All Plugged Up

How NOT 2 Plug Stuff

Plugs are getting more concise and take away less from the watching experience

I appreciate my audience's patience while I learn the best way to plug products. Living on Youtube ad revenue is a myth and all the donations go back into the channel. I don't want to live on donations, that feels weird, but I can't paint houses anymore AND run this channel. There is simply too much to do.

However, it doesn't need to completely take over a video. My first plugs weren't even things I was trying to sell, but just projects that helped the community like putting together the slacklining groups, or slackademics, or the bolting bible. There is a balance in explaining what the LineScale3 is, or that the Bolting Bible exists or why donating is so critical and just putting a little box in the corner with the information.

Look how much of a 6 minute video was a plug!!!

The nalgene bottle was probably my worst one and you can see 2 minutes of a 6 minute video was an Extreme Gear plug. I try so hard to cut out every um, and breath, and overlay thoughts with visuals to keep it tight so I hate any form of plug, especially long ones. EG was new though and I wanted to make sure my audience didn't think I was selling out because a store is the best option for me so I don't promote one product over the other or say something nice because someone paid me to. A store keeps HowNOT2 authentic.

The other risk with starting to promote things that would potentially make me money, was not to lose donations. People donated because it was the only revenue source and I don't want to give the appearance that wasn't important anymore so I over explained. FYI: I made only about $949 in the first 6 months of Extreme Gear being open and anyone watching the channel knows I blow a lot more than that making content.

My new strategy is to do a clear call to action in 1 or 2 sentences right in the middle of the good stuff or just put text on the screen that is clear while saying a joke or including a blooper in the middle of a video. It's just important to keep the flow going, however I need to accomplish that.

I can't change or add to my videos already published to youtube, but I can delete sections luckily. So I am going back through all 400-500 videos and removing long plugs, Juno coffee plugs, slackline.com jingles at the end, etc. I hope to clean up the mistakes and continue with the better methods.