Here's why I need to start a Patreon

We need to have an honest chat about the reason I'm starting a Patreon page. It really is my last resort. Over the past couple of years, I've tried everything else, from changing my video style to upload times etc. I complained to YouTube again and again about the drastic decline in views on all the biggest baking channels since youtube changed to an Artificial Intelligence algorithm (the algorithm decides which videos are suggested on the side for people to watch).

Here’s the views per month on the top 5 baking channels on YouTube. Prior to the algorithm change all these channels were slowly growing month on month as real people discovered them, subscribed and saw their videos recommended.

I could screenshot more and show the same downward trend but I figured this was enough to illustrate my point. Real bakers and creators are being squeezed out by big media companies who mass produce how-to videos. For those who don’t understand how YouTube works, you get paid a portion of the fees paid by advertisers on your videos. So diminishing views is directly proportionate to a diminishing income. This isn't a big issue if making videos is a side hobby ... but if it is your main income source (and you've spent years building up a studio, equipment and expertised) then at some point you simply have to move on and find another job to pay your bills. Some large baking YouTubers have already stopped creating videos and subsequently I get comments every week from people saying ‘please don’t stop uploading’.

At the same time there has been a dramatic surge in views seen on clickbait, compilation, copying, controversial topics and content-farms constantly uploading videos. Here’s some content-farm views per month over that same time period. Can you believe 5-minute crafts is now getting 800 million views a month!

To my absolute surprise YouTube’s reply after doing a ‘deep dive’ into food content on youtube was to suggest that I try making videos in the same format as channels like So Yummy and Tasty (Tasty uploads 29 videos a week).  They are huge companies with hundreds of employees. But I thought I’d take the feedback seriously and started watching some So Yummy videos. I quickly noticed that only the first 3 minutes of their videos were new content, the rest was a reshuffle of their other videos. By reshuffling they seem to bypass the ‘no duplicated content’ rule on youtube that doesn’t allow you to upload the same video twice. Not only do they duplicate on the one channel they also upload it onto blossom, another channel that they own. They do this in order to pump out as many videos as possible for the lowest cost. 

The current youtube algorithm favours constant uploading and ‘new’ videos. My type of videos take a week to film, edit and write the recipes out. So I can’t do multiple videos in a week, especially not 29 videos a week like tasty. But just as a test I thought I’d listen to feedback from youtube and make a video in the soyummy style to see what people actually prefer.  Full cooking videos with recipes and verbal instructions or fast forwarded compilations of easy baking with no written recipes?  A huge 90% voted for full cooking videos with recipes and verbal instructions.

Currently I spend 40-50hours a week filming, editing, shopping for and preparing for videos, answering comments, writing out recipes, making thumbnails and everything that goes into running a youtube channel.    

My plan is, with your support, to continue creating videos.