Source: Tubemogul

Arguably the above mentioned people are not household celebrities like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, but if you look at their audience numbers and their age you would be impressed.  The chart to your left displays some of the most viewed and subscribed to YouTube partners. For those who don’t know a YouTube partner is a video producer that uploads videos to YouTube and gets paid for it.  Solid little gig.  Let’s put it in a little equation for you: little production cost + small overhead (1 person generally) + multi million dollar employer (Google) + 100 000 subscribers = lots of views and 1 nice paycheck.   

Essentially, what these YouTube partners have going for them is their very own television station.  Their personalities come out in full and they get paid to film whatever they want.  Traditional television takes a lot to set up and involves a lot of risk in the hopes of building an audience and getting advertisers to pay attention.  Google on the other hand doesn’t mind cutting a check every month to people who have gained popularity simply by filming and publishing a large aspect of their life. 
 
There are a couple great features to this new model for media that no other medium has replicated.  When ShayCarl or CharlesTrippy posts a video, it’s not a 22-minute event broken up with ads.  Instead its quick slap in the face of entertainment that is available for free anytime you want.  So when a viewer searching the keywords for a video ends up watching it a year after its original posting date it still counts as a view and well more money.  Television shows on the other hand make their money while their on air; YouTube videos make their money indefinitely. 
 
The Internet will help discover celebrities like no other talent agent in the world as it already has.  This is the reason Jon Lajoie is mentioned  at the beginning of this article.  Just listen to Regular Everyday Normal Guy and you will see why YouTube is the worlds largest talent pool.  The song takes everything a rap video promotes and spins it on its head while keeping to the style.  Brilliantly original. 
 
If you haven’t heard of the above mentionedpeople maybe it’s because you have never searched around on YouTube or maybe you don’t like the webcam style of videos.  But if you ever take the time to look around the community on YouTube you will start to notice some people coming up over and over.

One thing is for sure though, the traffic stats for YouTube are increasing not decreasing and that my friend is what we call a movement – not a fad.  You write us the day you see YouTube stats start going down consecutively and we will rewrite this article.  Until then pay attention to the name after the slash.  Cheers!

The AV Team