Last week YouTube made an announcement that hurt my heart and caused me some reflection. I wanted to rage-write my feelings but decided to wait until I calmed down a bit, so here’s hoping I have.
I’ve been uploading videos on YouTube for ten years now (not counting the for-fun family home movie style videos on my personal account) with varying degrees of success, where success equals views. (The definition of success really varies for everyone!)
When people become YouTubers, they often have the monetization moment as a goal in mind. But when I first started ten years ago with the K-pop channel, I had no idea that monetization was really even a possibility. And then SURPRISE, that channel popped off and we reached that milestone quickly and suddenly I was like, well, okay then, let’s get a little money for all the work this channel takes. Cool. (The money was very miniscule still, especially since the type of videos I posted were mostly copyrighted due to the whole music topic, and copyrighted videos earn you no money.)
Then I decided to start a book channel, to play off my success as a book blogger, and to use the experience I had gained as a K-pop YouTuber. It was something I’d thought about for a long time, but didn’t think my writing about books would translate well to talking about books (which it doesn’t really) but it seemed like it was the thing to do, so I jumped in.
I had a video go crazy right from the beginning and I thought, oh wow! I might actually be able to do this thing! Still, I didn’t think making money would happen, but again, it would be nice because the work it takes to do a channel is insane.
All this time, YouTube had parameters for becoming monetized: get 1000 subscribers, and 4000 watch time hours (or 10 million views on your Shorts.) I got to the 1000 subscribers after a year or two (I can’t remember when it actually happened) and the 4000 hours I would have had fairly quickly after that first year thanks to that one video. BUT, everything resets every day (to the 365 previous days) so when we rolled around a year past that popular video, my watch time hours dropped to less than 2000 and have been dropping ever since.
I can’t figure out how to get views and watch time to grow.
So I assumed I’d never ever get to the 4000 hours.
Which is fine, if monetization isn’t the goal. BUT, even if it isn’t the bottom line goal, it’s always NICE to think that getting a little money for all the work might be possible. Sigh. Everyone always wants to say they never want to monetize anyway, but I call that crap because most people would like the validation of money no matter what they say otherwise.
Which brings us to last week when YouTube said that those watch time hours will now be doubled and in order to get monetized, you need 8000 hours… or 20 million views on your Shorts (and that’s in 90 days I forgot to say.) The subs stay the same.
To me, this feels like a slap in the face to small struggling channels…. even if I feel like I’d never manage to reach the first goal post. It’s hard to explain. Think of a race and you’re struggling and trying and working and running and then someone takes that finish line and puts it TWICE as far away. It’s painful and so extremely frustration.
And for someone who wonders every day, what is the point, it makes me think maybe just throwing in the towel and being done is the answer, even though I hate to be a so-called quitter.
THEN, I see the discourse on online about this new thing, and many people snarkily saying things like: “Well, we’ll see who has the passion now!” and “Well, none of this matters if you are passionate about what you do!”
Tons of the passion word being thrown around. And UGH! I want to blow up with anger!
After struggling for nearly four years with this booktube channel, trying so hard to make videos that people will watch, to keep up with the “consistency” rule, to keep pep talking myself that low views don’t matter. . .and then to be told that I don’t have PASSION because I am frustrated by the goal post moving. . .makes me crazy.
To have been blogging about books for TWENTY years, to have gushed all that time about my love for books, to have built up the community, to have led events that saw some traction, to have made friends all over the world… and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.
To have struggled with writing for TWENTY years, thinking about it, doing it, not doing it, doing it again, creating writing groups that fail, finally getting one going, writing draft after draft of many different stories, going over and over and over again to conferences, and then finally this year being brave enough to self-publish my first book, and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.
To have jumped into a fandom that many people look down on, that many people make fun off, that many people say “aren’t you a little old” and “isn’t that a little weird” but instead of listening to them, I embraced the fandom, created the channel, gained views and followers, was a special guest twice at a huge convention in LA, have taken three days to travel countless times to go to concerts… and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.
If there’s anything I DO have, it’s PASSION.
And if there’s anything I am NOT, it’s a quitter.
But that doesn’t mean that moving around milestones and making it harder for the small people, isn’t frustrating and doesn’t hurt. So yeah, I am sad, passion or no passion.
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