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I’m sure you all know that I’ve made some…

I'm sure you all know that I've made some...

I’m sure you all know that I’ve made some YouTube videos recently.

I spent a lot of time working with my hands. I work on everything myself, from my house and my cars to my computers and my various experiments. I own just about every tool you can think of.

I thought that since I do this work anyway, I can not only share it with others, who are interested in learning, but can also make a few bucks on the side to at least motivate me to not be so lazy to do the task. I thought if I could reach even $5 a month in earnings that I would consider that a success as it would be an additional $5 with which to buy Bitcoin.

So I got started not only taking the time to record my work as I do it, but also spending a lot of time and a fair amount of money researching various cameras and recording techniques.

I quickly realized that it wasn’t feasible to use my phone camera as, for my types of videos, I needed both hands free and couldn’t afford to the time keep moving a stationary camera around.

I bought a Panasonic A1 head side mounted camera with accessories and used that for a while but found the battery died far too quickly. I tried a head mounted GoPro type camera but found that it was too high for a proper view of what I was doing and too bulky to use comfortably. My most recent setup, which works really well, is a Polaroid Cube mounted on a Visor.

I spent a fair amount of time learning how to use video editing software to achieve the various effects that I wanted to achieve. I made a variety of videos throughout 2017, that you have probably seen, to teach myself the editing software. I also spent time comparing various different editing software before I settled on kdenlive, the software that I now use.

I also spent many hours making a variety of videos on a variety of topics that were informative and interesting; at least to me. Not only that, but when I recorded the videos, it many times took me 4 times as long to do the task as when I didn’t record it. For example, a starter replacement, which should have only taken me one hour, ended up taking me four hours.

YouTube’s guidelines stated that once I reach 10,000 total views that I would be eligible to monetize any of my videos. So I continued to make videos earning 50 to 100 views, and sometimes even 200-300, each time. I figured once I’m monetized, even 10 additional views per video is more than 0 views.

Then one day I made the Honda starter replacement video which, to my surprise, ended up earning 100 views a day. I did the math and realized at that rate, within a few months I would hit 10,000 views, and it eventually did.

I started counting my chickens; success, I thought.

After I reached 10,000 views, I submitted my channel to YouTube for a monetization review. I expected the review to go through immediately, since I thought it was automated, but it remained in a review state for a couple of months.

A couple of months later, when the review finally went through, YouTube changed the guidelines and said channels need 1,000 subscribers in order to monetize their videos. I had less than 20 subscribers and wasn’t going to gain any additional ones anytime soon; and by the time I did I knew they would change the terms again.

YouTube is private property owned by the Google corporation. They have a right to do as they please with their property, and I have a right to avoid their services if I’m not satisfied with them.

I’m a nobody with less than 20,000 views and less than 40 subscribers and yet I felt frustrated and annoyed after all the time and money I invested into making these videos. I also felt it was ridiculous on YouTube’s part as I do feel that I’m providing a valuable service, where everyone wins, to viewers as evidenced by a recent comment left by a viewer where he says, “Thanks for taking the time to do this video.”

I don’t know the full complicated motive of the person that went to YouTube to shoot people after she was demonetized, nor do I care frankly as nobody has the right to violate the rights of others.

But it did remind me of my experience with YouTube, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have YouTube change their terms and demonetize content creators that have significantly more time and money, and perhaps even their livelihood, invested into their YouTube videos than I did.

YouTube business is serious business.

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