How Much Do Surfing’s YouTubers Actually Get Paid?

Nathan Florence joined YouTube on October 23, 2013. 

However, the oldest video he currently has on his channel is from July, 2018. It’s called MEXICAN PLAYGROUND!!! and it has 7.4k views. It would not be a stretch to say that he has cracked the YouTube code since then.

Nathan now has nearly 200 videos and 155,000 subscribers. Three of his videos have over a million views. He’s built quite a platform. 

We wanted to learn more about his experience, and there was no better interviewer than Nate’s friend, Ryan Miller — a man who fears neither a rainbow speedo nor a difficult question. They spoke for well over an hour. We found the section below — which focuses on YouTube — fascinating enough to stand on its own. 

This week, we’ll publish the rest of the interview in which Ryan and Nate talk about how weight lifting tricks your body into thinking you’re getting chased by a tiger, OnlyFans, the role of the modern professional surfer, and more. 

Ryan Miller: You have 150K subscribers on YouTube. What lessons did you learn building that up?
NATHAN FLORENCE: People nowadays have an extremely keen sense of what’s genuine on these platforms. All of us are watching content all day — we know when another human is faking a personality or pushing something that’s not necessarily where it’s at.

For me, it was like, “Hey, I’m pretty natural in front of the camera. I don’t really get nervous and I’m not afraid to look like a dork.” I think that’s relatable to people, like, “This is a normal dude with a sense of humor. He’s not afraid to laugh at himself.” So I ran with that. And I feel that has been my biggest edge on YouTube, as well as just experimenting with things like sharing raw GoPro footage from an entire session. 

It’s an immersive experience that many people don’t get to see because they’re not out at these heavy waves. They’re not getting these hold-downs, stuck in the bowl at 12-foot Gums, getting pummeled. I’ll have the GoPro recording the whole time. A lot of people are not willing to use the GoPro as much as I do, but it’s worth trying stuff like that. So, experimenting and being yourself — those have been the biggest movers for me, as well as consistency.

When you came to New Jersey this fall for a hurricane swell, you knew approximately how much money you’d make before you even stepped foot on the airplane. In the past, guys used to call me and say they want to come out for a swell. Once they saw the $600 flight and the $600 rental car, they’d bail on it. But you play the game differently. 
Totally, but it was a tough lesson to learn. In my first three years, I was on the travel grind every summer and my bank account would literally go to zero. I’d stay at home all winter, saving money, and by the end of summer, it would all disappear. I looked at it as an investment like, “I don’t care. I’m going to be on every swell. I’ll spend every dollar I have because it’s going to pay off in bringing value to my brands.” That helped, but I didn’t realize the potential value of what I was doing. 

I was paying for filmers to come on trips, but most of that content was going into a black hole. At that time, it was this weird in-between like, “Do we save up for an edit that’s going to come out in a year and get like 20,000 views, even though we worked for a year and spent all this mental energy on it?” 

I wish so badly that I’d started vlogging earlier because some of those trips were so crazy. When you go on a trip and score, then have the video out the next week for people to see, it’s exponentially better than saving up clips and putting out an edit later — even in viewership alone. And usually, the guys don’t even put that edit out on their own YouTube channel. They put it out on someone else’s media platform and get zero to none of the fucking eyes on their own brand.

It was tricky when we started traveling with the vlog, because of the travel expenses and paying Zoard a salary. The ad rev isn’t there at the start. But fast forward a bit and you’re able to get a rough estimate of what you’ll make on a video because YouTube has incredible analytics. You can also pitch episodes to brands to sponsor them and create tiers around that. 

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A post shared by Zoard Janko T (@zoard)

Fun fact: Nate’s filmer/editor Zoard enjoys jumping out of planes.

Can you give me a breakdown of what the YouTube revenue is like. What’s the formula? 
It depends on your niche. Like, think about the one kid who just unwraps boxes. His entire audience is other kids watching him unwrap toys and he has millions of subscribers. He’s probably pulling in $50 to $100K a month on ad revenue. And he’s opening toys from brands that are paying him. It’s insane. 

As far as my stuff goes, you have to realize YouTube is a compound growth account. Each video you post doesn’t just stop getting views when you post the next one. So as you post more videos, you generate more revenue. It’s not just about views but also the volume of videos. If I have five videos up and they all have a million views, that’s good. I’m going to get paid well. But if I have 200 videos up and they’re all getting 20,000 views, it’s way fucking better because they’re all going to keep getting views. People will find your channel and watch all of them. Sometimes old videos get recommended by the YouTube algorithm and all of a sudden they go turbo again and get a couple hundred thousand views out of nowhere.

So, there’s a lot of factors. But it comes down to overall views and how interactive your subscribers are. If they’re hitting a ten-minute video and bailing after a minute, you’re not going to get good ad rev. If it’s eight minutes and they’re being interactive nearly the whole video, it’s going to be better. It’s a little complicated, but basically, each video compounds your last video.

What are people in surfing pulling in? 
I’m still learning as I go, but it totally depends on your audience. If you’ve got a million subscribers, and you post once a week, and every video is monetized with no copyright infringements, I’d say $30k a month in ad rev. 

What’s someone with 10,000 followers making? 
Nothing. 

Zero dollars?
Maybe $50 or $100 a month. At 10K followers, I wasn’t even monetized yet. Not till I hit 50K subs did I start to see a trickle, which was still just a few hundred bucks a month. If you have 10 times more videos and only had 10K subscribers, you might be making a little bit of money. 

What are the people that have 100k and 250k subscribers pulling in? 
The 100k people are probably at five or six thousand dollars a month. The 250k people might be closer to eight or nine thousand dollars a month. It still depends on their channel and how interactive the viewers are. In my experience and opinion, it’s best if you’re providing good quality content and keeping your audience in mind with ads. “Like, hey I want to show them this. I think it’s cool. They think it’s cool.” When your audience actually clicks the ads, your ad rev will be better.

If you’re click-baiting the shit out of content and throwing it out there nonstop, then I don’t think your ad rev is going to be as high. Two people could be at 100K subscribers, and if one of them is click-baiting and the other is providing quality content, the quality content one is going to get way more ad rev than the other person. 

Who do you look to for content inspiration besides that one lady [seen above]? 
Jamie O’Brien. I’ve been super inspired by him since the beginning. He led the whole content creation and build your own platform movement. He was doing his own surf films when he was younger and he has stayed way ahead of the curve. He told us for years, “All you’re doing is Instagram? You’re blowing it, there are other avenues. You have to get on YouTube.” He really looks out for the younger guys. 

To me, Jamie is the ultimate success story in surfing. He is not working for brands anymore, they’re pleading to work with him. He built a content empire. Being able to surf whenever you want, because you love surfing, and make content of it without being a slave to any sponsors — that’s the coolest thing to me. 

When you have your own platforms, how do you view your relationship with the rest of surf media? 
In my head, it’s a content war right now. Everyone is competing to have the viewers on their channel. You used to be so psyched to get a shoutout on Stab or one of the big platforms, and you’d get incentives for it. Now I’m stressing to get my stuff out of before everyone else. I feel like I’m in direct competition with every other surfer and media platform. 

It really is a war. The media outlets have people all over the world, filming every good session, then running home and uploading it as fast as they can. Everyone wants to have something up on their own channels first. They want people to see it there first and think that’s the main place for content — because to be frank, if it’s seen somewhere else then it hits your channel, it’s old news. In my opinion, a lot of surfers are caught under the spell of grinding for shoutouts when they could be grinding for their own brand. They’re stuck in the mindset of working for someone else instead of creating more value for themselves. And I get it because they have the views and it’s the easy way. But when you grow your own audience, you’re collecting all the value. And you then have that channel as bargaining chips for deals. 

At the end of the day, if you rely on platforms other than your own to post your content, then you’re tied to them when it comes time to talk sponsorships. You have less control that way. And you can’t sell merch through shoutouts by another platform. When you own everything, all of a sudden, people are coming to you and saying, “Hey, can I lease this clip from you for a commercial?” 

I think there’s been a complete turnaround in the way that athletes approach their content. And not even just in surfing, in any sport.