I've spent some of the last two weeks as a liaison between Steem, YouTubers on Steem, and those that aren't here yet. I've spent a few hours talking to people and have come up with a few conclusions.
The YouTube landscape is a little bleak right now
Competition is fierce
If you're not already above 1M subscribers the challenge of getting there seems a lot higher than it was 3-4 years ago. It seems as though everyone has thought about just being a YouTube star and has attempted this. As a consequence there's a lot more channels producing a much wider range of content. It's good for YouTube and it attracts a wider audience, but it's harder to get noticed during that time.
Adpocolypse
You can't talk to a person in YouTube land that doesn't seem drastically impacted by YouTube's ongoing changes to their financial policy. Whether you believe it's a form of censorship or you believe it's just corporate sponsors being very picky the result remains the same: YouTube channels are getting their revenue cut. For the folks making a living this way it's pretty scary to see that their revenue gets cut randomly.
Ad experience of the user
Have you tried watching YouTube lately? It's a fucking cess pool of ads. Want to watch a video? Watch this video first. Enjoyed 3 minutes of your video? Watch this 8 min video to see the next 4 minutes. You get the drill. The user experience of that literally keeps me away, and no it doesn't inspire me to get youtube red.
Steem is getting there
So, if you're already at 1M+ subscribers than Steem might not be the best place to grow your listenership or honestly contribute enough money to help you do what you do just yet. It's a good backup and a good plan, but it wont' be your central revenue source. That's not true for smaller channels though.
If you're in the sweet spot of 100k-1M then we're at a pretty good fit. Steem needs more eyeballs so we can grow. If you're a YouTube Channel operator then you got those! You need money. Don't know if you noticed it but Steem at one point hit a $1B market cap. Peeps in here have money. So, let's barter our money for your pitching us.
How does it work for Channel Operators
I'll help you. I'll be your Steem pimp. I'll pitch your content to some whales. I'll introduce you on radio shows to this community. I'll try to get you on panel discussions with big names on the platform to help you grow. It sucks getting started on Steem, but it helps if I'm there. I'm a top 20 witness with 9k followers, and there's a lot of people that think I help this platform and would back you if I'm promoting you.
So, that's how we're gonna get you money. I'll even put in some honorariums of 50-300 steem to bring you on shows and pimp you that way too. What you need to do though is progressive work towards these things:
At the end of every video I need you to promote your steem channel to your audience. When you're saying click here, subscribe here, touch this, hum that way.. you need to also say "Here's a link to my Steem profile leave a comment on my page and I'll try to type back to you!"
You should be putting your content on Steem. We want you using dtube, dsound, and dlive as well as the other projects that come here. We want you to put your content on steem based tools. Can you use others? Sure, but we need you doing this if you want attention from this community or help from me.
Exclusive to Steem content. We want you to pull your loyal audience here. To get the folks that don't want to miss out you need a hook. Exclusive content can do that.
Interact with fans. On Youtube you get a viral video and it gets 2000 comments and you dont' care about answering people. Here, especially as a bit of a celebrity you're going to care. Every comment you make could get you upvotes in addition to your article, story, video, song, whatever. So, you have a financial incentive to finally interact with fans. Your story could get $20. Your comment to a fan could earn $300. Won't always be like that, but people will drop upvotes on comments from you!
Make a plea, some tutorials, and other videos about crypto in general, and Steem in particular to help them understand how to be here.
Steem is hard and there's a learning curve
Steeming ain't easy. But that's ok. There's a help group for that. Have you heard of the Minnow Support Group? I founded this baby. It's got 6,000+ Steemians in there and it's run by publicly elected witnesses and moderators on the blockchain that can help you and your audience learn the ropes! This is part of how you can educate your people. Send them our way we'll straighten'em out in no time. We tend hang out in a Discord group called the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network. You can join it here: https://discord.gg/dpGVBcy. I also just redirected minnowpond.org to there, so that's a little easier to remember.
What if I'm just a minnow? Does any of this apply to me?
Yes, I'm crowd sourcing sales of Steem as a good home to all the minnows. I'm willing to pay you 50-200 steem if you line up someone with 100k-1M youtube subs to come on the minnow mayor town hall, or any of the youtube forums I'm gonna run. So, yeah. Minnows can get in on this action too. Just start bugging people to come to Steem, point them to that discord and tell them to talk to aggroed and if we make it all work out I'll give them and you some Steem.
The forum is my big one. It's gonna run on January 13th from 11am to 1pm (starts 1600 UTC). The real payout is to get them there, so that's you're ultimate goal.
This is part of my witness goals
The Charter of the Minnow Support Project is to Spread the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty, grow the Steem ecosystem, and train and retain minnows on the platform. Bringing YouTube Channels here helps with growing the Steem ecosystem and the help I'm offering them should help train and retain them and their audience. This is the work I'm doing for the platform right now to pour some gasoline on the Steem fire. Please vote my witness if you think this will help.