on the second try
Daria Strelkova created a YouTube channel in 2020, where she posts videos with recipes. This is an extremely popular video category in Russia, but Daria was not as warmly received by the audience as other authors. One possible reason is that there is a lot of competition on the site in this category. For two and a half years, the blogger has collected more than 50 thousand subscribers.
Daria posted her latest videos on YouTube four months ago, shortly after YouTube decided to shut down monetization for writers from Russia. Strelkova created a TikTok account to increase her viewer count, where she amassed over 11,000 followers. She offered to follow the link on her youtube profile and watch full versions of her recipes.
Success came to the blogger on the domestic platform Yandex.Zen, which replaced YouTube, but much more successfully. By the end of August of this year, she has more than 150 thousand subscribers, and even the latest videos collect 40-50 thousand views in less than a week.
Strelkova is not afraid to use familiar names for her cooking videos, which captivates the audience with the fact that the recipe is “unusual” and “delicious.” Variations such as “feed the whole family” or “easy and fast, I cook it every day” can be used.
For example, in just a week, a blogger’s video “I serve fish for the holiday in an original way (two recipes for a delicious feast at once)” has collected about 400 thousand views. Reviews, as usual, range from positive to critical, but an indication of interest in the video is the fact that the platform is actively visited.
Another example is travel blogs. This category on YouTube and Instagram (the owner of Meta is recognized as an extremist organization) has long had the main faces and was also chosen by Russian television. And in such an environment, a Dutch blogger Mahil Snape’s project emerged in 2021. He travels to Russia and CIS countries with his wife, Russian Alevtina Snape.
Like all bloggers, at first he tried his hand at foreign sites. But he did not meet with success: TikTok helps to collect 38 thousand subscribers, and YouTube – a very modest 1230 people. But Snape soon created a page on VKontakte, where he posted the same videos, and a profile on Yandex.Zen. As a result, each of the sites consistently brings more and more views to it.
For example, almost every video on VKontakte collects 20,000 or more views from Mahil. Snape in Zen’s Dutchman blog in Russia has 74,000 subscribers. At the same time, video views are even more impressive – from 40 thousand thanks to Algorithms, many videos achieve even higher rates – 100-200 thousand views per month.
Until now, the blogger has stopped running TikTok, but does not completely leave YouTube, continuing to publish videos in the form of Shorts – an analogue of short vertical videos from Google. The blogger manages all the videos in Russian and communicates in his native language only in rare comments on YouTube.
cash flows
Yevgenia Kazakova, director of operations of the agency for working with bloggers Perfluence, told Gazeta.ru that at the moment, more than 40% of bloggers have simultaneously accounts both on Russian social networks and on banned foreigners.
“Micro-influencers and novice bloggers have benefited the most from the transition, according to analysts,” he said.
According to the expert, a novice blogger will be able to earn an average of 1,500 rubles from an advertising post on Telegram, if he has from 2,000 to 5,000 subscribers.
Vkontakte pays 1 thousand rubles. For the integration of advertising into articles on Yandex.Zen for 50 thousand views, a blogger with an audience of 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers will earn from 500 to 2,000 rubles.
Kazakova explained that there is no clear relationship between the size of the fee and the number of subscribers, only the viewing statistics of a particular blogger are important. Therefore, the higher the activity under each video, the higher the total fee.
But in an interview with Gazeta, the general director of the Mikhalev Producer Center, noted that even in such difficult times, novice bloggers can earn more on YouTube through advertising integrations (short advertising inserts about a product or service in a video – socialbites.ca). .Ru » Andrey Mikhalev.
Nano-influencers who do not even have a thousand subscribers can receive an average of 1-2 thousand rubles per post,” he said. According to the expert, often small and medium-sized businesses choose micro-influencers with an audience of up to 100 thousand people.
Such bloggers can offer an integration in their videos from 6,000 to 30,000 rubles. Depending on the number of subscribers and video views. At the same time, the advertiser is usually not limited to one publication, but orders a series of posts, Mikhalev added.
There is still no full-fledged backup infrastructure – it will be quite difficult for new bloggers to grow and recoup the costs of creating content, but it is already possible to make money from it, Ilya Borodin, director of Yoola bloggers, told socialbites.ca. .
“Talk of amounts ten times less than on the same YouTube, the only question is how quickly sites can create attractive monetization models,” he said.
According to Borodin, earnings from monetization on YouTube can start from a few tens of dollars and end in tens of thousands of dollars, while on Russian sites the earnings can start from tens of thousands of rubles and reach hundreds of thousands of rubles.
Evgenia Kazakova said that advertisers are interested in domestic platforms, but so far they prefer to combine their work with work on Instagram and YouTube.
“According to our internal data, now the situation has stabilized and companies are combining their activities both in foreign social networks and on Russian sites. At the same time, demand for microbloggers has increased by more than 30% everywhere since April 2022.”
on the edge
Andrey Ivanov, an IT specialist, founder of the Harvester video selection service for text content, said that the main problem with new bloggers on domestic platforms is they are trying to find an audience that acts as a catch for the service. Gazeta.ru.
“VKontakte, Zen and even Rutube have algorithms for relevance and promotion of popular videos. But their problem is the lack of uniqueness for the user. They always come second. So there will be copies of the content instead of their “birthplace”, he explained.
The expert added that they give everyone the opportunity to start from scratch, but in fact, making money is not realistic for beginners. This is only possible for those who have access to private, proprietary and valuable information or can create catchy headlines for articles or videos.”
According to the expert, in the latter case, the content is not so important for the authors – it is important for them to click on an article or video.
Ivanov said it’s equally difficult for Russian platforms to attract new users to watch and read content.
“The platform is the place of consumption. And it is usually one due to the particular style of each person. Roughly speaking, someone in headphones listens to Artemy Lebedev in the form of a podcast in the gym, and someone watches, ”said.
Evgenia Kazakova of Perfluence found that the hardest thing for a novice blogger to work with right now is Rutube. “There was no reason to switch compared to peers, without them there are no active viewers, and without the audience there are advertisers,” she added.
According to him, the story with Rutube can only work if several new and interesting bloggers announce themselves at the same time and can engage viewers and new writers there.
“It takes a few weeks for a novice blogger to gain a few thousand subscribers and become attractive to advertisers, given that they shoot and upload compelling videos every day. If you look at the internal statistics, the number of new influencers on Russian social networks has increased by 15-20%,” he said.
According to Kazakova, bloggers who create content in the categories of discounts and financial literacy, humor and entertainment, children, life hacks, business and entrepreneurship are developing the fastest.
Ilya Borodin from Yoola is confident that Russian platforms are really short of quality content, so for novice bloggers this could be a good opportunity for growth. “Provided that making money isn’t critical to him right now,” he concluded.
According to Andrey Ivanov, an IT specialist, YouTube will be able to maintain its lead, at least in the coming years, due to its status as an indispensable video hosting site associated with bloggers around the world. He noted that the rest of the platforms just need to catch up.
“In three years, I will assume TikTok will give YouTube its laurels,” the expert said.