- Joined
- Mar 15, 2016
- Messages
- 156
- Reaction score
- 65
- Age
- 30
- Location
- Philadelphia
- Channel Type
- Youtuber
My latest video got 3x as many views as my current top video and I gained 300% subscribers (from 170, to 530!). I received A TON of extremely positive comments, an incredible amount of support and praise for this video. Better than that, NO negative comments or feedback at all. Incredible response. Some of the most amazing compliments I have ever received in my entire life, and that is not sugar coating it.
My videos take a long time to produce. I make one video every three weeks, they all take hours and hours of work due to my editing and animation which I believe is crucial to my channel and brand. I was running behind last week and was up til 2am on a Sunday night editing, with work following the next morning and the video was already three days late. I finished and submitted my video to my sponsor for review. To my surprise, the next morning my sponsor had already emailed me back (wow, that response time) approving the video.
Quick side note, I am INSANELY lucky to have a sponsor. I am generously paid in respect to the gamble my sponsor took on me. I convinced a sponsor to invest in my channel after only 3 videos and got a TEN VIDEO DEAL. This is a fantastic arrangement for me as it adds validity to my work, it keeps me on schedule, it trains my audience to expect sponsorships, and gives me material to show future sponsors in the future. If anyone needs advice/help obtaining sponsors, feel free to message me. My previous job was in sales where I contacted major companies like LA Fitness, Michaels Craft Stores, Large restaurant chains, and more..., and got contracts over the phone and in-person conferences. There's a talk to talk, and if you speak it, money will come.
Back to the main story,
Before I left for work in the morning, I published the video and submitted it to Reddit to the /r/WebDev subreddit (I make web design tutorials). I had been texting my girlfriend and mentioned how if I was able to get about 8 upvotes, it should reach the first page of the subreddit (from previous experience). As the day started, it hovered around that 8 number, which was ok and did get it visible to the front page. From there, it EXPLODED! While at work I was receiving notifications from my reddit app from comments as I watched the upvotes grow all the way to 395 upvotes, placing it at the top of the page for the entire day, with the next post only having 85 upvotes.
Around 7:00pm that day I received one last message stating that my account was banned from /r/WebDev for "self-promotion". This was SOUL crushing. Not only because my video was extremely well received by the community, but also because I am a frequent member of that subreddit and I comment often. It really ruined my day, even after my video had gained over 3,000 views in a day from a channel that just that morning had less than 200 subscribers.
I pm's the mod team and pleaded my case, the rules stated "excessive, self-promotion" was against the rules, which I do not at all believe I did. I ended up PMing multiple Reddit users who commented on the original post and asked them if they wouldn't mind messaging the moderators of the subreddit to let them know that they appreciated the video and did not agree with their decision. The next day I received a message from the mods apologizing and reinstating my account AND the post which had another stint of popularity after that.
The mods did kind of leave it vague on what is self-promotion (since every single post in that sub is generally a video or article created by a Redditor) but hopefully, this is less of a problem in the future.
It was a crazy 24 hour period in total of constant, non-stop phone and computer checking.
Finally, the video for anyone curious.
EDIT: And here is the reddit thread that was originally removed and then re-instated so you can see the comments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6i5t6c/flexbox_in_10_minutes/
My videos take a long time to produce. I make one video every three weeks, they all take hours and hours of work due to my editing and animation which I believe is crucial to my channel and brand. I was running behind last week and was up til 2am on a Sunday night editing, with work following the next morning and the video was already three days late. I finished and submitted my video to my sponsor for review. To my surprise, the next morning my sponsor had already emailed me back (wow, that response time) approving the video.
Quick side note, I am INSANELY lucky to have a sponsor. I am generously paid in respect to the gamble my sponsor took on me. I convinced a sponsor to invest in my channel after only 3 videos and got a TEN VIDEO DEAL. This is a fantastic arrangement for me as it adds validity to my work, it keeps me on schedule, it trains my audience to expect sponsorships, and gives me material to show future sponsors in the future. If anyone needs advice/help obtaining sponsors, feel free to message me. My previous job was in sales where I contacted major companies like LA Fitness, Michaels Craft Stores, Large restaurant chains, and more..., and got contracts over the phone and in-person conferences. There's a talk to talk, and if you speak it, money will come.
Back to the main story,
Before I left for work in the morning, I published the video and submitted it to Reddit to the /r/WebDev subreddit (I make web design tutorials). I had been texting my girlfriend and mentioned how if I was able to get about 8 upvotes, it should reach the first page of the subreddit (from previous experience). As the day started, it hovered around that 8 number, which was ok and did get it visible to the front page. From there, it EXPLODED! While at work I was receiving notifications from my reddit app from comments as I watched the upvotes grow all the way to 395 upvotes, placing it at the top of the page for the entire day, with the next post only having 85 upvotes.
Around 7:00pm that day I received one last message stating that my account was banned from /r/WebDev for "self-promotion". This was SOUL crushing. Not only because my video was extremely well received by the community, but also because I am a frequent member of that subreddit and I comment often. It really ruined my day, even after my video had gained over 3,000 views in a day from a channel that just that morning had less than 200 subscribers.
I pm's the mod team and pleaded my case, the rules stated "excessive, self-promotion" was against the rules, which I do not at all believe I did. I ended up PMing multiple Reddit users who commented on the original post and asked them if they wouldn't mind messaging the moderators of the subreddit to let them know that they appreciated the video and did not agree with their decision. The next day I received a message from the mods apologizing and reinstating my account AND the post which had another stint of popularity after that.
The mods did kind of leave it vague on what is self-promotion (since every single post in that sub is generally a video or article created by a Redditor) but hopefully, this is less of a problem in the future.
It was a crazy 24 hour period in total of constant, non-stop phone and computer checking.
Finally, the video for anyone curious.
EDIT: And here is the reddit thread that was originally removed and then re-instated so you can see the comments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6i5t6c/flexbox_in_10_minutes/
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