Dan & Phil Part 88: orbit of uranus

[socksparadox]

I've been down this road before (I did a post on my own experience of being a full-time creator awhile ago about what work entails). I would also like an update, but I'd encourage people to remember that being an entertainer and running a merch company is not the same as a jobs where you have a boss or are in a service/care-related role.

1) Often you spend a lot of time working on pitches/treatments for things that end up going nowhere but you can't talk about. My friend who's a TV showrunner and writer (with multiple employees) will write 10-12 treatments a year, and then once every few years one will actually get sent to pilot. That pilot can't be talked about for another 8 months or so - that means that it looks like she's doing nothing for 3+ years at a time despite working her ass off every day.

If Phil (and possibly Dan) are really doing pitches and projects right now, they could be working their asses off and completely unable to talk about it. Lilly Singh "took a break" from vlogging and it turned out she was getting her own late night show, which she'd been in talks for years about. Just because things can't be announced doesn't mean they're not happening. Dan and Phil were in talks with the BBC for 2 years before they got their radio show (as evidenced by the whiteboard of "rules" seen in their apartment from 2011.)

2) They both did merch releases in the past 3 weeks which do take a lot of work. I run a merch business. It takes a lot of time and work, even when you have staff.

3) Dan made a 45 minute masterpiece video that came out 6 weeks ago and took nearly a year to make. If he was a musician, that would've been an album. It's okay if he doesn't announce his next plans immediately.

4) Many many youtubers agree (as evidenced by the mental health panel + every other creator convo I heard at Vidcon) that the expectation of frequent, constant, unending content is a terrible, terrible cycle.

Anyway, I want communication. I just hate when people get frustrated that Dan and Phil aren't "doing their job". There's so much behind the scenes work that goes into a creative career, and in the entertainment industry the lawyers and contracts make it hard to talk about things if you're playing on the level of Dan and Phil. Also, Dan and Phil's entire life and relationship is part of what we view as the package of their content - but that doesn't mean they owe the world constant updates on their lives or "they're not doing their job". Plenty of entertainers create content, people like that content, and then they go back into creation hole. It doesn't disparage the work they've done to that point if they take a break from putting the content out.

</ plinthofmylife's regular "creative careers are not the same as other careers" monthly rant>

Thissss.

Among many other things, Dan's video reminded me that most of the time, we really have no clue what they could be working on. Just because they aren't making Youtube content specifically right now doesn't mean that they aren't making content. And they've already mentioned multiple times how strenuous making constant Youtube content can be, let alone making YT content AND working on other projects.

[flarequake]

It’s interesting to hear more about how it works behind the scenes, which is something they could talk to us more about if they chose to. An update could be “wow, working on stuff, so busy, but can’t say what right now”, but they don’t so quiet times can look like silence. I don’t mind the wait right now, somehow I thought “wow, I want to be less hung up on them” and my brain went “ok, then”, but for a while earlier in the year I was feeling it.

[phandemonium]

It’s interesting to hear more about how it works behind the scenes, which is something they could talk to us more about if they chose to. An update could be “wow, working on stuff, so busy, but can’t say what right now”, but they don’t so quiet times can look like silence. I don’t mind the wait right now, somehow I thought “wow, I want to be less hung up on them” and my brain went “ok, then”, but for a while earlier in the year I was feeling it.

While I get frustrated by unexplained silences, I hate "wow, working on something I can't talk about yet" messages almost more so. Writers do that a lot, I've noticed, and it honestly irritates me when it's vague like that. Because it could be a TV show pilot or a new book or a reedition of an old one or a freaking themed bookmark and it gives me no hint as to how to manage my expectations at all. 95% of the time, I hype myself for something disappointing. So I prefer to have concrete announcements. The only thing I would really like communication about is when otherwise regular content stops appearing but I understand there's a lot of people who find "no content in the foreseeable future" announcements as anxiety inducing as the lack of any information.

[alittledizzy]

It’s interesting to hear more about how it works behind the scenes, which is something they could talk to us more about if they chose to. An update could be “wow, working on stuff, so busy, but can’t say what right now”, but they don’t so quiet times can look like silence. I don’t mind the wait right now, somehow I thought “wow, I want to be less hung up on them” and my brain went “ok, then”, but for a while earlier in the year I was feeling it.

While I get frustrated by unexplained silences, I hate "wow, working on something I can't talk about yet" messages almost more so. Writers do that a lot, I've noticed, and it honestly irritates me when it's vague like that. Because it could be a TV show pilot or a new book or a reedition of an old one or a freaking themed bookmark and it gives me no hint as to how to manage my expectations at all. 95% of the time, I hype myself for something disappointing. So I prefer to have concrete announcements. The only thing I would really like communication about is when otherwise regular content stops appearing but I understand there's a lot of people who find "no content in the foreseeable future" announcements as anxiety inducing as the lack of any information.

Communicating that they're working on something also has the down side that once they do that, we're expecting something and likely won't ever let them forget they said it. That would probably add a lot of stress to them if what they're working on are scripts or projects that may never be picked up.

[firsttimeposter]

@plinthofmylife How are we sure those rules correlate to the bbc?

[plinthofmylife]

@plinthofmylife How are we sure those rules correlate to the bbc?

I don't remember where the thread is for trying to decode them, but one of them had "send X to the BBC" under the "once a week" column.

ETA: They also talked about the pitch process they went through for the BBC show when they were interviewed by Sue Perkins (god I love that interview and want a whole new one.)

[plinthofmylife]

One other side rant and then I'm done: when you have a job where someone else pays you, it's harder to take time off. But on the flip side you also, in jobs like nursing, get a steady paycheck, paid time off, sick time, and access to benefits (including the US, health insurance).

But when you're self-employed and have employees, the opposite is true. You have to pay to keep other people on, and keep the operation running (salaries/benefits for IRL staff, corporate taxes, warehouse space, hosting, etc) and pay for your own life expenses - even if you aren't working. It'd be like if you wanted to take a vacation but instead of getting PTO, you had to keep paying your job to keep your desk operational and any support staff paid. If you're doing a merch launch, you need the cash flow to buy tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of merch before it's sold.

So while getting to make your own schedule is an incredibly luxury, it also SUCKS to have employees and businesses based around your own creative content - because not only do you have an audience hanging on your production, you have people's livelihoods (including in deppy's case, your brother/brother-in-law) hanging in the balance. It's enough to create a lot of pressure.

[Megancita75]

Questions about how Youtube profits work, since I know nothing: (1) I am new around these parts, so I'm watching a lot of old videos and notice that a lot of them don't have ads. How do DnP profit off videos that don't have ads? (2) A lot of the comments in these old videos indicate people are rematching (all the "it hits different" comments, which creep me out some). Do creators still profit off old videos when people watch them? If so, I'd be very curious if DnP are seeing a profit boost from people either rematching videos or discovering them for the first time.

[knq]

I know Phil said he was pitching a show but I can’t help thinking how cool it would be if he and Dan made a video game. The Mark of Oxin was amazing considering how young Phil was when he made it, and with Dan adding secrets and stuff to walk back to the beginning of the game for, that would be my jam. Plus, think of the soundtrack.

plinthofmylife I always appreciate your informative posts on the type of work dnp do.

[Grey]

I’ve been feeling much more content lately with the lack of videos, particularly since Phil’s vidcon q&a. I don’t even really know why. But I’m cool with it (not saying other people should also feel like this). I do wish they’d do a live show though. I understand why if they don’t want to, but selfishly I’d like one.

A dan and Phil video game would be so cool!! Omg! I love that idea!!

[plinthofmylife]

Do creators still profit off old videos when people watch them? If so, I'd be very curious if DnP are seeing a profit boost from people either rematching videos or discovering them for the first time.

Creators do make money off their back catalog, but only when it has ads (either pre-rolls/mid-rolls/post-rolls or along side display advertising.) Having a video that has 1 million views but no ads will not make you money from google, however it can make you money through the other parts of your business model (sponsorships; merch sales; other branded products).

For example, Danandphilgames has gotten 6,925,590 views in the past 30 days despite not having posted a video in over 200 days. For anything with display ads, they are making money off of those views.

The amount they make off that varies, quite a lot based on how much advertisers want to pay for that content - but game channels have good CPM (cost per mill or thousand) usually, however, game channels with a predominately female audience (as most analytics on DAPG suggest) may not do as well because there's less targeted advertising (sexism on the part of game companies yo).

On the high end, CPMs can be as much as $4 per thousand views. The high end is when ads are 1) in demand (for example around chistmas) and for audiences that are highly desired (toy advertising on kid videos for example.)
More common is around $.70-$1.00 per thousand views, which means in the past 30 days, DAPG likely made about ~$5000 from ad views.

Some DAPG videos have probably been put on "yellow" mode because Dan's cursing, which means that youtube doesn't demonetize the videos but they significantly scale back the access to advertisers you can get, and often you get no ads or low CPM. Phil said in 2017 he's never had a video demonetized, I don't know if that's still true since Adpocolypse.

ETA: Your country makes a difference. Creators with a north american heavy audience make more $$ because, umm, we are capitalist swine. Japanese creators make a lot less money than American ones unless they have a american-heavy audience.

[sonicgreen]

@plinthofmylife always love your insight. great points made

[snoopysadie]

Do creators still profit off old videos when people watch them? If so, I'd be very curious if DnP are seeing a profit boost from people either rematching videos or discovering them for the first time.

Creators do make money off their back catalog, but only when it has ads (either pre-rolls/mid-rolls/post-rolls or along side display advertising.) Having a video that has 1 million views but no ads will not make you money from google, however it can make you money through the other parts of your business model (sponsorships; merch sales; other branded products).

For example, Danandphilgames has gotten 6,925,590 views in the past 30 days despite not having posted a video in over 200 days. For anything with display ads, they are making money off of those views.

The amount they make off that varies, quite a lot based on how much advertisers want to pay for that content - but game channels have good CPM (cost per mill or thousand) usually, however, game channels with a predominately female audience (as most analytics on DAPG suggest) may not do as well because there's less targeted advertising (sexism on the part of game companies yo).

On the high end, CPMs can be as much as $4 per thousand views. The high end is when ads are 1) in demand (for example around chistmas) and for audiences that are highly desired (toy advertising on kid videos for example.)
More common is around $.70-$1.00 per thousand views, which means in the past 30 days, DAPG likely made about ~$5000 from ad views.

Some DAPG videos have probably been put on "yellow" mode because Dan's cursing, which means that youtube doesn't demonetize the videos but they significantly scale back the access to advertisers you can get, and often you get no ads or low CPM. Phil said in 2017 he's never had a video demonetized, I don't know if that's still true since Adpocolypse.

ETA: Your country makes a difference. Creators with a north american heavy audience make more $$ because, umm, we are capitalist swine. Japanese creators make a lot less money than American ones unless they have a american-heavy audience.

@plinthofmylife all your posts about independent creators and dealing with being self-employed and so are amazing and I am living for them.
It's great to see just how much work they actually put into it, how some things they work on we might never see even though they try, and it makes a lot of sense now why Phil has constant headaches. I hope Vegas brought them some well deserved rest.

Also, to add to the topic from above: I am a huge Louis Tomlinson fan and he's been working on his first solo album for at least 3 years. He apparently rewrote most of it and despite having tweeted 100000000000 times that he's in the studio, working, content is coming, it's great, it will be soon, the album is still on the works and with some luck will come out at the end of the year.
I support him and I love him and I am no one to judge how much time he's spent working on it, but at this point, I just ignore his tweets on the topic because they make me so anxious.
He's been saying it's coming for ages and a lot of people (not me) don't even believe him anymore. There's even an inner joke about it in the fandom because most people think the tweets are annoying or bullshit. So, I'm glad dip and pip don't tell us regularly "we're working on something" or "content is comming" because I feel like in the end, even if you try your best not to feel annoyed and even if you support people, you do end up feeling like they're taking the piss and it's even worse than just wait to see what happens.

TANGENT:

Before this thread ends I would like to invite you to rewatch this masterpiece, specifically for minute 2:13, because it is ORBIT OF URANUS indeed. Dan likes this post

[jesp]

@plinthofmylife How are we sure those rules correlate to the bbc?

I don't remember where the thread is for trying to decode them, but one of them had "send X to the BBC" under the "once a week" column.

ETA: They also talked about the pitch process they went through for the BBC show when they were interviewed by Sue Perkins (god I love that interview and want a whole new one.)

Discussion of "The Rules" starts in this post {miss you oqua}.

[autumnhearth]

When I first glanced at that thumbnail for A HUNGRY Sleepless Night With Phil I thought it said SCAM where the 00AM is crossed by the white title and that pretty much sums up my feelings on that video and yes I did just rewatch it the other day you’re welcome Lester. Love the business discussion. Carry on!

[plinthofmylife]

one more business thing because I'm pretty much having my own "Sleepless Night with Plinthofmylife" after eating 10 chocolate covered espresso beans (maybe I should film it? It will be more real than A HUNGRY sleepless night with Phil.)

A thing to know about self-employed media jobs is that are that you do a lot of work that you may not get paid for - ever. Sometimes, things even cost you money, which is the risk you take as a business owner (when booking shows sometimes the venue doesn't get enough people and you owe promoters/venue guarantee $$ - or you spend money on merch inventory and it doesn't make enough money.) When you work as a nurse, someone pays your wage when you show up to work, regardless of how much money the hospital makes during that shift*. That doesn't happen for me. The work I put in does not correlate to my income.

Examples of things that DNP may do that don't = money ever.

1) writing pitches/treatments - tons of work that may not pan out to anything at all. Deals fall through all the time.

2) SPONSOR deals that go nowhere. I have collectively spent hundreds of hours dealing with PR and ad agencies that send me legal after legal, go back and forth with scripts and creative for sponsored spots, and then ghost or otherwise fail to materialize. Maybe it's not the right fit, etc. Consider that Phil works with massive corporations like DISNEY you know that he's got endless back and forth with legal and marketing standards.

3) filming and editing videos - yes, when they get uploaded, they get ad revenue. But you're often rolling the dice. You don't know what videos will work, or if sub boxes will break and no one will see it. Or if people are "over" british boys trying candy. This is why youtubers spend so much time stressing about the algorithm and thumbnails and titles because it has such a huge effect on their income.

4) Meetings or interviews. this is just an example where if you have a salaried or hourly job, you don't think about the fact that when you have meetings, you're getting paid for that time, even if it feels like time wasting. If you're self-employed, you aren't. Maybe it leads to a paying gig (spon or partnership etc) but it's sort of like constantly going to job interviews - take up your time, have to be professional, but you're not getting paid.

*a rant about capitalist, broken American health care is outside the scope of this forum but like, PM me if you want to hear it because it's my favorite topic.

[poweroftriangles]

Thank you for your insights, plinthofmylife! I guess I sort of vaguely knew some of this but didn't realise the magnitude.

[madzilla84]

Random question, but does anyone have any pics of their main channel gold play buttons? I’ve seen the LessAmazingPhil one, the DAPG one was on the wall behind them on the gaming channel before they moved, and I’ve seen the pic they posted of the D&P Crafts silver one (and it’s on the shelf in the recent baking vids). (DAPC is actually nearly at 900K subscribers, lol; it’d be hilarious if it got to 1M.) But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the AP or DINOF ones? Have they ever shown them anywhere?

[Catallena]

i think the heatwave has gone to his head

[SpikyLeaf]

i think the heatwave has gone to his head

he’s really blessing us with all kinds of content I guess

also is that phil laughing at the beginning I hear

[GalaxyDarling]

Tbh that's the kinda content you do when you are bored

[lefthandedism]

Any last-minute thread name suggestions? Put them here. Poll will go up shortly!

[lefthandedism]

Vote for the next thread name here!

[kavat]

While we wait for the boys to do something I can recommend this article about youtubers through the years and how we got from webcams in bedrooms to what we have today.

[alittledizzy]

While we wait for the boys to do something I can recommend this article about youtubers through the years and how we got from webcams in bedrooms to what we have today.

That article is really interesting, and kind of the reason I wouldn't hate if Anthony's video were a bunch of old school youtubers chatting shit together about the platform. (It doesn't sound like it is, I just wish it were now.)