Bringing people back into the fold

[Bryan]

As I write this, I wonder if I should. I mean, the thought behind it seems solid and relevant, but then it’s my idea so what else would I think about it, right? I’m not wanting to re-kick the hornet’s nest, but I see a problem developing and thought I’d offer my opinion for whatever it might be worth.

First, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m a lapsed Premium Member. I allowed it to expire several months ago, not long after Eric decided to sign off for a while. Please take what I say as my opinions only, and don’t ascribe any meaning to it other than that. I allowed it to lapse, as I was one of the ones that signed on for the repair videos and did not support the change in venue to the Fairmont Builds.

All that aside, the Fairmont build is done. It’s on the road and Eric is releasing many videos to Premium Members about it. They got to see the first start up… they got to see the Fairmont road test with the new GoPro setup.. all good things.

I just deleted quite a bit of this message, as I thought it came too close to an ad hominem slight, so I’ll just say it like this.

Eric, many of us white-listed you on our Ad-block plus software so that you might see the revenue from that. While I understand your desire to build and that building the Fairmont scratched an itch for you… from our perspective, the Fairmont took away much of what we wanted and indeed, came here to see.

Putting the First Start video behind the pay-wall of Premium membership makes sense… that’s certainly a special moment and sharing that among the premium membership to me is entirely appropriate.

But for those of us that still come by, that still have you white-listed (and still get annoyed by the ads! Heh..)…

Would you possibly be willing to consider throwing us a bone and showing -US- what so much of your time and effort was directed at? We’d like to see the final product too. We might not be tossing dosh in your direction directly, but we still do watch the ads and have bought things from your sponsors to reflect our support of the site.

I think doing so would go a long way to bringing us back into the fold, rather than making us feel a bit like we’re on the outside looking in.

Respectfully,

Hinoki

Topic

[EricTheCarGuy]

Thanks for your input Hinoki. I recognize you as a long time member of the site. Thank you for that. Thanks also for the ‘white listing’ as well as your viewership.

I understand your frustration and where it’s coming from. It sounds like you might have wished you had kept your membership to see the latest exclusive videos.

That said, as you pointed out, the Fairmont was an itch I needed to scratch and I’m glad I did it. I waited 30 years to make a car like that, and I’m happy with the result. Truthfully, I can’t say it’s done. I still have a few things to work out, but that’s custom car building as they say.

I will admit that I went somewhat off the rails with the videos of the Fairmont build. That was never my intention. The truth is, I’ve never built a custom car and had little to no idea of what I was getting into when I started. My original intention with the project videos was to showcase all the different systems on a vehicle during the build. A level of detail that I don’t think anyone has attempted in the past. Now I know why they haven’t.

Somewhere along the way it became more of a documentary about the build over a series of educational videos about all the different automotive systems. For that I apologize.

Given that I was in deep with the project, it made it almost impossible to produce other content. Hence EricTheCarGuy became “The Fairmont Channel”. Again, it was never my intention to do this, but once I was committed to finishing the car, it left me with little choice. I still have over 60 days worth of footage I shot of the build BTW. Right now I’m sorting out how to create content from all that footage.

In addition to the Fairmont, I took on additional video work outside of ETCG, ETCG1, and Premium Member content. That, and building a custom car for the first time, proved too much for me to handle. So I decided to take a ‘break’ and stop posting videos to ETCG for a while to maintain my sanity.

The Fairmont is for the most part complete at this point. As I mentioned, I still have some more work to do, but I’m sorting through that now. I’m also working on wrapping up that other video work.

During my time away, I’ve also been planning a new way going forward with ETCG. I don’t want to start posting videos to ETCG again and have them be more of the same. As a result, I’ve put a lot of thought into how I want my ‘comeback’ to look. Mostly I’ve been focusing on what got me here in the first place, which is the repair videos you mentioned. I have every intention of producing more of those going forward. Hopefully better videos than ever in that regard. But I also want to do more build videos. I have plans for that as well. Additionally, I want to revisit Fixing it Forward, but not in the same way I did it in the past. As much as people say they enjoyed Fixing it Forward, the truth is, it really didn’t get anymore views than the Fairmont Project.

This brings up an important point, views. Another reason I stopped posting was because the views just weren’t there. At the time I had almost a million subscribers and I was only getting about 30K views a week after I’d post a video. Given that my income is directly related to views, it became very discouraging. Imagine going into work tomorrow and they told you they were going to start paying you 60% less for the same work. How long would you stay working there? I imagine not long.

I realize I’m partly to blame for the lack of views, but not entirely. I’ve heard from several viewers that they weren’t even aware I was posting new videos despite being subscribed and hitting the ‘bell’ icon to be notified when I would post something new. Discouraged barely begins to describe how I felt about this.

I need to say this. I plan to make every effort to bring the views back by creating content that I believe you as an audience wants to see. But if I don’t see a significant improvement in views, I’m no longer going to make YouTube my main focus, and I’ll move on to other things. No hard feelings, but as I mentioned earlier, how long would you continue to work at a job with a significant pay cut?

You mentioned the first start up of the Fairmont. 2 things in response to that. The ‘actual’ first start up has been recorded and will air at some point on my ETCG YouTube channel. When that happens, I plan to make a special event out of it. In fact, I’ve been planning that event for some time. I think you’ll be happy with what I have in mind. BTW, that is something that will be available to everyone.

Second, I also did a first start up of the Fairmont on my ETCG1 channel recently. So your point about me keeping that behind a paywall just isn’t true.

Lastly, Premium Members pay a subscription. I try and honor that subscription by providing exclusive material for members to watch. After all, it’s what they paid for. Given that I haven’t posted as many PM videos lately as I would have liked, I’d say I owe them even more than what I’ve provided lately, and I intend to do that. If you’re feeling left out, perhaps you should sign up again and see what I’ve offered instead of lamenting letting your subscription lapse. I’m not trying to be mean here, but I think it needs to be said.

In summary. I haven’t wasted my time off as you’ll see in the coming months. More specifically at the end of October 2017. You’ll have the opportunity to see a project I’ve been working on for some time with my friends at Pull-a-Part. It was my first foray into executive producing. It was an amazing experience and I have every reason to believe you’re going to really enjoy the videos that come out of that effort.

I’ve enjoyed my time away and I’m going to use the things I’ve learned during this time to not only make better videos, but also live a better life where I’m not so strung out I become less effective and have to take another ‘break’. You must understand that I’ve been working 12-14 hour days 6 days a week for years. It’s amazing I didn’t burn out sooner.

Life is a learning process. I’m still learning like everyone, but I plan to stay true to the core of what ETCG is and I hope always will be, a place where people can get automotive knowledge, and possibly be entertained at the same time.

Thanks again for your input. I hope I’ve responded sufficiently to your concerns. I appreciate you taking the time.

[mckrishes]

Your videos are excellent and thorough. I say focus on quality videos that are popular to the public which I think you are already going to do. Mod videos are also cool and popular.

[Author]

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