Cape Town - Martin Lorton’s success began when he lost his job in 2011 and couldn’t find another one – so he turned to his hobby for help.
Now the former IT contractor from Meadowridge, Cape Town, is a YouTube superstar, thanks to solar power and Google. He has earned more after uploading videos for 18 months than he did after being an IT contractor for 20 years.
Lorton (aka MJLorton) had been experimenting with electrical measurement devices and solar power for a few years, and uploading videos of his tinkering as a hobby. Left without an income, he decided to enter into a partnership with Google, which allows adverts to be placed with his content.
In the first month Lorton earned about R150 from the channel, called Solar Power and Electronic Measurement Equipment. A year and a half later, he has uploaded 390 videos and has 25 612 subscribers. His most popular video is “How to use a Multimeter for beginners: Part 1 - Voltage measurement/Multimeter tutorial”, which has accumulated 308 820 views.
These figures are hardly staggering in the scope of the internet, but they earned him R35 000 in February alone.
Who says people can’t make money from the internet? Not Julie Taylor, a senior Google official. “When the economy is really hard, people need to think of alternative income streams,” she said. YouTube is experiencing a growth spurt in South Africa; views increased by 80 percent last year while uploads rose 30 percent, according to Google statistics.
Lorton is one of a handful of South Africans who have capitalised on this growth spurt. Peter Cilliers (moricestreet909) is another Capetonian cashing in. The fitness videos he shoots in his home attract up to 100 000 views a day – raking in $100-200 (about R1 000 to R2 000) of revenue daily from advertising. Google won’t reveal how much money it makes from the advertising but according to Taylor “the partner gets the lion’s share of the revenue”.
Cilliers began adding advertising to his channel in 2010. “Before then, no matter how many views you had, you couldn’t make money from it because you were sitting in South Africa,” he said. “But as soon as Google made us partners, it became an income you can live off.
“In 2000, when someone told me to make money online I was like, ‘yeah, right’. (When) you make the first 100 bucks and you think ‘wow, if I could just replicate this, I could make a living’.”
It’s an opportunity ripe for the taking, according to Cilliers, who uses a basic camcorder and simple editing software to produce his home-made workout videos. “Some people wait their whole lives for the perfect idea,” he said. “I think the most important thing is just to get started.”
While Lorton got started in South Africa, he has recently moved to Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and young daughter. Living in the US is better for his channel, he said, because the electrical equipment he tests is cheaper there and the postage system reliably delivers his online orders. And of course there’s plenty of bandwidth for faster uploads.
Viewers from the US account for 50 percent of the hits on his videos, followed by the UK and Canada. His South African fan base comes in 10th.
The global interest came as a surprise to Lorton. As YouTube veteran Cilliers said: “Who would’ve thought people cared about watching solar panel videos?”
A tutorial takes Lorton between two and five days to produce, while his short reviews and tips of the day take just a few hours. But add in research time, answering questions on his forum, promoting his videos and trawling through administration and it quickly becomes a 12-hour day.
As it turns out, being a YouTube superstar is no easy money. “Be prepared for hard work, long hours and disappointments,” is Lorton’s advice to prospective video bloggers.
“Blog about a topic you are really passionate about, strive to produce good quality video and keep it real.” - Sunday Argus