Ca$h Tube

Small incentive: Adam Tambakau is driven by his passion for making videos and the money he makes from it is merely a small incentive.

YouTube’s Partner Program allows users to show off their talents and earn a tidy sum but some are happy to do it for the love of it.

WHEN there’s nothing good on the tube, there is always Google’s YouTube — the online video-sharing site where you can be entertained by anything from flying rainbow cats to talented musicians.

According to YouTube’s own ­statistics, since it went live in 2006 about 100 hours of video have been uploaded every minute to the site. In a month it gets about a billion unique visitors and they spend a total of six billion hours watching videos. Talk about a captive ­audience.

And where there is a captive audience, there will be plenty of ­opportunities for people to show off their talents and perhaps also make money on the side.

Enter the YouTube Partner Program — it lets content creators participate in a revenue sharing model with the site by running its ads.

YouTube pays out millions of ­dollars every year to people through the Partner Program, says Zeffri Yusof, Google head of ­communications and public affairs for Malaysia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

“Globally there are more than one million channels earning ­revenue through the YouTube Partner Program and thousands of channels are getting six-figure income a year,” he says.

In fact, some have become YouTube celebrities and one such person is Natalie Tran, a Vietnamese-Australian who made about US$100,000 (RM320,000) in 2009 from posting videos on YouTube, according to an Australian daily.

Tran has also attracted over a million subscribers thanks to her quirky sense of humour and wit.

Other notable names include Ryan Higa of NigaHiga and Shane Dawson fame — they have ­reportedly raked in just a little more than Tran. Higa earned about US$151,000 (RM483,200) and Dawson made about US$315,000 (RM1mil) in the same year.

Earning money on YouTube may sound like an easy venture — you show off your talents to the world, gain subscribers along the way and make money from ads — but the reality is a little different.

While there is a possibility of making money on YouTube through the Partner Program, only a small number make big bucks, according to International Business Times reporter, Zoey Mintz, who wrote a piece on the same subject.

“For a vast majority, it’s like a part-time thing to get their brand out there,” she said in an interview with IBT video arm, IBTimes TV.

Show your skills

Although many users are not earning big bucks, they are pretty happy to have a channel to show off their love for filmmaking. Or maybe they just believe in the saying “if you choose love, wealth and health will follow.”

One of the more well-known names in the local YouTube ­celebrity circles is Dan Khoo of DanKhoo Productions.

The 27-year-old economics ­graduate considers creating and posting videos his full-time job now. His endeavours have paid off but he isn’t comfortable with ­disclosing the amount he has made thus far.

“Let’s just say it has been a good source of income and I have made enough to survive,” Khoo says.

If the upgrade of his equipment is anything to go by then he has ­nothing to worry about — when he first started making videos, Khoo relied on a Canon 60D but now he uses a full-frame Canon 6D.

New outlook: Dan Khoo of DanKhoo productions has made content creation his full-time job even though he studied for something entirely different.

Khoo says he always imagined himself as a sort of film director and started to make videos for fun.

“With a degree in economics, my family expected me to work in a bank or do something in the field of economics but I wanted to do this. They were shocked at first but they’re okay with my decision now,” he says.

He didn’t expect his channel to get many subscribers when he started out in 2011. Khoo says he would have been happy if he got 100 subscribers. He now has about 64,000 subscribers and hopes to hit 100,000 in the near future.

The secret behind the rising number of subscribers, he says, is all about giving the audience what they want and it is evident from the number of views he receives for the videos he uploads.

“My older videos revolved around the theme of love but the current ones have a more comedic flavour. I get more views with comedy and I guess people just want to laugh,” he says.

For Khoo this is just the ­beginning as he plans to do YouTube videos for as long as he can.

Entertain and earn

Unlike Khoo, 29-year old spa manager, Adam Tambakau went down a slightly different path when he started putting up content on YouTube around 2006.

Initially, the aspiring musician just wanted to learn how to play an instrument on YouTube and posted videos of songs he was learning to play.

“I was living in Melbourne at the time and I couldn’t afford music ­lessons because they were too expensive. So I posted my videos to learn from the feedback I got from my viewers,” he says.

It was a thirst for knowledge that got him started and he knew he wouldn’t be able to make any money from the cover songs he posted, as YouTube requires original content to make money from the Partner Program.

But soon he started gaining loyal fans who would wait for his new videos to be posted — that’s when he decided to carve out some of his time into creating original videos for YouTube.

He spent a little more than a year perfecting his art and when he felt that a video is flawed because of the editing or storytelling, he would take it down.

It wasn’t until last year that Tambakau had the confidence to put up his short films on YouTube and since then he has attracted over 4,000 subscribers.

In his videos he shares his musical talents, opinions on culture and current issues, and talks about his “annoying” sisters (he has three).

Like Khoo, Tambakau isn’t really taken in by the prospect of gaining profit from his YouTube videos. To him, it is merely a small incentive to get him to do what he enjoys most — making fun content.

“It’s nothing to boast about unless you have millions of followers,” he says. He has so far made about RM300 from the 70-odd videos he has created.

One of his popular works is titled How To Use Bah, a tutorial on the proper usage of the expression ­widely used in Sabah and Sarawak. At the time of this interview, the video has been watched 75,000 times.

But for those who are interested in making a few extra bucks, Tambakau says that in order to profit from YouTube videos, the content needs to be original.

Tambakau also says relatable content will help drive up ­subscription numbers.

“You need to find something that people can relate to rather than only what you find exciting. That’s no big secret,” he says.

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