In the past 18 months, many YouTube influencers have seen their ad revenue tumble.
The online platform, Razeline, has a solution. The start-up enables YouTube creators and their fans to connect directly through pre-screened text messaging.
In early 2017, YouTube started tightening up their policies around monetization in an effort to solve advertiser’s concerns about being paired with objectionable content.
The Google service began what they call de-monetization, a practice through which they stripped advertisements from thousands and thousands of videos.
This became known as the ‘Adpocolypse’ and got dramatically worse when one of YouTube’s most popular creators made a huge miscalculation.
On New Year’s Eve 2017, Logan Paul posted his now infamous Suicide Forest video. The video, which showed a deceased man hanging in Japan’s Suicide Forest, evoked strong, negative reaction.
In response, YouTube made their regulations around advertising even more restrictive to “prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube”.
Recognizing that many YouTube creators have strong and very loyal fan bases, Razeline enables creators to monetize that relationship by charging to respond to messages.
Creators can set up their own messaging service through Razeline’s platform. Within their creator profile, YouTubers set a specific rate that fans will pay to have a direct response.
Once a public profile is established, creators can share their profile information with a link similar to Twitter, post it on their channel and other social media accounts and share the link directly with their fan base.
“Creators worldwide can now respond to all those messages they receive from fans and businesses every day and actually get paid for it,” said Razeline creator and CEO Faisal Khan.
“We are in talks with several big YouTubers who have a combined subscriber base of over one hundred million.”
Fans who use the Razeline platform are guaranteed a response from the creator within three business days.
RazeLine users can include a 180-character WhatsApp-like message, along with a photo and limited information about themselves.
This added information lets the YouTube influencer have a little insight into the fan they are communicating with.
Razeline also lets businesses use the same tool to reach those influencers who can sometimes be difficult to connect with.