Making a Mint on YouTube

Dan Middleton made £12.3m ($16.4m) in 2017 by filming himself playing video games.

He wasn’t designing the games, nor was he selling them. He wasn’t even particularly good at playing them.

All Dan did was play a bunch of video games them while talking to a camera. Meanwhile, some California creator is pulling in $20,000 monthly doing pretty much the same thing.

If this strikes you as being absolute madness I’d empathize with you. However, you’re missing the point entirely. These aren’t internet oddities or some kind of black swan one-off. They represent something far more significant: proof that the fundamental rules of communication are evolving and most businesses either haven’t noticed, or are choosing to ignore what’s happening.

When Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2006, they weren’t buying a video website. They were buying one of the future directions of human attention. The fact that a 26-year-old gaming enthusiast can out-earn most Fortune 500 CEOs by talking to his bedroom wall should give every marketing executive serious pause.

The Attention Revolution Few Talk About

Most of us are living through what amounts to the largest shift in human communication since the printing press. Yet most boardrooms treat video-based marketing tactics like a nice-to-have rather than an existential necessity. This is a bit like dismissing the internet in 1995 as being a fad, because “our customers still use fax machines.”

Neuroscientific research suggests that the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. When we watch a video, multiple cognitive systems activate simultaneously: visual processing, auditory comprehension, emotional response, and memory formation. Text, in contrast, engages exactly one of these systems. At the end of the day, our brains are literally built for video consumption. Thinking otherwise is denying reality.

Why Corporate Videos Usually Fail (And How to Fix It)

Walk into any marketing meeting and someone will inevitably suggest “making a video.” But what they usually mean is hiring some agency to produce something that looks like every other corporate video: bland executives in boardrooms, saying nothing memorable and pointing at whiteboards, over stirring orchestral music. These kinds of videos fail because they’re created by committees, for committees. They’re designed to be generic and vanilla. While it’s true that they offend nobody, they also fail to connect with anybody. Effective marketing (video-based or otherwise) works exactly the other way around. It’s designed to deeply connect with somebody, which inevitably means it won’t appeal to everybody.

Dan Middleton didn’t become YouTube’s highest earner by appealing to everyone. He found his people and gave them exactly what they wanted, consistently, for years. Most businesses could learn from this approach, though they rarely do.

The Compound Interest of Being Interesting

One of the best things about video content is how it compounds similar to an investment. A brilliant video created today will still be generating value in five years. A single advertisement, in contrast, dies pretty much the moment we stop paying for it. Video marketing keeps working long after we’ve forgotten we made it. This creates a mathematical advantage for early adopters. Businesses that implemented serious video strategies three years ago now dominate their industries’ search results, social media presence, and (more importantly) customer mindshare. Their competitors face the choice between playing expensive catch-up or possible irrelevance.

YouTube has recognized this shift by raising their Partner Program threshold to 10,000 lifetime views. This isn’t arbitrary gatekeeping, it’s smart curation. YouTube wants video content creators who are serious enough about what they’re doing to build sustainable audiences. They don’t want fly-by-night operators hoping for quick cash.

Buyers don’t want more advertising. They want entertainment, education, inspiration, or preferably all of the above. The most successful business videos work because they don’t try to look and sound like they’re business videos. Their focus is on being genuinely useful or interesting, whether the viewer is a prospect is secondary. The underlying psychological premise isn’t hard to see. When someone watches a how-to video that solves their problem, they develop genuine gratitude toward the creator. Such gratitude can transform into trust, which can eventually become loyalty. Traditional advertising tries to create desire for products. Effective video marketing creates affection for brands.

The difference is profound. Desire fades quickly and must be constantly renewed through more advertising. Affection, on the other hand, compounds over time and becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome.

The Behavioral Science of Moving Pictures

One reason why video marketing works is down to what Behavioral Science (and indeed evolutionary biology) would describe as costly signaling. The task of creating quality video requires significant investment in time, creativity, and often money. Your audience unconsciously interprets this effort as proof that your message matters and your product doesn’t suck, since no-one wouldn’t go to such trouble making all this fuss if it were. A thoughtfully-produced video says to the viewer “this brand cares enough about communicating with you to invest substantial resources in getting it right.” Compared this to a mass-produced email template that subconsciously says “you’re simply one of 50,000 people receiving this identical message.”

Video also exploits what behavioral economists call System 1 thinking. the fast, intuitive decision-making mode that governs most human behavior. While reading text forces people into the analytical System 2 mode, video speaks directly to emotions and gut reactions. For businesses, this means video content influences purchasing decisions before rational evaluation even begins.

The biggest mistake many organizations make with video is treating it like the production of any other traditional media. They hire agencies, write scripts by committee, and produce content so sanitized it makes an operating theater look like a waste tip. But such an approach misses the entire point. Effective business video needs to feel somewhat personal, even when it’s professional. People connect with people, not with brands or corporations. Customers want to see the humans behind our company, understand our actual expertise, and feel like they’re learning from someone who genuinely knows what they’re talking about. The production quality matters far less than the authenticity and usefulness of the information.

The Platform Reality

Today, YouTube isn’t the only option open to forward-thinking businesses, but it’s certainly the most obvious starting point. With over 2.5 billion monthly active users, it’s essentially the world’s second-largest search engine. Videos posted to YouTube can continue to generate views (and leads) years after they were made. Social media posts, in comparison, disappear into algorithmic obscurity within days – or even minutes. LinkedIn has shown itself to be surprisingly effective for B2B video content. The algorithm favors video posts, and professional audiences are increasingly consuming business content in video format. A LinkedIn video can potentially reach thousands of decision-makers in your industry without any advertising spend. While each social media network has its own culture and expectations, the fundamental principle remains constant: regularly publish content that genuinely helps your audience, and they’ll reward you with attention, trust, and eventually, business.

The Competitive Advantage Nobody’s Talking About

Video marketing creates a specific competitive economic moat. Once a brand establishes itself as the go-to video resource in their industry, displacing them becomes exponentially more difficult. New competitors must not only match the expected level of content quality but overcome years of accumulated search rankings, subscriber relationships, and brand recognition which compounds over time. Businesses that start video marketing today will have a head start over competitors who wait. In rapidly evolving industries, that could mean a significant visibility advantage.

The smartest brands recognize video content as organizational infrastructure, rather than simply marketing collateral. Training videos scale expertise across global teams. Process documentation reduces onboarding time and improves consistency. Executive communications build company culture across distributed workforces. Video content becomes institutional knowledge that survives employee turnover and organizational changes. A well-produced training video continues educating new hires long after its creator has moved to competitors.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Dan Middleton’s achievement represents more than just a personal success story. It’s evidence that business communication methods are becoming ever more fragmented, whether we acknowledge it or not. Customers increasingly expect video content from their vendors, partners, and service providers. Brands that resist this shift risk appearing outdated, disconnected, or simply unaware of modern business practices. The investment required for effective video marketing has never been lower, while the potential returns continue growing. Professional-quality content can be produced with modest budgets and standard equipment. The barriers to entry have collapsed while the competitive advantages have expanded, which isn’t something that happens too often in business strategy.

Our customers are already watching videos to learn about our industry, our competitors, and our products. The only question is whether they’re watching our videos or someone else’s.