Despite millions of subscribers, Dr. Pimple Popper’s YouTube videos aren’t popping off with advertising income.
Sandra Lee, the dermatologist behind the pimple-popping franchise, got her start on YouTube back in 2010, before scoring her own show on TLC and further expanding her following on TikTok.
Her channel now boasts more than 7 million subscribers and 2 billion views, but Lee says she struggles to make decent money on YouTube because the site insists her content is “too graphic” — an assessment she called “subjective” to Business Insider.
A YouTuber’s value is based on their view count, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s estimates, who said that for every 1,000 views Lee gets on her videos, she should earn between $3 and $5 — which means she would have earned between $6 and $10 million from her 2 billion views in total.
YouTube policy states that any content creators who post “graphic or violent content” risk having their videos removed and, in extreme cases, their account revoked. This includes “footage or imagery showing bodily fluids, such as blood or vomit, with the intent to shock or disgust viewers,” which may fit the description for some of Lee’s content.
Lee first started getting “strikes” on her YouTube channel in 2016.Getty Images for Lord & Taylor
Dr. Sandra Lee received a Critics’ Choice Real TV Award for female star of the year in 2019.Getty ImagesLee told Business Insider that her videos earned nearly $100,000 per month prior to 2016 before YouTube began taking disciplinary actions — though she maintains her content was always meant to be educational.
“I’m really proud of the fact that kids know what a lipoma is now or they know that you can’t just squeeze a cyst — you have to remove the sack entirely to get it removed,” she told Insider.
“We’re teaching people about psoriasis or hidradenitis, but if you’re not motivated to get that content out, how are people going to learn?”
Lee added that she’s starting to see the same sort of content warning messages appear on some of her TikTok videos too.
“They changed the rules all of a sudden,” she speculated. “They [social media platforms] grow big because of all these new posters, but then they wait until they get big enough that they can sort of clamp down on it and make restrictions.”
The Post reached out to representatives for Sandra Lee, as well as YouTube, for comment.
