I messaged John a while back about this and he replied a while later.
(note: not trying to imply him and I are tight, I'm just a random dude he doesn't know...
I was surprised he took the time to respond.)
I don't know if he'd be cool with me posting his exact reply, so I guess to err on the safe side,
I'll just say he is still holding out hope that he can release it in a way that will let him make a few bucks.
I think he knows deep down that there's gonna be pirated copies.
But he's trying to think outside the box.
I suggested that he should just forget that, and make a cheap and easy digital download.
Louis CK did the same thing for one of his acts, and it was convenient enough that he still made
a million bucks even though it was easy to pirate.
John seemed somewhat open to the idea.
For the record, any youtube money will be negligible. As others have said, you'd use it to promote yourself.
The youtube AdSense payment has a few different factors... a longer video affords more opportunities
to serve ads, but you don't get paid for the ads that never get seen. So if they only watch a few
minutes and then get bored and quit... or they fast forward through a lot of it... your pay drops.
A pretty good rough rule of thumb, in 2019, if you're not a superstar and don't have additional
revenue through some sort of contract/sponsor... is $4 per 1,000 views.
The most popular video of John running balls that I can find, is his 366 ball run on Dennis Walsh's YT channel.
So John's already missing out a little bit, in the sense that all that revenue is presumably going to Dennis.
"All that revenue"
39,000 views = 39 * $4.00
= $156 spread out over the past 3 years.