Tell us which bloggers you watch, and we’ll confidently tell you which service one in five of them use. Mediacube is an ecosystem of services and tools for content creators that you’re used to watching on YouTube.
Our team wanted to take a look at the other side of content production on the world’s most popular video hosting platform and share a case study of one of CoinsPaid’s longtime partners.
A Bit of History
The company entered the market in 2013 as a production agency, creating entertainment content for television. At that time, the team had 30 employees. A few years later, Google reached out to content-related companies, TV channels, and production studios in Belarus to offer a tender. The company needed a contractor in an untapped market.
In 2015, the team won the YouTube tender and became one of the licensed CSPs (creator service providers). While the first year’s revenue was almost nothing — $750, the numbers changed dramatically in the following years. In 2016, the turnover was $72,000, in 2017 it was $1.6 million, and in 2020 the company’s turnover reached $30 million.
CSP: What Is It?
A CSP is a creator service provider that allows bloggers to quickly and conveniently receive payments and various YouTube services. It’s basically a system where each content creator on the platform can choose how they want to get paid and delegate payment, analytics, and support communication to a manager.
“What benefits do CSPs offer bloggers? For example, we help creators get paid by YouTube. Also, payments are available in many different ways, including cryptocurrency,” said Michael Bychenok, CEO of Mediacube. “And if YouTube pays earnings over a long period of time and only by bank transfer, we offer about ten payment systems, including crypto wallets together with CoinsPaid. With us, creators can receive fast payments every day or advance payments equal to the blogger’s average income for ten months.
We help with copyright regulation. Content ID, a special service from Google, searches for misuse of creators’ content and either blocks it or monetizes it for the benefit of the creator.
As an official YouTube partner, we have the right to priority support and resolving problematic issues. For example, the creator has received a strike, lost monetization, or is having other difficulties with the channel. Our manager takes care of all this and the blogger does their own thing instead of sending emails like a regular user and wasting months on it. We also do other things to help content creators not waste time on certain issues and obstacles in their interaction with the site.
Bloggers pay a percentage of their revenue for the CSP.”
Challenges on the Road to Success
In 2020, the Mediacube team reached several important conclusions that defined the challenges ahead. Statistics revealed that CIS creators represented 90% of all CSP users, and the revenue share was gradually decreasing. And while the average percentage for CSP services was 15% in 2019, it was only 12% in 2020.
How can you get bloggers from other countries interested in your business? You can open new offices, hire local staff who understand the cultural code and can speak the language of creative content that resonates with the audience and bloggers, and launch a support service that covers all time zones and is localized for each country. However, this is a time-consuming and expensive process. That’s why Mediacube went a step further.
They analyzed the problems that YouTube bloggers face regardless of their location. The main one is withdrawing money. The video hosting’s affiliate program takes about two months to pay a channel, and only by bank transfers. Mediacube decided to focus on creating a payment ecosystem with high quality analytics that would calculate what income a particular video will bring from the first days, based on the dynamics of views and hitting the trends. Thanks to the solution developed by Mediacube, bloggers were able to receive payments from the first days after posting videos, with the payment system and currency they were comfortable with.
Another innovative solution is the system of advance payments. For example, the creator needs a certain amount of money to produce content. They want to make a documentary that requires expensive specialists, equipment, or a trip to another country to film it. Analytics within the Mediacube ecosystem will predict an advance based on the blogger’s income they can get. The advance is then paid out in equal installments as remunerations for future content are received.
The FinTech solution has been offered to CSPs that have been successful in local markets. And former competitors have become partners that use MC Pay, Mediacube’s payment ecosystem for creators. CSPs are now using MC Pay for payments. Mediacube plans to become a full-fledged payment system or digital bank for content creators.
Over the past 12 months, one in five bloggers using MC Pay have chosen to be paid in cryptocurrency.
What Else the Mediacube System Offers
The company also provides businesses with a back office and assistance in finding bloggers to promote products or services. This is a convenient system where you can see channel dynamics, analytics, and direct contacts you can reach out to and agree to a contract for advertising integration. Bloggers in the back office have tools to identify competitors, track trends in their market, and monitor their own dynamics.
The team expects this year’s total turnover to be $123 million. That’s almost double the 2022 and 2021 numbers, when the company was in the process of addressing market challenges. More than 4,000 bloggers from 90 countries currently work with Mediacube, and the team has grown to 230 people worldwide. In terms of views, creators using the CSPs of CoinsPaid’s partners are leading YouTube topics and selections.
