The Problem With YouTube That Can Be Fixed

The following was originally written as a response to a statement on the YouTube Partner Monetization Forum that if a YouTuber just concentrated on making better videos, that would overcome the giant revenue drops they were experiencing. For those of you who don’t know, a “YouTube Partner” is one who makes money from the traffic … Read more

Michael Jackson Too? Is YouTube Taking Video Views From Music Artists?

Warning: YouTube is taking away video views from YouTube Partners where either staff or the algorithm determines, rightly or wrongly, that your video views were in some way enhanced. This is fact, and Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian UK, one of my favorite news site, got this one a bit wrong. To start, the website … Read more

Shelf Life YouTube Video Show Raised $35K In One Month

Shelf Life successfully raised $35,000 (well, $34,579 here: http://www.indiegogo.com/ShelfLife) and totally from clicks provided by fans of the show. Ok, so what’s the show? Shelf Life, produced by Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt, features the talents of Travis Willingham, Bryan Enk, Dee Bradley Baker, Tara Platt, Yuri Lowenthal, and Phil Morris. The description goes like … Read more

YouTube Takes To Reddit To Explain Update, Gets Hammered

YouTube’s latest update is the most hated change in the seven-year history of the video-sharing website. The design change, which focuses on smaller fonts, and a mix of subscribers versus partner videos in the timelines of viewers, and other small changes like putting the video title at the bottom of the video and not the … Read more

Maker Studios: YouTube Partner Lands $40 Million In Funding

Maker Studios and Awesomeness TV are two of a very small, but growing, group of YouTube Partners that are securing millions in venture funding for their video production efforts. According to CrunchBase, Maker Studios has secured $40 million from Time Warner Investments last week, after getting $2.5 million from Greycoft Partners and GRP Partners, according … Read more

PSY’s Gangnum Style YouTube Video Earns $1.65 Million In Ad Revenue

PSY’s Gangnum Style YouTube video has not just accumulated 812,794,421 views (as of this writing), but lost in the news that the music video has surpassed Justin Bieber’s “Baby” for YouTube’s most watched video is the fact that, along the way, it’s gained revenue from the ads placed on it. In fact, by this blogger’s … Read more

Bristol Palin Lawsuit Win Helps YouTube Partners

Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and a reality TV show star, just won a defamation lawsuit filed against her. The win, reported by TMZ.com, may open the door for a clarification of the rights of YouTube Partners. I saw that because of the reasons stated for why the lawsuit was … Read more

YouTube’s Robert Kyncl Keynote At MIPCON 2012

Robert Kyncl, YouTube Global Head of Content, gave a great speech at MIPCON 2012 that’s very much like the one he gave at CES 2012 Las Vegas. The overall focus was that content is king and the cost barrier to entry for a content creator is lower than ever. In other words, you can produce … Read more

YouTube Adds “Estimated Minutes Watched” To YT Partner Analytics

YouTube consistently makes it easier to determine how a YouTube Partner’s video sharing business is performing. When this vlogger became a YouTube Partner in 2008, and thus able to earn money from video traffic via Google AdSense, YouTube’s online ad placement system, there was no built-in system of data collection so I could fine-tune my … Read more

Zennie Abraham With Christina Marie Flores On SF Live, 2009: Blogs, Video-Blogs, And Media

Want to know how to blog and to video-blog? Watch this three-video segment that consists of a 2009 interview of me by “Christina Marie,” then the host of a cable show called SF Live, and also known as Christina Marie Flores, the former girlfriend of now-suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. (And no, before you go there, … Read more

Is YouTube Killing Viral Videos?

Is the viral video dead? In installing an algorithm to favor “engagement” over clicks, and seemingly in response to the “Reply Girls” controversy, where two women specialized in making videos that were responses to the most popular videos on YouTube. The problem is that, in making this change, YouTube has damaged the dollar earning of … Read more

YouTube / Google AdSense December Algorithm Change Harms Partners

A number of YouTube Partners, including this video blogger, have complained of a sudden and dramatic decrease in revenue starting in late December (though Zennie62’s decrease has not been as great as most). The place for the complaints, the YouTube Partner Forum, is packed with complaints like this one: Hello I am not a youtube … Read more

YouTube Analytics Much Better Than YouTube Insight

There are an estimated 20,000 YouTube Partners, or people who make some level of money from the production, uploading, and distribution of their own original content videos. Zennie62 is one of YouTube’s first partner channels during the first year it was established, and that’s going all the way back to April of 2008, when the … Read more

Justin Bieber YouTube Video Takedown Example Of Bad YT Community Behavior

Ad Age has a great blog post explaining how videos from Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Shakira were taken down by a channel called iLCreation. While the Ad Age website explains what happened, and asks how YouTube could allow such an action to take place, it doesn’t at all touch on the question: does YouTube … Read more