As a tech channel owner, I have to spend a significant amount of money to keep running the channel. It's not like every product I get a review for just magically appears in my hands or something like that. I actually have to buy a lot of stuff and, for example, last year I purchased the Canon G4 H that costed about one lakh seventy thousand. Just this year, I upgraded to the newer microphones and stuff like that. So, there is a lot of investment that we continuously do to keep improving the production quality and stuff.

But when the revenues and stuff just don't match up, it becomes sort of difficult. I still love making these videos, but I just wanted to highlight the facts that if you think you can scale up a business by just doing YouTube stuff like this individually, then it is sort of uh difficult. I would say yes, I'm able to manage because I'm doing everything alone, but let's say if I hire two, three people to assist me, then I don't think so. It is financially viable as of now.

I actually have some ideas on how to get out of this whirlpool daily. Some people have suggested that we can do donations like a Patreon campaign in the US. We have a site called Patreon where many YouTubers are part of that. Subscribers like you who really appreciate the content that we produce can pay a small fee, it's a voluntary fee, I would say like two dollar five dollar or whatever. So, that's one thing that can be done.

Another option is to post our videos on another video platform called Vessel. Vessel is not free to view videos on vessel; users have to actually pay a small fee, I don't know what's the fee about two dollar three dollar per month or something like that. What I can do is post my new videos on vessel and only after let's say uh 12 hours or 24 hours they are visible on YouTube.

However, I'm not sure if this will simply work in India. Another thing we can do is sponsorships and Brands but again that's a very iffy solution. Brands try to dictate a lot of things; I've tried working with some brands, trust me guys, I have rejected 90% of the brands because some of the stuff they ask you to do is simply ridiculous. So, I'm very selective about the brands I work with.

I did some branding stuff once or twice earlier, and now currently, I'm actually testing with a live Q&A, which has a small brand sponsor. But again that's not huge income. Sponsorships and Brands are one thing that can also be done, so I'm actually a little bit clueless how to get out of this whirlpool daily.

I work about 10 to 12 hours a day even on Sundays; I do work still. I put my best effort out there to put out the best content out there for you guys and whatnot, but the revenue portion simply it's sort of in the same grind. Do let me know what is the solution to this problem if there is a solution about it and in fact I would love to know if you actually run a YouTube channel try to run the stats that I have shown you on your YouTube channel and analyze if you are also in a similar situation and if you can share some of the stats in the YouTube comments. It would be great.

I hope this video was helpful, and again, I'll appreciate if you guys can uh if you run a YouTube channel or something run your analytics and share some of the stats so that others like me can also know what is the actual problem and how as a community we can get out of the same.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi there this is Ranjit and in this video I'm going to talk about a YouTube channel and a lot of you guys especially hamsters actually asked me about a YouTube channel and it's uh how was that is it a viable uh career or something like that and I'll try to actually answer some of those questions in this video and in fact I'll also share uh my uh Google uh what do you say YouTube starts with you with actual facts and figures so that you can have an idea is this for you or not and I have been doing this uh uh YouTube uh for about five and a half years I actually run a YouTube Tech Channel known as Kiki Ranjit here in India so again some of the facts and figures that I'm going to publish are based for Indian YouTubers specifically for the tech genre I don't know if this situation is similar for other journalists like quirking fashion Etc so again it's only applicable for Indian YouTubers and the thing is that I really love YouTube YouTube has sort of given me wings I started this YouTube channel about five and a half years ago and I love it uh YouTube has given me the freedom to do what I actually really like that is produced Tech related videos and uh uh by the grace of God and whatever uh today we have a huge subscriber base that's over 4 lakh 25 000 I think so my channel has done over 116 million views and again I feel uh we have a great YouTube Community uh and uh frequently I see a lot of uh you guys in the comments and also on Twitter about 40 or 1000 people follow me so again YouTube has given me a lot I would say we have built this sort of a mini Tech Community where I can interact with all of you guys and lately I've noticed that whenever I go outside to public places like Cinema and stuff uh a couple of people actually come out and meet me and they just come to me and you you're that geeky Ranjit guy so again YouTube has given me a lot of uh uh what do you say this uh that made me this uh thing called geeky Ranjit and people recognize me by the name called geeky Angie so I am nothing but what do you say humbled by what YouTube has given us as a platform as a Creator you can publish whatever you want and it's uh so it's a great uh platform I would say um and uh it's many people think that YouTube doing YouTube stuff is uh easy I'm sort of a full-time YouTuber because every day I work about 10 to 12 hours a day and including on Sundays Sundays are sort of like a half day for me I would say so many people think that youtubing is easy and stuff like that it's far from the truth you have to work hard in fact I would say you have to work really really hard and even when other people get public holidays and stuff it's not a holiday for you you have to work if you're specifically running a channel on your own like I am doing now uh to talk about the facts and the figures first let's uh talk about some of the expectations when you run a Channel or something like that when I think so I don't recall the exact date I started hitting 1 million uh what do you say video views per month sometime in 2013 and I thought to myself uh yes when I hit about 2.5 million uh what do you say uh video views per month uh the revenue that I get from YouTube should be enough that I can actually move into a proper office and hire at least one or two people to grow the channel I have a lot of thoughts in my mind to do this stuff and that stuff but doing it alone is really difficult and uh the thing is that I did cross that 2.5 million Mark three million ma still the revenues did not increase considerably in fact now I cross about 5.5 million views per month uh but uh still uh the revenues haven't increased that much that I can move out of my home office to a proper office and hire some people I do get a lot of email from you guys that you guys want to work with me but again uh the fact is that uh for that I have to move to a proper office I should have office space and I should be able to give you proper salaries I just don't want to hire somebody and after three months say that come on guys I can't give you the salary and boot you out so I don't want to do something like that but still the revenue portion hasn't been increasing as you think and if you treat it YouTube as a business that can be actually uh uh what do you say very demotivating factor in my opinion now to actually I give you some facts and figures and I guess not many people know this uh YouTube actually takes 45 percent of the revenue that you earn for example let's say you earn thousand rupees uh then YouTube will take 45 of that that means 450 rupees YouTube will give and you get 500 uh 550 rupees that's 55 so that is how it is for YouTubers and now uh the thing is that uh I'll actually show you the uh what do you say my Channel's uh facts and figures and show you the situation that I am though my what do you say page views uh watch time Etc is increasing like this but the revenue is almost flat so now let me switch on to the computer and let me show you some facts and figures now let me actually show you the actual stats and this is my YouTube channel and if you go to analytics and I'm going to hide some of the info because you can't show everything but I'll show you the raw stats so here you can see my monthly stats that's not important let's just go to this year's stats that is from January 1st till today's date that is uh till uh June 24 2016 so it starts off from January 1st to June 25 2016. and uh look at some of the numbers where you'll notice that my watch time is about uh 91 million or something like that and the views the channel views is about 26.68 million and what I will now do is again I can't show you the revenue numbers actual numbers guys but I'll show you the comparison later on because YouTube terms and condition does not allow us to share everything and what I'll do is let's compare it with the figures for exactly the last year that is 2015 so from this 16 I will just change that to 15 and I'll do the same for this also so it's for 2015 for the same exact period and now guys as you can see uh this higher figure is for the 2016 and this lower figure is for 2015. for the same time period that is from January 1st to uh June 24th as you can see it's the same period for even 2016. and if you notice closely for the watch time last year for the same time period I did about 56 million minutes and now I have done about 91 million so roughly I'm doing the maths it should be around 65 percent or so Improvement now if we move to another important uh metric that is the number of views that is number of times the users have viewed this video during that specific time frame and for last year it was uh 16.8 million but for 2016 for the same time period it is 26.68 million so again rough hopefully I would say that's about 60 percent uh Improvement and again you can see the same uh thing for the likes dislikes comments haven't increased that much last year 57 000 this year 64 000 shares has increased like considerably I would say uh it's uh almost about uh six times uh videos and playlist also has increased uh sort of double and the subscriber count is also not exactly double but close to about I would say 90 percent plus so again as you can see it's really healthy growth and watch time about 65 percent number of views about 60 and other metrics also a huge Improvement so you will naturally assume that even the revenues have increased right if you have increased uh your watch time your actual views that you give to your channel and everything subscriber base everything has grown approximately let's say sixty percent so uh your Revenue should also increase actually uh let me guess uh if you think like how much should the revenue actually increase about like 50 40 percent or let's say 35 percent if I'm conservative of something like that yeah it's not illogical to think like that I guess but the real fact is that my Revenue has increased not even one percent yes not even one percent so that is the simple fact though I am delivering on the views the watch time the subscriber base is increasing everything is increasing but simple fact is that the revenue is simply not increasing at all so that is one thing that is sort of uh highly discouraging I would say uh these days in fact whenever I look at the stats I sort of get depressed and I even had the the stock with the ash from C4 E-Tech and he also says this to me that whenever he looks at such YouTube stats he sort of gets depressed and he has mentioned me that he has stopped looking at the stats at all now so again I don't know if this issue is uh for everyone but yes at least I am facing it and I don't know about exact numbers for ash he's also facing it Ahmed bhavani also actually shared some stats with me I don't want to post his stats publicly but again for him also he's not a very active YouTuber but for him also the revenues are down of significantly I would say so those were some stats and figure from my actual Channel and as you can see they are sort of uh yeah in terms of growth it is really good I would say a 65 percent growth year on year is great but when your revenues are almost flat as a business I feel it's sort of discouraging I don't think so in any other business if you deliver this much you get the same results and I this was started happening quite a bit uh from last year was happening like that the revenue situation is not that great but it was migrated by the fact that if you actually watch my reviews and stuff I used to always say that if your guys are guys if you're going to buy I uh this product Etc what I have reviewed just use my affiliate links and I used to give affiliate uh what do you say links for Amazon or even Flipkart you don't get charge any extra but we do get some small commission and that used to sort of migrate the revenue loss that I was taking from YouTube but now strangely Amazon India has also started giving zero percent commissions for most of the popular smartphones so if you guys buy the popular smartphones I simply do not get any commission so yeah it is getting tougher and tougher for uh Indian uh what do you say Tech space YouTubers or even bloggers I would say I've spoken to even some bloggers they are also really annoyed with this that even Amazon on their affiliate side has started cutting down commissions uh Flipkart varies like crazy sometimes they give 0.1 percent commission sometime one person sometime one point five percent it's very erratic with Flipkart so again relying on uh what do you say affiliate commission just as a business model is also very difficult and it's sort of demotivating all this because uh for a tech Channel you have to actually spend a lot of money to keep running the channel it's not like every product you get a review in it or something like that you have to buy a lot of stuff and in fact uh I as a YouTuber also do significant upgrade for example last year I purchased the Canon uh G4 H that costed about one lakh seventy thousand just this year I upgraded to the newer microphones and stuff like that so there is a lot of investment that we continuously do to keep improving the production quality and stuff but when the revenues and stuff uh just don't match up it becomes sort of difficult I still love making these videos but I just wanted to highlight the facts that if you think uh you can scale up a business by just doing YouTube stuff like this individually then it is sort of uh difficult I would say yes I'm able to manage because I'm doing everything alone but let's say if I hire two three people to assist me then I don't think so it is financially viable as of now and so let's talk about some of the solutions that we can do I'm just throwing out some of the ideas I was just actually jotting down the ideas what can be done uh some people have actually told me uh we can do donations like a patreon campaign in us we have a site called patreon where actually many YouTubers are part of that you can sign up with them and uh subscribers like you who really appreciate the content that we produce pay a small fee it's a voluntary fee I would say like two dollar five dollar or whatever so that we can continue doing a channel that is one thing that can be done but I'm not very sure if that will simply work in India second option is that some some of the people actually told me and in fact uh I also got an email from vessel a vessel is another video platform where we can actually ask creators post our videos there and vessel is actually not free to view videos on vessel uh users have to actually pay a small fee I don't know what's the fee about two dollar three dollar per month or something like that and what I can actually do is uh post my new videos on vessel and only after let's say uh 12 hours or 24 hours they are visible on YouTube but again I don't want to do all these things uh YouTube is taking a 45 cut of our revenue and I feel uh they should work on the revenue part also and yeah other thing is that you can work with sponsorships and Brands but again that's a very iffy solution uh Brands uh try to dictate a lot of things I try to work with some of the brands and trust me guys I have rejected 90 of the brands because some of the stuff they ask you to do is simply ridiculous so I'm very selective about brand I did some branding stuff uh once or twice earlier and now currently I'm actually testing with the live q a we have what do you say Lenovo as a branch sponsor a small test I'm doing but again that's not huge income so again that's also a dicey thing uh but yeah sponsorships and Brands is one thing that can also be done so I'm actually a little bit clueless how to get out of this Whirlpool daily I'm working about 10 to 12 hours a day even on Sundays I do work still I'm putting my best effort out there to put out the best content out there for you guys and whatnot uh but the revenue portion uh simply it's sort of in the same grind so do let me know what is the solution do you think to this problem is if there is a solution about it and in fact I would love to know if you actually run a YouTube channel try to run the stats that I have shown you on your YouTube channel and analyze if you are also in a similar situation and if you can share some of the stats the general stats in the YouTube comments it would be great also I would like to know if this is this problem is only for Indian YouTubers or also is it affecting YouTubers from other regions so again I hope this video was helpful and again I'll appreciate if you guys can uh if you run a YouTube channel or something run your analytics and share some of the stats so that others like me can also know what is the actual problem and how as a community we can get out of the same again guys thanks for watching this video and if you're not subscribed to my YouTube channel hit that subscribe button thanks for watching this is Ranjit and I hope to see you in math next videohi there this is Ranjit and in this video I'm going to talk about a YouTube channel and a lot of you guys especially hamsters actually asked me about a YouTube channel and it's uh how was that is it a viable uh career or something like that and I'll try to actually answer some of those questions in this video and in fact I'll also share uh my uh Google uh what do you say YouTube starts with you with actual facts and figures so that you can have an idea is this for you or not and I have been doing this uh uh YouTube uh for about five and a half years I actually run a YouTube Tech Channel known as Kiki Ranjit here in India so again some of the facts and figures that I'm going to publish are based for Indian YouTubers specifically for the tech genre I don't know if this situation is similar for other journalists like quirking fashion Etc so again it's only applicable for Indian YouTubers and the thing is that I really love YouTube YouTube has sort of given me wings I started this YouTube channel about five and a half years ago and I love it uh YouTube has given me the freedom to do what I actually really like that is produced Tech related videos and uh uh by the grace of God and whatever uh today we have a huge subscriber base that's over 4 lakh 25 000 I think so my channel has done over 116 million views and again I feel uh we have a great YouTube Community uh and uh frequently I see a lot of uh you guys in the comments and also on Twitter about 40 or 1000 people follow me so again YouTube has given me a lot I would say we have built this sort of a mini Tech Community where I can interact with all of you guys and lately I've noticed that whenever I go outside to public places like Cinema and stuff uh a couple of people actually come out and meet me and they just come to me and you you're that geeky Ranjit guy so again YouTube has given me a lot of uh uh what do you say this uh that made me this uh thing called geeky Ranjit and people recognize me by the name called geeky Angie so I am nothing but what do you say humbled by what YouTube has given us as a platform as a Creator you can publish whatever you want and it's uh so it's a great uh platform I would say um and uh it's many people think that YouTube doing YouTube stuff is uh easy I'm sort of a full-time YouTuber because every day I work about 10 to 12 hours a day and including on Sundays Sundays are sort of like a half day for me I would say so many people think that youtubing is easy and stuff like that it's far from the truth you have to work hard in fact I would say you have to work really really hard and even when other people get public holidays and stuff it's not a holiday for you you have to work if you're specifically running a channel on your own like I am doing now uh to talk about the facts and the figures first let's uh talk about some of the expectations when you run a Channel or something like that when I think so I don't recall the exact date I started hitting 1 million uh what do you say video views per month sometime in 2013 and I thought to myself uh yes when I hit about 2.5 million uh what do you say uh video views per month uh the revenue that I get from YouTube should be enough that I can actually move into a proper office and hire at least one or two people to grow the channel I have a lot of thoughts in my mind to do this stuff and that stuff but doing it alone is really difficult and uh the thing is that I did cross that 2.5 million Mark three million ma still the revenues did not increase considerably in fact now I cross about 5.5 million views per month uh but uh still uh the revenues haven't increased that much that I can move out of my home office to a proper office and hire some people I do get a lot of email from you guys that you guys want to work with me but again uh the fact is that uh for that I have to move to a proper office I should have office space and I should be able to give you proper salaries I just don't want to hire somebody and after three months say that come on guys I can't give you the salary and boot you out so I don't want to do something like that but still the revenue portion hasn't been increasing as you think and if you treat it YouTube as a business that can be actually uh uh what do you say very demotivating factor in my opinion now to actually I give you some facts and figures and I guess not many people know this uh YouTube actually takes 45 percent of the revenue that you earn for example let's say you earn thousand rupees uh then YouTube will take 45 of that that means 450 rupees YouTube will give and you get 500 uh 550 rupees that's 55 so that is how it is for YouTubers and now uh the thing is that uh I'll actually show you the uh what do you say my Channel's uh facts and figures and show you the situation that I am though my what do you say page views uh watch time Etc is increasing like this but the revenue is almost flat so now let me switch on to the computer and let me show you some facts and figures now let me actually show you the actual stats and this is my YouTube channel and if you go to analytics and I'm going to hide some of the info because you can't show everything but I'll show you the raw stats so here you can see my monthly stats that's not important let's just go to this year's stats that is from January 1st till today's date that is uh till uh June 24 2016 so it starts off from January 1st to June 25 2016. and uh look at some of the numbers where you'll notice that my watch time is about uh 91 million or something like that and the views the channel views is about 26.68 million and what I will now do is again I can't show you the revenue numbers actual numbers guys but I'll show you the comparison later on because YouTube terms and condition does not allow us to share everything and what I'll do is let's compare it with the figures for exactly the last year that is 2015 so from this 16 I will just change that to 15 and I'll do the same for this also so it's for 2015 for the same exact period and now guys as you can see uh this higher figure is for the 2016 and this lower figure is for 2015. for the same time period that is from January 1st to uh June 24th as you can see it's the same period for even 2016. and if you notice closely for the watch time last year for the same time period I did about 56 million minutes and now I have done about 91 million so roughly I'm doing the maths it should be around 65 percent or so Improvement now if we move to another important uh metric that is the number of views that is number of times the users have viewed this video during that specific time frame and for last year it was uh 16.8 million but for 2016 for the same time period it is 26.68 million so again rough hopefully I would say that's about 60 percent uh Improvement and again you can see the same uh thing for the likes dislikes comments haven't increased that much last year 57 000 this year 64 000 shares has increased like considerably I would say uh it's uh almost about uh six times uh videos and playlist also has increased uh sort of double and the subscriber count is also not exactly double but close to about I would say 90 percent plus so again as you can see it's really healthy growth and watch time about 65 percent number of views about 60 and other metrics also a huge Improvement so you will naturally assume that even the revenues have increased right if you have increased uh your watch time your actual views that you give to your channel and everything subscriber base everything has grown approximately let's say sixty percent so uh your Revenue should also increase actually uh let me guess uh if you think like how much should the revenue actually increase about like 50 40 percent or let's say 35 percent if I'm conservative of something like that yeah it's not illogical to think like that I guess but the real fact is that my Revenue has increased not even one percent yes not even one percent so that is the simple fact though I am delivering on the views the watch time the subscriber base is increasing everything is increasing but simple fact is that the revenue is simply not increasing at all so that is one thing that is sort of uh highly discouraging I would say uh these days in fact whenever I look at the stats I sort of get depressed and I even had the the stock with the ash from C4 E-Tech and he also says this to me that whenever he looks at such YouTube stats he sort of gets depressed and he has mentioned me that he has stopped looking at the stats at all now so again I don't know if this issue is uh for everyone but yes at least I am facing it and I don't know about exact numbers for ash he's also facing it Ahmed bhavani also actually shared some stats with me I don't want to post his stats publicly but again for him also he's not a very active YouTuber but for him also the revenues are down of significantly I would say so those were some stats and figure from my actual Channel and as you can see they are sort of uh yeah in terms of growth it is really good I would say a 65 percent growth year on year is great but when your revenues are almost flat as a business I feel it's sort of discouraging I don't think so in any other business if you deliver this much you get the same results and I this was started happening quite a bit uh from last year was happening like that the revenue situation is not that great but it was migrated by the fact that if you actually watch my reviews and stuff I used to always say that if your guys are guys if you're going to buy I uh this product Etc what I have reviewed just use my affiliate links and I used to give affiliate uh what do you say links for Amazon or even Flipkart you don't get charge any extra but we do get some small commission and that used to sort of migrate the revenue loss that I was taking from YouTube but now strangely Amazon India has also started giving zero percent commissions for most of the popular smartphones so if you guys buy the popular smartphones I simply do not get any commission so yeah it is getting tougher and tougher for uh Indian uh what do you say Tech space YouTubers or even bloggers I would say I've spoken to even some bloggers they are also really annoyed with this that even Amazon on their affiliate side has started cutting down commissions uh Flipkart varies like crazy sometimes they give 0.1 percent commission sometime one person sometime one point five percent it's very erratic with Flipkart so again relying on uh what do you say affiliate commission just as a business model is also very difficult and it's sort of demotivating all this because uh for a tech Channel you have to actually spend a lot of money to keep running the channel it's not like every product you get a review in it or something like that you have to buy a lot of stuff and in fact uh I as a YouTuber also do significant upgrade for example last year I purchased the Canon uh G4 H that costed about one lakh seventy thousand just this year I upgraded to the newer microphones and stuff like that so there is a lot of investment that we continuously do to keep improving the production quality and stuff but when the revenues and stuff uh just don't match up it becomes sort of difficult I still love making these videos but I just wanted to highlight the facts that if you think uh you can scale up a business by just doing YouTube stuff like this individually then it is sort of uh difficult I would say yes I'm able to manage because I'm doing everything alone but let's say if I hire two three people to assist me then I don't think so it is financially viable as of now and so let's talk about some of the solutions that we can do I'm just throwing out some of the ideas I was just actually jotting down the ideas what can be done uh some people have actually told me uh we can do donations like a patreon campaign in us we have a site called patreon where actually many YouTubers are part of that you can sign up with them and uh subscribers like you who really appreciate the content that we produce pay a small fee it's a voluntary fee I would say like two dollar five dollar or whatever so that we can continue doing a channel that is one thing that can be done but I'm not very sure if that will simply work in India second option is that some some of the people actually told me and in fact uh I also got an email from vessel a vessel is another video platform where we can actually ask creators post our videos there and vessel is actually not free to view videos on vessel uh users have to actually pay a small fee I don't know what's the fee about two dollar three dollar per month or something like that and what I can actually do is uh post my new videos on vessel and only after let's say uh 12 hours or 24 hours they are visible on YouTube but again I don't want to do all these things uh YouTube is taking a 45 cut of our revenue and I feel uh they should work on the revenue part also and yeah other thing is that you can work with sponsorships and Brands but again that's a very iffy solution uh Brands uh try to dictate a lot of things I try to work with some of the brands and trust me guys I have rejected 90 of the brands because some of the stuff they ask you to do is simply ridiculous so I'm very selective about brand I did some branding stuff uh once or twice earlier and now currently I'm actually testing with the live q a we have what do you say Lenovo as a branch sponsor a small test I'm doing but again that's not huge income so again that's also a dicey thing uh but yeah sponsorships and Brands is one thing that can also be done so I'm actually a little bit clueless how to get out of this Whirlpool daily I'm working about 10 to 12 hours a day even on Sundays I do work still I'm putting my best effort out there to put out the best content out there for you guys and whatnot uh but the revenue portion uh simply it's sort of in the same grind so do let me know what is the solution do you think to this problem is if there is a solution about it and in fact I would love to know if you actually run a YouTube channel try to run the stats that I have shown you on your YouTube channel and analyze if you are also in a similar situation and if you can share some of the stats the general stats in the YouTube comments it would be great also I would like to know if this is this problem is only for Indian YouTubers or also is it affecting YouTubers from other regions so again I hope this video was helpful and again I'll appreciate if you guys can uh if you run a YouTube channel or something run your analytics and share some of the stats so that others like me can also know what is the actual problem and how as a community we can get out of the same again guys thanks for watching this video and if you're not subscribed to my YouTube channel hit that subscribe button thanks for watching this is Ranjit and I hope to see you in math next video\n"