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Harold Mansfield
12-15-2015, 01:12 PM
I wasn't sure whether to put this under Internet Marketing, or Blogging since it covers it all.

It's a great article about the internet economy, social media fame and real world economics. It talks about people's unrealistic association that lots of followers, somehow means lots of money and how many people that you may know online struggle to make ends meet.


She likened trying to get famous through social media to shelling out money for college—in each case, one suffers through hard work and zero-to-negative income in the hopes of a later payout. The difference, Beggs said, is that YouTube is more accessible “because there’s no admissions committee.” The technical term for this is the Dunning Kruger effect, where unskilled individuals believe themselves to be more adept than they are.



“It’s not surprising that the failure rate on YouTube would be higher because people aren’t good judges of their own abilities,” Beggs said. The result is that the market is oversaturated, and subscriber numbers, which rarely make any sense, become the gatekeepers of financial success.




It's a good article.
The sad economics of being famous on the internet | Fusion (http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/)

KristineS
12-15-2015, 03:06 PM
That is a very interesting article.

Amber
12-15-2015, 04:41 PM
Thank you. Great article Harold.

This reminds me of a friend who runs a video game tutorial channel on Youtube. She used to be making a pretty good side income until about 3 years when Youtube made changes (and Google took over). Now she's lucky if she makes a couple bucks for every 1,000 views. I think it's also because people are able to skip a full ad or utilize adblockers.

Harold Mansfield
12-15-2015, 04:51 PM
To me it just covers so many things that are relevant right now. Namely how we have a generation of people who expect everything to be free with no understanding of how much things cost, or where the money comes from to produce them. It's as if they think money appears by magic, that they are owed free content, and people are supposed to create it for them and not expect any financial compensation at all. And yet, those same people all expect to make money for themselves and not be criticized for it.

It's a fascinating time online of both entitlement and selfishness. People associate fame with fortune with no real understanding of how to connect the dots to make one mean the other. Seriously, it's magic.

krymson
12-15-2015, 05:09 PM
To me it just covers so many things that are relevant right now. Namely how we have a generation of people who expect everything to be free with no understanding of how much things cost, or where the money comes from to produce them. It's as if they think money appears by magic, that they are owed free content, and people are supposed to create it for them and not expect any financial compensation at all. And yet, those same people all expect to make money for themselves and not be criticized for it.

It's a fascinating time online of both entitlement and selfishness.

That's the web design industry in a nutshell...

I keep an eye on freelance sites and I literally saw a post the other day that said... "I would like a website exactly like Amazon and I do not want to spend more than $150 for it. I also need it optimized for Google. The site also needs it's own social media functionality that works like Facebook where people can create profiles and pages, share photos and reviews on products..."

I was speechless and darn near threw a fit at the IGNORANCE of people.

My point, like you said people have no idea how much things cost, how much time is involved, and they think by having a website they'll be millionaires over night. I'm 27 and I hate my generation and REALLY hate the generation coming after mine (I don't hate my kids, I hate the way society is molding the generation, including my kids because there is only so much we can do as parents).

Fulcrum
12-15-2015, 05:39 PM
That's the web design industry in a nutshell...

I keep an eye on freelance sites and I literally saw a post the other day that said... "I would like a website exactly like Amazon and I do not want to spend more than $150 for it. I also need it optimized for Google. The site also needs it's own social media functionality that works like Facebook where people can create profiles and pages, share photos and reviews on products..."

I was speechless and darn near threw a fit at the IGNORANCE of people.

My point, like you said people have no idea how much things cost, how much time is involved, and they think by having a website they'll be millionaires over night. I'm 27 and I hate my generation and REALLY hate the generation coming after mine (I don't hate my kids, I hate the way society is molding the generation, including my kids because there is only so much we can do as parents).

Sounds like a walk in customer I had. Refused to pay after the work was done because he paid less for the POS new.

FYI for everybody else, for me money does grow on/as trees.

rnhaas
12-15-2015, 07:43 PM
Thanks for the article! I have sent it to some of my friends.

Business Attorney
12-15-2015, 07:47 PM
Interesting article. I think the phenomenon of the social media vloggers is a situation common throughout the entertainment industry, and is not new. Even when I was young, I had (and still have) lots of friends who like to perform music but could barely make gas money playing in a local bar on Friday and Saturday nights. Many actors and actresses spend most of their time between auditions holding down jobs like waiting tables so that they have the freedom to take a role when it finally comes around.

I think the observations about the something-for-nothing generation may be true in other situations but I don't think that is necessarily what is going on with the author and other vloggers. The "selling out" issue is also nothing new. Even in the 60's and 70's, bands were often criticized by fans if they were viewed as bowing to commercial interests. And even when I am watching over-the-air commercial TV replete with commercials, I find it objectionable when product placements become conspicuous within the core programming.

The basic force at work is supply and demand. There are a lot of musicians, actors and vloggers who love what they are doing and will do it for free, or virtually so. For every Taylor Swift, Robert Downey, Jr. or Jenna Marbles, there are thousands who barely make it. The difference with vloggers is that their medium makes them "Internet famous" which should not necessarily be confused with success.

I do think that many legitimate artists are often underpaid by the current system. I have been told by friends in the industry that the Internet, and deals with companies like Spotify, have resulted in a precipitous drop in royalty payments, with the results that even relatively established performers have to constantly tour to make a living. The same economic forces (admittedly along with other factors) drive up the cost of concert tickets because the performers have to get money from somewhere.

Fulcrum
12-15-2015, 08:41 PM
I read the article and what I'm going to say now is going to be harsh.

Yawn. Cry me a river. Does she have another sob story for me?

If the author has "half a million" subscribers and can't find a way to monetize that outside of product placement, or she needed to quit her other job because she doesn't have the backbone to tell fans to back off on her show, maybe she needs to give her head a shake and start living in the real world.

Her examples early in the article don't hold any weight with me as those people are using sex to attract. Not sell - attract. No wonder they have trouble with the people who show up where they work those "menial" table waiting jobs.

I'm done ranting before I get myself into too much trouble.

Freelancier
12-16-2015, 08:04 AM
The difference with vloggers is that their medium makes them "Internet famous" which should not necessarily be confused with success.
This.

Being popular and making money are not the same thing. It's like being a good web designer; you can be great at building cool sites, but if you don't know how to sell and work hard at the selling side, you'll still starve. The idea that just being good at something means you'll make lots of money at it is... well... immature and naive. And the idea that having a million hits on something makes it something worth selling is also immature and naive. If you charged for it, would it still have a million hits? Not even close to how the real world works. Free is easy to "sell"; it's when you charge for it that you find out its true value.

David Hunter
12-17-2015, 12:23 PM
Here's a video from a popular YouTuber in response to that article. He's a smart businessman.

https://www.facebook.com/DeFrancoNation/videos/vb.79728204406/10153776624809407/