The problem is that all of those accounts that don't earn money don't earn money because they get no views, because they make videos no one wants to watch. I don't know the exact statistics but a simple Google search says that 3% of videos on YouTube get 95% of the views. Remove the top 3% of creators, you remove 95% of views.

The top channels get all the views because they're the only ones making videos people want to watch, and they're monetized because making such content is really, really expensive.

The problem is that beyond creators with "hollywood-like budgets", even just making 1 good video a week is a full-time job. Most creators are not looking to get rich or get massive returns, they just want to survive and pay rent. Which means any channel of any value has to be able to generate at least few thousand dollars month.

About as likely as opening a grocery store where people can pay through voluntary donations.

I'm a professional YouTuber. The problem with a "donation" system is that, unlike something like tweets or even blog posts which are either free or low-cost to produce, high-quality video is really. expensive. to produce. And people just will not pay if they don't have to.

A good 20-minute video can easily cost 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor to produce. That is, a whole week of labor. And that's not counting expensive equipment, software, licenses, etc.

I cannot run a business on people deciding to give me money for nothing out of the goodness of their heart. And I am still a one-person business, imagine having 5 full time employees. Even YouTubers with millions of subscribers and mature audiences with disposable income often struggle to clear like $5K/month on Patreon. Which, for a multi-person business, is simply not enough. Meanwhile, that same creator might be pulling $20K/month through ads and a similar amount through sponsorships.

YouTube is more similar to Netflix and HBO than Twitter or Reddit. Yes, in theory anyone can upload to YouTube, but the majority of content that is actually watched is at this point produced by full-time creators, some of which are solo self-employed while others are at this point running whole media production companies. And those are the people you need to make a service succeed.

No one donates money. It doesn't happen. Conversion rates across the board are around 1%. And then of those donations, most are the lowest tier/lowest increment.

It's the most annoying and persistent counterpoint brought up in these discussions, but it has no grounding in reality. The most popular contingent of viewers are ad-supported, close behind are ad-blocking, then the last 5% are your subscribers and donators.

that works for people you regularly watch, but what about the people that put out the rare random great video. or a video on a topic when you're trying to fix something. People dont subscribe to those patreons, and thus those kind of creators rely on ad revenue.