u/Icy_Palpitation9187

been thinking about this a lot lately and figured this group was the right place to ask

ad revenue has always been inconsistent for me, some months are decent and some months i look at the number and wonder why i bother. i know i'm probably not optimizing things the way i should be and i feel like there's a whole layer of this i'm just not seeing

so genuinely asking the group, what has actually moved the needle for you on ad revenue. is it posting frequency, video length, niche, thumbnails, all of the above, something else entirely

also curious how many of you rely on ads as your main income vs having other streams running alongside it because i'm starting to think chasing ad revenue alone might just be the wrong game entirely

what percentage of your monthly income comes from ads right now and what do you wish you had figured out sooner

drop your experience below because i feel like this group has people at every stage and the honest answers are way more useful than anything i'll find googling it

i've been thinking about this a lot lately because the gap between the two income streams is way bigger than i expected when i started

youtube ad revenue is genuinely unpredictable. some months are decent, some months you look at the check and wonder why you bothered. it swings based on what advertisers are spending, what time of year it is, whether youtube decides your content is advertiser friendly that week, stuff you have zero control over. and the amount of views you need to make real money from ads alone is kind of insane when you actually do the math

paid subscribers just feel different. it's the same people showing up every month because they actually want to be there and the income is something you can actually plan around

my setup right now is two channels. one is my main channel which is the content i built my audience on. the other one is way more personal, just life updates, what's going on with me, behind the scenes stuff, nothing fancy. and honestly that second channel is what converted the most paying subscribers because people feel like they actually know me

between the two channels and the paid subscriber side i'm sitting around $400 a month right now which is not life changing but it is consistent and it keeps growing which ad revenue alone never really did for me

curious if anyone else runs a more personal secondary channel alongside their main one and whether you found it actually moved the needle on paid conversions or if it just brought in more free viewers who never converted

genuinely curious because it feels like almost every creator i follow has a patreon for the money side and then something else entirely for the actual community side and i want to know if that's just the norm now

like patreon handles the subscription and the content delivery really well but it has always felt weirdly cold as a community space. there's no real back and forth, no live conversation, no place where your supporters actually talk to each other and feel like they belong to something together. it's more like a content library than a community

so people end up building the actual relationship somewhere else and just using patreon as the payment layer

i'm curious what platforms people are using alongside it and more importantly why that specific one. is it purely because your audience was already there or did you actually evaluate options and land on something intentionally

also for people who have been doing this a while, do you find that having a second platform actually increases your patreon retention or does it just create more work for you with no real financial difference

and for the people who tried to keep everything inside patreon only, how did that go because i've seen patreon add community features over the years and i've never once heard a creator say those features replaced what they were doing elsewhere

what's your current setup and would you change anything about it

think about what patreon actually was in the beginning and why it worked. it was dead simple. creator uploads a video, fan pays to watch it, done. it was basically youtube but with a paywall and that was the entire genius of it. no algorithm, no chasing trends, no fighting for attention in a feed. just a direct transaction between a creator and the people who actually wanted to support them

that simplicity is what made it feel safe. creators knew exactly what they were building. fans knew exactly what they were paying for. there was no noise

and patreon just sat on that for a decade. barely touched the interface. didn't improve discovery, didn't improve the video experience, didn't improve payouts, didn't do anything really. creators built their entire income on the platform basically in spite of the product not because of it

and now after ten years of silence the big innovation is a scrollable feed

a feed. on a paid platform. where most content is locked behind a paywall. the thing that makes social media work is frictionless free content that spreads and pulls new people in. that is the opposite of what patreon is. you cannot build a scroll feed out of content that 90% of visitors cannot even see. At this point it is better I look at subscribestar, stagetown or kofi. however, kofi cant host videos.

they had the most loyal creator base on the internet and the simplest working model and somehow the answer was let's make it more complicated

does anyone actually want this or is it just me??

okay so i'm planning to grab the new mac mini when it drops and i want to finally set up a proper openclaw home base that runs 24/7 without me babysitting it

first question is the config, is the base M5 going to be enough for running openclaw smoothly or should i go for more unified memory. i'm thinking 16gb might bottleneck things if i'm running multiple agents and browser automation at the same time but i don't want to overspend if 16gb handles it fine in practice. anyone running openclaw on a mac mini right now and what specs do you have

second thing i genuinely cannot figure out is the AI plan situation. i'm currently on the $200 codex pro plan using oauth and it's been working but i keep wondering if i'm actually getting the best value out of it or just paying a lot out of habit

so my actual question is for people who have tried multiple setups, is codex oauth on the $200 plan still the move for heavy openclaw use or is there a point where switching to claude api, minimax, or one of the open source models actually makes more sense. i know the results differ a lot depending on the task but i'd love to hear what people are running day to day and whether the quality gap is worth the price difference

basically trying to build the cleanest possible openclaw setup on the new mac mini and don't want to get it wrong from the start

ok so everyone's hyped about the CEO standing up for some random Lego guy and yeah sure good for him but can we talk about the fact that this same platform has been quietly banning creators left and right with absolutely no transparency

like Tyler Olivieras got banned and got nothing. no email, no warning, no appeal process, just gone. income wiped overnight. and he's not alone

i've seen at least a dozen posts in this sub alone in the past few months from creators who woke up to a disabled account and got the same copy paste "you violated our terms" email with zero specifics

so the CEO has time to respond publicly to a viral youtube video but not to fix the actual system that's been silently killing small creators' livelihoods for years??

the optics are great. the pattern underneath them is not.

genuinely asking, has anyone else here been banned or had their account restricted with no real explanation? because i feel like the number is way higher than people realize and nobody's talking about it in one place

drop your experience below because this needs to be documented

ok so my friend said something to me yesterday that broke my brain a little

she goes "patreon doesn't grow your audience, it splits it"

and i laughed it off but then i couldn't sleep because she's RIGHT

like think about it. you have your youtube community, everyone's together, vibing, commenting, it's chaotic but it's yours. then you open a patreon and suddenly

one half of your audience is like YES i want the extra stuff, i want behind the scenes, i want to be closer to you, take my money

and the other half is like so you're paywalling now?? i thought you were different?? i've been here since day one??

it is EXACTLY like cats vs dogs. one group wants to cuddle up and be part of the inner circle. the other group is feral and offended you even suggested they should pay for anything

and the funniest part is both groups think THEY are the real fans

the patreon people think the free people are just lurkers who never cared

the free people think the patreon people are just simps who got played

meanwhile i'm just standing here like a tired pet owner who loves both animals and cannot explain why the cat just attacked the dog again for no reason

has anyone actually figured out how to keep both sides happy or is this just the price of having a patreon 💀

i think i am going add stagetown as a second stream of income and sell single videos while i maintain my patreon.

so i'm standing in the checkout line today, completely zoned out, and i look over at the magazine rack and there's a huge photo of Sabrina Carpenter on the cover

and i'm just staring at it for a second and something hit me that i haven't been able to shake since i got home

like this woman has MILLIONS of people who feel a personal connection to her. people who never met her, never will meet her, but they feel like they KNOW her. they show up for her. they defend her. they cry at her concerts. and it's not just because she's talented, it's because she has somehow made every single one of those people feel seen

and i'm standing there holding my groceries thinking… my patrons are showing up for me every single month. like real people hitting a recurring payment because they believe in what i'm making. and if i'm being honest with myself i don't think i give that relationship even half the intentionality that she gives hers

i got home and started thinking about what it actually means to make someone feel like they're part of something and not just a subscriber number

so i genuinely want to ask people here, especially other creators

how do you actually build that kind of real connection with your audience? like beyond just posting content. do you do personal check ins? do you share the messy behind the scenes stuff? do you remember names? what actually moves the needle for you in terms of making your supporters feel like they matter

because i feel like i've been leaving so much on the table and i don't want to anymore. alongside patreon i am trying to sell a single video with stagetown and maybe images with gumroad!

i used to think audience connection meant replying to comments and asking what people wanted next

didn’t really work like that

i started with like 10 real followers, and what changed everything wasn’t growth hacks, it was just noticing the same people showing up again and again

so i stopped thinking in “views” and started thinking in “names”

i’d reference comments in videos, keep the tone consistent, and treat repeat viewers like the actual channel instead of the analytics

eventually i layered in livestreams and a small content subscription setup so the most engaged people had a place to actually talk, not just react

that’s pretty much how it went from random uploads to an actual audience that feels like people instead of numbers

it is not a lot im only at 20 followers lol but they all pay from the 1000 i have on youtube

AMA if you’re curious. also yall got any pets, allegedelly all youtubers do!!!

would you guys ever do pay per video alongside patreon subscriptions instead of replacing patreon entirely

like keep patreon for the monthly community stuff but then drop individual videos for like $5-10 separately for people who dont wanna subscribe every month

cause honestly moving off patreon completely seems risky as hell. every creator i talk to says the same thing. patreon is annoying sometimes but the brand trust is too strong and people are already used to paying there

but i feel like there might be room for both

subscriptions for core fans
one-off paid videos for casual viewers

feels like there are probably people who would never sub monthly but would absolutely pay 10 bucks for a specific video they really want

would this work or would subscribers get annoyed and feel double charged

yo I’m probably gonna sound like I’m glazing Patreon here but I actually LOVE it 😭

like I’ve got ~40 followers paying 20$ and I’ve tried a bunch of monetization stuff (YouTube ads, sponsorships, random digital products, even thinking about my own site) and nothing hits the same as Patreon

the UX is just stupidly clean:

• people click 2 buttons and they’re supporting you
• recurring income just shows up every month like clockwork
• tiers are simple enough that nobody gets confused
• payouts are actually predictable (which is rare online tbh)
• I don’t have to chase brands or beg algorithms

like genuinely… it feels like the closest thing to “creator stability” I’ve ever had

BUT I just saw fees are already like ~10% and trending upward… and it got me thinking

what happens if it hits like 15–20%??

not even hating, just realistically:

• at what point does convenience stop being worth it?
• do you just accept it because everything else is worse?
• or do people actually migrate off Patreon successfully without nuking their income?

because I’ve seen so many “I’m moving off Patreon” posts and then engagement just… dies 💀

I kinda feel like I’m in the “this is too good to leave, but also I don’t fully trust it long-term” stage

anyone else feel this or am I just overthinking it? should i look at subscribestar or stagetown a peer showed me a good ui.

trying to get realistic numbers here.

my use case is pretty basic: agent handles admin work like identifying relevant emails, sorting/prioritizing, drafting replies, and sending compliant cold outreach. Assume ~8 hours/day of work.

What are people actually PAYING per month for this?

Looking at APIs like:

• MiniMax
• Claude
• Gemini
• DeepSeek
• OpenAI
• GLM / Qwen etc.

Main questions:

1. What’s the cheapest API that’s still reliable for boring admin/email tasks?
2. Do you pay purely per use/tokens, or are people running monthly plans somewhere?
3. For this type of workflow, do you route cheap model for 90% and only use Claude/Sonnet/etc. when it needs reasoning?
4. What’s a realistic monthly cost if this runs daily?
5. What stack are people actually using in production-ish setups?

Not trying to burn money using frontier models for email triage. Just want the lowest-cost setup that doesn’t hallucinate or loop itself into a token bonfire.

Curious what everyone here is using.

Trying to avoid the classic “cool agent, $400 API bill” situation.

yo reddit,

I’m thinking about starting a finance YouTube channel, but my biggest question is: how do I actually build trust with people?

I’ve been trading/investing for the last 5 years and averaged around 30% annual returns, which I know sounds crazy and also sounds exactly like something a fake finance bro would say in a YouTube ad lol.

I don’t wanna come across like:

“buy my course bro, financial freedom in 7 days 🚀”

I want the channel to be entertaining, Gen Z-friendly, but still credible. Like finance content that’s actually useful, not just me yelling “THIS STOCK WILL 10X” with a shocked thumbnail.

My idea is to show my trading/investing journey, explain my thought process, break down wins and losses, and maybe talk about what I learned from the last 5 years.

But how do I prove credibility without being cringe or looking like I’m flexing?

Would people trust:

• screenshots of brokerage performance?
• full portfolio breakdowns?
• explaining every trade after the fact?
• sharing mistakes and bad trades too?
• doing live portfolio updates?
• showing risk management and drawdowns?
• third-party verification somehow?

Also, what would make you immediately think “this person is legit” vs “this is another fake finance influencer”?

I’m not trying to give financial advice or promise returns. I just want to make content around my experience and trading mindset.

Be brutally honest: how should I build trust from zero without sounding like every other finance YouTuber with a rented Lamborghini?

how do you actually make money as a youtuber lol

like do people just use youtube or do you sell videos somewhere or what
i feel like i am missing something super obvious

also how are you guys getting closer to your audience
like is it instagram, youtube comments, stories, lives???
i feel like i post and then just disappear and that is probably bad 💀

do you just talk to people more or is there some smarter way to do it