Creators Have Options
If your business model involves making money on YouTube, you might wanted to reconsider. Accounts getting demonetized by YouTube is a rising trend and video creators are not pleased.
All things considered, YouTube is fantastic at what it does. YouTube makes it incredibly easy for anyone to upload and make videos discoverable to massive audiences.
Unfortunately, YouTube’s monetization tools leaves much to be desired.
First and foremost, you must meet their eligibility requirements before you can even enable monetization. This includes having over 1,000 subscribers, 10,000 views and an annual watchtime over 4,000 hours.
Secondly, they take a huge chunk of your revenue, 45% to be exact. Ouch.
Third, and perhaps most worrisome, is the fact that they can (and will) demonetize your account at any given point.
Once demonetized by YouTube, all you can really do is wait.
A Case Study
One of our new client’s monetization abilities was recently deactivated by YouTube due to a third party copyright claim. For them, being demonetized by YouTube is particularly frustrating because they create and own 100% of their content… so the claim is totally false. They also had zero copyright strikes. Getting demonetized by YouTube was a complete surprise without warning.
The fact that there is no validity to the third party claim doesn’t stop the account from being penalized. And YouTube requires a minimum of 30 days before you can appeal the claim and reapply to join the YouTube Partner Program again.
To paraphrase YouTube’s monetization terms:
- You must grow your audience before making money.
- You must sacrifice nearly half of your earnings.
- Your ability to monetize can be revoked at any time with no warning.
Additionally, YouTube’s eligibility requirements for monetization can change at any given point. This means they could suddenly raise the bar, requiring more viewers, watchtime, or subscribers. So your channel’s ads could be indefinitely suspended even if there isn’t a violation or third party claim.
This was a harsh reality for many YouTube partners in early 2018 when YouTube revoked the advertising ability for countless accounts, dubbed the “adpocalypse”.
“Why did I get Demonetized by YouTube?”
“Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize,” Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler said. “We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us.”
So in addition to disenfranchising content owners, YouTube infuriated advertisers whose ads were placed next to illicit content including terrorism recruitment videos, channels breeding hatred, and disturbing children’s content.
A Double-Edged Sword
One of the reason’s YouTube is so great is also the source of its biggest problems: its low barrier to entry. Anyone can upload and videos go live without review.
Social video networks like YouTube foster gigantic audiences, consuming video at watch times without precedent. Powered by Google, discoverability on YouTube is second to none. But monetizing your audience on that platform is not wise.
Instead, we suggest creating teaser content for your social networks, driving users to your own platform, where you retain complete ownership of your viewers.
Sounds good right? But developing your own subscription video on demand (SVOD) app like Netflix, or perhaps even more complex, a live TV-like linear playout channel, is no small task. Development costs for Apple TV apps can easily run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Enter VidType
Fortunately for our clients, we’ve already created a proven solution. Our system allows you to manage your channel, similar to YouTube, but instead of publishing your videos there, they go inside your own app for Smart TVs and Mobile.
Simply drag and drop your videos to upload your content, categorize them in menus, and create playlists of content that streams. These playlists are then available as on demand menus or linear streams, viewable in your own branded app on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
To use an analogy… Instead of putting your eggs in someone else’s basket, build your own grocery store.
You can monetize by charging a subscription fee, running advertisements, or pay-to-watch… or simply give your content away as marketing promo, or build the revenue into the content with product placement.
Most importantly it’s your app, it’s your audience. You get to do what you want.
No need to outsource a developer to code your custom video app. Subscribe to our platform and we will do the heavy lifting for you.
The Other Guys
There are other companies out there that offer a similar service. They tend to focus entirely on the backend, the encoding and hosting. They will offer you a codebase template. They expect you to learn the development environment for each platform. They expect you to modify the code and design elements to suit your brand. They expect you to compile the code and upload the app, fix bugs, resubmit… they pretty much make you do everything. They charge you an arm and a leg for their backend and a template and leave you to hire your own developer. Shouldn’t that be included?
You come to them to create your apps… And they don’t actually create your app. Crazy right?
Their assumption is that you have a developer on-staff, or you have the time and patience to learn to work with code… edit, package, certify, validate, submit, and publish the apps… in multiple dev environments/workflows. Even for the experienced computer user, just submitting the app alone has a steep learning curve.
And if you tell them “I’m not a developer… Can’t you submit it for me?”
They’ll say something like, “Well, we have developers on staff you can hire for app customization and submission.” But guess what… that comes with a hefty extra fee.
So what you’re really paying for is a hosting/content delivery network, their code base, and some capabilities on the back end… but what good is that if it doesn’t include the front end?
Our Approach
We find it a bit absurd that they expect you to finish the process. It’s like they don’t want to actually dedicate any human hours into your project… they just give you an already established backend and template and leave you to figure it out.
Well, we pick up where they left off.
VidType is a complete end-to-end solution. You take care of creating and uploading your content. You manage the videos… give them titles, descriptions, and put them in categories… we do the rest. Our backend and content delivery network is rock solid, and our front end interfaces are intuitive to navigate and visually appetizing. You can leave the coding and app development to us.
What if you launch and then want to add new videos, or make edits to the channel? No problem, you’ll never need to touch a line of code. You can change your watermark logo, group content into menus, schedule playlists for certain times and days, and even cutting edge features like messaging your audience on top of your videos and adding dynamic buttons that link to your website, or anywhere else for that matter. All of that is controllable from your web browser.
Instead of learning developer workflows, or coming out of pocket with another expense, we want you to focus on doing what you do best, creating great content and engaging with your audience. Leave the tricky tech to us. This way you’re free to concentrate on your product and your brand.
In addition to personalized service and incredible attention to detail, we offer incredible rates. Our larger competitors can’t afford to beat our prices. At this point… We guarantee it.
Please reach out to set up a call with us to view a demo of our products. We’d love to show you how you can create your own video streaming app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.