Well I finally turned on the Monetisation switch of my YouTube channel. I had been thinking long and hard about it because part of me was (1) embarrassed but mainly (2) having an existential crisis about what it means to fold into the algorithmic-driven capitalistic agenda that pushes you to be a product of the platform.

But then I thought, “Stuff it! I’m spending all this time creating these reviews (well, mainly waffling to camera), I may as well be paid $1.23!”

Sigh.

I cringe at the thought of people watching halfway (if they get halfway because the stats tell me that they drop off around the 3-minute mark) and them having to wait through two ads that get forcibly inserted into my video.

Another part of me was embarrassed to turn it on. People who had been watching videos with no ads now have to wait further. It’s not lost on me that we spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for the ads to finish – and for some, we can’t even skip through them.

According to the statistics which I just checked today and got a little jolt, I now have about $8.23. I turned monetisation on over the weekend even though I had reached the point where I could turn it on some time back.

Is this a platform to “get rich quick”. I doubt it. Certainly not someone like me waffling on about book reviews.

At one stage I thought I could create some PDFs of questions about books that I could sell to schools or book clubs but I gave that up because it seemed like hard work. Like making my YouTube jaunt into a serious business endeavour. Stuff that. No thanks.

Anyway, I have people now contacting me through my website (no social media means that they have to REALLY search for me – there’s effort in finding me) to tell me that I need to be doing SEO Keyword searches. One person wrote a comment in a YouTube channel about me not having SEO so I responded and asked “what is your favourite book?” and instead, he continued to sell his services as an SEO expert.

Pity. I was testing him. I wanted to see what book he would write and share his reasons why. For once, to not sell but to be inspired with literature. He wasn’t. So I deleted his comment.

Let’s see how this YouTube endeavour goes. It’s an amusing way of passing time and also chatting to strangers around the world who also share their book recommendations which I like. I don’t count myself as a “Book Influencer” though.

I’m not much of an influencer of anything. If age has taught me one thing and that’s really, I don’t know anything at all.

Like everyone else, I’m playing the game and just passing my time.