๐ Get On the Early Train Out of Vanity Metrics Station
Hey Reader, if you're waiting for YouTube to monetize your content, I want you to stop. ๐
Unless you're specifically building an influencer or ad-supported media business, YouTube paying you should not be the goal. Your business should be paying you. And YouTube just gave us two excellent reasons why.
Beginning in February, new creators will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified public watch hours or 20 million qualified Shorts views to unlock ad and YouTube Premium revenue sharing.
That's double the current requirement.
My response: Good. Stop aiming for it.
If you're a consultant, coach, speaker, author, service provider, or subject-matter expert, I would much rather see you make a $2,000 sale because 137 of the right people watched your video than spend a year chasing 8,000 watch hours for a slice of YouTube's advertising revenue.
YouTube can be your discovery engine. It can amplify the hell out of an idea and introduce you to someone who didn't know you existed five minutes ago. But YouTube does not have to be your business model.
The second announcement makes this even clearer. Starting August 24, YouTube will count a public "view" as soon as a video starts playing or someone enters a livestream. Meanwhile, creators will still have a separate Engaged views metric showing how many people actually chose to keep watching.
โก๏ธ Think about what that means: your view count can go up without your content getting any better.
Meanwhile, YouTube's recommendation system is getting much better at understanding what your content is actually about and matching it with the people most likely to care. Clicks and watch time still matter, but popularity alone isn't the game anymore. YouTube is increasingly operating as a relevance engine.
Did you spot the vanity metrics booby trap?
We're making the number easier to rack up at the exact same time the algorithm is getting better at determining whether those views actually meant anything.
We've spent years treating numbers that are easy to see as proxies for things that are much harder to measure. Views, followers, subscribers, and downloads tell us something, but they don't tell us whether somebody trusts you, remembers you, understands what you sell, or knows how to give you money.
If YouTube itself doesn't treat every view as equally valuable, why the fuck are you? ๐
I think this is part of a much bigger shift happening in the creator economy. The first era rewarded more: more posts, more followers, more views, more content fed into the machine until, presumably, the Money Fairy crawled out of your analytics dashboard and blessed you with passive income. ๐ง๐ผ
Now we're drowning in content. AI has made producing more easier than ever, although let's not blame the robots for all the slop because humans were making mediocre content at industrial scale long before ChatGPT showed up.
When content becomes functionally infinite, more stops being particularly valuable. What becomes valuable instead is taste, judgment, original ideas, a point of view, knowing what's worth making... and knowing how what you make connects to an actual business.
๐ That's the train I want you on early. ๐
If your content exists to grow your business, your goal isn't to become popular enough that a platform finally agrees to monetize you. Your goal is to have a clear offer for a clear market and make yourself ridiculously easy for the right people to find, understand, trust, and pay.
Then your content has a job. Your podcast builds trust... YouTube makes you discoverable... your newsletter deepens the relationship... a short clip gets the right stranger curious. And underneath all of it is a pathway to revenue that you own.
That's a content ecosystem. AKA your modern business marketing plan.
Building a good one also requires something we're going to have to get much more comfortable talking about: taste. You need to recognize which idea is worth pursuing, which story is interesting, which 30 seconds deserve to become the clip, and when you're publishing because you have something worth saying versus because Tuesday's content calendar says you owe Instagram a Reel.
Sometimes you cannot see that from inside your own head. You need another set of eyes willing to tell you when what you're making isn't communicating what you think it is... and that's a big part of why people hire me.
I'm not here to help you manufacture enough content to appease an algorithm. I'm here to help you build media worth paying attention to... and a business capable of getting paid when people do.
That's also what the Creator Economy Dojo is for. ๐ซ We've got a big shift for the September Summit, which you can read about below. โคต๏ธ
๐ด Your recording light is on.
โSeptember 25th is going to be a big day inside the Creator Economy Dojo!
We're taking over Sasquatch Media Grounds for a hands-on working Summit built around one goal: I want to see your show make you money.
That means we're not spending the day sitting around talking about what creators should do... we're simply doing it.
For example, my bookkeeper will be in the room doing actual math with creators about the money that runs their shows. We'll work on story angles and content ecosystems built to pay you back. We'll look at different business models so you can figure out what makes sense for your goals instead of chasing somebody else's formula.
And because we'll be inside the studio, there will be microphones and cameras ready for you to actually hit record, experiment, and practice what you're learning.
โBut September 25 is only one day.โ
You can get a hell of a lot further in one day, but nobody builds a sustainable creator business alone in a vacuum. And that's why the Summit lives inside the Dojo.
If you're here in the PNW, you can join us in person. If you're one of the many members scattered everywhere else, you'll get the sessions delivered as private podcast episodes, Summit goodies sent straight to you, and the same ongoing access to this group as we keep working together.
And in Q4, we keep blazing ahead with workshops from guest experts exclusively for Dojo members. No more public tickets to Dojo workshops.
You don't have to be everywhere to belong somewhere.
Joining the Dojo is how you put your little red recording light on my radar. ๐ด It tells me: Hey. I'm building something. Pay attention. And I do.
Because the more I know about what you're building, the better I can spot the resources, people, opportunities, and connections that can help you build it.
Founding membership is $197/month through September 25, and you keep that rate as long as you remain a member. After that, new membership is $497/month.
General ticket sales are now closed for the Sasquatch Summit.โ
๐ Put your work on my radar + join the Dojo for $197/moโ
๐๏ธ Gossip from the creator trenches...
๐ณ๏ธ This One Runs Deep... Fuck.
On this week's edition of what-in-the-white-woman-is-going-on... the wife of Anthropic's CEO reportedly approached Jeffrey Epstein about funding her adult entertainment company. Sex work itself isn't my issue here; the systems, money, and powerful people surrounding it absolutely are. And the closer Anthropic gets to a potential IPO, the more scrutiny and spilled tea seem to be arriving at its doorstep.
โAccountability continues to be a problem โโ
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๐ธ You're Not Imagining It
Feeling "poor" and actually being poor aren't the same thing, but the cost-of-living squeeze is very fucking real. Here's what sometimes gets lost: the humans providing the services you buy are living in that same expensive reality. Their rent, groceries, insurance, software, and labor costs went up too. So before calling something "expensive," zoom out and look at what it actually costs to provide it sustainably.
โIt's a sad reality โโ
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๐ฏ Small Audiences Are Having a Moment
After years of brands obsessing over enormous follower counts, smaller creators are increasingly attractive because concentrated audiences can bring stronger trust and actual attention. That's very good news if you've spent years assuming you're "too small" to monetize your media. You don't necessarily need millions of people. You need the right people paying attention.
โSmall but might is very real โโ
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Let's Hang Out
I released a 90-minute Astrology and Tarot forecast covering July through December 2026 for $47. The second half of this year has a lot going on energetically and I had an absolute blast recording this. Several of you grabbed it immediately which tells me we are onto something here. This is my first experiment in bringing readings back in a sustainable way and it will not be available forever.
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Participate + Join In
PDX peeps! This is for you... Dojo member Jodi Ballard-Beach is putting her strategy work into action in real time. She and her sister have been building a sustainable plan for Goss Night at The Siren Theater on Mississippi, and it is happening this month. This is exactly what it looks like when someone in the Dojo stops planning and starts doing. Grab tickets or enter to win a pair at this link. See you there!
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