Unveiling the new funding model for Scot Goes Pop

Click here to visit my new Ko-Fi page.

On Sunday I published a blogpost explaining that my experiment of using YouTube as a more sustainable funding model for Scot Goes Pop wasn't really working out, and I added that I was going to have to spend a few days mulling over what to do next.  I expected it to amount to a straight choice between doubling down on the YouTube idea and trying to make my channel go truly galactic, or setting up a Substack newsletter and transferring all my energies into making that work instead.  I've now made a decision, but before I come to that I'll just briefly recap how I arrived at this point.

For several years after 2014, the funding for this blog worked fairly smoothly - I simply ran a fundraiser once a year and it pretty much always hit its target within a few days or weeks.  Things first started to become more difficult in 2021, and I think a big part of the reason was that I had begun commissioning opinion polls the previous year.  Quite understandably, people tended to only donate once to each site within a reasonable time-frame, and so the general fundraising to keep the blog going became a victim of the success of the poll fundraisers.  That wasn't the whole explanation, though, because after a while even the poll fundraisers started to fall well short of their target figures.  The poll I commissioned last month for the Holyrood election was actually the first I'd managed to do for three years.

To be clear, the general fundraising for the blog was still working in the long run, and I was still staying afloat, but it was taking a hundred times more effort than it had done in previous years.  Fundraising became practically a year-round effort, which effectively set up a vicious circle, because after a while the constant mentions of the crowdfunder became just 'normal background noise' and readers were far more likely to skim past them.  That meant I had to continuously devise ever more in-your-face methods of getting the fundraiser noticed whenever progress stalled, and although those efforts worked, it was getting increasingly stressful and I realised I couldn't go on like that for much longer.

So just under a year ago I decided to make a radical change to try to find a sustainable solution.  I checked the average earnings per 1000 views that YouTube creators in the UK receive simply from ad revenues - the figure was surprisingly decent, and I realised that could be the ideal outcome for me, because I would no longer have needed to receive any funding from readers/viewers at all.  That would have been a much healthier situation.  However, I couldn't be sure whether it would work in practice, because earnings vary wildly on either side of the average depending on the subject-matter of each channel and the demographics of its audience, so the only way I was ever going to find out was to give it a spin for a while.  Doing that was far from straightforward, because to even qualify for earnings I had to reach 1000 subscribers on YouTube, which took me until almost Christmas.

So it's only really now, five months later, that I have a good sense of how much I'm earning from YouTube per month, and it's simply nowhere near enough.  My viewing figures are, if anything, higher than I had expected, so that's not the problem - it's just that videos about Scottish politics pull in well below the UK average earnings per 1000 views because of the demographics of their viewers.  I did some sums, and I realised that to achieve the type of earnings I had initially been hoping for, I would have to get an average of 10,000 to 20,000 views per video, which I'm not sure is even attainable.  I've checked various Scottish political channels on YouTube and none of them are at that kind of level.  There's simply a finite number of people out there who are interested enough in Scottish politics to regularly watch videos about it.  Some YouTube channels attract additional revenues from sponsorship, but again, that only really seems to be possible with an average of over 10,000 views per video.

I did have a mad thought about aiming for a faster turnover by stripping back to audio commentary and perhaps doing several videos a day, and getting up to 10,000 views per day that way, but I quickly realised that was a hopeless idea.  So I then started thinking about abandoning YouTube and switching to a Substack newsletter, which had always been my main Plan B - I regarded that as an inferior idea because it would have involved charging readers for subscriptions, but at least it could have provided more stable funding and would have got me out of the crowdfunding trap once and for all.

I very, very nearly set up a Substack account on Monday afternoon, but once the doubts started creeping in, I swung hard in the opposite direction.  I had several concerns, but the biggest of all was that I would have needed to put at least a substantial minority of my content behind a paywall.  To me, that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.  When pro-independence bloggers and content creators first started to crowdfund in significant numbers just over a decade ago, the reason was that we didn't think the mainstream media was serving Scotland well enough, and we wanted a thriving alternative media to step into the breach as best it could.  So the point of the funding was to help people like me make more content and to get it seen by as many people as possible, not to hide the content and only make it visible to a secret society of a few dozen people.

There are no perfect options available, but I realised I wanted a solution that ticked as many of the following boxes as possible: a) no paywalls, b) no more stress from having to run 'boom and bust' annual crowdfunders, c) funding that comes at least partly, and to the greatest extent possible, from sources other than my readers or viewers, and d) the opportunity to continue growing the audience substantially.  I think YouTube, combined with some conventional blogging as I've been doing in recent months, is actually the best fit. I've definitely reached a new audience with my YouTube channel - that's clear from the comments section of the videos.  Although there is probably a natural ceiling on how much that audience can expand, I have not come close to reaching that ceiling yet, so there's still considerable scope for growth, which will in turn increase advertising revenues over time.  There's plainly always going to be a significant shortfall of funds to plug, however, so I've come to the conclusion that using a Patreon-type site is the best (or least worst) way of bridging the gap.

I've always known I didn't want to use Patreon itself, which is far too fussy in the way it works.  I've checked up on the alternatives as carefully as I can, and I've decided to go with Ko-Fi.  My new page on Ko-Fi is now up and running and you can visit it HERE.  It allows anyone who wishes to support my YouTube channel or the blog to set up either a small recurring monthly payment (the suggested options are £5, £10 or £20, but you can also choose any other amount you prefer), or to make a one-off 'tip' of any amount.  This can be done at any time, and of course you're also free to cancel recurring payments at any time.  Payment can be made by card, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and one or two other options.   It's just a much more flexible arrangement all round, and if it works it will hopefully generate much more stable and predictable funding from month to month.  That will free me up to concentrate on growing the YouTube channel as much as possible and creating the most interesting possible content.  As I'm sure some of you know from personal experience, making videos for YouTube is an insanely time-consuming process - even though I do it in a completely no-frills way without fancy editing or graphics or background music or whatnot, it still usually takes me hours each time.

My decision will of course mean I'll have to promote my Ko-Fi link in the description section of the videos, and at the bottom of each blogpost, but it should be a lot less obtrusive than the previous reminders of the annual fundraisers, and hopefully the whole issue of funding will become much less stressful from this moment on.  (No guarantees, of course, but I'll soon find out.)

Just to address a specific point that was raised the other day, one or two of you said that for a variety of reasons it's convenient for you to listen to podcasts but not to watch YouTube videos.  As most of my videos are effectively monologues, they would generally work as podcasts as well, and until a few months ago I used to upload an audio version of each video to Soundcloud.  The only reason I stopped doing that was because the videos took so long to edit, process and upload that I was usually losing the will to live by the end and I couldn't be bothered facing another few minutes dealing with Soundcloud.  However, it's something I could go back to doing if there's a strong enough demand for it.  Let me know in the comments section if you have a strong preference for audio content.

And once again, just a reminder that my new Ko-Fi page can be found HERE.

Greens almost draw level with Labour in GB-wide YouGov poll, SNP have double-digit lead in Scotland

Other recent videos: 

Newly-elected Scottish Parliament decides by 72 votes to 55 to hold an independence referendum

Is Scottish independence "closer now than on the day before the 2014 referendum"?

What was the REAL vote share for pro-independence parties at the 2026 Holyrood election?

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: Newly-elected Scottish Parliament decides by 72 votes to 55 to hold an independence referendum (but just one snag: the UK isn't a democracy, it's a *prison*)

Other recent videos: 

Is Scottish independence "closer now than on the day before the 2014 referendum"?

What was the REAL vote share for pro-independence parties at the 2026 Holyrood election?

First Makerfield by-election poll shows Andy Burnham could be in TROUBLE

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

As "Self-determination Tuesday" dawns, is Andy Maciver right to say independence is now closer than it was on the day before the 2014 indyref?

For anyone who would like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page HERE, which offers the options of either a small recurring monthly subscription, or a one-off donation.  (I'll explain why I've chosen to go down the Ko-Fi route in a blogpost later on.)

Let's examine the evidence: does RevStew's "brave" Ba'athist propagandist comparison stack up, or has it hilariously backfired again?

The controversial far-right blogger "Stew" has done yet another of his tweets about me without mentioning me by name - he does this regularly so that he can later do his schtick of "look! search for his name on my Twitter or blog! not there is it?  I never even mention the guy!"  This time it's a pair of 'before' and 'after' screenshots, which purports to show me contradicting myself, and is interspersed with a photo of a certain Ba'athist propagandist to imply that the alleged contradiction is in the service of pro-SNP propaganda.  That's quite a heroic implication on Stew's part, because the first screenshot in fact shows me openly criticising the chosen strategy of the SNP leadership - scarcely something that a real propagandist would do.  However, let's take a look at the two quotes and see if Stew's point is as weak as it first appears.

19th August 2025:

"So the SNP remain the only game in town, and we just have to work from within to try to improve the situation somehow.  If the rebel motion doesn't make the conference floor, the next best outcome is to radically amend the Swinney motion so that it closely resembles the rebel motion.  If that's not possible, the next best outcome is to defeat the Swinney motion altogether.  And if it's not realistic to do that, the very least that needs to happen is for the motion to be amended to remove the most harmful stuff from it.  As I've said before, no plan at all would almost be better than the Swinney plan, which would leave us in a worse place than ever before by setting a precedent of the SNP going into an election essentially agreeing with the UK government that no referendum should occur until some sort of ludicrously unattainable threshold is reached.  That could make it impossible to achieve independence for literally decades to come.  The voting system simply isn't designed to produce single-party majorities."

Today:

"The way the SNP have recovered from this event has been truly remarkable.  Our old friend Stew is trying to make out it has left the independence movement a "broken shell", which he obviously wants to be true, but the events of the last few weeks tell a completely different story.  The SNP leadership under John Swinney have restored the trust of party members sufficiently that the pre-election fundraiser succeeded beyond all expectations - and make no mistake, without that restored trust and without the funds that flowed from it, we wouldn't be sitting here now with the highest number of pro-independence MSPs in history.  Once we get past the negative headlines of today, which unfortunately we've known were coming for a long time, both the SNP and the wider independence movement will actually be in pretty good shape."

Those two comments are clearly about different subjects - they're not totally unrelated to each other but they're not about the same thing.  I don't see how anyone can possibly interpret today's comment as meaning that the single-party majority strategy worked or that it has put the independence movement in a better place - that's not something I believe, and I've unambiguously said in at least two of my videos since election day that the strategy was an "unforced error".  What I was talking about today was instead the way in which John Swinney has rebuilt trust with SNP members to the point that they are willing to take a leap of faith and donate substantial money to the party in spite of what happened with Peter Murrell - and I pointed out that without that process of gaining trust, the SNP wouldn't have been so successful in the election because they simply wouldn't have had the funds to compete.  What does Stew think that's got to do with the single-party majority strategy?  Answers on a postcard, folks, and send them to Bath.

It's quite true, however, that I'm hopeful that the majority strategy may not prove to have been as harmful as I feared last summer and autumn, and that's mainly because of the remedial work that John Swinney and other senior SNP figures have done since polling day by stressing that the combined SNP-Green majority is more than enough to constitute a mandate.  I didn't necessarily expect them to be quite as proactive if these circumstances arose, and it's made all the difference.

I do want to express my admiration for Stew, though, because not many people would be brave enough to voluntarily bring a Ba'athist propagandist into the conversation (especially if they actually live in Bath) when only a month ago they were telling anyone who would listen that "Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central is FREE MONEY", only to then begin their first blogpost after Mr Robertson's defeat with the line "well, we told you so".  There was also that unfortunate incident of announcing there was no chance of a pro-independence Holyrood majority in this year's election ("barring nuclear war or alien invasion"), followed by an announcement that a single-party SNP majority was a nailed-on certainty, followed by the unintentional comic genius of "well, we told you so" when neither of those hopelessly contradictory predictions actually came true.  Being as wrong as that takes considerable talent, and it's why Stew is a national treasure in his own quasi-fascist sort of way.

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If you enjoy Scot Goes Pop's polling and election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

Some thoughts on Peter Murrell's betrayal of SNP members

So just some miscellaneous thoughts about today's news that Peter Murrell has pleaded guilty to embezzling a six-figure amount from the SNP - 

* Speaking as someone who is used to living on a shoestring budget, I have no sympathy for Murrell whatsoever.  It's actually the smaller 'petty' purchases that anger me the most - to waste thousands of pounds of other people's money on a single fountain pen, something that can be of no possible practical benefit to you, is absolutely obscene.  That seems to confirm that Murrell was to a large extent motivated by vanity and a preposterous playboy self-image.

* The SNP and its members were the victims of this crime.  That's not spin, that's a fact.  Murrell did not steal from the public purse, he stole from the SNP, and the money he stole had been raised from SNP members for the purposes of making Scotland an independent country.  The supposedly righteous anger of unionist politicians over this matter rings extremely hollow, given that the political impact of Murrell's selfish, cynical actions was to slow or stall the progress towards independence - something unionist parties were only too thrilled about.

* The way the SNP have recovered from this event has been truly remarkable.  Our old friend Stew is trying to make out it has left the independence movement a "broken shell", which he obviously wants to be true, but the events of the last few weeks tell a completely different story.  The SNP leadership under John Swinney have restored the trust of party members sufficiently that the pre-election fundraiser succeeded beyond all expectations - and make no mistake, without that restored trust and without the funds that flowed from it, we wouldn't be sitting here now with the highest number of pro-independence MSPs in history.  Once we get past the negative headlines of today, which unfortunately we've known were coming for a long time, both the SNP and the wider independence movement will actually be in pretty good shape.

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Catch up on my latest YouTube video below...

Ignore the Brit Nat propaganda: what was the REAL vote share for pro-independence parties at the 2026 Holyrood election?

If you enjoy Scot Goes Pop's polling and election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

Another update on the Great Scot Goes Pop Video-Blogging Experiment

For two-and-a-half months between late February and early May, I was so wrapped up in writing the 73 daily constituency profiles for The National that a) I had much less time to make YouTube videos, so I did fewer, and b) I pretty much stopped keeping track of my progress in turning the videos into a sustainable alternative funding model.  I've since been doing some catch-up on that, and the latest stats are fairly grim.  The bottom line is that, as things stand, it's just not working.  And there's no point in anyone saying "I told you so", because as I said at the outset last year, I went into this experiment with my eyes wide open - I had checked what the average earnings per 1000 views were in the UK, and at that average level it would have just about worked.  However, I also knew that individual YouTube channels can fall anywhere on a very wide range on either side of that average, depending on their subject-matter and the demographics of their viewers, and the only way I was ever going to find out where my own channel would slot in was by giving it a proper go for a few months.  

Yup, you've guessed it, it turns out that videos about Scottish politics slot in pretty much at the absolute lowest end of the earnings range.  It's puzzling in a way, because my videos are disproportionately viewed by males over the age of 55, and if anything I'd have thought that would be a relatively higher-income group that advertisers would be only too keen to target, but apparently it doesn't work that way.  So I'm now not entirely sure of the best way forward, and I'm going to have to mull it over a bit.  

In theory, YouTube could still be made to work, but to do that I'd have to think big - on the current rate of return, I'd have to average 10,000-20,000 views per video.  So far my most popular individual video has around 7000 views, and obviously the average is much lower than that.  Is it even feasible to get up to the required level with a channel about Scottish politics?  I genuinely don't know.  I've found a small number of political channels that have pulled it off, including ones that just seem to be run by ordinary blokes like me rather than by celebrity commentators, but crucially they all have a UK-wide focus.  If anyone knows of a specifically Scottish political YouTube channel that receives a large number of views, please do let me know, because that would be important information to factor in.

It's also theoretically possible to square the circle by making a YouTube income via sponsorships (which are generally much more lucrative than the regular earnings anyway), but in practice there's a Catch-22, because apparently channels require average views of at least 10,000 per video to attract sponsors in the first place.  So it seems there's no way of getting around it - that's the daunting level of popularity my channel would need to reach.  

Basically I'm going to have to decide whether to double down on the YouTube idea and go all-out in trying to make the channel go truly galactic, or whether I should declare it a failed experiment and try something radically different, such as Substack or a similar site.  I'm reluctant to do the latter, because it would probably involve putting at least a minority of material behind a paywall, which I'd really rather not do.  Or I could just try to keep this blog going in the way I've been doing over the last few years, but you've seen what that's involved - I've just barely stayed afloat, but only with near-constant, in-your-face fundraising, which I am so tired of having to do, and I know you must be equally tired of seeing the reminders of the fundraisers at the bottom of each blogpost.  

For the time being, though, please bear with me because I simply have no choice but to keep plugging away at the fundraising for at least a few more weeks.  As I've mentioned a few times, I've been due to receive a substantial payment for freelance work at some point in May or June, and once that comes in I should be able to take a much-needed complete break from fundraising for at least a few months, but as of today there's still no sign of it even being in the pipeline.  So your patience is much appreciated as I continue to promote the fundraiser at the end of each post in the following manner...

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

First Makerfield by-election poll shows Andy Burnham could be in TROUBLE

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Catch up with last Wednesday's award-winning blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

* Salmond always went out of his way when he made the 'once in a generation' comment to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which he made the comment and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer.  He made clear that he wasn't intending to bind his successors and that it was democratically impossible for him to do so.

The biggest problem for British Nationalist propagandists like Fiona Bruce who triumphantly trot out the "once in a generation" excuse is that a generation has essentially *already passed*

Fiona Bruce claimed in her position as Question Time host on Thursday night that the 2014 independence referendum result had settled the issue for "twenty or thirty years".  That is an outrageous comment that once again demonstrates that the BBC, as the state broadcaster of the United Kingdom, is institutionally incapable of reporting on the Scottish independence debate objectively or impartially.  The BBC would actually do its viewers a much greater service if it would just drop the preposterous pretence of neutrality and instead openly own its unrelenting hostility to the principle of Scotland choosing its own governments.  If you're hellbent on being Fox News, then be Fox News, but for pity's sake be honest about it so that the people in Scotland who are legally compelled by the United Kingdom government to fund you, on pain of court action and possible imprisonment, know exactly where they stand.

What Bruce was praying in aid, of course, was Alex Salmond's occasional statements in the run-up to 2014 that independence referendums were only likely to be held once in a generation.  However, there are numerous problems for her and others who go down that road - 

* Whenever he made the "generation" comment, Salmond always went out of his way to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which the comment was made and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer. In other words it wasn't a statement of SNP policy or even of the Scottish Government's position, and it wasn't intended to bind his successors as First Minister or SNP leader.  Indeed, he frequently made the point that it would be democratically impossible for him to bind his successors.

* If it had been the view of the Scottish Government and the UK Government that the 2014 referendum was supposed to settle the issue for a defined period of time, as Bruce alleges, that would have been set out in the Edinburgh Agreement between the two governments or in the legislation paving the way for the referendum.  Bruce will search in vain for any such undertaking.

* It's extremely odd for Bruce and her fellow British Nationalist commentators to suggest that the losing side in a referendum gets to determine the meaning of the result.  Even if she genuinely thinks that Alex Salmond promised that the result would settle the matter for a generation (which he didn't), politicians are generally only held to their promises if they win the vote.  Salmond instead lost the vote "decisively" (the BBC used that word so often on 19th September 2014 that it was obvious an edict had gone out from on high), so what the hell does it matter what he said during the campaign?  It's the promises made by the No side that determine the meaning of the result - and No campaigners did not promise 'once in a generation'.  They instead promised "The Vow", a near-federal system, continued membership of the European Union, HS2 in Scotland, economic stability, and no Boris Johnson in Downing Street.  That's what No voters were voting in favour of, and as all of these promises and more were broken, it's scarcely unnatural that many people who now realise they were voting on a false prospectus wish to revisit their decision, and fully expect not to be denied that inalienable democratic right.  (They certainly don't expect to be denied that right on the ludicrous basis that "the losing side in the referendum, you know, the side you voted against, made comments that we think should be interpreted as a promise that you will not be allowed to change your mind".)

* Perhaps most importantly, Salmond did not actually leave scope for people like Bruce to use their imaginations and define the highly ambiguous term "a generation" in any way that they pleased.  He was absolutely explicit by what he meant and provided examples.  Those examples were: a) the eighteen-year gap between the 1979 and 1997 devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales, b) the seventeen-year gap between the 1997 devolution referendum and the 2014 independence referendum, and c) the fifteen-year gap between the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums in Quebec.

Twelve years have already passed since 2014, and crucially, John Swinney is not proposing a second indyref this year - 2028 is generally cited as his target date, by which time fourteen years will have passed.  That's almost identical to the fifteen-year gap in Quebec offered by Salmond as one of the key examples of what he meant by "a generation".

Sorry, Fiona, but your favourite little get-out clause has already passed its sell-by date.  "Once in a generation", RIP.

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Catch up with last Wednesday's 'critics' choice' blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

* Salmond always went out of his way when he made the 'once in a generation' comment to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which he made the comment and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer.  He made clear that he wasn't intending to bind his successors and that it was democratically impossible for him to do so.