Are these Vloggers just a scam? SOL or Shmee etc? (Vol 2)

[S11Steve]

jon- said:

Well, fk.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46427910

I recognise a few of those simply from appearing on our TV at home when the youngest has been on the app.

How does monetisation work when a kid watches the same video 15-20 or more times? Because that seems to be how they get massive views of my kid and his peers are indicative of the rest of the viewing population. It would be interesting to see the unique views on those channels.

[fridaypassion]

Youtube is unregulated though not like most terrestrial TV will be so its a goldmine for getting adverts to kids. Advertising to kids is far more effective than you could ever dream of it being to adults. If you want to make money from the platform cars is one of the last things I would look at. Too niche. Some of the tripe that kids watch beggars belief. Just stick some steady content on and wait for the algorithm to make you a millionaire.

[downhillmalins]

time to start reviewing toy cars

[SydneyBridge]

Well done Ryan...
Perhaps he will move into cars when old enough..

[e30m3Mark]

SOL vid from Gymkhana is just so much more interesting than exhaust ''tone'' stuff and laps of London's West End.

[jayemm89]

Agreed. And STG's excellent piece with Aston Martin is the best video I have seen from him, and one of the smartest PR moves from any car maker. An Aston should be about the little details anyway, not how it compares on track to a GT3. Bravo to them both.

[jon-]

jayemm89 said:

Agreed. And STG's excellent piece with Aston Martin is the best video I have seen from him, and one of the smartest PR moves from any car maker. An Aston should be about the little details anyway, not how it compares on track to a GT3. Bravo to them both.

I was in awe of the Aston piece, one of the best non-advert adverts I've been for a car in a very long time!

[ashleyman]

jayemm89 said:

Agreed. And STG's excellent piece with Aston Martin is the best video I have seen from him, and one of the smartest PR moves from any car maker. An Aston should be about the little details anyway, not how it compares on track to a GT3. Bravo to them both.

I thought the Aston video was great too!

The interior sound of the car did remind me of Chewbacca though!

[downhillmalins]

Shmee - whats your take on the TVR delay?

Seems to be in a bit of a mess and potentially a long way from cars being delivered. Lots of talk that people with deposits will pull out, are you keeping your order in?

[Shmee]

downhillmalins said:

Shmee - whats your take on the TVR delay?

Seems to be in a bit of a mess and potentially a long way from cars being delivered. Lots of talk that people with deposits will pull out, are you keeping your order in?

I'm definitely going to keep my order in, in part because I feel the same way as I read from another PH user: "If I don't end up with a car, I'll be much more upset to not have a new TVR than to lose the deposit".

Now, I'm a person who's just waited almost 3 years for a Ford so patience is definitely something I'm lucky enough to have in this respect, and I'm also aware of what struggles it takes for a manufacturer to make this kind of thing come to fruition. The car is built around my favourite format; big engine up front, lots of power to the rear wheels, and focused for the driving experience - what's not to love.

It's a much tougher choice for those who are making the purchase as their single sportscar that will be kept for a number of years, whereby there are many other options on the market that might make sense to buy now rather then keep waiting. I see it as an additional car to the collection and not directly replacing anything and as such it puts less time pressure on when it will arrive.

The one thing I would hope for, and I believe it is being done, is that as time goes by the car continues to 'improve' to keep with the times rather than getting left behind against new competition in the market.

[Shmee]

Felonious said:

Paul's talked a bit in the past about dealing with anxiety. It must be extraordinarily difficult being a YouTuber and coping with the constant barrage of mindless, ill-informed, lazy and offensive feedback. How does Paul manage to balance the incessant demands of maintaining viewer interest, acting on feedback and keeping his own motivation up?

Tim / Shmee - you seem remarkably impervious to it, for which I applaud you (fwiw).

A lack of motivation is certainly something that any YouTuber or social media influencer has to fight against at some point, but I have managed to be slightly shielded from this by keeping the content (mostly) about the cars and less so myself - contrary to the belief of the Twitter-journos of this world. In any case, there are still times it's tough to go out and shoot a video when it's actually the last thing you want to do, especially with a big smile on your face for the camera!

Another critical thing I believe has helped me in this respect is the fact that I have differentiated between my online persona of 'Shmee' and that of myself as 'Tim' - insults when they come are towards the scripted character, and not myself. It creates a big distance between the two and although of course it does sometimes get personal, normally it's easy for me to picture how the comment writer, Tweeter or PH user (!) doesn't really understand the difference between Shmee and Tim when they write it. Another of my favourite concepts: If you were writing a personal diary, it would be full of your deepest secrets. If you are writing a 'personal' diary that you know is going to be published to hundreds of thousands of people, then it will clearly be thought out in advance.

For Paul it's not like this at all as he's been much more revealing of his normal life, and not to mention goes by his full name on most social media platforms which just gives the audience that bit more access. There is also the constant battle against the YouTube algorithm to keep views up and to keep being relevant, both in terms of the technicalities behind publishing videos (content style, formats, publishing times, schedule) and the content's subject itself. Another difficulty is that nobody outside of the very, very small YouTuber world, understands what is actually involved in being a YouTuber, which is honestly actually quite a dangerous situation and you see more than enough of that reported in the news already.

[jon-]

Shmee said:

There is also the constant battle against the YouTube algorithm to keep views up and to keep being relevant, both in terms of the technicalities behind publishing videos (content style, formats, publishing times, schedule) and the content's subject itself.

Tim, have you actually found a time / day you're most happy publishing at? Or is the result of the video long term more based on the content. IE, if it's a good video it doesn't matter when it's published.

[Shmee]

jon- said:

Tim, have you actually found a time / day you're most happy publishing at? Or is the result of the video long term more based on the content. IE, if it's a good video it doesn't matter when it's published.

Actually, I think it constantly changes - what is good now, will not be in a few months time.

The most stand out thing to me, is publishing at a time that is different to everyone else; you don't want your video to be lost in a sea of uploads from similar channels.

It is definitely the case that a genuinely good video will do well whenever it is posted, so long as we aren't talking about 4am in the timezone for the majority of that channel's audience. However, an 'average' video will significantly be impacted by other aspects and could either do surprisingly well, or immensely poorly based on external factors.

[ashleyman]

I don’t know if any of you watch LLF but he’s just got a new M4 and has been posting videos about that pickup.

Latest video is about car security which is super interesting but I can’t help but feel he’s being a little silly about posting what security measures he has on his car - especially being who he is with all those followers.

https://youtu.be/bA8deKV2Xqc

[Truckosaurus]

Shmee said:

...It is definitely the case that a genuinely good video will do well whenever it is posted...

Do you notice that certain videos do better if they get shared on sites like PH, Jalopnik or Reddit, or is your channel well established enough that you get the views from your existing subscriber base?

[Sport220]

I miss the old days of Shmee150 when he had a car for a relatively long time and we got to follow his journey with them. I'm talking V8V, R8 and 12C specifically, those were my favourite videos. It was always exciting seeing what he was getting up to with the car, and also the expectation around his next purchase.

I haven't watched many I'm buying this, that and also that videos, or I'm getting this and that loaned and also flying to this tuner or that press launch to do a long video saying nice things about the cars. I know it's fantastic for him, but I do miss his old videos. Probably also down to me being a teenager back then, but it used to make my favourite entertainment on the internet.

[Shmee]

Sport220 said:

I miss the old days of Shmee150 when he had a car for a relatively long time and we got to follow his journey with them. I'm talking V8V, R8 and 12C specifically, those were my favourite videos. It was always exciting seeing what he was getting up to with the car, and also the expectation around his next purchase.

I haven't watched many I'm buying this, that and also that videos, or I'm getting this and that loaned and also flying to this tuner or that press launch to do a long video saying nice things about the cars. I know it's fantastic for him, but I do miss his old videos. Probably also down to me being a teenager back then, but it used to make my favourite entertainment on the internet.

Interesting observation, do you think that's mostly down to there just being far more content about them? For example my AMG GT R has outlived the 12C and will very shortly surpass the R8 and V8V; of course it goes without saying that my 675LT (2.5yrs) and GT8 (2yrs) are both much longer. The likes of the FF did over 2 years too; longer than any of the 3 you mentioned. I know that in the mean time the GT3 did move on quicker, but that was due to the car arriving later than originally planned plus the GT then coming through much earlier and needing to free up some capital to pay the 50% deposit for it.

There is the other element that having a fleet of cars rather than just one definitely gets confusing but I just don't think you could do all the trips and mileage I now do one car - to start because when it goes for a service or issue it throws everything off. During the time since 2013/2014 there's also been a major change in the way the content is consumed and as such it has to change in style. Even for me it's great to 'look back at the old days' (which believe me were much, much, much, MUCH less stressful and easier) but then the channels that were also creating content in this game at that time were BrianZuk, Marchettino, Jorrie2 and more that haven't kept up in the same way.

[Shmee]

Truckosaurus said:

Do you notice that certain videos do better if they get shared on sites like PH, Jalopnik or Reddit, or is your channel well established enough that you get the views from your existing subscriber base?

PH or Jalopnik wouldn't really have much impact at all, Reddit can bump some nice views but my longer form content doesn't really suit their audience. The best is to have a piece that generally gets shared around across many sites, but one individual one (unless it's huge) will have very little impact.

[S11Steve]

Tim, going back to the comment about "the old days" , some of your shorter clips are also some of your most viewed - like the Aventador crash, and some of the early walkaround videos, which I guess have gone viral over time through sharing.

I know the current algo means that daily 10 minute uploads are the norm, but is there any merit in still doing some 2-3 minute clips alongside the usual 10 minute daily content? Would 2 uploads a day have a negative impact on your overall figures?

(and my Missus also wants to know where Ms_Ps IG page has gone!)

[0a]

There seems to be a bit of a trend for starting second channels (eg Doug DeMuro). I understand that this allows the Youtuber to add content that his main audience might not like, to try out ideas and so on, but does it not risk 'splitting' the audience between the channels, impacting visibility on Youtube etc?

Thanks to Tim for answering questions on this thread - it's very interesting to hear a bit about how Vlogging actually works.