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What expenses are you referring to? I'm not interested in the amounts but what are you spending money on? I would have believed expenses are low if you have the camera, editing software, and computer already because you are hosting on youtube's computers. I thought the only variable is the value of your own time.
For most people though the "up-front expense" would never be recouped with vlogging.
A decent camera will run you around $500. Editing software is another couple of hundred.
A computer(and most likely an external drive) will add a grand or so. If you want to go with a Mac(my choice) that'll add around $2500+ . Want to throw a drone in the mix, tack on another $1000. Tripods, memory sticks, action camera(goPro style), extended warranties, etc...So you've dropped all this money and you still don't have a single sub yet and you kind of need all that(minus the drone), just to get started.
Time is the biggest factor though BY FAR, that's why you really have to enjoy the ENTIRE process, it's almost "hobby-like". Timelapses, drone-flying, city shots, uploading, downloading, rendering, editing, etc. Poker Priest I think said it best when asked why he stopped vlogging..."It's the opportunity cost!", especially if you are playing for a living. The 6-12 hours it can take to produce one is a few missed sessions, for very little return...if any.
I think some people got into it for the $$$ and quickly found out there really isn't that much $$$ in it honestly. I'd love the $1.9 per 1000 views to be accurate but I don't think the algorithm is that easy, the $$$ fluctuates greatly, depending on what ads are shown, time of year, engagement country, etc. There are a ton of variables.
Here I'll give you some RAW numbers:
My highest viewed video to date is "I Figured Out The Secret To Poker" it has 65,655 views and a total watch time of 426,401 minutes...my revenue on that $104.
Compare that with "What Do You Mean "Lost"?" which I released about a week ago. It has 16,287 views and a total watch time of 254,859 minutes...my revenue on that is $107
However, when I dig deeper into the statistics I can see that "What Do You Mean Lost?" got a lot higher percentage of views outside of the United States. Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and Australia especially. The ad rates in those countries is higher at times than here in the states.
There are sites like SocialBlade that are pretty accurate in some aspects(views, sub count, etc), on revenue though it appears to be waaaaay off.
"I figured out the secret to poker" probably took me 3 hours to edit. I was doing very little post production work and was just sitting in a hotel room banging it out.
"What do you mean Lost" probably took me 8-10 hours to edit.
I do alot more post-production work now(all the graphical stuff), sift thru a ton of music, email some artists to get an "ok" to use their music, color-correct some things,film alot more(Day 2 of my vegas trip netted SEVEN HOURS of footage, that I edited down to 2 vlogs) thus have to edit alot more but I honestly have a really good time thru the whole process.
Hope that helps
Jaman