"just because you have a billion views, doesn't mean you're useful to advertisers"

Hard as it might be to believe I actually respect salespeople and no matter how good they are, they can't sell the unsalable. Its disrespectful to even ask them, in a golden-rule-ish way I wouldn't even ask them.

I believe non-monetizability is the core problem not salespeople. If I churned out IT training videos for people who can't read websites and FAQs, it would be infinitely easier for a professional talented salesperson to sell, rather than "A picture of me out to brunch in Los Feliz" from the article. Its highly likely the only people that could sell her eating brunch would be incredibly talented, and therefore precisely the least likely salespeople to be selling vlogger brunch videos.

The meta issue which is extremely hard to discuss culturally in the USA is the people complaining in the article are high school kids. They may be 20+ years old but they stopped social development around age 14 or so. At that age, success is defined solely as popularity among your similar age and development level peers, not money, never money. In fact adults who tell kids to focus on their future, by getting training or an education or just by working hard, are told they're boring or old or not letting them be a kid. Well, if you let a kid age out of middle/high school without growing up, you get "wah wah My friends like me, how dare the world not make me rich". This fits the old nerd trope where you come back into town with your freshly minted degree and very high paycheck and run into the coolest kids from high school, still there, pumpin gas and flippin burgers and cashiering at the grocery store, they were kids, they were the cool kids, we grew up and are now rich and cool, but they're still cool kids making change at the cash register for a living, presumably for the rest of their lives.

The, uh, low developmental age of the folks in the article shows in the video topics. They are perfectly appropriate for a 13 year old to impress other 13 year olds and make a happy little echo chamber of little kids. Thats more or less non-monetizable, exactly as what most 13 year old kids do outside YT videos, therefore unsurprisingly she's deep in poverty and being a little kid at heart she's not going to have the bootstraps to pull herself up with.

The pity of it is they're so darn close, so close to actually making it. I am not talking about being even more clickbaity or shoveling just one more advertisement. Take for example the self described lesbian stoner waitress in the first paragraph. You can't monetize her "how to win the breakup" video no matter how stylish the presentation or the personal magnetism of the presenter or how experienced the presenter is or how great her first impression is. But she could make at least small stacks of cash if she leveraged her real job, being a waitress. Women who've never waitressed before (still working on their liberal arts degree, etc) wonder how to do the job and what its like, she can release some fun training-ish vids. Everyone loves to laugh, do some problem customer videos. The secret inside story of being a waitress. Re-enact the worst (in a funny sense) pickup lines she's had to tolerate (or not tolerate, or maybe the lines that actually worked LOL). How to beat the waitress interview and get hired. Small talk for people who don't like small talk but want a job. Rather than daydreaming of getting millions, she might actually get hundreds or even thousands. It would certainly be an easier sell for a professional salesperson than "I am pretty, and I ate brunch today"