Looking at Vlogging

Spurred by the ROTLD announcement I started considering monetizing my blogs. That means, for most of them, a new look and more frequent posting. I started by looking at a few Romanian blogs and even considered vlogging or video blogging.

Firstly, I was curious if there still are bloggers in the .ro space that are worth reading and possibly use Blogger / Blogspot. Apart from Tudor Chirila (a celebrity / rocker) who didn’t even bother getting his own domain name but hired a firm to design his blog (and back when they did it, it was a good job) and Iren with her “zen blog”, there is actually someone who, though less popular, has a surprisingly well-maintained blog: Bogdan Epure aka Nihasa (nihasa-17).

Bogdan has a template from ThemeExpose and it’s so interesting, I might have a look at it myself. The theme comes with a fully implemented choice of Facebook, Disqus and Blogger commenting, and even though the credits at the bottom suggest he didn’t bother paying for it and as a result it probably loads slower than it has to, it’s still responsive.

As it happens, Cracked (crak-yut) also has a rather interesting look at 5 downsides of YouTube Stardom:

1. Child Vloggers – not me
2. Much more than filming – yep, quite time-consuming and involved (especially editing/post-processing, and community engagement); “Clickbait titles, catchy thumbnails, and shareable content are necessary if this is something you want to do as a job. But not everyone wants that.” 
3. Only the stars at the top make a fortune, the rest are scrapping by (see fusion-famous)
4. Facebook will steal your videos – freebooting (maybe you should post to both, automatically)
5. YouTube will often ban your content – “you’re at their mercy” as Cracked puts it. Around Sept 1, they started more aggressively “demonetizing” videos that are not “advertiser-friendly”

When I first posted video creations on YouTube, I started getting videos banned for having used some popular (or unknown, but still unlicensed) song in the background. I learned the hard way that fair use means nothing on YouTube. Since then, I’ve learned about many others who have had their videos deleted for spurious reasons.

Making money with YouTube is hard work. But I think it’s worth trying if you feel you have something to say and you don’t necessarily expect to get rich with it.

Sources / More info: crak-yut, nihasa-17, te-olivia, tudorchirila, iren, http://amzn.to/2jmbVdj, te-olivia, fusion-famous, vrg-demonetize, ta-ytvoice

BlogIdol.ro, vlog, vlogging, youtube, censorship, popularity (Tags)