Channel Transition
I’m thinking about leaving YouTube, possibly entirely. I started posting videos regularly on YT a few years ago. I gained a lot of followers after I posted a reaction video to the super-popular video called “history of the entire world i guess”. That video got hundreds of thousands of views and pushed me over the threshold into “Monetization”, where the commercials that always ran before and during my videos would actually throw a few bucks my way. I had some things I wanted to say and I thought a few extra bucks would help me buy some tools and subscribe to some apps.
After a while, I got tired of the mostly silly comments that accrued to the reaction video. I did a few more reactions to more serious videos — I actually had a couple of public school students contact me for interviews after I said some things about the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation process in a response to one from Veritasium. But I took down the first reaction video and my monthly views and watch times dropped to a level I think was more normal for my market.
But that led to the question, is my market on YouTube? I still get a fairly steady traffic to my videos and my subs are still growing slowly. But comparing the number of subs to the number of views I get for a new drop, I’ve got to conclude that a lot of the people who smashed subscribe were looking for content like the first reaction video they subscribed off of. Since I’m not doing that type of thing anymore, I’m probably doing them a disservice and I should probably consider those subs as voided.
So I’m curious, who is watching my videos anymore? What types of content are you looking for? What would you like to see more of? What should I stop putting on YT?
I’m really asking. Not promising I’ll do what people suggest. But if for example NO ONE cares to see another video of a certain type, then maybe I won’t post anymore here. Similarly, if there’s a small group of people who want to see book club videos, would they be able to subscribe to a podcast feed that linked to Vimeo, or follow a link on Twitter to a video on Vimeo rather than YT? As far as I know, I can’t turn off commercials on YT, even if I turn off monetization. But the piece I get is so small that I don’t really think it’s worthwhile subjecting viewers to commercials every seven minutes in a 90-plus minute video, when I can let them watch it commercial free on Vimeo. Seems like I can sustain that just by getting some folks to buy me a coffee every once in a while.
I also suspect, when I put lecture videos up onto YT and teachers elsewhere use them, that some of them believe I’m getting “compensated” by YT/Google to some extent. I’m not saying that I want to charge for these, which I don’t. But I also sort-of don’t want Google to be profiting from them when I’m giving them away. The trade-off has always been that Google brings the eyeballs. Maybe I should give people more credit for being able to find resources online. In any case, there are aggregators like Merlot, where I can post links to my Vimeo channel. Then the instructor who seems to assign my Environmental History videos every semester will hopefully be able to find and use them there, when I remove them from YT.
If people have a different take on this, let me know. As it stands, I think I’m going to begin shifting some old content off YT and onto Vimeo. I may also begin posting some content only to Vimeo. So it would be a good idea, if you want to see new stuff as I make it, to subscribe to me there rather than here. One thing is for sure: even during this transition, however long it lasts, 100% of my stuff will always be on Vimeo. So that’s the place to be!