YouTube: The Power of Scale & Convenience
Today I became a paid YouTube member i.e. I subscribed to YouTube Premium. So what happened? Over the last couple of years I have been using YouTube extensively both to teach and to learn. My YouTube channel Hüseyin Demirtaş ile İngilizce currently has more than 124.000 subscribers and 5.3 million views. It is kind of surprising to me given that all of this started as a side-project when I decided to record short tutorials for Turkish students trying to advance their English.
The process of content creation requires a lot of learning both personally and professionally. I had to learn about filming, editing, storytelling and all kinds of things to produce content that would help my students. In this process of learning, YouTube has been a cornerstone. I used it not to watch funny cat videos all day long but to up my game (Though I guess I am guilty of watching funny videos as much as everyone else). I found a lot of content on YouTube ranging from editing videos to building full stack applications to building business empires. There is pretty much anything you want on YouTube.
As an avid user, I was annoyed by the fact that I could not listen to videos while the app was in the background. Similarly, I wish I had the ability to download certain videos so that I could watch them when I was offline or I would not have to stream them again again, incurring higher data bills. And of course, having your learning interrupted by ads is not a particularly enjoyable experience. So these were my complaints but overall, the range of materials kept me coming back to YouTube. So at this point, I decided to subscribe to YouTube Premium which gives me an ad-free experience as well as the ability to download videos and play videos in the background.
After my decision, I thought about the beauty of YouTube’s business model. As a free user, you do not really complain about the ads because you gain access to valuable content, plus you know that you are supporting your favorite creators. The more users the platform has, the more ad-revenue it will collect from advertisers. Even if YouTube had no paid users, it would, I guess, still be a very profitable business. By offering a paid plan that packs all the conveniences, it is catering to a particular type of audience that is willing to pay for a better experience. In both cases YouTube wins. Whether you are a free or a paid member does not really matter because YouTube has the scale to absorb any immediate losses it may experience in a particular area.
I suppose this a vivid example of a company dominating a niche in a true startup mentality. They scaled, and scaled, and scaled. Now they have enormous scale and reach across the globe. At this point, if there are not any surprises or major blows, they can pretty much set the rules in the video content creation ecosystem.
YouTube wins thanks to its scale and YouTube also wins by providing tools and services that offer more convenience at a higher price than free. So if you, as a company or entrepreneur, can offer a quality product or service at scale and dominate your market then you can monetize it in ways that can help you grow further.
