• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

The luxury of sufficient funds

I just don't understand that kind of "woodworking". Everything is new and shiny. Ferfect clear and straight timber planed on all sides to the right dimension just pop up out of nowhere in a "workshop" without a large enough planer nor thicknesser. The whole "workshop" has a feeling of film prop without the tools and machines I need to get anything done........... and all tools look new........ everything looks new........ that's not what neither work nor hobby looks like.
 
Maybe I should start making youtube woodworking videos........... well......that tree looks just about right...... starts the chainsaw........
or toolmaking videos........ First we need a driveshaft from a Moskwich car and a blade from a horse drawn sikle bar mower......
or tool restoration videos..... tonight we start with rebuilding a rewinding machine which we then use to rewind that bench grinder.....

Honestly I am sick and tired of youtubers who live in a weird parallel universe where everything is new, shiny and precut.
 
I used to live in the same small town as this guy. I never met him but folks in my woodworking circle of friends have. His story is that he was a decent enough professional woodworker and carpenter, if a bit quirky. He found he could make more money being quirky on Youtube than he could doing woodworking for pay.
 
GaryR said:
He found he could make more money being quirky on Youtube than he could doing woodworking for pay.
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Wow. That is not my experience, I wish. With all my 100+ videos I get paid about €100 per month, sometimes less, sometimes more. I just don't understand how these guys get thousands, even tens of thousands of views in their first week. I get a few hundred and I often wonder why I bother, TBH
S
 
Steve Maskery said:
Wow. That is not my experience, I wish. With all my 100+ videos I get paid about €100 per month, sometimes less, sometimes more. I just don't understand how these guys get thousands, even tens of thousands of views in their first week. I get a few hundred and I often wonder why I bother, TBH
S
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Adverts every 5 mins must help his revenue. Made me switch off though.
 
Steve Maskery said:
Wow. That is not my experience, I wish. With all my 100+ videos I get paid about €100 per month, sometimes less, sometimes more. I just don't understand how these guys get thousands, even tens of thousands of views in their first week. I get a few hundred and I often wonder why I bother, TBH
S
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He’s got 1.2M subscribers, but he’s been doing this a while. Not my cup of tea, but he’s pretty serious about content creation.

10s of thousands of views in the first week of a new account is either from getting extremely lucky with the algorithm or from a push backed up with ads, marketing money, and collabs. So paid views or bringing your audience or someone else’s audience from outside YT.

People serious about increasing their YT have to spend time doing stuff like optimising thumbnail images. Is that something you want to do, Steve? If so, take a look at Estlea, ten minute workshop, and bourbon moth’s thumbnails to see what works. You’ll see stuff like: colourful & bright, asking a question, consistent branding, large text only a few words. You could try goosing your thumbnails to see what happens.

Creating, presenting, and delivering video content for YT requires a bunch of skills in addition to woodworking knowledge. Hats off to those that have those skills!

Regarding the cleanliness of YT workshops, it is my experience that Americans value cleanliness more highly than Europeans and have the ability to easily find cheap, highly skilled professional cleaners. And many on YT would consider the presentation value of having a clean workshop to be a profit-making part of their business, in a way that a jobbing carpenter might not.
 
I can see why he is successful. He has a soothing voice. His brand is appealing and he has an attractive logo. He gets on with it and is not overly teachy in style. He shows the house and for many it will look aspirational and stylish. Many of the projects are not too challenging and can be done with pre-prepped wood. The stairs was an easy build.

There is nothing wrong with tools looking new - mine mostly look new, because I take good care of them. Some people are like that abd like a really clean and tidy space. That helps him look aspirational.

He generates a lot of content so people who subscribe will get regular you tube summonses. Ads are not an issue for me. easily blocked.

I don't watch this kind of video as it's too basic for me (and most of us here): we are not his target market. I suspect a good few viewers are women who want the house prettied up and this provides encouragement. I take a positive view of this kind of content: things that encourage retention of woodwork skills are good.
 
Collins dictionary describes my use of the verb goose and related variations as American informal. Not sure where I picked it up. One of their examples is “Let's goose up the stew with some wine”.
 
Goosing in a craftsmanship context....... should be abour how to find an electrocuted goose below a local powerline in spring, make off with it before the local foxes, and pluck it and skin it and butcher it and fry it for dinner.
However the world is wicked so this isn't the case................

Being aspirational is important to many. However I have notised that there ate two totally opposite views on what is aspirational. Oppinions held by the two groops one could call wannbes and wannados.

To the wannabe "aspirational" means to pretend to be better off than you actually are. Your home must be stylish. Your workvan must be newish. Your work clothes must be trendy. Your tools must be shiny. While they don't notice whether you have the proper tools for this and other jobs nor if you have functioning work routines nor if you have a clue about what you are doing.
They tend to start talking of it when they see my work van and my tools and my work clothes....... for some reason...... in a very derogatory tone.

To the wannado "aspirational" means the hard factual signs of the aspiration to grow your already solid knowledge base, your aspiration to grow your capabilities by purchasing such tools as provide the most capability for every euro or pound spent, your focus on workplace organisation not on wood chips in the corners and flaking paint, and your ability to prioritize in a way that enables you to live from your earnings.
They tend to praise my 20 year old work van which is spotty in at least 5 shades of red though free from rust and mechanically sound. They tend to praise my tools for being sharp and functional though with ample evidence of use and repairs. They tend to at least understand my patched boilersuits with half worn off advertisements for a long gone farm supply chain.

Maybe we are on to something.
Steve making videos aimed at wannados
Borbor Moth making videos aimed at wannabes
?????
 
My videos are't really "aimed" at anyone in particular. They are more of a record of my own journey, sometimes warts and all. I couldn't and don't even want to be a full-time content creator. Good luck to those who do, but it's not me. I simply film what comes my way, whether it is a new piece of furniture, a new jig, or, as soon as I can, a right good rant about something I bought which is not fit for purpose. And then I hope that someone, somewhere, finds it helpful.
Financial success from all this would be nice, but it's not happened yet, and I think it is getting a bit late in the day...
S
 
Steve Maskery said:
My videos are't really "aimed" at anyone in particular. They are more of a record of my own journey, sometimes warts and all. I couldn't and don't even want to be a full-time content creator. Good luck to those who do, but it's not me. I simply film what comes my way, whether it is a new piece of furniture, a new jig, or, as soon as I can, a right good rant about something I bought which is not fit for purpose. And then I hope that someone, somewhere, finds it helpful.
Financial success from all this would be nice, but it's not happened yet, and I think it is getting a bit late in the day...
S
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Well - marketing for money is always aimed at a clearly defined target market.
 
Steve,
Presumably your new home needs lots of repairs.
Next time you tackle something relatively simple why not make a u tube of the WIP and see what happens?
 
I think it's actually really difficult to make good you tube content and I admire Steve for what he does. We've thought about it several times as I am basically operating as a full time chef now (was not planned!) but to get good film for YT you need quite a professional approach, excellent lighting, a script of sorts, a plan, someone to help wih camera work and set up, and be super organised. We do a fair bit of social media but YT is a different ball game.

Occasionally I do a few TV things with pro film teams (cooking), and it is unbelievably hard work and long days. Multiple takes. Lots of c*ck ups, repetitive. Pays very well but at the end of a 3 or 4 day session of 18 hour days I need two days in bed.
 
I don't think his shop is all that oversized. I looked at another video and it seems to be a slightly enlarged two car garage. It is fairly empty though--I've got 18 machines and two work benches in that space or a little smaller.

The real issue is I have no idea how he finds any small screws that he drops on the floor with all those flakes in the epoxy paint.

Kirk
 
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The garage is his temporary "small" shop while his previous (absurdly large by UK standards) workshop is being further enlarged. He's slumming it for a while in a space only twice the size of what most of us have.
 
kirkpoore1 said:
I don't think his shop is all that oversized. I looked at another video and it seems to be a slightly enlarged two car garage. It is fairly empty though--I've got 18 machines and two work benches in that space or a little smaller.
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An oversized two-car garage hobbyist workshop in the States is larger than some commercial shops in Germany. :)

kirkpoore1 said:
The real issue is I have no idea how he finds any small screws that he drops on the floor with all those flakes in the epoxy paint.
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With his sponsors, I doubt he frets too much about losing small screws.
 
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