Woodworking Profit Lies

Fully a quarter of Youtube videos would disappear if the words "lies" and "lied" were forbidden like the f-bomb is.

Dave Bair wrote:

Fully a quarter of Youtube videos would disappear if the words "lies" and "lied" were forbidden like the f-bomb is.

Heh, the irony is he is making YouTube income by making videos about that. 

this guy's channel suggests no success in figuring out the algorithm, and a recent video claiming that a business making sheds (who knows if that even existed) failed. 

The string of complaints about other videos looks like typical AI or list-based "do this to make money on youtube". 

I wonder if he notices how close that is to "do this in woodworking to make money". 

I have a unique habit that's nice - to me at least. No youtube woodworking videos, with almost no exceptions. if YT suggests a creator's woodworking videos, I tell YT not to suggest the creator in the future, and that's the end of it. Over time, this has almost eliminated the false reality environment re: videos that are supposedly about woodworking, but are never from someone who makes a legitimate living woodworking.

I utilize youtube for entertainment, but it's not a good habit.  Lately I've been watching the curmudgeonly "Critical Drinker" movie reviews, but after a dozen or so the schtick gets old.  

EDIT:  I forgot to put in the point of mentioning that - he said something in a recent scathing review of some horrible movie that struck me as both very true and going well beyond his subject.  Viewers are very easily bored these days.  He was complaining about the non-stop, spastic running about in most recent action movies, and longing for the more thoughtful crafting of story lines in action flicks from a generation before.  It occurred to me, hearing this, that much of the problem is related to how we entertain ourselves these days - watching just tik-toks or clip reels of our favorite scenes from favorite movies.  You can watch the same 10 minutes out of a 2 hour movie every night, on demand.  That is a terrible way of entertaining oneself, it leads us to be very easily bored and not even remotely thoughtful!  Why would we expect woodworking infotainment on such a platform to tell us anything useful when that is their competition for clicks?

I've almost never watched youtube woodworking content of any kind - it's just awful from an informational perspective.  AI content is making that worse.  I did used to watch the Essential Craftsman on his spec house build series maybe 5 years ago, but honestly that was more because people like watching things that confirm their existing beliefs and biases than that I was looking for information.  There was too much information in there to remember for a visual brain like mine.  It's just fun to watch a master craftsman talk about his craft if it's one you like.  There's a similar guy who was doing concrete finishing vids at the time, and that is how I finally learned to properly finish concrete.  I had three small slabs to do, and the early pandemic provided the opportunity to do them.

But looking at the title and stuff in the background on this vid and I won't even click on it.  Yes, woodworking is not a sure fire route to profit.  I learned that pre-internet!  You can build fantastic stuff, but it does not sell itself.  You have to work at the marketing, and what I've seen of successful small woodworking businesses is that they routinely have at least two people - one doing the woodworking and related business tasks, and the other doing marketing and those related tasks.  That told me something useful. 

While I don't make a living at this stuff, I do sell things at a profit - and I do that through a vendor, aka someone doing the marketing for me.  He's always out of stock because I'm always behind, but I feel that the niche is small enough that scarcity works in our favor.

David, 

Are your plane videos still up?

@ThomDl,

There's a lot of features available when logged in that make using the forums easier. 

Your name looked familiar, and I found a forum account for ThomD created in 2004 associated with email address w*****[email protected] with thousands of posts associated with it. If that is you and  the email is still valid, you can continue using it after resetting the passphrase for it. If you no longer have access to that email account, use the Contact Us link to send me your current email address, and I'll update it.