Are these Vloggers just a scam? SOL or Shmee etc???????
Discussion
Shmee said:
I'm more than happy to answer serious and grown-up questions if you have any.
Youtube has properly exploded over the last week or so with people discussing videos being dropped from having adverts attached, and people seeing a significant drop in their revenue from such, to the point many are saying they may well have to draw a line under continuing to put content up.What are the noises like from people doing your kinds of videos? Are they generally "respectable" enough not to have been affected? I assume most of them try their best to do direct deals with sponsors etc, so they can't be knocked back by changes in the weather like this, but obviously, revenue is still revenue.
My current feeling is that if Youtube are "cleaning house" a bit with what subject matter gets advertiser's products slapped up next to it or as intro/interstitial ads, the people who keep their noses clean and seem advertiser friendly will see a net benefit as the way ads are distributed becomes more refined.
Thoughts?
From what I've heard people are pissed as the decent content creators are getting "punished" and the clickbait general trash channels are apparantly being rewarded.
That's not car related. All I know is I've been catching up on Chris Harris videos and every single one of them had a full length 30 second advert at the beginning so I guess he's raking it in lol
That's not car related. All I know is I've been catching up on Chris Harris videos and every single one of them had a full length 30 second advert at the beginning so I guess he's raking it in lol
It's time dumb advertisers woke up to the reality that their money is being anything other than targeted at their market. It's laughable what's going on. Digital media is the utter wild west. Facebook for instance have more 18 year olds on their site than are alive in the world today!! Their own figures. Can you imagine how bad that targeting must be. It's a folly we'll all look back on as a colossal experiment that shall we say relieved money from people under false pretences.
InitialDave said:
Youtube has properly exploded over the last week or so with people discussing videos being dropped from having adverts attached, and people seeing a significant drop in their revenue from such, to the point many are saying they may well have to draw a line under continuing to put content up.
What are the noises like from people doing your kinds of videos? Are they generally "respectable" enough not to have been affected? I assume most of them try their best to do direct deals with sponsors etc, so they can't be knocked back by changes in the weather like this, but obviously, revenue is still revenue.
My current feeling is that if Youtube are "cleaning house" a bit with what subject matter gets advertiser's products slapped up next to it or as intro/interstitial ads, the people who keep their noses clean and seem advertiser friendly will see a net benefit as the way ads are distributed becomes more refined.
Thoughts?
I can of course only speak for myself but there are some peculiar goings on at the moment.What are the noises like from people doing your kinds of videos? Are they generally "respectable" enough not to have been affected? I assume most of them try their best to do direct deals with sponsors etc, so they can't be knocked back by changes in the weather like this, but obviously, revenue is still revenue.
My current feeling is that if Youtube are "cleaning house" a bit with what subject matter gets advertiser's products slapped up next to it or as intro/interstitial ads, the people who keep their noses clean and seem advertiser friendly will see a net benefit as the way ads are distributed becomes more refined.
Thoughts?
Firstly on the revenue front, my RPM hasn't shifted in a way I could connect to this. The earnings I am making per thousand views is down around 7% for April versus March, however it is also still up 2% compared to February and 8% against January - make of that what you will. I have one suggestion for this which is that Shmee150 is on YouTube's "Google Preferred" list which means it has been vetted and approved as advertiser friendly; when they introduced that list it was only 300 channels globally (around 12 from Automotive) and I don't know the updates to it since.
There has been a more serious shift from an algorithm perspective which might be confusing some people who immediately shout that it is advertisers pulling out. Naturally if your views drop, so does your revenue, even if it has no connection to the rates at which advertisers are paying. I have not properly got to the bottom of it and understood what changed, but around mid-late March something did.
Digging into Analytics, which I spend at least an hour with every single day, there became a larger disparity between videos which succeed and videos that fail. It feels like the older a channel is and has been creating content, the wider that has become. For example I have gone a long time without many videos falling short of 100k views whereas since this shift quite a few have - while others reach 300k or 400k. This would fit a little with YouTube changing what they perceive as valuable content and it's a case of working out how automotive themed content fits into this - traditionally algorithm changes can be made very quickly at Google before going back to fix the problems later on, so it is conceivable it hasn't been thought about fully. Equally it can just be the case that they now want to see a different kind of content and it is up to us content producers to find out what that is and go with it.
One of the main things that I have said before in this thread, is that for me this pure Google AdSense income through YouTube actually only represents something like 1/4 or 1/3 of my Shmee150 income stream, and as important as it is; if it loses 10-20% or so that is not huge in the bigger picture as we look to expand other avenues to continuing growing.
Beefmeister said:
I believe the advertising issues has really only affected the US based guys as it's US advertisers that are cancelling.
US channels or from elsewhere, the audience is global and even my channel is currently receiving 18% watch time over the last 30 days from US sources; I believe a US specific channel would be seeing 30-40% for that specific statistic.Shmee said:
I can of course only speak for myself but there are some peculiar goings on at the moment.
Thanks for the detail.As for finding out what you need to do to "play the game" going forward, do you have a method for that? Try and analyse which videos have really killed it in terms of views, and what factors they have in common?
Once you hit a certain size, is it worth contracting someone to crunch that kind of data for you?
technodup said:
nnit. Who the f
k actually watches YT adverts?
As I have mentioned before on this thread, YouTube is the only website that is 'unblocked' on my ad blocker. I felt it was only fair on the content producers whose output I was watching for free got a tiny bit of income from my viewing (although I do mostly click the 'skip ad' button so that probably doesn't generate them any money anyway).k actually watches YT adverts?Jayonara said:
What I find hard to believe are the numbers of people subscribed to these channels. How long has Archibald I'm not Lewis etc been around for? I know of some really good channels that make really great content okay they not be car related but they might have sub 10k subscribers whereas these guys have ten times that if not more!
How does that honestly happen? Because they are Shmee/STG endorsed or are they easily findable on Youtube kids?
You can just buy them like you can with any of these social media platforms. How does that honestly happen? Because they are Shmee/STG endorsed or are they easily findable on Youtube kids?
The bent people in my industry will buy them for Twitter and Facebook as high follower numbers works as an endorsement to thick people that your product must be legit and they should buy it and become millionaires.
What happens in one industry always happens in others so in YouTube world there will be people who buy subscriptions and views so as to give a beneficial impression to their consumer and possibly also sponsors.
Shmee said:
I do not believe a single one of the aforementioned YouTubers to have acquired subscriber numbers through any illegitimate means.
It would be highly anomalous for some people in this particular sector to not be doing so as it would simply be out of line with the way the modern world works. Anywhere where the size of the audience works as a product endorsement will have cheats amongst the legitimate providers. On YT how do you spot fakes? It's relatively simple on Twitter and Facebook, is it the same?
Thanks Shmee for the insight, it's interesting to get some insight into how the Vlogger community functions, as i like many have always wondered & more so given the fact thousands appear to exist today. Just totting up the numbers parked outside Brunters & wandering the streets of Knightsbridge with their phones & GoPro's indicates the Vlogger community is saturated for newcomers, but likely adds value & kudos to those like yourself who established themselves many years ago.
Being honest i wasn't a fan of your early content, but for that matter i felt the same about most doing the same. That said my opinion has come full circle & i now watch much of what you upload & the content of a couple of others as the quality is excellent & has a more affable feel to it whereas in the past it came across as more showoffy (appreciate that's not even a word).
Well done & keep the good stuff coming.
Being honest i wasn't a fan of your early content, but for that matter i felt the same about most doing the same. That said my opinion has come full circle & i now watch much of what you upload & the content of a couple of others as the quality is excellent & has a more affable feel to it whereas in the past it came across as more showoffy (appreciate that's not even a word).
Well done & keep the good stuff coming.
w8pmc said:
... indicates the Vlogger community is saturated for newcomers...
I think it is still possible for a newcomer to 'break through' if they can offer something new/different/interesting to make themselves stand out from the crowd. For example, sometime Shmee collaborator Misha/Boosted Boris has only started doing daily vlogs since the start of the year (admittedly he'd made other videos in the past on a different channel so wasn't starting totally from a standstill) but because he is based out of the Nurburgring always has a source of somewhat interesting content every day. He's also in the fortuitous position that he has a related day job (track car rentals) so isn't relying on YouTube for his main income but can also use the platform to plug his employer's business.
DonkeyApple said:
Shmee said:
I do not believe a single one of the aforementioned YouTubers to have acquired subscriber numbers through any illegitimate means.
It would be highly anomalous for some people in this particular sector to not be doing so as it would simply be out of line with the way the modern world works. Anywhere where the size of the audience works as a product endorsement will have cheats amongst the legitimate providers. On YT how do you spot fakes? It's relatively simple on Twitter and Facebook, is it the same?
The difference with the binary scammers on instagram, FB and Twitter is that they are happy operating in a "whack a mole" style, i.e. stamp one out and they just reappear with a minorly different handle, for them it's all about quick proliferation.
No matter what any of us on this thread may think of the content, quality, or indeed shirts, of those under discussion it's cler that they are intending to build something.
Truckosaurus said:
I think it is still possible for a newcomer to 'break through' if they can offer something new/different/interesting to make themselves stand out from the crowd. For example, sometime Shmee collaborator Misha/Boosted Boris has only started doing daily vlogs since the start of the year (admittedly he'd made other videos in the past on a different channel so wasn't starting totally from a standstill) but because he is based out of the Nurburgring always has a source of somewhat interesting content every day.
He's also in the fortuitous position that he has a related day job (track car rentals) so isn't relying on YouTube for his main income but can also use the platform to plug his employer's business.
A good point. It's more the thousands of kids now who appear to have i guess seen this as a way to get rich quick. Perhaps that's just my pessimistic view point, but every event involving Supercars at Brunters, their must be at least 100 youngsters armed with GoPro's parked up at the entrance.He's also in the fortuitous position that he has a related day job (track car rentals) so isn't relying on YouTube for his main income but can also use the platform to plug his employer's business.
anyway, I watched the David Brown Mini vid the other night, the first Shmee content I watched all the way through and thoroughly enjoyed it. Looked good fun but cannot imagine buying one, even if I had the financial clout to do so.
So a good video and I am sure I will check out a few more.
So a good video and I am sure I will check out a few more.
RSK21 said:
DonkeyApple said:
Shmee said:
I do not believe a single one of the aforementioned YouTubers to have acquired subscriber numbers through any illegitimate means.
It would be highly anomalous for some people in this particular sector to not be doing so as it would simply be out of line with the way the modern world works. Anywhere where the size of the audience works as a product endorsement will have cheats amongst the legitimate providers. On YT how do you spot fakes? It's relatively simple on Twitter and Facebook, is it the same?
The difference with the binary scammers on instagram, FB and Twitter is that they are happy operating in a "whack a mole" style, i.e. stamp one out and they just reappear with a minorly different handle, for them it's all about quick proliferation.
No matter what any of us on this thread may think of the content, quality, or indeed shirts, of those under discussion it's cler that they are intending to build something.
What interested me was being contacted by a couple of entities after the 212trading sponsorship to seek my business's sponsorship. I then had a chat to the owner and gleaned a fair amount into how some of these types of channels operate.
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