Ok, Final part...
A few weeks pass from adding the deposit button on the partner application form... Chris, our YouTube rep schedules a call, we are shitting ourselves.
We were doing $1500 a day + what we were doing through advertising revenue shares, plus at this point if a partner wanted to leave before the end of the contract we were accepting payments for this also. We were exploiting the system at every fucking level.
We were exploiting that many things we genuinely didn't know which one he would bring up and warn, ban or sue us for. So here is a brief list of shit we were doing against YouTube guidelines and TOS:
- Charging people to apply
- Charging people to leave
- Copyright flagging competitive videos
- The Yeousch war (which was very public on twitter and in videos)
- Stealing email addresses and from Yeousch
- Releasing dox on CEO's of Yeousch + key staff
- Prank calls to other networks pretending to be youtube staff
- Working with Keemstar (who had been banned from youtube at this point)
- Using bots to manipulate views
- Using bots to get videos on the front page
- Creating fake sports highlights channels and using the thumbnail to trick users into clicking it
- Copyrighted footage and music (the filter was shit in 2012)
- Monetising gaming content from companies we had no rights for.
And god knows what else, we didn't give a fuck. But the most stupid thing about all our actions... We landed a fucking golden ticket with this opportunity... imagine where we would be now if we played by the rules but instead we were pulling this shit off, having mega fun not giving a fuck about anything.
So Chris calls, we have our Hangout meeting and everything actually went better than we thought... It turns out it was just a regular check in, right until the end.
Chris: Guys I do need to raise this point though... your website appears to be charging users $100 to apply. Can you explain the process behind this.
Me: Absolutely, we got too popular and as a small start up we didn't have funds to pay for staff to manually go through and check applications so as a gesture from the people that applied to our network we ask for $100 to show they are serious about youtube, serious about the opportunity and they get it back if they are a successful applicant in their first payment.
Chris: What if they are not successful
Me: We keep it to cover the time we spent researching their channel statistics and content making sure they do not violate any rules you guys may have missed...
Oh I fucked up...
Chris: This is a cost you need to cover yourself. It's in the agreement we have that no charges can be made at all. We are going to have to look into this.
Me: *realising I fucked up* No I think you mis-understand.
Chris: Which part?
Me: We don't like keep it keep it, we keep it for a little bit then send it back.
Chris: What?
Leo: We do keep it.
Me: Yeah for a little bit.
Leo: And we don't refund the $100 for those that apply, the contract states that.
Me: No, it's a deposit
Leo: A none re-fundable one. I've not payed anyone anything back from the fee
Chris: Guys, what is going on here...
We fucked up, we fucked up so hard. The pressure we were under was unreal and immediately after this meeting YouTube were going through our entire network, researching every video, monitoring every payout and asking us to provide all sorts of documents we never completed that we were supposed to. They froze access to our account while an investigation was made into things.
Me and Leo fell out big time.
He blamed me for risking it all for this stupid shit, I blamed him for not keeping his fucking mouth shut. He wanted to leave, I wanted to leave but we both wanted to keep the network which we didn't have access to.
Meanwhile, with Yeousch...
They were a sub-network of full screen if you remember back a little bit. This was something I wanted to fuck with...
I knew they didn't have the same level of YouTube support we had, I knew they had less tools, They paid less (as fullscreen wanted their cut) which we didn't worry about.
I called big snacks on Skype, I was bored. Business was closed while the investigation happened and Chaos (who I preferred to fuck with as he had a funny accent) was not online.
Me: Big Snacks, hows it hanging man
BS: Fuck off, what do you want
Me: I know something you don't know...
BS: What?
Me: Fullscreen are closing ALL their subnetworks due to new copyright rules. They are too much of a risk
BS: Fuck off, you are talking shit
Me: Go call George
He ended the call. This was a little bit of information I got from Keemstar... I couldn't wait to use it even though he told me not to.
The information turned out to be correct, Fullscreen apparently (from another source at yeousch (pro tip two: don't hire kids, they are easy to bribe)) that within 1 year all fullscreen sub networks will be closed.
This made me excited, It also meant smaller networks like TGN, VEX, Vexon were also going to disappear. The partners of these guys were going to be transferred to the parent network so they were not available to poach, but I was ok with that.
Keemstar won, I didn't get my partners but that's karma for not listening to him I suppose and at this point I could not partner anyway.
Me and Leo were arguing every day, I was ok with leaving and letting him have everything but I wanted buying out by him.
Leo wanted everything and for me to walk with nothing. Both of us had access to everything and to both our credit we were not being dicks. One of us could have altered a password here and there to fuck shit up and swing it our way but we didn't.
Leo's argument was he cannot leave his home, this is his only chance of income and leading a semi normal, gay wolf loving life.
My argument was without my ideas, exploits and wars we could not generate enough to pay staff so it would have failed anyway. We were both very hopeful that Youtube would give us another chance, it all appeared very positive in the few emails we had with Chris.
Leo left, I paid him very well (more than he was entitled to) and he ended up working at On Air Albania doing the same support based work he did with our network.
I didn't know though, that he knew YouTube had already dropped us. They removed all our rights as a network, froze our earnings, suspended 20% of our channels for copyright and finished it with a cease and desist letter. Fuck.
The dream ended.
Leo tried to carry on the brand and name of our network with OnAir as a sub network but they are not easy people to deal with. They wanted 50% straight up which left leo with 10% and partners with 40%. You cannot sign people like this when other networks are offering 70% and more.
I ended up selling all the channels, twitter, facebook pages and everything else (including bots and 10,000 accounts) to another network owner.
Yeousche ended up shutting down, I think they are still some sort of gaming hub though. They did pretend that this was a victory for them, but they were a dead network by this point. I single handedly ruined them and it later turned out it was not copyright fullscreen were worried about... it was the bad name and lack of trust associated with Yeousche.
Gloomy was paid, Alex was told to take his mole ass home.
I ended up doing ok out of it, for 4 months work I did well. I just wish it lasted a bit longer...
It was a crazy ride, but it was very enjoyable. I'm not sure I'll get the opportunity like this again, ever... but I'm not sure if I'd do it differently, I learned a lot.
