by William Skink
As I quietly scheme about how to monetize my creative content, Youtube is making it less likely for someone like me with strong political opinions to monetarily benefit from sharing in ad revenue:
Earlier this month, YouTube, the behemoth video-sharing website was accused of censoring users.
Claiming some of their videos had been barred from making money through the company’s ad services, YouTube hosts like Philip DeFranco spoke out against the policy, claiming over “a dozen of his videos had been flagged as inappropriate for advertising, including one dinged for ‘graphic content or excessive strong language.’“
In a video entitled “YouTube Is Shutting Down My Channel and I’m Not Sure What To Do,” DeFranco called YouTube’s policy “censorship with a different name,” since users touching on what the company considers to be controversial subjects end up losing money. “If you do this on the regular, and you have no advertising,” DeFranco added, “it’s not sustainable.”
I doubt I’ll even try to monetize any videos I upload to Youtube because they will most likely not be the kind of content that will make it pass the censors. Judge for yourself. Here is the second video:
JC
You got 47 views on the video you put up a week ago…I don’t think you’ll be making any money at all. I know this from my own experiences, though perhaps you’ll do better than me.
I put up a bunch of videos for ESL teachers about 2 years ago. I put some ads on there too. You can see them here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/gregstrandberg/videos
Most of those videos, well…no one cares about them. Still, some of them did surprisingly well, at least from my low-expectation point of view.
For instance, “A Simple ESL Activity to Kill Time” has been viewed nearly 27,000 times. “ESL Icebreaker Game, Make Words” has been viewed about 18,000 times.
Know how much money I’ve made off those two videos?
$0.02
I’ve gotten 49,000 views in total on all my various videos, but I’ve made no money from that. I dunno, maybe I’m doing it wrong.
I think most skip the ads anyways, in case that factors in to how much you get paid.
As of now I just don’t think there’s going to be much interest in your videos, however. This happens a lot when you do art and put it out there…whether it’s free or priced very cheap.
I’ve worked on books, thought they were pretty good, and put them out to get no sales except for 1 or 2 from my mom and dad…sometimes not even that.
Expectations…be careful of them.
says the dude who literally counts the days I don’t produce free content for him to consume then complains about it at his site.
That’s why people are coming to this site, your written content, not these videos.
this is the direction I’m going, not for you or for anyone else, but because I need to for myself. I’ve got a great person helping me design my new website, but as Steve correctly pointed out, there is nothing that is perceived in this country as having less value than poetry, the market essentially catering to the egos of poets who got MFAs, so I’m taking myself out of my comfort zone to incorporate video and eventually podcasts to document my process.
anyway, thanks for the assertive interest in my writing.
Then I’d encourage you to keep doing this new thing on this site while starting a new platform where you talk about politics and Montana and national issues, something that’s not WordPress so you can get some Google Ads on there.
It might take time, but if you do detailed articles Google will pick those up. You might only get $1 or $2 a day (and that might take a year or so to get) but then you have some steady income off old articles.
If you start an Amazon Affiliate account you can also get links to book and if people go to Amazon from your site you’ll get a bit, maybe $0.60 a sale. That can heat up around the holidays as people shop more. I made $120 last year from people doing that, which is a nice way of showing your support for a site.
I still think Google Adsense is the way to go, however. I do an “all time” report and see that I’ve made $125 on one ad that’s on one of my Montana celebrity posts. That took about 2 years to get that much, though. There are several other ads that have earned me in the $30 to $60 range, plus a ton that have earned just a few dollars each. Most earn pennies, if even that, but it ads up.
I hear Cowturd talking a lot about monetizing their site, but I never see it happen. Martin Kidston has the Missoula Current running an ad an article, but I’m not sure how much he’s making. It really is all about getting the evergreen content that shows up on the first page of Google’s search page. Even if someone doesn’t click on the ad you get money.
So those are some thoughts. Take them for what you will.
Perhaps the only thing harder to sell for real money is poetry. There is no market. However, if certain art might be used to control public consciousness, embarass Russia, or Putin, provoke “Islamic terrorists” to violence or help ignite WWIII, well then, it might be instantly elevated, popularized and subsidized by one of the various federal bureaucracies already spending billions on that very thing.