2013 Youtube News – Versatile Moving from vstPower to MoNeYinPHX

Revisions:
1-12-13: Initial release.

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I know a lot of people don’t like to read, so I’ll keep this “short”. The last few weeks I’ve tasked vstPower team member MoNeYinPHX to scout out partnership opportunities for vstPower. Coincidentally, within the last 2 weeks, we must have done something right with our channel, because we got partnership offers from various networks, including Zoomin.tv, Machinima, Fullscreen, and more.

However, all of them had to deny us because vstPower had one thing against it: a disabled google adsense account.

What? Apparently, if your google adsense account is disabled, it deprives you from getting any type of partnership with any network. Once I heard the news, I was both happy and pissed at the same time. Happy in the sense that we were getting partnership offers, but pissed because of how this whole thing has evolved.

If you guys didn’t know, I started off with Youtube back in 2008 era under my own account VersatileNinja. Within less than a year, I closed that account to start up GameDexterity, and had a good run of 3+ years until it got shutdown by Youtube in July 2012. GameDexterity did have a partnership, and near the second half of the third year running, I decided to let the account obtain ads, only because HM7 advised he needed it for his own personal needs and to help the channel with new recording equipment.

A few weeks later of doing that, GameDexterity was a target from unknown sources where videos were flagged, and even a harmless port forwarding video from 2009 was banned too. Nothing made sense. Before we could appeal anything, we got 3 strikes and Youtube disabled us. We tried to appeal, but they said no.

Immediately that summer, I kicked off vstPower and got back on track, with new videos and a new vision.

Yes, it was monetized later on (I didn’t do it, someone else on the team did it), and I think how the google adsense account got disabled in September of 2012 was because Google suspected fraudulent click activity.

If we were watching our own videos that had an ad, and if we clicked on the ad instead of skipping it (I’m not sure if watching the 5 second ad counts or not), Google may see this as fraudulent clicking as a way to boost own stats. The safest way to watch our own videos in peace would use adblock, or better yet, don’t even put ads on at all.

Whether I was nieve, or because I was a nice guy, I had mistakenly allowed monetization of  the videos. By doing so, someone on the team could have indirectly screwed vstPower, even myself included.  Granted these days, I do run adblock and flashblock, so this is no longer a concern, but this is besides the point.

The point of the matter is (and I should have trusted my instincts on this one) the minute money is involved, things change. People change. Because I let this happen, now I am kicking myself in the head because I cannot reap the rewards of partnership opportunities, nor the ability to create a brand name.  Screw the money and the ads, I should have stuck to my core philosophy, and this is exactly what happens when you work in a group who doesn’t value the same values tht you have. Things happen, and right now, I am getting punished for it.

If the google adsense account was not banned right now, vstPower would be on Machinima network, and that alone is priceless. I cannot explain how I felt when the news was presented to me the other day that our opportunity to partner with Machinima was denied because of one small detail: disabled adsense account.

How many of your friends you know are on Machinima? None of mine are, but damn, I could have been the first!

There were several options to consider for moving forward:

1. Do nothing. Continue with vstPower. Never ever have another shot at partnership ever again.
2. Create a brand new channel from scratch. Start moving videos over, redo backgrounds, and grow sub base again from ground. Doable, but still a living hell.
3. Create new content and slowly port over vstPower videos to the MoNeYinPHX youtube channel. It already has a small subscriber base, video views, and for the most part, Machinima approves the account, but claims it needs more content, views, etc before re-negotiation of the contract can begin.  Doable, still hell, but not like #2 hell.

In a previous video, MoNeYinPHX himself told me that as an effort to grow his IT career, his advisers and his future prospective employers told him that he cannot put vstPower on his resume because it was a group effort, and not his effort. Moving my videos to his channel doesn’t affect him personally, as he shall be recognized as the CFO of the account, even if we don’t monetize the videos (which I don’t plan to).

He has a domain name, wordpress blog, and other business related items that he can use to grow/promote himself. I’m tagging along because its a natural extension of vstPower, and increases the chance of having other gaming networks partner with us once again.

Trust me, this was a huge crossroad in life type of decision. These don’t come often, and when they do, you got to evaluate all your options on the table, bite the bullet, and just do it. Life is too short to think “what if” scenarios. Knowing when to cut your losses is important. If we got no partnership opportunities at all, I would have said, “Ok, whatever, continue with vstPower.”

But the fact that a golden chance with Machinima (of all networks) slipped through my fingers, well, I’ll be damned. After all, they contacted US first, we didn’t contact them.  So with that said, I’m going to learn from this whole experience, and never let this type of mistake plague me again.

What does this mean for existing vstPower videos?

I will continue to answer your comments and support the videos as long as they exist on vstPower. I am smart enough to have every single youtube video I ever made since 2008 on my external hard drive. I will slowly start to upload the older vstPower videos to the MoNeYinPHX channel.

Slowly over time, existing videos will have annotations and video description updated to tell the user to go to the link to see the brand new video hosted on MoNeYinPHX.  By a certain date, the video will go private or unlisted, depending on the nature of the video.

Videos not created by me shall remain public. Not all videos made by me will go to the MoNeYinPHX channel, only key focus tutorial type videos. The update videos and old giveaway stuff shall remain on vstPower, including the 1st history video.

Tunngle videos that I had linked at tunngle.net/wiki or at vstpower.wikispaces.com will also be updated as I reupload old and new Tunngle videos.

Perhaps, I may use vstPower for backup of videos. Who knows, one day MoNeYinPHX channel is disabled because of some jealous girlfriend who created a bunch of flagbots to take us down. If that happens, its back to vstPower.

I will always identify myself as from vstPower.  We cleared up the details with Machinima that we own our copyrights and content, so whether its GameDexterity, vstPower, or even a MoNeYinPHX Productions, this is a non-issue.  I guess that in itself is good news.

Creating new AAE intros is a pain the ass, trust me. I don’t need to punish myself and do all of that again so soon.

That is the update. It is very unfortunate it has come to this, but I really want to have a good 2013 year, and by mid-year, I am hoping to turn this into an inspirational story.

Every month I am taking pictures of our progress, so that once we are drafted into Machinima, I can exactly tell and show you guys what we did to get partnered with a network. After all, we would be living proof then.

Thanks to everyone who follows me on youtube, and please subscribe to the new channel here. Thanks!

Video Explanation