The Couple's Table
The Couple’s Table is a weekly livestream podcast hosted by Heather Ramirez and Tom Buck. Join us, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall podcast and stuff!
The Couple's Table
Online Communities and Memberships - Patreon vs YouTube
Join us for this episode where the magic of online communities and memberships takes center stage. Tom shares his experience of using both Patreon and YouTube Memberships. Discover how these connections in the digital age can be profoundly enriching. Pull up a chair, get comfy, and join us as we chat about building a thriving community while managing the occasional audio mishap along the way.
🟣 CONNECT WITH HEATHER —
My Vlog Channel: http://www.youtube.com/heatherjustcreate
My Tutorial Channel: http://www.youtube.com/heatherramirez
My Gaming Channel: http://www.youtube.com/heatherjustplay
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/heatherjustcreate
Website: http://www.heatherjustcreate.com
🟣 CONNECT WITH TOM —
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/tombuck
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sodarntom
Hello and welcome. My name is Tom.
Speaker 2:And I'm Heather.
Speaker 1:And you're sitting at the Couples Table, the.
Speaker 2:Couples Table is a live stream podcast here on this channel. Join us for better or worse.
Speaker 1:For richer or poorer.
Speaker 2:In sickness and in health.
Speaker 1:Even if we're on different sides sometimes, because we're sitting on different sides today.
Speaker 2:Do, do, do, do. Hello everyone, happy Friday, happy November 22nd. Welcome to the Couples Table we have made some changes. Okay, it's fine, it's an adjustment.
Speaker 1:I'm okay with switching our sides back. I just thought you should use your microphone. That was my big thing.
Speaker 2:No, I know.
Speaker 1:Because what we did was we changed up, we continued to refine the setup in Heather's office for her gaming channel, because we've been doing a lot of gaming streams and so instead of me bringing in a mic and like rigging stuff up in a funky way, we just put in like a more a permanent mic arm for me and then moved Heather's they, they both.
Speaker 2:they come in from the sides, yeah, so nice, we just like push them out and then pull them back in.
Speaker 1:Consistent, matched audio every time, which is really fun, and it's there's no. Like you know, every time I'm bringing a mic, bringing in a cable, setting it up, doing the eq, all that. I don't have to do that before all the things, uh, and this is where we sit for when we do that. But for couples, hey, we're always on the other side, and I was on a phone call and I came back right before the thing and heather sitting here and I was sitting there and I was like, oh wait, I don't. I don't know if I'm supposed to use your mind. I just, I thought we were using ours. She thought we were going to our normal one and we flipped it at the last second, and so it's okay if we, if you want to go back to the other side.
Speaker 2:we could even literally switch right now. No, no, no, it's just. I am trying to, like, make it easier for all of the things that we make, and this is going to be easier for Heather to play.
Speaker 1:The one thing I don't like about it, though, is that this is my good side. She thinks she has a bad side. She does not have a bad side. They're all good sides.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have preferences of our own thing, you know they're all good sides? Yes, we have preferences of our own thing. You know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I like looking at this way to like FaceTime.
Speaker 2:I want you to feel comfortable, not this way. I know no one even cares.
Speaker 1:I'm sure everyone can relate.
Speaker 2:These are the things we think about. Anyway, all right, let's check in with everybody. We did not go live last week because Tom and I were at a leadership conference, so sorry for that short notice, but here we are. Today we're going to be talking about online communities and memberships. Yeah, we have a lot to share about that. So, first of all, jake is here, hello. Hello, we have a lot to share about that. So, first of all, jake is here. Hello, hello.
Speaker 1:Audio hotline. What's up?
Speaker 2:What's up? Hello Bon is here. Hey, bon, good to see you. Chip, hello, and the vote has been cast.
Speaker 1:Awesome, the vote caster.
Speaker 2:If you haven't seen the link or haven't heard us talk about it yet, tom was nominated as well nominated and shortlisted as one of Rhodes creators. Creators of the year. So, uh, the last day to vote, I believe, is this Tuesday, so if you haven't had a chance to do that yet, we'd really appreciate it. There's a link that I pinned in the chat if you want to check that out undecided toy stories here. Hello, it's good to see you over here decided to come here and Charles.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, hello. Good to see you all and hopefully this sounds okay because I'm also exporting a video.
Speaker 1:4k videos take forever to export well, this is a 30 minute 4k video. 30 minute 4k video. Heather worked on quite a beast oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about this video. Uh, I don't think we've ever I say we because it was a joint effort I don't think we've made a video like this no, it's very different yes, it's different, it's. It's so fun though it's like one of my favorite videos. It's vloggy, it's, uh, it's chatty, it's, it's all kinds of it's charming.
Speaker 1:It's chill, it's fun, it's like it's adventure.
Speaker 2:it's collaborative, it's collaborative.
Speaker 1:Bond was there.
Speaker 2:But if you want to see what that video is, it stars both of us. It's going to be me and Tom. It's going to be premiering over on my gaming channel at 430 today, because I still have to upload it. I haven't it's still exporting, yeah. Yeah, so I wish I had the link to share, but it's over at Heather Display, or will be. Anyway, all right, kay is here. Hey, kay, I'm just going to drop this and dip again. See you guys next time. Well, good seeing you here. The King is here.
Speaker 1:I voted for Tom, oh wow.
Speaker 2:Thank you. My crafty adventure is new here roy tech, oh, roy tech troublemaker sent me. Oh, very cool nice to see you here, just flinks always nice to catch the best live show on the web. Always good to see you, josh. Hey, good to see you, josh. So, tom, yeah, online memberships no online communities and memberships yes about it.
Speaker 1:What do you want to know?
Speaker 2:Well, I want to know. You made a big change this morning. I did.
Speaker 1:I was kidding because I very much am figuring out it for myself. So, yeah, yes, I made some very I think we mentioned it in a previous episode, but I made some very big changes this week, finalized today, for how I do my online channel memberships and stuff. Yeah, um, which was scary, but now I'm like really relieved and really excited and we thought maybe a fun thing to talk about because I did that. And then you have also been like very organically building this really awesome community on the gaming channel yes, yes, and which is not?
Speaker 1:it's not a monetized community or anything just like strong, fun community.
Speaker 2:Very engaged and talking about those things, yeah, yeah, so well, let's start with yours, because yours is officially launched as of this morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Tom has had a membership like a membership program for four years no, I I started my patreon, I think, in 2018, so oh, wow, so yeah, yeah and then youtube channel memberships when they like launched them.
Speaker 1:I think it was in 2020 around thereabouts that they launched them. I started that and I have been running both side by side the whole time since and trying even though it's very different platforms, different features and capabilities trying to even out Basically, like, if people think YouTube is easier to join, they could go there. If people think Patreon is easier to join, they could go there, and it's the same benefits, same perks either way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were offering both. I've been offering both. Yeah, you were offering both.
Speaker 1:I've been offering both yeah, and that did not work for me anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you did it for four years, did it for a long time, yeah.
Speaker 1:And the thing was like Patreon had been around for a long time and YouTube memberships were new and really really basic when they started out. And then over the years, youtube keeps adding new features and new capabilities and Patreon ironically, kind of keeps muddying up or taking away features and capabilities and it was like, hmm, and for me it was interesting because I started with Patreon and I follow and support a lot of people who make their full-time income through Patreon and I always thought that was really cool because it's separate from everything else, so it's not part of your Google AdSense account, it's not part of some other thing, it's its own, entirely separate entity. You can pull people in from everywhere. You can pull them from YouTube, podcasts, online community, whatever. They can all just go right there and then you know you can set it up and they take a smaller fee than YouTube and stuff does.
Speaker 2:So I was always like patreon's, the way to go. Yeah, and the membership model for or yeah, a membership business model as a content creator is very common. It makes a lot of sense, especially, you know, for someone like tom who has 155 000 subscribers. Uh, you don't need that many people signing up for like a dollar a month yeah, we can.
Speaker 1:I mean, we can go. I need more people we can go into like that, like what. What it's really cool about memberships at least for me, the thing that I like is and the reason that it's something that I want to focus on and figure out a way to like actually have be effective, because right now, I think it's my smallest source of my smallest revenue stream yeah, I would like it have be effective Because right now, I think it's my smallest source of my smallest revenue stream.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would like it to be my biggest, and so that's. I don't know how to make that happen, but that's what I would like, and the reason for that is because it's a rare thing that actually adds stability to being a full-time creator, and I mean you have accountability, depending on how you run it to your members, but you don't have the pressure of. You know there are people who will sign annual sponsorship deals with brands or it's like do X number of videos, whatever, every month or throughout the year or whatever, and then you get this amount of money and that that can give people some stability. But then you're kind of on the hook for these. You know it's.
Speaker 1:I've always thought it's maybe a little bit risky to be like in you know december of a year now signing a thing for what you're gonna be making in october of the following year, when you're like do you know where are you gonna be? Where's your channel gonna be, your audience gonna be, where's that brand gonna be? Are they gonna go? You know, sometimes companies do things that maybe you don't want.
Speaker 2:Well, you also as a creator, like you might change you know, your priorities and the way that you feel about the content that you make and all that so yeah, and so that.
Speaker 1:So members, let you. I mean, that's the whole thing. Right, that was patreon's whole point was like that's why you have a patron, like in the old old old days, where it's someone who supports someone to create the thing that they make and it's it's. It can be a situation of, like many hands make light work. You don't need one sponsor to sustain yourself. You can have a bunch of people chipping in just little bits, and what's cool is that then allows for like churn. People can come and go.
Speaker 2:Right, and it doesn't yeah.
Speaker 1:If you have one source of revenue, that's I don't know, $5,000 a month, and it disappears. That's devastating.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you have 2,500 people paying you $2 a month and 10 of them leave, it actually doesn't make a huge difference. Not that that's not to say like oh, the members don't matter, or whatever, but it's like it's designed to accommodate that Like cause people can't keep paying forever. A lot of times, you know, like like stuff changes and all kinds of things change, so people come and go and it allows for that, and then, as the creator, you're like okay, regardless of what happens, I get this baseline revenue.
Speaker 2:Well, also, I think what's special about memberships is that I feel like creators eventually get to the point where they have this very special relationship with their audience and the audience does genuinely want to support the creator so that they can keep watching their favorite creators content, right?
Speaker 2:so this is a way where they can, you know, depending how you set it up, in a small way contribute to you being a hundred percent in creative control. Yeah, I think it gets you know, obviously, like with sponsorships and when you're working with clients and stuff like that, the way that you have it set up, you are very forward about, like, I am still in control, but you have to factor in the fact that, like there's an yeah, an integrated, you know, ad segment. Um, there just is certain things pressure you put on yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to like abide by and stuff like that. So, um, so yeah, it's a, it's a really special way that, like members can can like feel like they're a part of the thing that you're making yeah, and they are.
Speaker 1:And you know, sometimes I know like there are people I support on you know patreon or channel memberships or whatever, where it's like I don't care about getting perks, I just want to support them. Sometimes I don't even watch all the stuff they think, I just want them to be able to keep making it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there are others where it's like the reason I'm supporting is for the perks you know, like there's there's behind the scenes stuff, yeah. There's one that I do like. There's a podcast I support and by being a member that's the only way you can. They have like their main podcast series, but then they have other series that have been running for years and the only way to hear those is as a member, so it's like members only.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah um, and there's, you know, there's a whole spectrum of ways to approach it and it's just really cool. And it is a cool way to like if you have those people that not only want to support you but are maybe the most interested in what you do. Sometimes, you know, as a creator, you can have that, that question of like should I, you know, should I make this video? Is this too vloggy, is this too personal, is this too off topic or whatever. And it's like it's really nice to have a group of people opting in who are probably on board with those ideas and instead of like either not doing this idea or putting it out and having it hurt your channel.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Now it actually has a place to help your channel and be really appreciated. So it opens up a lot. You know, obviously a lot of people run the risk of like overextending themselves with memberships and like promising just way too much and now you have a full-time job to support. You know 18 people who have given dollars a month and it's like this is not practical at all.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, there's definitely ways to do it. Uh, really quick, just a guy and a girl. Hey guys, just voted for tom. Thank you for doing that. Uh, just flink says I heard that smosh, after they bought their channel back, decided to go with youtube channel memberships over patreon, even with the split. I think it being on platform is a huge plus for most people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what we can get to in a second is what I ended up doing is essentially closing my Patreon and moving everything to YouTube, so we can talk about that.
Speaker 2:My crafty adventures. I'm a crafting channel and 200 hours from being able to monetize and start memberships.
Speaker 1:I'm just not sure how to use the membership which you can kind of share, yeah, and decided to do it also, just because you can doesn't mean you should right away. You know like, yeah, maybe it's like cool, this is an option. But as time goes on, something might pop up that just suddenly makes a ton of sense. Or even people who watch your channel might go like, hey, you, could you do this, could you offer this? Like they might even give you ideas of what they want well actually.
Speaker 2:So, going off of that, I have the ability to turn on memberships over on my gaming channel. Um, it just does not feel right to turn it on right now. Like does not feel right. Uh, there there are super chats, right? So if people want to, for some people contributing $5, $10, $20 is, I don't want to say, easy, but like Everybody has a different perspective on yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:There are people who, like they have the ability to contribute that immediately. And then there's people who don't Right, so they can support in other ways, like through their time or by, you know, being a mod in the discords or something like that.
Speaker 1:There's, you know, other ways that they can, or just being enthusiastic about the stuff you make, right showing up I actually like watching the videos and leaving comments and sharing them and stuff like that makes a world of difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but like going off of you know what you said about even though you have memberships available, it's not necessarily you want to turn them on immediately and I'm definitely it just doesn't feel right right now to talk about it, turn it on, but there are super chats in case people want to support that way I really admire that.
Speaker 1:That's the way you're. I admire that you're taking that approach and, even though it feels like, oh, you might be missing out on revenue right now, I feel like in the long term sustainability the thing we always talk about I feel like that's a way, better way to go I'm trying to come up with a clever response to that, because it's our decision, it's for our business I know like I really admire that decision that you made that affects our bank account.
Speaker 1:I know, but it's like you know on the game, like you're in the driver's seat on the channel Sure?
Speaker 2:no, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it needs to work for you and be a thing that's creatively inspiring for you and motivating for you and it's easy I could be like it makes financial sense for you to turn on memberships and people asking for it, and then you do it. Now you feel guilty and now it's like, yeah, I have just stopped all the creative gears and shut everything down, like yeah so yeah so well, we can share more about that. Uh, ernesto hi heather and tom, happy friday. Speaking of supportive members jfk.
Speaker 2:How's everyone's bank card doing? Y'all resisting temptation? Is that because it's black friday coming up?
Speaker 1:we're heading to black friday. There's a lot of new cameras and tech and things coming out is there?
Speaker 2:is there anything that you've been paying attention to?
Speaker 1:I bought new goalie I know. So that that was all of birthday black friday well, yeah, so yeah, there's a lot of good hockey sales right now, which is awesome I love that.
Speaker 2:That's where your priority is.
Speaker 1:My birthday gift to myself was the base that should be delivered tomorrow.
Speaker 2:See how hard it is to get Tom a present Because he has goalie pads. How much were the goalie pads?
Speaker 1:We don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 2:It's a lot.
Speaker 1:How much was the base babe? We don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 2:This is why I can't get him anything, because all the things that he wants are like a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not even. It's not the price, it's also real, specific, like right, yeah, like I'm not gonna do, like I would if you were like I got you goalie pads, I would appreciate it so much, but the chances of you getting like the right fit, the right style, the right like everything, nope I can't even do that for myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'd have to return exchange like several times. So it there's that kind of, there's that thing too, where it's like I would never buy tom a camera because you have your preferences and I don't know right, and that's you know. So it's like I'm not expecting gifts.
Speaker 2:All right, mr camera junkie the house. Hey, everyone be strong resist the urge to abuse the bank guards. I haven't like thought about it actually, but I feel like I probably should abuse the bank guard no, be aware of black friday deals oh, there's probably some cool.
Speaker 1:I haven't even like thought about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I forgot thanksgiving was this week.
Speaker 1:It's like less than a week, easy.
Speaker 2:Easy Gil's here. Hey, everyone, all right. Well, did you want to go into?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So a thing that I'm at. So, basically, as of this morning, I have everything's finished. The last thing I had to do is make a new intro video for YouTube memberships, because when you go to someone's channel and you click the join button thing pops up and you have the option, if you want to include a video where you can like it's like two minutes of you know. Hey, this is what I have to offer, this is what it's here. So that was the last thing I wanted to add. I did that. I revamped some tiers, um, which which?
Speaker 2:I pull it up I think.
Speaker 1:So I guess I could go with maybe lessons I've learned in doing this okay would maybe be the most helpful thing to share. So running youtube and patreon, I thought, made things the most accessible and the most open to everybody. Um, if you log in with a channel that you're not, if you, if you log in with a youtube account that you're not a member on, it'll show like the thing there, but you have to be signed into some account. Um, I thought that was like hey, that makes it open for everybody there we go.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you can show.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so if you click the, join button.
Speaker 2:There's a video there.
Speaker 1:I literally I'm wearing the same shirt this morning um, and there's three tiers now, uh, which we changed the pricing on. You help me figure that out. So there's five dollars, ten dollars, twenty dollars a month. It used to be 5, 15, 25, so actually lowered those, um, clarified. You know, perks and no perks and things like that. Um, so some stuff is the same and some stuff is a little different. Overall, I actually think it's a lot better and like it's a more fun offering. The thing is, having done both of them for a long time, what I kind of hoped was that, like Patreon would take off and that would be my main thing, and the opposite Well, I shouldn't say channel members just took off, but they were definitely more. It's like a three to one signup rate for YouTube versus Patreon.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And that just is the way it is because, just like we mentioned a minute ago I forget who someone brought it up, I forget who said it. Yeah, jess Flink said that. It's just easier for most people. It's like how it's easy to add a Discord server, like, if you already have a Discord, just add another server. If you're already on YouTube and you have a Google account with a credit card attached to it, you can just join a channel really easily, right there just like leaving the platform going to patreon.
Speaker 1:I feel like before it wasn't as common for people to have like a credit card stored yeah, it wasn't yeah, and now I feel like it's a lot more common yeah, so it it makes it a lot easier, um, and youtube has added so many cool features and so it's been hard because I haven't been able to use those features.
Speaker 1:So every time I want to make a post, I have to post on Patreon and then make the same post on YouTube, but the two platforms don't format things the same. If I want to do update videos, I have to upload them to two separate places, which again doesn't work exactly the same. If I want to do something like a members-only live stream, I I can't use the members only stream function. I have to do an unlisted stream and then, like email everybody about it, which is way less effective in terms of notifications, so people are missing streams a lot. I can't do cool stuff Like you can do a public stream with the members only chats you can do, um, just all kinds of like like you can do early access.
Speaker 1:You can do early access to videos. Haven't been able to do that because I'd have to upload the video or I have to like move it as like a private thing, share the link, do everything manually, whereas you can just have it do automatically on YouTube, like set it to early access and then on a date it automatically switches to public and you're done Like. Youtube just really made their memberships a lot more robust over the past few years and things are integrated so so well. Few years and things are integrated so so well. Um, the down part, the downside to it really like the big pain point, is the posting like community posts. If you go on patreon, you can basically make like a blog post. You can integrate photos and formatting I have this problem.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful. Yeah, discord, I could basically bold youtube, you can't even do that. You can't bold.
Speaker 1:you can't even do that. You can't bold, you can't do images in line.
Speaker 2:You can't even really put a link easily. I can't do images in line either.
Speaker 1:So doing posts on YouTube is annoying.
Speaker 1:But they have said they're going to totally revamp that whole thing, which is also like okay, seeing the features you've already added, the features you said you're going to add, I'd really like to take advantage of that. Patreon also completely rebranded about a year ago and I didn't even realize that it really kind of did cause a lot of friction, because they started pushing everyone towards their mobile app. I felt things got really confusing. They suddenly added a free tier that was on by default and you couldn't even turn off until recently, and so people could go to your Patreon, sign up for free, and you'd be like get all these notifications like member, and I'm like, what are they signing up for? Like I'm not offering a free tier, like why did you do this? And then people go and they're like, oh, I could join for free. It's like, why would you do this to me? And then a big thing with Patreon, which is a bummer. It's not Patreon's fault, but Apple basically said that if you do subscriptions through apps, they're charging like an additional 30% on top of it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, patreon's been pushing people.
Speaker 1:Patreon's been making their app more required for a lot of stuff and integral, and now, if you subscribe to people through the app, apple gets another 30% of that, so it's actually even less, so you can't do global pricing.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're getting maybe 60 cents on a dollar for a member if they sign up through the app, which is like, not that's, and maybe it might even be more than that if you do like the patreon fee plus the apple fee in full, um, and so that's rough. And then patreon this didn't affect me, but it was a thing that did affect a lot of people. They took away because of that. For some reason, they took away the per project option. So what some people would do is it wouldn't be a monthly thing, it'd be a per project. And so you know, it's just like every time you upload a new thing, all your members are charged for that project. And that's kind of cool because it's like I've seen people who do. You know they might take a long time to work on videos, but every time they like literally press the upload button.
Speaker 1:They know boom now I have this return on that done and if you do two videos a month, it doubles. If you do zero, it's zero and now that's not an option. So some people who were doing that especially people who are like artists and illustrators and stuff they were music yeah they, they might get. They might do three or four projects a month.
Speaker 1:get three or four you know, rounds a month and now that just went back to they're getting like one fourth there. Yeah, that's a bummer, and that was all stuff that like on top of the fact that, like, people were just going to youtube more anyway. That's where I was like, okay, I'm just gonna, yeah, I'm just gonna make that leap. And so I actually didn't fully close down patreon because it's so annoying. Unless you like, delete your account.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't push people out of tiers and I didn't want people to like I can delete a tier and then someone's just going to be being charged, but with no access to perks. So I had to talk to the people, I had to let people know I can archive all those. And then there's just one tier which is just a tip jar with no benefits or perks or anything. That's all that's left. And the reason I do that was because, since it's been up since 2018, that link is a lot of places it's in youtube videos, it's on podcasts, it's on websites, it's in it's everywhere, right, and so going to a 404 page not found, and it's not practical for me to go do that. So, okay, at least go to something and if someone's just like yeah, I like what you do, and I don't want anything returned. I'll do that. And it even says like if you want perks, if you want more options go to youtube yeah, but at least that way it still opens up for the podcast and things like that.
Speaker 1:It's a long story but it's a lot to learn, yeah uh, really quick, let's see.
Speaker 2:Uh, hold on really quick. My crafty adventures. Dumb question. I see the way to add super chats, but how do you join a membership? So we actually don't have memberships turned on for this channel. So if you are looking here, you're going to see the super chats, but I don't have memberships here. So here's tom's channel. The way that you would subscribe to a membership is if you go to their youtube page. Right here, next to the subscribe button, there's a join button and you can click join here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for checking, uh, and then there's gonna be like a you know an explainer video and then all the different tiers that you can sign up for. But it's really it's very clear what you are signing up for, how much you're going to be paying per month and all the perks that you get. So there's multiple buttons before you actually, like you know, subscribe on a paid level, but on this channel you're not gonna see it because we don't have it turned on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go um yeah and yeah, you did that, andre sheesh. Only 22 and a half hours away from being able to have memberships, I'm not sure if I'm gonna gamble on being able to offer something exclusive to members, though yet time will show, yeah.
Speaker 1:The cool thing is there's like so many options. You don't have to do what other people do. You can really make it work for you and your audience, like what you want to offer. You can change it too. So, yeah, so the tricky part here. I'll go through this and then because I don't want to share this just randomly, but I feel like this might be helpful to have people understand Like, do I want to use YouTube? Do I want to use Patreon? Yeah, or in this situation. So, okay, I'm going to go full in on YouTube. I had my three tiers that have been up since the beginning. Youtube's sort of the opposite of Patreon. You can't I can't archive a tier and like grandfather people in and then have a new one. Yeah, you can only delete a tier and then it just cancels people's memberships.
Speaker 1:They're just gone that makes sense to me I mean I like the option to do either because there's some patron like I'm members of people's patreons where I signed up early and they grandfather me in but then they revamp their pricing structure so like I still get you know, maybe I it. It's nice to have that option I.
Speaker 2:I feel like if someone signs up for $5, what like they signed up for $5, and if you're going to close that tier, I feel like the only thing that should happen is you get canceled, because it's not fair for you to start paying for something you didn't sign up for. That's why I feel like you. Because, I had this problem with Mighty Networks.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've only seen it benefit people. So like essentially for me on Patreon, I am now grandfathered into like a $5 tier where I would be getting a feature I would need to pay $10 for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you are adding benefits, that's fine.
Speaker 1:That's the only way I've ever seen it happen personally, but I can see how people would remove Right Well well, in my case, nothing was going to get removed, but then, yeah, so so I don't.
Speaker 1:I tried to make a post explaining what's happening, but of course I mentioned the posting's a little funky right now, uh. And then I had to remove the tears. And then I did have someone in tears, not literally, but they. They emailed me like why did my membership get canceled? I think my card's still good. What's happening? And I had to explain what happened. But the good news is I actually bumped both the things down. So I was like, yeah, there's actually more perks for less money.
Speaker 2:So I'm not trying to and I think the idea there is like hopefully, by doubling down on YouTube memberships, you can get more members.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was the thing you really helped me with, because I was like I have these three tiers. I'm not changing the low end one, but I'm want to change the middle and the high. There's already people in there, so by changing them I'm now canceling my like highest paying members, just canceling them, which is scary, but you were explaining. You were like, well, if you have a 25 tier, someone might join that, but that that's a way bigger monthly expense than five dollars or ten dollars and so they might join, be excited, but how many months can someone be?
Speaker 1:paying 25 realistically, do that yeah so then they're gonna maybe dip pretty quickly, which I have seen, like people I've. At one point I even offered a 50 tier because people told me to and it was awesome. People joined it. But you can join that for like two months. Yep, even the people who asked for it are like, okay, that's about it. Um, whereas I have, I have people who have been in the $5 tier at this point I think it says literally, says like 39 months, like it's been a very long time, 20.
Speaker 1:And get more people in and get more people in, and that's the again. Many hands make light work, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Really quick. Let's just catch up with the comments. Hammer and Sickle, hey guys just dropping in to say hi, hello, hello, just flinks. The number of paid subs that a lot of Twitch streamers have shows that people are willing to support creators. They watch if it's on platform. There are multiple streamers with 50k plus paid subs that's crazy that's insane. Uh, freddy says I voted for tom the first day and I usually don't go through the process.
Speaker 1:I very much appreciate that, thank you greg who's ocd's freaking out? Uh, tom and heather swapped their usual spots we'll see if that stays might be a one-time sit don says I surprised my wife with a stop at handles last week. She loved it. Great recommendation. Curious what flavors you guys got so good, oh, spiral lab.
Speaker 2:Hey late, but happy to be here. Happy that you're here, charles, I'm not eligible for memberships yet, but even if I was, I don't know what type of benefits I could give. Uh, we can talk a little bit about yeah, what you, what you did andre too bad. The join button isn't in the mobile app next to the subscription button makes it kind of hard to get to yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 2:In the ipad app it's like it's non-existent, basically oh okay, my crafty adventures is on the mobile app and didn't know how to join. How weird, okay, g, look at Greg. Oh, greg, ice cream fund donation.
Speaker 1:if it's not too cold, it's never too cold for ice cream.
Speaker 2:It's never too cold for ice cream.
Speaker 1:Oh see, that's literally the next comment.
Speaker 2:We are all on the same page. Yeah, the problem is, today we are going to a hockey game and at our arena there's Mr Softee, so Tom gets Mr Softee.
Speaker 1:At our arena there's mr softy, so tom gets mr softy guaranteed every game, and so that would be weird if we got handles. I did do that once this season. I did both in the same day because I needed to do it for science to see how they compare for science, andre just noticed tom and heather switch places.
Speaker 2:Now I have to turn the tv. So look, put it in front of a mirror oh, they got, oh, you got the sampler, the four different flavors don't remember the names yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, I forgot where we were with memberships, uh, well, the the risk of like canceling people, but to lower it down it really helped because well.
Speaker 2:So here's the thing with pricing, right? Um, do you remember the percentage? Yes, okay, so let's talk about that. This is, this is how memberships can really be, um, effective, and I think this is like the perfect thing where you have someone who is, I feel, like, at a um, a realistic subscriber number. You know, I think a lot of people can hit 100,000. I think not a lot of people can hit a million, right? So, obviously, if you have a giant, massive audience, you get everyone to pay a dollar, like you're going to be good, right, but I think 100, 150,000 is a lot more reachable.
Speaker 1:So, hearing your math in terms of this, check in in a year and see how it goes. But the math that I came up with was like what would I really like If I want this to go from smallest revenue source to biggest revenue source? I would love to be able to have $5,000 a month come from channel members. Right now it's about $375.
Speaker 2:$375.
Speaker 1:That's a ways to to go. We have a long way to go and right now it's about, at least on youtube, there are 75 members, okay, so, um, which is great and great yeah, it was over 100 of patreon, but you know, things are changing there. So the thing that I was thinking, especially as a non-salesy person, was I was like I don't want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't want to be salesy, but also people like I want them to know where do I want to go with this. And five thousand dollars a month, if what is that? Like 60 grand a year, I think. So that's a, you know, a lower middle class fulltime income. Depending on where you live. It would definitely be like paycheck to paycheck situation. But if that's just the foundation, and then on top of that you have the volatile stuff like affiliate revenue, adsense, course sales, all that stuff where it's like sometimes those can be really strong and sometimes they can be nothing, but at least you have this very strong foundation, like the amount of stress it would alleviate is huge.
Speaker 1:And you know, I've not done a ton of sponsored videos over the years but unfortunately the ones I've done have been with great companies but not even feeling like you know, not feeling really only doing something like that. I feel like it's 100% something I really, really, really, really want to do. Yeah, it kind of gives that freedom Cause even when I do sponsor videos where it's like literally I've done sponsor videos where the video is finished, scheduled, uploaded, and then a brand reaches out and says like hey, you want to do a sponsor video this month and I'm like, oh, it would actually fit really great in this. And like, hey, you want to do a sponsor video this month and I'm like, oh, it would actually fit really great in this. And then I just edit in, and so it's like I know the video. The video was done without a sponsor the same way, so I know the sponsor did not affect the content of the video at all, right yeah, um, but there's still the thing of like.
Speaker 1:Obviously I want all my stuff to like, do well, but now when it's sponsored, I know they're going to be looking at it. There there's a little more pressure of like there's never a guarantee of like it will get this amount of views or anything. But obviously I'm like well, if you sponsor, I'd really like it to do like you know, and it's just can be a little more pressure and sometimes that doesn't work out. So alleviating that stress, yeah, so fun.
Speaker 2:So what's our math?
Speaker 1:So the math, uh, what I think a realistic thing for my channel, my audience, whatever, is that most people would be in the least expensive tier. So I think it was a 60% there, 30% in the middle, 10% in the highest tier which would come out to get my $5,000.
Speaker 1:The rough math is something like 850 ish people in the low one, 250 ish people in the middle one and like 30 people in the high one. It doesn't need to be about 30 to 50 maybe. Um, and then that would. When you factor in YouTube's 30% and all that, that would come out to take home $5,000 a month. Um, and I was like okay, that comes out to like something like 1,125 members.
Speaker 2:I have 75.
Speaker 1:now we're talking about well over 1,000.
Speaker 2:Long way to go.
Speaker 1:We need 1,000 more members, 1,100 more members. But I was like, okay, let me look at what is that percentage of my total subscriber base? That is 0.75%. It's less than 1%.
Speaker 2:Less than 1%.
Speaker 1:And so when I look at it that way of like, okay if I can just get 1% of my channel subscribers.
Speaker 2:Because if you look at it like 1,100 people that's a lot.
Speaker 1:It feels insurmountable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you look at it like it's 1% of your existing Existing. Okay first of all, tom's subscriber count goes up every day, right. So just existing 153,000 subscribers 1% there. But then knowing that, like new, people are going to continue to discover your channel and stuff like that, it feels I'm not business savvy enough to be like oh, what is the like turnover?
Speaker 1:You know, if I market it this way, then I convert this many people. I don't. What I know is that it feels a lot less salesy to think of like okay, I'm trying to get one percent of the people into my channel you're not trying to get to join a membership. I'm not trying to get 50, all of them like no, I'm not trying to sell it to everybody, it's people who are interested in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah and for sure. One percent out of 155 000 people like have been subscribed to you for years I'm sure would want to support they. Just you know I've never asked.
Speaker 1:I've never even asked for it, I barely mentioned it. So it's like okay, let's, let's try to like work on that yeah a little bit um, and so that's kind of where I'm at with my goal there. Don't know if that's achievable or not, but we'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like perfect timing because we're, you know, at the end of the year here and then we could definitely check back in like six months and see how it's going, but you officially turned it on today, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's really nice to streamline stuff Like it's, and I think I thought I was adding more options, like you could do options like you could do, patreon, you could do this, and I think that was like well then, now I don't know if I'm not gonna do anything versus like simplify, do this yeah here's very clear options done yeah, um, I didn't realize.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I didn't realize this super chat was for both of us. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:We might have to go, we might have to swing by. Let's see, mass is the largest consumer of ice cream year round, really.
Speaker 1:How does?
Speaker 2:one know that.
Speaker 1:Is that where Ben and Jerry's is based?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think so. Somewhere with like premium dairy situations. Really, how is that even calculated? Science I find that that's very curious to me because I feel like I feel like california would be it. There's so many like beachside towns, you know I don't know I don't know I don't know. Eating junk food for science is my kind of experiment.
Speaker 1:It's around 32 yes, freezing literally 32 degrees. You just have your ice cream outside. I'll never know, okay you know what it is here. 78, 70 but I was eating ice cream in the hockey arena the other day and I was like literally yeah, your hands are shivering just fling said.
Speaker 2:I found that my that on my multiple channels. Offering memberships in a way is not always the best idea. Prioritizing community and audience without monetizing always pays dividends in the future.
Speaker 1:And that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can talk a little bit about my community.
Speaker 1:I want to talk a lot about that.
Speaker 2:Let's see For science. Heather Tom, you were about to talk about what type of perks can do via memberships, when you got derailed by ice cream. Hey, bailey, bailey. What's up, bailey? Let's see Fundraiser idea Raise $2,000 on Tom dies His hair the same color as Heather oh boy, I don't know about that. I feel like you should go. Adam blue Adam.
Speaker 2:Adam, I feel like you should go Adam Blue, adam 8-Bit Blue, yeah yeah, yes. See, tom, if you rebound the channel to McFlicks and offer weekly bespoke Mike vids, you'd probably have 1,000 members in a month. Mike Flicks, your $20 closer, just became a signal booster.
Speaker 1:You are the king, thank you. We'll talk about what members get in a bit uh, coach constant, oh, benedict vermont, oh I was like eating northeast somewhere. I was like new england literally.
Speaker 2:I saw this comment, I was like vt come on heather. Where is that?
Speaker 1:oh wow, bailey's going around podcasts and I was trying to figure a lot of this stuff out membership options and oh, wow, how funny.
Speaker 2:32 fahrenheit sounds about right, greg. We just had snow a couple days ago.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh yeah, well, we can talk about membership options. Do you want to talk about your discord and everything and like how that came about and all that?
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, so okay. So here's the opposite approach. So, obviously, tom and I have been talking, thinking about monetization. When it comes to heather, just play it just does not feel right right now. Um, the community there, though, is like the strongest online community. I've been a part of it's. So active people are in there every single day, um, and the best part is, like I it's at the point where I don't have to start every conversation. Um, I feel like I mean, even mighty had mighty networks, had a whole. It was like a huge, big push, because they integrated ai, where it can generate just an infinite number of questions for you and schedule it out so that you were asking a question and prompting conversations every single day. I don't even have to do that, like people are just reaching out and connecting without very organic and real and like yeah it's.
Speaker 1:it's such a cool community because there's been so many times where people go above and beyond to help out in all these ways and it's like, um, it almost feels like like we can't pay you and no, this is what they want to be doing.
Speaker 2:It's like it's so strange to me, it's so freaking weird, and I think it's like I have to-.
Speaker 1:Remember when you could just have hobbies that didn't need to be like monetized.
Speaker 2:That is the difference, and I think, like it's. You know, in our past seven, eight years of doing this, uh, we've been part of communities. That it's not a hobby, right, it is. This is a business, this is a job, whether it's full-time or part-time or aspiring to be, you know, monetized at some point. Um, but to have a community, that's it's, it's just the equivalent of people coming over and we're playing video games, like we did on the weekends as kids. Like there is no expectation of anything in return aside from just being a member. So what's really cool is, like I don't, I really don't feel like I feel like I'm very much a member of the community.
Speaker 2:Yeah like I'm very much a member of the community. Yeah, uh, it's very two-way versus um, you know where on youtube you're, you're, it's like you're talking one to many. This is two-way conversation, like it is going back and forth. I, I know people by name and um, you know, of course there's like people who are more involved than others and stuff like that. But either way, it's just it's so active and it's just awesome. I don't know. It's great.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and it's a good example to whether you're doing a paid or unpaid thing, like your initial thing wasn't, like I'm going to have a discord.
Speaker 2:I never, never in the horizon, ever. You know I don't like discord. It's not. It's not even something like even if that was the right thing to do. I didn't plan for it, you know. Um, but it, it. The whole channel has been very organic. When people are asking multiple people are asking for it, that's when I'm like, okay, let's make this happen together. I didn't even build it. You know, people helped to build out the structure. They're all contributing ideas and I don't know it's just. I think it's. I'm redefining community. You know I'm seeing a very like this is what a very healthy, thriving community looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In terms of monetization, I don't know. You know, like I don't want, I definitely don't want to monetize the community, but I think that there are people who you know there have been people who super chatted $20. So obviously it's like there are people who it goes back to time, talent and treasure, right, like different ways that you can support a nonprofit. This is like I used to be a nonprofit, so people would ask like do you want to volunteer your time, do you want to donate? Or, you know, contribute to fundraising, raising funds, or was it time? Talent, yeah, or talent where, if you're in marketing, you can help promote an upcoming fundraising event or something like that. So I'm kind of looking at it that same way with the community or with Heather Just Play as a whole. There are people who have the ability to contribute money, there are people who have the ability to contribute a lot of time.
Speaker 2:And then there's also the talent where it's like you know everything from being a moderator, uh, or putting the discord together putting the discord together or organizing and coordinating events, um, you know, just be just being active, welcoming new members, all all those things. It's like I could. I would be doing that if people weren't doing it for me. So the fact that people are contributing that way is huge. So, like that's kind of I guess I want to get to the point where people don't feel like less than for not being a paid member.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think, just I think people will understand that it's just a matter of time of like establishing. You know, just because someone has like, because the thing with YouTube is like, if you're a YouTube member, you get the badge, and I know aesthetics and badges and emojis are very important in the gaming community and I don't want people to feel bad that they don't have the badge.
Speaker 1:Badage, the badage.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I don't know, we'll see it's, you know, still thinking about it, but it's just like it's really cool to see how organic it's been and I guess the reason why I share that is like I can't even tell you, like, how that happened. You know, like I, I have so much of my content and like you know a lot of the tutorials I've made and I, for two years, I did so much research on community platforms and every single community platform had their own best practices on how to grow and cultivate a community. I don't think I did any of the things. Um, I think they help, but it's like I don't know it's vibe I don't think it's hard.
Speaker 1:It's hard if you had said I'm gonna dive into a gaming channel. It makes sense to have a discord. So then you spent weeks and weeks putting together like the perfect discord, best practice discord. And now it's like, okay, people join the discord. People would join, but then it would probably like kind of just fizzle. This was like people. It was asking like where's your discord? You need a discord. There's like there, we need this because we need to like there was a need for it. And now that people are like built friendships and relationships there, it's like, okay, well, the discord can grow and so it's. It's a thing. It's like when people always go like, oh, what do I get for? You know my podcasting setup and stuff? Should I buy all this gear? And despite how much I like gear, I always tell people like start with what you have, upgrade as your needs become apparent. It's sort of the same thing like you didn't offer anything. And then the channel and the community the needs became apparent, exactly yeah yeah, that's yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:Uh, okay, let's see. Oh, hammered to gold. This is a, a youtube mod and, uh, an officer in our Final Fantasy XIV free company called Kraken's Call. Let's see, I honestly forgot to look at JCM for months. We're just logging in again. Well, we shadowed Sunsetted.
Speaker 1:Sunsat.
Speaker 2:We sunsat, but see even that. I think like what the thing with JCM? And someone asked on the YouTube huddle about our mastermind? Tom and I used to have a YouTube mastermind which was 75 bucks a month and we had like a really good group.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was fun. I mean like it was such a good group.
Speaker 1:The reason why we don't do it anymore is like he's digging in your blanket because he thinks the squeaker is in there oh, my gosh finley is it's not a towel oh no, finley's trying to get to his toy and it's like stuck under a blanket or he thinks of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go over there, come on um that was really oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So we I don't really know how to explain this I like, uh, being a coach, you know, a cheerleader, a teacher, like I feel like I need that outlet and the couples table. This is a great place for us to discuss relevant content creator issues and topics and stuff like that. The YouTube huddle up is kind of the thing where I can be in like a YouTube coach role. But the thing that I didn't realize that I really wanted to build was a community that I could just be a member of you know, where I can, where I didn't feel like people were looking to me for the answers.
Speaker 1:Yeah or you have to keep it going. You have to keep pushing the gear, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't know, I forgot what my point was.
Speaker 1:I think the importance of just organicness.
Speaker 2:The advantage of having jobs. Doing what interests me and I would probably do anyway means my hobbies are automatically monetized. Yeah, so, um, I feel like there's something else I wanted to say about it, oh yeah, so here's. Here's an example. Um, I put out a video this week that I wasn't going. I was, I was, it's just stream of consciousness for 30 minutes. I felt like I had gotten a lot of DMs and messages and I was reading comments and stuff and I really wanted to kind of give an update to the community in terms of what I was thinking about. Meanwhile, we were really busy last week in real life, so I just haven't, I hadn't had a chance to like sit down and give an update, and so I was like you know what? I think it'll be actually faster and more effective if I just do a quick video update.
Speaker 2:That ended up being 30 minutes, one shot, one shot. I was like no one's gonna watch this video, tom and uh, after I recorded it I didn't, whatever. We had to go to a hockey game and by the time we got back, I was like I don't think I'm gonna put this video out because it's terrible. It's just like objectively a bad video. It's just me talking. It's the same shot and I'm rambling. I don't even. I think I repeated myself like there's probably a good 10 minutes of me repeating the same thing over and over. Uh, it is one of my most successful videos. Of course, um tom is the one who encouraged me to put it out anyway and I got such good responses and feedback and comments and like it kind of soul soothing, yeah, it kind of felt like it rejuvenated the community and, you know, told me a couple things.
Speaker 2:One, I'm all up in my head about things that no one else is paying attention to, uh. Two, it kind of speaks to the um connectedness of the community. You know, I think, um, it's kind of like you know, youtube memberships, like if people are in, they're in. Yeah, they, they want to hear what, what, you don't have to keep justifying. Yes.
Speaker 1:They made the choice.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so I'm over here like this is not a good YouTube video. I didn't even make a thumbnail for it. It was YouTube's auto-generated selected freeze frame and I titled it like some updates about the channel, like something.
Speaker 2:So just non-channel updatemov yeah, literally it was, you know, very simple um, but again, like such great response and um, you know it's just, I don't know. So it's like it just speaks to if you can have, if you can focus on building a community that's really fun, where people feel like they have ownership. You know, I think you're doing that really well with your community anyway, and I'm excited to see how it unfolds and getting new members into your YouTube memberships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see yeah, so yeah, um, getting new members into your youtube memberships? Yeah, I see, um, yeah, so so yeah. If you just create like a space that people want to be a part of, it's there, it's, there's no, there's no. Like, how do I make it perfect? It's, people are here for you, you know. For you as the you know creator of the tombuck channel, and for me is heather of heather just play yeah and it's really cool that's super special.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, to wrap up, can we go through the perks? We mentioned it, but we never did it oh, yeah, sure uh kyle's here, always great content.
Speaker 2:Good to see you, kyle. Uh, mike says happy friday. Love the gear setup. You two are rocking a hammer and sickle. I love that video so much because it was genuine and just honestly sharing your feelings, very relatable and human yes uh, let's see. Heather's perspective on her youtube community is super interesting because it reminds me of the really tight communities on twitch that I like. Have you ever thought about exploring that space? Have we ever thought of us exploring twitch?
Speaker 1:I think, the same way that people who like come from twitch are like I don't know about youtube, I think if you're like youtube native, you're like I don't know about twitch and we're so into the youtube world that it just it just kind of where we make sense, I think yeah, like I, I can't.
Speaker 2:Every time I go to Twitch I'm confused, so I can't like the idea of figuring out another thing. And here you know what I think this is what it comes down to just like Tom condensed from YouTube and Patreon to just YouTube. That's kind of like I'm not gonna now, you know, have another arm of Twitch. It's just it just going to be here on YouTube and it's great so far, you know. So it's like I wouldn't add on a thing to add in more people If I wanted to add in more people. It's just going to be YouTube people.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, uh, let's see. My most successful video was a video I spend a total of 30 minutes on just something to be said when it is raw, not overly produced, and just genuine. Bon is here and says it doesn't have to be shiny and polished to be very moving and impactful.
Speaker 1:Very true, yeah, important thing to remember for all of us.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's go over your perks really quick.
Speaker 1:Sure. So, and this is, I want to share these to kind of like help people understand why I chose these, because maybe that would help you figure out if you're thinking like what can I possibly offer or do whatever?
Speaker 1:So there's the, the three tiers which work for me. Some people have more than three uh, the base one, for for me, like, some people have like a dollar a month tier or whatever, and that just like I've heard the phrase the juice isn't worth the squeeze. When it comes to memberships, to me the juice ain't worth the squeeze, like Like, come on, let's do something here. So the base one is pretty basic. It does have badges, because you can do those with YouTube. I might want to revise my badges, and it's got emojis. I think I might even have more that I made. I can add there, but anyway, I drew like these custom little emojis in Procreate, which is pretty fun.
Speaker 1:I did build my message board, which we talked about a while ago, which is like the opposite of Discord, so you get access to that, of course, name at the end of videos and then community posts, so text posts for members only. A thing about this, though, is I mean the name in video credit, so that you're assuming is every video, and I typically do a video a week. The message board is your own time and members only community posts. It doesn't say weekly, biweekly, monthly, it just says members only community posts. So for me that's extremely manageable, that workload and also understanding a lot of people who jump in at that level. They do just want to show support, they're not trying to get something in return.
Speaker 1:They're not trying to get a lot of things in in return. They just want to show support. So I don't need to like go out on a limb, overextend myself with a whole bunch of stuff that now it's gonna be a full-time job, just trying to like keep up this membership thing.
Speaker 2:It's gonna end up creating more stress that is totally what I did when I first started patreon in 2016. I was like, okay, here's all these like really cool perks for every specific tier. Oh God, I have just created so much work for myself and I had like two people in the top tier. So I was doing all this work for two people, which was fine but like not sustainable.
Speaker 1:So something that I didn't put in here but I want to do is that is a thing. You have your top tier. Typically you want to put your biggest benefits there, but that's also the slowest tier to grow usually. So it does end up being a thing like oh, custom video, custom whatever, and it's like-.
Speaker 2:And high churn rate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like for one person or two people. So I put the perks that are there and then I actually have other ones that I think would be really fun. But I'm going to wait until I hit certain milestones and maybe, as things grow, I might actually make that like like just tell people that, like. Hey, you know, once we get 10 members.
Speaker 1:we can do this, we only need a few more people, and then this, and then it's like, okay, then this perk will be added, because it's not just for, you know, an empty room, or whatever it's it's a one-on-one consultation, like an Ecamm Zoom Q&A, where people can pop on the stream and we actually talk and like do a live stream.
Speaker 1:that way Sounds super fun. But yeah, like I would not charge $20 an hour for a consultation so it doesn't make sense for a thing like that. But if there's 30 to 50 people in there, now that makes a lot of sense to do that. So the next one is the $10 a month AV club. That includes everything from the other one, but you also then get video updates, so not just the posts but again, no specific timeframe on those Early video access. So now I can start doing that in like two days before on Tuesdays I can give people access to that week's video and members only live streams, which my goal is to do those monthly.
Speaker 1:There's just some practical life, semi health things that make that difficult to say like yes, but my goal is to feel what it to pick a day every month, like something like the last Wednesday of the month or something that's always a members only live stream day, and I would really like that. So that will start incorporating, ideally one that does have a timestamp on it. So you know like, okay, I'm getting at least this every month and then the big one which the king just signed up for, I get top billing in the end credit. So when I'm going to redo my you know, at the end of the videos membership thing which, by the way, just anyone watching I have a couple videos scheduled. So if you see, like this, my name's not there or whatever it's those videos, the list is always accurate at the time that that video was produced, because those are the people that were supporting at the time the video was made yeah, and sometimes the videos get scheduled differently.
Speaker 1:So top billing. So I'm going to change the way that looks and, like that tier, like the signal boosters, are going to have their own sections a little bit, a little bit more prominent. I decided to put course discounts. Not, you know, that's probably not a reason to start spending $20 a month on something, but if you're already in, you're already supporting that much and you're looking at courses, why not get a little discount there too? And then, something that I'm really excited about this is where it's like what kind of perks do you want to offer? Not just stuff, people, you know, oh, it'd be a good value for them. But something I really want to do is something I'm calling show and tell videos, because sometimes it happens how?
Speaker 2:many times I am the show and tell video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not me, but like you're my audience, yeah or it's the beginning of the couple's table, when I derail the show for 10 minutes because I want to talk about a thing. So when I find, find that weird camcorder, that cool little, do hickey this like old gadget or whatever, that's the video. It doesn't need to be like a heavily edited thing. It's, you know, something that would go on like the regular. It's something that I wouldn't put on the channel, but something I want to make where I can sit down kind of just like this and literally just like show and tell something yeah I think that'd be really, really fun and and there will be a library and there'll be a library of those and that's what's really cool about that.
Speaker 1:And the same thing, like. Another thing I would like to add there in the future as like, if it does grow, is uh, I'd like to have more of a tutorial library. So like deep diving, you know, not tutorials I put on the channel because they're probably way too niche and way too in-depth, but like and they don't need to have, like the YouTube pacing and stuff, but it's like, it's almost like little snippets, almost feels like what would be in a course, but like here's, you know, audio processing, here's whatever any part of the process, like some real specific tutorial, which, again, then there would be a library of that, library of that, and even if there is a high churn rate in that higher category if you join six months from now, you'll still have access to the entire and if you join for a couple months, paying $20, $40 to get, access what is
Speaker 1:essentially like an unofficial online course, and then if you leave, that's that's a good deal, yeah and it's, and so that's something that I would like to do more of.
Speaker 1:So and there's also stuff, too, which I haven't played with lately because I couldn't, because it wasn't an option, but I've seen some people do this and I think it actually does help.
Speaker 1:Clean up the channel is, if you do a live stream just a regular live stream you leave it up for a couple of days or whatever, and then you switch it to members only the replay, so it. It's something I've played with once or twice, but then it it barred all the Patreon people, so I couldn't do it, whereas now I can do something like that and that way it's not. You don't have all these like I like having my live stream replays, so I I've been leaving them, cause I think they're fun and cool, but sometimes they do kind of like clutter up the video page and do so it like it. So it almost makes sense to like let's not unlist them or delete them, but let's put them over here and someone can become a member and now if they just want to have like background audio for days and days, they can just play live streams. So those are the current perks and maybe some potential future ones.
Speaker 1:Great but those are all ones that make sense for me. It's a manageable workload for me, and it's stuff that people have either been interested in or said they'd be interested in or I think they would be interested in uh, let's see, I'm a rare, both twitch and youtube believer I love that. That's awesome. You go to vidcon and twitchcon uh, my crafty adventures.
Speaker 2:Do you offer coaching or consulting?
Speaker 1:uh, I do sometimes, but I haven't in a while yeah, you did coaching too, I did consulting I used to do both. Yeah, uh, I don't anymore, yeah time is is a thing, uh time, if you want, if you're, if you are looking for youtube specific like coaching, consulting.
Speaker 2:We have the youtube huddle up over at us free uh, my tutorial channel.
Speaker 2:yeah, so that's. It's not one-on-one, but it's uh. It's a weekly accountability group of people who are working on growing and building their YouTube channels. We meet every Wednesday at 1 pm Pacific Standard Time. It's a weekly live stream and it's really fun. We do Q&As, we get feedback. We're all in different niches, so I feel like it's really helpful to see what's working globally for YouTube creators and the YouTube platform, and there's a whole scoreboard wins goals thing there. So if you're looking for like that kind of a thing, that's free and it's over at my tutorial channel called Heather Ramirez just my name.
Speaker 1:And my crafty adventure, since Tech Troublemaker is the one who pointed you this direction he's, he's a part of it yeah, you might already even know about it audio hotline my wife is also my show and tell audience. Yeah, and I know sometimes you do not care, but I just need to get it out, so why not?
Speaker 2:I know, but like I feel it's not. I feel like there are people who care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you never reject, yeah but there are people like you're excited by me being excited about something yeah, exactly, but when there's someone who's gonna be like oh my god, that my mind is also blown for these reasons I'm like right, yeah, yeah, you guys, like I can tell you there's a simpsons reference in final fantasy 14. I have never seen and you can appreciate that but when someone else gets the reference, then it's like totally different, yeah yeah andre, a practical question about supporter names and credits.
Speaker 2:Is there any smart, practical way of making those uh csv file export or something? Or is it just copy paste from a membership list in youtube studio?
Speaker 1:um, you can export the csv from youtube and then I, I have a photoshop file. So mine's photoshop some people do scrolling ones, i'm'm going to different ones Mine's Photoshop and I, I updated, I add people to it every time. It's like the last thing I do. You know, it takes a couple of days to make a video, so the last thing that gets added are the names. That way they're the most up to date and I just add them to that Photoshop file.
Speaker 1:And then every the list, because people drop off. So I don't actually, when someone leaves, I don't take them off right away because it's just too, that's a full-time job, just keep calculating the list. So it's like you know, you might get a couple of free bonus credits or whatever. That's fine. So every quarter is when I and you'll notice like the list kind of like goes and it fills up the screen and then suddenly it's like there's an empty column again and it grows and does that and that's that's the reason for that. Um, that's what. That's what I've done. I think everybody does it a little differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that has worked uh, let's see, I'm an avid tom vaude live stream watcher, so I might need to get me a membership well, mr camera junkie said, if you put live streams over the zone you lose the chat.
Speaker 1:So that's a good reason to keep them public. And I, I mean I'm happy to keep them public because yeah it's cool when people join in the thing, that sometimes, sometimes people I don't know if they're new to youtube or they miss it they they watch a live stream from like a year or two ago and I think you're alive? I think they think it's live and they start leaving a barrage of comments and wondering why I'm not responding to them and I'm like like that was in 2021. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Audio hotline says my wife turns her brain off when I start talking my crafty adventures. Just subscribe, yay.
Speaker 1:That's your next channel, heather, just subscribe.
Speaker 2:Gosh, it's perfect. I have so many. Heather Just, I was thinking about it this morning. Heather just. Heather, I was thinking about it this morning, heather Just Jump.
Speaker 1:If you started a hockey channel it could be Heather Just Ice, but it'd be like Heather Justice Just Ice.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I like that, because everyone's going to read it as Justice.
Speaker 1:I know, but Heather Justice is a very cool, is it, I don't know, like a public defender who's a superhero or something?
Speaker 2:Ace Attorney.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm making up a new lore now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, we're at the top of the hour, past the top of the hour and I have to get. Of course, my video stopped exporting when we went live.
Speaker 2:So, I have to get this out and uploaded. So anyway, thanks for joining us guys. This was super fun. Hopefully that was helpful. I know you know memberships is a very common effective way to monetize as a content creator, so hopefully that was insightful for any of you guys who might be considering that or have a membership. And yeah, we will. Well, actually next Friday is Black Friday. Yeah, are we going live?
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the plan. Are we going to go to the mall? He laughed. Is that weird?
Speaker 2:We Are we going to go to the mall. He laughed. Is that?
Speaker 1:weird. We're not going to go to the mall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're not going to the mall, so we'll be here next Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are there malls to really go to anywhere also? So, anyway, thanks for watching, thanks for or whatever you're sharing. Thank you for that and we hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your day. Actually, this will be the last time we see you if you celebrate Thanksgiving in the US. So if you do that, have a happy Thanksgiving and see you next time.
Speaker 2:Bye have a great weekend.