The Swede Seth Everman (29) is a popular musician and YouTuber. At the beginning of the year, he announced that he wants to withdraw from YouTube at the end of 2023 to focus on other projects. Until then, however, he wants to deliver as much content as possible. He recently spoke about his most successful video – and explained why it wasn’t such a big financial hit.
Who is the YouTuber? Seth Everman has been running his YouTube channel since May 2013. Besides his shaved head, he is known for music videos in which he deconstructs and parodies popular songs. This includes his most successful video from 2019.
What kind of video was it? In 2019, American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish had a huge hit with her song “Bad Guy” and the accompanying music video. Seth Everman then released his parody.
The video is only 46 seconds long and shows the musician with a wig, recreating the sound of “Bad Guy” using everyday objects (and his keyboard). Alongside this, he wrote a comment under Billie Eilish’s music video: “I’m the bald guy”.
Both the video and the comment were a success: the video received over 92 million views, and the comment is considered the most liked comment on YouTube with 3.2 million upvotes (via youtube.fandom). We have embedded the video for you here:
92 million views, but hardly any money
How much did the YouTuber earn? In a video from January 8, Seth Everman shared some statistics about his most successful video. He looked at which demographic groups it was particularly popular among and where his viewers came from.
You can watch the entire video, including all statistics, here in English.
Afterward, he shared how much the video brought him. A total of $31,410 with the clip. That’s a decent amount at first glance, but it relates to the entire period since its release – so more than 3 years now.
Of these $31,000, around $11,000 came from YouTube’s “Premium” program, while advertising only brought in about $20,000. The musician received approximately 33 cents per 1,000 views.
This seems unfair to Seth Everman: after all, just as many people watch the Super Bowl as his video, but a 30-second commercial during the football event costs more than $5 million.
The analysis should surpass the original
What is the reason for this? The CPM indicates how much a content creator earns per 1,000 views from ads on YouTube. This means that even if two videos have the same number of views, their creators’ earnings can differ significantly.
Once that value is low, it’s hard to get it back up. For example, German content creator Maximilian “Trymacs” Stemmler has this problem. On his main channel, he only receives €2.80 for every 1,000 clicks, while his second channel has significantly fewer clicks, but each 1,000 clicks is worth €4.60.
Another aspect is that the video, being just 46 seconds long, is too short, and YouTube generally prefers longer videos. The longer a video, the more ads can be placed on it. This means that a bad 8-minute video could potentially earn significantly more than his most popular video.
What can be done about this? The musician explains that videos on financial topics often have significantly higher CPMs, which can be as high as $30. After all, his video is about ad revenue, which is finance.
He calls on his viewers to leave comments on financial topics to make YouTube increase his CPM. With over 12 minutes, the analysis video is also significantly longer than the original. Whether the plan works remains to be seen.
Content creators also face similar problems when their content is used by larger streamers as the basis for so-called reactions:
Twitch streamers earn money by reacting to good content from others – A YouTuber demands his share
