Hey guys! Sometimes-viewer of Nostalgia Critic and other Channel Awesome fare here. Here is a question that has been bothering me a lot lately- how the hell is Channel Awesome staying profitable?

They have significant overhead costs including but not limited to; the lease for their MASSIVE studio, wages for their many contractors (and I would imagine salaries for at least a few people), props and costumes, A/V recording equipment, and subscriptions to video editing software.

According to YouTube analytics they are making between $3.4k-$54.9k a month, but considering how often their videos (especially Nostalgia Critic episodes, the videos they publish with the highest amount of views) get demonetized due to copyright claims, I would be surprised if they cleared more than 10k/month in ad revenue. Which leaves them with 2 other income streams; merch and brand deals

Checking out the merch options I sincerely doubt they are making bank on it. Most of it would only be appealing to superfans.

I know brand deals are often lucrative, but I have a hard time imagining that they are able to snag whales with the number of views they are able to consistently pull in (usually 500k on NC episodes).

Moreover... there are plenty of channels out there with almost NO overhead for whom brand deals, ad revenue and merch sales are simply not enough, and they have to rely on Patreon supporters for enough money to sustain a YouTube career. One-man (or woman) operations where they work from home. Channel Awesome seems to have 10x the production costs of some of these channels, so how are they managing to pull in a profit when smaller channels absolutely need patronage to survive?