5 ms·

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

by 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.
- Grumbledour 2y ago
  Personally I have seen a few over the years come and go. Podcasts (Adio and Video) for example often tried to use youtube as an additional channel, but still maintain their websites and RSS feeds. It seems these days, most Youtube creators are at least somewhat aware of the problem and have websites, discord channels, patreons etc. While I still think many would struggle if they lost their youtube access suddenly, they do have additional channels to reach out to at least part of their audience.
- sumtechguy 2y ago
  I have seen a few do the conversion. They usually start by cross posting on any video site they can. X, Rumble, locals, self hosting, discord, with usually some sort of patreon model of funding with maybe ad reads. Then what is left on YT is highlights of their other longer form content on other sites. The kicker is they do not need as many people following them as YT is not taking the majority of the ad revenue cut. But if you want to see people trying to make the conversion just scroll the front page of Rumble. Many of them are trying to get out form under youtube and many have YT channels too. But Rumble is just another YT waiting to happen and they know it.
- lucianbr 2y ago
  There's nebula.tv. The people there are both video creators and their own hosts, or so I read. Got together and built themselves a host because YT was not what they needed.
  - tdeck 2y ago
    Is there anyone on Nebula who didn't build their audience through YouTube?
    - fsflover 2y ago
      You can build your audience through YouTube and then diversify.
- rchaud 2y ago
  Most videographers are actively trying to be seen, are they not? How else would they transition into an agency/studio job with real customers and projects? I've never heard of a videographer that would accept obscurity in exchange for tech/platform sovereignty.
- albert_e 2y ago
  one possible example -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9GwXQMgpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9GwXQMgpo i saw they post pretty well produced videos on youtube -- for folks like me but also promote a more elaborate/detailed video series on the same/related topics on a separate subscription based platform
kalleboo 2y ago
Vimeo only gives you 2 TB bandwidth/month without negotiating an Enterprise plan. If your video goes viral, you're going to be out thousands to host it for everyone. How are you going to pay for that? You could put it on credit and then show these numbers when manually negotiating the payout from your next sponsor and pay it back with the proceeds from the next video, but there's no guarantee your next video will be also a hit.
- account42 2y ago
  How do you think Google pays for it?
- Animats 2y ago
  > If your video goes viral That's what PeerTube is supposed to be for. You can set up a PeerTube host yourself. Or there are some public PeerTube hosts that accept uploads. When people are watching your videos, the ones with good bandwidth are also hosting them for other users. The hosting site is just handling the original copy and coordinating the peers. (This isn't like Bittorrent; hosting is centralized but playout is distributed. When no one is watching, the only copy is on the original server.) PeerTube really should be popular like WordPress, for self-hosted content. But it's not. Neither Google nor Bing indexes PeerTube sites, so there's no discovery. Few PeerTube videos have more than a handful of viewers. I use PeerTube for technical videos, to keep them ad-free, and it works fine for that low-volume application. Here's the Blender 4.2 showcase reel on PeerTube.[1] It's a good demo. Will it overload if watched by many HN users? Please try. [1] https://share.tube/w/uYK7X52m2Y7RyahL4wjKaM https://share.tube/w/uYK7X52m2Y7RyahL4wjKaM
  - immibis 2y ago
    PeerTube is just a self-hosted video platform. Video bandwidth is legitimately expensive. You'll still be out a bunch of money if your video goes viral.
    - j45 2y ago
      There are cdns that can help..
keiferski 2y ago
This is all good advice but realistically you can probably skip the random social media sites and just do email and YouTube. Email is much, much better than pretty much any social network.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Mail lists go far, but retweets go wide. Different tools for different purposes.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Sure, but in my experience it's better to have 1000 solid email subscribers than have your tweet seen by 100k people. Even moreso for something like TikTok, where you can get millions of views but capitalize on virtually none of them.
    - authorfly 2y ago
      Email has the problem though that Gmail suddenly in one fell swoop blackhole you for 80% of your readers.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  Somehow you will need to reach people, at least initially, though. They don't magically appear on your mailing list.
- gilbetron 2y ago
  Email? Outside of the older crowd, I don't know anyone that actively uses email for anything. So many people in my life are surprised when my wife and I use email for anything. Tech/business/academic might hit some ok % with email, but outside of that I'd doubt you'd get to 1% of your potential audience.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Email is generally considered the best channel in the marketing industry. It’s absolutely not just something for old people.
tdeck 2y ago
Dave Jones from the EEVBlog does this - he cross posts to his own site and to many smaller video hosting sites. But if I remember correctly he has said in the past that almost all his viewership comes from YouTube. Unfortunately for long-form videos in English YouTube seems to be the only game in town in terms of discoverability.
- nine_k 2y ago
  While you're tiny, you need discoverability a lot. But even if YouTube bans you and deletes all your videos, you lose relatively little. The bigger you are, the more well-known, the larger is your following, and the more the whole enterprise is the source of your livelihood, the more you may need to hedge your bets.
  - tdeck 2y ago
    It always makes sense to have a backup, but the issue is that video creators are always naturally losing viewers and need to replace them by new viewers who discover their channel(s). It seems like the new viewer discovery is all happening on a very short list of giant platforms which is a bit worrying. Personally I like the way podcasts have managed to be more decentralized but I also fear podcasting is slowly becoming YouTube centric.
j45 2y ago
Nice summary. There are tools out there that can help with chunks of this, but understanding the pieces as you’re laid out is critical. Since a lot of creators today were consumers first of content, they miss the side when there was little social or video to consume online, and in turn creating was the default.

by nine_k 2y ago

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.
Grumbledour 2y ago
Personally I have seen a few over the years come and go. Podcasts (Adio and Video) for example often tried to use youtube as an additional channel, but still maintain their websites and RSS feeds. It seems these days, most Youtube creators are at least somewhat aware of the problem and have websites, discord channels, patreons etc. While I still think many would struggle if they lost their youtube access suddenly, they do have additional channels to reach out to at least part of their audience.
sumtechguy 2y ago
I have seen a few do the conversion. They usually start by cross posting on any video site they can. X, Rumble, locals, self hosting, discord, with usually some sort of patreon model of funding with maybe ad reads. Then what is left on YT is highlights of their other longer form content on other sites. The kicker is they do not need as many people following them as YT is not taking the majority of the ad revenue cut. But if you want to see people trying to make the conversion just scroll the front page of Rumble. Many of them are trying to get out form under youtube and many have YT channels too. But Rumble is just another YT waiting to happen and they know it.
lucianbr 2y ago
There's nebula.tv. The people there are both video creators and their own hosts, or so I read. Got together and built themselves a host because YT was not what they needed.
- tdeck 2y ago
  Is there anyone on Nebula who didn't build their audience through YouTube?
  - fsflover 2y ago
    You can build your audience through YouTube and then diversify.
rchaud 2y ago
Most videographers are actively trying to be seen, are they not? How else would they transition into an agency/studio job with real customers and projects? I've never heard of a videographer that would accept obscurity in exchange for tech/platform sovereignty.
albert_e 2y ago
one possible example -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9GwXQMgpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9GwXQMgpo i saw they post pretty well produced videos on youtube -- for folks like me but also promote a more elaborate/detailed video series on the same/related topics on a separate subscription based platform

kalleboo 2y ago

Vimeo only gives you 2 TB bandwidth/month without negotiating an Enterprise plan. If your video goes viral, you're going to be out thousands to host it for everyone. How are you going to pay for that? You could put it on credit and then show these numbers when manually negotiating the payout from your next sponsor and pay it back with the proceeds from the next video, but there's no guarantee your next video will be also a hit.

account42 2y ago
How do you think Google pays for it?
Animats 2y ago
> If your video goes viral That's what PeerTube is supposed to be for. You can set up a PeerTube host yourself. Or there are some public PeerTube hosts that accept uploads. When people are watching your videos, the ones with good bandwidth are also hosting them for other users. The hosting site is just handling the original copy and coordinating the peers. (This isn't like Bittorrent; hosting is centralized but playout is distributed. When no one is watching, the only copy is on the original server.) PeerTube really should be popular like WordPress, for self-hosted content. But it's not. Neither Google nor Bing indexes PeerTube sites, so there's no discovery. Few PeerTube videos have more than a handful of viewers. I use PeerTube for technical videos, to keep them ad-free, and it works fine for that low-volume application. Here's the Blender 4.2 showcase reel on PeerTube.[1] It's a good demo. Will it overload if watched by many HN users? Please try. [1] https://share.tube/w/uYK7X52m2Y7RyahL4wjKaM https://share.tube/w/uYK7X52m2Y7RyahL4wjKaM
- immibis 2y ago
  PeerTube is just a self-hosted video platform. Video bandwidth is legitimately expensive. You'll still be out a bunch of money if your video goes viral.
  - j45 2y ago
    There are cdns that can help..

keiferski 2y ago

This is all good advice but realistically you can probably skip the random social media sites and just do email and YouTube. Email is much, much better than pretty much any social network.

nine_k 2y ago
Mail lists go far, but retweets go wide. Different tools for different purposes.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Sure, but in my experience it's better to have 1000 solid email subscribers than have your tweet seen by 100k people. Even moreso for something like TikTok, where you can get millions of views but capitalize on virtually none of them.
  - authorfly 2y ago
    Email has the problem though that Gmail suddenly in one fell swoop blackhole you for 80% of your readers.
zelphirkalt 2y ago
Somehow you will need to reach people, at least initially, though. They don't magically appear on your mailing list.
gilbetron 2y ago
Email? Outside of the older crowd, I don't know anyone that actively uses email for anything. So many people in my life are surprised when my wife and I use email for anything. Tech/business/academic might hit some ok % with email, but outside of that I'd doubt you'd get to 1% of your potential audience.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Email is generally considered the best channel in the marketing industry. It’s absolutely not just something for old people.

tdeck 2y ago

Dave Jones from the EEVBlog does this - he cross posts to his own site and to many smaller video hosting sites. But if I remember correctly he has said in the past that almost all his viewership comes from YouTube. Unfortunately for long-form videos in English YouTube seems to be the only game in town in terms of discoverability.

nine_k 2y ago
While you're tiny, you need discoverability a lot. But even if YouTube bans you and deletes all your videos, you lose relatively little. The bigger you are, the more well-known, the larger is your following, and the more the whole enterprise is the source of your livelihood, the more you may need to hedge your bets.
- tdeck 2y ago
  It always makes sense to have a backup, but the issue is that video creators are always naturally losing viewers and need to replace them by new viewers who discover their channel(s). It seems like the new viewer discovery is all happening on a very short list of giant platforms which is a bit worrying. Personally I like the way podcasts have managed to be more decentralized but I also fear podcasting is slowly becoming YouTube centric.

j45 2y ago

Nice summary. There are tools out there that can help with chunks of this, but understanding the pieces as you’re laid out is critical. Since a lot of creators today were consumers first of content, they miss the side when there was little social or video to consume online, and in turn creating was the default.