Roger’s $0.02 - When Walled Gardens Become Prisons (Patreon)

Image from qimono 

I find YouTube a wonderful, if flawed platform for individual-level content generation. It has allowed tens of thousands of people a way to deliver content to a global audience essentially free of cost. However, like all closed content ecosystems, success in it is dependent on the actions of the owners. Creators can quickly find the walled garden they’ve successfully planted roots in turn into a metaphorical prison.

On last Thursday’s DTNS, Tasia Custode explained how YouTube is flagging some YouTuber’s views as invalid traffic. Invalid traffic refers to views that YouTube deems as non-legitimate and evidence that a channel is using bots or other means to inflate viewership numbers. This has led to a precipitous drop in revenue for many creators including Tasia. What’s more the onus is on the channel owner to solve the issue while YouTube supporter provides no assistance or help in clarifying what steps must be taken. Do you stay, do you go or do you stay and try to bring your audience over to whatever platform you decide to move to? It’s a tricky proposition.

Last week I commented on the controversy surrounding Linus Tech Tips and the role that having a relentless production cycle might have played a role in that. Specifically how the demands of growing viewership can negatively impact a workplace and production. The current YouTube invalid traffic issue and their insistent belief that fighting against possible VPNs and manufactured view numbers is worth the hassle for smaller creators add another pressure point. While YouTube still maintains value as a distribution platform its usefulness as a revenue source, through monetizing views of a channel’s content, has become very dubious.

In its growth phase, YouTube did as much as it could to grow and encourage creators. They eagerly supported creators with cash incentives to produce projects they felt would draw new subscribers to their content garden. All of this was predicated on healthy ad sales revenues. But that business model has reached its limits. And IMO the model has already passed its peak. The space has gotten more crowded and the companies are spending less on social media and video streaming advertising. Or as Justin Robert Young is fond of mentioning, online ad revenue is shrinking. Everyone’s wallets are feeling the pinch.

So what can be done? The obvious step is for creators to diversify their distribution to more than just one platform. Have a foot in every major social media channel. If you’re lucky you might find enough success to ensure that you become big enough to bend the ear of customer support whenever you have problems or questions. But that’s not enough. Platforms like TikTok or Instagram offer similar benefits but also the same challenges. If you become hugely popular on TikTok that success can be fleeting depending on the changes it makes to its algorithm and geopolitical forces beyond the control of any creator. The longer-term goal should be becoming revenue-independent of any platform.

Creators continue to use YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms to grow an audience but their source of income will instead rely on things like Patreon, merchandising deals, or in-person appearances instead of a cut of YouTube’s ad revenue. Things that a creator can directly control. By building a direct relationship with an audience and diversifying income streams, creators can become more independent and less vulnerable to changes in the social media landscape.