Why MrBeast Learned That Ads Are NOT The Way To Monetize For The Long Term

Published Aug 3, 2023, 11:00 AM

In episode #2525, we discuss the lessons learned by MrBeast on why ads are not the ideal long-term monetization strategy. Join us as we analyze the journey of MrBeast, a prominent YouTube personality known for his philanthropy and attention-grabbing stunts. Discover the drawbacks of relying solely on ads for revenue and the potential limitations in scalability and sustainability. We explore alternative monetization methods that content creators like MrBeast have adopted to build a thriving and lasting income stream. Whether you are a content creator, entrepreneur, or marketer, this episode offers valuable insights into crafting effective monetization strategies for long-term success. Tune in and learn from MrBeast's experiences to optimize your business content for growth and sustainability.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

  • [00:00] Today’s topic: Why MrBeast Learned That Ads Are NOT The Way To Monetize For The Long Term.
  • [00:20] How advertisers are making more money than you.
  • [01:10] An alternative to ad revenue: providing products and services.
  • [01:39] Why it is all about margins.
  • [02:35] Leading with the audience first.
  • [03:01] Short-term strategies for getting started.
  • [03:26] Interesting findings from the Linktree Creator Report. 
  • [04:00] A key aspect to keep in mind.
  • [04:20] That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe!

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All right, So here's why mister Beast learned that ads are not the way to monetize for the long term, so wanted to share. Actually, this was a podcast that I was watching, and he was talking about how he might get paid three four or five million dollars for a video, which is a lot of money, and he might get one hundred two hundred three hundred million views or so. And what he's realizing is for the two hundred three hundred four hundred million views. Just for some context here, the super Bowl gets about one hundred and fifteen million views or so, and his videos are getting three hundred four undred million. No, that's not apples to apples necessarily. We could talk about why that is in a second. But his justification is that he should be paid maybe ten million dollars per video or so, and he's realizing that brands aren't willing to pay that, and so if they're not willing to pay that, then he should start to think about his own brands, his own stuff, right, which is kind of what we talked about before when we talked about him advertising his own brand, Feastables in one of his videos, which is his yacht video, which is one of his all time best performers.

At the end of the day, someone's advertising on your guys's videos, your website, social media. Typically, if you continually get people to advertise, they're making more money from your audience than you are. The better option is to make money by selling your own products and services versus taking the other approach of just selling ads. And again, if you don't want to build your own product and service, nothing wrong with ads, but you'll make way more money from the concept of hey, let me go monetize a product and service versus selling other people's ads. And when people by adsering on a consistent basis, it's typically because they're making a profit.

Yep. Look, business is a game on margins, right, It's all about margins at the end of the day. And so if someone's running ads on your stuff, they're probably making three, five, ten x, maybe twenty x on their return and they're making a killing on it. Obviously they're investing because they think they're going to get a better return on their investment. And so when we have an enterprise like Microsoft advertised on this podcast as an example, their lifetime value of coustomers way hired. Our customers are going to stay for years and years and years. They just don't really care. And maybe that's why they're one of the easiest advertisers to work with, whereas when you work with I don't know. We'll just use them as an example right now, if you are, let's go back to mister Bees as an example. He's like, Okay, well, if I'm not going to make a lot of money from ads, then I'm just going to sell feastables. I'm going to sell new products because I have a mass market audience. I think he has over four hundred million subscribers across his channels. Well, then I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to take all the profits from that and just reinvest it into making the best videos again, which is his number one mission, right And you're seeing more and more creators do this. Now. We've talked about Logan Paul, we talked a lot about mister Bees. We've kind of done this to death a little bit, right, But I continue to think that this is where things are going. You lead with audience first and then you figure out the business model afterwards, and ads are a great way to get started. That's how a lot of these creators got started in the beginning, but it's not necessarily a way to build for the long term, especially if you want to have really big home runs.

Yeah, and if you can't figure out how to release a product in the short run, option is a take ad revenue in the short run and eventual transition, or a better option is take someone else's product and services, white label see what's working well with your audience. Once you find the right products and services that resonate really well, then go create your own products and services so you don't have to white label someone else's in your margin's increase. You know.

There's that we talked about this link Tree Creator report. If you can, you can google this, but link Tree Creator Report. It talked about how a lot of creators, well a lot of them have multiple different ways of monetizing. So ads is one. Affiliate products was the one that Neil just talked about, where you're promoting other people's products and then selling their own physical products, and then selling courses as well. So people that are full time creators, about thirteen percent of them actually make courses. And there's a handful of other things that you can You can sell a newsletter as well, you can sell sponsorships in your newsletter. You can sell a paid subscription to your newsletter as well, so there's a lot of different ways to do it. Here is when you're starting out focused on building a nice audience that loves you, that knows, likes and trusts you in the beginning, then you can think about the first monetization engine, and then you can start to compound for the long term. But we always like to say on this podcast it takes about three years to build something for the long term, and that means for building an audience or building a business. Yep.

So that's it for this episode. Make sure you rate review this podcast episode. We really appreciate it. We love those five star reviews. We hope you guys have a wonderful day and we'll see you tomorrow.

Goodbye.