Cash Money: 53 Million Page Views Equals What in Dollars? The Rebecca Black 'Friday' Phenomenon

For those who have been off the grid - or who dont have teenage children - Rebecca Black is a 13 year old Los Angeles middle school student who made a funny video for her friends, she thought. It is about her life. Who would care? 53 million human internet users, that's who. Her video went viral, allegedly in the 'so bad its good' category. It is mildly interesting that a tech savvy teen in a very sophisticated media-dominated city claims to be surprised that her video went wild. What is perhaps more interesting is what she actually makes from this, in profit. Millions? Uh, not exactly. Mashable explains the economics of virality:

"None other than Lady Gaga recently pronounced Rebecca Black a “genius,” but is Black now a millionaire too?

That’s been the subject of some speculation over the past few days as the video for Black’s so-bad-it’s-good anthem Friday has racked up 53 million views and counting. What kind of cash can Black expect out of that?

According to Forbes columnist Chris Barth, YouTube makes about $1 per thousand page views, of which content creators like Black (and Ark Music Factory, the Los Angeles-based producer that wrote the tune) get 68% of the profit. If that’s the case, then the total take for Black and her producer is about $36,000.

Going by a similar ballpark measure, Black’s iTunes sales of 37,000 in the first week nets out to about $26,000 if 101 Distribution‘s claim that Apple pays $.70 per download is true. Adding those two figures together, Black and Ark Music Factory have netted about $62,000. That’s not including whatever revenues Ark gets for selling a Friday ringtone at $1.29.

Barth, who mistakenly wrote that Black’s song had been downloaded on iTunes 2 million times, had initially proclaimed her a millionaire based on that calculation, but it looks more likely, as Annie Lowrey writes in Slate, that Black is actually a “thousandaire.”

Whatever the ultimate take, the point is somewhat moot anyway since the affable Black announced on The Tonight Show this week that she planned to donate the money she made from the video to Japan and to her school. Meanwhile, Ark is using its suddenly well-visited website to promote its next teen would-be star, Alana Lee.