SellerThink was a web series for online sellers that began in 2010 and ended on May 17, 2022.
The channel reached 7,000+ subscribers and several million non-subscribers. The official view count according to YouTube was 2,000,000+ views. However this number is disputed since YouTube in 2022 was manipulating channel views, channel reach, and other numbers in order to reduce the amount of money the series was earning at its end. According to our records, YouTube withheld over $9,000 in earned revenue, claiming that the channel was somehow engaged in false clicks, bots or some other unknown methods to which they refused to show any proof or records to support their claims after multiple requests. We’re filmmakers, we wouldn’t know how to game the algorithms if we tried, which is why it took the series twenty years to make any kind of dent in YouTube’s monetization system and break the subscriber limitations and views our series encountered.
Ultimately, the team at SellerThink decided to wind down production at the beginning of 2022 due to having to literally fight YouTube without resolution for half of 2021. Out of the $16,000 of royalties, YouTube wanted to pay us $4,000. We did what we could to resist and defend our claims with their customer support, minus going to court or arbitration, including going as far as to show screen captures of channel analytics which showed the amount earned before YouTube began manually manipulating the analytical date. They removed ultimately paid out a total $9,700 of the owed $16,000. We were taken by as much surprise as YouTube when a short series we released accidently stumble upon a combination of topic that ended up going super viral.
We started as a channel to help sellers never asking for or expecting a penny in return, and we worked that way with very little royalties from YouTube, being a niche channel and topic. We had already sensed YouTube was heading in a bad direction when it began asking Creators to self-identify in survey’s to classify them into “protected classes”. When we responded to the very first survey they ran that asked us to identify our gender and ethnicity as a representative channel, our channel took a big hit as a result that stuck with us for the next five years. YouTube decided it would push gender, sexual orientation, black creators with it’s algorithms. No one in our team fit those demographics.
When YouTube de-monetized the channel, Host Randy Dreammaker decided to support the team in order to allow the series to continue un-monetized, but the shadow ban, throttling and our subscribers no longer being shown new videos in their feed due to the de-monetization resulted in our videos only receiving less than 150 views.
It was at that time, Randy who originally came up with the idea and funding to launch SellerThink, decided the time, energy, research, time in front of the camera, etc. for 150 views that were not even current subscribers was a poor investment, after all he made his name to claim due to his success as a person who is able to make a return on investments. The only one making any return on the investments SellerThink had made months earlier, was now YouTube, who was still running commercials and taking all of the revenue after it demonetized the web series.
The last video was released in September 2022.
We explored Playuer and Rumble as alternative video syndication platforms but the community of sellers were already vested in YouTube.
Feel free to see what our former host Randy Dreammaker is currently doing on his official web blog.
