A few minutes ago, my phone spontaneously managed to escape from my pocket onto the road outside my house for the second time in the space of six months, smashing the screen yet again. I thought I had learned the lesson from last time by putting a protective film on the screen, but clearly that didn't make as much difference as I'd hoped. Unlike last time, the phone is still working for now, but the end for it is probably nigh and I'll have to fork out yet again for a replacement.
This is perhaps nature's way of reminding me that I've been meaning for a little while to post an update about my Great Switching To Video-Blogging experiment and also about the progress of
the fundraiser I've been running to try to bridge the gap during the prolonged period it's taking to find out whether YouTube is a viable alternative funding model. The intention is to try to give a little boost to the fundraiser, which got off to a fantastic start, but has since stalled a few hundred pounds short of its target figure.
Basically the situation is that I reached the two thresholds for monetisation on YouTube several weeks ago (1000 subscribers and 4000 watch-hours), but I still haven't reached the minimum earnings threshold for a first actual payment. As I understand the payment schedule, the earliest it's now possible for me to receive any money at all is in the second half of February, so in the meantime I will unfortunately need to keep
promoting this stopgap fundraiser to stay afloat. The target figure is £1700 (I know it currently says £1100 on the GoFundMe page, but that's because they're using a new-fangled 'dynamically-changing target' system which supposedly produces better results).
So is the YouTube idea going to work as a funding model in the long run, or will I have to switch to my Plan B of Substack? The jury is still out. At the moment the videos are only netting a few pounds per day, and if that's the way it stays it obviously won't be sustainable. However, the average number of views per video has markedly increased over the last few months as my number of subscribers has crept up, so the hope is that increase will just keep continuing at a steady pace. If it doesn't, and if I eventually reach a sort of plateau, then I'll have to reconsider the plan, but for the moment I remain semi-hopeful. Realistically I'd need to multiply my number of daily video views by about four, which is a tall order, and if it does prove to be feasible it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of time to get there. If all else fails, there are supposedly sponsorship opportunities on YouTube, although that may be a bit of a circular argument because to be attractive to a potential sponsor I'd probably need a much greater number of average views anyway.
One thing I will say in favour of this experiment, though, is that it's proving to be a really simple and effective way of promoting to the general public favourable results in opinion polls, both for independence itself and for pro-independence parties. As you know, YouTube promote new videos in their sidebar, and I've been using the actual full results of opinion polls as the thumbnail for each video, so even if people don't click on the links, they're still becoming passively aware of the latest poll results, and of the fact that Yes are in the lead in many polls. I think that's quite a useful public service, even if I do say so myself!
If you'd like to help keep the lights on while I try to make this madcap project work, there are three options for supporting the fundraiser:
Card payments can be made via the main GoFundMe crowdfunder page
HERE.
Direct PayPal payments (which can have the advantage of eliminating all fees, depending on which option you select from the menu) can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Bank transfers are the third option. I've been advised not to publicly post my bank details, but if you'd like to donate that way, drop me a line and I'll send you the details privately. My contact email address is different from my PayPal address, and can be found on my
Twitter profile, or on the sidebar of this blog (desktop version of the site only).
