Binkov's newsletter, July 2018

Hi my dear patron,

Another month, another newsletter. First off, a little explanation on
why certain videos aren't released on Fridays, even though we do
strive to keep to that schedule. There is this thing called
demonetization when it comes to YouTube. Every YouTuber wants their
videos monetized, including us. Reason is two fold. One is to earn
money so their channel can go on. The other is to have as many views
possible. Which may or may not influence the future earnings.

YouTube, as a company, wants videos to have as many views as possible,
too. They also want them monetized because then they can put ads in
front of those videos or as banners during the videos. And the
earnings from those ads are then divided between the author of the
video and YouTube. The single biggest factor behind view numbers of
any video are YouTube's suggestion of various videos to the general
audience of YouTube. YouTube picks which videos they will be
suggesting to which audience, how much and so on.

They certainly want to increase their earnings so they suggest videos
they think will be most popular. At the same time, when it comes to
picking whether to suggest a monetized video, which can bring them
money, or a demonetized video, which won't bring them money, they will
basically pick the former. Demonetized videos simply do not get
promoted. And don't get viewed much.

At the same time, YouTube has this automatic review process. Whenever
a new video is uploaded, its software algorithms check it out and
decided if the content of the video is good for the general audience
and thus for the advertisers, or is it perhaps too controversial, in
which case they demonetize it. They generally don't like anything with
guns, weapons, wars and politics. So channels like ours are especially
hit with demonetization. Something like 80% of our videos that get
uploaded to YouTube get demonetized at one point or another. There are
several catches, though.

That automatic software driven review is not immediate. Sometimes
videos get demonetized within a minute. Sometimes it takes a week
before the algorithm gets to them. Also, when YouTube's algorithm does
demonetize a video, the creator is offered to request a manual review
of the video. Of course, we always ask for  one. And then it takes
from several hours to a few days for YouTube employee to actually get
to your video and watch it. Then he\she makes the final decision.
Either remonetizes it or keeps it demonetized. To date, we had only a
single video demonetized permanently. (Possible NK attack on Guam).


Anyway, all the above means the whole upload process is quite
unpredictable. We certainly don't want to go public with a video
without monetization. At the same time, we don't want to keep you, our
audience, waiting for long. With our latest video, Tank drones, we
waited for two days, and no manual review happened yet. We ended up
going public nevertheless. We'll see just how much it will influence
our view numbers. We try to go around the whole thing by having videos
complete several days before Fridays, but it's either not always
possible or YouTube sometimes just takes so freaking long to do their
reviews.

That was a long explanation, we know. But monetization is really a
core issue for many YouTubers. Without it, 99% channels would simply
shut down. Anyway, onto the more fun stuff.

Our upcoming videos! Next one we have prepped is another short
newsflash video. To be released this upcoming Friday. There were some
news released from Russian media about actual testing performance of
their unmanned combat vehicle Uran-9. So we have a video about that,
which we thought tied in nicely into our Drone tanks video.

Then a week after that we're gonna have one of three UK vs Spain
videos released. That was the winner of our community poll for June.
Continuing our effort to capitalize on amount of research that goes
into our videos, we will have three videos released over a two week
period. There will be a forces comparison video, mostly with tables of
equipment for both sides. And then we will have two big videos
covering actual war possibilities. One will deal with Spanish invasion
of Gibraltar and British reaction to it. The other will deal with
other possible fronts in such a war. How could Britain punish Spain,
and what sort of options would UK have, warring with Spain.

We are not 100% sure yet, but we may do a China vs USA: Trade war
sometime in August. It'd be a departure from our usual videos, but
it's a very important geopolitical topic. We'll definitely know more
in a week or two.

September should also bring you a WW2 themed video. But it's too early
to speculate, as we too haven't decided on a topic.

Oh, and if you've perhaps noticed our recent poll special on our
website, asking what sort of Binkov game would you like to see, you
might have wondered what that is all about. As our videos are
basically non-interactive wargames, we are toying with the idea of
participating in something a bit more interactive. We certainly don't
have the time for anything big, so we're just weighing our options.
Not much to report on yet. It's more of a backburner project for the
long term.

Will write more next month. :)

Salutations!
Commissar Binkov