Some good news, some bad news.

First of all, THANK YOU EVERYONE! Thanks to all of your support (+ some incredibly generous human beings) we have reached my milestone goal of $1000! For this I am very, very grateful. I didn't imagine I'd ever reach this point. So I'm really at a loss for words right now :).

And now onto the bad news... couldn't we just have good celebratory news without bad news for once!? I'm sensing a theme here! Anyway - I'm still having a lot of issues with youtube. For the past month and a half every new video I have posted has lost monetization. How does this affect you guys? I'll get to that momentarily.

Technically I still have the "ability" to monetize my videos, but YouTube doesn't like my content. I have emailed them asking why monetization keeps disappearing off my videos, and they replied with, "due to the sensitive content of your videos advertisers don't wish to display ads on them." As to how YouTube advertisers are deciding they don't like my content? Well at first I thought it was because of my keywords! So I started taking all drug related tags out of both the keywords, the descriptions, and some of the titles.  

This seemed to work at first. I managed to get that little monetization icon to pop back up on a couple videos after waiting a week. But then a day or two later it disappeared again... leading me into complete confusion as to how youtube is figuring out they don't approve of my content. They even removed monetization from 2 out of 4 of my "trip reports." This makes absolutely NO SENSE. why would 2 reports still be monetized and not the other 2? How are they deciding which videos can be monetized and which ones cannot? Wracking my brain with this is giving me a headache. I am so confused. Is there a youtube executive who's actually watching my videos and randomly removing my ability to monetize certain ones? I am actually leaning towards this. I partially believe my account has been targeted in this way since I primarily talk about psychedelics. Perhaps Youtube does not want me to continue, and as a deterrent they're removing my ability to monetize new content. But if this truly was the case, wouldn't they just restrict my ability to monetize all content? Why just limit my newly posted videos??? You see, I'm very, very confused. 

And finally - how does this affect you guys? Well for me to afford to quit my job and focus full-time on youtube (like I said I would do when I hit $1000 in pledges) I need to be making ad revenue off youtube as well. There are youtubers who have the same number of subscribers as I have and make a full-time income just off youtube alone! Which is insane! And unfortunate as it seems I will never be able to do that due to the content of my videos. I absolutely despise this monetary system we live in. I want to be making these videos ALL THE TIME without needing to care about "money." Being in this system can be very difficult sometimes. 

Ultimately what this means is I am not making enough to live right now if I were to quit my full-time job and focus on spreading this information as my practice. But you know what, FUCK IT. 

I'm done feeding energy into this. I have a solution. I will diversify the information I spread. It will all be psychedelic related, but if I'll be posting 2 videos a week I will no longer be as strict with my content. I will see if I can manage to get at least half my newly posted videos monetized - somehow. Do you guys have any ideas?

My girlfriend and I have had a Central America trip booked since 5 months ago. We leave in November and we'll be gone for a month. 

When I return I am finished with full-time employment and I WILL make this work. Somehow. I'm not backing out of the promise I made when I wrote that $1000 mile-stone goal just because YouTube doesn't approve of my content. 

Thanks again everyone for your continued support. I knew doing this wasn't going to be easy when I started. I imagine issues like this will continue to happen and the only way to overcome them will be to stop reacting to them. 

What do you think my next Milestone goal should be? Please let me know what your idea's are!

- Adam