Welcome to the world of "unboxing videos," one of the many p peculiar genres res on You Tube, the Google-owned video hosting site where viewers watch more than 6 billion hours of video every month. Unboxing videos are exactly what they sound like: People opening boxes and narrating their actions. The volume of unboxing videos has boomed in recent years. Easy to make and surprisingly hypnotic to watch, the videos have become a lucrative little corner of the Internet for the people who film them.

      The most popular unboxings are for expensive gadgets, like the iPhone, Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Competition for these views is fierce. Tech-news sites rush to post their own slideshows and videos of brand-new Apple products being birthed from their high-end packaging. - [I] - Companies have even started uploading their own unboxing videos to official YouTube channels, like this clip of the new Xbox One from Microsoft that has been watched more than 3 million times.

        Since 2010, the number of YouTube clips with "unboxing" in the headline has increased 871%, Last year alone, 2,370 days, or 6.5 years, worth of unboxing footage was uploaded to the site. The traffic is coming from all over the world, with an uptick in recent interest from such far-flung places as India, Brunei, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago. film them.

        - [2] - The people who post the videos are not just bragging about their latest purchases. They make money off ads displayed at the start of a clip or that pop up while they're playing. YouTube's payment system is complicated, but one unboxer said he can make $2 to $4 for every 1,000 views. Older videos don't necessarily fall off the search rankings, so a creator in it for the long haul can make more money as they add videos over time.

        Creators only get paid per "monitized" view. That means visitors have to actually watch enough of the video for ads to appear. To keep people from abandoning a video before they've seen an ad, the videos have to be engaging, well shot and more than just SE0-keyword spar. Unboxers look at Google Ad Words and YouTube search's auto suggest function to uncover popular search terms and name their videos aceordingly. They might borrow the products, or buy and return them after the video is shot. - [3] -

       To keep viewers engaged, unboxers often bring a unique style to their product category. Some put their own personalities front and center, turning their faces into a trusted brand that brings back followers. Others have a specific shooting style that might favor time-lapse style footage set to catchy music, or close-up shots that pan lovingly over the unblemished surface of a new product.

        In addition to pulling in search traffic, good unboxers can get large volumes of subscribers to their YouTube channels. - [4] - Consistency and focus are key to Iuring in those repeat viewers, so some people will have multiple channels, one for cach narrow c category.