We love creating our vlogs, photography and other content for you guys, let's make that very clear from the start. In fact I would love to create content all the time but that's not viable for many reasons as I do have to earn a living (don't you hate jobs getting in the way of fun?). With that said we are not going to stop doing our vlogs any time soon and have indeed made sure that our channel is secure by having Rumble as a back up - you know what I am like for saying things YouTube don't like ha ha!
So, what the heck are we doing setting up new channels and sites like the one you are reading now?
Well, there are a few reasons but mainly to make things easier and more organised for the future. Many of our subscribers and MeWe members may remember me saying that I had many new ideas that would happen in 2022 and whilst I have not said much recently on the matter things have actually been progressing in the background away from social media. Let's see if I can explain as I do ramble on a bit sometimes (well ok a lot of the time). I'll go through each one at a time.
YouTube v Rumble
This one is easy, protection of our content and a central hub for all our YouTube Channels. What actually happens at the moment is that any content we upload to Hannah the Narrowboat and Living in a Ditch on Youtube automatically gets backed up on our Living in a Ditch Rumble channel - I literally have to do nothing (well apart from set it up in the first place). Any other channel we create on Youtube can be made be made to do the same thing so that gives us peace of mind should I be too naughty on YouTube! We are trying to just make everyone aware that should something happen to our YouTube channels you will be able to see them and follow us on Rumble.
Hannah the Narrowboat Shorts
Now this one is in it's infancy and we may change things up once we see how things evolve. We set it up for three reasons the first being separation from our main Vlogs. Historically people subscribed to Hannah the Narrowboat for our cruising vlogs and we did not really want to dump other stuff onto those people who really would not be interested in other things but then lockdown happened and we did not cruise for a couple of years pretty much so the vlog changed. Still unsure of our audience, and perhaps I am asking you here, I thought we had better leave it as it is hence setting up Living in A Ditch where I can have my rants if I desire (within YouTubes stupid rules of course). I get the feeling that most of our subscribers now are actually OK with me going off on one every now and then but still, I think Living in a Ditch was the right move. Secondly it's about being monetised. On HTN we are indeed monetised which is why you get adverts. However, as an example the video of Lee's Weekend Bender we posted to the Shorts channel would have received a copyright warning on HTN because of the background music (yep it's pathetic isn't it!) being a monetised channel. The Shorts channel at this stage is not monetised so a copyright warning don't really matter to us there. Of course if the shorts channel takes off it may get monetised in the future and then we will have to. The third and perhaps more important reason is freedom for us. We don't feel so obliged to stick to narrowboat or alternative living stuff - we can post anything from silly clips to insights and behind the scenes stuff that our HTN audience may not be interested in.
Let's talk money
I hate adverts, sure they help us make a few pennies here and there but nowhere near as much as people may expect. Please let me be clear here, our Vlogs are not about earning money at all, they have always been a diary to us and something to keep me amused. That being said we have some absolutely wonderful followers who have made donations either via Patreon, PayPal or YouTubes Super Chat on our livestreams. These wonderful people have helped us cover some of the costs of producing our Vlogs, and there are costs unfortunately and we do need those covered - not so much if my business had not been destroyed by lockdowns but we are where we are.
I know I can be a gobshite sometimes but I am an honest gobshite so here's what we get. On YouTube (forget super chat for a minute) it takes us 3 months to make £60 and that usually consists of 12 videos (1 a week) which works out at around £5 per video. Of course there may be the odd anomaly along the way if a video gets a lot of views but that's the average right there. This is for a channel where many of you guys have to sit through shitloads of adverts. Now let's talk Livestreams and Super Chat. Livestreams have been a good laugh and we will continue to do them every now and then but we ask everyone never to donate anything big on Super Chat - the odd £ here and there is OK so long as you understand that YouTube take 30% plus other stuff I don't understand (tax I think) from your kind donations and pocket it themselves. As if adverts were not enough! Yes I do understand they have a platform to run but I just thought you needed to know the breakdown.
In the name of honesty I will tell you this - we make about the same from our awesome followers donations as we do from YouTube monetisation. There is a 'but' though. I have always felt uneasy about asking people for donations just because we do a weekly vlog which is why we have started using platforms like Buy Me A Coffee and Patreon (more on that below) where we can give something extra to those who support us whilst at the same time not putting our channels behind some sort of paywall.
Buy me a Coffee v Patreon
As I write this, our Buy me a Coffee page is just a couple of days old and some may ask why we done this as well as having a Patreon page. Straight up Patreon is not flexible enough and we find it difficult to use. Our Patreon page will be dropped at the end of March 2022 - we will continue to post there up until then (although we have been shit at updating Patreon!). Patreon forces a membership on people meaning you HAVE to pay for content where as Buy me a Coffee lets you decide if you want to contribute or not. For instance, I have just posted Chugging Along (our theme tune) to this Buy me a Coffee platform and it's free if you want or you can buy me a coffee - that's much more acceptable to me and does not stop people being able to have extra content from us. I know, I could just make everything completely free but how do I cover costs? There is also the option of monthly and yearly membership levels that we set ourselves on Buy me a Coffee where yes, some stuff will be for members only - they need to be rewarded in some way for their kindness. The bottom line here is that the more support we get the more we produce - I would love nothing more than to be able to jump in the car and drive to different locations on the canal or wherever to make you some lovely cinematic films - I have the Blackmagic 6k Pro Cinema Camera now along the computing power needed and relevant drone license to do stuff from above legally so we are halfway there. Once the weather breaks then maybe I will do one to show you what I mean. I'm just being honest here, yes I would give up my floundering graphic design business to do something like described above, you all know I love photography and videography - I could even spend time making tutorials and things like that. Perhaps a bit of a pipe dream but you have to have dreams in life. On a final note about Buy me a Coffee it feels like a good platform for blogs and long form posts like this so maybe we play with that in the future!
The bottom line
Our vlogs are here to stay on Hannah the Narrowboat, everything else we do is an extra and we can do more if we have our time and costs covered. We don't expect donations at all so please don't feel that we are doing our vlogs for money, it's a terrible business model in any case!. Nothing changes at all for those that have followed and subscribed to the Hannah the Narrowboat Youtube channel you can be assured of that - well, unless Netflix picks us up and throws cash at us ha ha!!!!