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Is Advertising the Future—Or the Past?

Hank and I have always felt varying degrees of discomfort supporting our YouTube videos with advertisements. We don’t control the content of the ads or who sponsors our shows, and many times we disagree with the advertisers.

I do not, for instance, think gold is a good investment, or that Obama is a terrible President, or that sexy geeks are just a click away. I also don’t particularly enjoy being supported by for-profit universities, oil companies, and Super PACs.

Recently, some nerdfighters have been upset about ads they’ve seen on vlogbrothers videos, and we share their concern. But these videos are a big part of our jobs—we spend a lot of time making them and trying to be good leaders of this community—and while there are other ways we make money (t-shirts, books, music, etc.), the ad revenue is a vital part of how I buy diapers.

But it’s not really that much money relative to the size of nerdfighteria, because online advertising rates are so low. Even so, I still think that most nerdfighters would rather glimpse an ad than use kickstarter or something to create a delightfully ad-free world of vlogbrothers. But with ad rates pretty stagnant and the success of kickstarter projects like Ze Frank’s, I’m beginning to wonder A. if I’m wrong, and B. if creators of online video might find themselves turning to new models of supporting their work rather than continuing to seek corporate patronage. Also, C. these days, I find myself personally more inclined to support online video projects and their creators directly.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not suggesting some awful subscription model in which you have to pay to watch videos. That would be gross. I’m suggesting a model like the one you find here in the US with National Public Radio: some people pay to support the station, but the listening experience is available to all, regardless of whether they pay. (There are bonuses for members, of course: tote bags or This American Life CDs or whatever.)

Mostly, I’m curious what you think. Do you want to watch stuff supported by ads, or supported directly by viewers? Are there youtube channels (not just vlogbrothers or crashcourse or scishow but any YouTube channels) you’d give $5 or $10 or more per year? Or do you like the current system and believe that advertising should continue to play the central role in visual media funding it has since the earliest days of television?

How to Run a Business That Doesn’t Suck: The Hank and John Green Rules

So Hank and I run or help run several businesses at the moment: Vidcon, DFTBA Records, the juggernaut that is 2-D Glasses, ecogeek, vlogbrothers, scishow, and crashcourse, as well as administering the nonprofit Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. These are not huge businesses or anything (and in some cases are not even profitable), but many of them have employees and revenue and function like any other business, so recently Hank and I have developed some Rules for Running a Business That Doesn’t Suck, which we thought we’d share.

Rule 1: Don’t be a dick. This is the governing law of the Internet, as created by the great Wil Wheaton, and we try to apply it to our businesses. Not being a dick mostly means treating your clients and customers respectfully, and focusing on creating value rather than creating profit, and generally being reasonably kind and personable when it comes to business relationships.

Rule 2: Increase Awesome or Decrease Suck. If an idea won’t increase world awesome or decrease worldsuck, we won’t do it. (And if we’re doing something that no longer feels like it is increasing awesome or decreasing suck, we stop doing it.)

Rule 3: Minimize lawyering. Hank and I tend to lose interest in any endeavor when a lot of lawyers become involved. Basically, if we require lawyers other than our cousin Mike or the people he works with, we don’t do it.

Rule 4: Employ more people per dollar of revenue than PepsiCo. This is very important to us. So one of the emerging metrics for a company’s “success” is revenue generated per employee. PepsiCo generates more than $196,728 in revenue per employee. (That may seem ludicrously high, but it’s much lower than many companies: Google generates $1,900,000 every year per employee.) The thinking goes that successful companies generate a lot of money per employee. Our thinking is that it is both good business and good citizenship to invest revenue in new employees.

Rule 5: Keep promises. We try to keep promises even when they are very inconvenient and expensive to keep, such as when Amazon Germany ships out a thousand unsigned preorders of your new book even though you signed more than enough copies for them to ship to their customers. 

Rule 6: Pay tops out at 10x average worker pay. Pretty simple, really: The highest paid employees of a company shouldn’t make more than 10 times the average employee’s pay. (Current estimates in the US indicate CEOs make between 185 and 310 times more than the average worker.) Capping this at a multiple of ten means everyone is invested in seeing the company grow and succeed.

Rule 7: Have awesome customers. If you don’t like the people who watch and read and wear the stuff you make, then you will not have any fun. Speaking of which…

Rule 8: Have fun. Our grandfather wrote thousands of lists in his life—grocery lists, lists of business ideas, pros and cons of taking different jobs. Almost all of his lists ended “Have fun!” We think this is good advice.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Tour de Nerdfighting 2012

In January of 2012, Hank and I (and the Katherine and occasionally the Yeti) will be going on tour to celebrate the publication of The Fault in Our Stars, and also because we haven’t been on tour together since 2008. These events will feature music, readings, hilarity, free posters, fancy programs, crossword puzzles, book signing, and many other things.

Tickets are available by contacting the bookstores involved in each event. For almost all events, tickets cost the price of a book. Part of the reason we’re touring is because we want to support great independent bookstores. (Incidentally, all books on tour will be BOTH signed AND hanklerfished.) Tickets are limited by the size of the venue.

I’m sorry we aren’t going everywhere (and particularly sorry we’re missing the great midwest, but it is January, after all). A few more dates will be announced in the next week or so, but for now:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10TH - 7:00 PM
WELLESLEY, MA
Dana Hall School (45 Dana Rd., Wellesley, MA 02482)
Hosted by the Wellesley Booksmith. More info here at their site or by calling 781.431.1160.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11th - 6 PM
NEW YORK, NY
Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, New York, NY 10025 (Broadway & 95th)
Tickets at their site or by calling 212.864.5400
NOTE: Tickets are $25 (but do include a book), because everything is more expensive in New York.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13th - 7 PM
BETHESDA, MD
The Crystal Ballroom at the Bethesday Hyatt regency (7400 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD 20814)
Hosted by Politics & Prose - Tickets at 202.364.1919

SATURDAY JANUARY 14TH - 6 PM
RALEIGH, NC
Ravenscroft School (7409 Falls of Neuse Road, Raleigh, NC 27615)
Hosted by Quail Ridge Books - Tickets at 919.828.1588

SUNDAY JANUARY 15TH - 7 PM
ATLANTA, GA
Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College (141 East College Ave., Decatur, GA 30030)
Hosted by Little Shop of Stories - LSOS is apparently not ready for ticket sales, but they will be soon! I will let you know…

(Then there will be events in Birmingham, AL and New Orleans, LA, but I don’t know when or where yet.) 

FRIDAY JANUARY 20TH - 7 PM
PASADENA, TX
Pasadena High School (206 South Shaver, Pasadena, TX 77506)
Hosted by Blue Willow Bookshop - Tickets at 281.497.8675

(Then there will be something in Austin.) 

TUESDAY JANUARY 24TH - 7 PM
ALBUQUERQUE, NM
KiMo Theatre (423 Central Avenue Northwest, Albuquerque, NM 87102)
Hosted by Alamosa Books Tickets at 505.797.7101 or info@alamosabooks.com (Also, they have a facebook.)

(Then comes a thing in Arizona, but I don’t know when or where.)

THURSDAY JANUARY 26TH - 7 PM
SANTA MONICA, CA
Lincoln Middle School Auditorium, 1501 California Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90403
Hosted by Children’s Book World. Tickets at 310.559.2665.

Kind of Important News

If you scroll past all the Hollywood names in this YouTube blog post, you’ll see down the vlogbrothers down there at the bottom. But we’re above the Wall Street Journal! Take that, Murdoch! Oh. It’s…yeah, it’s alphabetical. I see.

So Hank and I are finally realizing our dreams of being able to produce the kind of educational videos (think the French Revolution videos, or Gatsby, but better) we hope can offer learning opportunities to students of all ages around the world. This channel, to be called Crash Course, will begin with me teaching World History and Hank teaching Biology 101. With the help of educators, designers, and animators (almost all of them nerdfighters), we’ll be launching Crash Course at the end of January 2012.

Hank will be spearheading a second channel, called SciShow, where he will get to make the kind of science videos he is so good at: videos that are fun and engaging and accessible, even to people like me who suck at science. (Think Hank’s video about nuclear power, but better.) SciShow will launch early in January.

Hank and I have always loved making educational videos, but they’re tremendously complicated and time-consuming, and we’ve never had the opportunity to make them as consistently or as thoughtfully as we wanted to, because deadlines are always pressing and the budget for vlogbrothers videos has generally been 0 dollars. Now we get to try.

In short, you’ll be seeing more (and much nerdier) videos from us that will hopefully help make both you and us more thoughtful and informed creatures.

The pressing question: What will happen to vlogbrothers? Nothing. Same schedule. Same relationship with the community. Same everything. Nerdfighteria is the most important thing in our lives, and that won’t change. These new channels will have their own lives, and while we certainly intend to make them awesome, it won’t be at the expense of vlogbrothers. We’re hoping it will be a kind of return to 2007: Once again, one of us will be uploading something almost every weekday next year.Feel free to leave questions in the ask box; I’ll try to answer them over the weekend in another blog post. Thanks, and DFTBA.

tl;dr: More & better educational and sciencey videos in 2012. Less of nothing.