voluntaryistmitch Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I know Stef has talked about this quite, and I believe he has good reasons for a 100% donation-based model. However, I still believe that the best way to grow the show is to simply enable ads on YouTube and thus I will bring this up once again. FDR is forecast to have 52.5 million views over the next year. This translates into $75-179k in YouTube revenue (http://youtubemoney.co/). Stef does not have to actively promote any product or service, and there will be no interruptions during videos like Stef has mentioned before as a reason to not use advertising. All that would happen is that some videos have short ads that can be skipped at the beginning, and there will be small pop ups on videos. This is extremely widespread on YouTube and widely accepted so I don't think people will find it to be a big nuisance. Any lost traffic from these minor nuisances would be more than offset by the increased reach FDR could have from an additional $100k/year put into growing the show. Stef could hire an additional person or two, could advertise his show elsewhere, or any number of things with this additional revenue. So, I'd love to hear some good rationale for why this massive revenue stream should continue to ignored year after year. I completely understand why Stef wouldn't want to do "live reads" for sponsors or anything like that, but this is extremely passive advertising with which Stef does not have to be affiliated with. Other sources for calculating YouTube revenue: http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/stefbot http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/032615/how-youtube-ad-revenue-works.asp 1 1
RationalPenguin Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 I don't know exactly when or where, but I believe Stefan said that he prefers being paid for bringing philosophy to his audience to being paid for bringing an audience to advertisers. And also that he wouldn't want to be dependent on advertisers. 2
voluntaryistmitch Posted November 26, 2015 Author Posted November 26, 2015 They aren't mutually exclusive. He could do both. This would just be an additional revenue stream. And it isn't like he is bringing an audience to specific advertisers that he contracts with. It is just whatever YouTube serves up. 1 1
Will Torbald Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 If he wanted more money, he would have done it a long time ago. I think he's just trying to prove a point by being exclusively based on donations. Since he advocates that in a free society only voluntary charity would be allowed, he is giving an example of how people can support each other without force.
Koroviev Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 Nah, I don't think it's about proving a point. It's about the ability to say whatever he wants. How is he supposed to a show on the truth about ______ (insert "crazy murderer," suicidal maniac, etc.) and talk about the effects of SSRI's on that persons life following an ad for xanax? How could he do a show about the false "science" behind AGW that gets interrupted by Bill Nye the climate guy talking about the 7 stages of climate denial? Also, what demographic is he supposed to be selling? What happens if he becomes dependent on ad revenue because donations drop and then one of the advertisers decide to drop? Would it have the same effect if one of Stef's speeches was interrupted by an ad? No, the value for value model allows for the freedom to do shows that your audience wants to see. NOT what makes the most ad sense. It's the difference between Stef creating a great product for you and you being Stef's product for the advertisers. 1
SamuelS Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 They aren't mutually exclusive. He could do both. This would just be an additional revenue stream. And it isn't like he is bringing an audience to specific advertisers that he contracts with. It is just whatever YouTube serves up. Picture this: he starts up ads, everything is going great, bringing in $10k/month...then, over time, nobody wants to have their ads on his channel. What happens then? Lose that revenue stream or change the message to bring it back in order to keep up w the new bills that'll surely be generated...there's no winning in that scenario. Now, its not certain to happen, but it's certainly not going to happen without the ads. Why invite the possibility? 1
J. D. Stembal Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 The OP has a very good point, but I wonder if the Google advertisement model is suited to the content in question. What products would a philosophy channel sell? For many months now, I've been attempting to sell the importance of fitness, wellness and nutrition to the community with the ultimate goal to bring rationality and science to health, and most importantly, remove state interference from health care, thus making universal health care obsolete. If less philosophically-minded folks are getting sick, the community, as a whole, will have more capital to donate to the cause of promoting philosophy, and FDR will benefit. Has anyone looked at the cost of health insurance lately? I have not, because I don't buy it. On Peter Schiff's video yesterday, he briefly mentioned that premiums are going up 10-20% year over year, which are not calculated into the government's CPI numbers. 1 1
ResidingOnEarth Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 If he wanted more money, he would have done it a long time ago. I think he's just trying to prove a point by being exclusively based on donations. Since he advocates that in a free society only voluntary charity would be allowed, he is giving an example of how people can support each other without force. Youtube serving ads, Youtube channels choosing to enable those adverts and you watching a Youtube video with those adverts are all voluntary interactions. Youtube servers belong to Google and Google does not force you to use them. Like-wise Youtube Channel creators are not forced to post content onto Youtube. So use of ads on Youtube is an example of how people can support each other without using force. Stefan has given some very specific reasons why he has chosen not to use advertising: I want to stay focused on you. I want to stay focused on what's most important to you, what's most relevant, what's most powerful, what's the greatest use that philosophy can be put to, in your life. If I took advertisers, I would inevitably be distracted by the needs of advertisers, which may not coincide with the needs of you source: Why Advertising Corrupts 1
Kevin Beal Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 If the goal were to make money, then that would be a good solution. Where do you want your incentives to be? In a romantic or friend relationship, I want the incentives to be set up such that being authentically myself profits me. With insurance, I want the prevention of whatever I'm insuring to be incentivised, so that there is less damage done to my life, my property, etc. If the way that Stef et al get funded is by providing enough value to people that they enthusiastically send them support, and that's exactly what they want, to be as relevant and impactful as people want and need, then that's where there incentives should be. And if you introduce a whole bunch of money coming in from annoying ads that most people hate, people won't donate as much, since they are annoyed, or they don't think it's needed (because you have all this other revenue). You say it's not mutually exclusive and that you can do both, but I don't think you've thought it through. Of course it's mutually exclusive. The fact that they work for and require voluntary contributions from listeners in order to pay the bills is exactly the point. If they don't have to care as much about it because they're getting ad revenue, then that's at the expense of that first incentive. At least, that's what would make sense to me. I won't speak for their actual motivations. 4
shirgall Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 The goal is to provide value for value. Ads would make me less likely to visit, and less likely to subscribe.
David Ottinger Posted November 26, 2015 Posted November 26, 2015 Being 100% dependent on viewer donations allows Stefan to have a metric for evaluating the market's demands. If Stefan accepts advertisement money, then he doesn't have to be as committed. If you accept that there has been a form of epistemological conquest carried out by the powers-that-be (e.g. public school indoctrination, media, etc), then what we have here with FDR is a market driven, i.e. 100% voluntary driven, push back against the statist dogma, propaganda, and narrative. The following analogy is going to be rather ironic, but it's tapping into the same "do or die" principle: By going 100% viewer funded, it's like the story of military commanders sinking their own ships so there is no retreat; no surrender. Your only option is to push forward. 2
ProfessionalTeabagger Posted November 27, 2015 Posted November 27, 2015 There's been a recent controversy on you tube about certain channels being side-lined and other non-controversial channels being promoted to the top. This is something of a vindication of FDR's no-ad policy. If Stef had taken some people's advice and just used ads then FDR would be in a more precarious position. He would not have cultivated a culture of donation and so would be far more dependent on not pissing off advertisers. When you want to speak truth to power that's not a good position to be in. Also, what if Ad policies change and you tube requests ads be used every 20 minutes. Imagine stopping a serious discussion on parental abuse or an amazing rant to watch an ad for Call of Duty 16. How obnoxious would that be? The money is the only good reason to have ads but even that would be less because most people would no longer donate.
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