CDS (Studio71)

[Clam-]

Hello everyone. Normally I share my experience and offer advice, but this time I'm in need of assistance myself.

So yeah, I'm in bit of a dilemma here and would appreciate any suggestions, advices and other comments on this matter. Our contract with BBTV ends on March 26th and we have 12 days left to decide whether we're staying with them for another year or parting ways. We're currently on a 100-0% $6 RPM threshold deal and have basically kept every cent we've earned in the last 11 months, however we've received no additional sales and no sponsorship deals (although this is also our fault simply due to content uploaded - I'll write more about this in next paragraph). Overall support from our channel manager has been pretty good, he gave us a lot of tips how to improve SEO and get more out of our videos, but ultimately we figured the best stuff on our own after experimenting with a lot of different combinations. Their dashboard looks fancy, but it's nothing spectacular and I haven't used it much because I have all I need on YouTube. Audio library is nice, but we're paying for Monstercat license anyway and haven't needed it much so far anyway.

Anyway, to touch on content we upload. It's produced by Riot Games, creators of League of Legends and is broadcasted on their own channels which we upload ourselves, just way faster making it accessible to thousands of fans all over the world shortly after each game ends (although Riot stepped up and has been uploading them way quicker this year compared to last year or 2014). They're perfectly fine with anyone uploading their content and monetizing it, as long as it's not behind a paywall (free to view to everyone), but we don't have a written permission for this, just some emails where they say they're OK with it as well as their 'Legal Jibber Jabber'. So yeah, in terms of copyright, we're fine because they're fine with it. However, we don't want to be known as just VODs uploader, we want to do more! We started doing some of our own montages, such as "Top 10 Teamfights" and teams Minitages and we want to do even more of these, hopefully later this year we'll have 3 different series created on weekly basis. I guess it's worth mentioning we are already creating something similar for two other channels. We'll be also recruiting additional content creators, people who can do voice overs, write scripts, provide music and so on and basically, take this thing to a whole new level (not sure if I'm allowed to do that here, so if I'm not, please edit this out, but if there's anyone interested, feel free to send me a message and we can discuss this further).

Anyway, that's where Studio71, formerly known as CDS (Collective Digital Studio) comes into play. I personally believe that they have the expertise and knowledge necessary to help us make all of the above mentioned stuff happen. They work with a lot of great content creators, are directly or indirectly involved with production of several TV shows and basically know what advertisers are looking for. On top of all that, they're not one of those networks with thousands of channels and completely ignoring smaller ones and since they just recently branched out into gaming and only have a handful of gaming channels, this seems like a great opportunity. We would still continue doing VODs for as long as we're allowed, which would be our main source of income from which we could pay content creators and everyone else involved with channel a fair amount for their work.

So if you were in our shoes, what would you do? I've had a meeting with Studio71 today, everything sounds great, but I'm still not sure what deal we'll get on the table - it's definitely going to be standard revenue share and either one or two years long (I would assume 70-30 for 1 year and 70-20 for 2 year deal). Either way, we'd be giving up on a LOT of money and I'm not sure if we can actually utilize their services enough to get it back and well, gain more from it. Has anyone been in this network before or possibly still is? Have you heard about it somewhere? I've been doing my research, but I still feel like maybe there could be someone who could help me make this decision easier.

 

[CousinEd]

So if you were in our shoes, what would you do? I've had a meeting with Studio71 today, everything sounds great, but I'm still not sure what deal we'll get on the table - it's definitely going to be standard revenue share and either one or two years long (I would assume 70-30 for 1 year and 70-20 for 2 year deal).

We can't provide advice if we don't know the small details. But by what I can see, your channel is doing great and I see no reason why they should take 70-30 or even 80-20 cut. THEY should be honored to have a channel your size under their wing, not the other way around. If I was you, I would keep the 100% and use the money to hire additional help.
I also wanted to ask you, are you from Germany?

 

[Clam-]

We can't provide advice if we don't know the small details. But by what I can see, your channel is doing great and I see no reason why they should take 70-30 or even 80-20 cut. THEY should be honored to have a channel your size under their wing, not the other way around. If I was you, I would keep the 100% and use the money to hire additional help.
I also wanted to ask you, are you from Germany?

Sadly, I don't know what the deal might look like either, those percentage shares are just my assumption - should have more details by Tue-Wed next week.

The problem is, this network normally has only big channels and their average is 3.2M views per channel per month, while all others don't come even close to that (I don't think any bigger network even surpasses 500k) which is huge for advertisers. So to them (the network), we're not as important since they already have big revenue makers, but since they just recently kicked it off with gaming channels and after I told them all about our plans, they were very interested. Like, if we approached some new network with only a handful of channels, then they may be honored if we joined, but CDS probably doesn't look at us in that way.

Basically, the question is: will we get enough from them in return for 20-30% of our revenue (if it's 90-10, then it might be a whole lot easier to make sure decision). And sorry, no, I'm from Croatia.

 

[Sebas]

Hello everyone. Normally I share my experience and offer advice, but this time I'm in need of assistance myself.

So yeah, I'm in bit of a dilemma here and would appreciate any suggestions, advices and other comments on this matter. Our contract with BBTV ends on March 26th and we have 12 days left to decide whether we're staying with them for another year or parting ways. We're currently on a 100-0% $6 RPM threshold deal and have basically kept every cent we've earned in the last 11 months, however we've received no additional sales and no sponsorship deals (although this is also our fault simply due to content uploaded - I'll write more about this in next paragraph). Overall support from our channel manager has been pretty good, he gave us a lot of tips how to improve SEO and get more out of our videos, but ultimately we figured the best stuff on our own after experimenting with a lot of different combinations. Their dashboard looks fancy, but it's nothing spectacular and I haven't used it much because I have all I need on YouTube. Audio library is nice, but we're paying for Monstercat license anyway and haven't needed it much so far anyway.

Anyway, to touch on content we upload. It's produced by Riot Games, creators of League of Legends and is broadcasted on their own channels which we upload ourselves, just way faster making it accessible to thousands of fans all over the world shortly after each game ends (although Riot stepped up and has been uploading them way quicker this year compared to last year or 2014). They're perfectly fine with anyone uploading their content and monetizing it, as long as it's not behind a paywall (free to view to everyone), but we don't have a written permission for this, just some emails where they say they're OK with it as well as their 'Legal Jibber Jabber'. So yeah, in terms of copyright, we're fine because they're fine with it. However, we don't want to be known as just VODs uploader, we want to do more! We started doing some of our own montages, such as "Top 10 Teamfights" and teams Minitages and we want to do even more of these, hopefully later this year we'll have 3 different series created on weekly basis. I guess it's worth mentioning we are already creating something similar for two other channels. We'll be also recruiting additional content creators, people who can do voice overs, write scripts, provide music and so on and basically, take this thing to a whole new level (not sure if I'm allowed to do that here, so if I'm not, please edit this out, but if there's anyone interested, feel free to send me a message and we can discuss this further).

Anyway, that's where Studio71, formerly known as CDS (Collective Digital Studio) comes into play. I personally believe that they have the expertise and knowledge necessary to help us make all of the above mentioned stuff happen. They work with a lot of great content creators, are directly or indirectly involved with production of several TV shows and basically know what advertisers are looking for. On top of all that, they're not one of those networks with thousands of channels and completely ignoring smaller ones and since they just recently branched out into gaming and only have a handful of gaming channels, this seems like a great opportunity. We would still continue doing VODs for as long as we're allowed, which would be our main source of income from which we could pay content creators and everyone else involved with channel a fair amount for their work.

So if you were in our shoes, what would you do? I've had a meeting with Studio71 today, everything sounds great, but I'm still not sure what deal we'll get on the table - it's definitely going to be standard revenue share and either one or two years long (I would assume 70-30 for 1 year and 70-20 for 2 year deal). Either way, we'd be giving up on a LOT of money and I'm not sure if we can actually utilize their services enough to get it back and well, gain more from it. Has anyone been in this network before or possibly still is? Have you heard about it somewhere? I've been doing my research, but I still feel like maybe there could be someone who could help me make this decision easier.

I HIGHLY suggest sticking with BBTV if your contract is indeed 100% rev share. Studio71/CDS does not have a good rep for small/medium-sized channels like yours, especially for gaming-related channels. The 30% they'd be taking would not be worth it for what they'd provide you with. I'd recommend either finding a talent agency to pair yourselves with, or trying to find deals yourself. At your size, you shouldn't expect a network to consistently provide you with decent revenue opportunities outside of YT.

 

[CubizFIFA]

What is an RPM Threshold?

 

[Shane]

I HIGHLY suggest sticking with BBTV if your contract is indeed 100% rev share. Studio71/CDS does not have a good rep for small/medium-sized channels like yours, especially for gaming-related channels. The 30% they'd be taking would not be worth it for what they'd provide you with. I'd recommend either finding a talent agency to pair yourselves with, or trying to find deals yourself. At your size, you shouldn't expect a network to consistently provide you with decent revenue opportunities outside of YT.

I agree with this, from channels I've talked with in the 50k-500k subscribers range, they tend to offer "global expansion", "production help" etc but that does not seem to happen and seems unlikely to even have a chance of happening unless you're based in their home town of LA or close by.

BBTV are going crazy lately with "buying" channels into 1-2 year contracts, not just 100% agreements (whether that be a quota or 100% YouTube sales and 60-80% of BBTV sales) but 100% agreements and sign-on bonuses in the 5-6 figure range for channels that are not even huge.. (Seems to be so they can get alot of channels in the door and them aim to either impress them or sell the company on but it also seems to be working, they are the fastest growing MCN even if they're throwing money away in the short-run).
So my advise is when negotiating with BBTV, bring up a re-sign bonus into the conversation

 

[Clam-]

Well that's a bummer. Thanks for your insights guys, appreciate it a lot.

Offer we've got is way better than what I originally expected. Why is it so hard to find a network that's interested to work with a channel on a lot of new exciting content that has a great potential of going viral, we even got a bunch of stuff written down, worked out and ready to hit the production within a few weeks, but getting a proper insight from networks manager or someone who knows YouTube well enough and could figure out what's missing or what should be done in a different way would be huge.

Problem with BBTV is that we haven't seen any additional sales done on our channel and it kind of makes sense since we are one of the smaller channels in the network when you compare them to hundreds of others they got (and that's the only excuse for them I can think of, our demographics are pretty good I'd say, mostly US followed by Germany, UK and Canada). Despite YouTube Red being great for us at the moment, we can't just rely on AdSense, so I was hoping that'd be a great addition to our revenue - Studio71 brought it up (like any other network) and right away said they can't guarantee it, heh.

But if I learned something from two+ years on YouTube so far, if you're not actually communicating with your channel manager(s) and actually using them, nobody is going to take care of you. We had a great connection with Mark from Creative Nation and pretty good conversations with Jason from BBTV, but most of partner managers just have too many channels they're working with and can't properly focus on a selected few and get more out of them. This is why I'm also normally hesitant to trust random reviewers because they give little to no insight how often they tried to contact person assigned to them and how much did he/she actually help them.

This sucks, I guess I was really hoping someone would step forward and say a few good things about them, which would make our decision a whole lot easier. Not to take anything away from your comments, they're great!

 

[Sebas]

Well that's a bummer. Thanks for your insights guys, appreciate it a lot.

Offer we've got is way better than what I originally expected (something along the lines of 90-10%, but for two years). Why is it so hard to find a network that's interested to work with a channel on a lot of new exciting content that has a great potential of going viral, we even got a bunch of stuff written down, worked out and ready to hit the production within a few weeks, but getting a proper insight from networks manager or someone who knows YouTube well enough and could figure out what's missing or what should be done in a different way would be huge.

Problem with BBTV is that we haven't seen any additional sales done on our channel and it kind of makes sense since we are one of the smaller channels in the network when you compare them to hundreds of others they got (and that's the only excuse for them I can think of, our demographics are pretty good I'd say, mostly US followed by Germany, UK and Canada). Despite YouTube Red being great for us at the moment, we can't just rely on AdSense, so I was hoping that'd be a great addition to our revenue - Studio71 brought it up (like any other network) and right away said they can't guarantee it, heh.

But if I learned something from two+ years on YouTube so far, if you're not actually communicating with your channel manager(s) and actually using them, nobody is going to take care of you. We had a great connection with Mark from Creative Nation and pretty good conversations with Jason from BBTV, but most of partner managers just have too many channels they're working with and can't properly focus on a selected few and get more out of them. This is why I'm also normally hesitant to trust random reviewers because they give little to no insight how often they tried to contact person assigned to them and how much did he/she actually help them.

This sucks, I guess I was really hoping someone would step forward and say a few good things about them, which would make our decision a whole lot easier. Not to take anything away from your comments, they're great!

What exactly are you looking for from a network, and what are the sales you have in mind?

 

[Clam-]

What exactly are you looking for from a network, and what are the sales you have in mind?

I'd say most important thing would be communication & guidance. We've done bunch of montages across several channels, whether for our own channels or for someone else and we'd like to get some proper feedback from someone who understand the industry (both gaming and YouTube). What can we do better, what should we do differently, what are we missing in videos are just some of the things we can't really always get from random viewers.

We're not expecting anyone to produce content for us and luckily, we have a huge archive of VODs from past events and can use most of the footage freely. But getting help, possibly getting us in touch with someone good who can work with us and create intro, outro and/or channel trailer would be amazing. It's probably not too difficult to find someone like that ourselves, but a network should either have their own video creator versatile in various effects or know someone for who they can vouch and who we could explain what we'd like and even pay him - doesn't have to be free if such creator is not employed/contracted by the network, not a problem.

When it comes to revenue share, we don't mind giving up for a small cut if we'll actually get something in return. Mind you, just 10% from our channel could possibly be up to <redacted>, let alone bigger percentage. Most networks have access to same or similar audio libraries so that's a standard thing, but it would be even better if the network was partnered with some musicians who we could work with as well, either advertise them or pay for sound tracks - but this is not a must-have/must-offer, this is just additional bonus for the network. Dashboards are nice, but they've never been really useful to us and we have TubeBuddy Star level access anyway, so when it comes to video optimization or anything similar, we don't even need a dashboard (like VISO Catalyst) for that. But what I'm very interested in are additional ads sales, something we used to have in Creative Nation back in the day and it was a nice boost to our standard AdSense revenue. especially when we were much smaller. Not even talking about sponsorships here, but if a network has ad sales team (and I'm starting to believe only a handful of them really have them, despite the advertising of such), that shouldn't be a problem - and this can come in handy when CPM is low at times throughout the year.

That pretty much sums it up, sorry for a long comment again!

 

[Sebas]

That pretty much sums it up, sorry for a long comment again!

That's a really good response, thanks a lot for sharing. At this point, I don't think many networks would be able to satisfy all of your criteria. Studio71 certainly not, and other major MCNs neither. You're likely better off by sticking with BBTV & using that $500 yourself for your intro/outro/..., music licensing, etc. You might be able to find someone willing to act as an agent/management for you, but I'm not sure who to recommend for a channel like yours.
Just an fyi: If you're in BBTV and on 100%, then they definitely should be offering you premium ad sales. Else, they're not making money.