Join the YoTricks Team! Yoyo Trick Core

Join the YoTricks Team! Yoyo TrickIn this video I am going to share with you some of the biggest changes we have ever made, but in order for us to do that we do need to leave YouTube behind. Sort of.

Now, obviously, we would never leave YouTube behind completely, YouTube has been really, really good for us. We just hit 200,000 subscribers, and our most popular video is about to hit its 3 millionth view. We don’t really want to change anything as far as what we are doing with YouTube. We are going to continue to make the same content on the same schedule, if you had never seen this video, you wouldn’t even know that we had made a radical change.

What we are doing is we want to make a lot of new, different types of content, particularly content where we are engaging with you on a much deeper level. What we realized is that YouTube is not the perfect platform for that. So we are going to be switching that new content over to Patreon. Now, if you are familiar with a lot of different YouTube channels you have probably heard of Patreon. If you have you can go checkout our Patreon campaign right now, it is on patreon.com/yotricks. We have a link right below, you can click that. Make sure that you come back because I am going to let you in on a lot of the reasons on why we think this is the right move, and some of the things we are going to be attempting to do through that, and even some of the changes that you can be a part of moving forward.

So, to get started, what is Patreon? Basically, what Patreon is it is a way for content creators to get support from people who view and enjoy our videos, to get support from the directly. This is super, super important for anybody who releases the majority of their content on YouTube, and that is partly because YouTube is so good at what they do. I know that sounds kind of ironic, so follow me here. We release a lot of our content on a lot of different platforms. We release it on Facebook, on Instagram, on our website and on our app. And we also release it on YouTube. And YouTube makes up about 90-95% of the total views. That is good, because it has allowed our content to reach so many more people, but it is also a little bit scary because, every now and then, usually about once or twice a year, YouTube updates its algorithm, and that changes how they decide what to show people in their subscriber feed, and what to show in the sidebar where they recommend videos while you are watching another piece of content. I have heard all of these horror stories, and you probably have too, about these algorithms going into effect and channels just being completely destroyed, they lose half their viewers overnight because now their stuff is not ranking the way that it used to.

So what a lot of creators have done that are kind of like us, who have a really small team that are trying to create the best content in the space they are in, what they have done is turn to Patreon. That way they can get a base level of support that will help them to weather the storm when YouTube makes an algorithm change, that way they can figure out how to fix their content and get it setup in a way that YouTube actually likes and will show people so they can carry on without missing a beat.

Now we have already done this a couple of times on our YouTube channel, and you can see this if you look at our earliest content compared our newest content, and if you compare them, they are radically different. But, when we made our early content we were making it exactly the way YouTube recommended, and now we are making our content the way we think YouTube is recommending, and you can see that is how big a shift has taken place as far as what YouTube is looking for. We have no idea what Youtube is going to go next, what they are going to do next. But we do know that they are such an important part of what we do, that if they decide to do something that will take away part of our viewership it is going to make it very difficult for us to continue to make the same amount of videos and videos of the same quality that we currently do. So, again, if we can get a base line of support on Patreon, that will allow us to continue to do this without the fear of changes that YouTube will inevitably make.

Now, that is only part of the story. I think the more exciting part, is how we are going to be able to use Patreon to be able to engage then a deeper level all of you. So one of the simpler things we are doing, something a lot of you guys have been asking for a lot. What we are going to do is allow people who are patrons at a certain level, they are going to be able to submit tricks to us. We will watch all of those tricks, and we will maybe take 4 every month, and then we will allow the rest of the patrons to vote on which of the 4 they like the best. One of use will then learn the trick. We will figure out how to teach it, and we will actually teach it on our YouTube channel, and we will mention your name and let people know, yea, this person made up this awesome trick and this is what it looks like. You know, we will do our thing. That is something that we haven’t been able to do before, but Patreon makes that really, really easy.

Another thing that we are going to do is we are going to try to grow what we do in a lot of ways that we have not done before. So, you guys know that we have partnered with YoYoFactory to make yoyos, and also Sengoku, and also we have worked with Duncan to make the Ultraweight, but we have never gone ahead to make a yoyo on our own. What we are thinking is that on Patreon, once we have gotten to a certain level of support, we will go ahead and do that, but we will bring you with us the entire way. Since we have never done this before you will get the inside story of what it is like to make your first yoyo. So, we will show the CAD designs as we are making them. We will show you what we are not sure about, and then as we talk to the manufacturers and get prototypes back, you will see those. We will give you guys opportunities to give us input along the way so that you have a hand in shaping what these yoyos become. We just think it sounds super fun, and you can see that it is very different than what we do on our YouTube channel. On our YouTube channel you only see it once it is done and perfected and clean and refined. That is what we like to do on our YouTube channel. This will be almost the opposite. You will see everything as it is in process, and you will be with us all along the way.

Another thing that we have never done before, that we want to expirament with, is we have never sponsored a player. We think it would be super fun, once we get to a certain level of support, to find a player who is really interested in sharing their life with you. As we sponsor them and kind of go through all the different phases of sponsorship, you can kind of see their journey all along the way. We are going to want to make a yoyo with them a well so you can see, how is it different working with a player trying to figure out what kind of yoyo to make? How can you take their vision and bring it to life? They are going to be competing, and so we have a couple of guys on our team that are really good at competing and understand how it works, so we are going to try to teach them them how to win contests. Then they will go and compete. Will they win? We don’t know, we have never done this.

I don’t know, we just think that this kind of engagement is, it is something that we have really wanted to do for a long time. On a personal note, something that I have always wanted was to have a core group of people that I could go to and run video ideas by. For example, on our more detail heavy videos like the Regen video we just did. It would be really nice to know that we have a group of people who know are really committed and enjoy what we do. Maybe I could run some ideas by you before actually filming the video. Hey, we are going to cover this and this, are we missing anything? Do you guys have trouble with this trick that we have not covered yet? That we we could actually find out before we make the video how to make it as good as possible. We have so many more minds working on it, the content can just turn out that much better.

These are just some of the ideas. We have so many more, and as the support goes up, we will be able to continue to explore more and more ideas. Like I said, we are just getting started with this, so we are eager for you guys to give us your feedback as you are taking part in it so we know the best ways to move forward so that we can give you exactly what you are looking for.

We don’t just want to give you a benifit in terms of more content, we also want to make it a little more practical, so when we make a yoyo obviously you will get a discount on that product, and you will get access to it first, because you actually helped make it. Even on a monthly basis, at certain levels we will be giving you coupons that are either 10% off, or 20% off one item from our store. If you are the type of person who is frequently buying yoyos, like if you buy even one budget metal yoyo a month, it actually going to be maybe even cost effective for you to back us on Patreon, because in the long run you may actually save money. We are trying to find as many ways as we can to make this work, because we think this is a really good opportunity for use to have a deeper level of engagement, and produce a lot of different kinds of content, that we haven’t been able to do before, and in a way that is more engaged with you guys and your interest in what we are doing.

So again, if you want to check that out, we would really appreciate it. It is patreon.com/yotricks, and like I said, we just couldn’t be more excited for the potential for what this has, and we are really excited to be working with you on this moving forward.