The Hard Truth About My Channel's Decline

If you've followed me for a while, I try to keep channel drama and financials to myself. My biggest breach of that principle was earlier this year. I did a Patreon/YouTube membership promo earlier this year to try to supplement my YouTube income, which has been floundering since 2021.

Back in February, I penned a script named "This Isn't the End, But You Can See It From Here" (inspired by Deus Ex: Human Revolution). Yet, I decided against using it as it felt too guilt-trippy and I didn't want to dampen the mood. I redid the video from scratch and recorded it mostly off-the-cuff, hinting at the decline of my channel, while still keeping my chin up.

But the situation was a lot more dire than I let on. The ugly truth of the matter is:

I've lost money on 4 out of my last 5 scripted videos.

("Lost" as in hard costs, meaning subtracted dollars from my bank account)

This has been going on for a while, and I thought it was just my own bad choices in topics.

And it turns out, I'm not crazy. Last year, Forbes published an article detailing reports about a sudden and inexplicable drop in many YouTubers' incomes.

"Well Indigo," you might say, "I know Such-and-Such and So-and-So YouTuber who still gets millions of views on the regular!" And you'd be right.

I see many creators doing well still, and even some friends of the channel like MandaloreGaming, Maajular, NerdSlayer and Raycevick who are still doing quite well (even though they seem to have experienced dips and declines this past year or two as well).

But that doesn't change that not only has YouTube simply stopped recommending my videos to new viewers, only about 4% of my subscribers are guaranteed to see my video pop up in notifications or their feed. And my recent videos show a vast majority of my views (90% or so) are from YouTube recommendations, not subscribers.

And it gets worse.

Not only are my actual VIEWS down year over year (with only a spike around my moderately successful Diablo III video):

...But that graph shows greater peaks and valleys than my REVENUE for the same months:

Notice the tiny, inconsequential blip around June 2023? That was a 700K-view Diablo III video I worked on for months and released in perfect timing with the once-in-a-decade Diablo retail release. And it made very little, dollar-wise.

My Miami Vice video cost about as much money to produce (stock footage, upscaling tools, music licenses, commissioned music, commissioned artwork, voiceover, etc.) than it made.

The Alan Wake video was a total loss. And my only "profit" this year was the hour-long Fallout deep dive that once costs were accounted for (which I drastically lowered with the previous failed videos in mind), only made about $200. That means I could have earned about 5X as much working at a minimum wage job evenings and weekends.

The End Result? Burnout.

I'm under no illusion that I'm entitled to money on YouTube for making edutainment videos. It started as a creative outlet because I was burned out at my desk job, but then it evolved into a hobby, then as a part-time side job. But I won't sugarcoat things and say it didn't start to get difficult:

• I've spent over eight years working evenings, weekends, and 70-80 hour work weeks well into 1-2am every night.

• I've passed out at my desk more times than I care to recall.

• I've slept next to my desk while rendering my videos in parts, to ensure its timely release.

• And I've stressed over completely unpredictable analytics, SEO and video failures. This is despite my craft, research and editing continuing to improve.

And there have been some great times too! I got to meet game devs, and have had amazing conversations with viewers and fellow game fans (like you fine folks). And of course, I appreciate all the support, monetarily or otherwise, that I've received over the years.

However, I've also received over 95,000 comments on my channel, and I try to read and/or respond to most of them. It's a losing battle, but when I get legitimate criticism or someone factchecks me and they're right, I work that much harder on my next video to improve.

But at this rate, I'm basically working my life away for free on a hobby that rarely gives me joy or satisfaction anymore, to a mostly positive audience with a few outliers who like to hate or complain about my free content, while missing time with friends, family and even enjoying the medium of video games which inspired this entire Indigo Gaming project.

Between YouTube, and my past jobs, I've worked the equivalent hours of 30 years of full-time employment. I just turned 39, by the way.

So What Now?

I'm not quitting YouTube, but I'm taking a step back, not obsessing about views, the constant need for content or SEO. I'll continue to work on Cyberpunk Part 4 when the desire comes to me. But I will not continue to lose sleep or stress out about working for $1/hr for a two-trillion-dollar tech company.

I'll probably appear on more podcasts, maybe I'll get back to streaming, and work on videos when the passion and desire arises.

In the meantime, I've revived an old game dev project I was drafting 11 years ago, and see if there's any merit to it.

I know this isn't pleasant news, and I understand 100% should you choose to disable your donations, as it's going to be a while before any new videos are out on my channel.

I'll post here when I have a better estimation on what to expect from me, and hopefully I have some good news about future projects.

Thank you again for all your support, and I hope you have a fantastic day!

Ian