Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites • Hacker News Board

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#381

Post by xorcist » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 12:56 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #293

vl wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGP Grey is strange, so to say. He effectively abandoned Hello Internet. They once mentioned that they have 900K subs. Grey fully controlled HI, and it was way more popular than Cortex. If he wants to diversify so much abandoning project like this just doesn’t make sense. Also he has no basic decency to announce cancelation and left Tims hanging, for many of whom it was the podcast.

Slight tangent but podcasting is an interesting counterpoint. Right now the business is pretty distributed. There's no youtube for podcasts although Apple is easily number one. There is now an absolute street fight between Apple and Spotify with Google, Amazon and some other wannabes fighting to own the walled garden. And crazy consolidation for creator tools and monetization. It'll be interesting to see if a "winner…

All other podcast networks still use Apple for discovery, so the situation isn't that far from how Youtube still is essential for creators to be discovered.

Spotify is the first serious challenger, but so far the only ones to go Spotify exclusive as the really big ones that are paid handsomely to do it.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#382

Post by alimbada » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 12:59 PM UTC

motogpjimbo wrote: post #353

leoc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sebastian and Linus Media Group seem to be pretty frank and open about a lot of this: see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... on putting up gurning thumbnails and navigating the YT algorithm (and that whole playlist, including a revenue breakdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... ), the Gamers Nexus video on LTT's production process https://www.yo…

I wonder how many potential views he loses due to his gurning? I've never watched any of his videos despite YT constantly recommending them to me because I've got a personal rule about never clicking on a thumbnail that has a picture of someone pulling a face or which has a clickbait title.

That's an oddly specific rule, but okay.

I find enough of their videos to be informative enough that I continue to watch those that I think would interest me. I've become a regular for the their TechLinked channel as I find it entertaining as well as informative but their longer videos and unboxing videos I'll cherry pick: I'll watch reviews of products I'm interested in but I tend to skip the extravagant/outlandish builds they do as I find them pointless since I wont be doing anything like that myself.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#383

Post by selykg » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

Maybe not totally on subject here. But Cleetus McFarland is one of the people I think is starting to make his move away from YouTube, or at least, diversifying dramatically.

Merch is huge for YouTubers in a lot of ways. He's been doing solid merch for a long time.

He also has been doing his Cleetus & Cars events for a few years now and those bring in big numbers.

Last year he announced purchasing an abandoned race track. Which he opened officially this year. This past weekend he had an event and the place was packed (COVID not withstanding... it feels like in Florida, where this is all located, COVID isn't a thing). He seems to have successfully saved an abandoned race track.

In an extremely creative maneuver they had to tear up part of the race track for repairs. To help fund the repairs he sold chunks of the track in a bottle with a t-shirt and a few other merch goodies. He literally sold chunks of the track.

He's now doing Pay-per-view events, which he started last year.

I'm sure a good chunk of his income still comes from YouTube, but in a lot of ways he's seemingly finding creative ways to make his business bigger. Eventually, I anticipate that YouTube and him part ways and he starts his own platform where he can make it more of what he wants it to be.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#384

Post by globular-toast » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

desiarnezjr wrote: post #263

walrus01 wrote: post #210

> Linus Sebastian Something to understand, for those who might have just seen some youtube videos of him being goofy, is that he's an actor . The guy on camera doing stupid stuff is a stage persona. It's an intentionally cultivated image and media persona to get as many video views as possible. I sort of see him as one possible aspect of the low/medium budget TV production stuff which is common in his home city, Vanc…

Linus learned all of this over the years, and optimized it over time. He's great at it now, but was pretty rough at first -- but he was never an actor, he was a geek that loved technology. He worked for a large computer reseller that gave him lots of resources when he was starting. He actually built this in spite of all the production resources that Vancouver has to offer, and is more a "growth hacker" than actor I'd…

I think comedian might be a more accurate way to describe him. "Actor" somewhat implies deception which I'm sure is not what is intended by the GP. Interestingly, in French comédien means "actor", while they have a different word for the newer English definition of comedian: humoriste. In any case, the point is who he is on screen is a character that he has developed. There's nothing at all wrong with that. In fact, such characters are usually celebrated!

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#385

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

motogpjimbo wrote: post #353

leoc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sebastian and Linus Media Group seem to be pretty frank and open about a lot of this: see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... on putting up gurning thumbnails and navigating the YT algorithm (and that whole playlist, including a revenue breakdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... ), the Gamers Nexus video on LTT's production process https://www.yo…

I wonder how many potential views he loses due to his gurning? I've never watched any of his videos despite YT constantly recommending them to me because I've got a personal rule about never clicking on a thumbnail that has a picture of someone pulling a face or which has a clickbait title.

Some people will stick to watching because of the content, others will actually click on them because of the thumbnails. As they explained (and I'm sure his is the most cited one), it's a simple numbers game. Min-maxing Youtube, so to speak. Or growth hacking, to put it in hip startup crowd terminology.

I mean the HC community and YC companies have no qualms about discussing and promoting the best practices for a good landing page, every time someone comes in to promote their product there will be unsolicited advice about that. It's the same thing, but instead of saying "you should put caps in your title and have an expressive face in the thumbnail" it'll be about the content on the landing page like "you need a screenshot".

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#386

Post by midasz » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

_-david-_ wrote: post #128

bawolff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't AWS's claim that parlar was hosting illegal content? Regardless, they signed a contract detailing what they could and could not host on aws. They broke it. Its not like they were unaware of the requirements. Moral of the story, if you promise X, dont promise someone else Y if X and Y conflict. You are going to be breaking your word ine way or another.

If strictly hosting illegal content / being slow to remove it means you should be booted from AWS then how on earth is Twitter still using AWS?

> being slow to remove it

They just didn't. There's a difference between being slow and just not doing it at all.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#387

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #151

dalbasal wrote: post #117

This article is a little on the surface level, but it's true. People were screaming about where platforms and digital sharecropping was headed all along... and we're here now. Youtube, which is basically digital free-to-air is even more centralised than old free to air. Youtube really is an extreme situation. They really dominate a whole medium single handedly and youtubers have shockingly little power in the whole t…

It's just incredibly hard to compete with Youtube. In a way that's Google's greatest achievement: they convinced everybody that they're entitled to host and stream 4K videos forever not only for free, but the creators get a share of the ad revenue despite fronting none of the hosting costs. It's an incredibly good deal. The amount of infrastructure and human resources required to merely keep a system like Youtube run…

The thing with the resource sharing is that it's peanuts compared to what youtubers earn off of other sources of income; sponsorship and product placement deals (which I'm sure is a thorn in Youtube's eye, unless they get a slice of that cake), Patreon is a really big one, and merchandise sales. I'm sure that Youtube ad revenue is in 4th place with regards to income for youtubes, especially since the 'adpocalypse' wherein advertisers pulled out of youtube and stronghanded them into a strict demonetization practice.

Anyway that said, there's enough competition for youtube to ensure that these channels don't have to die; it's just discoverability that is the issue. Youtube does not have exclusive rights to any video uploaded (although I'm sure they have negotiated exclusivity contracts with some), so anyone is free to mirror their uploads elsewhere, just in case. I'm sure there's software out there that makes cross-posting videos easy.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#388

Post by astura » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #352

astura wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't rss how podcasts are normally distributed?

Judging by most podcast ads I've heard, the normal distribution methods are the Google Play store and iTunes.

Idk if anything has changed, but last I knew those are just RSS readers on the backend.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#389

Post by geerlingguy » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #226

simongr3dal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was some kind of really simple syndication so I didn’t have to visit 40 different sites to check if my favorite video creators have released anything new.

This sort of dumb sarcasm is soooo annoying for a billion reasons: - Every major website where RSS would be useful (except Facebook. Twitter needs RSS like we need the plague), _has it!_ RSS support is ubiquitous - There are carbon-copy clones of google reader. I use one every day (well, twice a week cuz I don't depend on reading RSS). You can just subscribe - For really tricky stuff, you can wire together some stuff…

The first statement is, sadly, no longer true today. Far too many times after a redesign, RSS feeds that were useful and functional just disappear. Sometimes they're redirected to a new feed location that doesn't have all the content the old feed did, or just has headlines instead of headlines and teasers.

And many new sites never test RSS functionality, so if there is a feed, it just shows posts tagged 'feed' or something like that.

Re: Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites

#390

Post by wooger » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #293

vl wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGP Grey is strange, so to say. He effectively abandoned Hello Internet. They once mentioned that they have 900K subs. Grey fully controlled HI, and it was way more popular than Cortex. If he wants to diversify so much abandoning project like this just doesn’t make sense. Also he has no basic decency to announce cancelation and left Tims hanging, for many of whom it was the podcast.

Slight tangent but podcasting is an interesting counterpoint. Right now the business is pretty distributed. There's no youtube for podcasts although Apple is easily number one. There is now an absolute street fight between Apple and Spotify with Google, Amazon and some other wannabes fighting to own the walled garden. And crazy consolidation for creator tools and monetization. It'll be interesting to see if a "winner…

From my own point of view, I've entirely abandoned and forgotten about the existence of 3 podcasts that went Spotify only. The app on both iOS and windows is a terrible implementation of podcasts, appears broken and is lacking tons of features.

I have a podcast app (Overcast) which I use for everything, and nothing that I can't subscribe to in that will ever get my ears.