YouTube's new channel sponsorship option (Patreon)

I'm going to talk money. It's not a fun subject and may have you rolling your eyes, but I'm not here with my hand out - I'm saving that for when Series 3 merchandise turns up. Instead, I wanted to talk a little about fan funding and a new program YouTube are rolling out.

Since you're reading this on Patreon, you already know that I have an active and pretty successful Patreon campaign whose backers are referred to as Bad Company. These generous souls kick a donation towards the growth and ongoing jollity of the channel in exchange for a few exclusives and the opportunity to get stuck into games with likeminded people. The range of odds and ends I offer up on Patreon can vary a little from month to month, but largely it's consistent - and a good number of my backers seem happy with the whole set up (you guys are happy right?)

Last June I was contacted by YouTube and asked whether I'd conduct an interview into being a channel owner and how monetisation was working, what I did to supplement my AdSense revenue, and to give some feedback on a new scheme they were setting up. Asking for my opinion? That's a recipe for trouble right there.

Among the questions, I was asked why I chose to use Patreon for a fan funding campaign. The answer was in 3 parts. First, I pointed out that the existing YouTube fan funding option was unavailable in the UK, rather like YouTube Red. Personally I suspect there is a tax reason for this, rather than anything else, but that's me and my tinfoil hat talking, I've no data to back it up. So, there was no funding option direct from YouTube itself. 

Second, I mentioned that I liked the level of control that Patreon gives me over different reward levels and funding amounts. I'm able to offer a $1 and $5,000 funding tier, and many others in-between. At those tiers I can offer what I feel is an appropriate and potentially desirable reward (pro-tip: if the reward is junk, you won't find anyone taking it in a hurry.) It also gives me a rudimentary blogging/update platform through which I can send unlisted videos to backers as well as providing a suite of analytics to help me understand the ebb and flow of my channel's backers. Patreon is a little basic, but it does the job it sets out to do. Moreover, when they've made a bad move in the past, they've had the cojones to reverse that decision. I like 'em. I didn't mention this last part at the time as it hadn't happened yet, but it adds further validation to my point.

Thirdly, and this one is critical, placing all my digital eggs in one digital basket is inherently risky. YouTube routinely change policies or algorithms that can have a direct impact over what I'm doing on that channel. As such I wouldn't want to tie the whole of my channel's wellbeing to a single platform. To put it a different way, when YouTube decide to change things up again, I want to know that at least one part of what I do will remain unaffected.

The folks at YouTube aren't bad guys. At all. They have a job to do, and they make the steps they think will enable them to do that job. Priority number 1 right now is regaining custom from advertisers. When they have that relationship back up and bouncing the hope is that CPM rates can become more competitive again, ensuring that "creators" (I dislike the term, but it's accepted as normal) can benefit a little more from their work. I don't think we'll see a CPM rate bounce back, there's a surplus of inventory to sell and lower demand than at any point previously. The point is however, that their focus is on bringing the commercial side of the business back up to strength.

Meanwhile, there are creators out there in the gaming space that are abandoning YouTube for Twitch as that's the land of the current gold-rush, and YouTube really want to keep them onboard. After all, someone who watches the latest Minecraft Let's Play episode, has a good chance of watching the latest Marvel trailer, or checking out the latest pop superstar video. They still call it pop, right? YouTube's strength as a platform comes from its sheer scale - it's the big dog and would like to remain that way. Meanwhile it's being challenged on multiple fronts, from Twitch to Facebook and more, YouTube's dominance is under threat.

To counter this threat and to persuade gaming channels to stick with YouTube as their video home base, we now have the option to offer "channel sponsorship" to existing subscribers. For $4.99 per month you can sponsor your favourite channels, and in return get some special emotes and badges to use while they're streaming.

I've been in the beta release of this since September, and you might have noticed that I've never mentioned it.

The rewards are currently not usable in any situation other than a live stream. I'm also not permitted to offer those rewards from other sources (e.g. someone backing the channel on Patreon can't be granted the same privileges). While I have a few backers who help my channel out purely because they're interested in seeing it prosper, I always try to offer a personal reward for doing so, and this sponsorship offer simply doesn't allow me to do that.

If YouTube were to introduce sponsorship in a way that could benefit regular comments as well as those when streaming, as well as allowing me to integrate rewards in the same way that Discord does currently, I'd be onboard, but for now I'll be leaving this feature untouched.

If you'd like to support my channel and help me make better videos the place to do so is right here, on Patreon.

Thanks

-CF