Welcome to My Shop!

I've finally decided to give the whole 'YouTube Merch Store' thing a thorough investigation to see how profitable it will be to actually use it. The problem that I foresaw before engaging on any of this was that there would be some kind of 'hosting cost' involved. I pay the third party so many dollars a month to keep my account active.

After a bit of digging through the possible third party hosts for the store, I realised I wasn't wrong. Amazon wants me to pay to be able to add items to their database, so that was prettymuch an insta-no. I abandoned iTunes early on, because one of the requirements to host stuff there is that the quality needs to be on par with DVD. What I have in mind is only 360p.

I did eventually discover that Topspin gives your account a 3 month plan totally free if you're with YouTube, otherwise a $30 value. It was free, and I figured what the heck, if this really works out and I make a reasonable profit, I would definitely be interested in staying with them a little longer. If it doesn't work out, at least it didn't cost me anything.

I've just made an account over at Topspin and have been learning the ropes there for the last hour. I eventually managed to make an item to sell: My very first video. In comparison with my more recent videos, this one is pretty ugly, but it still has me and my charms. :)

In addition to the subscription, they also take a cut of the earnings from the item. Fair enough, they've got a business to run. I'm sure I would break some kind of agreement if I gave out numbers here, but let's just say the cut is verging on significance.

The video itself is currently for sale for $1.99 US. I always hated when retailers did the '99 thing,' but hey, it almost works, and you save 1 cent. :)

I just have to wait until tomorrow for the YouTube search thingy to update so that I can find it and host it in my Merch Store. I'll be making a more formal announcement over on YouTube that the store is active. I'll probably say something like that it's a donation, with a free piece of nostalgia. :)

So there you have it. An experiement to see how charitable my viewers are. I would need to make at least $30 to make the whole thing worth it. So a little bit over 15 copies need to be sold (remember Topspin's cut) before I theoretically make a profit. YouTube gives a free 3 months, so right now I haven't paid for anything, but hopefully you will. *Wink wink nudge nudge*