Starting a "walking youtube channel"

Do you mean walk around your city, or do you want to go somewhere to do some filming?

Priince1337 said:

That's not the case anymore. This also applies for your own content.
As I said there have been huge channels that created their own content, but just because they did not talk in the video they were removed from the YPP. There's nothing special or skillful walking through a city. Anyone can do that. The thing that adds value to the video is some sort of commentary.

Click to expand...

Alright, if we're talking at the same time we're walking then are we okay?

Priince1337 said:

There a two reasons why this might be a bad idea just in terms of monetization:

1. Low CPMs. Which companies are going to pay adrevenue to a channel that only walks around a certain city?
2. You're not creating transformative content. YouTube has been very strict lately when it comes to videos where there is no person talking. They've removed monetization from massive channels because of that reason.

Click to expand...

Stumbled onto this thread from a Google search and had to register just to reply to it -- it's that bad. This is one of the most inaccurate replies I've ever seen regarding anything on YouTube.

1. Companies do not pay different ad rates for content on YouTube based on their evaluation of the specific editorial "quality" of a particular video or channel. This is not whatsoever how it works. YouTube uses data to determine this. Advertisements are placed based on broad, general categories like "travel", "finance", "basketball", etc by YouTube, who sells the ad space & time to vendors. YouTube places the ads on videos on behalf of the vendors on the basis of watch retention time, platform time, video category, and viewer location. In other words, the longer you keep a viewer on the platform, the particular broad category into which your video is assigned and the countries in which your viewers reside determine your ad rates. For example: A video with a large amount of watch & retention time, in the finance niche (a high CPM category), with a mostly American audience will receive a significantly higher ad rate than a video with a small amount of watch & retention time, in the toys niche (a low CPM category), with a mostly Kenyan audience. Walking videos fall in the "travel" category and "walking tours" sub-category, which tends to have a $3 to $8 CPM dependent mostly on where the audience comes from geographically. If your videos are placed in the travel category, even if there is no travel, your ad rates will be determined by this because advertisers are not paying to individual channels nor are they making individual evaluations about specific content.

2. The transformative content standard relates to copyright and fair use. This is totally unrelated and completely irrelevant to originally produced videos, regardless of whether or not there is talking. Transformative content has nothing to do with talking or not talking. This is not even what the word, "transformative" means. You can transform a video without talking at all. You can transform a video with talking by removing all of the talking. It is only ever applied when reusing someone else's content. The word "transformative" in this context means to "change" something creatively that already exists. A walking tour is an original work that does not reproduce without alterations a previously existing work because there is no previously existing creative work. You cannot violate the copyright of something that does not exist. You cannot transform something that does not exist.

This is confoundingly bad information. If anyone else stumbles on this from Google, please do not listen to this person. They have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.