MAY 2020 - Update !

Been slacking off on the blog, and for those of you who follow the blog, I do apologize. Making videos on youtube, or vlogs as they sometimes get called, has been front and center of my 'blogging' activities for the past several months. 

I have been creating weekly update videos, which you can access here. 

There are already over 70 update videos alone there. Most are well under 10 minutes, so you could binge watch them all and see my progress from moving from the old place, buying the new place, and doing renos, and moving in, and progress from there setting up. Still have lots to do, of course. Had to get a living space built from scratch, and technically it still isn't 100% complete, but I am living in the building now.

 Was hoping to monetize them eventually, but now youtube has announced changes that may make that a pipe dream. You used to have to have 1000 subscribers (which is daunting enough to get to), and a few thousand viewing hours on your channel in order to get access to the monetization point, where they put ads and such on your videos, and give you a cut. It is not big money by any stretch (not until you hit a million subscribers, really), but also by that level you do get some perks and features not otherwise available to you.   But, now, if you don;t hit that threshold by June 1st, you won't be grandfathered into the new levels, which apparently will be something like 4000 subscribers and many more viewing hours than before.  With my videos being so short, and with people's attention spans being even shorter, it would have been tough enough to get to the old levels, but now it seems even tougher, almost insurmountable.....Would pretty much need a video to go viral in order to accomplish what seems to be the impossible at this point. I have maybe 75 subscribers now, which has taken many months to get to, so to get another 925 before June 1st seems like an utter impossibility.  

It makes me now doubt the value of the YouTube platform. It is like the "AirMiles" program where they kept downgrading the value of the mileage points you have earned. Just when you think you could afford that toaster with your mileage points, suddenly they  downgraded the points/miles to a level that you could only afford to buy the ballpoint pen with your "miles". 

So, what I am doing may or may not change in the coming few months, as far as blogging and vlogging goes.  We shall see.