Obligatory Introduction

Hello, Steemit. I'm Decker Shado, the internet personality with the best hair.

To be honest, I'm just doing what I can to try to cling to relevancy in the flighty landscape that is the internet. While it sounds nice to say "Oh yeah, I'm a YouTuber" that does mean that when the platform crumbles, so does your livelihood.

I didn't really set out to make some big profound post here, as you can likely tell from my "yep, that's me" picture. (paper? Who has paper?) but I've found myself as of late expanding my presence on the 'net to all kinds of sites. While over the last 6 years I've been a movie reviewer on YouTube, and for a few I've had a regularly updated gaming channel, it wasn't until the good ol' adpocalypse that I really started working on expanding my presense online.

Don't get me wrong, I have done very well in my opinion over those six years. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING I have made has ever "gone viral" but I set out on this journey with the goal of actually quitting my job to do this full time. Even dumber, I actually quit my job about 1 year in, well before I was anywhere close to able to make up the difference. There were setbacks along the way, and fights with the almighty algorithm but by early 2017, I had finally "made it" and was making as much via ad revenue as I had been working a regular grunt job in the real world.

Then Adpocalypse stepped in.

Now, there are many different takes on what exactly "adpocalypse" was and what it entailed. Quite a few people out there mean it as the single day that ad rates dropped, others count the time when top youtubers had lower ads, but few seem to count it the way I've experienced it. I view adpocalypse not only in terms of the drop in ad value (a metric that is to this day, a very present blemish on the year-on-year earnings on my channel) but the changes to the algorithm that resulted in kneecapping views across the board.

So if you ask me, Adpocalypse didn't come and go. It came, and moved in. The channel went from pulling $2k a month to $500, but what was worse in my opinion, was that views and subscriber growth tanked on top of it. Being in a race, and being arbitrarily pulled 100 meters behind where you were is difficult. Having your legs cut off on top of it? That makes it very hard to believe things will ever turn around.

That's the problem with being a "YouTuber." I got a firsthand lesson on not putting all one's eggs in one basket. I preferred getting by with nothing but ad revenue, but when that was suddenly and without warning compromised I found myself in an unnecessarily difficult situation. The channel's still not really big enough to say merchandising would have helped all that much, but I've spend a lot more time in the last few months promoting my Patreon.

With this mentality, I've been working on expanding to as many sites as reasonable to create a sort of safety net. If I really want to do this for the rest of my life (spoiler alert: yes) then I can't put myself in a situation where the failure of one platform will nuke my career. As such, I'm not just on the big 3 anymore. (YT, Twitter & Facebook) I've expanded over to Minds, and Gab. For a short but pleasant while, the entire channel was backed up on Vidme as well. Lots of work went into getting it all together only to see it close down shortly after, but that happens sometimes. Now, the channel is being backed up on BitChute, I'm working on getting the backlog uploaded there, and wouldn't you know it here I am on Steemit as well.

The internet is constantly evolving, and as an internet personality I have to be able to evolve with it. YouTube is king right now, but being on top breeds complacency. Just as TV networks had plenty of chances to embrace the internet BEFORE it took over the world, the internet will continue to move forward even if the leading platforms plant their flags and refuse to come with it.

Things are looking up, right now. February's earnings on the channel are the highest they've been since February of last year. Not quite that high, but much better than all the rest of 2017. However, that's no reason to relax. The next crisis is coming. The next panic, the next time some intern at Google sneezes on a server. Don't know when, but it will happen, and when it does, I want to be ready this time.

Thank you all for reading, I have been Decker Shado and remember: C.Y.A.