etc., etc.
And to top it off, you have no benefits or security. And it seems like all these You Tubers have more kids than intelligence.

And this is before you understand that everyone that can't get a decent paying job / career has a "channel" or podcast or the like. So it is competitive as can be. Which drives down the pay related to advertising dollars.

So, unless they are independently wealthy (which I a tiny percentage could have a couple of bucks), how does it cash flow? And once again, having a "channel" or podcast is about as reliable a Land Rover with no benefits and no long term consistency.....

1M subscribers and a good, healthy interaction rate probably does decent. Getting in the neighborhood of 500k to 1m who watch the full length of each video probably make decent change.

Where the bigger money is made is on sponsorship deals - the adds that the youtubers themselves do. Or the videos that are entirely sponsored by a company. (I'm thinking of the Cartrek videos that Hoovie's Garage, Tavarish, and VIN Wiki did).

Also consider that they are probably able to do a tax write-off on almost anything they do associated with their channel. Car youtubers can write off vehicle purchases, mechanics' bills, and depreciation if a vehicle happens to lose value when they sell it. They can also write off their garage if they feature it in a lot of youtube videos. Hoovie's Garage has probably been able to do tax writeoffs on a lot of his new garage, for example.

But for most people in the 20k to 50k subscriber range, it probably does not pay much. A lot of those creators have burnt out in the last few years and have either barely been posting or have stopped posting altogether.

 

[DeepDive]

Found the time to go back and watch the whole thing, which of course, shouldn't be done because it just gets the guy another click, but it's interesting to see how some of these folks make a living. Might be some of the dumbest analysis I've seen. It's certainly OK to not like certain features or even not like the whole vehicle. Really don't think these things will be for everyone, although I do love mine so far. But this concept of "it's so capable at everything that it's boring" is pretty funny. Would you prefer that it suck as an everyday vehicle, or suck as an off roader? It's as if he couldn't find anything to say but said it anyway. When the guy makes it clear that he's doing the video because Toyota sells a ton of cars and people tend to watch Toyota content, that really tells you all you need to know.

Having said that, he does have a nice truck that someone should take off his hands asap!

 

[LCOceans]

To better answer some of these questions about how YouTubers are making money - watch this video.
I find interesting. At roughly 5:20 in he details his income from YouTube. By the way this is all new to me so he could be full of sh$% but I wouldn't know. He seems OK. A likable and reasonable persona. I like his reviews etc. TRD Jon

 

[Esquire]

To better answer some of these questions about how YouTubers are making money - watch this video.
I find interesting. At roughly 5:20 in he details his income from YouTube. By the way this is all new to me so he could be full of sh$% but I wouldn't know. He seems OK. A likable and reasonable persona. I like his reviews etc. TRD Jon

Thanks for the link, LCOceans.

It's definitely not a reliable income source at all. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul every month. You are never making any money if you are basing your "profits" on covering loans on depreciating "assets."

He's talking about covering loan payments and considering this a money maker. This is not a money maker, this is a spiff to help offset the cost of owning something. You're just earning "income" to try to get to zero in the end.

If you were to buy a $250k rental property and it churned out gross $4k per month, it would be a solid return. In fact, it wouldn't gross this. The rule of 1% for rental properties is pretty close as this covers your monthly nut. And, theoretically and historically, real estate increases over time. So if you have to take a loan on a property, you can theoretically sell it down the road and get your money back (or close) or make a few bucks (the COVID real estate market won't likely happen again).

You are losing your shirt every month on a car with depreciating and paying interest. You cannot stay ahead of that fixed cost.

Vehicles obviously depreciate heavily and in order to generate income, you need to continue spending money on a new product or other expenditures to make the "channel" interesting.

 

[Area 51]

I was only joking about sexist thing earlier, but man your response actually make you a self incriminating one.

Several of my European friends have similar theories about why American off-roader often equipped with unnecessarily oversized tires and how it compensates the fantasy to have certain body components. I guess they are not wrong after all.

The euro crew is not concerned about staying on top of soft fields. They know nothing about attack angles on boulders and rocks. What they consider off road vs places like Rubicon Trail are very very different.

 

[Area 51]

Forget the selling to get something else scenario. Most liley as these things become more prevalent and known for the SMMs they seem to cater to, trading them in on the next big thing will be a better way to go.