For about a decade I've used Youtube to host shows about video games for the various sites I've worked at. It's always been horrible. And judging by the way recent changes have impacted some people I know, it will continue to be horrible. So I thought I'd write this little article detailing the miserable experience of actually trying to make content and monetizing it on your own on Youtube.
If you are someone that's actively trying to do that, my main advice is as follows: Don't. Just chuck content there for cheap storage and promote it on the likes of Steemit, because Youtube isn't going to give you any money just because you work hard, make good content and try your best to abide by the rules. No. Since being acquired by Google and being hit with a lawsuit by Viacom for content it didn't want on Youtube, the network has been doing its best to bow down to old media. It's been turned into a platform that will disregard its user based on a whim, if it can gain at least a sliver of favor from american media giants. It'll double over backwards to introduce a non-functional system to make Viacom and the RIAA happy, no matter how much it punishes the user. They made a copyright system that enabled abuse at a level unheard of. Where you were guilty until you spent weeks trying to prove your innocence. It wasn't even about demonetization. Any video you would upload would be capable of giving you a strike on your account, getting you one step closer to having years of work vanish with no ability to appeal. No humanity, no recourse, no law, only Youtube's insanity. Here's an example. World of Warcraft Cataclysm. Activision-Blizzard sent us a media package containing footage from the game. We had a show where I talked about upcoming games, so I used some of that footage in an episode where I talked about Cataclysm and how it changed Azeroth. It got a copyright strike. Not a claim, but a strike. We couldn't upload videos longer than 15 minutes. We couldn't live-stream. We could't do shit. The copyright strike came from Activision-Blizzard. For the video footage they had sent us to be used in preview shows about the game. It's like me giving you a picture to show to someone else and then suing you for doing exactly what I told you to do.
Months and months went by, I had to shorten videos to under 15 minutes, but finally, the strike was lifted, the appeal went through, and we were free again. Well, we were free for a few months, when Activision-Blizzard just reinstated the copyright strike. By that time, all videos were over 15 minutes, they couldn't be shortened so I spent money to get them on a different, local and quite horrible video hosting service. They were all use for our site anyway, so I couldn't care less where they were being hosted as long as it worked. Somehow, deleting the Cataclysm video fixed the issue, after no answer came from appeals. And then began the copyright claim fiascoes when I actually tried to turn on monetization for the content.
In the old days monetization was impossible, unless you were in the good part of the world and/or being supported by an MCN, a Multi-Channel Network. Monstrosities created by Youtube because it doesn't like dealing with people, it likes dealing with other corporate entities that have no soul or understanding, and only speak in world bubbles containing dollar signs. If you were a normal person, you were screwed. The MCN affiliates on the other hand prospered. They were able to monetize their content and they were shielded from the negative effects of the various algorithms that Youtube had in place to murder culture... I mean, to police thought... I mean to prevent copyright abuse. But since some of the content creators protected in this way were abusing the system, this privilege was also dropped. I still remember the outrage, where Youtubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers were suddenly shocked at all the copyright claims they were getting for basically nothing. All the false claims, all the hassle, all the lost revenue all the agony. They were going mad, they were going ballistic. All I could do back then was say "Welcome to the real world". I had news shows being claimed by Nintendo because there was a 10 second clip of one of their games in there. I had videos claimed because some bot thought a chiptune song sounded a lot like some song I never heard of. I had videos claimed by "media companies" from countries with no relation to the content I was making. And since most of the money was being made on those videos in the first few days (not that there as a lot to be made to begin with), monetizing on Youtube was basically pointless. And all of this was done with the blessing of Youtube, to force us to sign up with an MCN. To be protected from these. Or at least that's how it started out.
MCN's should have stopped existing then,when the protection stopped, because they instantly became pointless. But they didn't. They are Youtube's Mafia enforcers. And even though the protection racket wasn't a thing anymore, they still collected money from the people they signed into perpetually renewing contracts. In a civilized world MCN's would have been illegal and considered organized crime, because that's what they were. There wasn't any difference between them offering you copyright protection and a guy showing up at your store telling you it would be ashamed if someone were to bust it up and set it on fire. MCN's went on to make sure there wouldn't be any competition for Youtube, killing alternatives like Blip. And not just MCNs, corporate media also began the purge, killing things like Vessel. Why? Because people made Youtube successful, and corporate media loves things that are successful, so after a decade of trying to prevent its content from being o Youtube, it's putting it there by itself.
But even with a total stranglehold on what could be monetized, by whom, and in what way, Youtube still had problems maintaining a profit. Now, is it because the company is poorly run? Maybe. Is it because they let people upload 10 hours of they're taking the hobbits to Isengard and not have it be monetized? Probably. Is it because they still refuse to extended Youtube Red in the rest of the world? Possibly. Is it a combination of these, alongside the tendency of the company to lick the boots of corporate media and bend over backwards instead of standing up for its user base, the users it relies on to actually make money? Sure, let's go with that.
The core idea is that Youtube isn't making money. It's screwed over ad revenue so much that it's down to basically nothing, making a lot of people move over to Twitch and to donation services like Patreon. Initially, people just tried to go with the flow and have their own integrated ads in their videos, but because Youtube wasn't getting its beak wet, it through a hissy fit and threaten to stop the practice. It calmed down a bit after realizing that's how most of its big names got along. So then Youtube got another bright idea.
"Hey, these people that make the content that draws others to our service, they're asking for donations so they can still do this as their job, even though we were the ones that promised them they could get enough revenue to consider this an actual carrier path before we screwed them royally, right? Well, why don't we ask them to get those people to give money to Youtube instead and then we'll give the content creators some of that money."
I kid you not that that is (with some exaggeration in the middle) what a Youtube rep told me and everyone else present during an MCN member meeting. Youtube plans to keep on going by taking more money from the user. It wasn't enough that they took 50% of the ad revenue, that the MCNs took a bucket load in the beginning and a teacup now. I wasn't enough that Youtube drove us to seek help by begging people for money, by holding content hostage in the hopes of being able to do this as a job and actually do it right, instead of making a video a month in the time you have when you get home from work. It wasn't enough for Youtube. It wanted part of that money too. It just keeps reaching and reaching until it has it all, and even then it won't be enough. This is a tone deaf company that isn't even capable of listening to feedback. Isn't capable of fixing issues people have been complaining about for years. A company that will let corporate media break the damned rules every time, but won't even come in the aid of a content creator that's fallen victim to its abusive content claiming system.
And now, now it's de-monetizing channels that don't have enough 4000 hours watched in the last year. Because, you know, terrorists. The fact that Youtube didn't come in the defense of its user base last year, that Google didn't swing its giant internet dick, that it likes to screw everyone with non stop, to at least say :"We know some content here is made by horrible, horrible human beings, and we are doing are best to limit it, but that shouldn't mean that we have to treat everyone that posts content on Youtube as a pedophile terrorist." Instead, it parted our cheeks and let the advertising industry ram right through. And it's been doing it again, and again and again, always turning a blind eye to it's beloved ones, to it's big big money earners, only suddenly realizing the amount of disturbing shit that was there to prey on kids.
Youtube is not a place to build a business on. It's a cesspool of corporate interest and human disinterest. And at the rate it's going, it'll start asking content creators for money to even upload videos. But hey, at least we should be thankful that the CEO of Youtube finally made an account and actually posted two videos. Yep, that sure matters, that's sure going to change things.
On the bright side, we've got Steemit and D.tube. Even though currency prices are in the dumpster right now, it's still more that we would have gotten in February from Youtube.
So endeth the rant.