Forbes Spain
Nothing personal, just business.
When YouTube announced in September that it would allow video creators to make money from Shorts, its TikTok clone, creators were intrigued. Jaeki Cho of Righteous Eats, a foodie account that features New York City restaurants owned by people of color, was so drawn to it that he posted a video on TikTok. promising that he would publish all of his content (in premium mode) on Shorts before any other platform.
"As much as I love TikTok, monetization only goes so far. However, YouTube is implementing that part of the game," Cho said in the video. "That's why being a YouTuber is a really established job."
Their goal was to grow the Righteous Eats YouTube channel before YouTube begins applying a 45% revenue share to Shorts creators early next year. At the time, the channel, which currently has 137,000 TikTok followers, had only 283 subscribers on YouTube. Post content exclusively to Shorts for 24 hours before uploading it to TikTok and Instagram Reels helped modestly grow the YouTube channel, which now has just under 2,000 subscribers.
But the experiment was short-lived. The channel only aired its content on YouTube Shorts for one or two weeks because the platform is very "cumbersome and difficult to use," Brian Lee, commercial director of Righteous Eats, explained in an interview. "The main impediment to continuing to do so is that the tool itself is bad," Lee explains, citing the difficulties of programming and music features. "The return on investment isn't there right now."
The Righteous Eats experience underscores a common sentiment among creators regarding YouTube Shorts. In the age of TikTok—with all its issues, such as its unknown black-box algorithm, its alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and its constant threats of being banned by the United States— YouTube is a tempting opportunity, but fraught with practical obstacles.
Creators complain that success and virality on TikTok are inconsistent and that it is difficult to make money on the platform, as most of the Revenue opportunities come from brand partnerships and sponsorships. For its part, the YouTube Partner Program has allowed creators to share revenue from video advertising for 15 years. Shorts will join the Partner Program in early 2023, Although the company hasn't publicly announced an exact date, YouTube Shorts is still a platform in purgatory until then.
Creators around the world are talking about Shorts monetization—potentially a Big Bang moment on the horizon—and their excitement is palpable. But when it comes to short-form video, YouTube, the platform with the longest track record between TikTok and Instagram, remains a platform with potential for now.
YouTube has a lot at stake in this battle, as it could one day lose its crown of being the world's largest video platform. Children and teenagers spend more time watching videos on TikTok than on YouTube, according to data from the technology company Qustodio, which used its software parental control to analyze the use of 400,000 families. Last year, young people around the world spent 56 minutes a day on YouTube, compared to 91 minutes on TikTok.
Faced with this competition, to YouTube likes to promote the rise of 'multi-format' creators, That is, those who do all kinds of things and publish shorts, traditional long-form videos, and occasional live videos. YouTube says that more and more creators are being seduced by shorts. and use them as a gateway to longer videos (and the advertising revenue that comes with it). However, YouTube declined to provide any data or figures to support this claim.
Leading the charge in attracting creators is someone from behind enemy lines. Kevin Ferguson, YouTube's director of operations and partnerships for Shorts, previously worked for Musical.ly, the app that eventually became TikTok. Ferguson was the app's head of North America. when it was acquired by the Chinese technology company ByteDance.
"TikTok -ByteDance- is an incredibly agile company that moves fast and isn't afraid to take risks," Ferguson told FORBES in an interview, when asked what the two platforms could learn from each other. “What we can learn from TikTok—and what we’re learning—is speed of execution.”
"What I think TikTok can learn from Shorts, and YouTube specifically, is that creators come first," Ferguson continued, pointing to the upcoming revenue share for Shorts. "Creators are the centerpiece."
YouTube first launched Shorts in September 2020 in India. as a beta test. The product took off immediately, filling a void among the country's billion people after the TikTok ban. Six months later, YouTube launched Shorts in the United States.
Now, Shorts has 1.5 billion monthly viewers - more than TikTok, with 1 billion a month - and receives 30 billion views a day. In October, Meta said on an earnings call that Reels receives 140 billion "views" a day across Instagram and Facebook, (which includes views when videos auto-start, as well as when someone clicks on a video). click in play).
TikTok did not respond to questions about daily views. But unlike the rest of YouTube, which often boasts that people watch more than a billion hours of video a day,, the company does not disclose viewing time figures for Shorts.
In modern Silicon Valley, tech companies aren't shy about ripping each other off. When Snapchat invented Stories in 2013, the addictive feature that lets you post a series of photos and videos that self-destruct after 24 hours, Mark Zuckerberg He called it a smart “format” again and cloned it for Instagram.
Now, every company, from Twitter and LinkedIn to Signal and WhatsApp, has experimented with their version of Stories. But while Instagram was able to move into Snapchat's territory, no short-form video product has been able to replicate the cultural power of TikTok. Instagram has tried to force users to watch Reels with constant alerts, but its efforts have failed to dethrone its main competitor.
Ferguson defends Shorts as more than a clone. "As someone who came from TikTok, if this were just a copycat product—there are several of us who work at TikTok who work here—I'm excited about the fact that we can give short video creators something to watch." a set of tools that is only possible on a platform like YouTube"He said, citing the site's long history of helping content creators make money. (He declined to say how many TikTok alumni work at YouTube.)
Milad Mirg, a 23-year-old former Vine creator who rose to fame on TikTok for posting videos of himself making sandwiches at his parents' Subway, He claims that YouTube is the only platform that allows him to make a living as a creator. He says he makes "a couple thousand dollars a month" from the YouTube Shorts Fund, a bonus the platform pays creators each month from a $100 million fund. But he says the real money is in long-form videos: A traditional YouTube video with a million views earns you the same amount of money as Shorts' monthly bonus.
Kat Buno, a 21-year-old creator with 5.4 million subscribers on YouTube, returned to the platform earlier this year after an eight-year hiatus from posting videos. unboxing and gaming content. This time she opted for shorts, as it was easier for her to create and edit content from her mobile phone. Now she posts videos of couples' challenges and other trends. For her, Shorts is a "long-term investment." "So I'm building that audience for when it becomes monetized."
Even so, Creators who primarily post on YouTube say they want more from Shorts. Mirg says he wants a better user interface. Buno would like better editing tools because the current ones are "really bad," he says. There aren't many options and they're confusing, which is why he edits with Final Cut Pro.
YouTube spokeswoman Susan Cadrecha said the company is gathering feedback from creators and said its approach to product development is "iterative." «Improving and expanding the creation tools for Shorts will continue to be a central focus for us in 2023 and beyond," he explained in a statement.
Meanwhile, YouTube continues to push the idea of the "multi-format" creator. The company claims that accounts that post both short films and traditional videos on YouTube have longer viewing times and a higher number of subscribers than channels that only upload long-form videos.
Anecdotally, creators have embraced the "multi-format" approach. Ahead of the US midterm elections, Cho and the Righteous Eats team received an unexpected email. The office of Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who represents a New York City district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, contacted him because they wanted to record a food crawl through Queens with the vloggers. It would be one of the only promotional appearances he would make before that all-important vote. (He also participated in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert).
Cho and AOC ate tamales at Evelia's in Corona, Queens. On TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, the video is just over a minute long. In the video, Cho talks about his story as an immigrant and his struggles to obtain a green card. The video ends with an ad advertising the longer version of the video on YouTube, a clip six-minute video that includes interviews with the congresswoman and the restaurant owner, Evelia Coyoyzi.
It was always part of the plan to publish a clip short and long, Lee said, wanting to get the most out of the footage. “Realizing that we have very limited resources right now, we wanted to make the most of the money,” he explained.
(Still, Righteous Eats primarily gets its views on TikTok: the clip got almost 200,000 views on TikTok, while the Shorts version got around 2,100. The clip The longest YouTube video got even fewer views at 1,300.
Mirg, which has 4.57 million subscribers, uses the same strategy. He says he uses shorts as his main format, and then expands on them with longer cuts published as traditional YouTube videos. For example, in September, he published a short film in which he attempts to make the world's most expensive sandwich with A5 Japanese wagyu beef, lobster, caviar, and gold flakes. The longer version, which he also mocked in the short film, includes jokes and outtakes. The short version has 3.8 million views, while the longer version only 183,000.
Not everyone has the same opinion. Buno believes that shorts and longer videos should be more differentiated. Instead of using longer posts as a sort of director's cut platform, She will be posting all-new content on YouTube, such as Q&A themed videos and other videos where people can “see a little more of my personality.”
However, YouTube's commitment to long videos shows that Traditional videos remain the platform's bread and butter, and that Shorts isn't yet ready for primetime in the eyes of some creators. Still, video creators say it's worth building a business on YouTube, especially when success on TikTok can be so short-lived.
"TikTok gets you high", said Cho, host of Righteous Eats, in an interview, adding that creators often see an initial surge of engagement and then “constantly try to chase it.”For YouTube, you have to be more dedicated. YouTube is like learning a martial art.
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