Channel Growth, Patreon Changes, Video Vault

First, good news: JK Rowling is in fact getting sued! I choose to take full responsibility for this thing that was already in motion before my video went up. Now, housekeeping.

The new video has been really well-received so far and I could not be more grateful to all of you for your support both through sharing and direct tips. I especially want to thank everyone who let me know about the minor crisis we had at around 2AM GMT, after a copyright claim was made against the video for some Olympics footage. More than just the standard claim, the video was taken down entirely as well as demonetized, but thankfully I was able to just trim out the segments that were claimed so that the video could be made public again. Being naturally filled with late-night anxiety about either not getting monetization back or just killing the video’s early views momentum, I got to thinking about something I had been meaning to discuss on here for a while. I am, now, discussing it, on this post.

Patreon Changes

Before anything else, this is a warning to make sure that you absolutely do not use the Patreon iOS app, and warn others who might otherwise do so. Apple has forced a ridiculous 30% additional fee on all new members that can thankfully be avoided as long as you are subscribed a different way. To my understanding this doesn’t impact current patrons, but either way it’s a disgusting show of greed that is going to cut into many creator’s pockets. On a related note, the actual subject of this blog:

I’ve always been pretty upfront about the precarious nature of funding the channel due to my reliance on YouTube’s unreliable ad revenue combined with viewer support, supplemented by the occasional sponsorship. A few things have happened over the past year. First, I’ve been making a concerted effort to refine my work both in terms of more in-depth research and improving the overall presentation of videos. Second, in light of the fact that I’m back to writing full actual scripts again, I’ve been jumping on the bandwagon of putting together much longer projects, some of which will hopefully be available soon. Finally (less fun), I have experienced an inexplicable sponsor drought, a massive reduction in offers that would otherwise help keep us afloat while I take time on these longer projects.

The nice cool takeaway of this is to say the channel’s getting bigger and better. The not nice takeaway is that I am currently investing more into the channel than ever while getting less ad revenue and fewer sponsorships making me more reliant on viewer support. Here’s where I make the poll this post is attached to make sense.

I first started this Patreon in 2018 without much thought of treating my YouTube channel as a serious career, which is the reason I set my lowest tier to $1, literally the lowest Patreon would allow (and something they heavily discourage now). When you factor in Patreon’s cut and taxes, that essentially means 60 cents in my pocket. The fact is, this was not an especially sustainable pricepoint. At the same time, I had no interest in trying to squeeze more money out of people especially when I was just so shocked anyone wanted to monetarily support the channel in the first place. Hopefully it’s understandable why, through a combination of all the things I’ve just explained, I have been reflecting on this.

This is probably a lot of words to just say I’ll be making the original $1 Supporter Tier a $2 Tier and the $5 Credits tier a $6 Tier, but I hope my nervous wordiness conveys how much I’d been putting this off. Ultimately, I feel this is necessary to help the channel remain stable as I continue to make the investments needed to both increase the quality of videos and provide more long-form in-depth research and analysis. This is still basically a one-man show, but in the future I would like to have editors or other assistants to produce better work more frequently - this is a small step to taking all of this more seriously.

With that in mind, I have a few options for how to go about this and I wanted to leave that up to patrons. One option is more straightforward, a flat adjustment to the tiers that will take effect next month. The other option is for me to clone identical tiers at the new pricepoint and then unpublish the old tiers, which is more complicated but basically means current patrons can stay at the old price and only optionally move over. I do want to be clear that this is a one-time change, but either way I hope what I’m saying makes sense and you can all appreciate why I made this call.

Anyway, one more fun thing.

Video Vault

So I have a few old videos I made that I’ve unlisted over the years either because I wasn’t happy with the quality of them in retrospect, or disagree with some of the things I say, or maybe I repeatedly shout out creators I no longer like or respect. That being said, I don’t see why the people who give me money should be denied access to them even just as little historical artifacts of the channel. So here’s a big list of them, if you want a trip down Bad Video Memory Lane.

Captain Spirit and Fetishizing Trauma: Nitpicky Opinions by Jack (Jun 2018)

Analysing The PlaneBae Story: How To Sell A Personal Life (Jul 2018)

Instructional Tape | Channel Trailer / Patreon (Jul 2018)

What's Wrong With Eddie Brock? - Character & Type (Aug 2018)

The NPC Game (Oct 2018)

Captain Marvel Was A Film That Came Out (Mar 2019)

The Strange Subtext Of Toy Story (Apr 2019)

The Ideology of Frost/Nixon (Apr 2020) Mostly unlisted due to copyright issues

Alice Through The Looking Glass: Extended Commentary (Aug 2022) This one is just a Patreon exclusive I made a couple of years ago, but it’s pretty hard to find now

I think that’s about it for this way-too-long post, thank you if you read it and thanks in general for sticking with me. Have a great weekend, folks.

Jack

xoxoxo