Paying YouTube for views on your channel

wxboss@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 117 points –
Youtube wants us to pay for views - this platform is circling the drain
youtube.com
39

You are viewing a single comment

Eli the computer guy [...] had this show up in his dashboard: "grow your Channel's popularity and engagement by promoting your video on YouTube, running a promotion helps attract new viewers who can boost your subscriptions, views, likes, and other engagement" and the way this works is your videos will show up if you pay them. YouTube is trying to get people who make content on YouTube to pay for views now.

Isn't this kind of basic in terms of content marketing?

One entity makes content then pays another company to promote it?

What else would Luis being doing if he actually had to pay for the storage space YouTube gives him for free? Handing out CDs on the street?

Is he aware that companies like Pinterest already do this?

I can't say that the sudden huge drop in viewership isn't suspicious though.

It makes sense if you think about it like basic marketing

But the thing is Youtube already promoted channels through it's algorithm. Having to pay for it implies that something has changed regarding it.

I think what's worse is that the content seemed to be less visible even to his subscribers. The discoverability of your content to new people who are not actively looking for it is one thing, bit hiding it from people who have actively said they want to view it is another thing entirely.

the content seemed to be less visible even to his subscribers

Am I the only one who still uses the subscriptions page? I get a chronological list of all my subscribed channel's video releases. I have seen zero indication that I'm missing anything at all, and I fairly frequently go to channel's pages to check that my subscription list is complete.

I've never clicked a single notification bell, and don't rely on the home page's recommendations/sorting, unless I'm actively seeking out new recommendations.

it became clear to me that the main discovery page on youtube would never be of any use to me when it suggested a video entitled “Andrew Tate Tucker Carlson Interview” by the channel “Gentleman Masterclass” and i almost projectile vomited all over my keyboard

I try to give as little data about myself to Google as possible, so I do not maintain subscriptions on YouTube. The recommendations from youtube are awful beyond belief. And somehow the search function is even worse - I really cannot find shit other than whatever their algorithm wants to push on me.

One example: searching for Buddy Holly gives me the video "My drummer said that RINGO sucks, so I dared him to play THIS Beatles beat" as one of the first results, along with a video I've already watched of Chuck Berry jamming out with Keith Richards. On which fucking universe is this what I would be looking for with that search term. Meanwhile, even slightly obscure live recordings are almost impossible to find.

YouTube has made itself practically worthless to me. I don't want to spend my life watching what their algorithm wants to shove down my throat, and the way it currently works it's hardly any good for watching anything else.

I mean, you're in whatever the opposite of a sweet spot is. If you want better recommendations, you have to rate and maintain a subscription page. It takes information -- a lot of it -- to get a good personalized feed.

I've found my home page to be very useful -- it even recognizes I want to watch certain channels at different times of day.

Yes, I'm bringing it on myself by not allowing them to create a good profile for me. I do, however, believe that the search function worked much better a few years ago. I don't really want content recommended to me on the front page, but it still amazes me how hard they are trying to become TikTok in the recommendations I do get served.

You are not the only person who just uses Subscriptions. I do, too.

And I am considering using rss to track channel updates instead of Subscriptions so I can see what’s new without going to YouTube directly. Less likely to get hit by distractions.

That's what stuck out to me, I can surmise multiple-but-equally-unlikely reasons but it's just too strange.

Google is triple-dipping at this point. Youtube advertisers are already paying, they want users to pay, and now they want content creators to pay. Might as well also ask their CDNs to pay at this point. Also don't forget to have the Linux Foundation pay for the privilege of having their source code in Google's proprietary codebase.

What about it? Conventions already do this.

Want to advertise at the convention? Gotta pay.

Want to have a booth for your content at the convention? Gotta pay.

Want to just go to the convention to see the advertisements and booths that companies paid to market to you? Believe it or not, gotta pay.

Steam does the same shit, pay to list your games, pay to run promotions, and players pay for the game.

IMO, YouTube is lagging behind on this one.

Some fair points. Your convention analogy doesn't really work though. What would happen if convention organizers started asking the talent they are booking to also pay?

More people are catching onto the "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further" mentality of huge corporations that have only gotten to where they are because of content creators, and it should scare Google.

Wouldn't that then be the convention organizers paying for marketing? They have people that they want at the convention who don't necessarily even want to go to the convention in the first place, even to market themselves.

Is the talent marketing their talent or is the convention paying them in order to create interest in the event?

In any case, having talent pay to register for an event isn't something new.

It is, but the idea of such is shockingly new to a lot of YouTubers. A lot of them will just trust the algorithm when they get good growth metrics and hate it when growth stalls.