Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,710
Club RR Member Number: 34
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Aug 24, 2022 22:07:04 GMT
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The festival of the unexceptional is popular because hagerty are throwing some money behind it. They’re basically trying to monetise the autosh1te end of the market, after previously deriding it and refusing to insure most of the cars it attracts because they weren’t ‘worthy’ of a collector car policy- I know, I’ve asked them about insuring some of that type of car in the past and was given pretty snotty replies about the worth of my vehicle. I remember things like that for a long time and they influence my future decisions.
Same with the radwood brand. Oh the millennials have money now? How can we tap into that? With a tickbox pastiche of little bits stolen from other shows to give what boomers think young people want, that is quite comically wide of the mark. I see it as a slap in the face to other events that have been going for nearly 20 years and were set up and run by people deeply immersed in the retro car scene over here, including a fairly big forum-based one I’ve heard has been going for a while now…
Call me a cynic but I won’t be supporting hagerty or their ‘festivals’ becuase of this.
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,812
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Aug 25, 2022 12:59:27 GMT
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The festival of the unexceptional is popular because hagerty are throwing some money behind it. They’re basically trying to monetise the autosh1te end of the market, after previously deriding it and refusing to insure most of the cars it attracts because they weren’t ‘worthy’ of a collector car policy- I know, I’ve asked them about insuring some of that type of car in the past and was given pretty snotty replies about the worth of my vehicle. I remember things like that for a long time and they influence my future decisions. Same with the radwood brand. Oh the millennials have money now? How can we tap into that? With a tickbox pastiche of little bits stolen from other shows to give what boomers think young people want, that is quite comically wide of the mark. I see it as a slap in the face to other events that have been going for nearly 20 years and were set up and run by people deeply immersed in the retro car scene over here, including a fairly big forum-based one I’ve heard has been going for a while now… Call me a cynic but I won’t be supporting hagerty or their ‘festivals’ becuase of this. Aye - "curse word the bed all our customers are dying" syndrome is strong in those ones.
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Aug 25, 2022 15:58:27 GMT
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I thought that Radwood was originally something like RRG, spun off from some forum or Facebook group or something, but that whomsoever "owned" the IP for this sold it out to franchise?
The "unexceptional" and "autosh1te" thing fits in with this whole "everything is so ironic now I can't work out what I really think is cool or not" vibe. Yeah, I can monetize that.
All of this sort of thing will always be about money. Even if its only about putting a show on and covering your costs. Money matters.
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1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
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tdk
Part of things
Posts: 958
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Sept 7, 2022 10:11:27 GMT
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Any suggestions on how to fill the PPC void? There genuinely isn't anything. Retro Cars went, Fast Cars went, PPC now gone. I like the idea of something like 28mag (as per biturbo228 ) for the modified car scene. Other niche hobbies have gone through similar transitions, it has taken cars a long time due to the size of the hobby I expect. When we looked at doing the Retro Rides magazine and tried to Kickstart it we were aiming for the glossy quarterly approach. We dodged a bullet I reckon as it would have launched in April/May 2020! I actually considered also going the other way, proper oldschool Zine type publication, my wife gets a few on various esoteric subjects, they seem to come out infrequently, cost about £8-10*, are all black and white and dense with text. Not sure how that would work for the very visual world of cars. I know someone (maybe tdk ??) was doing a magazine that was mainly stories and not much (if any) photos. *often come with little extras like stickers and such Late to the show - hello, I've been offline a bit of late. Yes, I wrote for PPC for many years (and other mags), it was the first publication to print my drivel and Will has been a mate ever since. In a nutshell, huge cost increases, a big drop in quality, and the endless surge of Facebook and YouTube have killed PPC. Sad, but life moves on. My own magazine was MotorPunk (lots of pics!), launched and ran for a year, my thinking was that if I could convert 5% of the online readership to buying print it would be viable. Sadly, for every 10 people who said "great, I'll buy it" only 1 actually did. We had great feedback and I didn't lose any money on it, but it was not growing enough to satisfy the publisher (who was very supportive throughout). The theme was rotten exotica, BL cack, interesting engineering and lots of Roadtrip stuff, it was quite jokey, too, fake watch adverts and daft letters from loonies. I am VERY proud of what we achieved. You can still buy back copies, although I think issue 1 is sold out now; Link here - www.performancepublishing.co.uk/back-issues-mp.htmlI now write for Alternative Cars, Absolute Lotus and have just started with Classic Retro Modern, my little Fiat 500 'Abarthish' is in the next issue. I don't think print is dead, but I do wish a pox on FaceBook. Even YouTube is tough - I presented for the Carfection channel for many years, owned by CBS (massive American media group) and they've just wound up operations as, even with 1 million subscribers, it never got close to covering it's costs. Sad times for many who lost their jobs. I would not rule out kickstarting another magazine, but you'd have to be brave in today's climate.
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Last Edit: Sept 7, 2022 10:14:40 GMT by tdk
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tdk
Part of things
Posts: 958
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Sept 8, 2022 12:00:04 GMT
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I'm going to quote someone from the 90s. "Even anti-fashion is a fashion and thus we hate it" Other good points Mankee Cheung is also a pretty sound chap, who was a regular contributor. I really enjoyed his company the few times I met him, and the insight he had in the car world. Same for Rich Duisburg, who now runs MotoPunk. Thanks, chap!
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misteralz
Posted a lot
I may drive a Volkswagen, but I'm scene tax exempt!
Posts: 2,297
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Sept 8, 2022 14:23:27 GMT
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Sorry Rich, I'm one of those folk who helped you crowdfund MotorPunk and then never bought an issue. Postage to mainland Europe was just too much, sadly. If you'd do a bundle of them and post in one go I'd do that, depending on the cost. If you can even be arsed anymore.
I also don't think print is dead. It's doing pretty well over here, where a decent magazine is 8 to 12€, but only out every month or quarterly. Sitting and reading is a tactile pleasure, sodding friendface is not.
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The Rodders Journal has come back to life apparently according to Pay Ganahl's latest blog post. It absolutely should! And, the latest issue hit my mailbox. It’s a good one although the covers are not as thick as before; content is not lacking.
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mrbig
Part of things
Semi-professional Procrastinator
Posts: 461
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Mankee Cheung is also a pretty sound chap, who was a regular contributor. I really enjoyed his company the few times I met him, and the insight he had in the car world. Same for Rich Duisburg, who now runs MotoPunk. Agreed, anyone know what Mankee is up to these days? I met him (and TDK) on the Scumball in 2007 where he kindly offered me a passenger lap in his AX GT. I'll never forget him hustling that tin can round the 'Ring flying past 911s and other similarly-priced exotica I learnt a lot about how skill and track knowledge is worth more than horsepower that day!
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1969 German Look Beetle - in progress
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thebaron
Europe
Over the river, heading out of town
Posts: 1,636
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Sept 10, 2022 22:00:51 GMT
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- I presented for the Carfection channel for many years, owned by CBS (massive American media group) and they've just wound up operations as, even with 1 million subscribers, it never got close to covering it's costs. Sad times for many who lost their jobs. This is revelatory …… I don’t see anything about this online and I’m not questioning the validity of your information but it seems crazy that a channel with 1M subs gets cut. What does it take to survive?
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Last Edit: Sept 11, 2022 10:15:09 GMT by thebaron
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jimi
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 1,776
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Sept 11, 2022 9:22:40 GMT
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thebaron You might want to sort your quotes out, they are wrongly attributed and misleading
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Black is not a colour ! .... Its the absence of colour
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thebaron
Europe
Over the river, heading out of town
Posts: 1,636
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Sept 11, 2022 9:43:27 GMT
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Late night edit on the phone.
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Sept 11, 2022 12:07:38 GMT
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- I presented for the Carfection channel for many years, owned by CBS (massive American media group) and they've just wound up operations as, even with 1 million subscribers, it never got close to covering it's costs. Sad times for many who lost their jobs. This is revelatory …… I don’t see anything about this online and I’m not questioning the validity of your information but it seems crazy that a channel with 1M subs gets cut. What does it take to survive? I guess it depends on the costs of producing it. My kid watches these 2 guys who sit in thier flat and "react" to things on TikTok and they have more than a millon subscribers, each video gets over 100K views. It must cost literally nothing to make. OTOH if you have a lot of professional sound and video guys, production, post production, equipment hire, insurance, indemnities, etc, in order to make a video then I can see the returns might not cover it.
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1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
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Sept 11, 2022 13:25:24 GMT
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This is revelatory …… I don’t see anything about this online and I’m not questioning the validity of your information but it seems crazy that a channel with 1M subs gets cut. What does it take to survive? I guess it depends on the costs of producing it. My kid watches these 2 guys who sit in thier flat and "react" to things on TikTok and they have more than a millon subscribers, each video gets over 100K views. It must cost literally nothing to make. OTOH if you have a lot of professional sound and video guys, production, post production, equipment hire, insurance, indemnities, etc, in order to make a video then I can see the returns might not cover it. Exactly the issue. It is hard to make compelling car content without it being quite costly to do. Either in terms of time or equipment or crew.
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,188
Club RR Member Number: 170
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Sept 12, 2022 21:26:03 GMT
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This is revelatory …… I don’t see anything about this online and I’m not questioning the validity of your information but it seems crazy that a channel with 1M subs gets cut. What does it take to survive? I guess it depends on the costs of producing it. My kid watches these 2 guys who sit in thier flat and "react" to things on TikTok and they have more than a millon subscribers, each video gets over 100K views. It must cost literally nothing to make. OTOH if you have a lot of professional sound and video guys, production, post production, equipment hire, insurance, indemnities, etc, in order to make a video then I can see the returns might not cover it. This. That's a TLDR version put very well. Apparently, RoadKill costs around £100k an episode, and in all honesty, they are clean cut and very good quality. It sounds crazy. BUT -Fancy cameras and Drones. -Sound recorders (they have several!). Zoom H4s are around £250 a pop. GoPros are more (which they damage inevitably) -Microphones, including wireless ones, for the above, especially ones which can take abuse and work time-after-time again. -retaking shoots -Getting things lined up -Crew members (several). Sound editors, camera editors, their assistants, you get the rest... -The folks doing it. They're not going to do it for free and they do regularly work 13-15 hour days every day. -Parts : I think around £4ks worth parts seemed to be a theme for most episodes from what I could tell. -Songs ; they pay for them, but obviously not for anything fancy. It's still a cost however. All add up. I didn't realise the efforts they went to until: -Marty and Moog from MightyCarMods stated it ; They did a shootout with RoadKill, and gave an insight into the world -I saw the RoadKill Extras. There were about 3 or 4 episodes which explained things, and hinted at why the Crusher Impala they made wasn't on on for MCN (basically, they had to film for it during making it for RoadKill Extra) -Some folks had me try to make a few videos. I wanted perfection, and could have spent forever. But the work never have been done in a decent time. Some folks do make it work on a low budget but take a hit on quality, or basically bring something else to the table. This includes: -Mighty Car Mods do their own music and their own editing, albeit they have some folks film them. One chap was shocked that they were music producers (Casey Neistrat for those wondering). They also have alot of sponsors, and now, alot of merch -HubNut has upped his quality game but is very much a 2 person band -M539 can live with the ameuter quality, as time is precious with one person doing the lot, but he does it solo, wanting to show exactly what he does, rather than the 'yeah, we just slapped in a Big Block V8 in 2 minutes of movie time'. It's rumoured that Streten from M539 restos is on around £90k a year. Sounds like alot but it's alot of time to go into as one person. As soon as you start adding more people, that pot just gets smaller and smaller, despite bringing increases elsewhere (i.e diminishing returns). This is why some shows like RoadKill went behind a paywall, as this article details: mightycarmods.com/blogs/news/who-is-going-to-pay-for-itOne person can get a very professional look but they won't get the throughput. This is what SOUP tried to do but the gaps between his episodes just grew and grew, which of courst, has folks lose interest inevitably.
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Last Edit: Sept 14, 2022 6:02:45 GMT by ChasR
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Sept 13, 2022 9:05:59 GMT
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This is a very good read - thanks for posting.
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Sept 19, 2022 18:27:45 GMT
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This was posted on their Faceache Page a couple of days ago. It's definitely all done.
Thanks for all the supportive messages. Sadly, attempts to find a way to keep PPC going have failed. I think the current bleak economic outlook is largely responsible because it really wouldn't have taken that much to make the mag profitable again, but we are where we are. I had this email this morning, and as I said to the bloke, we must have got PPC right because he's described back to us exactly what we set out to do. "To everyone at PPC, Having seen the sad news of the demise of the magazine, I felt I should write to you to and thank you for creating a wonderful magazine that gave me many, many, many hours of enjoyment. From the day I discovered the mag about 17 years ago, I never missed an issue. The only magazine I can say that about! Subscriptions came & went as finances allowed, but I always made sure I purchased a copy every month. From that first issue I loved it for the very reason you started it – because there wasn’t anything else like it. Does it do 300mph? Does it have the latest ridiculous fashion mods? Can you hear the stereo from 3 counties over? Who cares about all of that, is it INTERESTING? Which is exactly what you delivered, earning the magazine (and the people behind it) a special place in my heart. The selection of cars you featured was wide and varied, all interesting, even if not always 100% to my tastes (not that that was a bad thing). But there was the rest of the magazine. The hands on guides, Dave Walker’s tales of the rolling road, the Top Ten’s etc. Not forgetting my two favourite parts of the magazine; Will’s Piston Broke column, and the staff car sagas. And they really were sagas. Sometimes you’d win, sometimes you’d lose (but were never afraid of saying you had, giving hope to the rest of us). Sometimes Kev would plant yet another rusty heap of curse word on the drive to become an interesting garden ornament, yet somehow manage to avoid a divorce… Through it all, you never pretended to be more than you were. You were normal people like the rest of us, scraping by to afford the next bit of work to the project. Working on driveways, the street, sheds, garages. Wherever you had the chance to. Not in sprawling workshops with all the latest tools. Just people who loved cars, and loved that they could make a magazine about it for the rest of us. So thank you. All of you. Every single one who was involved in making PPC such a fantastic read for so many years. Past, present, sadly departed. To each and every one of you, I say a truly heartfelt thanks from the bottom of my heart for making the best magazine I’ve ever read. Best wishes for whatever adventures lie ahead for you all."
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Sept 20, 2022 12:15:36 GMT
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There genuinely isn't anything. Retro Cars went, Fast Cars went, PPC now gone. I like the idea of something like 28mag (as per biturbo228 ) for the modified car scene. Other niche hobbies have gone through similar transitions, it has taken cars a long time due to the size of the hobby I expect. When we looked at doing the Retro Rides magazine and tried to Kickstart it we were aiming for the glossy quarterly approach. We dodged a bullet I reckon as it would have launched in April/May 2020! I actually considered also going the other way, proper oldschool Zine type publication, my wife gets a few on various esoteric subjects, they seem to come out infrequently, cost about £8-10*, are all black and white and dense with text. Not sure how that would work for the very visual world of cars. I know someone (maybe tdk ??) was doing a magazine that was mainly stories and not much (if any) photos. *often come with little extras like stickers and such Late to the show - hello, I've been offline a bit of late. Yes, I wrote for PPC for many years (and other mags), it was the first publication to print my drivel and Will has been a mate ever since. In a nutshell, huge cost increases, a big drop in quality, and the endless surge of Facebook and YouTube have killed PPC. Sad, but life moves on. My own magazine was MotorPunk (lots of pics!), launched and ran for a year, my thinking was that if I could convert 5% of the online readership to buying print it would be viable. Sadly, for every 10 people who said "great, I'll buy it" only 1 actually did. We had great feedback and I didn't lose any money on it, but it was not growing enough to satisfy the publisher (who was very supportive throughout). The theme was rotten exotica, BL cack, interesting engineering and lots of Roadtrip stuff, it was quite jokey, too, fake watch adverts and daft letters from loonies. I am VERY proud of what we achieved. You can still buy back copies, although I think issue 1 is sold out now; Link here - www.performancepublishing.co.uk/back-issues-mp.htmlI now write for Alternative Cars, Absolute Lotus and have just started with Classic Retro Modern, my little Fiat 500 'Abarthish' is in the next issue. I don't think print is dead, but I do wish a pox on FaceBook. Even YouTube is tough - I presented for the Carfection channel for many years, owned by CBS (massive American media group) and they've just wound up operations as, even with 1 million subscribers, it never got close to covering it's costs. Sad times for many who lost their jobs. I would not rule out kickstarting another magazine, but you'd have to be brave in today's climate. I have all 4 of these mags. Definatly a great read. I often get distracted in the garage when I get it down off the shelf. It was a shame that it never carried on. I too still think print has a place today. There are lots of good mags still around. The monthly thing I think has run its course. It shows in the quality of the content sometimes. A lot of the mini magazines I used to get repeat every few years,the same with Land Rover owner international. I only ever buy these if they have a car or an article I like. One mag I love to get is the Overland journal,comes out seasonaly and is a great read. I think that's the way forward,less often and an more quality content. Or even annually,imagine the Motorpunk annual. That would be awesome. PPC annoyed me when they gave up on the blue mk2 escort. And one of the writers just buying project cars and never working on them. Not to mention the woeful proof reading. I also remember a buyers guide that half way through just Finnish halfway through or had parts from the previous months buyers guide. In the start it was great but for me went to curse word and I stopped buying it.
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ToolsnTrack
Posted a lot
Homebrew Raconteur
Posts: 4,117
Club RR Member Number: 134
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Sept 20, 2022 12:35:59 GMT
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I guess it depends on the costs of producing it. My kid watches these 2 guys who sit in thier flat and "react" to things on TikTok and they have more than a millon subscribers, each video gets over 100K views. It must cost literally nothing to make. OTOH if you have a lot of professional sound and video guys, production, post production, equipment hire, insurance, indemnities, etc, in order to make a video then I can see the returns might not cover it. This. That's a TLDR version put very well. Apparently, RoadKill costs around £100k an episode, and in all honesty,.... You know, I didn't actually know that but suspected it for long enough. Modern day YT and tiktok is killing what I try to do as much as internet based stuff has hammered the printed media. For context, I've been doing Toolsntrack now for what is now my fourth year. I make borderline NOTHING from youtube ads. To this day its so menial that I refuse to turn them on and interrupt the episodes I make. What has helped soften the financial blow is Patreon, but that more or less just covers the materials to put content around, its not like I get surplus pocket money from it. And to compare the Roadkill / MCM production team efforts, like most solo acts I do all of it on my own. So in between working a 40h week, I film the content whilst doing the actual car build stuff, then edit all the footage and strive to get one episode a week out to keep the ol algorithm nonsense happy. Whilst I now see slow but steady growth, even I question how long that lifestyle will be sustainable... This time next year Rodney....
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,188
Club RR Member Number: 170
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Sept 24, 2022 6:42:09 GMT
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This. That's a TLDR version put very well. Apparently, RoadKill costs around £100k an episode, and in all honesty,.... You know, I didn't actually know that but suspected it for long enough. Modern day YT and tiktok is killing what I try to do as much as internet based stuff has hammered the printed media. For context, I've been doing Toolsntrack now for what is now my fourth year. I make borderline NOTHING from youtube ads. To this day its so menial that I refuse to turn them on and interrupt the episodes I make. What has helped soften the financial blow is Patreon, but that more or less just covers the materials to put content around, its not like I get surplus pocket money from it. And to compare the Roadkill / MCM production team efforts, like most solo acts I do all of it on my own. So in between working a 40h week, I film the content whilst doing the actual car build stuff, then edit all the footage and strive to get one episode a week out to keep the ol algorithm nonsense happy. Whilst I now see slow but steady growth, even I question how long that lifestyle will be sustainable... This time next year Rodney.... You do have to respect someone who goes it alone, while doing a 40 hour job. That, and speaking to a camera to an alien audience can be a strange thing! It's something I've tried to do at times, but it's also something I'm unsure about. For me to get to a quality of video I want, that's a large time investment. Just doing it in a purely vlogging format isn't my thing. As you say, while working full time, it can all add up, especially with personal/family commitments to attend to. Hopefully something comes of your stuff (y).
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Sept 24, 2022 7:43:51 GMT
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This. That's a TLDR version put very well. Apparently, RoadKill costs around £100k an episode, and in all honesty,.... You know, I didn't actually know that but suspected it for long enough. Modern day YT and tiktok is killing what I try to do as much as internet based stuff has hammered the printed media. For context, I've been doing Toolsntrack now for what is now my fourth year. I make borderline NOTHING from youtube ads. To this day its so menial that I refuse to turn them on and interrupt the episodes I make. What has helped soften the financial blow is Patreon, but that more or less just covers the materials to put content around, its not like I get surplus pocket money from it. And to compare the Roadkill / MCM production team efforts, like most solo acts I do all of it on my own. So in between working a 40h week, I film the content whilst doing the actual car build stuff, then edit all the footage and strive to get one episode a week out to keep the ol algorithm nonsense happy. Whilst I now see slow but steady growth, even I question how long that lifestyle will be sustainable... This time next year Rodney.... don't you fecking dare even consider stopping T&T
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