Create. Create, Create! That’s the mantra everyone seems to be chanting, as we witness an upheaval of content creators popping up across the country. With so many rising Pakistani YouTube stars, the notion that creating, engaging and relevant content will make you large chunks of money, appears to be a well-settled assumption. Countless success stories of virtual nobodies making it to the big leagues have evoked aspirations nation-wide.

Several YouTube stars such as Irfan Junejo, Mooro, Junaid Akram and Azad Chaiwala have made communities of loyal followers by creating educational, entertaining and engaging content. It is the loyalty, attention and constant engagement of their ever-growing communities which assures a comfortable pay-check.

Unfortunately, more often than not – an aspiring creator will pick up a camera, start recording, editing and uploading videos on YouTube. After months of waiting, and pushing their channel across every other social digital platform, perhaps the content creator will gain enough subscribers and watch hours to become eligible for monetisation (YouTube’s current benchmark is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours). However a few months pass and the creator realises that, “this isn’t making as much money as we thought it would.”

This is primarily because we fail to factor in the fact that, that YouTube does not pay content creators for uploading videos on the platform, it pays them a percentage of the ad revenue they generate for showing commercials on those videos. While more views on a video might increase your chance of making more money, the relation certainly isn’t concrete. This is because advertisers do not get billed on YouTube unless a user watches the ad in full or clicks on the action button. Therefore, if viewers are not doing either of those two things on a daily basis, chances of making a decent amount of money are very slim.

The percentage can also vary depending on factors such as the source of traffic (the viewers landing on your videos through search or social media) and the type of content i.e some categories offer lower CPM (cost per million impressions) than others.

Just like a middleman would, YouTube takes away about 40 to 60 percent of the ad revenue from ads shown on your videos. This percentage varies based on the aforementioned factors but it’s important for us to note that it is a large chunk of potential income.

Having said that, it’s not all so bad since the popularity content creators gain, by using generic and popular platforms help create various avenues of direct income from collaborations, PR activities and endorsements.

Therefore, the potential to earn is not defined entirely by how many subscribers or views the channel has but also by the niche it caters to, the level of engagement and varied streams of revenue such as merchandising, promoting brands, reviewing products etc.

The long-term catch

While YouTube is a solid platform for content creators to begin their digital entertainment journey, the end goal is to acquire more digital real-estate. In layman terms, it only makes sense to take steps that would increase your share of revenue generated from your videos. One way to do that is to create, owned digital spaces such as Video On Demand (VOD) websites where audiences can either be served with ads delivered directly through the content creator or pay for ad-free experiences.

This strategy works particularly well for content creators teaching skills. Such digital property not only helps the individual but also positively impacts the entire industry through smoother viewer experiences, negotiable ad placements and ultimately better return on investments.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani digital space leaves much to be desired in the context of facilitating the independence of content creators. Another YouTube ban by the government could mean a drought.

There is so much room for entrepreneurs and content creators to initiate such digital platforms. The rise of local VOD and streaming platforms from Telecoms indicates that the industry has definitely taken note of this dependency. Original content on these platforms could go a long way in providing more baskets for content creators to put their eggs in.

While local platforms would also most likely share a percentage of the ad revenue any content creator makes, monetising on local platforms has positive implications for the future of content creators for several reasons. First, local platforms would be more responsive to share negotiations compared to platforms that are based out of the country. Second, the advertising spend would remain in the country and circulate within the industry, in turn improving the quality of content and media delivery.

The trouble with such platforms however is that many content creators would likely feel restricted in applying their creative liberty. A major reason for that is application of similar censorship policies for mainstream and digital mediums despite the clear contextual differences. Another dilemma with local applications is the culture of incentivised downloads which means that most users only downloaded the app for a certain reward and so spends very little time actually watching the content if not deleting it immediately.

In order to help grow Pakistan’s digital economy and propel it to a stage where it is producing global content – creators, platforms and the government must create a way forward which helps keep profits within the country and provide independent growth.

The author was a   financial contributor for Forbes, and now works as a media strategist in Karachi