the joy of cooking videos
https://carlalallimusic.substack.com/p/the-true-costs-of-being-on-youtube
I started my YouTube channel in earnest in October, 2021, shortly before That Sounds So Good, my second cookbook, came out. A little over three years later, on January 29, 2025, I uploaded the 177th episode of Carla’s Cooking Show. That video, for a cheddar burger named after my mom, is my last for now, and possibly forever.
In this time, I logged 18 million views, grew my subscriber base to 231,503, and grossed a total of $187,997. Some of those numbers sound big, but the costs—financial, logistical, and personal—didn’t earn out. In this newsletter, I’ll explain the hard and soft costs of doing business on YouTube, why leaving is the right move for me, and what I’m doing (for money) next. ...
The original goal was to use my channel to drive sales for my second cookbook, That Sounds So Good, ideally earning the book a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. I had been making videos for Patreon, where I had about 3000 paying subscribers. For the book, though, I needed to maximize reach. ...
If we roll with the average Adsense income, here’s the bottom line: $14k going out. $4k coming in. Net loss, month over month: TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. That’s a lot to sink into a channel that is barely moving book sales and not getting me a TV deal. Simply put, it’s completely unsustainable from a business perspective.
The videos are good, but not great. She is pleasant and the recipes are competent, but I struggled to find a video that both piqued my interest 💡 ( for various reasons, I would only promote a vegetarian recipe here) and was "good enough to share". Ultimately, the one in her blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9wfngvhV0E might be the best choice.
In the game of clicks, "good" isn't good enough. 🔥 ( there is a world market for approximately five celebrity chefs.) ⚔️ ( well, actually, five American celebrity chefs)
As far as the money side of things:
The most significant metric for earnings on YouTube is CPM, or the cost per thousand views that advertisers must pay to run spots against a channel’s content. To advertise on my channel, that number is about $29 per thousand views.
The other metric is RPM, revenue per thousand views, which is what the creator is paid. My RPM is around $10. Easy math: For a video with 30,000 views, I earn $300. People tend to assume that my take is much higher, in particular the viewers who can’t believe I have the audacity to put my recipes behind a paywall.
Again: It costs $29 per thousand to run an ad in my videos, and I get $10 per thousand. Where does the other $19 go? To YouTube, of course. That’s a 2:1 split in favor of the platform. Lord, give me strength.
This does not acknowledge the fact that YouTube will let you upload (and distribute) an unlimited number of videos, for free.
It does note that, if you "only" make $10k/month in advertising revenue, you are largely immaterial to YouTube.
And, the "production" side of things:
Releasing a video every week for years meant I was always navigating three overlapping schedules: pre-production for the videos we’ve yet to shoot; post-production for the videos going through their edit; and pub week for the video coming out. Honey, we’ve been grinding.
In 2023, when my marriage broke up and I had to stay in (goofy, upbeat) character for the sake of my and my family’s privacy—that was brutal. I was living a lie, projecting an inauthentic version of myself. The conflict between the person in reality and the performer ate away at me.