On January 30, 2009, there was a video of a kid after dentist posted on YouTube. A really funny video.
That video turned viral. It also turned into gold for its creators. $150k worth of it.
You probably know which video it is by now, right? It’s David After Dentist.
It’s no surprise to me that viral videos can make money. Lots of money. But making $150k with a single video is a pretty impressive feat. I mean, that’s probably what the average Chinese family earns in 10 years of hard work.
The income breakdown for the video is divided into 2 main categories: $100,000 from the advertisements YouTube served with the video, and the rest from licensing & merchandise.
If you’re asking yourself “but how did they make money with YouTube?” the answer is simple: YouTube has a partnership program that’s available for creators of original content (youtube.com/partners). Once accepted into the partner program, the partner videos are served with relevant advertisements and the revenue is then shared between YouTube and the content creator. It’s that simple.
But back to the amount earned by this video, it made me go wow. It will probably make you go wow too.
