Is YouTube Losing Their Mind?

As some of you might be aware, I am a YouTube creator, and have been for many years now.

I started creating videos for it about 9 years ago, though I took a break for a few years from doing it, mostly out of frustration with some of the things I was seeing them doing on the back end.

I came back to it a couple of years ago to broadcast out my live shows, mostly as a service to my listeners and fans, but I will admit the prospect of making a few dollars off of the channel was not far from the front of my mind.

I was not making a ton of money, mind. I would be lucky to see $100.00 in a month come in from it, but, when you’re a struggling author with no other source of income, that little bit of monetary stream could make a ton of difference.

That has definitely changed over the past 5 months or so, and certainly not for the better.

While I am still getting the same amount of views (perhaps even more, depending on the subject matter) as I did before, the income from the advertising revenue has dropped significantly.

For example, in November, a pretty standard month, views-wise, the revenue generated added up to about $13.00. Same amount of views, substantially less income.

Some of this is due to my cutting down the number of shows I do, but, again, overall views on the channel have not really changed, and certainly not enough for it to be adjusted downward so dramatically.

I am not the only one to see this issue, either. Many of my fellow creatives have seen a substantial loss in income, while some of the big boys on YouTube have remained about the same.

It’s being attributed to some of the algorithm changes YouTube has implemented over the past few months on the platform, leading to videos which would have normally generated a reliable income to receive nothing at all or a massive loss in the amount it would have gained if published months ago.

Let me give an example.

Recently, one of my shows was with a guest who was a psychic medium. We talked a fair bit in the show about life, the universe, and everything, even delving into the subject of science fiction and how it relates to real life.

It was a good show and we had a lot of people tuned in to the live stream, with a ton of phone calls.

By the time the show ended and YouTube was finished processing the video, I saw in the archive it was flagged as “Not Advertiser Friendly.”

That means no ads will play or, if they do, it will be infrequent at best and likely not to generate much of any income.

Now, I ask you, how is a show with a psychic medium as a guest “Not Advertiser Friendly?”

Think about what is on television and radio today. How many shows have psychic mediums involved? How many shows about paranormal subjects, including all the ghost hunting shows, aliens and their interactions with us, and the list goes on and on.

Each of those shows brings in revenue from advertisers. If they did not, they would not be on the air. Simple as that.

Yet YouTube, in all of its wisdom, has chosen to go against the grain and fly in the face of anything sane in their actions and reactions to videos being published these days.

I have also been creating videos and uploading them to my channel that are audio teleplays of some of my stories and those, too, have been flagged as “Not Advertiser Friendly.”

Are you freaking kidding me?

I admit, what they are doing is confusing at best and dangerous at worst.

What this type of thing does is steer the direction of content being created for YouTube toward specific subjects and “Fluff” that is essentially meaningless, in an effort to keep their heads above water in the sea of pissed off advertisers who were finding their ads playing on “not good” videos (their words).

It, essentially, turns the creative process into junk and stagnates it at its core.

Maybe over the next few months, things will change, as the algorithm is adjusted and they get their metric reports in about the flow of income. Maybe they will be satisfied with it as is since they are generating more revenue overall by needing to pay out the channel creators less overall.

And maybe that is the reason we are seeing it all happen to begin with.

I’m not sure if I will hang out on YouTube much longer. I am certainly not going to change my content to favor their views or wants, and I hope other creators out there feel the same way.

We’ll see what happens from here.

http://youtube.com/c/openeyesnetwork