Fourth year is a busy time and second semester can be especially stressful as coursework is being finished up and there’s more pressure to get the work done. For some reason stressful events tend to bunch up at the same time and right now is no exception.
I’ve been part of the Machinima Entertainment Network for a few years now, which means my channel is managed by Machinima and they pay me a revenue share from advertisements displayed against my videos. YouTube has a large number of networks and a large number of channels associated with those networks. When I was initially invited to the Machinima network they were just starting out with expanding to partnering with other channels. When I received an invitation I thought it was a mistake as Machinima were only associated with big people often focused on gaming. They explained they were now reaching out to other channels with different content to increase the profitability of their network. From my understanding, for a YouTube network to be worth running, you need a lot of partners to make it worth it. YouTube networks were great for protection from YouTube’s less than perfect copyright striking system and having someone to reach out to for support was a good benefit. It also opened up the opportunity for collaborations with other content creators and to promote content through Machinima’s channels. Today, there are an enormous amount of networks and I frequently receive offers from startup networks. Today they no longer offer the same benefits such as copyright strike protection and customer support from many networks is difficult to deal with.
Machinima were revising their contracts in November of last year and they offered me a pretty good deal. However I wasn’t as enthusiastic about networks as I was before as they no longer offer the same benefits as they used to. These days everyone is in a network and I wasn’t as bothered about being in one anymore. I reached out to Machinima with some general questions about the contract but they didn’t reply. I figured it wasn’t really worth being in a network so I wasn’t too bothered about signing. They never unliked my channel so I kind of just ignored it while my channel was in limbo.
However I’ve been making an effort to restart my YouTube channel by uploading new content and I have a video I’ve been working on for a while in the works. I have considered other YouTube networks or going it along and the opportunity presented itself this week when Machinima finally unlinked my channel (without a notification though). While I planned on contacting them eventually this was one less thing I had to do.
Revenue sharing on YouTube is pretty great. By choosing to display advertisements next to your videos, every view or interaction builds up and you can earn money. Obviously more views equals more money and my channel has a decent amount of views for some reason. When I first created animations for YouTube I never imagined it would even be a possible career option. When I got accepted into the exclusive YouTube Partnership Program in 2008 it was a great opportunity to earn a little bit of money. As a kid, it was great and it helped to fund future videos. During my time at university its been enough to keep my afloat in addition to other funding (SAAS, parents, etc.). Machinima dealt with payments through their system but as I was no longer partnered with them I had to set up my channel with Google AdSense again like it was when I was a standard YouTube Partner.
As my AdSense account has been inactive for some time, I ran into a couple of problems when trying to re-associate it with my channel again but after a day of teething problems I’m all set up again. I’m now motivated to continue on with my animation that I am creating for the channel which is a Lego re-creation of the Batman v Superman trailer which I have previously discussed on this blog. My goal is to complete it soon in order to restart my YouTube channel with new content.