So my gaming channel is taking off... Partnership options (80k views per month)

Flammy

Flammy

Shooting Down Idiots
UPDATE:

Hi everyone,

While I haven't gotten all of my questions answered, you guys definitely provided some direction of investigation which sure helped me out. Channel is doing good. About to break 100k views per month and 500 subscribers.

I know a lot of you were curious about what I did/my content, so here is my channel is flammy5 [can't post links, linked in signature] In short I produce videos for a multiplayer iOS game (yes, a mobile only game) called Clash of Clans. It has a surprising amount of depth for an iOS game, not to mention it has been holding top of the charts sense its release in early august. This caused a very respectable amount of search traffic to appear online, which I have been able to ride so far. I will be answering questions in depth over on reddit (see next paragraph) --- I also have a video linked there for my channel overview and reasons why I was successful.

I'm still looking for more advice but I'm continuing it over on Reddit [Reddit.(om/r/PartneredYoutube] [can't post links, not enough posts, sorry viewers] So come drop by and ask any questions or help me with any of my refined questions. The /r/PartneredYoutube community there is small but growing.

Thanks again and peace,
Flammy

End UPDATE. Start original message:
----------------

So after poking around the forums I feel sort of bad about posting this...

I had created a YT account way back when, uploaded a few things randomly a few years back ... only started uploading videos + commentary for real last month.I managed to get about 400 subscribers and about 80k views in my first month. I'm currently at ~25 subs per day, 5,000 views per day. Note this is higher than the past month's 80k total might indicate. Which I know so many of you would really like to get and I feel bad just strolling in going 'tada look at me'. I don't really want my channel to become the topic of discussion so I'm not going to link it to it. I will say I was writing other guides (text + pic based) for a community and started using videos as supplementary material, but then other people started noticing (which surprised me). Also I'm not a AAA or indie or retro title, which most of you seem to jump to.

Issues/concerns:
  1. Continuing from the last sentence in the above paragraph, I'm not sure how much room there is to grow. I'm in a low volume area, but it is even lower competition which helped me get noticed, I assume. First off, will partners not like the 'niche' nature of my videos, despite my view count?
  2. What are Machinima's 'guidelines' for subscriber base/views per month? I haven't seen anyone quote hard numbers
  3. Are there other issues related to machinima other than the 'we will always own your content' language in the contract?
  4. What other partners should I be aware of for my size?
  5. How does my sudden growth look like from a partner point of view? I probably can't maintain same growth rate going on indefinitely but at the same time my sub count and total view count are limited to one month's accumulation.
  6. None of my videos were huge hits, which shouldn't be surprising given my niche postion, but all have 1,000-10,000 views. So i guess that shows stability/staying power.
  7. Do partners care that these high numbers are partially driven by lots of videos? I uploaded about 40 videos over the last month. I try to upload every morning.
  8. Do I lose a lot of the benefits partners offer by being niche? For example I highly doubt any have licensed my game.
  9. Overall, what is your general advice? Strike while the iron is hot? Wait a few months? Other? Depends on something else?
Finally, I did monetize with YT. Might be slow to respond. Got a busy schedule for the next two days. Also, if I get some good advice here, I'll come back later and talk about exactly what I did in detail and link to my channel.
 
Wanted to simply say congratulations, no real advice sorry. You're obviously leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of others, so I think you should just stay the course. I hope you get lots of useful feedback though, knowing YTT you will. I love it here and everyone has been more than gracious and helpful here!
 
to be honest there was no reason to remove your channel link, no one here would have judge you because you are doing successful and your not the first person to join and have a growing channel, we had people join the forums with 45,000 subs. there's nothing to be worry or ashamed about.

1. Partners will accept any video you upload as long as it is not copyrighted and the quality is good, sometimes some network partner channel even faster if they are doing videos on not so popular content.
2.the only number i ever heard for machinima and this was about a year an a half ago was 1k a day for views.(this most likely change)
3.the only thing i can think off is that they upload so many video to their hub channel that yours might get lost in all of them and not get crazy amounts of views, but beside that i dont know any major issue with the network.
4. here are all the popular network i know of: YEOUSCH, TGN, VEXON (<---this are mainly for gamers) then there is FullScreen, Social Blade which are general network that allow all kinds of content
5.they probably wont mind it, once you get in into a network the dont really care if you dont meet the requirements that they asked when you where first trying to join. (ex: requirement is 10 views a day and your getting 9, they wont really care)
6.no they dont care if the views are coming from many videos, at the end of the day as long as your meeting their requirement they will accept you.
7. I say go for it now that your channel is doing so good, who knows when its the next time you will get an opportunity like this one.
 
dylanmanincfanatic said:
Wanted to simply say congratulations, no real advice sorry. You're obviously leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of others, so I think you should just stay the course. I hope you get lots of useful feedback though, knowing YTT you will. I love it here and everyone has been more than gracious and helpful here!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response anyway, best of luck yourself.


eliteistoxic said:
to be honest there was no reason to remove your channel link

2.the only number i ever heard for machinima and this was about a year an a half ago was 1k a day for views.(this most likely change)
Click to expand...

Edited my first post to add numbers rather than bullet points, good idea.

I am a little surprised to hear the ballpark for machinima was that low, relatively speaking.

I'll look into those partners you mentioned

Also brand new account, just didn't link my YT and this account... Glad to hear that about the community though[DOUBLEPOST=1354677239,1354591108][/DOUBLEPOST]

BUMP/Update/New Questions time:

OK the more I look around the more partnership seems really, really, really lame. I would love to hear your justifications as to why so-and-so channel isn't, however.

Why Lame?

1) MONEY MONEY MONEY GRUBBING. The few CPM values I've learned about seem to be in a competition for "who can be the lowest" with Machinima doing a really good job of trying to stay 'ahead' in being the lowest of the low. More on this in paragraph later.

2) Shady practices: Over inflating benefits mostly (channel promotions) the 'huge' benifit of extra youtube 'features' (already got thumbnails, would like Shows but...) slow/missing payments (TGN rumored, a few others I've forgotten)

3) Not being particularly helpful... slow response time to support (Machinima, TGN, many others)

4) Literally no benefits? From some of what I've read it sounds like Partnerships don't actually have contracts with companies to 'publish' their game content? with the possible exception of a rare deal between Activision and Machinima? They all just take advantage of the 'loophole' in free rights usage that we all do with commentated footage (and no, depending on your interpretation it doesn't prevent profiting from this use).

OK CPM --- Seems like there are a lot of sources supporting the default machinima rate is a fixed $2 per 1k monetizable views. Also saw recent video that indicated 100k monthly views is a good minimum before asking for partnership. I did hear an ~$8 CPM for a SocialBlade guy (not video games) which was very surprising after hearing Machinima's rates. I guess I sort of expected some of this, but how wide-spread is just ridiculous. Also, I'm currently getting not far off of this with my current youtube partnership (it estimates CPM based on your CPC revenue)


Questions:

  1. What do your CPM rates do thru out the year? (both for people with youtube limited partnerships and for people partnered with different networks) Presumably this is time time of year for higher rates (black friday, Christmas, etc) PM me if you don't want to say publicly. And I know they change over time - just trying to get a ball park.
  2. Do I have the right read on #4 above?
  3. Any small networks I should look at that are actually decent people?
  4. I'm looking for info about the 'full' youtube partnership - generally what they're looking for, when other gamers have gotten it in the past and their views/monthly views/subs at the time
 
Don't worry about not focusing your videos on mainstream stuff. There's a viewers for every video out there and what matter most is if people watch your videos. Since they already do, the hard part is already out of the way.
We haven't messed with Machinima, but from what I've heard, they will take just about anyone now as long as you agree to their terms. For channels that don't get a lot of views, your revenue split will be on the low side-probably 60/40 with a 3 year contract.
I would check into Fullscreen and Maker. Both aren't gaming specific, but they both take on gamers and your revenue share based on percentage would probably be greater than 60/40. Don't worry about not having a standout video. That's actually a good thing. Studios want to see that you upload on a regular basis because that's one of the best ways to build a subscriber base.

Before you sign any partnership deal, ask yourself what they're actually doing for you and if they're worth the amount of money they're taking from you. If a studio can serve higher paying ads on our videos, that helps make up for any money they take. If they can't make up the percentage they take with the ads, they have to justify it thru other means whether it's promotion of our channel, taking an active role in helping us interpret the data and tweaking our videos/release schedule to get more subscribers and views, or by providing production assistance.



Issues/concerns:
  1. Continuing from the last sentence in the above paragraph, I'm not sure how much room there is to grow. I'm in a low volume area, but it is even lower competition which helped me get noticed, I assume. First off, will partners not like the 'niche' nature of my videos, despite my view count?
  2. What are Machinima's 'guidelines' for subscriber base/views per month? I haven't seen anyone quote hard numbers
  3. Are there other issues related to machinima other than the 'we will always own your content' language in the contract?
  4. What other partners should I be aware of for my size?
  5. How does my sudden growth look like from a partner point of view? I probably can't maintain same growth rate going on indefinitely but at the same time my sub count and total view count are limited to one month's accumulation.
  6. None of my videos were huge hits, which shouldn't be surprising given my niche postion, but all have 1,000-10,000 views. So i guess that shows stability/staying power.
  7. Do partners care that these high numbers are partially driven by lots of videos? I uploaded about 40 videos over the last month. I try to upload every morning.
  8. Do I lose a lot of the benefits partners offer by being niche? For example I highly doubt any have licensed my game.
  9. Overall, what is your general advice? Strike while the iron is hot? Wait a few months? Other? Depends on something else?
 
Wreckless Eating said:
Before you sign any partnership deal, ask yourself what they're actually doing for you and if they're worth the amount of money they're taking from you. If a studio can serve higher paying ads on our videos, that helps make up for any money they take. If they can't make up the percentage they take with the ads, they have to justify it thru other means whether it's promotion of our channel, taking an active role in helping us interpret the data and tweaking our videos/release schedule to get more subscribers and views, or by providing production assistance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I also posed a few more specific questions 3 messages above your reply in its own message (I've learned a lot over the last few days)...

Is it common for people to sacrifice revenue when they enter a partnership? I have a hard time seeing it, really...
 
Sir Derpington said:
Thanks for the advice. I also posed a few more specific questions 3 messages above your reply in its own message (I've learned a lot over the last few days)...

Is it common for people to sacrifice revenue when they enter a partnership? I have a hard time seeing it, really...
Click to expand...
Some people do it just because they want to have all them features for example with the network socialblade their split is 60/40 which in my opinion is a bad split, other networks offer better splits than that. but many people dont care since they have low requirements and thats what most new channel want, i feel more and more people dont want to put hard work into their videos they just want to create an account and be partner in weeks and thats how i see network like socialblade/Maker studios.
 
It's really common to sacrifice revenue in a partnership, but it's your choice to do it. If you already have a thriving channel that is generating income, there's no reason to sign over any money unless you're getting value in return.

In terms of what benefit you actually see from partnershps other than being able to monetize gaming videos, there's not that many. Don't expect them to set up collabs for you-you have to do that on your own. And aside from having access to an internal forum within the network, you're pretty much on your own.
 
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