It’s amazing to think that as long as the internet’s been around, people still can’t figure out how to make a dollar off it. And apparently YouTube, one of my favorite websites of all time, can’t make a profit either.
According to BGR, YouTube is the most popular website on earth, and it’s not making a profit. The Wall Street Journal tells us that YouTube made a billion last year, $3 billion in 2013, and it contributed to 6% of Google’s overall sales in ’14. “After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is roughly break-even,” the Journal continues.
How is this possible? How can you make that kind of money and not make a few bucks? Well, these reports tell us that most of the videos that people check out on YouTube are from embedded links, and BGR tells us, “Google has been trying for some time now to transform YouTube into a site people will visit completely unprompted…doing so has been an uphill battle for the search giant.”
Interestingly enough, this news comes as YouTube turns ten years old, and as a huge YouTube fan, it was one of those revelations I still love to this day. Like the internet itself, when I discovered YouTube, my reaction was, where has this been all my life? Whether it makes a nickel or not, I’m very glad it’s here.
