Online Fame Easy; Ads Harder to Get
Income for Web Video Creators Varies From 'Retire' to 'Keep Your Day Job' — Some Web video stars, like the "Ask a Ninja" guys, are raking it in. Some, like Beet.TV video blogger Andy Plesser, are earning a hefty supplement to their day jobs.
Context & Ripple Effects
Six months after the Wall Street Journal's guide to becoming a star in a YouTube world sketched how anyone could build an audience, TVWeek is asking the follow-up question that guide left open: what does that fame pay? The answer, per its reporting, spans everything from 'Ask a Ninja' creators pulling in retirement-level ad revenue to Beet.TV's Andy Plesser treating video ads as a hefty supplement to his day job.
That spread matters because it punctures the 2007 narrative that viral reach converts directly into a living. Distribution was solved by YouTube and its peers this year; monetization clearly was not, and the gap between the two is now the story every aspiring web-video professional has to price.
First-order effects
- The 'Ask a Ninja' duo can fund continued production from ad revenue alone, while creators at Andy Plesser's tier must keep day jobs and treat web video as supplemental income — the same medium, two different businesses.
- Advertisers gain proof that web video audiences convert into sellable inventory, but also see that pricing is inconsistent enough to demand case-by-case evaluation rather than a standard rate card.
Second-order effects
- Talent agents, networks, and ad sales intermediaries have an opening to arbitrage the gap: creators who built audiences for free will pay for help turning views into contracts, and whoever packages web video stars for brands captures margin the creators cannot get alone.
- As more creators chase the same advertising dollars, supply of inventory grows faster than brand budgets, pressuring rates for everyone below the top tier like Plesser and reinforcing the winner-take-most economics already visible in the 'Ask a Ninja' example.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, web video bifurcates structurally into a small professional class funded by advertising and a long tail of hobbyists subsidized by other employment — mirroring the economics of stand-up comedy or indie music rather than broadcast television.
- The inconsistency documented here creates pressure for standardized measurement and rate-setting across video sites; without common metrics, advertisers cannot buy online video the way they buy television, and intermediaries who solve that become gatekeepers of the whole creator economy.
The trend: Online video is entering its monetization phase, where building an audience is cheap but converting one into ad income remains scarce enough to split creators into professionals and day-job holders.