A new report says Canada's YouTube creator ecosystem supported 34,600 full-time equivalent jobs, and 20 of those were by Cambridge-based YouTube creator, Hacksmith Industries.
The new research comes from a recent YouTube impact report which estimates that the country's YouTube creator ecosystem directly contributed $1.1 billion to Canada's GDP last year.
Now in its tenth year creating videos for YouTube, Hacksmith Industries, founded by James Hobson, is a multi-million dollar company.
Hobson originally started making videos alone in his garage in 2012 and quit his job to go full-time with it. His goals when he first started were to own his own workshop and be able to make what he wants whenever he wants.
Hacksmith Industries takes fictional ideas or gadgets and brings them to life in a working prototype for which they gained popularity for. One of their most popular videos is about a prototype of a lightsaber from Star Wars, which has 36 million views.
"We're putting money right back into the economy and the majority of our income does actually come from the US and international advertisers, so, it does feel very positive to be able to support local and earn international and be able to bring it all together," Hobson said in an interview with CambridgeToday.
The channel now has 12.8 million subscribers. Hobson grew the YouTube channel, from a team of one to a team of 20 that includes three co-op students.
They recently were able to purchase a new workshop in Cambridge, using revenue they earned from their YouTube channel.
"It's not a very typical way of making money; it's not like building a product and selling that product. It’s building one of those projects and then making lots and lots and lots of money off that one prototype in videos and advertising," he said. "It also feels more efficient too."
"We're not using many resources to earn income and grow the economy. A fraction of the materials are coming in, we're building just one product, we make a video about it but then that video could be making more money than a thousand items. We're not being wasteful, we're keeping it all together."
The revenue coming in from the channel has allowed them to hire more people and keep making bigger projects, like the gigantic Thor hammer they recently completed.
Hobson continues to pump the revenue back into the business, wanting to keep expanding further into newer ideas.
The revenue generated from YouTube can be tricky to calculate, Hobson said. It's not as simple as pay per view. Instead, they get paid per view with an ad attached.
The tipping point for Hobson was going from 100,000 subscribers to 500,000 subscribers and when the view count on Hacksmith Industries videos would get hundreds of thousands of views.
"If you make a million viewed video, you make two to five thousand dollars."
Hobson mentioned income varies based on the YouTube channel, location in the video, audience location, content with the video, country paying for the ad and what category the video or channel falls into.
There are also various other ways of making revenue off YouTube channels such as memberships to the channel or sponsorships put within videos.
"If I was a solo YouTuber I might be crazy rich but I might not have attained this kind of success if I didn’t grow a team to help me make bigger projects and what not."
The goal is for Hacksmith Industries to become self-sustainable so Hobson won't have to work as much as he currently does. He is looking to keep expanding, growing the company and having different revenue streams.
There are different milestones YouTube creators have to achieve in order to get any revenue from their channel. The first is to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 valid public watch hours.
A local channel looking forward to hitting that milestone soon is Amazing Cambridge, Ontario.
Ingrid Talpak takes people along the city streets, trails and inside shops to see all of what Cambridge has to offer.
Her travel and tourism YouTube channel was created less than a year ago, out of a love for the city she lives in.
“I wanted people to know how amazing Cambridge was," Talpak said. "There is so much history, so many beautiful buildings here, so many shops, people, events that are happening.”
Having been in Cambridge for over 30 years now, Talpak said many people she meets still don’t know where to go or what to do in Cambridge so they still venture out to Toronto. She wanted to create videos that give them reasons to explore their own city more.
Her channel has yet to see any revenue but she hopes to expand into other avenues to make money with the channel while waiting to hit the first milestone.
The time it takes her to film each video varies. Her recent video about trails in Cambridge took two hours to film and about four to edit the video. Talpak mentioned her favourite ones to film are the more complex videos that take up more time.
Most of the enjoyment comes from chatting with shop owners and being able to get to know more of the people around the city through making her videos.
"My biggest thrill is when I put out a video and people come up to me and say ‘I had no idea that was there, I didn’t know we did that or you could buy that here.'"
