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thdrdt | 5 years ago

"...and pretty much have their entire business on there..."

This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income. This is bad practice in every business book.

I am a freelancer. If I only had one customer my business would be instantly over when they didn't hire me anymore.

YouTubers put too much trust in an untrustworthy business partner.

discuss

izacus|5 years ago

> This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income.

More importantly, they also then decided to scam their source of income by getting money from other sources (e.g. Patreon) and are now acting surprised when their own data host isn't happy about not getting their cut of the revenue.

Reminds of a scam that cinemas attempted in my state - because the distributor wanted a % cut from movie tickets, they sold cheap tickets and then charged rent for 3D glasses required for a movie (e.g. 2EUR for ticket and 12EUR for the glasses). The distributors took their distribution rights because of that at all.

Trying to scam your most important source of revenue is just a really bad business decision.

sixothree|5 years ago

How is it a "scam" to have other sources of income for a video?

alisonkisk|5 years ago

Did Google ever offer an alternate revshare plan?

mNovak|5 years ago

Generally I think many YT creators have multiple sources of income (ads, Patreon, merch, sponsored vids)--as such they have many "customers". It's their distribution channel that's locked up.

Milner08|5 years ago

I totally agree, but there simply isn't a good competitor to YouTube, so they're stuck. I know LTT (Linus Tech Tips) have tried to divest their content so its available on multiple platforms, but the one they used that was paid and ad free shutdown cause it wasn't profitable. They've now set up their own I think which other tech YouTubers also use.

So some are trying to get away from YouTubes monopoly but many cant.

viraptor|5 years ago

The channels do seem to split into other services on groups. Educational/explainer creators went to nebula (not sure who led that one), comedy/entertainment went to dropout.tv (from CollegeHumor), tech went to floatplane (from ltt), etc. There will be more of those and I can't wait to see who embraces/monetizes p2p first.

watwut|5 years ago

If their skill is to create popular videos, they did not had much choice. It is not like there would be other popular video services that would compete.

For many of them, it is youtube or nothing.

izacus|5 years ago

> For many of them, it is youtube or nothing.

Is this really true? I mean, there are hundreds of video hosting sites, is YT really the only way of making any money?

This is like saying that the only way to make your business sustainable is to get a reserved place on NY Times Square... are you really entitled to it?

sixothree|5 years ago

What are the alternatives that actually offer a better experience? Vimeo, floatplane? Serious question. Because I would love to start spending some time at one.

alok-g|5 years ago

You too most likely have many single points of failure. Just that it may not have come yet and hopefully never comes.