Hey, I Earned Two Cents on YouTube

Only took me four years

Four years after I started my YouTube channel, this week I finally earned enough viewing hours to qualify for monetization. Yesterday, I earned my first revenue. Two cents.

At that rate I will earn $7.30 a year. I might as well post about it, even though Medium will shadow ban the mention anyway, so hello to the 30 to 40 people who will be lucky enough to see this before it gets hidden. Thanks for reading!

But I mention my two cents to make two points.

1. Who’s Making Money on the Web?

The hyped-up, gilded story that creators can get rich online is mostly a myth. Sure, a few people do — a very few people. The philosopher Axel Honneth claims that capitalism allows a few people to succeed and hypes those few examples to perpetuate the illusion that the capitalist economic system is open and fair. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s how power operates.

Whether or not Professor Honneth is correct, it is definitely true that the corporate media publicizes the very few winners and ignores the reality that almost every online content creator gets little to nothing for their efforts.

That’s why I praise Medium, even though they seem intent on shutting down my articles. It is the only…