I am in possession of the Patrons-only video and have transcribed it. It is over 17 minutes long, so here's the meat of it:
So,
just as a bit of background, what prompted this, was, as it says there, things
are uncertain for the channel, and to explain, the channel is Ipsilon Media,
that’s my Croatian company. Ipsilon
Media employs, me, Tibor and Dijana. So
there’s three of us working for this company.
And just before I posted this, or shortly before I posted this, I had
received word that basically the paycheques would not be paid, or could not be
paid. Not just the paycheques, but all
of the expenses, you know, the rental for Ramacro, various service
subscriptions, you name it. We would be
short as of the end of January by around 700 Euros, and I had a decision to
make. Do I try to approach individuals
to see if they are interested in helping?
I did actually do that about a month – two months ago and someone very
kindly and generously stepped in to help the channel get through the current
situation, but I view that sort of thing as a sticking plaster solution to a
long term issue. And the long term issue
is that, again, we had this disastrous blow to the channel last year. A sustained misinformation and bullying
campaign that unfortunately led to a huge drop in support. Thankfully many Patrons stuck around, they
could see through it, they could see that it was purely smite and
vindictiveness and lying about who I am as a person, and the work that I do,
and how much I earn. At one point it was
said that I earn a six figure salary, which is just completely untrue.
I’m obviously still taking legal action to
deal with all of that because there was a heavy heavy financial loss, and quite
apart from the financial loss, I worked really really hard on my body of work
to build, you know, this resource – the channel, that I really hope will
benefit generations to come. And if my
reputation is going to be tarnished, because the internet doesn’t forget, does
it? If my reputation is going to be
tarnished, then that body of work is compromised in terms of its credibility
and its ability to help people. So, I’ve
had to, obviously devote funds to taking legal action, and that’s ongoing
because the judicial process here in Croatia is painfully slow. But in any case, that’s summarising for you
what happened last year.
Towards the end
of last year, things have really started to improve in terms of subscribers. We’re growing by, I think, hundreds of
subscribers every month now, whereas it was just a trickle before. It’s starting to grow again – the channel, it’s
encouraging to see the number of views on the videos, and as I said there we
have plans for 2023. Uhm, we really want
to try new things, as you have seen we are doing the JW Watch bulletins
now. We want to make short, succinct
videos, summarising what is going on in the Jehovah’s Witness religion, we want
to engage more, and not just with Jehovah’s Witnesses, but on a broader kind of
sphere of religion and religious beliefs, which is why we are doing the “Change
My Mind” videos. We have lots of plans,
and I genuinely want to see them through.
It’s just that, I can’t expect Tibor to work for free. I can’t expect Dijana to work for free. And frankly, I can’t work for free, you know,
I need to earn money, and as I said in the post, if I need to find another way of
earning money that does not involve making this content, then sure, we can go
down to making a couple of videos or a handful of videos per month. Tibor would effectively lose his job, Dijana
would lose her job and it would just be a one man show, and the amount of
content would drastically, drastically be reduced. And that’s, that’s what I was staring at,
when I wrote this message.
But since
then, I’m really pleased to tell you that I’ve been inundated with support. We’ve grown by 20 Patrons, whereas we were at
around 396 Patrons, we’re now at 416 as of filming. And bear in mind, when we took on Tibor, when
we hired Tibor, we had 620 Patrons. So
that gives you some idea of where the problem is, you know? We need not just kind of short term fixes, we
need a reliable, kind of a stream of income because YouTube, quite frankly is
all over the place, we cannot bank on how much money is going to come in, in a
given month from YouTube Ad revenue even when we’re putting out a video per day
in a given month. And even if those
videos do well, it’s just the algorithm gods who decide how much money we get
for some reason. So we really really depend
on Patron support and now YouTube member support and frankly we need to get
back to the 620 Patrons/YouTube members.
So again, as of now we have 416 Patrons.
We also have 35 YouTube members, 12 of whom have joined in the last 24
hours, I’m guessing in response to what I wrote on Twitter and on the Community
tab. Just an amazing response, so we’re
now up to collectively between Patron and YouTube members, 451 who are willing
to support our channel on a monthly basis.
And that gives me hope. So I
guess what I am trying to say, more than anything in this video is thank you
for giving us hope. Not just me, but
also, Dijana and Tibor that we can continue to do our jobs. We can continue to keep this channel going,
maybe. But we’re still not out of the
woods yet, because ideally, and I realise I am saying this to those of you who
are already pledging, so I can’t… Uhm this is not a request, but I’m just kind
of managing expectations in letting you know how things are. We really need to get to a minimum of 500
Patrons and YouTube members and ideally we need to get back to that 620 who
were pledging when we hired Tibor, if the channel is going to grow. If we get to 500, I think we can break even, and
we can trundle on month to month. I like to think that we’re going to be OK, well we’re definitely going to be OK for next
month. Hopefully with a bit of momentum,
or inertia as Trent Lippold would say, uhm, hopefully with a bit of momentum we’ll
also be OK the month after, but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
But I just wanted to explain more. I feel like I owe it to those of you who are
pledging regularly, uhm, to understand where we’re at, because again the last thing
I wanted was for me to just say nothing. It’s easy to just say nothing and say, you know, uhm, if you have to
die, it will die, I’m not going to go asking for anything. I’m too proud. I’m willing to swallow some pride for the
sake of the channel, and what I don’t want is a situation where those of you
who are supporting me wake up one day and you know, there’s just one or two
videos going up per month because I’ve had to let Tibor go, or Dijana go, or
both. I wanted you to have advance
notice of what’s happening and again, I’m incredibly humbled by how many have
stepped forward, with YouTube memberships, with Patreon pledges, some of you
have increased your Patreon pledges, thank you, and I don’t expect all of you
to, by the way. Uhm in fact I don’t
expect anything, as I’ve said in that message.
What happens, happens.
It’s just
that to do what we’re doing, at the intensity that we are doing it, covering
all of the things that we are covering, uhm, it needs to be a business. It needs to be something where I can actually
hire someone to edit videos, and hire someone to do the admin and arrange
interviews which is what Dijana is doing.
So, it costs money, as I am sure you can all understand, and I panicked
when I made that message, but I am kind of glad I did post that message
because, again, it’s given us some breathing space. We’ve had around about $1000 come through in
PayPal donations and again, we’ve had 20 added Patrons, 12 added YouTube
members, and it just feels like we’ve been given a little bit of breathing
space and we can fight another day. We
can, we’ve got another month or two under our belt. And hopefully over the course of those couple
of months we can get closer to that kind of minimum threshold of 500, uhm, who
were supporting the channel, be it through Patreon or YouTube memberships and
work towards getting back to that 620 which is kind of where we need to be in
order to grow because right now, we are in no position to go out and buy new
equipment if we need to. If some of our
equipment breaks down, or if there is a particular project that we’d really
like to do, but we need this particular piece
of equipment to do it, we’re powerless, we just have to work with what we
have. And incidentally one of our pieces
of equipment did get lost, we lost our Ronin DGI Gimbal and we’ve just not been
able to replace it because we don’t have the money.
So… I just wanted to explain to you all where
we are. It’s been really tiresome and
tedious to see people say “Oh Lloyd’s begging!”
I’m really really not because I really mean it when I say if I have to
do something else, I’ll do something else.
It would be tragic in my view if the channel has to drastically
downscale, because more than anything, uhm, it’s an important resource. I enjoy working with Tibor and Dijana, and we’re
doing something really special. But…
basically our audience needs to decide.
It’s in the hands of the audience whether we do this. And over the last 24 hours, it feels like the
audience has given us a resounding “Carry On”.
You know, we’ve got you, we’ve got your backs. And I really appreciate that. And I speak on behalf of everyone at Ipsilon
Media or the Lloyd Evans Channel. Thank
you for helping us carry on. That’s all
I really have to say
