Do you guys feel that videos are helpful or not?

[Stockjock]

I just started unsubscribing to some of the cruise vloggers.  I'm going to do that to the ones who keep using sensationalistic terms to get clickbait hits and show a still shot of their shocked faces.  I don't have time for that.

Today, I unsubscribed from a bigger fellow whose preview talks about the fact that he is "annoyed" and "I hated this."  Nah, adios.  

I understand that the YouTube algorithms prioritize these clickbait, sensationalistic videos, but I want nothing to do with them.

[JanR]

DW and I are among those who share our experiences on YouTube.  Before YouTube came around, I was the guy who used to take my still pictures and put them together in a video montage so I would only bore my friends and family for about 5-10 minutes instead of the old-style, "Here's my 400 pictures of our last vacation, let me take an hour or more of your time to show you each one."  (Anyone remember the vacation slide shows of the 1970s?)

 

We have a few reasons for posting on YouTube:  1.  Share with friends/family.  2. It's a way that we can relive these experiences when we no longer can travel.  3.   It gives me a hobby that challenges me with new problems to solve and skills to learn (we still have LOTS to learn).  4.  We try to provide the information and perspectives for why we watch YouTube videos and feel we can do so better than many--but certainly not most.

 

Reading of everyone's posts was very illuminating and I appreciate the thoughtful responses that so many of your offered to StockJock.  I thought I'd share our perspectives for some of the comments that were made.

 

1.  Videos of lounges/spaces on a ship.  When we do our ship tour, we usually get up at 5 am and begin shooting pretty much at 6 am (sunrise) specifically to shoot the ship empty.  This is to limit another issue that was raised--invasion of guest privacy.  While we don't always succeed, we try very, very hard to limit our impact on other guests and protect their privacy.  This especially applies to kids.  I'll spend 30-45 minutes editing a 4 second scene to blur out the face of every child.

 

2.  Just because there are advertisements on a video, doesn't mean the creator is getting revenue.  YouTube has the right to place, and often does--if a video is getting sufficient views-- advertisements on a video even if the creator has less than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last year which qualifies them to participate in the YouTube Partnership program and begin to receive ad revenue.

 

3.  Speaking of money, there's not a lot there especially with small channels like own own.  We pretty much earn enough to cover the cost of our editing software and not much more.  Gary, Tony, Emma and the bigger YouTube creators do earn enough to be a fulltime profession--but the bulk of their money won't come from YouTube ad revenue.  Most large channels will tell you that the YouTube ad revenue pays their taxes on the sponsorships, merchandise, affiliate sales and other revenue streams.

 

4.  Music.  We are still trying to learn how to better use (and not use) music in our own videos.  We'll use music to provide energy to scenes without narration and--yes--to help mask copyrighted music on a ship.   Especially in our destination videos (which we truly love making but will generally have lower viewership), I personally find that watching video shots of even the most dramatic scenery usually lacks something until you add the "emotion lotion" that music provides--it's why movies have soundtracks.  But like I said, it's hard to find that balance and we are still working on ours.

 

5.  Posting of videos on Cruise Critic.  Quite frankly, if a YouTube creator believes they will drive a significant audience to their channel because they posted a video on CruiseCritic, they are greatly mistaken.  Moreover, if someone posts a video n CruiseCritic, don't assume they are doing so to drive traffic to their channel. 

 

I have posted maybe 3-4 videos from our channel (in addition to our playlist of the videos we made each day of our MSC World Cruise which was a direct response to the thread that asked if there were any world cruise vlogs available) on CruiseCritic since we started the channel.  We did so for the very reason anyone posts something on the platform--to share our experiences--that's all.  Let me illustrate this with a recent example.  In the Asia forum I had noticed several questions posters had about Singapore.  So, to help illustrate what you can go see, we posted our recent video on our pre-cruise.  As of writing this post, that post had a total of 145 views--not 145 people who watched the video from that post--but only 145 people actually even opened the thread whether they watched the video or not.  For context, that video has over 5,700 views.  

 

Anyway, great discussion and hopefully my comments can help put some of the reason why those of us post on YouTube do what we do.

 

My 2 Cents.  Your mileage may vary. . .

[AstoriaPreppy]

On 5/17/2024 at 12:54 PM, Stockjock said:

One of my pet peeves, and this is not directly related to my question, is when the semi-professional vloggers create clickbait misleading titles just to get views.  Some "shocking" headline, perhaps with a photo of the vlogger's face with an astonished expression, and then you get into the video and it's nothing shocking at all.

Again, doesn't specifically relate to my question, as I find some of the videos quite helpful.  I've done brief reviews of cabins on MSC, Celebrity, NCL, Pullmantur, Carnival, and others and I've been told those were useful.  But when they try to mislead me, I find that to be annoying.

 

TBH, the one kind of cruise video I find eminently useful is the cabin video: things like storage, bathroom layout, sofa (or lack thereof) is valuable to me... and it's easy to look past bad production values when it's just someone in their stateroom. 

 

What I really (REALLY) dislike about influencers and content creators on cruises are the ones who film indiscriminately, in public spaces, without considering other passengers. We took a cruise to Iceland a few years ago and there was a couple filming constantly, doing livestreams, having screaming calls with relatives on FaceTime in public spaces while cruising fjords in Greenland, etc. They were spectacularly obnoxious and completely oblivious to everyone around them, almost to a fault.