Casey Neistat fanboy ready to quit YouTube after 3 months

Do any CONTACT fans monitize videos on YouTube? If so, what has been your experience?

I was inspired by YouTube creators such as Casey Neistat (who I’m a total fanboy of), Matt from Demolition Ranch and Off the Ranch, The Slo Mo Guys, and others – and ramped up CONTACT‘s lacklustre channel during the Christmas break last year to a fully monitized channel where I could earn roughly about $0.001 for every view.

And, it was going ‘great’ – $11 earned in three months! – until three days ago when all of a sudden, all at the same time, 75 out of my 95 videos were suddenly disallowed from monitization because an automated YouTube algorithm said all of them “may not be advertiser-friendly”.

Note that it said ‘may not be’ – which means it doesn’t actually know for sure – it just red flagged all of them, just in case (but didn’t red flag 25 others, which are very similar content with the exact same theme music clips).

The reason I’m so frustrated and angered by this is because all 95 of my videos were automatically red flagged weeks and months ago – and all but two were approved when they were manually reviewed.

When this happened two days ago, I asked for assistance and explanation, through the ‘Help and Assistance’ button – but all I got was “have you read the policies” – “you can easily request manual review” – “have a nice day”.

Yes, I did read their policies and guidelines – before Christmas and again now – and I am confident I am not breaching anything I have read there.

The fact that all 75 videos currently rejected were already approved by the manual reviewers weeks and months ago is proof that I was not in breach of any policy – at least back then.

So what if I’m in breach now because some policy has changed (though having re-read it I still can’t see an problem) and the automated algorithm simply rejected my videos again now, just in case?

Will this happen every time there’s a change to the algorithm? I asked but they didn’t/wouldn’t answer.

What if I go through the pain of the 4 mouse clicks required for all 75 videos to get them manually reviewed AGAIN – and what if the manual reviewers say they are OK again now – but then they are not OK again in another two months when something else changes, and when I could potentially have even more videos affected?

The totally frustrating thing about the process is that there is never any explanation of what the problem was or might have been – so I cannot educate myself so as to avoid it the next time.

But here’s another thing – four new videos I uploaded on 27 February were automatically rejected (because that seems to be the default setting), so I requested manual review of those – and they are still sitting there ‘Under review’ 240 hours later.

Sure, I could go through all 75 videos, with 4 mouse-clicks and two page refreshes each, to request a manual review – AGAIN – and have those 75 videos join the queue behind the four that have been waiting 240 hours already – and maybe behind millions of other poor suckers in the same boat as me (or am I the only one?) – but I don’t see the point if this is going to happen again and again in the future.

So, it looks like the ‘cool’ CONTACT video channel so many of you have told me you’ve been enjoying, could be at a sudden end already, just three months after official launch.

OR (I had this epiphany in recent days) – what if I don’t ask for review and leave all my videos red flagged as advertiser unfriendly. That would mean YouTube can’t run advertising on them. And, while that also means I lose out on my $0.001 every time a fan views my videos – at least my fans get ad-free videos to watch. See – I’m always thinking of you guys 🙂

 

I’d love to get some feedback, support, empathy or suggestions from you guys – via editor@militarycontact.com or via comments below or on Facebook.

 

EPILOGUE: In the latest correspondence from YouTube, a lovely girl assured me she sympathised with my frustration – before going on to frustrate me even more by copy-and-pasting the rules at me without answering any of my questions – except one – why is it taking so long to get manually reviewed? In answer to that, she partially blamed YOU – my audience! That’s right, my videos are prioritised so low because of “video and channel performance”, among other things. In other words, you guys are not watching my crap videos enough to make them rate a little less crap 😉

So, your homework for tonight is to watch and comment on at least six of my very short but, rather excellent videos, here, and leave constructive comments.

PLEASE!!!

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EPILOGUE 2: Two of the four most recent videos which were under review were finally authorised – 11 days after requesting review. But two still haven’t been, 12 days in.

BUT, here’s the big kicker – 57 of the 75 videos that were red-flagged as advertiser unfriendly, have been recategorised as Monetized without notice and without me asking for manual review. Of course I’m pleased to see the green dollar symbol back – but it surely demonstrates that something weird happened – something beyond my control – and something beyond logical explanation from the Help Desk.

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