It has been an incredible week at the More Freedom Foundation. I’ve spent a lot more time than I like to admit refreshing the real-time view statistics and just repeating “Wow!” As this video shows, viewership this past week was up by a factor of ten from two months ago. This is tremendously satisfying, and I’m endlessly grateful to all of you, the viewers and readers for making this possible. It’s now possible to call this weird project of mine successful. That’s amazing.
But there’s a bit of an odd contrast here, laid out in this video. As the channel reaches new heights of success, I’m crashing in some friends’ guest room and taking care of their dogs. The dogs are awesome, and it’s a lot of fun. But it’s not what I should be focused on right now. For the past year I have been floating from couch to couch, trying to make this YouTube channel a success. It’s been amazing, dropping into so many different lives and cities, and I’m tremendously grateful to the friends that have put me up, and the Patrons whose pledges have covered my travel and living expenses. It’s great, but it’s tiring. I really want an apartment of my own, after most of a year on the road. I’ve got new projects to work on, and it’s difficult to do that when I’m staying at a new place every week or so.
So I’ve launched my Patreon campaign in the hopes of getting funding for this channel up to US minimum wage. If I don’t meet my deadline by July 15th, I’m going to have to give up this channel. I think that would be a shame. This channel is making valuable contributions to the conversation, and giving that up would break my heart. So how about helping me to keep that from happening?
If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click here to support this project through Patreon. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.
Video Transcript after the jump…
Sit…
Oh… Good Dog.
Hey there. So it’s a really exciting time here at the More Freedom Foundation. The channel has been doing better and better over the past couple months, but this week in particular was pretty amazing. I think I’m finally reaching the kinds of audiences that I have always wanted to reach. I think I can actually call this channel a success.
I just checked the 7-day average for this past week, and it is ten times larger than that figure was in April. So the traffic to my channel has grown by a factor of ten. This is pretty amazing. I am very, very happy about this, which I wanted to share with all of you.
Now getting five to ten thousand views a day, is obviously not like, YouTube stardom or anything. It’s not the big leagues, but for the content that I’m putting out there I think it’s pretty amazing, and I am reaching a larger audience. There are a couple videos that I did last month that are both doing incredibly well.
So thanks to this channel, there are now 14,000 people who are more aware of the important and positive election that happened in Iran. The election that both Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia tried to hide from us. Also, there are now, I think almost 25,000 people who are aware that Turkey is not in fact turning into Saudi Arabia, which is something that you can read in some of the less scrupulous outlets in the United States. I think I’m actually making a difference. This channel is finally becoming what I always wanted it to be. And it’s tremendously satisfying.
There’s a piece that’s still missing however. I think I’m now producing pretty good content. I have an audience, finally. This week and over the past couple months that has started to develop, which is very cool. But I don’t really have enough money to support myself. You guys have heard me complain about this before, but it’s worth emphasizing that even as the…
Oh, Hello Patricia!
Even as the traffic increases, this money situation isn’t improving. Thanks to some changes in YouTube’s policies I am now making less money with ten times the traffic that I had two months ago. Volume alone will not save this channel. I’ve been in Los Angeles for the past couple weeks, and the only reason I can be here is because I am trading dog-sitting services for housing. I mean that’s great! I love these dogs…
Gordita! Hello Gordita! Say hello to YouTube Gordita! No?
Patricia!
Anyway, these dogs are adorable. They’re fantastic, but it’s not what I want to be doing right now, is taking care of these dogs. I want to be focusing on growing this channel, taking advantage of this moment that I’m in with this great audience.
Oh…
I mean I really do like these dogs.
But I don’t think dog-sitting is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. And that’s why I’m asking for your help. I’ve been running sort of a fund-raising campaign for my crowd-funding thing, through my Patreon page, for the past month. And the response has been tremendously positive, but donations have slowed down a bit, and we’ve just got about a month to go, before the deadline. If I can’t get my funding up to around US minimum wage by my birthday, July 15, 2017, I’m probably going to have to give this up. And I really don’t want to do that.
I’d be tremendously grateful if you considered essentially buying me a cup of coffee a month. If about 65 more of you great people agree to do that, then this project can survive! I think that would be worthwhile…
Thanks for watching, please subscribe, and please consider contributing to my Patreon account. I’m not a very good dog-sitter.
Not a very good dog-sitter at all.