echoangle
8 hours ago
Easier said than done… if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete? And how many of your viewers will move over to watch your stuff there? This advice probably works for blogs and mailing lists but isn’t really actionable for other content.
nine_k
2 hours ago
If you are a "YouTube creator", you have already firmly planted your castle on Google's land. The positioning of onself as bound to a particular website run by someone else is needless loss of independence.
Position yourself as a video creator and post your videos also to Instagram (when possible) and to Vimeo. Seed free / back catalog episodes via a torrent. Run a mailing list announcing and discussing your videos, with some premium content for paying subscribers only. Maybe have an X / SkyBlue / mastodon feed with more compact announces, comments, and high-virality short clips from your longer videos.
Cross-link and cross-reference all the channels of your presence. Make your brand recognizable across the publishing methods. Gently prod people to touch more than one channel of your video distribution, just to get the most avid viewers acquainted with several.
Yes, this is significantly more work. It also may bring significantly more results if your videos are good. This gives you a much stronger assurance that your brand and your following will not be lost, should you lose access to YouTube / Instagram / Vimeo / X / whatever other platform. Commoditize your complement, as they say.
keiferski
9 minutes ago
This is all good advice but realistically you can probably skip the random social media sites and just do email and YouTube. Email is much, much better than pretty much any social network.
kalleboo
35 minutes ago
Vimeo only gives you 2 TB bandwidth/month without negotiating an Enterprise plan. If your video goes viral, you're going to be out thousands to host it for everyone. How are you going to pay for that? You could put it on credit and then show these numbers when manually negotiating the payout from your next sponsor and pay it back with the proceeds from the next video, but there's no guarantee your next video will be also a hit.
tdeck
5 minutes ago
Dave Jones from the EEVBlog does this - he cross posts to his own site and to many smaller video hosting sites. But if I remember correctly he has said in the past that almost all his viewership comes from YouTube. Unfortunately for long-form videos in English YouTube seems to be the only game in town in terms of discoverability.
CJefferson
an hour ago
Can you suggest a few video creators who are having success with this model? I watch quite a few video creators, and don’t know any trying to use this model.
mvdtnz
31 minutes ago
No, he can't, because there are none. It's a ludicrous model that exists only in the minds of HN commenters.
rlayton2
7 hours ago
I think one method here is to incorporate your own site into the content as much as possible. For example, if you are a creator, get people to sign up to a newsletter to get the source files. Get people onto your platform/forum/whatever as well as watching through YouTube. Easier said than done, but better than not doing anything.
From there, you also ensure that you have a backup of all your videos. I've talked to people that only had their stuff on YouTube/Facebook/whatever. It is super risky. If you have a backup, and YouTube bans you, you can rehost elsewhere, it won't be as big, but you might still have a business afterwards.
azemetre
6 hours ago
Also something that needs to be noted, you don't need the same original numbers of people in your kingdom to make equivalent money.
When you're making commerce in someone's fief, they will demand tribute as well. In the confines of your own kingdom, all the ad dollars are yours.
Which also means you don't need to chase the same amounts of people to make similar coin, especially if the deals you make with advertisers are between you and the advertiser (not you, the advertiser, and the king of some other fief).
georgeecollins
2 hours ago
Exactly. You can be huge on Youtube or tiktok and if you convert some of that to direct engagement you are much better able to survive a changing landscape.
lolinder
5 hours ago
Your YouTube example is exactly what gave rise to Nebula.tv—creators banded together to create an alternative that would backstop them against YouTube's dominance.
kalleboo
24 minutes ago
Another example is Floatplane which was bootstrapped by the Linus Tech Tips people after realized how dependent they were on YouTube.
naming_the_user
3 hours ago
You're omitting the choice of just not doing that in the first place.
If you want to be a Windows developer, then yes, you have to be a Windows developer in order to be a Windows developer.
But you don't have to want to be a Windows developer. You don't even have to want to be a developer.
devjab
28 minutes ago
I think the difference between development for a “real” OS is that windows is still mainly owned by its customers. Similar to how MacOS is. On MacOS people can still install your applications even if you don’t pay the Apple tax to avoid their pop-up warnings. (I’m not sure if avoiding the windows warnings is also something you pay Microsoft for.)
I think a better comparison would be iOS or Chrome, where you’ll realistically have to submit yourself to their stores if you want to reach most users. Which is sort of even more locked down than YouTube as some content creators on YouTube have managed to move their audience to other platforms, though sometimes by still posting teasers or at least some content on YouTube.
btown
5 hours ago
There's an entire OTT sub-industry for video hosting and out-of-the-box monetization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service
For instance, https://vimeo.com/ott is an effective (albeit expensive) option, powering Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor) and other brands and allowing them to focus on content. Dropout, in particular, has found an effective model of releasing short clips from their improv-heavy shows on social video platforms, gaining virality there while subtly reminding new and old fans that they can find full episodes, and support on-screen and off-screen talent, by subscribing to the brand directly. Their growth would be impacted by the loss of a marketing channel, but not their underlying subscription fundamentals.
(The entire Dropout business story is quite inspiring and worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK_gNfFdP0 )
JBiserkov
3 hours ago
That sounds incredibly interesting! Thanks for sharing that!
The YouTube link at the end is ironic ;-)
chillfox
6 hours ago
One way is to release videos 1-2 weeks early on your own site.
paulryanrogers
8 hours ago
Well there is podcasting and PeerTube.
whatshisface
8 hours ago
YouTube offers millions of dollars in free advertising to content creators along with tens of dollars in free hosting.
EarlKing
5 hours ago
It really doesn't. To understand why, you have only to comprehend the following: Whether someone is searching under a particular keyword, or just browsing whatever pops up on the home page, the average browser has a finite amount they're willing to scroll before abandoning their search... and chances are your video is NOT going to be placed highly in those results unless you're directing a firehose at it from offsite via Twitter, forum posts, news aggregators, or paying Youtube to promote your video flat out (which is such an obvious moneygrab on their part its disgusting). In other words: If you rely on their algorithm to promote your work you're literally playing the lottery and, much like the lottery, statistically you're going to lose. It makes far more sense to find bandwidth and hosting, negotiate with an ad network, and direct a firehose at the resulting site... but that's more work than some are willing to do. shrug Oh well.
ako
an hour ago
If you place it on a website you’ll also be subjected to their algorithm, google search.
paulryanrogers
8 hours ago
Indeed, I was just trying to point out some decentralized alternatives.
tshaddox
8 hours ago
With podcasting you’ll almost certainly be reliant on being searchable on the major podcasting apps.
PeerTube is as close to nonexistent as a video platform can be.
Spivak
3 hours ago
Podcasting is actually worse. YouTube is a kingdom where people come to you. In podcasting there are a few large kingdoms and you have to be in all of them because of the "wherever you get your podcasts" thing.
giantrobot
8 hours ago
With YouTube people can just click the "make money" button. YouTube handles the ad sales and payments. Both are your job if you're podcasting or publishing on PeerTube.
Hosting video content is not an unsolvable problem. YouTube's moat is economies of scale and user base. YouTube's draw is the "make money" button.
EarlKing
5 hours ago
The "make money" button, however, is an illusion for 99% of publishers. The one case where it does seem to make out is with livestreams, and then only because unlike topical short-form videos, streaming is not a winner-take-all environment where one or two people run away with all the eyeballs, but instead people will tend to decommoditize topical streaming based on the personality of the broadcaster and your ability to form a parasocial relationship with them... hence even a relatively unknown person, if they're persistent, can manage to grab a few hundred regular viewers who'll toss a few bucks each stream... not enough to make a living, but enough for beer money. The prime advantage of youtube in this scenario is not having to deal with setting up hosting/DDoS filtering and negotiating with a payment processor ... just push the button and upload. So for streamers I think it can still be worth it, but for people posting short form content I think they might be better off rolling their own because they can't rely on Youtube's algorithm to give them enough eyeballs to be profitable.
magarnicle
3 hours ago
Some of them have, it's called Nebula.
jimbob45
3 hours ago
The optimal strategy would probably be to start on YouTube and then migrate to your own platform once you can afford it and have an audience willing to come with you.
Then probably dual stream for a while on your site with blended chat support before cutting the YouTube cord loudly and with warning.
Razengan
4 hours ago
> if you are a YouTube creator, are you supposed to set up your own video hosting to compete?
They could use their popularity to promote and donate to alternatives.
MisterBastahrd
4 hours ago
A high school friend of mine contacted me out of the blue on facebook after probably 20 years. He had gotten on early with an MLM that made it big and one of them had such success on the platform that he had made multiple appearances at their national convention to give a testimonial to how it changed his family's lives. Mind you, this is a guy who was 2 years from being able to retire with a pension from the chemical refinery he worked at.
I laughed, told him I wasn't interested, and warned him that he didn't own his network: that the MLM could take it from him at any time, and it's why most of the experienced salesmen I knew lived well below their paychecks. He grew very upset, told me I didn't know what I was talking about, and basically behaved as if I had insulted his religion.
Well, half a year later I was laid off and found a new job with a marketing automation firm. On my second day, we had an all hands meeting where they were announcing that the MLM he worked for would be immediately breaking contract and leaving our platform because they reached a settlement with the DOJ over their methodology. Effective immediately, they were going to a distributor model and ceasing all payouts for network related sales.
I knew his world was going to collapse before he did. In the end, he had to sell his house and most of his possessions, his wife divorced him, and he tried to break back into the MLM world but could never get anything started. Nobody wanted to hire him for a traditional sales role because they regard MLMers as lazy and dumb. He's back at another chemical refinery, hoping to work there for another 20+ years to earn another pension.