My membership

There are times when we all have to think about our personal membership on a YouTube channel and what are we spending to keep that channel active. Lately I have been finding that I have been spending some money on a channel that hasn’t been the best for me so now to figure out is it worth me continuing to support this channel. 

I have been a member of this YouTube channel for over three years and now I am looking at what the community is like and what I am getting for the price that I pay each month. We were told that there were going to be member exclusive posts, but I haven’t seen any of those for over the past two years. I wonder why that is happening, that could be because we aren’t getting the revenue to support those special exclusive feeds. People need to know that the exclusive feeds aren’t going to be part of the benefit that we were told we would get.

The chats that are included as a member benefit has now become only part of when departures happen and that is very limited to actually when the ships are departing. There is no extra chat because that isn’t encouraged and it just isn’t happening now matter when happening in the group. I know that I have tried to encourage different chats, but people show up for departures and immediately after departures they disappear. This doesn’t help with the overall community and even the moderators don’t encourage chatting outside the very small-time window of departures.

The other issue we are currently dealing with is either a slow feed or a buffering feed so that doesn’t help to ensure communication in the group. If we can’t see what is happening in or around the port it makes it rather difficult to have a conversation. If there are going to be issues that are going to take some time to resolve people need to know what is happening. Just seeing a stream disappear when it is part of a bigger channel doesn’t help at all.

As members we should be able to find out what is going on with the stream/channel and have an idea of a timeline but when we don’t we start to think about the money we are spending and is it worth the cost versus when we are actually receiving as a paying member versus what we could get as a free member?

Patreon and YouTube Memberships

I am finding that more people are either setting up a Patron account or setting up YouTube Memberships for their YouTube channel. It can get extremely expensive if you were to have the various memberships because if you want some of the benefits.

If you were to join a bunch of YouTube memberships and then patron accounts, it could get very expensive quickly.

Here are some examples of YouTube memberships for people that have FlossTube channels

1. First one
1. $4.49/month CDN

                                                              i.      Benefits are you get a member shout-out on videos

                                                            ii.      Priority replies to comments

                                                          iii.      Loyalty badges next to your name

2. Second one
1. $1.99/month

                                                              i.      Weekly blog

                                                            ii.      Loyalty badges next to your name

                                                          iii.      Custom emoji to use in comments

2. $4.99/month

                                                              i.      All previous perks

                                                            ii.      Twice weekly Vlogs

3. $14.99/month

                                                              i.      All previous perks

                                                            ii.      Twice monthly live stitch with me sessions

                                                          iii.      Quarterly gift charts

 

One of these Flosstuber also have a patreon account so here is one of those with the costs of the patron account as well as a count of other patron accounts that doesn’t have a YouTube membership.

1. First one (also has YouTube membership)
1. $7.50 CA/month

                                                              i.      A day in the life – weekly vlogs, weekly blog post and discord access

2. $14.50 CA/month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      Hang out live for filming of Live FlossTube

                                                          iii.      Quarter Patreon Gift chart

3. $22 CA/month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      Monthly Zoom chat

4. $29 CA/month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      Sneak peeks of upcoming designs

                                                          iii.      Monthly Gift chart

2. Second one
1. $10.50 CA/month

                                                              i.      Monthly PDF small chart

                                                            ii.      Sneak peek of upcoming designs

                                                          iii.      Access to patron only posts, vlogs, and updates

                                                          iv.      Participate in Polls

                                                            v.      5% off purchases on website

                                                          vi.      Early access to purchase fabric via Patreon store

2. $22 CA/Month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      One large PDF chart

                                                          iii.      10% off purchases on website

                                                          iv.      Monthly stitch and chat

3. 57.50 CA/Month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      2 Fat quarters of fabric send 4 times a year

                                                          iii.      15% off purchases on website

4. $208 CA/Month

                                                              i.      All previous tier benefits

                                                            ii.      20% off purchases on website

                                                          iii.      A yard on Hand dyed linen per month

3. Third one
1. $3.50 CA/month

                                                              i.      Exclusive content and more

What I am trying to show is that Patron memberships and YouTube memberships can cost quite a bit depending on what you want to receive each month as the benefit of being a member. If there are a few designers that you like their designs and you would like their month benefits it is going to cost you quite a bit on a monthly and you need to think about, are you getting the real value for the cost.

I recently received an email from someone that is now changing their Patron benefits and as soon as I looked at the benefits, I quickly said that I would stick with the free Patron membership that I have as the levels where just too much for what I saw as the benefits I would get. Being able to look at the cost and the benefits that you receive is very important because it can help you determine if being a YouTube member or a Patron is worth it.

Each person must make their own decision if they want to be a Patron or a YouTube member and no one can tell you that you should or shouldn’t have a specific membership. For me, I have the YouTube channels that I enjoy and am a member of one of those channels (not cross stitch) and I don’t have any Patron memberships currently but am looking at maybe joining one to just see what the benefits really are.

Social media and drama

I have been watching a family channel on YouTube, and I have some to realize that both kids that are on the channel need some education on how to manage things. Part of these kids have been home schooled all their life, and their mother doesn’t seem to have the discipline to manage that.

The girl has just started college, and I don’t think she understands the demands on her time because after her fist day it was total drama because there were things that she needed to get done in the next week. She has 5 courses and four of them are online so that means she doesn’t have to sit in a classroom for four of them, but she was complaining because she didn’t know how to manage the courses. Her questions were should I do all of one course, on one day a week or should I try and work on a bunch of them each day. I think part of the issue is because she has been home schooled, they haven’t had to learn about having glasses a couple of times a week depending on the schedule.

The boy that is shown in this family seems to be able to get away with way too much and if he doesn’t want to do the home schooling, she seems to let him get away with it. Of course, letting him get away with not getting everything done isn’t helping him at all and he seems to spend quite a bit of time playing videos games or knee hockey. Once again, the discipline of making sure that school is getting done each day and he is up and ready for school at a specific time doesn’t seem to be happening. He also never seems to clean up after playing knee hockey in the living room, so that to me is also showing that he isn’t learning how to clean up after himself.

Yes, it is a channel on YouTube so I understand that they are paid per views to the challenge but when you have two students that are complaining about having to do homework or schooling why should I continue to watch you. I have now decided that it is time for me to walk away from viewing this family channel because when your children/teens don’t understand the demands on life it is showing that it’s ok for them to behave like this and get away with it.

Watching YouTube channels that only show the drama within a family isn’t what should be happening. Yes, all families are going to have challenges, but you also need to show that the children/teens behave nicely, and they don’t always complain when they are asked to do something. Also, showing children/teens that appreciate things that are done for them is also important.

Memberships on YouTube

Recently there has been a discussion on the YouTube channel about membership and why a gift membership could not be sent to a specific person. It was getting to the point that I was about to yell because they didn’t understand what we were trying to explain to them.

This channel has a membership of $5 a month and that provides the streams from multiple locations and the chat. The chat and special membership videos are the benefits for paying the monthly fee. Of course, when the membership starts the chat was open to everyone, but then it becomes a lot harder to manage, so now the main changes that are viewed have the chat normally set to “Chat as a member”. As a result of this change, there are people that were normally chatting that are no longer chatting because they don’t have a membership.

I understand that people may not be able to afford the $5 a month, and they might not want to pay that money because of their views. I think it is up to the individual if they become a member or not. There is also the option that you can change your own settings to accept gifts. If you have this set, you may randomly receive a membership.

The discussion got to the point that this one person was complaining and wasn’t listening that the random membership is a YouTube thing and not how the channel set it up. This individual wanted to gift a membership to a specific person and not to a pool. Why should one individual get a membership gifted to them when the rest of us are paying for our own. I understand that the person that she wanted to gift a membership was normally chatting but why single someone out for a membership.

So, for now, if you are a viewer of a channel that has membership, and you want to gift a membership it will go into a pool and those that have their settings to accept gifts may get your gift.

Audio-books, Podcasts and YouTube

Now these are all different ways of listening and watching things and sure they have been around for years some of them but until the last year I really wasn’t into any of them, but now I have figured out what works best for me and have started to love all of them in different ways. Each of them meets a different need for me, and that is what I am going to try and explain here.

Audiobooks

Now, until the beginning of this year I had heard people talk about audiobooks, but I had never really given them a try. I think before this I may have listened to one book, but other than that I didn’t think it would be something that I would enjoy. Yes, I like reading books, but as I am also a crafter and use my hands for the various crafts I have let the reading of books sort of drop off because my evenings are normally spent crafting. I did read a lot during commutes to and from work, but now that I am a co-owner of a business and most of the work is done remotely, there aren’t a lot of commutes.

Earlier this year, I decided to try audiobooks as a means of getting through some of the books that I wanted to read. I went to the library to renew my library card and while there looked at some of the cd audiobooks and immediately saw titles that were of interest to me. Seeing that there are a lot of titles that sounded interesting made me want to really give this idea a try, and that is when it started. After renewing my library card, I came home and decided to see what audiobooks were available through the library but online, and it opened up something that I have to admit that I have really enjoyed.

For me, audiobooks are something that I can listen to while crafting or even just when I am getting ready for bed. It has helped me get through some of the books that I have wanted to read, and now I have a wish list on the library website as well as another list on a piece of paper of the books that I want to listen to. Sure, I may encounter some wait lists for some of the books but that doesn’t bother me as I have a lot of other things to listen to now.

Podcasts

Podcasts aren’t as new to me as audiobooks, but they were normally something that my husband and I listened to on a long drive as a means of making the trip feel a little shorter. We started with one series of podcasts, and we are still working through that series as they are now recording their 13^th season and there are now around 52 episodes a year for them. Most of this series recording are only around 15 – 20 minutes, so that isn’t bad, but other podcasts can be a lot longer than that.

This year I decided to find out about some of the other people that I had heard that did podcasts, and now I have a rather long list of podcasts that I want to listen to as well. My first really good exposure to podcasts was earlier this year when I needed to do a commute that was going to take me almost 2 hours to complete. I downloaded some of the podcasts that I wanted to listen to onto my phone and off I went. The actual commute sure didn’t feel as long as it really was, and I was able to get through a few of the podcasts that I had downloaded.

I now have 5 different podcasts that I follow, so that means that I have lots of listening to do, but again these are things that I can listen to while crafting or before going to bed in the evenings. I am enjoying the experience and am happy that I now can download them onto my phone and have them with me all the time.

YouTube

YouTube can be a major distraction if you let it, but then if you are able to just watch what you subscribe to, it doesn’t feel so bad. I have tried to develop a discipline where I go into YouTube and check my subscriptions. Sure, it can still mean that I have a lot of videos to watch, but I can manage those putting them into my watch later library and I watch the various videos when I have the time. Sure, the watch later library can get rather large sometimes, but again these are videos that I can normally watch when I am crafting.

I have been watching YouTube videos for the last year, and basically the ones that I have been watching are a group of videos with the title FlossTube. These are videos done by cross-stitchers and individuals that may even have a store, but they are ones that I enjoy watching, and I have tried to keep my subscription list short so that I don’t feel overwhelmed when all the different people post all at one. The individuals post at different times, so I have some that post most days, some weekly, some monthly and then there are some that don’t post very often but at least by subscribing to them, I can see when they post a new video.

The different medias have given me a different experience, and I am loving all three of them. Audiobooks are great when you know you are going to have the time to listen to something that could take between 10 and 25 hours in three weeks, as that is how long some books are. Podcasts can vary in length between 15 minutes and 1.5 hours, but at least these are things that I can manage based on the time that I have available. YouTube is something that I watch either on my computer or tablet, and which video I watch will depend on the time that I have available as well as the mood I am in.

Knowing what works for you can open up a lot of different things and for me just having these different tools available means that I can’t say that I have nothing to watch or listen to because each of them gives me enough to keep me happy. If you haven’t tried these, give at least one of them a shot and see what you think. You may be surprised at how much you enjoy at least one of these methods, especially if you do something with your hands that doesn’t require a lot of thinking. A lot of crafters have found all of these work for them, and I am one of those crafters who now enjoys listening to things while I craft.