I am re-posting this here since I thing the likelihood of getting a response on the YT forums may be dubious given the rather meager activity I see in responses there. This is actually a big post composed of 3 separate posts, and is a bit uncoordinated in its articulation (sorry, ADD), but it is born out of months of frustration trying to find out the answers to these questions, and some of it is just wanting to get a few things off my chest.
So without further delay, here is the post:
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I have spend DOZENS of hours trying to get an answer to this question. How EXACTLY is monetization of my Channel supposed to increase views / traffic / audience to my videos and channel?
I have seen forums that comment that it doesn't help at all.
I CERTAINLY will NOT be creating or adding an AdSense account given the NUMEROUS horror stories of people being shut down due to "unusual click activity", especially if someone out there doesn't like your video and decides they want to play god and get your channel canceled! It is hardly worth it...there is no VALUE PROPOSTION there at 12 cents per 1k views...I would have earned 20 cents in since I created my YT channel 4 months ago. Given the risk, there is negligible reward to THAT!
However, if monetizing my Channel / select videos increases YT's incentive to list and promote my videos (and perhaps some show up on Google searches as many should given the SEO effort I have put in), then at least Monetizing the channel could be worth it ... even though YT would keep all the money (no AdSense remember).
Hopefully having no AdSense would help immunize me against trolls trying to take me down or whatever...hell, I am even afraid of accidentally clicking on an ad myself (sometimes I have noticed buggy behavior when trying to use IE's 'back button' to reverse out of one of my videos).
In any event, I hope someone can FINALLY answer this question as to rather it is worth it to monetize my channel to attempt to get more views, etc.
I know that common sense would suggest that monetization would give YT incentive to actually promote your vids/channel, but that is an assumption...I want the facts.
Has anybody saw a large upswing from monetization (especially if they have a new channel with not so many views)?
Does monetization help in your opinion?
By the way, I have a good 50 videos on my Channel, many are on subjects that really SHOULD see a lot of views (like 3D Printing and Neodymium Magnets and LED technology), but they all seem to putter out after a few views and don't seem to show up in YT searches. I only have ONE mildly successful video (the first I ever published to christen the channel) on 3D printing (>1500 views), but that was a fluke apparently...cannot duplicate it.
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Since I cant figure out how to edit my post, I will just say this here.
Geese, the number of views and posts on these forums reminds me of the number of views on my YouTube channel!
I hope somebody can help me.
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Also, another concern I have had (after another several hours of research), is that the video quality on many if not most of my videos isn't the greatest. Given the nature of my videos, I am MUCH more concerned with providing my viewers THOUROUGH coverage of a topic (with a few asides while I am at it), than the overall production-value of my videos.
Will that affect my ability to monetize a given video? If so, monetization may be a waste of time since it isn't either practical or in many cases even POSSIBLE to reshoot all those 50 videos, even if I could afford some high-dollar camera.
Since there still may be bad consequences to monetization (even with NO AdSense account)...and you cannot undo it, I would rather be safe than sorry.
I have stressed out over this issue for the last 3 months, so any help would be appreciated since you cannot just ASK YT or Google.
For crying out loud, I thought companies were moving AWAY from insular policies like that in the social media age (being inaccessible to their customers)...I guess not in this case.
That is one of the reasons this whole monetization thing makes me SO nervous!!! Nobody in authority to communicate with if you have concerns, or if they decide to take action against you.
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It isn't really appropriate for me to put this here...but when I am on my soap box I cant help it. I need to figure out how to get a blog or something!
I see YouTube not just as a source for entertainment, but as a sort of "Library of Alexandria" of human knowledge and knowhow from every-day people. That is where it has been of the greatest use to me. I mean, all of the tech and how-to videos are FINALLY and TRULY fulfilling the original promise of the internet after ALL these years...at hand and freely accessible knowledge on any topic you can think of...that, not entertainment, is the real miracle here!!!
I just learned in YT's help areas that your channel will vanish after 6 months (of inactivity) if you get hit by a bus! So much for that legacy or idealistic way of viewing YouTube!
