Youtube Vs LBRY: Which is Better for a Beginner?

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Written by

Crypto Enthusiast

3 years ago

In community: Crypto Mindset(9c1c)

I recently decided to start making video content related to crypto and I could not make up my mind whether to go with Youtube or LBRY so I decided to give both a shot.

This post will cover my experiences and struggles in both so far and what I would recommend to someone who is planning to start something similar.

Benefits of Choosing Youtube

Youtube is clearly the big daddy of video content sharing platforms and for people who want to earn some serious earnings and are willing to put in the effort making quality videos regularly then this will undoubtedly offer the highest rewards. Key benefits of youtube are:

· High Ad Revenues: If you are able to build up a big subscriber base, say more than 50-100K then you can start expecting regular income. It might fluctuate month to month depending on the views you generate.

· High Userbase: Youtube has the highest user base and no other platform comes even close in comparison. If your videos are found useful by Youtube's algorithm then there is no limit to the visibility you can get.

· Key Stats: source- https://www.omnicoreagency.com/youtube-statistics/

o Registers Users – 2 billion (I would have never guessed it)

o Users who are Active Daily – 30 million

o 73% of US Adults use Youtube

o Millennials prefer watching Youtube over watching TV

o Youtube’s Revenue in 2019- $15 billion

Challenges of Using Youtube

Youtube may seem like an obvious choice but you also need to consider the barriers which are in place for new content creators planning to start a new channel. Due to the high number of active channels and new ones being added everyday it’s is really difficult to make a mark and create visibility for you videos if you are just starting out. The Youtube’s algorithm is strongly biased towards big established channels who are able to publish content daily (or almost daily). Key challenges to earn from Yotube are:

· Minimum Criteria to enable Monetization: You need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content during the last 12 months before you can expect monetization of your channel. Considering the growing number of channels this criteria might get more daunting in the future.

· Lack of Transparency- Youtube has the sole discretion to demonetize any channel without any warning or clear reasoning. Recently many youtubers were suddenly demonetized and that’s why they decided to move over to other platforms like LBRY

· Crypto is Too Niche- You would not be able to tap into the majority of 2 billion users as not even 1% of them will be interested into watching content on crypto. They would rather spend time watching cute cat videos or researching make up tips. Yes, it sounds strange but that’s the reality. A crypto content creator would be lucky to hit the 10K subscribers mark and very few ever go to 100K level and I have not seen anyone hit 1M so far.

Keeping all these factors in mind I looked at how LBRY compares to it considering the point of view of a newbie.

Benefits of Choosing LBRY

LBRY is relatively new compared to Youtube and still has a long way to go before it can claim to be a serious threat to youtube. On the bright side it has been growing at a good pace and is much better suited to creators who focus on crypto related content.

· Earning from Day 1: Biggest advantage of LBRY is that you start earning LBC tokens from Day 1. You don’t need to wait months or years before earning your first penny. In my view this is a big motivating factor as when you start seeing the LBC tokens rolling in everyday it motivates you to make more content. Viewers have the option to tip your post in LBC and once you get a high subscriber base you can also make paid content which would mean users will have to pay a fixed amount of LBC to watch your content.

· High Visibility of Crypto: LBRY is currently used mainly by crypto savvy people which means they will be searching more on blockchain or crypto related content. This gives your content much higher visibility.

· Boosting your Content: Another great feature of LBRY is the option to boost your post by staking LBC tokens on the video. I would recommend you to stake your unused LBC as support for your videos which significantly improves their visibility.

Challenges of Using LBRY

LBRY is very innovative and so far they have been making considerable improvements to their platform to improve the user and creator experience but there still are several glitches which should be fixed before taking it to the next level.

· Low User base: Number of active users on LBRY currently is very low. They have not published official stats related to how many users they have but their data collection site has some other useful info - https://lbrynomics.com/. If you don’t count the official LBRY channels the top channel by user count has just 57,000 followers. To imagine the difference in scale, Youtube top channel T Series has 151 million subscribers.

· Earnings not linked to Views: In youtube your earnings are linked directly to views whereas in LBRY it can be very erratic as the views don’t matter. Even with small userbase you might get tips and even someone with higher subscribers might not get any tips. I think to improve this situation LBRY needs to use something similar to Publish0x by giving some incentive to viewers to tip the content creators

· Performance Issues: Based on my personal experience I would not consider LBRY totally smooth as of now. There are still some drawbacks like really slow streaming speed specially compared to Youtube or other popular streaming sites. Another glitch I face is that Youtube video embedding is supported by all major blogging sites whereas I have found that LBRY embedding is not supported by many sites or the video does not play giving some error.

Despite these challenges I am quite optimistic about LBRY in the future and if they are able to iron out these wrinkles they do have the potential to grow exponentially from here. Another barrier to their growth is lack of awareness as I still find that many people have several misconceptions about the platform or are not very clear on how it works.

I would like to clarify some popular misconceptions about LBRY:

# 1. Only Video Creators can earn from LBRY? No, this is not true. If you have a registered account you can daily earn LBC tokens (random amount up to 50 LBC) simply by watching videos.

# 2. Only Video can be uploaded on LBRY? No, this is also not true. You can upload images, documents and audio files as well. I have seen some channels that only upload images and articles and they earn a good amount of tips.

# 3. The LBC you use to boost your videos are Burned. No, again not true. The LBC you stake to boost your videos are just locked and can be revoked later if you want to sell them.

My Experience so far:

Personally speaking I started on both platforms at the same time a couple of months back and have uploaded about 20 videos on both and below are my stats:

Yotube

Followers- 29

Earnings- $0 (don’t expect to see this changing for the next 1-2 years)

LBRY

Followers- 175

Earnings – $18 (about 600 LBC tokens)

Frankly I am not expecting to make any money from Youtube ever, but I still continue to use it as it helps connect with users who have no idea about crypto and it is interesting to get their feedback.

In case you are planning to start creating video content or have recently started doing it then it will be definitely worth the effort to try out LBRY. Even if you are just planning to watch videos LBRY is worth trying out.

If you don’t have a LBRY account yet feel free to use my referral - https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@Crypto_Sense:1