A little over a month ago I started posting videos to my YouTube channel again. This is one of many times that I try to breathe new life into the channel, and also the first time I've been at it and still motivated over a month later. I've found a routine for recording and editing that gives me energy instead of sucking the life out of me.
The success has been decent and better than I expected. Since I posted the first new video I've gotten over 600k views (thanks to Shorts), gotten almost 5k hours of watch time hours and gained over 350 subscribers. I also decided to activate memberships on mu channel as a way to get extra revenue, and today, roughly a month later I've gotten my first paid member. For me, that's a huge milestone.
What are YouTube Memberships?
YouTube memberships are basically like Twitch subs. You pay a small or large sum to support the content creators you like a little bit extra while also getting something in return. You can have several tiers that get more and more expensive that will give better and better rewards for the members, or tiers that give nothing but just support the creator even more.
I set up four membership tiers for my channel with the following perks:
- Pro ($2.99) - Early access to all my videos
- Elite ($4.99) - Priority reply to comments
- God ($6.99) - God role on Discord
- Nook ($24.99) - Noob role on Discord
I thought long and hard about how to set up my tiers and decided to go with a model where only the lowest tiers give any real value to the user while the more expensive tiers are just for novelty. I decided that this way I'd seem less greedy.
On top of this, these perks don't cost me any extra energy and time. I was already scheduling videos weeks ahead of time and now I only need to click one more button to make videos available to members before they go public on the scheduled date. I have nothing to loose on this.
Why is this a milestone?
To me, getting my first paid member on my channel is a huge milestone because someone actually chose to use their hard earned money to support me and to be able to watch my videos early. While the fact that people are choosing to subscribe and leave likes and comments on mu videos is proof enough that people like them, this is the a new level of proof.
This is a huge motivational boost to me and it's something that'll keep me going for a long time. It's only $0.7 extra revenue (due to regional pricing) but the action itself is worth far more in terms of symbolism.