I was asked this in DMs and since it was a long answer reply I figured why not let others know as well! You may be curious as to why the giveaways stopped this past year. We had been doing constant consistent (and on average for sure weekly that were daily at some points during the year) giveaways.
We've been building the channel and the giveaways with the community in mind for the past 4 years. Year 4 was the rest year and here is why.
First - Comment Sections
Negativity is louder and more passionate and quite frequent.
All content creators deal with negativity from random online strangers constantly. Most of the people that use YouTube don't even comment or chat. It is a very small portion of people who chat. Plus, there is a slightly larger percentage of people among those chatters who open up with negativity.
After 3 years of it in one's face daily it can tend to be a bit much. Rest and reflection in the absence of good people to chat with becomes a necessity. Too much negativity and good people consistently silent.
Second - Money The creator code use wasn't sustainable.
We were giving away 1000 free vbucks daily from people using the creator code. As soon as we started to give away that much daily the creator code use started dropping. I thought for sure people would use the code more, excited about real giveaways, but surprisingly the opposite happened.
We gave away daily for 3 months and gained no traction. We in fact were going in the opposite direction from our goals. Made sense to take a break and assess what was going wrong.
I'm a stay at home dad. The 5 yo co-host goes to school for the first time this year for like 3 days a week starting in September. I've been trying to build online so that I can stay home with him but it takes time to get traction and build the necessary skills. "Survival" is the name of the game and consistency.
The problem we face; for real traction we need enough people "using the creator code" but it isn't as simple as go live and ask people to use the code. I hate relying on other people for likes, views, code use and all that. So my work in crypto as a moderator and community manager will help with online cash as we get the channel more traction.
I'm starting up the giveaways with the intention to pay for all the free vbucks necessary to give away 1000 free vbucks per day. I'm hoping that doing the giveaways from my own cash will gain the traction we need so that the creator code can catch up and cover the cost; and then over take the cost of the vbuck codes.
Either way and for long term daily 1000 free vbucks giveaways is a huge part of the plan.
Third - Community
Attracting the right people.
A main part my goals is to build a community not just be the big badass streamer "giver awayer" person. So, I took a year off; if you call doing stuff casually posting weekly and still sometimes daily "time off." Giveaways were paused as we figured out how to build more specifically for the community we want.
I'm constantly thinking... how do we attract the right kind of followers while doing giveaways and family friendly content? My goal is to have people chatting knowing me and interested to do bigger things together for others.
We want to attract contributors, chatters, viewers, and more who are all chill. We want to build a community of people who are tired of the toxic and inauthentic. We want to attract those who want to build family friendly giveaways with us that can go beyond free vbucks and reach offline needs. Gamers doing good for other gamers and beyond.
Any time I have streamed lately people we know visit the stream and it so vibe. It's one of the most encouraging things. I guess we are simply an old enough channel now. We have OG awesome people returning to chat when they see we are live. We simply need to keep going to find more?
The conclusive T...
More family friendly value, more giveaways, more community until we can't be ignored.
Each of these 3 things played a part but it was largely time after 3 years to take a break. We were streaming daily grinding constantly. We were making progress but I couldn't see it and I was getting exhausted.
We will get it. I won't give up until we make the channel and community we are aiming for. It will take some time but it feels like year 5 will be our best yet. Sustaining the giveaways minimally with my own cash will bring a lot more consistency to the giveaways. It won't be easy personally but giving is one of the best ways to inspire and to attract the right kind of people.
We will pick up the wrong sort of people along the way but working together we will either turn them into our sort of people or be so family friendly vibe that they get bored and leave. lol I mean it's in the wisdom of the culture you build on purpose that will make more people who value that culture stick to it and less people who don't like it stick around.
As always, I am inviting YOU specifically to join us as we...
Shoot for the stars! and dream big; for ourselves and for others.
- ZymaPro
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