Are these Vloggers just a scam? SOL or Shmee etc???????

[Japveesix]

Getting off the endless and slightly depressing shmee/trading/revenue debate for a bit I really enjoyed STG's most recent vid and I'm not a huge fan of his really (though he has got a lot more watchable over the years and editing etc is way better now).

For those who live around Bristol and Somerset you'll recognise the locations which makes a really nice change from seeing people cruising around Monaco or alpine passes that i'll never go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J356ZG71ExI&t=...

[VGTICE]

InitialDave said:

VGTICE said:

No st Sherlock.

So why are you labouring the point?

The guy probably exists. The result he got in that competition was probably real. It's just the relationship between what he achieved in the "play money" version of things probably has almost no relationship to what could be done in the "real money" one.

Of course it's "probable". But anyone with experience will tell you that this probability is like winning all lotto's across the globe within 24hrs. Especially when the guy - surprise surprise - is nowhere to be seen afterwards.

[parabolica]

Gandahar said:

Sorry but as an older bloke who would rather his 15 year old daughter get off

HER FAT ARSE AND SEE THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE IN ALL IT'S GLORY WITHOUT BEING CONNECTED TO THE MATRIX.

and given that is not going to happen, I'd rather see her watch some niche car video's than some some fecking load of youfs eating a tin of baked beans in under 1 minute etc etc etc with 12 million views clicked by fat kids out there.

Lets get them all into karts! Lose weight or die.....

acceleration wise of course, not really die. Having said that will get the chubby pounds off.

[jon-]

Shmee said:

Butter Face said:

Just referring to that stats, it amazed me that channels like fail army and the beauty bloggers etc get multiple amounts of views and subs and they don't have to run a fleet of cars, they must make a killing!! That's what kids need to be aspiring to

YouTube is not my only source of income, many times I've said it's a small portion so even if those guys are doing equally on YouTube, unless they are doing other work as well then the overall package isn't the same. However equally I know many YouTubers who earn more than I do but don't spend it, but I love cars and I enjoy the experiences they bring (given I live on the road!) so I chose to pump back in more or less everything I earn. It's cliché, but you only live once...

Last time I checked, labbible had 20 staff and a 7 figure income.

Which seems like a lot of people to repost content from reddit.

At least the vloggers work hard for their money!

[Yipper]

Puzzled why Schmee keeps responding to the green-eyed monsters on this thread.

Way too many posters struggling to contain their envy of his (and others') success and aggressively trying to put the boot in all the time, no matter how minor, trivial or dubious their affectations.

Depressing to read.

[Deisel Weisel]

Yipper said:

Puzzled why Schmee keeps responding to the green-eyed monsters on this thread.

Way too many posters struggling to contain their envy of his (and others') success and aggressively trying to put the boot in all the time, no matter how minor, trivial or dubious their affectations.

Depressing to read.

I think you’re right, in as much as a lot of flack Tim attracts on here is born out of jealousy. But here we have squeaky-clean Shmee150 promoting an outfit which is anything but squeaky clean, so questions are bound to get asked.

[VGTICE]

Yipper said:

Puzzled why Schmee keeps responding to the green-eyed monsters on this thread.

Way too many posters struggling to contain their envy of his (and others') success and aggressively trying to put the boot in all the time, no matter how minor, trivial or dubious their affectations.

Depressing to read.

You were looking for the word "integrity" not "envy" or "jealousy"

[Scuba_steve]

VGTICE said:

You were looking for the word "integrity" not "envy" or "jealousy"

Absolutely - my comments to Tim were highlighting that i'd not use that sponsor due to the dubious business practices of the company, regardless of how much money they offer - no jealousy or envy here.

I thoroughly enjoy and regularly watch Tim's content. I will not, however, watch content, be that Tim's or MrJWW's with that particular sponsor attached.

[Fckitdriveon]

Hi guys /girls , I have been reading this thread for quite some time (long time lurker - yada yada) and often wanted to throw in my 2 pence, no agenda other than a consumer of YouTube content, nor am I jealous of what any of the vloggers have achieved, I own and have owned a pleathora of high end cars and bikes as it happens and plod along quite happily in life, I also share a couple of the same cars with shmee so I have a natural interest.

I believe it's all got abit boring now, the content is repeatative and as hard as coming up with new ideas must be, it's started losing its appeal to me at least, some of the videos recently released - shmee all my Cars on the road together at once for example- a bit of me died when I saw that title - hardly earth shattering is it.....you mean you got 5-6 of your cars on the road at once - all together - really ?! Wow 😂 . No personal opinion on him as a man, sure he's quite a lovely chap, camp as you like though.

The issue with questionable sponsorship in this case is likely only an issue to those that know about online trading platforms etc, I have no knowledge of the stock market or the such . But it's a problem faced by plenty of companies in all areas of business, ethical company associations etc.

STG is a neighbour ish of mine, never met him but he use to come down my street fairly regularly in his Alfa and I know he's from the battersea area, he seems an entirely personable chap and I quite enjoyed some of his content .

I can't abide Archie Hamilton, maybe it's because I find him a very annoying character, his latest video made me want to kill myself then him 😂. He looks like a rape victim waiting to happen. (Sorry squaddie humour )

In general it seems that it is impossible to satisfy the audience with new and exciting content as much as we d like....it's a question of sustaining the business model which Is a struggle all business faces no?!

Interesting to see how it all plays out and how youtube content creators adapt.

Regards

[frankenstein12]

Scuba_steve said:

VGTICE said:

You were looking for the word "integrity" not "envy" or "jealousy"

Absolutely - my comments to Tim were highlighting that i'd not use that sponsor due to the dubious business practices of the company, regardless of how much money they offer - no jealousy or envy here.

I thoroughly enjoy and regularly watch Tim's content. I will not, however, watch content, be that Tim's or MrJWW's with that particular sponsor attached.

Which is fine however many many others will as they will be unaware of the advertiser or the sites purpose. They like many many people wont click through to the site and use their services.


Shmee has made his point about why he allows them. It is what it is no need to harp on about it. Don't like it? don't watch any of his videos sponsored by them.

[bluemason]

I am a fan of salmondrin and friends videos but the past few videos have not really been as interesting and I do not even know in what salomondrin was thinking with his latest video about trying to come up with a better line up of cars for a music video of cars with cars that we are already familiar with.
Oh and I find it annoying when they ask a question and end a question with a "no?"
"that burger was good?No?"
I like that stg will be doing podcasts

[Shmee]

Fckitdriveon said:

I believe it's all got abit boring now, the content is repeatative and as hard as coming up with new ideas must be, it's started losing its appeal to me at least

You aren't wrong, it's starting a decline now so this is not the future, but what is? That's the question on my mind.

[Streetrod]

I have mentioned this before but it’s worth mentioning this again. The subscribers to these channels have stalled in numbers. Shmee's numbers have been hovering just under the million mark for a long while with the others showing no decent increases either.

Shmee states that YouTube only counts for a fraction of his income; in that case he is lucky.

Mr. JWW has the family textile fortune to keep him in the cars he has become accustomed to plus of the bunch he is the most natural presenter so you could see a future for him in TV if he decides to go down that path.

STG does have some natural talent but SOL, Seb Delanney and Archie Hamilton are I am afraid rather woeful, none of them appears to have an original idea between them. You would think with his racing background and his farthers connections and business Archie would be able to come up with some original content, but no I am afraid he is a sad wannabee who's only USP is the fact that he bought a Corvette.

All of them are probably nice guys, but I think their current formats leave a lot to be desired.

[Shmee]

Streetrod said:

I have mentioned this before but it’s worth mentioning this again. The subscribers to these channels have stalled in numbers. Shmee's numbers have been hovering just under the million mark for a long while with the others showing no decent increases either.

Last month was slow for sure at 10k subs but no worse than I've seen before, for example just 8.6k in Sep 2016 - it just goes in cycles depending what the algorithm is doing at that time.

1st May 2017: 973.3k
1st April 2017: 963.3k
1st March 2017: 943.2k
1st Feb 2017: 918k
1st Jan 2017: 897k
1st Dec 2016: 872.1k
1st Nov 2016: 859.2k
1st Oct 2016: 849.5k
1st Sep 2016: 940.9k
1st Aug 2016: 821.6k
1st Jul 2016: 798.7k
1st Jun 2016: 775.8k

The 1 million will be around end of June, early July, depending obviously on various things but I don't think there's anything specifically to read into at this time.

[KHK]

SOL has been hit or miss with his content. Like for example his Aventador S review last week was awful and for a guy who adores Lambo you would think he would more time and effort in doing a better review.

[M7arthy]

Very few youtube channels have truly original content. My favorite content at the moment come from drive tribe, Regular Car Reviews, The Smoking Tire and anything Chris Harris related. Regular Car Reviews is perhaps the most original of the lot

[Frio3535]

Doug DeMuro channel seems to have exploded - most of the videos have at least 500k views.

[Tucker1]

I've no issue with these guys, its all free content which I can dip in and out of as I please. Have to take my hat of to the sheer volume of content some of them make and how quickly they get it out there. Sure some of it is a bit low quality but you can skim through it and find some real gems.

If these guys make a bit of money then good luck to them, there must be a load of hours worth of work in producing or even dreaming up new content with limited resources, and when the quality suffers everyone pulls you apart. They deserve some credit as I know I couldn't, nor would I want do it. If I was prepared to sacrifice everything else in my life such as having my family, house and holidays to run a supercar I would personally much rather do my day job to pay for it and enjoy the cars with relative anonymity. These people choose to live it all publically and put themselves well and truly on the line.

Everyone has their favourites or even those they love to hate, its the same with anything, Sports, Music etc. Keep putting the content out there for me to chose from and if its not to my liking I will just skip to the next.

Automotive vlogging is here to stay, manufacturers and advertisers know it. In the same way the internet and web forums battered magazines, now content is able to be out there so quickly means these guys can review stuff before TV shows and magazines. The Vloggers we see now are just the first to the party, in time new genuine talent will shine through and overtake the less talented guys who have maybe only been successful by being early to the party. Whatever happens its all great for the viewers and there is still an ever increasing bundle of money to be made in Vlogging land.

[Rogue86]

Tucker1 said:

now content is able to be out there so quickly means these guys can review stuff before TV shows and magazines.

This is half of the problem for me to be honest, it means there is no quality control or care as the race to become first supercedes the desire to the become the best. Out of sheer saturation, anyone who does put effort in by definition becomes last and by that point the 'worth' of the event has dissipated. For me personally it also takes the shine off supercar ownership - the majority of these people aren't interested in cars, they just want people to photograph them and tag them on instagram after they've spent the weekend driving the same quarter-mile loop in London hoping that they'll be spotted.

This is not unique to automotive coverage or vlogging, mind. I think as a viewer in more general terms we are being subjected to poorer and poorer quality coverage, both in terms of visual impact and the story being told.

[LaDS3arri]

Rogue86 said:

This is half of the problem for me to be honest, it means there is no quality control or care as the race to become first supercedes the desire to the become the best. Out of sheer saturation, anyone who does put effort in by definition becomes last and by that point the 'worth' of the event has dissipated. For me personally it also takes the shine off supercar ownership - the majority of these people aren't interested in cars, they just want people to photograph them and tag them on instagram after they've spent the weekend driving the same quarter-mile loop in London hoping that they'll be spotted.

This is not unique to automotive coverage or vlogging, mind. I think as a viewer in more general terms we are being subjected to poorer and poorer quality coverage, both in terms of visual impact and the story being told.

To tag onto what you have quoted in your comment. I only see this as a downside. Top channel youtube reviews seem to be always positive, never hear any bad sides to a car other than a minor minor detail that bears no thought. They must want the continued relationship with the brand and so just promote the car as the best thing since sliced bread. I used to enjoy watching top gear and listening to clarkson slag the cars off as well as promote the good. It's all one way aside from the lower down youtubers.

I suppose they can't really win really, want to give a good review but don't want to ruin your brand relationship.