These are some of my Youtube channel numbers. With low budget indie movies, I know I would never get these many eyeballs through conventional distribution, (which I also do in addition to the channel). I think this is the way to go; treating a youtube channel as if it was a TV channel. However, some folks will say "youtube views don't count". Any opinions?
But did they make any money? Or: How many views do you have to get to get paid anything, and how much is that? In other words: What the point of views for your film when you're not making any or pennies from all the views?
It's a revolving door, money comes in and out, and I get to break even almost all the time. The revenue share from google is very bad, no doubt about it; but so is conventional distribution for low budget films. Anyone who's honest will tell you that. Of course, bluffing exists. As well as I could lie and say I'm making tons of money with all those millions of views, many will for sure lie and say they're making good money with their DVD releases. I do both; most movies you see in my channel have been in the market for years, two of them with Warner Bros Independent. The conventional model is equally lousy. The times of advance money at the moment of signing a contract are long gone, and residuals are plagued with what everybody knows as "Hollywood accounting", meaning overblown marketing budgets to justify not giving the producers any money or very little. So the question that you stated actually should be: "what's the point of views vs conventional, if none of them will bring in good cash"? Then the answer is: Is there a point in making movies if you are not getting rich off of it? The answer to that depends on each individual and their assessment of what makes them happy or what is true success. If you ask almost any filmmaker at any age, they will tell you that what they want the most is to be able to make movie after movie. DVD, four-walling, TV, and now also youtube are different venues to keep doing what we love.