Analyzing Revenue Generation Activity Using YouTube: A Case Study Of PewDiePie Channel

PewDiePie: An Overview

YouTube is one of the greatest online platforms where creator effectively showcases their talent and generates revenue. The purpose of this assessment is to analysis revenue generation activity using YouTube. In order to understand revenue generation process, a YouTube channel i.e., PewDiePie has been selected to understand strategic   relationship between Patreon, PayPal and other revenue vectors in a systematic order.  Apart from revenue generation, a synthetic revenue model with respect to PayPal and Patreon has been demonstrated in a table including revenue statement and inclusive of gross net figure.

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PewDiePie is a YouTube channel created by a Swedish person known as Felix who was born in 24th October 1989. The channel was created in the year 2010 and gain 60 thousands subscriber by the end of 2011. According to Money Nation, it has estimated that Net worth of PewDiePie was about 18.7 million dollar by 2011 (Peng, 2018, p.78).  In 2012, the channel successfully gained 1 million subscribers by 2012 and most of the videos were regarding gaming.

Year

Subscribers

2011

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60000

2012

1 million

2013

4 million

2014

19 million

2015

33 million

2016

50 million

2017

60 million

2018

77 million

Table 1: Number of subscriber per year

(Source: Created By Researcher)

From the above table, it can be stated that PewDiePie is one of the top influencer across world. Presently, PewDiePie rank world’s number one YouTube channel based on subscribers. In the year 2015, it has been found that channel became the first to receive 10 billion video views and appeared in Forbes list of richest YouTube star. In the year 2014, channel has more than 4.1 billion views and earn about 42 million dollar according to Money Nation.

As per the report by Money Nation, PewDiePie became the first YouTube channel to reach 50 million subscribers and net worth was whopping 90 million dollar in the year 2018. From the above table, it can be said that YouTube is one of the great way to earn money through new content. Similarly, it has been evident that a Swedish channel became number one channel in YouTube, which was started in 2010. Furthermore, it has been stated that within a span of 8 years, channel successfully earn most subscriber across world (Soha et al. 2016, p.452).   Moreover, it is comparatively 2.5 times than Hillary Clinton.  

On the other hand, it has been evident that Patreon and PayPal is another source of revenue generation. Most of the payment has been made through Patreon and PayPal; currently Patreon takes about 5% of processed payments. In addition, creators can take 95 % of revenue that they make from subscriptions.

Revenue   of PewDiePie with proper diagram and table

PewDiePie rank number in terms of subscription in YouTube and comes under top 10 influences across world. It has been evident that his subscription growth is comparatively higher as compared to other YouTube creator. According to the statistics, PewDiePie earning over the year from YouTube view is approximately 114 million dollar.

Years

Earning (million Dollar)

2011

18.7

2012

25

2013

38

2014

42

2015

55

2016

68

2017

75

2018

90

Table 2: Estimated earning per year

(Source: Created By Researcher)

From the above table and graph, it can be said that PewDiePie generate revenue of about more than 100 million dollar from YouTube.  In the year 2015, he had 33 million subscribers, which approximately generate 55 million dollar, which is comparatively high as compared to other YouTube creators.  On the other hand, his subscription growth is gradually increasing day by day. As it was started in the year 2010 and with a span of 8 years, PewDiePie successfully get 77 million subscribers, which is comparatively higher in YouTube history (Jansen et al. 2017, p.438). Payment processing fees can be described as a cost of moving funds from patrons to creator balance.  It can be said that payment processing fees need changes for YouTube creators that depends upon number of subscribers per month. It has been evident that American Patreon users are charged 25 % per payout and 3 dollar for users internationally.

Revenue of PewDiePie with Proper Diagram and Tables

On the other hand, it has been evident that most of YouTube creators use two types of payment gateway such as Patreon and PayPal. According to the statistics of Money Nation, it has been estimated that PewDiePie get an average earning of 12 million dollar per year.  On other words, it can be said that earning revenue generates about 3.400 dollar per hour for a 40-hour week (Wohn et al. 2018, p.474). From the earning of PewDiePie, it can be said that it is not bad for a person who is looking for fulltime job as YouTube creator.  On other side, the earning of a Doctor is approximately 94 dollar per hour on average and 28 dollar for a teacher. Therefore, a person can successfully join YouTube as a career due to continuous growing of technology and digitalization across world.  

Strategic relationship between Patreon and PayPal  

The biggest difference between   PayPal and Patreon are the payout process. In most of the payment gateway, payment processing fees and payout fees have been charged.  It has been evident that PayPal is an open and secure payment gateway that uses pay flow gateway APIs.   PayPal Payments Pro internally using Pay flow Gateway and on other side its API serves that similar features. Merchants of PayPal Payments Pro use PayPal as their credit card processor.

PayPal

The YouTube creators can use bank, account and processor such as PayPal. It provides a complete customize checkout process with the help of API.   It is quick and gets paid as soon as data proceed.  With the help of PayPal, YouTube creator can reduce their workload as generate revenue positively.   

Patreon

Patreon payment processing fees signifies an amount that process of payment will be charged each time when a creator processes a payment. On the other hand, payment processor charges some amount of pledge and a fixed number of cents (Lagiovane, 2018, p.45).  Most of the time, it has been describe as a charge for moving funds to bank from creator balance. The charge of process has been varying and mostly it is 25% per payout for users of American Patreon and approximately 3 dollar for users internationally.

From the above image, it can be said that users over YouTube has been increasing spontaneously and rate of growth of payment gateway is comparatively higher. According to the statistics, the number of YouTube users across globally upsurge to 9.2 percent in the year 2017 as compared to the previous year’s user’s growth. On the other hand in the year 2021, the user growth rate is predicted to slow year-on-year to a 4.9 percent.

According to the statistics of YouTube, it has been found that most of the YouTube creator uses Patreon as a user’s friendly gateway payment system. With the help of PayPal, creator can use bale to post and only patrons paying can able to see it.  It allows subscriber to part in a conversation with their favorite subscriber efficiently. It is an independent governing body so that creator can able to deliver their content through continuous support through Patreon (Giraldom, 2015, p.45). Most of the time, it has been evident that creator has to experience different kind of critics as well as threat through YouTube. On the other side, Patreon allows subscribers to support their YouTube channel for continuous support.  

Strategic Relationship between Patreon and PayPal

Numerical   extrapolating of PewDiePie along with revenue statement 

There are mainly for four factors to determine YouTube earning potential, which have been highlighted below are as follow:

  • CPM VS CPC
  • Predicted gross earning per 1000 views
  • Estimated earning Per Subscriber
  • Estimated variance based on engagement of video

Number of subscriber earn by video

Number of total video views

Estimated video earning (Dollar)

Average Earning per video  (Dollar)

Gross earning

9655

4483595

8295

38

10452

6744045

12476

38

75462

2481597

7569

38

Net figure

142568937

304587

40

Table 3: Estimated Revenue Generation

(Source: Created By Researcher) 

The above table represents a synthetic model of revenue generation by PewDiePie. The above data has been extracted from videos uploaded by YouTube channel.   

It has been evident that YouTube creators earn approximately 7.60 dollar per 1000ad views as per the statics of Tube Mogul (Platformed.info, 2018). Ads are only shown in limited number of video and approximately a YouTube creator can earn about 2000 dollar for every million views. Below is some estimated earning of video uploaded by PewDiePie to extract specific figure of revenue generation by YouTube creator.

Conclusion 

From the above study, it can be stated that YouTube is a great8 platform to showcase their talent to generate revenue gradually. It has been evident that a person can choose YouTube as a fulltime professional career. On the other hand, most of the YouTube creator uses Patreon as payment gateway due to user friendly and build relationship with subscribers. It allows subscriber to support their creator so that they can deliver their content successfully.  Most of the payment has been made through Patreon and PayPal; currently Patreon takes about 5% of processed payments. In addition, creators can take 95 % of revenue that they make from subscriptions. Therefore, a person can successfully join YouTube as a career due to continuous growing of technology and digitalization across world.  

Reference list

Ali, M.A., Arief, B., Emms, M. and van Moorsel, A., 2017. Does the online card payment landscape unwittingly facilitate fraud?. IEEE Security & Privacy, 15(2), pp.78-86.

Giraldo Lozano, D.J.M., 2015. Subscription Based Crowdfunding A look into an alternative monetisation model for music

Jansen, B.J., Jung, S.G., Salminen, J., An, J. and Kwa, H., 2017, October. Leveraging Social Analytics Data for Identifying Customer Segments for Online News Media. In Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA), 2017 IEEE/ACS 14th International Conference on (pp. 463-468). IEEE.

Lagiovane, A., 2018. # Ad: How YouTube Went From “Broadcast Yourself” to Broadcast Brands and Why It Matters(Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University).

Peng, H., 2018. The Audio-Visual Teaching Plan for College-Level Specialty-Oriented Career Planning Courses. US-China Education Review, 8(6), pp.227-238.

Pillay, A., 2017. Exploring alternative revenue sources that can be utilised to improve advertising revenue at SABC public broadcasting radio stations (Doctoral dissertation).

Platformed.info  (2018), PayPal, on 12th December 2018, Available from: https://platformed.info/how-paypal-youtube-and-stumbleupon-gained-rapid-traction-through-piggybacking/

Rogers, W., 2014. Sustainability and the role of revenue generation. A guide to the best revenue models and funding sources for your digital resources, p.9.

Soha, M. and McDowell, Z.J., 2016. Monetizing a Meme: YouTube, Content ID, and the Harlem Shake. Social Media+ Society, 2(1), p.2056305115623801.

Vonderau, P., 2016. The video bubble: Multichannel networks and the transformation of YouTube. Convergence, 22(4), pp.361-375.

Wang, X.L., Yoonjoung Heo, C., Schwartz, Z., Legohérel, P. and Specklin, F., 2015. Revenue management: Progress, challenges, and research prospects. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 32(7), pp.797-811.

Wohn, D.Y., Freeman, G. and McLaughlin, C., 2018, April. Explaining Viewers’ Emotional, Instrumental, and Financial Support Provision for Live Streamers. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (p. 474). ACM.