After Li Ziqi and Ms Yeah, an unknown grandpa becomes a hit on YouTube.
In China, the 63-year-old Grandpa Amu's YouTube celebrity status has also become a popular discussion topic on Weibo.
Grandpa Amu is an old Chinese carpenter who masters the techniques from traditional Chinese architecture. He can turn the wood into beautiful art without using a single nail.
How did the Chinese bloggers rise on YouTube?
From Li Ziqi, Ms Yeah, to Grandpa Amu, there are teams that distribute their video work on YouTube, Tiktok, and other overseas app channels.
The benefits of "operating overseas" for these creators are brand influence, number of clicks and views, and in other words, revenue.
YouTuber's revenue sources are mainly divided into platform share, ad placement, and product revenue. By joining Google AdSense, YouTube will allocate 55% of its ad revenue to creators.
YouTube doesn't disclose any of its creator revenue. Last year, it was reported that Li Ziqi earned over 168 million dollars a year on YouTube.
We used noxinfluencer.com to get the top 10 Chinese YouTube creators. As it turns out, while many YouTubers distribute overseas, those who can earn a multi-million fan base like Li Ziqi are rare.
The creators whose videos rank in the top ten of YouTube China's fan base include food, crafts, fashion, travel, and cute pet and many other categories.
But Li Ziqi is the only creator in China with over 10 million followers.
Li Ziqi's 10 million followers only contribute between 3.6-7.2 million RMB per month, which is well under the rumored 168 million.
Ms Yeah has 9.1 million followers and between 1.62-3.27 million RMB in affiliate revenue in a single month. With 1.39 million followers, Teacher Li Yongle earns 16,000-136,300 per month from advertising.
Grandpa Amu has 1.17 million followers and earns 300,000-600,000 RMB per month.
This comes to the rules of YouTube, the platform will price the ad exposure according to the creator's fan profile, the region they belong to. The "value" of a fan can vary by a factor of 5 times from region to region.
For example, the cost per 1,000 impressions for Australian fans is worth $5.45, but the cost per 1,000 impressions for Vietnamese fans is worth only $0.94. The more popular it is in the US and Europe, the more ad revenue it generates.
Li Ziqi has about 1/4 of its users from the US. Most of Ms Yeah's users are from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc., which might be the reason why their ads are not that "valuable".
Why do foreign viewers like Chinese YouTube celebrities?
In terms of content production costs, the cost of creating content in China is decreasing, while production quality is improving.
In addition, a majority of the top-ranked creators are creating food-related content, which is also facing the least hurdles in cross-border content distributing.
Finally, these creators, which are popular in Europe and the United States, have a strong Chinese flavor.
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