He made another video just after about how much money his top 10 videos make.
$33K to $74K. Not sure if CAD or USD. His general rule of thumb is $2,000 per million views. If Amir is right about $600K US for the mortgage, it's $11,538 a week. Divide that by $1547 ($2,000 CAD in USD), and he needs 7.46m views a week to clear it. I didn't count, but the main channel usually gets 1-2m views on his daily videos. Not even counting the 5 periphery channels, he should clear it.
Still though, I'm surprised he didn't go for the extremely low-hanging fruit that doesn't cost a penny, gaming/streaming. He could've jumped on the Elden Ring bandwagon while it was still hot, but doesn't have a single video mentioning it in the title or description. There's one video that mentions Cyberpunk 2077 by name. OK, it costs time to edit, but this is a guy who makes content out of everything. Building editing PCs for his staff? Content. Moving into and automating his new house? Content. Entertainment systems for his wife and kids? Content. When you listen to him, you can hear how ideas for his next videos shape his thinking. Like "how many videos can I make out of buying a sports car vs a wall TV".
What is Linus? An influencer? A vlogger? Where does the persona end, and the man begin? Who knows. Maybe I've been sucked into the "open/honest businessman persona". I mean, for a guy with 100 employees, he sure does act like "one of the boys". He doesn't use the words "parasocial relationship", but he talked about the Flotaplane gang getting upset over his Dream server build (Dream the streamer). Floatplane is a streaming service he created, but is legally distinct from LMG, and run by Luke, his co-host for the WAN show. Only the most committed fans watch his videos there (before they go on Youtube), and he said they were upset that their image of him had been tarnished by the Dream build (Dream was caught cheating, and other toxic actions).
That's why I'm worried about the lab. People watch Linus to see Linus, the gang, and what crazy stuff they get up to, with the occasional PC edutainment. He made a channel, Mac Address, with a new host and ambiance distinct from his other ones. He said it's because he wanted the take of a Mac guy. Macs are the antithesis of PC gaming: locked down ecosystems; poor price/performance ratio; Apple's "we know best" anti-consumer attitude; cult like followers (debatable); and the absence of games and gaming brands. Nvidia makes up 80% of gaming PCs, and has been absent from Apple for a decade. So let's be real: he made a Mac channel because nothing he said about the Mac would be taken in good faith by the Mac community. His mere presence would poison the well.
Extend that to audio/video testing. His latest video asks whether 8GB ram is enough for gamers. That's his forte, yet below the video is a pinned comment of him apologising for not including background processes. And this is the guy we're going to trust for audio/visual tests? Even the original head/torso test was done with a limited scope to make sure they could bang out a video on time. Everything he does is done better by someone else individually. Hardware Unboxed does a better job of gaming tests than him. Gamers Nexus pretty much picks my cases for me. Seems like a fundamental issue of whether his analytical content takes off. People who want it don't trust Linus. People who trust Linus might get bored by it. And yet Linus and co. bring in the views, which they're going to need a lot of to pay for all the equipment and staff.
Edit: in the latest WAN show, he said he had mortgages (plural) that cost half a million dollars a year, internet that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that he needs to make millions of dollars a year just to stay afloat (~19 minutes in).
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