As a YouTuber, I’m conflicted about this. My main channel (non-tech) is small, but is monetised, and YouTube see fit to throw me a _very_ variable amount of money every month. CPMs are down right now so revenue has tanked along with it, it’ll pick back up at some point, but the variability is itself the pain point. My videos are relatively expensive and time consuming to make, but people seem to find them useful, and even enjoyable. The occasional (relevant) sponsor read or similar has been a huge help in providing some stability in the past, and I know for many channels it’s the main source of income since YPP revenue share can be so volatile.
I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and it’ll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that’s never really sat right with me personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile storm brewing).
On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of “the usual suspect” sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos and it’s a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.
That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.
Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.
And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites and creators.
Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.
I’m sort of amazed this has to be explicitly stated:
Because most YouTube creators (even the hobbyists) are at least partially motivated by money, and if you take away all the money they will likely make less content or stop altogether. I understand that it’s fun to get things for free, but that’s usually not sustainable.
The point is that's fine, and it is perfectly sustainable for people to do things they enjoy for free. It'd perhaps not be sustainable for someone to play video games as a full-time job, but maybe that's okay (or even desirable from a societal resource allocation standpoint)?
Simply make rent, housing, and food free. Then people need not make money for the majority of needs.
Indeed:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-no...
If true, possibly the most damning rebuttal of UBI proponents that there is.
I don't see how. They are young adults and of course they want to be [flashy job]. Some may do it out of passion, some will inevitably realize the platform exploits them and moves on so they can have stability, or pay rent. Trust me, I'm a game dev, the 2000's version of this, succeeded by the band musicians of the 90's/80's.
UBI would bring out more passionate people and not force the passionate but disheartened to drop out. meanwhile, the passionate who do stick it will optimize for money. So they can pay rent. Or worse, the unpassionate marketers take over and the discipline is reduced to slop (we've probably been here for ~10 years now).
Because they're saying if they could sustain themselves, they'd have their job be to... eat at restaurants, play video games, travel, try on clothes, wear makeup, etc. Basically be an exact conservative caricature of socialists.
The irony is that its a caricature of rich nepo babies under consumer capitalism vs socialism. In a pure socialist society (good example of this is US government or military jobs) you still work and there wouldn’t be such striking wealth inequality on display.
I think that's fine, though. Maybe we should have different platforms. Maybe we have a platform just for people who post stuff out of love for their craft, and don't expect any sort of compensation. And then we have a platform for people who want to monetize, and the platform itself has a subscription fee that gets distributed to creators based on views, or... something. Anything, really.
Maybe this could all be YouTube, but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other models.
The current situation with YouTubers asking people to subscribe to their Patreon or whatever is so weird, since often they have to distribute patron perks outside of YouTube, or via unlisted links, or whatever. I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear of anti-trust regulation, but an integrated solution like that would likely be better for both creators and viewers.
They do have that functionality[0]. The elephant in the room to me when discussing these things is that people aren't wrong when they won't pay for most "content". The overwhelming majority of it brainless filler-noise that a lot of people probably only look at because they don't know what else to do with their time. If actually pressed to come up with how much they'd pay for it, they correctly come up with $0 as the answer. Unfortunately, they don't then figure that it's not worth their attention either.
[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7636690
There are plenty of alternative video hosting sites if you seek that. So, why are you still on Youtube?
Sure, works for Onlyfans. they even blend in both subscriptions AND PPV behind the sub. And we know how quality that content is (no offense to the models there. but come on, I've seen $100 for 2 pictures, behind a $20/month subscription. You're not 2000's Brittany Spears).
They do. CC's can enable Memberships and upload videos specific to that.
The issue is that
1. the memberships are small for many right now. Conseuqnces of being late to the party.
2. what's offered isn't necessarily going to be even higher quality than a public video.
3. ad rev from non-subbed views is still signifigant. Making a paid subscription for certain videos can mean brining in less money.
4. That lower view count affects your algorithm for growing.
It's complex. And sadly, outside of the OF model most people simply don't want to pay for content. They get bored and they move to Tiktok and that's the real endgame should YT fall.
If they want to make money, they are totally free to have a website hosting their content behind a paywall.
Than I can decide if their content is worth money to me (let me tell you: in 999 out of 1000 "creators" it isn't).
But I already pay for a few select content creators. And happily shell out more than I would pay YT for an adfree experience.
Spoilers: the 1 out of 1000's won't get your money either because of any number of arbitrary reasons unrelated to their craft that is conjured up.
- Slow website/video host? Great now they need to pay for a better host or pay a web dev to optimize their site.
- Not responive? now that dev/service needs more money.
- pay is too much (meanwhile they still can't even make minimum wage)? Well, their fault for valuing themselves over a McDonalds' employee
- they pivot to premium teaching and now are a "scam"? Why am I here, I can google and learn this for free on Youtube
You can't win with some people.
Less content frequently better content. Hobby as content job may just not be sustainable in another form. Tons of hobbyist creators jumped on the full time content mill job and burn out. Maybe in another world they have their hobby on the side and put out 1/10th content slowly, without the incentive to make filler to keep bills paid. TBH sometimes when work and passion mix, passion takes a back seat. It would be different if youtube algo doesn't incentivize this type of content milling, but it does.
If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g:
- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)
- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)
- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google
- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)
HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble
It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted.
No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.
I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out, people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.
Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable. Because giving all your content away for rent isn't financially viable. But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire thing collapses.
It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking point for many (past the ones who complain about every price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).
Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless, as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.
We know how the rest ends from there.
I think this proves my point, that it's a service problem. Put everything together in a single, easy-to-use service for a low price (like Netflix in 2012), and only the true die-hards will still bother with piracy. Ask them to subscribe to a whole bunch of services (with a high total cost) or try to figure out how to save money by strategically subscribing and unsubscribing to see the stuff they want, and have to deal with shows suddenly disappearing or moving to a competing service when they're half-finished watching them, and many will simply go back to torrenting because it's honestly easier than all that BS. But instead you think people are "lazy"... A lazy person doesn't do torrenting; it's really not that easy.
Back then, 1) there weren't many alternatives. At the beginning of cable TV's reign, videotapes weren't even commonly available. And 2) back then, people had more disposable income because the cost-of-living was much, much lower (particularly housing). Technology is much better now too, so people expect to pay less.
Citation needed. Last I checked, Netflix is doing quite well, and even better after cracking down on the password-sharing.
Some people raged, but Netflix's subscriber count has increased and profits are up, so obviously those people either got over it, or were a small minority.
in all fairness, I'm sure Kagi is aware it's serving a niche right now. It's more a matter if that niche (maybe a few thousand consistent subscibers?) can support their infrastructure. You don't need to compete with Google to make a good living.
Sure, I totally get that. I’m no fan of being advertised to myself and as a premium subscriber I do find sponsor segments - especially poorly-places ones - just as annoying as everyone else when watching YouTube - which is why I said I was conflicted in my earlier comment.
However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.
Making YouTube non-viable is the entire point. Google should not be the gatekeeper for the world's content, or get to decide who wins and loses in a rat race trying to keep up with algorithms built to keep users addicted to low quality advertizer friendly content.
The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non viable source of revenue so creators will move on to ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are in charge again and users can pay them directly with no corrupt middle-men .
I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative platforms building a direct relationship with a more independent donation-motivated audience before everyone else does.
These are platforms with worse availability and worse affordances, ranging to nonfunctional once you're on a mobile device. Adblocking technology isn't going to make them better. Making them better is going to make them better, but the unit economics remain not in their favor.
A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.
You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements?
What a baaad world that would be...
The videos aren't going to be replaced with text, they're going to be replaced with nothing. Text died because it is too hard to get paid for, banner ads paid peanuts to begin with and are now trivial to block. Video ads paid really well which is why people started making video content, if video ads also die, then there is simply going to be no content.
There's going to be less content, which will likely still be more than enough content.
Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video.
in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.
I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world.
If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization.
That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.
Exactly that. But surprisingly, although I'd consider it as a trivial insight, we're living in a world that just doesn't want to understand that.
And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are other big tech walled gardens, where content fights against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And people still do not want to understand what a terribly bad idea that is...
Aren’t you, as a YouTuber, in the same position as many creators that do the same on other mediums? There are people out there who write amazing blog posts but now the traditional advertising world is basically dead and people have to figure out other ways to make it work.
Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to earn a living.
Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.
because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't.
It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable because there's no money in it, literally. There still is money in video ads.
I’m not asking why it is. I’m asking why it should be.
Why what should be? Why platforms with money pay people with no money? Why platforms with no money shut down?
It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They "should" get more money because they more effectly do this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to advertisers effectively enough.
I don't really know what to do with that answer, though. Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid avenues to support creators (or even care about other creator's well beings?) and move on?
No I’m asking why we should look at people who make video on YouTube differently than any other type of creator who publish elsewhere.
The original post I was replying to said:
And my answer was that this is no different than any other type of creator online.
I don't know who's "we" here. But that's simply psychological. You will look at [person who make lots of money] differently from [person who can barely cover rent], if only because the latter may need more help you may be able to give.
There's no "should" here. And influencers aren't limited to YouTube. all my answers come down to "because they are backed by a trillion dollar corporation"
Maybe instead of "but no one else makes money" to drag down, we should change the lens to "let's reward other mediums for being high quality and throrougly researched" to boost up other mediums of creation.
Especially in a time where we are already getting so much slop and misinformation (and we're not even close to the worst of the storm). I'm sure you seen enough of the internet to know most people will just accept the slop and at best take years of introspection before they realize why quality matters (others never do).
I'm not trying to be offensive or hostile but, as much as I value the higher-quality content on youtube, if youtube went back to being just a place people posted videos of themselves doing stuff instead of what effectively amounts to studios making youtube content, I'd consider that a win.
Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.
D'accord
It's another effect of the economy. Programmers are traditionally well compensated, so they can use their free time literally giving away knowledge for others. Because they don't need to monetize that knowledge to survive.
Video editing: not so much. If you want more people just having fun you need some part of the economy making sure they pay rent. Hence, hustle culture. It'd still exist if everyone was comfy, but many people would instead focus on leisure over minmaxing money.
Assuming when you say thoroughly researched, you're looking for high quality educational information, the highest quality videos are generally from a camera pointed at a blackboard/whiteboard recording a lecture that an expert was already going to give. Not a lot of production value necessary.
I wouldn't pay real money other than my YT Premium, so I'm fine with sponsor reads. I'm not alone.
As I understand it YouTube Premium viewers result in significantly more revenue than ad based viewers do [1] but represent a tiny fraction of viewers [2] and can't be targeted separately. I.e. if most people were willing to pay in just one way, even if that were just YouTube Premium, then there wouldn't be such a strong incentive for channels to rely on sponsored segments but most people prefer not paying anything and dealing with ads and/or sponsored segments instead leaving those that do a bit stuck with the latter.
[1] Just one example https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubegaming/comments/p1qmgu/conte... [2] https://backlinko.com/youtube-users
I would buy premium in a heartbeat if it actually filtered out all ads and sponsored content. Not just the segment, the entire video should be cut if its creation was influenced by “impressions” or what ever filler content is measured in.
The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality.
Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.
why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control.
Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.
Yes, I have a limited amount of time so I use curators (or algorithms) to narrow down what I might most like. For example, people used to pay HBO and other TV networks, or these days, Apple/Netflix/Amazon/Disney/etc.
Yeah I have premium and TBH expect creators over XYZ size to spend a few minutes to timestamp/chapter their sponsorships and youtube to enable autoskipping. Or have youtube crawl through transcripts and figure it out.
The problem is the people willing to pay for premium likely much more valuable customers for sponsorships to target.
It greatly depends on the audience, but for many cases, unfortunately, it's more likely the case that you are dreaming.
Typical income flows for streamers include:
1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which many adblockers do block)
2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock wants to block)
3. Live stream donations
4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via Patreon
5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their obvious weaknesses)
6. Merchandises
And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with very different perks, but then your income is completely independent from streaming).
Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises because it does have significant margins if you can keep launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising, but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees, prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves active advertising as a compelling option for smaller streamers, at least for now.
While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves, unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying anyway.
If blocking ads means for-profit video creators go out of business then so be it. There will always be those who do it because it is something they enjoy and usually that kind of content is more worthwhile anyway.
You are free to do so, but your claim won't work for most of my favorite creators and streamers. Thank you.
Direct payment is good, but Patreon-type models are unfair (for both consumers and creators), inefficient (in terms of both time and money spent by consumers), and unscalable (to anything but a tiny fraction of the economy).
We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-item level.
The thing that sucks is I pay for YouTube Premium to remove ads then youtubers always have sponsored segments. It makes my $20/mo useless because I'm spending time watching ads still. I don't have a solution I'm just stating my perspective on it.
That said, SponsorBlock has been around for years. I've been using it for as long as I can remember. Basically any decent-sized channel's videos already have the sponsored segment skipped. I'm not sure why someone just posted it but we're well beyond SponsorBlock "taking off".
Same feeling here. It's gotten twice as expensive, which is insane by itself. But worse is the jarring rotation of sponsored advertisers.
it's reminiscent of NASCAR. Or, like being a kid forced to watch advertising during TV breaks, wondering why the TV screen istrying to sell me cigarettes.
It's maybe a bit social-media-toxic to say that some youtubers are my "favorite people" in that i look forward to their takes on the topics they cover. I lose interest though when that youtuber presents to me an unprompted ad for my testicular health.
I have no solution for creators consumers or google :(
I always wondered why YouTube themselves didn't start restricting sponsored segments. I don't necessarily agree with the idea (not a big fan of how restrictive youtube already is) but I always thought it was odd they were ok with their premium offering being devalued by sponsored segments.
They could stop sponsored segments, but they couldn't stop creators and users from going to other platforms where they allow sponsored segments. They have far less control than e.g. Apple with the app store (where they literally can stop other app stores from ever coming into being, barring regulation that changes that).
It's not like there are many viable competitors, at least for long form videos.
If youtube stopped allowing sponsored segments that puts pressure on the market to produce such a thing. Even now creators are trying to come up with alternatives. Nothing has panned out, but something like stopping sponsored segments could very well tip a large number of people who want to get paid to find another way to get paid.
So what, even despite high-profile creators such as Practical Engineering constantly pushing for Nebula (the largest of them), it's still a fraction of their YouTube following.
Most of the time, the complete content is a disguised AD anyway. Same for most hollywood movies.
Someone spotted a "SKIP"-button for sponsored segments and posted about it on the LTT-subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1ekajmt/is_y...
I have YouTube Premium and on my phone I sometimes get a "Jump ahead" button that pops up on the bottom right corner when the video is in fullscreen. It doesn't just appear during sponsored segments but also during "less exciting" moments of a video like the introduction.
They just give you 10% of SponsorBlock so you dont get SponsorBlock :D
People getting their own sponsors means Google doesn't need to increase rates to compensate creators. Who wouldn't take a deal for a 3rd party to pay part of your "employee" compensation if they were given a chance? Google still has plenty of sponsors going directly to them anyway.
No. Look, I'm not happy to pay more, but YT is really great. It's completely obviated the need to watch broadcast or cable TV for me (yes I know, sports...). They haven't enshittified it at all, and since I'm a music lover, I love that they include YT music (although I sorely miss its predecessor). There is the sum-of-human-knowledge and then some !! on youtube. it's absolutely worth what they charge. In fact, I dont know how they can even order enough storage to keep the thing running. tl;dr the features and content has grown proportionately with the price increase.
really? There are entire posts dedicated to how many features Youtube cut removed, or messed up over the years. as a old school forum boomer I still hate that they changed from a nested comments section to "twitter feed of loose chains" over a decade ago.
I won't go on a whole rant on every little feature, but the service has definitely gotten worse. It just so happens that the tech core still works fine enough (smoothly watching videos on nearly any platform), and the business core is powered by user-generated content which is as good as you choose.
P.S. I sure do wish we got Youtube Premium Lite wasn't cancelled. I do just mostly want ad-free browsing. I can manage around offline/offscreen videos and no YT Music (also miss Google Play Music btw).
Cutting or removing features!= enshittification. To me that word means contracts with early cancellation fees, charging more for long form or educational content, pop-ups, rate limiting ( you get 10 vids per day on your free plan), charging to upload, billing authors for bandwidth used, and so on. I don't think you realize how good we have it.
Your definition slightly off. Here it is from the guy who coined the term:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Removing features is absolutely part of enshittification.
Yeah, any day now YT is going to shut its doors.
You must have an incredible lack of imagination, the story of software is the story of mayflies.
Cigarette commercials have been illegal since 1971.
r/USDefaultism
Wow thanks for this
Good to knoW that the entire world is under a single jurisdiction.
I was gonna post a similar comment but with the opposite conclusion: SponsorBlock has been around for years, and the people who are really annoyed by sponsors are mostly already using it. Most of the rest of the population either doesn't mind sponsor segments (me) or isn't willing to go to the trouble of installing addons. Of course, there's always going to be people who become aware of it due to threads like this and start using it, but I'd venture that that's too small a number for worries about this suddenly "taking off".
I think, to some degree, this was my sentiment as well just not stated as clearly. I meant to say basically "SponsorBlock has been around and I know of a couple people who use it so it's taken off but hasn't caused any kind of revolution" but have been dealing with somethings in life and I think just was short with my explanation.
Are we, though? Regular ad blockers are still only used by a minority of web browser users. I would be surprised if SponsorBlock has larger market share than that.
That's fair I just mean I was recommended it by someone and have recommended it to others. Mostly just expressing people know about it and it's been around a while not necessarily intending to assert that it's ubiquitous.
You can still manually skip the sponsored segments. That's not the case with most ads on YouTube, so your subscription is not worthless.
Exactly why I instantly stopped paying for Spotify. They even went so far as to have regular advertising before podcasts.
Not paying for shit like that, only because they put a clause in the TOS that says ad free only means ad free music.
I have no qualms using any ad blocking option available. And I am happily paying for creators using patreon or other means they provide.
This is why I started using SponsorBlock. I've been a YouTube Premium subscriber since it first became available (when it was called YouTube Red), but I'm still inundated with long-form "ads" for Made In cookware and other such nonsense.
If your creators are also on Nebula ( https://nebula.tv , no affiliation other than being a former user) it may be worth considering.
The various creators I used to follow on Nebula have no ads at all in the videos published in Nebula, compared to those they post on Youtube. Not sure if its applicable for all creators on Nebula though.
being around for years =/= mass awareness. Just look at Hacker News ;)
There is no perfect solution because the interests are diametrically opposed. Many CC's don't WANT to be a business, but if you want to work full time you need to be. Businesses' main incentive is to get max customers or max revenue, while a concumer's incentive is to get as much as possible for as little money as possible.
Ironically enough, the RAID SHADOW LEGENDS (since we're talking about the "usual suspects) financial model may be the best of both worlds, at the expense of some well off people (and some unfortunate addicts): have whales bankroll 80% of the game and subsize the free players. But that probably can't happen with 99.99% of video creators.
Don't do your videos for money. You are interrupting users that pay for YouTube premium with ads in the middle of your videos. Set up a way to donate to you on YouTube, channel memberships are an option, they display next to the "subscribe button".
You shouldn't work for money either. Just do it for free.
We live in a capitalist society, and most people are forced to work to make ends meet. Being able to choose to put in what amounts to full time hours on a passion project isn't a privilege most people have.
You, presumably, wouldn't work for free, why do you insist that artists should entertain you for free?
You didn't understand my post. I don't insist that artists entertain for free. I was responding to the parent who said "don't make videos for money". I am in fact a full-time content creator.
My mistake then.
I encounter that attitude a lot here so I guess I jumped to conclusions.
Yeah, I get that!
YouTube isn't work and I doubt this person creates videos for a living. I assume this is just extra money this person wants, not needs. Many years ago YouTube was about hobbyists, and nobody complained. I'm sick of the attitude to monetize everything. I listed a few non-intrusive options, just don't be hostile to your viewers shoving them sponsored crap in the middle of videos
Youtube isn't work but producing videos at a decent quality and frequency is. It happens that a large amount of them are distributed through Youtube.
In the beginning of YouTube, true. But nowadays YouTube is work for a lot of people. It's their primary source of income, even. It's pointless to say, "well, that's not how it should be". It is, and that's the reality of the situation.
And, frankly, the production value of a lot of stuff on YouTube is amazing. That doesn't come for free, in the form of recording equipment, set design and purchasing, and just plain old time to write scripts and do post-production work. There's no reason that stuff at that middle quality level (between random guy with a handheld smartphone and professional studio production) shouldn't exist. I think it's amazing that people can make such high quality content, without having to get past e.g. a hollywood studio gatekeeper.
In the past, TV was traditionally paid for through advertising and syndication, and movies through ticket sales, and VHS/DVD/Bluray sales. Nowadays there are so many more ways for people to distribute their creations, and more ways for viewers to compensate them for those creations.
The thing that sucks is that we are still so stuck on this ad-supported model, not that people want to put enough work into their creations that it needs to be a paid full-time job.
For a lot of people, it is work and the quality is vastly better for it. Youtube in the past wasn't a replacement for tv, now given the quality many creators put into their work, it is.
This is of course a valid suggestion, and there are many, many creators that do this. However I think the world would be a poorer place if we lost all the creators that do need to make _some_ money for their channels to survive, which IMHO is the natural endgame if we remove or block all routes to passive monetisation.
I do get the issue with premium, as a premium subscriber myself I too find it annoying to be interrupted by yet another 30-second (or increasingly, more) read for some shady VPN or whatever.
Channel memberships, like patreon etc., are an option, but have a vanishingly small rate of uptake, and people expect some sort of value-add in return (early access to videos, a discord, and so on). Without other routes to revenue this just devalues the content itself, which I feel may be part of the problem here - we no longer value attach value to quality content. Rick Beato made a great video on the effects of this (in the music industry) recently, and it’s not great - but it does feel like all media is going a similar way.
I often pay for Patreon to get uncensored videos. Youtube by itself already devalues videos in various ways and avenues like Patreon let creators provide what they actually want to provide, not just what YouTube allows them to.
That’s great, I’m glad that you’re supporting creators directly and getting value from it too. But unfortunately you’re in the minority in my experience, for every person who does this, there are hundreds who wouldn’t even consider it.
For creators making certain kinds of content the “uncensored” and “non-ad-friendly” topics are a great argument for direct sponsorship etc, I definitely agree.
If by "certain" you mean anybody covering anything from movies to songs to games to whatever else, yes. I mean "those" creators. It's extremely easy to fall afoul of YouTube's Draconian censorship. I'm not talking about sex games. I'm talking about YouTube demonetizing anything they want for arbitrary reasons.
I feel you're not recognising the issue and what Patreon solves, and why relying on YouTube for revenue is simply not an option for anybody.
Well, what I had in mind by “certain” is probably really “not me”. I’m fully aware how easy it is to fall foul of the ad-friendly guidelines, and have had more than one video demonetised for “reasons” myself. I’m also very aware that tying one’s entire revenue to a single platform isn’t a good strategy in _any_ business, it’s not limited to YouTube (but I can see an argument for it being worse there specifically).
I really do recognise the issue, being in it myself. I do have patreon (and others) for other projects and it’s another revenue stream, which is great. But for my YouTube main channel I believe the content itself has value, and having to pour time and resources into building a value-add package devalues it - both in the immediate (since I would now have less time to devote to content creation) and longer term (since it makes it essentially a leader for my value add packages).
(Some larger creators I know do manage to carve out some revenue on patreon etc without any “perk package” but I think for that to work it becomes even more of a numbers game, and won’t help small creators just getting started. I’m also putting aside the recent announcements ref. The App Store etc since they’re not directly relevant here).
If you aren't able to get enough funding through Patreon, then it's simply because you haven't found a large enough or the right audience yet. It has nothing to do with value add. Not every viewer is going to subscribe to you on Patreon. Even the biggest channels I have subbed on Patreon have a fraction of their viewers on Patreon of what they have on YouTube, yet it's more than sufficient to fund an entire well-off lifestyle based on it.
You can also time delay any content .
Supporters get access via paid LBRY views or access to unlisted or privately hosted videos right away, and they are published a month later for free on public platforms.
I just don't personally find that sort of thing compelling. For the kinds of videos I watch, it doesn't matter to me if I watch it today or a month from now.
I think paywalled bonus content has the most value. A creator has a lot of control in that sense: if they are not making enough money, they can shift more of their free content behind the paywall. Certainly there's a point where viewers will get mad and leave, and/or what's available for free won't be enough to attract new paid subscribers, but there's still wiggle room.
Let me state upfront I do understand the desire to make money from a channel, and much of the YT content I enjoy would not exist if that was not possible. But allow me to make a few hopefully nuanced remarks.
First of all it is not just the VPNs. Briliants, RSLs etc. that annoy, it is all sponsor reads. Even those channels that try to be creative with it, there's only so many times you can be funny about it, and then it turns into just another piece of formulaic slop.
But another reason why sponsor reads annoy me is that it breaks the youtube premium deal. I pay YT for an ad free experience. YT pays you more for my view than a 'free' watcher, and then you shove in ads anyway. Now I do get your argument that "it's not enough", but that does not change my end of the deal.
Idealy ad reads would be autoskipped for premium subscribers. If that meant premium being a bit more expensive, I would be fine with that personally.
I totally get that, and I feel the same way when I see yet another read as a viewer and premium subscriber.
I don’t really have an answer (and if I did, I’d be doing it already), but I will say that my (subjective, based on my ad placement strategy and viewer profile) experience is that premium views are worth less than non-premium - although YouTube cleverly don’t actually give me enough data to _know_ that as a fact (and it would go against their stated position, which I guess they would never do).
Linus Sebastian has said the exact opposite of that whenever he's discussed the breakdown of where the money that Linus Media Group makes comes from. Premium views are worth more than free views.
Just a guess: maybe it depends by which vertical they’re in? Not all channels earn the same so many be there are cases where non-premium users are more valuable than premium ones?
A game streamer I sometimes watch also said something similar - that "youtube premium" views are tracked separately and worth significant multiples per view compared to those that get ads.
They also said it isn't variable in the same way for what ads can get assigned to your content, or for "limited monetization" content (which apparently pretty much sets the ad income to zero).
If I remember correctly the numbers given were 6x more direct payouts for a premium view vs. a free view.
I wish YouTube Premium (and honestly, Spotify too!) had a feature where I could voluntarily commit X additional dollars per month to be directly distributed to the creators I watch according to their share of my total watchtime, with some kind of manual opt-out button for individual videos/creators that I explicitly do not want to support. I am already a member of several Patreons but wish I could cast a bit of a wider support net for the people I watch enough-to-want-to-support-them-but-not-enough-to-join-their-Patreon, yknow?
Is that not just youtube "memberships" though? The creator can choose the cost and have multiple "tiers" - I don't think there's anything stopping them having a $1 "tip jar" tier.
Sure, it's not quite the same, but at some point of similar-enough the number of people who actually use each feature becomes vanishingly small and/or the cost of managing the extra option outpaces the income, and it's just not worth it.
Even then I've heard of some channels uploading ad-free versions of their videos for certain membership tiers.
This somewhat reminds me on the discussions around the Web Monetization API [1] a few years ago.
I still wish for a service that gives me access to all paywalled sites or a way to sending all websites I visit a little money in exchange for them not serving ads.
[1]: https://webmonetization.org/
They halfway do this. The numbers are opaque but part of your premium is given to creators you watch, and that cut is based on your watch time, among other factors.
ofc I dobut we'd ever get that granular a control on CC's. As said in another reply, memberships are sort of that solution.
I've mentioned this in the past but I mind sponsorship a lot less when it's highly relevant for the channel. For example a lot of engineering channels are sponsored by JLPCB who provided machining services or PCBs for the project video - that makes sense.
Coffee influencers selling me NordVPN on a video about grinder particle size distribution does not.
I will either block/skip ads or not use youtube
instead of having a "sponsored" segment where you talk about some product (basically an ad) you could just make the whole video about that product, and thus sponsorblock wouldnt really be used - i mean, sorta like product reviews
Well, that’s your call, of course. And when it comes to regular YT ads I don’t really blame you, “the algorithm” and the way monetisation works encourages us to set up aggressive mid-roll placements etc that must be incredibly annoying if one doesn’t pay for premium.
One of the nice things about sponsor segments is that they don’t involve YouTube, so the creator gets more benefit from the deal, but of course done badly (and I assume this must be the case with many of the generic irrelevant VPN ads for example) they will harm retention and thus limit reach.
Your “whole video” suggestion is really “advertise smarter” IMO, which I completely agree with. Personally I’ve never done a “reading a 30-second script about how great product X is” type segment, but I have done videos where I try out “product X” in some way that’s relevant to my audience. It’s more product placement than direct advertising, but I guess even that is unpalatable to some.
Even sponsor segments mean you are being biased by third parties, which makes it harder for you to criticize them later if they are no longer something you would honestly endorse.
I did not click the video to waste time hearing about corpo sponsors you have been paid to shill. At most I will listen to information of non profit causes to donate to.
Use the sponsor segments to tell users how to donate to you. Sponsor block categorizes these differently and leaves them by default.
Just a heads up, the VPN ads are annoying sure but I think a lot of people would agree the RAID SHADOW LEGENDS ads are the worst lol
Those are called "fully integrated ads" and most of the time you don't see them because creators want more money for the whole video being an ad vs 30second of the 10 minute video. They also tend to involve a lot more back and forth with the creator and the sponsor about what is "allowed" in the video.
"I will either block/skip ads or not use youtube"
I agree. But to add, if youtube went all out and made ad blocking sufficiently difficult I probably would pay for it.
I fixed my dryer some time back. Watching a youtube video on how to probably saved me multiple hours then figuring it out all on my own. I use it to fix cars.
I would rather expect an extension like AdNauseam[1] which automatically play the advertisement muted in background.
[1]: https://adnauseam.io/
The best part about AdNauseum is it solves the criticism people give ad-blockers: content creators still get paid
But viewers do not owe anything to videomakers[1]
[1] honestly content creator is a terrible word for what it is, I wish people would stop repeating that non sense.
I agree completely, but it's easier to build a bridge than it is to redirect a river.
But does it really work? I would expect click fraud detection to catch this pretty easily given how big the click fraud arms race is, especially since AdNauseam said their implementation is quite naive.
Why are you entitled to make money from YouTube though? Monetisation is part of the reason the site has become a low quality content farm. Now it’s just an industrial clickbait and ragebait machine. Even the educational channels just pump out poorly researched crap or convert Wikipedia articles to video format. Back in the days it was just a fun little site for people to upload whatever they felt like and it was great, the content was organic.
Counterpoint: why do you feel entitled to free content?
Normally if you don't agree to the price of something, you don't pay for it and you don't get it. With content people feel okay with both getting the content for free _and_ denying the creator any income.
Then when the creators dare to bring it up, there's invariably a comment like this downplaying their contribution.
It's truly adding insult to injury.
If you hand out free cupcakes and then people take them, you can’t really then complain about people taking the cupcakes without paying. The reason creators monetise their videos on YouTube instead of charging for them on Patreon is because they know people won’t pay for them. Why would they? There are mountains of other videos they can watch for free and if they aren’t inclined to pay, the videos probably aren’t worth paying for.
This is the free market at work. If you don’t make the videos for free, someone else will, unless they can’t because the production value is too high.
In this case the cupcakes are not free. They are explicitly exchanged for a minute of your attention. You use scripts and tools to get the product without paying for it.
Kind of like sneaking into a meeting room to eat the cupcakes, then leaving before the meeting begins.
If you decided not to watch ad-supported content, it would be the free market at work. In this case you're just stiffing creators.
I think we need to rethink the whole "advertising as a way to support creators" model. Support comes in many forms, and decoupling knowledge of a thing from being paid for good work would likely result in higher quality outcomes.
It's possible there's something to the Nostr model (https://nostr.com/) that could be of use here. A key part of Nostr is the "zap" system. In addition to allowing users to just merely upvote posts, users can also choose to zap a post, which is just a method of sending Bitcoin to the poster's wallet.
Think of it like a tip system, as it directly and concretely rewards users for good content, by exchanging a token of direct value (money).
With a system like this, advertising is something you do to get recognized, while the zaps are something you receive as a reward for valuable work (by whatever metric your audience appreciates).
YouTube has something a bit more direct available for partnered channels via the "Super Thanks" comment option. It allows you to tie a dollar amount to your comment on the video.
Never in my life have I been interested in any sponsor mentioned in a YouTube video. It's sad to see creators having to include these humiliation rituals in their videos just to keep their channels alive. To me, such tools are just a noise filter.
It is sad. Early YT was for hobbyists and those that loved to share.
I'm curious what it is about the Patreon model that doesn't sit right with you? To me it seems like it's both the most respectful monetization strategy to viewers, and provides the creator with a much more stable income than YT ads, YTP shares, or sponsors.
Agreed; I don't get the GP's aversion here. To me, ads -- especially ads embedded in the regular flow of a video -- are one of the most disrespectful things you can do to your audience. Asking for voluntary subscription payments (perhaps with some added perks beyond what you'd get as a free viewer) sounds like the best model possible. People will pay if they find your content valuable and can afford the expense. Sure, there are a lot of people who will freeload, but that's just life. If you don't find that acceptable, then you need to put more of your content behind a paywall.
If you can't make enough money to be satisfied with the Patreon model, and that makes you want to create less, maybe that's the correct outcome.
I absolutely hate advertising in all forms, and will aggressively block ads whenever I can.
I pay for YouTube Premium, though I have no idea how much (if any) of that goes toward creators. If a YouTube channel I enjoy has a Patreon, I'll subscribe.
Advertising is psychological manipulation. I get that there aren't many ways for independent creators to get paid for their work, only a selection of sub-optimal choices, but ads are gross.
I believe YT Premium supports creators better than the ads you would have watched would have.
Make your sponsored segments worth watching.
I watch a bunch of travel vlog channels and for the most part they advertise the same things (If I ever see another athletic greens sponsor segment or a four sigmatic ad I will scream -- I even actually LIKE four sigmatic products) but I have several channels whitelisted in SponsorBlock because the ads they do are hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/user/kingingit365
Watch some of their videos and you will see what I mean. I was watching the channel for a year or more before watching a video while sponsorblock API was down (it's volunteer run so it happens sometimes) and realized I was missing out on a really hilarious and important part of their videos, instant whitelist!
Sponsored segments always have stipulations on what you need to mention and how. Some may let you add some pizzazz, but that's why they all sound the same. Thats part of the contract.
Even that pizzazz is risky though. Sometimes videos get delayed simply because the sponsor comes in last minute and needs to debate the segment.
I think this is a spot where YouTube fails to give a "fully valid" option as a platform. As a user right now I can have YouTube Premium, be a Patreon, and leave a Super Thanks on a video but still get served a sponsored segment. At the same time on the creator side I have no way to target YouTube Premium users or people paying directly to the channel with different content while keeping it as the same posting on the same platform (i.e. all as one video post on YouTube). As a result, no matter how you slice it, there is no way to have things be "right" even given ideal and fully willing creators and viewers.
This leaves the only realistic way for a channel to make reasonable money to be via ads and sponsored segments targeting the majority of non paying users at the expense of the rest.
As a creator - I'd be very interested to know whether a direct microtransaction system (not crypto, imagine something like PayPal) would be appealing to you. (none currently exists, but I want there to be)
Your per-video ad revenue is probably under 1c/video, right? If so, I don't think that many consumers would bat an eye at directly paying that cent (or more), assuming a sufficiently well-designed wallet UI (clear indicator of balance, easy refund system (with anti-refund-abuse countermeasures), current spend amount per session and spend rate prominently displayed, one-click content purchase with low latency, etc.). Does that sound plausible, or am I missing something?
I think most advertisers track how their ads are doing by looking at how much the personal discount code gets used, or tracking links in the description. I won't ever use any of that, so no advertiser will ever know I didn't have to suffer through the ad read about their product.
Obviously these sponsored segments are effective marketing otherwise no one would pay for them, but I'm sure they're far less effective with users who seek out tools like sponsorblock.
One thing I've always wondered is do sponsors request watchtime data for their sponsored segments? I'm under the impression that they don't, which is wild to me.
I actively support channels and causes by purchasing merch, donating, etc. That said, I refuse to waste a second of my life watching ads of any kind or supporting adtech. Adtech is what has enshittified the entire internet and we must burn it with fire at all costs.
I use FreeTube to block all ads and sponsor segments and I teach everyone I know to do the same.
The ad model results in creators being restricted in order to be advertised friendly, and encourages mass spying, of which the data is often irresponsibly managed and leaked putting people in danger.
This model is fundamentally unethical to participate in from either side.
Make some merch, and provide a mix of accessible and anonymous ways to donate to you.
Honestly the VPNs are probably the most ethical usual suspects. They actually do what's advertised and the affiliate links for deals are decent enough. If it's so much noise that people know what it is already, mission accomplished.
But yes, I sympathize. youtubers aren't google, and this will just mean sponsors will push only on the biggest youtubers, wheras the small-medium sized ones need the money the most (where sponsor blocks can be half or more of their income).
It won't. Honestly, most people use the official apps on their phones/TVs. Desktops and laptops are in a minority now, sadlyu, but good for stuff like this. Some know about ublock origin, but that's still a small % compared to the population.
I don't think I've ever purchased a product that I have seen advertised by a creator on YT that I hadn't already purchased before seeing it in a sponsored ad. That last bit I added because I used to use ExpressVPN and now I'm seeing some sponsored ads for it.
The deal has been made between the creator and the company already, it's been added to their video, so there should not need to be any noticeable affect from running sponsor block for people like myself who don't jump to buy advertised products when seeing them advertised by a creator I follow. Unless there is some kind of feedback that YT is giving the companies about who is viewing their sponsored ads, I guess, but I doubt that's happening. So my use of sponsor block (which I don't actually use - the right arrow button exists) shouldn't have any affect on sponsor finances that I can see.
I'm not against creators making money, but I don't want to see ads in videos placed by YT and I don't want to see them in videos by creators, but I understand they would like to make some money. I've given through Patreon to some creators, but I'm not going to do that for all of the dozens of creators I follow. If I could just press a button and tip a small amount to the creator when watching a video I really liked, using a payment method I've already set up, I'd start doing that in a heartbeat. But I don't know if such an animal exists.
The main area that SponsorBlock blocks are the type of sponsor read that typically are recorded separated from the video. Those are never going to be safe again blocking and it likely that most companies that uses that kind of services knows this. They are low quality, low effect, and thus (likely) fairly cheap.
At the other end of the spectrum, we got paid content and sponsored gear. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It turns the issue to a balancing act where too much sponsored content will likely ruin the viewer ship (and artistic freedom/integrity/happiness/extra), but in turn it provide an income. SponsorBlock has no effect here, but naturally users may not click on paid content if they feel like it too much like an advertisement. The channel Linus Tech Tips have a few videos on this, and its a fairly common topic on their wan show.
I’d like to see this.
If creators make money it should be from YouTube handouts from Premium and paid subscriptions and/or creators seeking funding directly outside YouTube.
Having less “professional” content (and less content in general) is a reasonable price to pay to break our dependence on adtech and the “attention economy”.
For advertisers masquerading as creators. Not all creators turn their hobby into a hustle and not all that do use abusive methods to extract money out of their viewers.
I do support some patreons and have also donated directly to projects I like but I would also be more than happy if payment opportunities for "creators" dried up entirely and we went back to an internet with more genuine content instead of crap designed to be profitable.
Patreon is people explicitly and knowingly agreeing to give you money in exchange for a service they want. Why does forcing people to watch ads preferable to that? Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean when you say it doesn't sit right with you, because that sounds like you don't like the concept. I can understand if it doesn't bring in enough, but it is by far the most honest transaction between you and your viewers. Whereas with ads, you make the viewer the product and that doesn't sit right with me.
If there aren't enough people willing to pay for someone else's work product to make it worth the producers time/effort, then I'd argue that maybe that work product is not actually worth producing in the first place. In the realm of youtube, that may require putting out enough quality content as a loss-leader to gain a following large enough that a percentage is willing to support the creator directly. Many have made this work well.
I have many issues with advertising in general, but put simply, it breaks the basic transactional nature of business. When the people benefiting from someone else's work product aren't the ones paying for it, then both the producer and consumer end up being taken advantage of for someone else's profit.
The way I see it, tools like Patreon that allow consumers to directly support people they benefit from are just what are needed.