Vimeo Pro isn't (quite) enough

More on my content plans for 2022

I’m gradually moving away from YouTube, I think. I have about three thousand subscribers, but the only thing I’ve ever really made any money off of has been the “history of the entire world I guess” reaction video. Although I believe that people like Ali Abdaal have made boatloads of money from turning productivity into a sexy lifestyle and Rick Beato have huge followings, I’m not really doing either sexy nerd OR music. And although historians like Heather Cox Richardson apparently draw thousands and thousands of FB live viewers each week as well as a big Substack subscriber list, I find her stuff a bit…trivial and boring. I can’t bear to read day after day what Liz Cheney said in the January 6th hearing or some other cable-news-worthy deep-dive into material that we’re going to be SO embarrassed to recall in a decade (at least, I hope!) While I think bringing a historical perspective to today’s political debates is more valuable than just being a run of the mill pundit, in the end you’re still talking about the same crap.

I want to do content such as a US History primary source video and Substack post daily. If each of those videos is about 2 GB, then five a week = 10 GB. Leaving me 10 GB for other stuff. This quickly proved less than optimal when I bought the Pro Plan this weekend and immediately maxed out my weekly uploads with just a few Knowlton Biography and primary source videos. I’m not sure exactly how it would work, telling people I’m moving to Vimeo, but only a little bit at a time and only adding a video here and there from my collection when I have free space at the end of the week after posting new videos.

The 90-minute videos I’m making for my Obsidian Book Club run to about 9 or 10 GB in HD. I suppose I can try out dropping the resolution on those to something less than HD, but I’m not sure people would like watching that. I’ve actually been thinking of boosting the resolution on some of my videos to 4k, so I don’t think this is the time to drop down. The “Business” plan on Vimeo is $600 a year, so I would need a fairly substantial uptick in memberships. Business Vimeo has a 5 TB annual limit and NO weekly limit. What would I be adding weekly, going forward?

• 5 Primary Sources (10 GB)

• 1 Obsidian Book Club (10 GB)

• 2 Ranney Letters (10 GB)

• 3 Knowlton Bio Chapters (15 GB)

• 1 “Note-taking and Writing” video (5 GB)

So if I make 2 videos a day (at least this summer), that’s about 50 GB per week. And then any additional stuff I “backfill” in. And any additional “course” content. Looks like I need a Business plan.

It also looks like I need a business plan in the more mundane sense of the term. What if I offered a “commercial-free” package that included access to all the Vimeo Book Club videos past and future, for $5 a month or $50 a year? This would be a “Collection” in Vimeo that would be restricted to members (people who have already subscribed at that level on Buy Me a Coffee would be grandfathered in). Maybe I could also offer the note-taking and writing manual videos as a subscription plan. Also five dollars a month — actually the identical plan (in that it would give members access to ALL my Vimeo content) but offered to a different market. Are there interactive features like a discussion thread or comments that I could add on top of the commercial-free videos to sweeten the deal? Then subscribing for the note-taking and writing videos might be more like a “class” — maybe even with opportunities for people to interact on Zoom or send in examples of their writing for “workshopping”. I’ll have to think about that.

There’s a lot for me to think about, actually, and probably a lot of examples beyond the obvious and not particularly attractive ones of launching high-dollar “courses” like Tiago and Ali have done. I’m really NOT that interested in the “lifestyle” side of PKM or productivity, I’m finding. So I hope I’ll find a more low-key ecosystem in one of these other media. I still don’t understand how to have multiple folders or “channels” in my Substack. It seems like other people are doing that. I also need to continue exploring the Substack history ecosystem, and now that of Vimeo as well. Seems like there’s a LOT of history content! But in the meantime, I’ll start uploading all my relevant videos to Vimeo and organizing them.