I have been thinking about this a good bit and I have concluded that YouTube is a double edged knife of sorts. On the one hand it is good for research and legitimate tutorials if you can wade through the product “reviews” and clickbaited op-ed pieces.
When I look at a video on YouTube now, I am analysing it for all sorts of things and not just the face value. Things like;
Is the tip valid or just something to garner views?
Does the tip or skill bring something to my table that I will actually use?
Is the video also entertaining?
Does the video have photos embedded that show how to use the information or resultant images that display how the information will help me?
Is the video a thinly veiled product advertisement or endorsement meant to lead me to affiliate links for purchase?
Am I being “sold” on something I dont need?
These are just the ones I came up with off the top of my head while writing this blog post. Some of those are touchy for me too since I also have a channel of my own.
With my own channel, I have ads enabled on certain videos and some content I do not because I dont want that content influenced by the drive to get views. I want those videos to be an outlet of sorts for our engagement on a sort of personal level. This allows me to connect with my viewers and from what I can tell, it seems to work for me.
I am also an anomaly in that I do not need the ad revenue to sustain my lifestyle. This frees me from needing ad revenue to finance my hobby so I am free to make the content I want instead of click based content. The problem is, I find myself making content to garner clicks all the time… I try to consciously not do this, but the lure is so strong that it happens sometimes anyway. So why do I want to make those videos that are just for the view count? I feel it has to do with the channel analytics page. This page shows you, in almost real time, the results of your efforts. It seems like a fancy video game at times and the natural desire to win drives you to increase the numbers. The algorithm is written to provoke us to make content like that so you guys will watch it. We are being played from both sides so they can sell ads.
I like the little stream of money that is coming from these videos though, so I just have to find balance somehow. What’s a guy to do?
What do y’all think?
Check out my channel on YouTube if you are done shooting for the day.. lol
David Saylors