I know at times I may sound like a shill for Patreon, but I have no connection to them whatsoever beyond "normal customer", and don't care if you use a competitive service to them or whatever. But if you are in the position of finding yourself with a growing show like this, I implore you to set up some sort of voluntary subscription revenue as soon as possible, before you embed into the very foundation of your content a dependency on ad dollars. Even if you use it as an augment to ad revenue, it's so much better for you. It's more stable against Youtube deciding to tweak an algorithm one day. It's more stable month-to-month. It's even more socially stable since it releases you from having to chase ad dollars by keeping advertisers happy instead of your "actual" customers. If your primary money base is subscriptions rather than ads, you could even completely shift video services if you need to without crashing your income.<p>My interest in pitching this so often is my desire to play my little part in sticking a stake in the idea that getting advertising money is the default path to monetization. I'd rather move to a world where it's either merely one option among many, or even, dare I dream, a last resort considered vaguely déclassé.<p>Oh, and I would also implore you, let your patrons download video directly somehow. I'd love to not even have to go through YouTube at all. Of course, I'm a crazy Linux user for whom YouTube isn't as convenient as it could be, but it's another way to detach your patrons from a particular video service.
It's funny because the NYT pushed an entire beat about companies needing to limit their digital advertising to only respected outlets...you know, like the NYT.<p>In hindsight it was easy for them to play up the "offensive content" straw man, get a few execs riled up, and convince google to kill their upstart competitors.
I canceled my youtube red over this. They've blacklisted channels that are specifically against racism because of some channels that support racism. They don't want to offend racists? I'm keeping my 5/month and will not consider their new 30/month service that I had been excited about.
A few years ago I did an evaluation of google seo to assist with a project. I distinctly remember my conclusion being that due to the proprietary and closed source nature of the algorithms google is using, I predicted they would be tempted to artificially manipulate them to produce profit through siphoning the ad revenue, and that I suspected it was already happening to the blackhat seo technique sites. They weren't taking measures to stop blackhat seo, they were taking measures to profit off them.<p>All conjecture on my part, but perhaps it's relevant to this story? If the algorithms are the dark secret sauce of your power that no-one talks about, why not abuse them for profit? Publicly you have plausible deniability, because no one can see inside your box but you. If there is enough of a PR issue you can artifically adjust to match the needed PR stance, but still keep the rest of the manipulation system in place.<p>Especially given googles close ties to the gov, and certain political groups, I question if we really want such a power to exist over the future of the internet.
Well. I guess that the NYT, WaPo and WSJ can be proud of their accomplishment.<p>They managed to hurt the independent media on its revenue, but to their vein it seems like most youtubers actually have a passion for what they do and their subscribers are also smart enough to see through all this bullshit and support their favorite content creators through other means than watching ads.
It's all about YouTube becoming profitable. It's not about the algorithms or any specific political ideology or any other silly idea. It's cold hard cash that Alphabet wants from YouTube and it's not delivering. So how do they handle that? Especially if the advertisers are the ones funding this? More control over content and more gate keeping are the likely options YouTube's bosses are going to pick. It's just inevitable that Youtube content creators are going to get squeezed harder. I expect YouTube soon to have moderators that will vet any content of channels of a certain size before that channel's owners see a dime. Hell, I expect YouTube to require content creators to fork out a few hundred bucks to be given free license to publish videos on the site eventually. Why? Because showing an ad on a video is a risk and if it doesn't generate enough money or have enough people viewing it then why are they hosting it? We all have to think like this when approaching YouTube and Alphabet with respect to the current and future changes to YouTube.
This is why people should not put all their eggs in one basket. He can get sponsors. He can drive people to other places like Facebook and his own site. That way when some company needs to change something to be better for them it does tank your business. If you have a show you are a business. If you want to keep it then learn business.
I get around 500,000 views a month. No way would I ever invest my career in YouTube not just due to shifting algorithms but the fact that there is no competition makes it next to impossible to invest heavy amounts of time.
I don't understand why non-youtubers care about these nuisance. These 'independent media' provides little to no value or productivity, these people are mostly equivalent to those who dance on the train or street to get money. Online, they get the money by deterring from their own content to who-knows-what advertisers who paid the most.<p>If anyone actually produces any value in need, they should be able to create a business model where people would exchange money for it.