Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is leaving YouTube a good idea?”.
Uh Watcher leaves YouTube. I have to confess, as someone who doesn’t watch that much YouTube. I hadn’t watched them before, but it’s a really interesting business move and something that I thought you know. Luke might have some thoughts to share uh, Watcher entertainment, a media company founded four years ago by three former BuzzFeed creators has officially announced they are leaving YouTube and beginning their own AdFree subscription streaming service Watcher tv.com according to the founders, they have found found themselves increasingly Split between creating the content that their fans want and creating the content that appeals to advertisers and to YouTube’s algorithm further they’ve been dealing with a tension between the costs necessary to maintain television-like artistic standards and the financial model that is required to thrive on YouTube. Their hope is that switching to their own streaming service will allow them to build a more sustainable business and rely Less on advertisers.
The site went live today. It’S currently priced at $ 6, a month or $ 60 a year and they’re offering 30 % off the first year. I assume that that might be a typo here for anyone who subscribes before May 31st, as well as the opportunity to vote on which previously canceled Watcher series should be revived. This is an interesting move.
Mhm, I think they’re doomed yeah. Me too, I think I said I think it was literally last wow, where I gave my like five websites statement, uh, which is i i i my theory on this I’ll try to keep it short is that roughly everyone has roughly five websites each that they go To it’s not the same five websites for everybody, but most people have like a few websites that they go to and pretty much nothing else. And if you leave that Sphere for people you’re gone and you can you can sort of exist in both like you can have a foot outside like, I suspect you know, the vast majority of the lip’s audience doesn’t go to FL all the time. The full subscribers do sure, but we’re on YouTube, so our visibility doesn’t go away. People still know that we exist, but by completely leaving the the YouTubes, the reddits, the whatever things like that Facebooks of the World by leaving those entirely your discoverability goes away. Now they are planning to upload.
I think they were saying, like the first few videos of a given series on YouTube, but then the idea, I guess, is they’re pay Walling the rest of it so kind of like if uh, if Netflix just uploaded the first episode of every series to YouTube. That’S a better that’s a better idea than I I thought it was, but I still think that this is going to be an incredible challenge. I mean we’ve um, we struggle with all the same things. You know: how do we balance increasing production values? How do we balance, and I do think that it’s a little bit um misleading to whether it’s our notes or their feelings or whatever? I do feel that it’s not it’s not quite right to say that you have to fight between or or you’re torn between what. The algorithm wants and what the audience wants, because the algorithm and the audience are one and the same is because the algorithmic audience is the the broader audience. Whereas I think that, if you were to say if I were to say my audience right, who would I be thinking of, would I be think of a random flyby who happens to come across one of our videos.
One time gets engaged with it, watches that video and then never watches Another LTT video. No, I would I wouldn’t think of that person. As my audience, I would think of that person. As my algorithmic, I don’t know person that YouTube managed to serve this thing to right, like they’re, not my audience.
When I think of my audience, I think of the wow viewers, I think, of the people who are actually enabling notifications on their phone and and clicking on them when they come up which, by the way, is very small in case you guys were curious. I’Ve wanted to make a video about that for a while. I even came up with the title. You won’t click this notification um because they won’t it’s it’s like a fraction of a percent or something like that. It’S like absolutely minuscule um anyway, like so there’s different ways to Define my audience, and so in that sense, if I were to talk about the differences between what the algorithm wants and what my audience wants, it makes sense and I think that’s what they’re talking about, But the danger of catering to this one catering to my audience, catering to you guys with the mainline content versus catering to you guys with the WAN, show on a weekly basis where we really get to sit down and hang out. Uh catering to you guys, with behind the scenes on float plane where we we pull silly pranks on each other, and you can kind of see the real personalities come out.
We’Ll get we’ll get deeper into uh. Tanner did a really cool video doing a deeper dive on that North Korean Wii? U clone thing: um, that’s the kind of stuff that we want to make and – and we understand that you guys want to see, but we can’t infect the mainline content with that, because that’s our Discovery funnel right. We need that algorithmic audience and, if you’re putting out, if you’re, if you’re casting fewer Nets out into that sea of potential audience members that audience that core audience is going to Decay. And you know I’ve seen every reason Under the Sun for someone to site that they’re not going to watch anymore um I had I had someone uh tell me how disappointed they were that um we built such a cheap skate computer for that person who begged for One and um and that it it really showed how not generous we were.
It was hilarious because it came literally the day after we raised $ 100,000 for sick kids right a video they clearly didn’t watch. Imagine imagine for a second if it had absolutely nothing to do with that and had everything to do with what I said, which is that we wanted it to be something good enough to like really be a gaming PC worth going and getting, but not so good That they were going to get like murdered on the way home. That was it that that was the re. Imagine a whole skit gets stabbed in the back.
I think imagine for a second. If the reason was just what I got stabbed, that’s not the great part. Sorry, the skit was great yeah um. Sorry. Where was I? Where was I going with this right? I I’ve been given every reason Under the Sun for someone to stop watching anymore, but the reality of it is most of the time. It’S that you’ve changed. You’Ve moved on I’ve probably changed too, but I suspect I haven’t changed as much as you have in terms of the product that we’re trying to upload.
We we’re always trying to do things a little bit differently. We’Re trying to do them a little bit better, but the cold. Hard truth is what probably happened, and this is particularly understandable lately with tech, at least in the you know, on the gaming PC gaming side, um, the traditional PC gaming side. Getting you know kind of stagnant compared to what we’re used to kind of kind of boring compared to what we’re used to right um. That’S, probably the the most honest reason that people have given me for for for not watching anymore man. If I had a dollar for every time, someone said they’re not watching anymore, because we’re constantly making jokes and the juvenile humor I’m sitting here going like we never did that in 2012, okay, buddy yeah! That’S that’s a new thing! That’S a new thing! If anything, it’s probably gotten less to be completely honest. Yeah I don’t know, maybe that’s it.
Maybe it’s more jarring now, maybe I don’t know, there’s still a fair bit of it. I doubt it yeah yeah, there’s still a fair bit of it. So I’ve done some poking around while we’ve been sitting here, um but anyway, okay so hold on. Let me finish: let me finish really quick, I’m sorry um! So by not by not casting out Nets to the algorithmic audience right, the broader audience. You aren’t replenishing the core audience and that attrition is unavoidable.
You can’t watch the same TV show forever yeah think about it. You can’t play the same video game forever. One person in the audience is like I played Starcraft since I was born and game.
We’Re not mostly we’re not mostly wired like that, and so I I think that, while this is something that could be very successful uh in the short term, they could convert a significant amount of their current core audience over to this paid platform. Uh, I I worry. I mean it’s not like this, isn’t the kind of thing that we’ve dabbled in in the past, we were one of the we were as far as I can tell the only relevant Creator on vessel.com we built float plane like sweat, Blood and Tears, built float plane In an effort to to create that sustainability, most of the creators on vessel.com stopped kind of doing the Early Access thing all this kind of stuff. We weren’t the only relevant Creator on the platform.
We were the only relevant Creator to vessel in terms of Revenue. Yeah. Sorry I should clarify um anyway, so I I’ve done some looking around someone in the chat pointed out, Dimension or sorry, not Dimension. Well, Dimension. 20 is one of their products, but um dropout.tv, which I think was a really really good call out of a channel that has done something similar. As far as my understanding goes. Actually, I’m not even going to go there cuz, I don’t even know but um. They do a really good job, they still get into the brain space on the main channels.
They do stuff with shorts um and I I think they might still release full videos here or there um every now and again, but it’s a funnel into Dropout TV for the most part and as far as my understanding goes they’re very successful with this, they also Have a very large amount of different shows and shows with like very DieHard dedicated audiences, which is exactly what you would need in order to uh. Do this mck says Dropout uses Vimeo as their their backbone provider? Yes, um and I think that’s a good idea. I think that’s how they should do that if they wanted to do this approach, where it’s one Creator, one website, they want the thing they should just use. Another service like Vimeo Vimeo, is a great solution there um and and run it that way.
Um yeah Dropout has a ton of different series and they’ve been doing this for a long time. They’Re very well set up now uh looking into as well. It’S like okay, what external monetization does Watcher have so first thing you look for. Is there more links on their YouTube channel and you can see patreon? So, okay, let’s go to their patreon. If I can click things well, they’ve converted 1,200 members, which is very good conversion, very respectable they’re doing a great job. They’Ve got what looks like well fleshed out good tiers. We could maybe learn something from that um they do. You know they’ve got a 7.
This is all Canadian dollars, so the 750 is probably five bucks. Looking at a some form – standardization, it’s probably 5 USD 10 USD. I don’t know, maybe six something around that I don’t know exactly um, but they’ve they’ve got a good pricing range. They even have the like wh big, crazy one um, and they seem to be posting actively, so they they they can convert people to outside platforms. They shown that they have a very strong outside platform presence um. One thing that they might unfortunately find is that patreon is one of those websites that a lot of people go to.
It might be harder to convert to a external platform non patreon funding website um. I have looked into Watchers website as well watch.tv, and this is also built with Vimeo um as the video playing back end. Someone pointed out that Dropout was done that way.
This one is also done that way. I don’t remember how I determined that I think it was this video uh you can pretty easily tell this. Is the Vimeo player, but another fun uh thing to do is like let’s just copy this URL um um and go to builtwith domcom and you just paste in the URL, and you can see like all the things that they’re using and if you scroll down a Little bit to audio and video media, you can see Vimeo um, so yeah they’re using Vimeo, which seems like probably a good idea for what they’re doing so they’re doing a lot of things. Well, from my judgment, I don’t know what that matters, but um. I don’t know I wish them the best.
I hope they do the thing that Dropout TV is doing where they still sprinkle out content quite healthily and really start trying to grasp onto things like shorts, where they can try to convert people. Look there’s this really tasty. Little nibble from this video you need to go over to this other side to watch it. Um yeah, someone in someone in chat, said Rooster Teeth, did it for a while, but then it just slowly went Into Obscurity.
That’S the risk! That’S why this is terrifying. Um Rooster Teeth is not the only example that that’s happened to um, it’s just a really big name uh but yeah. This is this is scary, but I wish them the best. I hope it goes well yeah. I don’t know man, it’s uh, it’s tough and once you’ve um, you know, did I say: 12200 yeah. I meant 12,000.
Sorry yeah once you’ve once you’ve got an audience. It’S um! You know it’s something, but it’s it’s small. Like we’ve. We’Ve got 35,000 subscribers on float plane. We are, we are one of the top patreons except we’re not on patreon yeah um, we’ve been very, very successful at it and still in the grand scheme of things guys the the revenue that we can generate on an audience that small even directly as paying customers It it pales in comparison to the costs associated with hosting video hosting video through VI is not cheap um, and it pales in comparison to you know what you can generate more broadly through ads and sponsorships and and all those things on on a platform like YouTube. I do yeah, I do I I worry, I worry about them, that’s all I mean these aren’t people that I know personally or anything like that, but I I generally think the Creator economy is pretty cool, I think of other creators. As my my fellow creators, these are people who have gone through a lot of the same struggles, a lot of same challenges that we have, and I I want nothing but the best for them um. But I I I’m, I fear, I fear, for these kinds of moves they can be and and I’m sure, I’m sure they feel it too right.
It can be scary because once you’ve once you’ve left it’s not that easy to just come back. .