How Steemit has given me another chance!

Ever since I was introduced to Steemit through a comment on one of PsychedSubstance's videos, I've been hooked. The first week here I was a bit sketched out and confused. Constant thoughts of "Scam?" or "PONZI SCHEME!" kept looming in the back of my head, begging for answers.

After a few days of research, I finally calmed down the raging thoughts and the mud has settled. I run a drug orientated channel over on YouTube, now approaching 12,000 subscribers. This is my first personal channel, and I'm no stranger to YouTube as I've run over 100 channels since 2010-2011. My largest channel was Buzzvines, which is over 500K (however it's out of my hands now).

I knew very well going into my channel that if I posted controversial content, I'd be flagged and I'd make a lot less money. I didn't care. I didn't want to be censored and so I spoke my mind freely. In recent events though, with the ad boycotts and YouTube's new policies, my channel went from earning about 1/4th of what it should've been earning to now about 1/12th. Some channels over on YouTube can make over a few dollars per 1k views. On my most viewed videos, such as my LSD replication (which cost me and my editor over $500 to make and market, hence why it's approaching 600,000 views now and has been featured on so many popular pages) I had days where I made about a 1 cent CPM. Other videos are completely demonetized.

I find it funny how one of my posts here recently made over $8 (and even though that won't go fully to me, that's quite a lot!) compared to maybe the 2 pennies on YouTube. It's not that I'm going to stop creating content, but when you choose to move out and really get your life started and this happens all of the sudden where your earnings drop like crazy.. you panic for a little. Even in a country like Poland, where I'm trying to live for under $500 a month, the effects can be felt. I know my channel's nothing big or anything, however I was got quite demotivated spending my time and money marketing the channel.

And now with Steemit in my life, I feel like I got another chance to monetize my content. I know my videos aren't all that professional and I'm just a 19 year old filming myself with my phone camera.. but sometimes I release something that I feel needs to be heard, and it's hard finding the motivation to spread it everywhere you can when it seems like a lot of people are going against it.

Thank you for not caring whether or not content here is "family-friendly". I won't go as far as saying that YouTube's censoring their creators, I mean.. it is their platform, they're able to do whatever they want with it. But I find it funny how even the largest content producers (such as H3H3 or a lot of political channels) are now jumping ship and moving onto better platforms. I know it's not much, but it just means so much that it's crazy! It's not even about the money, it's more about just thinking long-term and seeing hope here.

I've been in love with social media platforms from the start, and throughout the years I've been crushed time and time again on each major platform. Whether it's bad customer service or my large accounts getting hacked or demonetization or whatever it was, I kept seeing failures right after my giant successes. And once you see enough of that, it starts to debilitate you. I was starting to panic a little, losing sight of what my mission originally was.. but now it seems I'm able to sleep better at night knowing there's something out there for the little guys.