Youtube has come a long way since its creation in 2005; the video-sharing website now sees more than 300 billion searches every month. With the fame and fortune that has come to so many video bloggers on the site (aptly named Youtubers), much of today's youth are interested in starting their own channels and posting their own videos. In fact, the trend has become so prevalent in the U.S. that summer camps are jumping on the bandwagon.
The New Summer Destination
Summer camp has been a part of many American's lives for decades. What's changed is the theme; the age-old activities of hiking, arts-n-crafts, and archery have given way to more specialized skills. Julie Jargon, the family and technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote about this shift in focus.
"They're teaching [kids] to create their own unique voice so that they can stand out in the crowd of YouTubers and develop original content," she explained. "But a lot of the kids I talked to, they just want to shoot videos of themselves playing Fortnite. They watch the YouTubers playing video games and then they want to do it themselves."
The camps are teaching kids how to light, shoot, and edit videos. Because there are so many people on Youtube these days, they're also focusing on intangible things, like building your brand. As Jargon stated, there's a lot of videos of kids playing video games -- with over one billion active users (that is, users who are actively logged in) each month, you need to stand out from the crowd if you're going to make a career out of the venture.
Making It To Monetization
Strictly speaking, it is very possible to make a living off of your Youtube channel. If you've got content that viewers want to view, advertisers will pay to advertise on your videos. The average cost per thousand views (CPM) for advertisers is two dollars; that works out to approximately $2,000 to reach one million viewers. If a Youtuber has one million subscribers, and all of them watch all of their videos (we'll say they uploaded an average of one per week), they could theoretically be making around $57,000 per year. This isn't an exact science; not everyone who watches your videos will be a subscriber, some of your videos will see more (or less) viewers, and some of them will have more (or fewer) ads.
Considering the fact that Youtube reaches more 18 to 34 and 18 to 49-year-olds than any other cable network in the country, the prospect is quite a lucrative one. While it's true that there's a significant amount of competition, these emerging summer camps might make the difference between a random video on the Internet and a Youtube star.
