Sunday, October 6, 2024
7:15 a.m. Ground Floor Room
House in Port Dickson
(5,041 words)
It’s been a long time since I’ve kept a written journal. Simply put, making YouTube videos and running a YouTube channel has been so time-consuming that I just haven’t had the time. Video, as I’ve learned, is a demanding medium. Plus, I tell a lot of my stories and thoughts in the videos themselves, and those have replaced my written journal to an extent. However, I’ve had this idea of starting a Patreon rattling around in my head for a long time, and one of my ideas is to incorporate a bit of writing in the Patreon.
I’ve experimented with combining some writing with YouTube through the Community Tab. However, that never feels right. As a platform, YouTube is designed for video, and people who visit YouTube are expecting to find videos. And when they stumble across a relatively long piece of writing on the Community Tab, they seem to get annoyed. It bugs them. You’d think that people would be happy to get something extra – like a written update with photos – but in general, it bothers them because it’s NOT video. It’s different from their expectations. People will complain that it’s boring and too long. And they’ll comment that I should make a video giving the update rather than writing it down. Or they’ll suggest making videos about other things. They don’t appreciate the written update for what it is – something extra. They are annoyed with it because it’s not a video.
I’ve noticed this trend on YouTube. As a YouTuber, I’ve often wanted to give my viewers something extra. There are the normal travel videos that I think of as the heart of Planet Doug. Those are the “big” videos that are about a place I visited and my personal experience going there. They are long-form and take a long time to make. And then I might have this idea to just toss up something short and simple. For example, I might have a time lapse of a scooter ride I took. I didn’t include it in the main video, so I decide to put it on YouTube as an extra feature or a bonus video clip. Or I might sit down in front of the camera and just record behind-the-scenes stories of my life. Or I might record straight audio without any video. These are things that are much faster to make, and I think I’m doing some good by offering these “bonus” items on my YouTube channel. Yet, in general, people didn’t seem to like them. Instead of people appreciating them for what they are, they complain about them for what they aren’t.
Personally, I don’t see posting all these extras as a problem. I’d love it if other YouTube channels did it. After all, I’m still making the regular Planet Doug videos. That is happening all the time, and I post one of them every two or three days. But then could I ALSO post all these bonus segments: audio posts; written updates; time lapses; photo montages. I think I’m doing something nice for people by giving them these little bonus tracks. Yet, rather than appreciating them, people hate them. And I eventually concluded that this negative reaction had something to do with expectations. When people expect one thing but get something else, they get annoyed and upset. It doesn’t matter that it’s a bonus or an extra item. They don’t see it as a bonus in addition to the main video. They see it as a replacement for a video. And they don’t like it because it is different from what they expected.
When I noticed this trend long ago, I started splintering my YouTube life. I started creating new YouTube channels. I created a Planet Doug Behind the Scenes channel. My idea was to record video journals of my life. And I thought I could also post all the extra bonus clips and other items. It would be like a dumping ground for anything I wanted to create and post. And nobody could be disappointed or upset with me, because this was all behind-the-scenes. It was my video playground to do with whatever I wanted. There would be no expectations about what would be there. I also created a technology channel. If I ever wanted to talk about camera gear, I could make the video and post it to this channel instead of to Planet Doug. That way, I would avoid upsetting people if I started babbling about the features of newest action camera. I also created a completely new channel just for 360 videos.
Actually, 360 video is a good example of what I am talking about. When you record video with an Insta360 X2 or X3 camera, you end up with two types of video. You have the true 360 video. But then you reframe it and export it as regular video. And you put that regular video into your normal YouTube video. BUT you still have the full 360 video, and it seems such a waste to just delete it and lose it. So once in a while, I edited the full 360 video and posted that to Planet Doug. I thought it would be such a great, fun, bonus video. But people generally hated it. Most people didn’t understand what 360 video was. They didn’t understand it or how to watch it. And since it was different from their expectations, they generally complained about it. So I stopped making them, and then I created a separate 360-video channel. And that separate channel is just for me. It’s a place where I can keep an archive of 360 videos for my own enjoyment.
I enjoyed having all these different YouTube channels. It meant that there was less chance of annoying people and having them complain. Every channel had its own expectations. The expectations would be right in the name of the channel. The Planet Doug Behind the Scenes channel contained behind-the-scenes videos. Nobody could complain when they found them there. The Planet Doug 360 channel contained 360 videos. Again, nobody could complain about that. The problem, of course, was the usual problem with YouTube: lack of time. It’s almost impossible to find the time to have ONE YouTube channel. To have several of them can be overwhelming. My original idea was that all these bonus videos could be done quickly. I’d just throw them together and toss them up on YouTube. But video requires time. No matter how small you think the video is, it will still require tons of time. And most of these new Planet Doug YouTube channels have been abandoned. I simply don’t have the time to do anything with them.
And this brings me back around to the idea of establishing a Patreon. The thing is that I have this urge to create all this content anyway. I enjoy writing down my thoughts. I enjoy shooting time lapses. I enjoy shooting 360 videos. I enjoy taking pictures. I’m going to be doing these things anyway. And a Patreon might be a good way to create a Planet Doug community AND give me an outlet for all these little projects. The way that Patreon works is that people who enjoy what you are creating can sign up for Patreon and support you financially AND get perks and bonuses. You can organize your Patreon in any way you like. But in general, the idea is that you create various tiers. And each tier comes with a specific set of bonuses and perks that you create for your patrons.
I’ve thinking about starting a Patreon for a long time, and I’ve even been writing down my ideas and trying to organize them. In fact, when I came to Port Dickson, one of my goals was to spend two months here completing my videos from Vietnam and setting up Patreon. Unfortunately, I’ve had so many demands on my time and so many things have gone wrong that it has taken me until today just to get caught up on my backlog of videos. I haven’t had the time to really dive into learning about Patreon. But in the last day or two, I switched gears a little bit and started pondering Patreon again. One problem I was facing is that I didn’t (and don’t) really understand the internal mechanics of Patreon. I understand the idea, of course. However, I don’t understand how it actually works. I know that people who have a Patreon offer their patrons bonus videos (among other perks). But how does that work exactly? Where is this bonus video? Do you upload it to YouTube as normal but somehow restrict it only to patrons? Do you upload it directly to the Patreon website? Do you upload it somewhere else? Do you email patrons a special link to the video? I didn’t understand any of this. And I still don’t.
I’ve gone looking for tutorials and guides and manuals. But, as usual, none of that has been helpful. Nobody ever talks about the things I need to know. It seems like the entire world already knows everything. I’m the only one that doesn’t know these things. So when people on YouTube make a tutorial video about Patreon, they only talk about strategies and ideas. They never get around to talking about the technical aspects of how Patreon works – the actual mechanics. And I find it impossible to design a Patreon without knowing how it works. I think people who make tutorial videos assume that you already know how Patreon works. And they just talk about ideas and strategies. But I need the nuts and bolts explained to me.
In the last couple of days, I’ve come to the conclusion that (like with all technology) it is impossible for me to learn about it in advance. No matter how much I read and how many tutorial videos I watch, I will never learn anything about how Patreon works. The only way to learn this is to just dive into Patreon itself and start setting it up. Personally, I like to know things in advance. But that just doesn’t work anymore. The only way to learn anything is to just start doing it. So that is my goal starting now. I was hoping to design my Patreon first and THEN dive into it. But that clearly won’t work. So I am going to go into Patreon and just start building it and figuring it out as I go.
That being said, I DO have a lot of ideas already. I have a document on my computer called “Patreon Master Plan”, and it is about fifteen pages long and is jammed with ideas and outlines. I think the next step is to just dive headfirst into Patreon and figure out how exactly I can implement these ideas. And as I implement them, I can refine them and make choices. I think part of my problem was that I had this idea that you had to commit to your choices and THEN launch Patreon. I thought that you had to make all your choices first. But I’ve realized now that you can take it slower than that. You can set up your entire Patreon and see how it works and make changes before you launch.
For example, I was watching a Patreon tutorial video the other day, and this person was also talking about strategies rather than nuts and bolts and mechanics. However, they did provide some useful ideas. And one of these ideas (which had never occurred to me) is that when you officially launch your Patreon you should already have some Patreon-exclusive content available. And that makes so much sense. I want people to sign up for my Patreon, of course. But it would be much easier to convince people to sign up if there is already Patreon-exclusive content to enjoy. I never thought of that until I watched this tutorial, but it makes perfect sense. Imagine if someone signs up for the Planet Doug Patreon and they choose their tier with specific benefits and perks, but when they actually visit my Patreon, there is nothing there! And when you launch your Patreon, I assumed it would be empty. How could there be content there already when it didn’t even exist yet?
But I’ve since learned that you can set up your entire Patreon in advance. And that includes being able to post content to it. Basically, you have no members yet. Nobody has joined your Patreon because it doesn’t even exist yet. You haven’t officially launched it. But it’s possible to add content in advance and make it exclusive to patrons. For example, this written journal entry will already be on Patreon. In fact, I plan to write a journal entry most days and add them to Patreon even while I’m working on the Patreon launch. Therefore, when someone signs up for the Planet Doug Patreon, there will already be twenty or thirty journal entries. And the same thing for videos. As I set up the Patreon, I hope to record special videos. And I will upload these videos to YouTube or Patreon, but I won’t post them and make them public. They will be restricted to patrons. And all these videos will be sitting there waiting for people when they sign up. I was so happy when I figured this out. It bothered me when I considered setting up and launching a Patreon with this idea that the Patreon would be empty at the beginning. I hate promising people something and not delivering. But I’ve since learned that you can add content in advance. And I’m very happy about that.
And in the last couple of days, I’ve also learned something else about the internal mechanics of Patreon, and this knowledge has also made me happy. What I learned is that there is a specific Patreon WordPress plug-in. And this plug-in allows you to restrict entries in your WordPress blog or website to only patrons. I don’t know how it works yet. That has been impossible to figure out. As I said, people seem to assume you already know the mechanics and don’t explain the nuts and bolts. But the idea is appealing.
Up until I learned about this WordPress plug-in, I just assumed that all my written journal entries and other content would be on the Patreon website. That’s one of the things that appealed to me about Patreon. The Patreon site acts just like a blog. You can have many different types of posts. You can have photo posts. You can have text/written posts. You can have link posts. Therefore, I assumed that as someone running a Patreon, I would spend all my time there and I would be posting everything to Patreon itself. I liked that Patreon offered this capability. However, it did worry me a little bit because it raises the question of who owns all this content. If I have written 500 long journal entries on Patreon, who owns all this writing? Do I still own it? Or does Patreon own it? And what happens if my Patreon account disappears or I want to stop using Patreon? Do I lose all the photos and all the writing and all the other content?
That’s why I like this idea of using the WordPress plug-in. I already have a Planet Doug website. I created the domain PlanetDoug.life. And I have used that website to create Planet Doug email addresses. My original idea was to build a full website to go along with the YouTube channel. I was going to post photos and journal entries and articles, etc. However, I’ve done none of that because I just haven’t had the time. BUT it all still exists. Therefore, there is the possibility of linking that website with Patreon. I can write these journal entries, post them to my website, AND give patrons exclusive access to those entries. Therefore, the written journal entries will be part of the Planet Doug Patreon but they will be physically hosted on my personal Planet Doug website.
I loved this idea when I stumbled across it. However, over the last couple of days, I’ve started to ponder some problems with it. Originally, I liked the idea of creating a Planet Doug community on Patreon. There would be one place where people could go to interact with me and learn about what I was up to. And, to be honest, I already saw a problem with convincing people to go there. The heart of Planet Doug is the YouTube channel after all. Planet Doug is all about watching my videos on YouTube. But now I’ll be asking people to create an account on Patreon. And then they will have to physically visit this website to look at photos or read articles or updates. So now people have two places they have to visit to keep up with me and my activities. But what happens if I post all my journal entries and photos to my Planet Doug website? Now the Planet Doug content is spread across three places: YouTube, Patreon, and my blog. It would be hard enough to convince people to go to Patreon. And now I have to convince them to go to my blog? And then if people want to interact with me, where should they do it? Where is the Planet Doug community? I assumed it would all be at Patreon. It would be simple. I’d post pictures to Patreon. I’d post written journal entries to Patreon. People would leave comments on Patreon. I’d reply to them there. But now I’m considering posting to my own blog instead. That’s starting to get confusing. People wouldn’t know where to go. And then it makes more work for me. Now I’m updating my YouTube channel, updating the Patreon, AND maintaining a website. If I want to reply to comments, where do I go? Now I have to go to all three and monitor all three.
It feels like I have to make a decision about where the heart of the Planet Doug community will be. Will it be at the Patreon website? Or will it be at the Planet Doug blog? See what I mean about things getting confusing? The main point of Patreon is to allow people to financially support Planet Doug. That’s what it is all about. But an equally important part for me is to establish a Planet Doug community. And that raises the question of where this should be.
It did occur to me that I could do both while emphasizing one. For example, I could write a journal entry and post it to Patreon as normal. But then I could ALSO post it to my blog and set it up there with exclusive access for patrons. In my YouTube videos and in other ways, I would encourage people to visit Patreon. And that makes the most sense. I’d be encouraging people to join the Planet Doug Patreon, so it makes sense that I would send them to the Patreon website. THAT is where they would physically sign up and select a tier. If I sent them to the Planet Doug blog, they would see a bunch of locked entries. But to gain access to them, they would have to go sign up for Patreon and then return to the website. It complicates things for patrons AND for me. Or does it? Maybe it makes sense.
This is a good example of what I was talking about earlier. Right now, I don’t have enough information to make a decision about what is the best thing to do. I think the only way to figure this out is to dive right in. I have to go into Patreon and start setting things up. And as I learn about how Patreon actually works, then I can make decisions. It’s impossible to make good decisions right now. As I said, I don’t even know how the WordPress plug-in works. My understanding is that you use the plug-in to lock the entry on your blog. And patrons will have a special way to unlock it. But I don’t know how. Do they get a special code? If so, how do they get that code? Or do they use their Patreon log-in credentials? If so, do they have to do that for every separate entry they went to look at? Or does it open up the entire blog to them? If they have to enter these credentials for every single entry, that would be a huge pain. Then it would be better to use the Patreon website. I’m assuming that on Patreon, everything would be open automatically, and they wouldn’t have to enter credentials every single time. Then again, I don’t even know that. I don’t know how Patreon works.
I was thinking that I need to sign up for an established Patreon just so I can see things from a patron’s point of view. And I’ve been looking for one to join, but I haven’t found a good one with a variety of content. Most Patreons that I’ve seen for YouTube have been very simplistic and not that interesting. I’ve learned that all Patreons have a free tier. You can join any Patreon absolutely for free. And then the Patreon creator can decide what these free patrons have access to. At the very least, you get email notifications when they post something new. I’ve joined a couple of Patreons just to see how that works. And then, most Patreons have a low tier that asks for $1 or $3 or $5 per month to join. That’s what I would want to test. But most Patreons offer very little for that tier. There’s almost nothing offered. So joining that Patreon wouldn’t teach me very much about how it works. I’m still looking around for a good one to join.
There are like a thousand decisions you can make with a Patreon, such as how many tiers to have, how much to ask for each tier, and what to offer for each tier. Your options range from having just one tier to having lots. For a long time, I thought it would be best to have just one tier. That goes with my idea of having a Planet Doug community. I don’t like the idea of dividing people into different groups with one group getting things that other groups don’t. For example, I don’t want to post a Planet Doug video that only one group can watch. I want every video to be available to everyone. Putting up what they call a paywall feels wrong. In fact, in all my planning, I’ve been leaning towards having almost all content in the very first tier. Therefore, all written entries, all photo entries, all links, and all Patreon-exclusive videos would be included in the very first tier. I want everyone to have access to them.
However, it occurred to me that having just one tier is not a good idea. It excludes any possible patrons that, for their own personal reasons, might want to support me financially to a larger degree. It’s possible that someone might want to support my travels more and would like to provide more financial support. And if there is only one tier for $1/month, they can’t do it. So there should be options for people who WANT to support more. And therefore, you have to create other tiers, perhaps even a tier for $100/month. I figure, why not? I can provide that as an option just in case someone wants to help me out to that extent.
But once you create these other tiers, you need to provide benefits and perks. And if you include the bulk of content to just the first tier, what else can you offer upper tiers? That is one of the many questions that you need to grapple with as you set up a Patreon. Another major stumbling block is offering too much. You have to make sure that you actually have the time and energy to create the extra content that you promised. My idea is that this shouldn’t be a big issue for me. I create all this content anyway. It wouldn’t take extra time. I would just use Patreon as a place to put this content (photos; audio; text; video) without annoying people. Can you imagine posting a 10-page journal entry to the YouTube Community tab? You would definitely get some negative feedback and complaining if not a ton of outright ridicule. But I enjoy writing things like this and I would do it anyway. And Patreon would just be a place where I could post it. And people would expect it because that is one of the “perks” of that Patreon tier. No one can complain about me posting a 10-page essay about Patreon because that is what they were expecting. And since I do all these things anyway, it shouldn’t add too much to the time I spend.
You also have to make decisions about branding and labelling inside the Patreon. I’ve played around with a bunch of options so far. The simplest approach is to do nothing fancy. You can base your tier names on metals, must like Olympic medals: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. Everyone understands these and instinctively knows which one is higher than the other. The Bronze tier would be the lowest one. The Platinum tier would be the highest. It’s simple and clear, but it’s not very personal or fun. I also worked on a system based on luggage and how people travel. I liked this idea because it was fun. This is what I wrote:
Daypack Crew
Backpack Crew
Wheeler Crew
Steamer Trunk Crew
Camper Van Crew
Daypack Crew – Traveling light is your thing. You don’t need a ton of space, because you know where you’re going and what you’re going to do when you get there. You’ve got the essential Planet Doug perks in your lightweight and streamlined knapsack.
Backpack Crew – Rugged and independent, your world fits on your back, leaving your hands and feet free to take you anywhere you want to go. Specialized pockets and compartments and a rain cover provide protected space for some well-organized Planet Doug perks.
Wheeler Crew – You’ve got this travel thing dialed in. Your wheeled suitcase effortlessly zips through the airport, whisking you from your plane to your Grab to your rooftop Airbnb condo with infinity pool. You’re enjoying your Planet Doug perks before other people even get out of customs!
Steamer Trunk Crew – Elegant and romantic, you’ve got the room to bring it all. You can travel for years and return home a changed person, or start a new life on the other side of the world. Ocean voyages are your specialty, and your spacious steamer trunk provides room for lots of Planet Doug perks!
Camper Van Crew – The best of all worlds? You have your whole life with you, even your two cats, three rescue dogs and vintage kite collection. Fully independent, able to go anywhere you want, you enjoy four-wheeled freedom and the space for all the Planet Doug perks and then some!
The idea is that the first tier was the lightest and smallest, so these people travel with only a daypack. The highest tier get everything, so they travel around with a camper van. I thought it was a fun idea. But now I think it is far too complicated, and it’s not 100% clear which tier is higher than the other. Everyone knows that gold is higher than silver. But is a backpack higher or lower than a wheeler suitcase? Some people think a backpack is better and some people think a suit case is better. Anyway, I think I abandoned this idea. It’s fun but cumbersome.
At the moment, my idea is to base my tiers on different types of geography on different types of planets. That ties in with the idea of living on Planet Doug.
1) Free Planet
2) Forest Planet
3) Jungle Planet
4) Ocean Planet
5) Mountain Planet
And the tagline for Planet Doug Patreon would be, “Choose your planet”. You can live on the Forest Planet or you can live on the Ocean Planet or the Jungle Planet, etc.
Free Planet (IT’S A COMMUNITY!)
Forest Planet (IT’S LUSH!)
Jungle Planet (IT’S WILD!)
Ocean Planet (IT’S TROPICAL!)
Mountain Planet (IT’S LOFTY!)
I like this idea. One problem, however, is that there is no clear hierarchy. Actually, when I first came up up with this idea, I had more fun with the planet types. I was thinking more in science fiction terms, and I came up with this list:
Choose your planet:
1) Desert Planet (It’s EXOTIC!)
2) Ice Planet (It’s COOL!)
3) Ocean Planet (It’s REFRESHING!)
4) Lava Planet (It’s HOT!)
I still like this idea. However, when you think about it, those planets are just not very pleasant. Who would actually want to live on a lava planet? Or a desert planet? Or an ice planet? And so I switched to more pleasant planets: Forest Planet, Jungle Planet, Ocean Planet, and Mountain Planet.
And even though the hierarchy is not 100% obvious, there is a subtle hierarchy. A forest planet would be most suitable for the largest population. That’s where most people would live. A forest can support a larger population. But some people would live in the jungle. And then it sort of makes sense that the ocean planet would be above that because that involves tropical beaches and fancy resorts. And then mountains would be the most exclusive. And each of these planets would be a nice place to live with specific benefits.
Anyway, I think I will wind up this morning’s thoughts right here. It’s time to head out for breakfast. I’m writing this from Port Dickson, by the way. And it is raining heavily outside. I have no idea where I will go for breakfast, but probably to Coconut Bay. It’s the nearest. I haven’t been there for a while.