1. How are estimated earnings calculated? Are they accurate?
Estimated earnings are just that, estimated. What we do is take a lowball and a highball value on based on what we know about what partners earn on average per view and multiply that by the number of views they get per day. This assumes every video the partner gets views on is monetized, which isn't usually the case. The number isn't supposed to be read as religion but to give you a general feeling of what they might be earning. It is updated regularly so mouse over the column header to see the values used to calculate it at any given time. Also note that the actual values any given partner might actually have vary greatly, hence the range. Use the higher end of the range if the partner you are looking at uses prerolls, and use the lower value if they do not. Also other then the ad type it really depends on where the viewers are that watch the partners videos. Ads in some countries pay way more then ads in others. Also if the user is not a partner and does not have ads on their videos this is an estimation of what they could earn. Lastly it doesn't take into account taxes or expenses of course so their actual in pocket figure is less of course.
At the end of the day again the estimated earnings are provided to give an estimation, but only the partner knows what they really make unless they make it public (which contrary to popular belief is not against google/youtube's TOS.
2. What is the SB Rank all about?
When SocialBlade was created we first just listed rankings based on # of subscribers and # of views, but it quickly became evident that this was not an accurate indicator of how people were actually doing on youtube. Someone could have a bazillion subscribers that they cheated to get but not have any actual views. The SB ranking system aims to measure a channel's influence based on how many views they are actually getting, how they are doing networking wise (i.e. who has them in their box), and other factors. If you have a A+, A, or A- SB rank then consider yourself very influential on youtube. If you're not there quite yet don't fret, just keep up the good work!
3. What does my view count show a negative number or zero for a day?
Negative numbers occur when YouTube audits the view counts. There is not a problem at SocialBlade, it just means YouTube looked at your views and decided they made a mistake, or decided to change what counts as a view and the negative number is how this is displayed when they roll the counter back. If you ever noticed when videos get to about 300 views YouTube locks the view count. This is the beginning of their audit system. The same thing happens on a grander scale for your total video views which is why you sometimes don't see an update in your view count for the day, or again why it sometimes gets rolled back showing you a negative number. Update: As of December 2012 it appears YouTube decided that if you delete a video or private it you lose the views that were on there so many channels lost a large number of views.
