FREE means YOU are EXPENDABLE

I’ve been on YouTube.com for almost a decade and before that, REVVER.com (no longer exists) and then lots of other online video platforms until YouTube.com took over them all.

Believe it or not, there use to be 12 different video platforms I use to upload videos to, it was literally an all-day process uploading just one video, tagging and publishing!

I even use to post my videos on Chinese and foreign websites back when I ran WoodMarvels.com but those were eventually deleted without any recourse or warning.

There have been a lot of lessons learned from this and one of them is that if you don’t own the platform, free means YOU are the disposable product, expendable anytime, anywhere for whatever reason.

What do I mean by this?

Here’s a great example of what’s going on with YouTube.com and other social medias… people are getting banned, their videos disabled and so forth.

These content sites owe you nothing, they don’t care about how many “friends” you have, how vital it is to your business or relationships you’ve built through the years.

You are disposable because you are nothing but a number and are no different from a mosquito that they will swat the moment you hint at any bother to them or their business model.

I’m one of the lucky ones that just loves the creative process and whether a video gets a one hit or a thousand, makes no difference to me, that’s one reason why I disabled  comments on YouTube.com as well, I’m no looking for affirmation of my existence.

What a lot of people fail to realize is that you can’t build a business on something you don’t have control over.

Don’t build a business on rented land.

This is one of the primary reasons why I actually PAY to have my videos hosted by Vimeo, it doesn’t totally protect me but at least I have incrementally more control about my message and my passion than solely using one platform.

I post my videos on YouTube.com, Vimeo.com and starting to do the same with Facebook.com, just to hedge my bets.

Each social media platform has their advantages and disadvantages, which is why I also keep all my videos on my computer and also back everything up in the cloud as I’m just waiting for the day where bandwidth costs next to nothing to upload all my own videos to my own server and stream content from that for total relative creative freedom.

At any moment, like what is happening to the bodybuilding and arms communities, the same can be applied to the woodworking one, the creative ones and so forth.

Remember, YouTube.com and other sites rely on ADVERTISERS to stay afloat, that’s why they can get away with charging you NOTHING.

You aren’t paying the bills, their advertisers are and guess what, anything deemed detrimental to them means you are GONE.

I remember when I was banned and removed from Blip.tv a while back before they rebranded into something other than a YouTube.com alternative.

I actually spoke to one of the founders, they explained to me that my videos were “sales pitches” and thus, not allowed on their platform.

I sent them a link to my video and asked them where the sale pitch was… the actions they took on me where quickly reversed.

Don’t even bother trying to do this with FaceBook.com, YouTube.com… but I can with Vimeo, because I PAY THEM.

I’ve been making videos for YEARS, I really enjoy sharing the creative process behind it, that’s why, year in and out, CNCROi.com has averaged about a new content posting every two days consistently.

The only times I skip producing content is when I’m on vacation or am so swamped with work, paying takes over creative for a little bit.

Something I’ve done since my WoodMarvels.com days and even back when I ran i3DS.com which was my web development and 3D animation studio 20 years ago, was always brand my videos with my website.

My goal with FaceBook.com, Vimeo.com and YouTube.com etc. is to send traffic to something I do own, MY WEB SITE!

If, for some reason, all social media was taken offline, guess what, I’d still have my web site and my business.

At least in the grand scheme of things, it would be the last thing to go as I have the most control over it.

If your entire business is on YouTube.com with only references to that and other social media, you are in trouble as things get slowly tighter content restriction wise, no matter what you are doing.

Maybe one day, I get a complaint from somebody about me “showing off” my equipment and expertise and this causes somebody to feel bad and lodge a complaint which then social media deems valid, all this off-server content would be gone.

If you think this is impossible, it has happened to me before!

If you look throughout history, you’ll see that big events always start by people who take offense by extremely small things and then it explodes exponentially from there.

Right now, you may think that “you are safe” but in reality, you are not.

Build and send all the traffic to your website, hedge your bets across multiple hosting and promoting platforms and never forget that unless you pay for something, you are disposable without cause or foresight.

As for me, I use YouTube.com, not the other way around, same with all these other social media and content platforms, I know better I hope this posting has opened your eyes to how fragile your content is.