Watch your money grow on YouTube

What does the missing footage of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction in 2004, a Tsunami and a house party have in common?

Don’t sweat it, we’ll tell you Those three were the ingredients that would spawn the world’s second largest search engine and a billion-dollar video sharing site everybody knows as YouTube.

For three friends – Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim – missing footage was all they needed to establish the most popular video streaming and sharing site in the world.

YouTube, has become the go-to place for  music and cat videos and locally is a welcome alternative for many local entertainers who always complained of not getting enough airplay on local TV.

DISCOVERED ON YOUTUBE

Internationally, many singers have been discovered on YouTube. When a video of Greyson Chance performing “Paparazzi” for a talent show went viral, he was quickly signed to Ellen’s record label.

Rebecca Black: Her song “Friday” has so more “thumbs down” than “thumbs up” on YouTube but still has over 80 million views that made her an internet sensation and even appeared in Katy Perry‘s music video “T.G.I.F.”

Other YouTube stars include Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Just ask Sauti Sol how important this platform is after the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) banned “Nishike”.

Curious Kenyans also caught the video online to know why it had deserved the ban. Whether it was curiosity or the cult following the music group enjoys, the video clip has clocked over a million views and counting, a first in Kenya.

The clip was a far cry from South Korean Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’, a K-Pop music video that has over two billion views, making him an international superstar.

That video which introduced the horse-gallop dance to the world earned him over Sh200 million. So, was Sauti Sol able to rake in some money from their clip? Nobody wants to say.

“Contrary to popular belief, payment is not driven by number of hits one’s video has but by how many users were engaged with the adverts that were displayed during the period in which they watched the video.

Quite simply, a video can have over a million views but the owner ends up making nothing,” explains Dorothy Ooko, the Communications and Public Affairs executive at Google Kenya.

“For instance, Psy got rich through YouTube, but only because viewers engaged with the ads that were posted.”

MAKING MONEY

As did Sauti Sol make money off YouTube? “We cannot disclose if and how much a partner has earned,” adds Ooko.

“Here I would answer generally: Every YouTube video has an opportunity to earn money through the YT monetisation platform.

A YT channel owner enables monetisation on their channel and selects which videos YT is to monetise against as well as the ad-types to be used.

Once monetisation is enabled, a user then has to drive the watch hours and views on their channel and attract a global audience for maximum revenues.”

YouTube was purchased by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. Currently its monthly running cost is estimated to be between five million and six million dollars.

To make money, the second most visited site behind Google, turned to advertisements in March 2006.

Techprenuers at California’s technology hub, Silicon Valley, engineered easy methods through which advertisers could post ads on YouTube. On the site, video ads can appear as either TrueView In-search video or TrueView In-slate video ads.

Ads can also appear as TrueView In display ads – which appear alongside the video- or as pop-ups within the video. It’s very simple: every time you search for a video, there is an ad that usually appears.

Any YouTube user is familiar with the “Skip Ad” link that pops us five seconds into an advertisement. If one watches the ad for more than 30 seconds, the advertiser pays Google.

If one also clicks the ads that pops up while the video is playing, the same happens. The revenue stream is divided in a 70-30 ratio with more money said to go to the owner of the video.

“In order to start earning money through videos, one needs to enable monetisation. This means you are allowing YouTube to place ads in your video. This also means that you acknowledge that there is no copyrighted material in your video,” divulges Ooko.

You would think it’s only artistes who employ YouTube, but a host of other Kenyans have discovered this money making trend and are earning from it.

Comedians Alex Mathenge, Ali Baba and Alex Kirui run the popular “Makarao TV” channel, a series of animated comedy clips on YouTube that makes fun of Kenyan police habits. Starting out in April 2014, the trio have made a name for themselves on the site.

REFLECTIONS OF KENYA

“It is a reflection of what happens in Kenya. We voice imitations of corrupt police officers. Although we have a few episodes, the response we are getting online is positive,” says Mathenge.

“We decided to broadcast through YouTube since it is a free platform that allowed us to entertain a global audience.

Although animation is quite expensive and it takes lots of time, You Tube ensures that unlike TV, one can watch our shows whenever they feel like it.”

According to Alex, acting like crooked law enforcement was just a hobby they used to practice at Kenyatta University when Kirui, an animator, approached them with the idea of having an animated show air on YouTube.

That turned out to be a really great idea, “Makarao TV”, has well over 5,500 subscribers and over 600,000 views.

“We have been getting more and more subscribers per day, but I cannot reveal to you how much we make from YouTube. It’s a business secret,” Mathenge explains.

Internationally, Felix Kjellberg, 25, who goes by the alias PewDiePie on YouTube, earned Sh700 million ($7 million) in 2014 from his YouTube channel.

The Swede, posts videos of himself playing video games along with his animated reactions to his YouTube channel that has so far amassed 37 million subscribers.

More followers than the popular boy band One Direction, and singer Taylor Swift. ”Whenever it comes out how much I made a certain year, people just get so shocked he told BBC.  “A lot of people are also very, very angry.  They think I just sit on my ass all day and yell at the screen over here. Which is true. But there’s so much more to it than that.”

Kenyans are quick to catch up and the number of Kenyans on the site is growing. Radio personality Carol Mutoko has a YouTube channel where she posts videos of herself discussing topical issues.

Not only does she get thousands of views, her subscriber numbers are rising. They get alerts whenever she posts something new increasing her viewership.

Kangai, a local make-up artiste has a channel too. Under the name Bellessa Africa, she posts videos of herself applying make up to well-known personalities like NTV’s Kobi Kihara.

Fashion blogger Sharon Mundia is also on YouTube as “This is Ess” and she also generates thousands of hits per video.

Whether these YouTube users generate money from their content is not known but it is a good start. How can Kenyan artistes use YouTube to market themselves?

“YouTube for artistes is a great online learning resource that artistes can use to leverage the platform. It offers tips, tricks and tools available.

One needs to make videos with good content and quality; Properly edit your videos; upload fresh content regularly; create social networking accounts and use them to share and advertise yourself; use keywords and tags to optimise on search for people to discover your video; and finally make videos on popular topics on the internet.

According to Ooko, Google has made watching videos on YouTube cheaper and accessible keeping in mind that local internet users always fear their internet bundles will be consumed.

How? By making sure the video does not buffer anew if one has watched it before. That’s why the watched videos bear the “watched” tag whenever one searches for it again.

Ooko concludes by advising: “YouTube is a platform open for anyone and everyone, and many have been discovered and gone on to become instant global stars.

This is no different from our artistes, they should continue producing great content and leverage the tools available and we could have the next Psy coming from Kenya. More dance videos, maybe?”