Local Magician Congers Up YouTube Golden Play Button

By Mark A. Diaz
Magician, sleight-of-hand artist and all around prankster, Rich Ferguson, was awarded a “YouTube Gold Play Button” for reaching the 1 million subscribers milestone, making him one of roughly just 2,000 people in the whole world have received the award. Ferguson had 1,641,960 subscribers to his “ucmagic” channel when writing this article began (His followers grow daily).
Back in the 1970’s, there were only a handful of TV channels to pick from. In the ‘80s and ‘90s that number grew into the hundreds with the introduction of cable TV. And the growing source of visual entertainment has grown exponentially with online platforms like YouTube.
The website is much like TV with a vast number of shows to watch. With dedication and perseverance, Ferguson has become one of the few that has tapped into the outlet making it into a viable source of income.
Originally, Ferguson used the website simply as another place to embed his videos and produce some magic related content. The big change came when he posted the “head falling off” gag he had invented for The Tonight Show. Unbeknownst to him, the clip went viral, receiving 100 million views in the first week. It also received an award from Google for being one of the world’s most searched-for videos for 2012.
Contrary to popular belief, the revenue is not driven by how many people visit your channel, referred to as “clicks,” but rather by the duration of the time spent viewing the video, and advertisements viewed. This is called “monetizing your channel.”
According to YouTube’s website, “When you submit a video that is eligible for monetization, YouTube will place ads inside or near the video. You will earn a share of the revenue that is generated from ad impressions occurring when these videos are viewed.”
About 45% of the advertisement revenues goes to the company, but 100% of the income created by brand endorsements and royalties goes to the poster.
Unfortunately, Ferguson did not originally monetize his channel, and in turn, lost thousands of dollars of potential income. It wasn’t until some people pointed out to him the money he was losing that Ferguson realized his mistake.
“I learned my lesson real quick,” he said. “So, when I did the chair [prank] I had monetized my channel and made several thousand dollars.” The chair prank was created for the Today Show. Ferguson disguises himself with cushions and stands up when people sit on him.
“I’m finding the creativity that I use in magic I apply to ‘youtubing’ and reached such a bigger audience,” he said. “It’s about retention. If I can retain an audience for a certain amount of time, they are not on Facebook, they’re not on TV, they are looking at YouTube ads.”
However, if too many people stop watching the video before the end or before an ad pops up, it can have a negative effect on the overall channel’s standing and cost the poster the most precious broadcast resource, momentum.
“Sometimes I do a video that I think this is going to be gold and I put it up there and no one is watching it long enough,” Ferguson said “There has only been one instance where I deleted it. It would have had such a negative result it would have had a domino effect on my channel.”
Ferguson spends a lot of his time trying to spot leaks, points where viewers opt out, in his postings and learning from them.
Descriptions and tags are a vital way of grabbing the audience’s attention and one letter can make a big difference. According to Google trends, people search the word “prank” more often than “pranks” and the amount “VR” is used greatly exceeds the use of “virtual reality.” Better descriptions equates to more viewings.
Google also helps those who help themselves. The company will give channels that are getting traction better ads, push videos to the top of searches to encourage viewership, and once you reach a certain number of subscribers, the company will give you a dedicated, creative support person.
And, by the time this article was finished, Ferguson had 1,648,479 subscribers.