So, for those of you (NOT) in the know...

Youtube has continued to smash me pretty hard in terms of organic discovery and search returns. In fact people are more likely to stumble across a cooking video than my content these days, and that's searching for my content directly. I didn't exactly share this with you guys in detail but check this out, true story.

My first battletech video here - > https://youtu.be/_bDW5CBnnyo had over 14k hits in 24 hours and was running away to be a big hit on the channel. SEO experts I'd hired (a reputable, above board firm) had created organic back-links, searches, indexes, and everything for the video. They'd made certain that the Battletech Community, from their Reddit presence to their forum presence to the twitter presence, developers, players, and influencers all knew about this video. As such, its popularity exploded.

Then youtube froze the counts and search return on it.

Then youtube unranked it.

Then youtube removed 10,000 views from it.

They claimed it was anomalous activity and the result of a glitch. What's funny is that all of this anomalous activity came from the United States, and specifically from states where there are strong battletech clubs, namely the Midwest. These views didn't come from third world country botfarms or pay per click in Indonesia/India. These were legitimate views. I've tried to fight you tube before, namely in writing long diatribes and explaining everything they've done to me that's unjust - from unranking my videos to labeling my videos unsuitable for advertisement, to just punishing my channel.

December, last year was the high-point of the BPL in terms of viewership. 120K plus people watched, and that's pretty damn impressive. On average I do 75k-80k views a month, which is still better than some businesses and most medium sized newspapers. That being said though, things are on a downward slope. This month I shall be very lucky to hit  60k views. This downward slope is in direct opposite of last year's performance during the very same time-frame. I've made content for seven years now and this is really shocking to say the least.

You have to understand, for the longest damn time I was slowly getting more viewership. Slowly, because I was doing it honest, not buying views, not selling out, and not endorsing the latest gaming chair or headset or microphone or game, or anything of that sort. Took me 4 years to reach 1k subscribers and I'm damn proud of that. Now at 7 years we're at 11k almost. That's not so bad. However, viewership and engagement are now sharply declining.

It's frightening to say the least, considering that over half of the people polled on my channel said that they don't get notifications, or that they've been unsubbed, or the only notifications they DO get are from larger/more cost effective channels for the company. In short, this ramble has two points.

1. Ensure to check back manually if need be on my channel. For some reason Youtube is ANGRIER than normal at me. Maybe its because I swear a whole lot.

2. While my patreon donations have shrunk by a third from earlier this year, most of you are long-term supporters and that is a vote of confidence that gets me through this dark shit. So thank you.

Back to a 72 hour work week. That's right. I'm working less than 80. Because I'm listening to my Doctor. Huzzah!

-Texicus Maximus-