Wealth, youth, contempt and overtime: brilliance and misery of the 'youtubers', the idols of today's children

Patty Dragona (whose real last name is not public) writes the script for the next video that will be broadcast on her YouTube channel every morning, with almost six million subscribers.

In reality, he says, ideas come to him at different times of the day, and then he scripts, records, edits them (“the job that costs the most”) and promotes them through social networks.

Another thing is the live shows, which sometimes must be done at untimely hours, as a result of a large percentage of their followers coming from the other side of the pond.

Her case is special because, in the Top 50 ranking of Spanish youtubers with the most subscribers, Patty is one of the only two women, along with another Patricia, the tireless Patry Jordán.

"YouTube is a very macho community," he confesses to ICON, adding that other successful male colleagues, with whom he is related, "have always supported them more than me."

Since he started his channel in 2007, he has managed to impose himself in the virtual world through

(annotated recordings of his own video game games) creating content without interruption.

Later he transformed his style and opted for humorous videos, in the form of challenges,

or jokes, such as executing a scare with firecrackers or pretending to have slipped in the bathtub, including blood.

These recordings have amassed more than 780 million views.

Maybe 13 years ago Patty realized that the theme of

is one of the ones that attracts the most followers.

Currently, 25 of the highest paid 'youtubers' in the world are dedicated to this genre, only ahead of entertainment (with 72 'star' creators).

Other types of channels that are also successful on the platform are tutorials, humor, children's, education, music, technology and beauty content.

Despite the difficulties, Patty Dragona managed to carve a niche among

male

and currently has more subscribers than the entire population of Finland.

She spends about five hours a day recording, editing and publishing her videos, tasks that, for this young woman who started in the

world

with just turned 21, are part of her profession.

But does the platform really contribute enough money to be able to live on it, even make us millionaires?

Millionaire kids, twentysomethings with laborghinis

Some have succeeded, such as the popular Ryan Kaji (27.3 million subscribers), who, with only eight years and thanks to his videos unpacking toys, already monetizes 26 million dollars a year with his visits.

Or Anastasia Radzinskaya, the six-year-old Russian-American girl who has seduced the whole world with her children's content and today already has six channels of her own on the platform.

Born with cerebral palsy, her parents began posting videos to account for her speaking progress, and now she not only defends herself in front of the cameras as a seasoned actress, but also earns more than $ 400,000 a month, ranking No. 3 on the charts. 'youtubers' with the most economic benefits in the world.

There are many others, like David Dobrik, with 13 million followers and 24 years old, who starred in such surprising images as appearing in public with a Lamborghini valued at $ 219,000, a gift from a well-known sports brand.

In Spain it has also penetrated very deep, an example of this we have in the well-known 'youtuber' El Rubius, which ranks number six in the world in 2020. With 38 million loyal subscribers, this 30-year-old from Malaga (who is actually called Rubén ) could have spent years making about $ 204,400 per month.

The Rubius is, perhaps, the clearest Spanish reference for young people who have enriched themselves through the platform and not only is it one of the best paid in the world, but its fame has grown meteorically: it was the image of the advertising campaign of Fanta, he has appeared alongside Hollywood actors of the stature of Tessa Thompson, participated in promotions of films such as

or

, published a book (

, in 2014) that was number one in sales in Spain For eight weeks, he has his own comic (

) and has even been a character in a video game.

Are Anastasia, Ryan and Rubén exceptions?

It seems so, at least in these times.

Patty Dragona, meanwhile, acknowledges that in 2007 she used to receive "about 20,000 euros a month."

But that was before the platform established stricter criteria when it comes to making money from videos, such as increasing the minimum barrier to entering its partner program to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of annual viewing.

Perhaps due to this change in rules, the

barely monetizes a thousand euros at present.

And is it profitable?

"I set my schedule as I want, I don't have to move from home and I am my own boss, but as this continues to go down, it will go down for sure, I will leave the channel and return to my previous profession: tattoo artist", he explains.

In this network, which brings together 2 billion users worldwide and publishes about 500 hours of video per minute, it offers content for free, although saturated with advertising.

With as many

as types of people, our way of consuming content has changed, characterized by the urge to continuously jump from one video to another.

To the point: the numbers

With more and more users creating content on the Google platform, it is no longer enough to have a large community to obtain a good income, subscribed (in exchange for the channel's advertising) by YouTube itself.

In addition, the number of subscribers is not correlated to the amount of income: we found channels with fewer followers, such as that of the influencer Paula Gonu (1.57 million), earning about 14,000 euros per month, as she herself declared on her channel.

If there is one thing that most agree, it is that the main income actually comes from contracts with outside companies.

Currently, to monetize the ads that YouTube puts on your videos, the channel must have 4,000 hours of playback and at least 1,000 subscribers.

A 'youtuber' with 2 million followers (higher than those of the musical group La oreja de Van Gogh, for example), who offers an average of 2 or 3 weekly videos and more than 100,000 visits in each one, You could receive an income ranging between 1,000 and 3,000 euros.

"Depending on the number of advertisers who are interested in your topic, as well as the number of ads you decide to insert in your videos," says Marisa Oliver, director of the influencer agency Hamelin Agency.

"From there,

are usually invited to give talks, participate in round tables or events and it is common for publishers to offer to write a book because they know they are going to do their own promotion," he adds.

One of the

best known and controversial

on the Spanish scene, Dalas Review, with 9.84 million subscribers, claims that "

we

should stop calling ourselves as such, because the platform does a nefarious job and does not treat creators well" .

In statements to ICON, he defines it as “an absolute monopoly with abusive policies.

YouTube is like a boss who never talks to you, whom you've never seen and who makes decisions without communicating anything to you ”.

Despite this, he acknowledges that "there are people making a lot of money" through this social network.

His perception, however, is radically opposite to that of the brothers who have become the musical success of the moment among teenagers: Adexe and Nau.

With 11.3 million followers and a style that combines reggaeton and hip hop, they are a clear example of two singers who have used the platform to jump to fame.

“We owe it all to YouTube;

if it didn't exist, we might not have gotten this far ”, they acknowledge before ICON.

Its success was dizzying since its first version, in 2015, of the song

.

These Canarian students (Adexe is in the 4th year of ESO and Nauzet started Philosophy on September 1) suddenly saw themselves on tour in various countries of the world, signing albums in front of crowds or received with fervor by thousands of fans in places like Mexico.

They have become great idols, exponents of a new digital culture and one of the leaders of the musical revolution of their generation.

The Sony Corporation company describes it this way: "The impact that Adexe and Nau's music has had on YouTube is the greatest that a Spanish artist has achieved in history."

Only through the video platform, according to reports, they enter about 30,000 euros per month on average, although it is easy to assume that most of it comes from their tours, concerts and contracts with other brands.

What is clear is that in Spain the success of the platform has been devastating for years: at the end of 2015, ten years after its birth, there were already in our country more than one hundred

with more than one million subscribers.

According to official YouTube data provided to Verne, El Rubius reached ten million subscribers in record time (to put us in context, Lady Gaga had half), surpassing accounts such as Barça, Real Madrid and most of the actors and actresses on the international scene.

At present, some of the

most famous

are Vegetta777 (31.6 million followers), with his videos about Minecraft;

the

AuronPlay (26.2 million), Las Ratitas (21.4 million) with children's themes, the humor and games channel of El Churches (6.49 million), the also classic of the

world

TheGrefg (15.6 million ) or the peculiar satirical videos, with a black humor, by Coruña Wismichu (9.38 million).

They all have something in common, apart from being dedicated to posting videos on the Google platform and earning considerably higher income than the average for people their age: they are very young.

Some even teenagers.

In fact, many have never worked in anything else before.

Many others, such as the

19-year-old fashionable

Marta Díaz, have confessed to having put aside their studies to dedicate themselves to the channel.

"It's a mistake," says Patty Dragona.

“Monetizing visits on the platform is a practice that is going to be increasingly difficult.

If you don't know how to do anything else or have prepared yourself, what are you going to put on your resume when this is over and you have to look for work, like everyone else?

Children no longer want to be singers or astronauts, but 'youtubers'

Nobody knows if this phenomenon is doomed to disappear, or when it will.

But today it remains enormously influential, with figures still stratospheric.

Despite the strong competition (gamers are creating more and more communities on Twitch), neither Vimeo nor Dailymotion, nor even Netflix ever managed to catch up with this video giant, the second most visited website in the world only behind Google, according to Alexa.

Despite the fact that it is a social network also used by veterans (51% of the population over 75 years of age view their videos), it is mainly aimed at the youth sector.

90% of the age group between 11 and 15 years old consume its contents.

Their influence is such that in a recent survey carried out by

, which takes as a sample boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 17, half of them expressed their willingness to want to be 'youtubers' when they were older.

In another survey by consulting firm Harris Poll, this calling is three times that of astronauts or even music stars.

Can we say that El Rubius exerts a greater influence on Generation Z than Neil Armstrong had on children of the seventies?

Possibly yes.

These are very young audiences who have grown up surrounded by screens, listening for hours to this type of public figures, watching content that has not been previously reviewed by their parents, due to the difficulty of controlling them.

This reality is a source of concern and generates a heated debate between the convenience of community self-management and the supervision of content by the platforms themselves.

The 'youtubers' have been clear references of youth culture for years, sometimes over teachers or family members.

Although the massive social network tries to put restrictions, it is not difficult for any child to find violent or sexually charged content.

“As of today, YouTube demonetizes your video - that is, the creator does not charge for it - the moment you swear, but they are monetizing very sexual video clips.

There is a very strong double standard, ”complains Dalas Review.

This fact has contributed to the demonization of the platform by some groups.

Is it really as dangerous for the little ones as you think?

"Traditionally, education assumed that the main learning spaces were the school and the family, but now the contemporary situation has brought us closer to new figures in society who influence close development, especially of the youngest," he explains to ICON the sociologist specialized in education from the University of Chile, Víctor Orellana.

For him, YouTube in particular also provides educational benefits.

“It is a space for global cultural search and creation.

This cosmopolitanism brings children closer to many languages ​​and accents, which has a positive effect: it has been shown that people with access to different languages ​​and registers develop greater faculties to relate different things ”.

But, at the same time, there is a warning: "This fact carries a responsibility: it is necessary to protect, more and more, the contents that boys and girls consume and guarantee that they are adequate and edifying for their development."

A real challenge that society faces, because how is it possible to review the volume of content created every day and by so many people?

The democratization of content creation, the fact that everyone can upload, in seconds, a video to their channel is precisely the most advantageous and, at the same time, the most dangerous of the YouTube effect.

There is a certain desire among teenagers to "get rich" on YouTube, although some voices warn that fame is fleeting or that this devastating phenomenon will eventually lose influence.

"The universality of its uses makes it very difficult for the platform to decay," they explain from the Hamelin agency.

“I don't think it will go away any time soon.

It is part of the new technologies and it is the new entertainment ", says Dalas Review who confesses that, for his part, he plans to leave it very soon to" set up a laboratory that discovers immortality. "

To be a good

need to have knowledge about scriptwriting, use of cameras and lighting equipment, editing software, personal image, oral communication skills, decoration of spaces and social networks, among other things.

Marisa Oliver introduces us to the day-to-day life of her influencer agency: “In general, most

don't improvise, they usually spend a whole morning, even a whole day, preparing the script for a video.

If you want to include editing effects in your pieces, you can spend several days recording and editing them.

The video blogs in which the

records a day of his life do not have complexity at the pre-production level, but they do have editing, since they have to compress many hours of recording in just 15 minutes ”.

From this type of agencies they give representation support to creators, especially in the face of the challenge of implementing advertising campaigns within the videos, so that it is as natural as possible and does not disturb the followers.

Even though it's losing influence and harder to make money than it was a decade ago, it's still a booming occupation.

There are more and more businesses related to the sector, there are already specific job agencies for

and schools that offer specialized training to dedicate themselves to it, such as the Postgraduate course in Professional Influencer offered by IEBS School.

But is it a profession that you would like for a child?

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