Thursday, November 30, 2017

Ephemera circa 2017

As I struggle to wrap my mind around YouTube and my barely nascent career as a YouTube 'creator', there are still mysteries in the blogosphere that are curious puzzles I am likely never to solve.

Among the puzzles are messages that 2017 has floated into my inbox praising this blog as a top-rated go-to moto-blog. As much as I can't help lapping up the praise, I remain skeptical.

There was a Dilbert cartoon I stumbled on that I have alluded to in the past where the punchline was "will work for recognition".  Since I don't get any financial reward for the work I do here, in the Dilbert spirit I have posted my 'awards' in the sidebar.

Most recently, I received a very nice email from some kind folks informing me that science and statistics had rewarded me with a fresh accolade:

https://www.testfacts.com/top-15-motorcycle-blogs/

I apologize for this evil display of pride, justly ranked among the seven deadly sins. Yet, I just can't help myself. In my defense, I feel that the kind people who went to the effort to find and list my blog deserve to have me recognize the recognition. There's that, plus, as the internet evolves as it must, this ephemeral praise will evaporate like the gasoline I often manage to spill when I gas up the Vespa. In that spirit this post is where the recognition belongs, where it will get buried as time passes and future posts pile on, eventually sinking into Google's bottomless basement storage locker until it gets dredged up from time to time in response to some random search.

Oh well, that's all for now.

It's time for me to get back to my 'studio' to grind away at the YouTube challenge cum mystery. I've got to crack 10,000 views on my channel to unlock some prizes in the shape of enhanced permissions and the shadowy possibility of some monetization that may or may not ever materialize. In this respect I'm like a teenager toiling away at a video game in the basement hoping that today is the day that I unlock the Sceptre of Ottokar (no... wait, that was a Tintin story...).

8 comments:

RichardM said...

If one of the goals is more subscribers, then maybe instead of embedding the video in your blog post, have a static photo link to the YouTube page where you can click on the subscribe button.

David Masse said...

Thank you Richard, that’s really good advice.

I noticed that when the video was embedded the end screen annotations that contain the clickable links that allow the viewers to subscribe don’t show up the way they do on YouTube.

Linking to YouTube from a screen shot of the Youtube image of the video solves that problem. Having that link open in a fresh tab allows the blog to stay on the screen so viewers can easily return to the blog and not get strandedin YouTube (assuming they come to the blog through a Google search which accounts for most of the traffic on the blog).

I don’t know why Google doesn’t invest more effort supporting creators on Blogger and YouTube. In many cases they actually add hurdles over time making it harder.

I think I’ll go back and make that change to the previous posts. Maybe see if it’s possible to add a YouTube subscription nutton to the blog post so that readers can click to subscribe to the channel right from the blog.


David Masse said...

Thanks to your comment I found a YouTube Developer page that I wasn't aware of that allows, among other things, to embed a subscription button on a web page.

I tested it and I think I've got it working.

I've added that button on the latest post, and to the show notes page, and have begun adding the button in to all the previous posts with embedded videos.

I have to find a willing user who is not subscribed to my channel (my wife springs to mind), to see if it actually works. It's supposed to allow one-click channel subscriptions without any second or subsequent confirmation step.

David Masse said...

As a quick and dirty work-around, I have added Javascript subscription buttons below each embedded video, and as well in the vlog/show notes page, and in the sidebar.

My concern is that the Javascript slows the page load, particularly so when the home page ends up with X number of subscription buttons.

Longer term (time permitting) I should go back and edit the posts as you suggest to remove the embedded posts and the separate Javascript subscription buttons in favour of an image of the YouTube video and with a link to the video that opens in a fresh tab.

The only problem with that is that it will be relatively time consuming.

In the meantime, I'll try that with the most recent post, just to get a feel for the process.

Trobairitz said...

Congratulations on the accolades David! We always knew you were great.

David Masse said...

Aw thanks Brandy, that is so kind! {blushing}

len@RE-GLAZE-IT said...

Hi David,
A simple well done from me pal.
You’ve earned it and deserve it.
Congratulations.
Regards
LEN

David Masse said...

Thanks for the very kind words Len.

All the best to you and yours for the holidays!

The copyright in all text and photographs, except as noted, belongs to David Masse.