14 ms·

Easier said than done… if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? And how many of your viewers will move over t

Easier said than done… if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? And how many of your viewers will move over to watch your stuff there? This advice probably works for blogs and mailing lists but isn’t really actionable for other content.

chillfox 2y ago
One way is to release videos 1-2 weeks early on your own site.
paulryanrogers 2y ago
Well there is podcasting and PeerTube.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  YouTube offers millions of dollars in free advertising to content creators along with tens of dollars in free hosting.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Indeed, I was just trying to point out some decentralized alternatives.
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    It really doesn't. To understand why, you have only to comprehend the following: Whether someone is searching under a particular keyword, or just browsing whatever pops up on the home page, the average browser has a finite amount they're willing to scroll before abandoning their search... and chances are your video is NOT going to be placed highly in those results unless you're directing a firehose at it from offsite via Twitter, forum posts, news aggregators, or paying Youtube to promote your video flat out (which is such an obvious moneygrab on their part its disgusting). In other words: If you rely on their algorithm to promote your work you're literally playing the lottery and, much like the lottery, statistically you're going to lose. It makes far more sense to find bandwidth and hosting, negotiate with an ad network, and direct a firehose at the resulting site... but that's more work than some are willing to do. shrug Oh well.
    - ako 2y ago
      If you place it on a website you’ll also be subjected to their algorithm, google search.
      - EarlKing 2y ago
        The point of going to your own site, though, is not to rely on algorithms, but construct your own marketing funnel.
    - speff 2y ago
      This is an amateurish take on marketing yourself on YouTube. The algorithm is /not/ like the lottery. My wife is a content creator on YT and hasn’t spent a dime on advertising. The free advertising isn’t in the form of search result placement (mostly) but rather the algorithm showing your videos next to more popular related videos. That’s why the absolute most important thing for video promotion isn’t the material itself, but rather the title/thumbnail combination. People are generally bad at understanding this and/or bad at marketing themselves so they attribute their lack of success as random chance And unless your audience is very tech oriented, they’re not going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on to watch videos hosted elsewhere. You’d need to ask a LOT of people (= a large amount of $$$) and hope a few of them make it over a bit at a time
      - EarlKing 2y ago
        > My wife is a content creator on YT and hasn’t spent a dime on advertising. Is your wife a representative sample of all Youtubers? If not, your datum is irrelevant. > unless your audience is very tech oriented, they’re not going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on to watch videos hosted elsewhere. Having now witnessed multiple creators hop from one platform to another and drag their audiences with them because they're JUST THAT ENTERTAINING... no, you're wrong. People will gladly follow artists to a better platform if it means they're able to make a living and/or not be censored.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  With YouTube people can just click the "make money" button. YouTube handles the ad sales and payments. Both are your job if you're podcasting or publishing on PeerTube. Hosting video content is not an unsolvable problem. YouTube's moat is economies of scale and user base. YouTube's draw is the "make money" button.
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    The "make money" button, however, is an illusion for 99% of publishers. The one case where it does seem to make out is with livestreams, and then only because unlike topical short-form videos, streaming is not a winner-take-all environment where one or two people run away with all the eyeballs, but instead people will tend to decommoditize topical streaming based on the personality of the broadcaster and your ability to form a parasocial relationship with them... hence even a relatively unknown person, if they're persistent, can manage to grab a few hundred regular viewers who'll toss a few bucks each stream... not enough to make a living, but enough for beer money. The prime advantage of youtube in this scenario is not having to deal with setting up hosting/DDoS filtering and negotiating with a payment processor ... just push the button and upload. So for streamers I think it can still be worth it, but for people posting short form content I think they might be better off rolling their own because they can't rely on Youtube's algorithm to give them enough eyeballs to be profitable.
- tshaddox 2y ago
  With podcasting you’ll almost certainly be reliant on being searchable on the major podcasting apps. PeerTube is as close to nonexistent as a video platform can be.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Podcasting is actually worse. YouTube is a kingdom where people come to you. In podcasting there are a few large kingdoms and you have to be in all of them because of the "wherever you get your podcasts" thing.
    - JacobThreeThree 2y ago
      There is a quasi-open podcasting index that many podcasting apps use. It's here: https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/
rlayton2 2y ago
I think one method here is to incorporate your own site into the content as much as possible. For example, if you are a creator, get people to sign up to a newsletter to get the source files. Get people onto your platform/forum/whatever as well as watching through YouTube. Easier said than done, but better than not doing anything. From there, you also ensure that you have a backup of all your videos. I've talked to people that only had their stuff on YouTube/Facebook/whatever. It is super risky. If you have a backup, and YouTube bans you, you can rehost elsewhere, it won't be as big, but you might still have a business afterwards.
- azemetre 2y ago
  Also something that needs to be noted, you don't need the same original numbers of people in your kingdom to make equivalent money. When you're making commerce in someone's fief, they will demand tribute as well. In the confines of your own kingdom, all the ad dollars are yours. Which also means you don't need to chase the same amounts of people to make similar coin, especially if the deals you make with advertisers are between you and the advertiser (not you, the advertiser, and the king of some other fief).
  - georgeecollins 2y ago
    Exactly. You can be huge on Youtube or tiktok and if you convert some of that to direct engagement you are much better able to survive a changing landscape.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yeah, every YT creator that is serious about their job should have their own website with a copy of the videos, and I find it really curious that this doesn't seem to be much of a thing? At best I'm seeing merchandise webshops. But you'd think these people would be multi-channel and have a website, youtube, all the social medias, etc, and the bigger ones a company to manage them all. But I suspect that as they get bigger, they enter in exclusivity / no-compete contracts with Youtube, and if they detect the same video hosted elsewhere, they get taken down or something.
btown 2y ago
There's an entire OTT sub-industry for video hosting and out-of-the-box monetization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service For instance, https://vimeo.com/ott https://vimeo.com/ott is an effective (albeit expensive) option, powering Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor) and other brands and allowing them to focus on content. Dropout, in particular, has found an effective model of releasing short clips from their improv-heavy shows on social video platforms, gaining virality there while subtly reminding new and old fans that they can find full episodes, and support on-screen and off-screen talent, by subscribing to the brand directly. Their growth would be impacted by the loss of a marketing channel, but not their underlying subscription fundamentals. (The entire Dropout business story is quite inspiring and worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 )
- JBiserkov 2y ago
  That sounds incredibly interesting! Thanks for sharing that! The YouTube link at the end is ironic ;-)
lolinder 2y ago
Your YouTube example is exactly what gave rise to Nebula.tv—creators banded together to create an alternative that would backstop them against YouTube's dominance.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  Another example is Floatplane which was bootstrapped by the Linus Tech Tips people after realized how dependent they were on YouTube.
- echoangle 2y ago
  And how many people are on nebula compared to YouTube?
  - nine_k 2y ago
    All the 1000 of your mailing list subscribers? Or maybe 10k. You start needing alternatives when you're already established and have a following. With this comes large enoug influence and thus the ability / risk to step on some big toes, including Google's.
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
A high school friend of mine contacted me out of the blue on facebook after probably 20 years. He had gotten on early with an MLM that made it big and one of them had such success on the platform that he had made multiple appearances at their national convention to give a testimonial to how it changed his family's lives. Mind you, this is a guy who was 2 years from being able to retire with a pension from the chemical refinery he worked at. I laughed, told him I wasn't interested, and warned him that he didn't own his network: that the MLM could take it from him at any time, and it's why most of the experienced salesmen I knew lived well below their paychecks. He grew very upset, told me I didn't know what I was talking about, and basically behaved as if I had insulted his religion. Well, half a year later I was laid off and found a new job with a marketing automation firm. On my second day, we had an all hands meeting where they were announcing that the MLM he worked for would be immediately breaking contract and leaving our platform because they reached a settlement with the DOJ over their methodology. Effective immediately, they were going to a distributor model and ceasing all payouts for network related sales. I knew his world was going to collapse before he did. In the end, he had to sell his house and most of his possessions, his wife divorced him, and he tried to break back into the MLM world but could never get anything started. Nobody wanted to hire him for a traditional sales role because they regard MLMers as lazy and dumb. He's back at another chemical refinery, hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension.
- liotier 2y ago
  > 2 years from being able to retire with a pension > [..] > hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension I don't understand that... If he was two years from retiring, then he only needed two more years of salaried employment somewhere lese - didn't he ? What country did he live in ?
  - MisterBastahrd 2y ago
    The US. Your pension, if you get one, is tied to your employer. Most people have 401Ks.
    - 2y ago
Razengan 2y ago
> if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? They could use their popularity to promote and donate to alternatives.
jimbob45 2y ago
The optimal strategy would probably be to start on YouTube and then migrate to your own platform once you can afford it and have an audience willing to come with you. Then probably dual stream for a while on your site with blended chat support before cutting the YouTube cord loudly and with warning.
magarnicle 2y ago
Some of them have, it's called Nebula.
naming_the_user 2y ago
You're omitting the choice of just not doing that in the first place. If you want to be a Windows developer, then yes, you have to be a Windows developer in order to be a Windows developer. But you don't have to want to be a Windows developer. You don't even have to want to be a developer.
- devjab 2y ago
  I think the difference between development for a “real” OS is that windows is still mainly owned by its customers. Similar to how MacOS is. On MacOS people can still install your applications even if you don’t pay the Apple tax to avoid their pop-up warnings. (I’m not sure if avoiding the windows warnings is also something you pay Microsoft for.) I think a better comparison would be iOS or Chrome, where you’ll realistically have to submit yourself to their stores if you want to reach most users. Which is sort of even more locked down than YouTube as some content creators on YouTube have managed to move their audience to other platforms, though sometimes by still posting teasers or at least some content on YouTube.
nine_k 2y ago
If you are a "YouTube creator", you have already firmly planted your castle on Google's land. The positioning of onself as bound to a particular website run by someone else is needless loss of independence. Position yourself as a video creator and post your videos also to Instagram (when possible) and to Vimeo. Seed free / back catalog episodes via a torrent. Run a mailing list announcing and discussing your videos, with some premium content for paying subscribers only. Maybe have an X / SkyBlue / mastodon feed with more compact announces, comments, and high-virality short clips from your longer videos. Cross-link and cross-reference all the channels of your presence. Make your brand recognizable across the publishing methods. Gently prod people to touch more than one channel of your video distribution, just to get the most avid viewers acquainted with several. Yes, this is significantly more work. It also may bring significantly more results if your videos are good. This gives you a much stronger assurance that your brand and your following will not be lost, should you lose access to YouTube / Instagram / Vimeo / X / whatever other platform. Commoditize your complement, as they say.
- CJefferson 2y ago
  Can you suggest a few video creators who are having success with this model? I watch quite a few video creators, and don’t know any trying to use this model.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    No, he can't, because there are none. It's a ludicrous model that exists only in the minds of HN commenters.
  - Elinvynia 2y ago
    LinusTechTips literally built their own video hosting site - Floatplane - exactly for this reason, to have a backup in case YouTube nukes their channel.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Which is increasingly likely as they manually removed his video about adblock.
instig007 2y ago
With videos you can start by retaining control of your channel configurations and making it independent from any particular video hosting provider. See this for inspiration (not promoting it, just the gist of the idea): https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/
j45 2y ago
A huge part of the world forwards videos primarily on WhatsApp. And links to YouTube. Your question seems to connect discovery of videos and distribution. Video hosting is getting easier. There’s platforms like avideo that are relatively easy to host. Many companies use alternatives already like or Vimeo. Hosting your video permanently first from your own setup isn’t too far fetched. YouTube can be secondary. Many people use social media to build their own email lists and communities. YouTube can achieve the same. At the same time I think YouTube is more going to eat cable tv up or at least offset it more first.
dfxm12 2y ago
Another option is to consider that "YouTube creator" should not be treated as anything more than a hobby; it should certainly not be your identity/job title. Unless you have some sort of contract with Alphabet, your videos are hosted at their pleasure and you are owed nothing. Your time is likely better spent not bolstering someone else's library of content.

chillfox 2y ago

One way is to release videos 1-2 weeks early on your own site.

paulryanrogers 2y ago

Well there is podcasting and PeerTube.

whatshisface 2y ago
YouTube offers millions of dollars in free advertising to content creators along with tens of dollars in free hosting.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Indeed, I was just trying to point out some decentralized alternatives.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  It really doesn't. To understand why, you have only to comprehend the following: Whether someone is searching under a particular keyword, or just browsing whatever pops up on the home page, the average browser has a finite amount they're willing to scroll before abandoning their search... and chances are your video is NOT going to be placed highly in those results unless you're directing a firehose at it from offsite via Twitter, forum posts, news aggregators, or paying Youtube to promote your video flat out (which is such an obvious moneygrab on their part its disgusting). In other words: If you rely on their algorithm to promote your work you're literally playing the lottery and, much like the lottery, statistically you're going to lose. It makes far more sense to find bandwidth and hosting, negotiate with an ad network, and direct a firehose at the resulting site... but that's more work than some are willing to do. shrug Oh well.
  - ako 2y ago
    If you place it on a website you’ll also be subjected to their algorithm, google search.
    - EarlKing 2y ago
      The point of going to your own site, though, is not to rely on algorithms, but construct your own marketing funnel.
  - speff 2y ago
    This is an amateurish take on marketing yourself on YouTube. The algorithm is /not/ like the lottery. My wife is a content creator on YT and hasn’t spent a dime on advertising. The free advertising isn’t in the form of search result placement (mostly) but rather the algorithm showing your videos next to more popular related videos. That’s why the absolute most important thing for video promotion isn’t the material itself, but rather the title/thumbnail combination. People are generally bad at understanding this and/or bad at marketing themselves so they attribute their lack of success as random chance And unless your audience is very tech oriented, they’re not going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on to watch videos hosted elsewhere. You’d need to ask a LOT of people (= a large amount of $$$) and hope a few of them make it over a bit at a time
    - EarlKing 2y ago
      > My wife is a content creator on YT and hasn’t spent a dime on advertising. Is your wife a representative sample of all Youtubers? If not, your datum is irrelevant. > unless your audience is very tech oriented, they’re not going to switch off whatever platform the ads are on to watch videos hosted elsewhere. Having now witnessed multiple creators hop from one platform to another and drag their audiences with them because they're JUST THAT ENTERTAINING... no, you're wrong. People will gladly follow artists to a better platform if it means they're able to make a living and/or not be censored.
giantrobot 2y ago
With YouTube people can just click the "make money" button. YouTube handles the ad sales and payments. Both are your job if you're podcasting or publishing on PeerTube. Hosting video content is not an unsolvable problem. YouTube's moat is economies of scale and user base. YouTube's draw is the "make money" button.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  The "make money" button, however, is an illusion for 99% of publishers. The one case where it does seem to make out is with livestreams, and then only because unlike topical short-form videos, streaming is not a winner-take-all environment where one or two people run away with all the eyeballs, but instead people will tend to decommoditize topical streaming based on the personality of the broadcaster and your ability to form a parasocial relationship with them... hence even a relatively unknown person, if they're persistent, can manage to grab a few hundred regular viewers who'll toss a few bucks each stream... not enough to make a living, but enough for beer money. The prime advantage of youtube in this scenario is not having to deal with setting up hosting/DDoS filtering and negotiating with a payment processor ... just push the button and upload. So for streamers I think it can still be worth it, but for people posting short form content I think they might be better off rolling their own because they can't rely on Youtube's algorithm to give them enough eyeballs to be profitable.
tshaddox 2y ago
With podcasting you’ll almost certainly be reliant on being searchable on the major podcasting apps. PeerTube is as close to nonexistent as a video platform can be.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Podcasting is actually worse. YouTube is a kingdom where people come to you. In podcasting there are a few large kingdoms and you have to be in all of them because of the "wherever you get your podcasts" thing.
  - JacobThreeThree 2y ago
    There is a quasi-open podcasting index that many podcasting apps use. It's here: https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/

rlayton2 2y ago

I think one method here is to incorporate your own site into the content as much as possible. For example, if you are a creator, get people to sign up to a newsletter to get the source files. Get people onto your platform/forum/whatever as well as watching through YouTube. Easier said than done, but better than not doing anything. From there, you also ensure that you have a backup of all your videos. I've talked to people that only had their stuff on YouTube/Facebook/whatever. It is super risky. If you have a backup, and YouTube bans you, you can rehost elsewhere, it won't be as big, but you might still have a business afterwards.

azemetre 2y ago
Also something that needs to be noted, you don't need the same original numbers of people in your kingdom to make equivalent money. When you're making commerce in someone's fief, they will demand tribute as well. In the confines of your own kingdom, all the ad dollars are yours. Which also means you don't need to chase the same amounts of people to make similar coin, especially if the deals you make with advertisers are between you and the advertiser (not you, the advertiser, and the king of some other fief).
- georgeecollins 2y ago
  Exactly. You can be huge on Youtube or tiktok and if you convert some of that to direct engagement you are much better able to survive a changing landscape.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Yeah, every YT creator that is serious about their job should have their own website with a copy of the videos, and I find it really curious that this doesn't seem to be much of a thing? At best I'm seeing merchandise webshops. But you'd think these people would be multi-channel and have a website, youtube, all the social medias, etc, and the bigger ones a company to manage them all. But I suspect that as they get bigger, they enter in exclusivity / no-compete contracts with Youtube, and if they detect the same video hosted elsewhere, they get taken down or something.

btown 2y ago

There's an entire OTT sub-industry for video hosting and out-of-the-box monetization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service For instance, https://vimeo.com/ott https://vimeo.com/ott is an effective (albeit expensive) option, powering Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor) and other brands and allowing them to focus on content. Dropout, in particular, has found an effective model of releasing short clips from their improv-heavy shows on social video platforms, gaining virality there while subtly reminding new and old fans that they can find full episodes, and support on-screen and off-screen talent, by subscribing to the brand directly. Their growth would be impacted by the loss of a marketing channel, but not their underlying subscription fundamentals. (The entire Dropout business story is quite inspiring and worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 )

JBiserkov 2y ago
That sounds incredibly interesting! Thanks for sharing that! The YouTube link at the end is ironic ;-)

lolinder 2y ago

Your YouTube example is exactly what gave rise to Nebula.tv—creators banded together to create an alternative that would backstop them against YouTube's dominance.

kalleboo 2y ago
Another example is Floatplane which was bootstrapped by the Linus Tech Tips people after realized how dependent they were on YouTube.
echoangle 2y ago
And how many people are on nebula compared to YouTube?
- nine_k 2y ago
  All the 1000 of your mailing list subscribers? Or maybe 10k. You start needing alternatives when you're already established and have a following. With this comes large enoug influence and thus the ability / risk to step on some big toes, including Google's.

MisterBastahrd 2y ago

A high school friend of mine contacted me out of the blue on facebook after probably 20 years. He had gotten on early with an MLM that made it big and one of them had such success on the platform that he had made multiple appearances at their national convention to give a testimonial to how it changed his family's lives. Mind you, this is a guy who was 2 years from being able to retire with a pension from the chemical refinery he worked at. I laughed, told him I wasn't interested, and warned him that he didn't own his network: that the MLM could take it from him at any time, and it's why most of the experienced salesmen I knew lived well below their paychecks. He grew very upset, told me I didn't know what I was talking about, and basically behaved as if I had insulted his religion. Well, half a year later I was laid off and found a new job with a marketing automation firm. On my second day, we had an all hands meeting where they were announcing that the MLM he worked for would be immediately breaking contract and leaving our platform because they reached a settlement with the DOJ over their methodology. Effective immediately, they were going to a distributor model and ceasing all payouts for network related sales. I knew his world was going to collapse before he did. In the end, he had to sell his house and most of his possessions, his wife divorced him, and he tried to break back into the MLM world but could never get anything started. Nobody wanted to hire him for a traditional sales role because they regard MLMers as lazy and dumb. He's back at another chemical refinery, hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension.

liotier 2y ago
> 2 years from being able to retire with a pension > [..] > hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension I don't understand that... If he was two years from retiring, then he only needed two more years of salaried employment somewhere lese - didn't he ? What country did he live in ?
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  The US. Your pension, if you get one, is tied to your employer. Most people have 401Ks.
  - 2y ago

Razengan 2y ago

> if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? They could use their popularity to promote and donate to alternatives.

jimbob45 2y ago

The optimal strategy would probably be to start on YouTube and then migrate to your own platform once you can afford it and have an audience willing to come with you. Then probably dual stream for a while on your site with blended chat support before cutting the YouTube cord loudly and with warning.

magarnicle 2y ago

Some of them have, it's called Nebula.

naming_the_user 2y ago

You're omitting the choice of just not doing that in the first place. If you want to be a Windows developer, then yes, you have to be a Windows developer in order to be a Windows developer. But you don't have to want to be a Windows developer. You don't even have to want to be a developer.

devjab 2y ago
I think the difference between development for a “real” OS is that windows is still mainly owned by its customers. Similar to how MacOS is. On MacOS people can still install your applications even if you don’t pay the Apple tax to avoid their pop-up warnings. (I’m not sure if avoiding the windows warnings is also something you pay Microsoft for.) I think a better comparison would be iOS or Chrome, where you’ll realistically have to submit yourself to their stores if you want to reach most users. Which is sort of even more locked down than YouTube as some content creators on YouTube have managed to move their audience to other platforms, though sometimes by still posting teasers or at least some content on YouTube.

nine_k 2y ago

If you are a "YouTube creator", you have already firmly planted your castle on Google's land. The positioning of onself as bound to a particular website run by someone else is needless loss of independence. Position yourself as a video creator and post your videos also to Instagram (when possible) and to Vimeo. Seed free / back catalog episodes via a torrent. Run a mailing list announcing and discussing your videos, with some premium content for paying subscribers only. Maybe have an X / SkyBlue / mastodon feed with more compact announces, comments, and high-virality short clips from your longer videos. Cross-link and cross-reference all the channels of your presence. Make your brand recognizable across the publishing methods. Gently prod people to touch more than one channel of your video distribution, just to get the most avid viewers acquainted with several. Yes, this is significantly more work. It also may bring significantly more results if your videos are good. This gives you a much stronger assurance that your brand and your following will not be lost, should you lose access to YouTube / Instagram / Vimeo / X / whatever other platform. Commoditize your complement, as they say.

CJefferson 2y ago
Can you suggest a few video creators who are having success with this model? I watch quite a few video creators, and don’t know any trying to use this model.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  No, he can't, because there are none. It's a ludicrous model that exists only in the minds of HN commenters.
- Elinvynia 2y ago
  LinusTechTips literally built their own video hosting site - Floatplane - exactly for this reason, to have a backup in case YouTube nukes their channel.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Which is increasingly likely as they manually removed his video about adblock.

instig007 2y ago

With videos you can start by retaining control of your channel configurations and making it independent from any particular video hosting provider. See this for inspiration (not promoting it, just the gist of the idea): https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/

j45 2y ago

A huge part of the world forwards videos primarily on WhatsApp. And links to YouTube. Your question seems to connect discovery of videos and distribution. Video hosting is getting easier. There’s platforms like avideo that are relatively easy to host. Many companies use alternatives already like or Vimeo. Hosting your video permanently first from your own setup isn’t too far fetched. YouTube can be secondary. Many people use social media to build their own email lists and communities. YouTube can achieve the same. At the same time I think YouTube is more going to eat cable tv up or at least offset it more first.

dfxm12 2y ago

Another option is to consider that "YouTube creator" should not be treated as anything more than a hobby; it should certainly not be your identity/job title. Unless you have some sort of contract with Alphabet, your videos are hosted at their pleasure and you are owed nothing. Your time is likely better spent not bolstering someone else's library of content.