Hours and hours of invested energy and time. Zero dollars to show for it
Here is the large aspect I dislike about YouTube these days. I have two channels on YouTube which are over 7 years old now which I will not name on here. In the beginning a decade ago I would regularly get thousands upon thousands of views on my channel, which reflects my over 5K subscribers.
Google over the last five years really changed the platform of which allows you to garner vies on your channels. It’s gotten to the point where unless you are trying to sell or target someone and make Google money personally, traffic won’t be directed or recommended to your channel. Let me explain.
When YouTube first started, the idea was that channels and videos would be pushed based on the auto generated tag system. Where you could punch any tag on your video, and when the user searched out the tag your video would pop up. Back in those days you could fill your videos up with random tags that could generate a lot of traffic to your video, even if they were completely unrelated. This led to a lot of spam where channels were typing in pornographic tags just to garner views, but it also allowed really small channels to rise up to fame overnight. If you notice most of the channels with millions of subscribers on YT right now were created over a decade ago. Very few gigantic channels created in the last four years.
So when YouTube dropped this system, they switched to the monetization system, where your videos will only get pushed if you allow YouTube to monetize your channel. This created an industry overnight called YouTube ads, where channels with a lot of funding will literally pay millions of dollars to advertising agencies (E.X. Tube Buddy) for search engine optimization. This has led to a lot of channels becoming nothing more than an advertising network if you were not popular already, based on affiliate links, sponsorships, and partnerships.
“To help drive more views and subscribers to your channel, you can pay to run an ad campaign for your videos on YouTube through Google Ads. You can create an ad that appears before a video starts, or alongside a video on its watch page on YouTube.” – Google Statement
YouTube took this system and decided to punish and suppress small channels that do not bring in revenue by demonetizing controversial topics. One of my channels is about history and politics, and as you can imagine politics often gets demonetized. Since my channel is not bringing in any revenue, what happens is that the algorithm no longer recommends my videos and even to my subscribers. Even though I have over 5,000 subscribers, I went from getting tens of thousands of views on each video a decade ago and now I am lucky to get 5 views on a video today. Another one of my channels was a music channel where I discuss music history and technology and play actual songs. As you can imagine those videos now get demonetized for copyright purposes. It has become a lot more strict. Often times I will get strikes because I am a small channel and they can get away with it. I don’t have an army of Twitter followers that can complain to YouTube staff.
Oddly enough YouTube actually pushes your vids and likes when you use copyrighted songs or material, so they can use the ID system and you can generate revenue for the big labels instead of yourself. That is the only way small channels seem to garner any views. Of course you get zero revenue.
Me personally. I have spent more than 15 grand on equipment in my studio including better mics over the last decade, and my videos still regularly get 5–10 views on a video. I have no interest in using my channel to market a product or sell anything. I get punished because of that.
The old advice once told to new startups was that, if you’re not getting views it means your content is low quality. Buy a better mic, buy a better camera, better editing, more consistent uploading. If you do all that you will be a success. This is simply not true anymore. I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of incredible channels that should have way more views but don’t. At the same time there are low quality channels and videos that have way more subscribers and views than they should have just because they turned their channel into the home shopping network. That’s what started the whole Patreon movement because a ton of channels got their traffic cut off. That’s why a funny cat video will get 10 million views, but an intelligent hour long debate on politics or science or history will get 10 views. Of course the algorithm is rigged now more than ever for what will bring in YouTube the most ad revenue and that is clickbait. YouTube has turned into more of a place for large businesses and corporations to host their content on for embedding into their website than for entrepreneurship and small guys that started “You” Tube.
YouTube has also done many little things over the years to suppress small channels. Such as encoding your videos in a lower quality codec. Only the large channels get to use VP9 where as we are stuck with AVC which looks way worse. That’s a big reason they they switched from Flash Player to HTML5 in 2015 by default. Then a great feature YouTube once had was groups. Sort of like Facebook, you could share your videos in large YouTube groups and spread your content that way. Google took that feature away. Then Google took away the ability for you to edit the contrast/brightness/color once it was uploaded to your channel, so now the only way to edit your videos is to use the video editing software the pros have. To wrap this up, if you’re a real small channel now and you are not trying to sell something or generate revenue for Google, it’s going to be near impossible to become a huge success like the YouTube from the last decade. Don’t be discouraged to stop creating, but just know it’s not unusual to get almost zero views. We are all experiencing low traffic to our channels these days.
Bottom line, I refuse to give YouTube money. I refuse to monetize or optimize my channel and ask for donations and be told what I can or cannot post. I refuse to push ads and sponsors and affiliates. Therefore I get no views. I’m willing to accept that now. That is the punishment I’m willing to take. I would honestly prefer if YouTube allowed you to subscribe to services which gave more exposure to small channels. They obviously no longer care about small channels, where you could blow up overnight with a “Charlie bit my finger” viral video. Those days are long gone.
Hours and hours of invested energy and time. Zero dollars to show for it
