Hi everyone and thanks for all the amazing comments! Sadly the problem still isn't resolved - you can follow the latest here: smallbusinesstoolbox.uk/yt/x - Ironically this vid has now gone semi-viral so I'm struggling to reply to all the comments - thank you, please keep them coming as it's exposing how widespread this issue is! 👍 I'm hearing more and more conflicting opinions of what's going on too. Some saying it's a bug, some saying it's by design. Either way it's not good news for any small creators out there and if you're also impacted you have my deepest sympathies. Don't let it get you down and keep doing what you do. 👍😎
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have multiple other youtube channels associate with your google account that also has "Small Business Toolbox" under it? And I'm going to assume you've switched profiles on your videos with said other youtube accounts associated with your same google ID?
Poor clueless thing. it's not a bug. Read TOS. It's called Right to monetize. It's a scheme. They push vids off unmonetized and demonetized channels to viewers pocketing 100% off ad revenue.
@@whiskeywisdomplus interesting thought I have 3 channels and wonder if where I switch it gives irregular views on my channels, I just have the issue of not knowing if its that, madness that youtube can't tell us...so question, do all those affected have multiple accounts on the same log in?
This happened on my channel basically the same day it happened to you. I was finally starting to make really good money from AdSense and now my RPM is half of what it used to be (and yes, the CPM for my niche is high compared to all of TH-cam). Support was no help in the multiple times I tried to contact them and this happened directly after my all time highest revenue day
I'm not sure if you saw this recently, but another youtuber said it has to do with youtubes auto mid roll ad placement ai. So if you want to get your revenue back turn it off and place your ads manually and it should fix the problem.
Piss and moan about TH-cam and they pick that very video to toss into the algorithm, such a weird site. Hope it works out for you friend, you look to have some nice looking content.
As an individual you have zero sway on yohtube. They don't gaf, about individual creators unless you're famous, a Rogan $. Creators need to form a union and communicate to youtube in solidarity to have any say with youtube at all.
TH-cam is so huge that it's literally not worth their bother to care about individual creators aside from the very biggest. A small tweak to their systems on their end results in huge changes to people's lives down on the ground and it makes no difference to them at all. It's as if the message from TH-cam is "it takes full time effort to grow and maintain a channel but don't ever count on it for your living because it could go away at any time without warning."
but they should look at channels with a certain amount of views at least, i think only like less than 10% of youtubers have reached 1 mil views across their whole channel, but thats probably still a massive amount of people to accommodate for, maybe they should get a bigger staff team idk
This. The entire YT content creation is a catch-up game; I had another channel with 8k followers, The algo kept changing on us and YT get adding/making changes to features; It gets annoying.
You are right about individual TH-camrs. This problem is however bigger then a single TH-cam channel, as it seems. A lot of YT channels complain about this, so in that case it is going to effect business for YT. As I understand it now, what YT is detecting is that an abnormal amount of traffic is being generated by people that otherwise never would visit your channel. I saw one person finding a probable cause. He saw that one of his video's was suddenly visited a lot from the Philippines, while normally he does hardly have any visitors from the Philippines. He expected that some website embedded or linked to his channel. After some time his revenue went to normal levels again.
So sorry this is happening to you. It sucks that TH-cam (through AI) can wreck a successful business. If it helps, your video came up randomly for me as a suggestion and I had never heard of your channel before, so TH-cam must still be recommending you.
TH-cam AI has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So, if you mention the name "TH-cam" it will just automatically start recommending your video to everyone. I might be joking, but AI is some of the STUPIDEST technology that humans have yet created, so I might be telling the truth.
Just for your information: I got recommended your channel just now. I`m not located in the UK, I am not particularly interested in the UK tax system, had never seen the channel before and your video was suddenly on the top of my page. So your channel is definitely not dead, it is apparently being recommended to new people.
@@SmallBusinessToolbox Same here, although, given the cost of providing quality content, the channel might as well be dead if the traffic is invalid and that's going to hit the ad revenue. I'm guessing it's only so long until the algorithm stops recommending it at all.
Yeah, I guess TH-cam wants to keep all the revenue. The algorithm know it's a hot topic. Usually a video with the word Kill in the title being recommended to me when I have never watched the channel videos before.
Another thing to consider is this opens the door for malicious invalid traffic attacks on popular channels purely to take them down either by a competitor or just someone out to be destructive. It is very worrying.
@@SmallBusinessToolbox It is exactly this, I've been in this kind of field of work for a long time now, people used to pay for likes/views/engagements, that doesn't work as well anymore due to adsense and your main direction of channels, most channels that have direct competition, go straight at the throats of their competition. Now AI and its tools have advanced even more, chatbots or bots in general with extreme direction are able to do these things very easily. Has been a lot of people doing these sorts of attacks as well as copyright claims, also be extremely careful with doing counter claims, it's a way people Doxx you and get your info cause you have to provide all your legitimate details when you do a counter claim.
@@Synthetic-Chicken yep, the whole copyright thing is just to appease the big media corporations. Historically copyright law was put in place to serve the interests of the publishers. When copyright duration gets extended its still only about the interests of the publishers, agents, and managers, not the creators. Any benefit to creators is entirely collateral and handy for spin to sell the idea. So I'm not surprised by lack of action to fix the defects.
I have watched multiple videos on this topic. To me, it sounds like a scam by TH-cam to pocket extra money. TH-cam can tell creators about what is going on with traffic on their platform? Absolute BS!
Maybe this glitch is purposefully set in the algorithm so they can justify giving you less of your share of the Ad revenue. and TH-cam never has to speak to you or explain the algorithm. Like they are purposely stealing from creators with a random excuse like invalid traffic.
It's not a glitch. It's part of the plan. They want everyone to leave so that they can control ALL the narratives and then they can control the promise that way, or so they think.
@@ToonShmix in fact, you can actuall sue Google in a Chinese court...this is the best way to do so, since US and China are in a very hot water right now. This is the only way to get attention.
I wish somebody would take Google down. They are everywhere. I can't get away from them. I lost my Xbox account because of their friggin phone verification. I changed my phone number years ago. I know my Xbox user ID & password but they're useless because my account used Gmail & Google won't let me access my account without a stupid SMS verification code. The phone on my Xbox account was a landline. It couldn't receive text messages anyway. I HATE GOOGLE!
NEVER ever start a TH-cam channel or website that solely relies on Google Adsense income. ALWAYS diversify your monetization with sponsors, affiliate marketing, courses, your own digital products, email marketing and more.
This kind of stuff is happening on all platforms- Etsy, TikTok, TH-cam, etc. feels like they don’t want anyone to use the internet to make good money so they are suppressing everyone so they can’t afford to live and have to go work.
It seems like they just want big companies to make any money and push individual creators away, like when you have a small but popular shop or a restaurant and a big supermarket chain or McDonalds comes and takes over
It is so unethical for TH-cam to recommend this video to me (I haven’t watched you before), and then show me several ads when watching this video, while simultaneously telling YOU they won’t pay YOU. Wow. Just wow. Great video though. I’m an avid TH-cam consumer and worry all my content will be going away.
TH-cam has forgotten what made it great... videos produced by creators. Sadly, they are probably victims of their own success. There are now so many creators that it would be simply impossible to deal with each and every complaint using "a real person" -- hence 99 percent of the time you're left interacting with a bot which simply regurgitates the stock reference material. I've had the same problems as you recently with copyright claims (albeit using a different source) and again, YT doesn't care a jot. Unless YT starts recognising the harm they're doing to the essential creator community then eventually one of the YT-wannabe competitors will start gaining real traction and YT's dominance will begin to wane. Nothing lasts forever and YT needs to be aware of that. Things have got so bad for me that I'm looking at the option of self-hosting my videos and relying on Patreon for funding because when I first entered the YT partner program (many years ago... when it was basically by invitation only) I was making very good money. Now, despite getting a *lot* more views and putting a lot more effort into production, my revenues are probably less than 20 percent of what I was earning back there. I already earn more from Patreon than from TH-cam so ditching TH-cam and its adsense revenues wouldn't be the end of the world for me -- in fact it might be a relief!
How ironic is it that I have been targeted with three ads and I am not even halfway through watching your video. The conclusion is that they have no problem advertising on your channel they just don't want to pay you for it?
Yes there is a clause that states google can stop paying you at anytime but continue to show ads on your videos. It´s absolutely disgusting but they are too powerful to be stopped
The whole "Oh noes, you posted something that isn't suitable for advertisers" thing was suspicious long ago. It's an excuse that almost makes sense until you realize they'll just run ads anyway, on the videos that supposedly no one wants to advertise on.
Not sure anyone can make youtube aware of this issue.... Mostly cause they are aware of it. TH-cam themselves posted about that in November, and after they didn't fix the issue- deleted their tweets on the topic. We wouldn't see a spike in viewers, as "invalid traffic" is for ads, not just for views. What you could see is if a specific video has a higher than normal RPM (that happens when you actively say in the video- please click on ads to help me make more money ) Sorry you're in this mess, I am as well... This was a full time living for me as a disabled person looking for something to generate income for days/weeks that I am bedridden, but yeah... Goodbye to TH-cam? Opened a Patreon account, and substack, and blogging in writing more. Hope you take your content to written format, it is in the rise, especially with a platform like Substack that makes a post become a newsletter. Anyway... Hugs ? and support from Bulgaria
My channel was hit with this bug on the 19th of August. I chatted with Creator Support, and they sent me to all the generic 'help' links, but did nothing to actually help. When I asked if they could tell me the specific videos that were causing the problem, they told me this: "For the exact videos, our internal policies prohibit us from sharing these specifics to avoid partners from going around our policies. We empower you to check the articles I shared to avoid your future videos from being impacted by the same issue. We hope you understand our limitations." They also told me to avoid partnering with untrusted parties when it comes to video creation and building your channel, whatever that means. Anyway, best of luck with your situation.
Thank you for speaking up on this!🙏🏽My channel was hit by the glitch, too! A 90% drop for more than 3 months starting in April, it bounced back for 3 weeks, and for the last week, it's flatlined again. It DESTROYED my income. You're right, most of us have around the same number of subs. Regarding the ads, I've seen expensive ads like Apple, running on my channel while YT refused to pay me. We need to stay vocal about this. I've interviewed with Tasia, done livestreams,, and posted about it. We have to stay vocal. My advice, keep a blog, you own and start a Patreon (or other non-TH-cam membership) with exclusive content. Best of luck to you and everyone affected. 💖
I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Two of my channels were hit in late April and haven't recovered since. It's absolutely mind-blowing YT hasn't fixed this yet. I've heard stories about creators becoming heavily depressed, pulling their children out of school/kindergarten, selling their houses. It's really, really bad. We don't deserve this. :(
Thanks for your video. It‘s a really disappointing situation. I have 4 channels affected including this one with over 200k subs. I actually do have a partner manager team at youtube but unfortunately they weren‘t able to do anything either. They said that they‘ve spent a lot of time looking into it but they can‘t share any details with me. They say it‘s not a bug and it‘s just the system protecting advertisers from unvalid clicks. I tried to communicate to them our situation as creators multiple times along with the threads to the entire platform. But I can‘t seem to be getting on the same page with youtube so I‘ve given up on discussing it with them. I‘ve turned off the embedding feature on all videos on all channels but I haven‘t seen an improvemnt so far. I‘ll let you know if I find something helpful. All the best!
Cheers for the info! I've reached out to my partner manager for one of my other channels but I'm expecting a similar response. This could be the end of an era. 😥
Hey Andy, thanks for commenting about this and the shoutout. Sorry to hear you’re also facing this problem! It’s the worst I’ve ever experienced and faced after so many years on this platform. TH-cam continues to give us the PR safe answer (aka nothing). All we can really hope for is our channels are randomly fixed or if TH-cam ever truly addresses this. “In the dark” is an understatement! Wish you and all of us the best!
TH-cam falsely limited 4 of my videos in 90 days which lead to my self certification score going low and every video from then being limited. It took several months until it was fixed.
Andy, thank you for speaking out about this as well! We all need to stick together in this mess. I certainly won't be silenced! I wish we already had a solution for you. I've updated my running list of affected creators and so far I'm at 57 of us and counting! This is so brutal. Also, we ALL watch our own content once when it goes live. As you said, it's the only way to even pin a comment. One view? There is no way that is invalid traffic. This is clearly a bug and YT won't admit it. It's infuriating. EVERY content creator needs to get together right now and make some noise until we have actual solutions and real change. As I said in my Talk Techie To Me podcast episode about this, it's not okay for a company to hide behind 'it's your fault, even if it's not your fault'. AS IF!!! We'll keep in touch about this!
No worries Tasia and thanks for your great vid too! I'm coming out all guns blazing now. I have a few contacts up my sleeve who I'm hoping can help. I've also noticed they're still running high CPM ads against my content which is the icing on the cake. 🤬
@@Adamerhartvideo ugh I’m so sorry that you’re here with us, Adam. 😞 I’ve added you’re name to our growing list. It’s brutal and I hope we see a resolution soon.
@@TasiaCustode I am also affected by this issue. My revenue dropped heavily in November 2022. It stayed there for 4-5 months. That time TH-cam gave me no reason. Just said I am getting Low CPM ads and that is an automatic thing. 2 weeks before, I got the invalid traffic notification. I am getting low CPM ads again. I am earning only 25% of what I used to earn from TH-cam.
Andy this sounds like a bloody nightmare, particularly coming hot on the heels of the copyright claims on your GH channel. I seem to recall you almost foreseeing this issue when you set up your websites and can only concur that putting so much power in the hands of these tech platforms with their increasingly poor customer service just ain’t a good idea. I hope TH-cam sees this and sorts out whatever is going on and more than that recompenses you for the lost income. All the best, Darren
The people who are making billions off of content creators don't care what so ever. They've made their billions, they are set for many lifetimes. They can do what they want, go where they want, buy what they want. WE ARE THE PRODUCT! What is the incentive for them to actually help everyone else make bank?
It happened to me, I’m also on a high CPM niche so you might be on to something. It seems to have resolved now, but for a few weeks some of my videos revenue flatlined.
I've got the same problem, started on 1st September. My channel seems to fit very well with your 'commonalities', yes? Views are about the same as normal, the percentage of views coming form YT search, YT recommendations etc are all normal, but my revenue is down about 30% for the same number of views. I also have the same 'invalid traffic message' and the useless help page with no option to appeal or do anything else. For whatever reason, just before I got to 100K subs, I got selected by YT to get onto a scheme where I have my own 'personal manager' on a six month program to help grow the LER channel as they say it has very high potential. Anyway I had the first face to face video call/chat with YT just about a month ago and my next one is scheduled for this coming Friday 15th Sept. I can assure you the only topic of the 30 minute session will be to fix this problem, unless I get it sorted quicker than that. So I can hopefully help or at least advise on this matter at the weekend after a proper face to face chat. I hope that helps.
I have no more faith on this, I think they're going to kill my channel, I'm waiting to see my revenues going away and earning nothing for the next 6 months ! I was hit in February, August was quite normal, but I received the notification again on past saturday
The problem is not you clicking on your own videos. The problem is a lot more people are using VPN's. So it looks to TH-cam like it's bots viewing your channel, some people will pay to get views. VPN activity is being detected on your channel views as bots.
Same thing literally happened to me last week. I too was sent the form that made no sense. I too had normal views, didn't click on ads or anything else.
So sorry to hear - that's awful. This is what terrifies me. I have another channel with nearly 250k subs - it's taken insane effort to build up and if TH-cam can pull the plug so easily, what's the point? 😭😭
My AdSense account got completely deactivated due to ‘invalid traffic’ just 7 days after joining the partnership programme. I’ve appealed twice with both times being denied with no reason as to why. Have not violated ToS, it’s ridiculous. TH-cam support was also VERY rude and condescending to me. Good luck!
Hi, just watching this as I write, but TH-cam recommended this video to me, and I've just had some ads. I hope it's slowly sorting itself out for you. 🤗.
Just to confirm what you’re saying, I haven’t been shown one single ad in this video :( I’m so very sorry that you and other creators of high value to viewers are experiencing this. It’s awful. They need to sort this out asap.
That happened to my sister's channel. She is making a virtual hike and travel videos. She made a video about a local event, then shared it on Facebook in a group of the town she lives, and then she got invalid traffic because of friend and family. Since then the channel is dead.
I was hit with this like 9 years ago, no feedback from TH-cam. I gave up with this platform years ago because of it, I don't think it's a recent problem.
@@SmallBusinessToolbox That would be really stupid. Every channel starts with 1 video, 1 view, and 1 subscriber. Btw, now that I have watched your video, similar videos pop up, where they mention the same problem. Some are more than 6 months old!
I hate to say this my Friend, I believe that The TH-cam Company People, just do not want to Pay TH-cam Creators, Too Much Money at all, my Brothers and Sisters.
I'm another channel that has been hit and gone through the same thing with TH-cam, emails, twitter etc with no joy. My analytics are similar to yours with normal traffic levels and daily revenue numbers and then on the 25th August, a 90% drop in revenue with no explanation and I haven't even had the invalid traffic warning in my dashboard.
My channel got demonetized for a bug that led to an invalid click activity of which I knew nothing about I reach out to them and they said I would have reach out to report the issue when I realized I had a lot of people clicking on my videos This reason made no sense.
I can understand your frustration, I have been a TH-cam partner for many years. A few years back TH-cam started demonizing channels and I never look at TH-cam the same after that. We work hard making videos to hopefully build a solid foundation as a business only to have it taken away at any time
Possible reason for the 'bug'. See if the following makes any sense. I noticed while watching this video that I would get intermittent notices from my browser that it was being slowed by one of my ad blockers. This got me thinking, I'm only a few minutes into the video and the ad blocker reported over 80 ad's blocked on this page. Over 1,600 ad's blocked from youtube today. TH-cam see's it's ad's being reloaded over and over because they aren't being played and can't uniquely identify which computer the ad's are being reloaded due to tracking blockers. As such TH-cam automatically assigns the blame to the content creator. TH-cam's algorithm assumes the multiple ad reloads are the creator trying to game the system. Is it possible this is a cause of the 'invalid traffic' bug. I remember recently TH-cam made changes to try and prevent browsers with ad blockers from working on the site, which has lead to ad blockers publishing updates to get around TH-cam's changes and it's been an escalating battle. Possibly the algorithm has not been adjusted to properly monitor changes to the ad traffic over the network made by youtube in its efforts to push ad's through the blockers leading to this 'bug'. They can't backtrack without loosing their ad's. But the ad monitoring code may be too complex to figure out how it's being interfered with by youtubes ad pushing. Changes are just happening too fast. Guess it's just simpler to let hundreds of smaller creators crash and burn rather than spend the money trying to fix/identify the issues. The bug is likely happening to larger creators too, but youtube's giving them a pass as they need them.
Yours is not the first channel that I have seen with this issue. What I was wondering is if this issue might be caused by a form of "doxxing"? If some nefarious group decided to launch attacks against TH-cam channels for some reason, maybe as a way to eliminate competition for eyeballs for instance, or maybe just because they can cause drama. I don't know if there would be any way for a channel owner to be able to figure that out or not. I wonder if TH-cam could figure it out. Or have figured it out and can't talk about it because of potential criminal investigations going on to track down the nefarious entities behind it. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it seems like a possibility to me.
You had the word "killed" in the title and they still share it... I lost 90% of the traffic of an evergreen Shorts after converting it to a brand channel
TH-cam is coming to an end, if any advice to give to creators is to create there channels on other platforms and offer boosts to there supporters, TH-cam is always going to be a platform that comes to an end and it is on the path to that demise. They also do not give a toss about creators, harsh i know but true.
How is it that none of the big companies fix the issues with the bot farms ran on their platforms, there is where the invalid traffic icomes from. Any time a big creator post a video there will be a massive wave of spam/scam comments same on IG you post anything, and get a wave of Sponsors/add bots telling you to go "promote it" on their bot pages.
Hi Andy - sorry to hear of your issues. It is awful what AI is doing to the world in general. I lost my instagram business account (Thorsen Joinery) last year as Meta decided my age verification was not valid and locked my account with over 5.5k followers. I left FB and IG completely and will not go back. I'm only on youtube to watch quality content such as yours. Big corporations do not care about individuals - only about profit.
You're joking! I used to follow you - thought I hadn't seen much from you lately. That would explain it! Crazy world. I enjoy your Twitter / X posts too... but I have to be careful what I say about that. All utter insanity. 👍👍 Oh, and btw for some reason your post was quarantined on here!! Wtf is going on ?!? 😬
I had the same issue but instead of dropping my revenue, they just closed my Adsense account entirely. 97% of my traffic was driven by TH-cam recommending my content themselves, so I believe that there is definitely a bug somewhere. I've been searching through my contacts to see if there's anyone I know that I can reach out to to help with this
That's crazy! And very scary. I've heard this is possible. The whole ecosystem seems to be incredibly fragile and nobody seems to know what's going on. 😬
Very worrying. I thought (on your bigger channel) that once you got to 100k subscribers you got a dedicated TH-cam manager to chat to and help? Obviously not. Yes very worrying if Adsense was turned off, once a channel loses traction even if they fix it you then lose all that traction and traffic. Hope it gets sorted for you. With regards to music I only ever use the free TH-cam Audio tracks, I’ve had issues with supposedly non copyright music from other sources!
I wonder if this could be due to other channels paying for bot views, and to make the paid views to their channels appear legit, they also have the bots view videos on other channels, such as yours. This is just a theory, but if someone wanted to pay for bot traffic, I could see how they'd want those bots to view content on other channels too, in addition to their own channel, to try to make the artificial views of their videos appear legit. Otherwise, if the bots/paid views only viewed the videos of their channel, it would likely be less effective for them and they'd be more likely to have their channel flagged. I think when people pay for bot traffic they want those bots to view videos on other people's channels too so that it doesn't appear that all of the bot traffic is just viewing the videos on their own channel.
What's mind blowing is that this "Invalid Traffic" problem has been around forever since the dawn of Adsense... and the tech whizzes at Adsense, while they can "identify" if traffic is invalid, have still NOT come up with a way to IGNORE that traffic on a case by case basis!!! Sounds a simple enough solution for me. It's certainly a LOT easier than a content creator trying to work out WTF is happening and how to "fix" it. Good luck mate!
Hi, I have had the same issue occur twice. We run live cameras/streams that have been up for over a year at a time. My guess is that these live streams are embedded in third party sites that are dodgy or have been subject to dodgy click-bots. Or maybe something about the way they are accessed through external sites raises a flag. Here's the approach I took to get ad revenue restored: - Email TH-cam Creator Support through the back end contact form - clearly outline the specifics of the issue. - As someone who works at a place with chat and form -contact, I would recommend that you never use chat, it's frustrating for you and the (human) bot alike. - TH-cam Creator Support will reply with an invalid traffic FAQ. Even when I explicitly linked the FAQ and said "Please don't reply with this FAQ as I have already read it" they sent it lol - Reply to that and TH-cam Creator Support might follow any reply with an FAQ about 'appropriate content' which is irrelevant - I had to request escalation - Created a Twitter account strictly to @ Team TH-cam who said contact creator support and linked to the FAQ - After an escalated reply to the email with no suggestion of definite resolve, ad revenue restored after about 10 days Other things to note: - You'll see it's only affecting specific videos - check each video's revenue > how much advertisers pay, and you'll see the drop. Some videos will be unaffected - It's not only high CPM/RPM - we are a distinctly low-medium RPM channel but maybe creators getting $15-30 RPM (that's high) feel it a lot more - It does affect views - check your impressions and you'll see a drop - On the plus side you'll find a new audience - I don't search for UK tax/business but obviously my cookies aligned perfectly with this video... - I guess this is why Think Media, Film Booth, VidIQ, Channel Makers/Nate Black, Oliur Online are always saying you that relying on ad revenue is unreliable Hoping it gets resolved! If it does, maybe make a follow up video about the path to resolution in your case. The opaqueness of the issue is pretty painful.
TH-cam has been morally bereft for years, awash with adverts from business tutors whose only business has been to teach others how to make a business teaching others how to make a business (pyramid scheme). If I was to make video for youtube it would be to promote another project, in and of itself I never considered it to be a genuine income stream. Your content is great BTW so TH-cam's loss
TH-cam recommended this video to me, I don't know who you are or what your channel is about, but I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. I can't imagine the stress of it all. It's honestly terrifying and I wish there was something we could do. Really hope they get this mess in order!
Really sorry to hear this Andy. I refer people to both the Gosforth Handyman and Small Business Toolbox channels because you make really useful content. It's reasonable for you to want to receive ad revenue, if advertisers a bidding to place adverts within your content. I doubt it is a bug. It seems much more likely that it is a deliberate policy to make the algorithm oversensitive. I do hope this gets fixed, but if it doesn't, you should look for another platform and/or business model.
YEEES !! This happened to me on Aug 17th! Down 65%!!! And it has not fixed itself in 3 weeks! Mirror image of what you are dealing with. ANd I have been doing videos for 10 years!!!! I am trying to make it to the end of the year, hoping it fixes itself but going on a month now and nothing has changed. And they answer my emails and chats with form emails and messages. so sad!
TH-cam has been trying to take as much as possible and giving back as little as possible (from creators), especially when they came up with the scheme where you have to pay to get more viewers...
It sounds like this problem comes from Google/TH-cam depending too much on AI tools. Everyone who has worked with machine learning app development knows that false positives, aka hallucinations, are a huge problem.
This hit me a month ago and has affected my larger videos. I have a smaller channel but a handful of viral videos with high CPM. Those are the ones affected. My smaller videos don’t seem to be affected. I don’t think it has anything to do with you clicking on your own videos. The algorithm only counts the first 2. It totally sucks.
Big thanks for this video, and so so sorry to hear about this. Absolutely rubbish system and reaction. I'm terrified the same will happen to me, because I have a number of channels - and sometimes I watch through my videos, eg for captions - while I'm logged into 'the other channel'. I'm sure it's not this - but noticed your mention at 8:32 that you have other channels. It would still make no sense whatsoever, but my family watch my videos - on the same IP address. I'm paranoid enough to think that this will some time trigger this attack on Creators between 10k & 100k subs... I'm sure you're contacting all you can but have you reached out to Rene Ritchie the TH-cam Creator Liaison? Good luck with pressing on, it's a huge help for all of us.
YT puts a lot of obstacles in front of Creators. Even if they meet requirements, there are so many things that can go wrong, it's almost too risky to take it seriously. I struggled to get monetized because YT thought I used content from other channels. I did not, but it didn't matter; I was accused of the infamous "re-used content" spiel. After eleven months I tried one last time and presto, it worked. Now I'm finally monetized, but in the meantime I haven't uploaded anything. So it's like starting over.
Hey Andy, Thankfully your video popped up in my feed because I too have been hit with this BS and have been researching this to death as well. When I saw your screenshot at 6:40, my jaw dropped because that's the precise day my revenue dropped dramatically as well. The thing I noticed that stood out in the analytics for me was the Ad impressions per view. On and before August 11th my videos ALWAYS had a positive ratio of Ad impressions to views. To be precise, on August 11th my channel had 6692 views with 8807 ad impressions (or a ratio of 1.32 ad impressions for each view); whereas on August 12th, I had 7521 views with only 5866 ad impressions (or a ratio of 0.78 ad impressions for each view). Since then, my ratio has never been over 0.82/1 and has been as low as 0.6/1). Before August 12th, my ratio has never (excluding when I first started) been below 1.3/1 and has been as higher that 1.5/1 on several occasions. I have been thinking of making a video like yours, and might do so in the near future. The accusations on TH-cam's part that implies that somehow we are at fault for this alleged "invalid traffic" is both ridiculous and insulting. I am sure there is such a thing as invalid traffic, but it's clear that their system is broke and needs to be fixed. I just hope that they step up at some point and admit there is a problem and fix it. Good Luck with this. I'm going to look for your Tweet and RT it.
Wow the more I hear you the more I am upset I pay TH-cam $26 a month for a premium account! Literally if they don’t fix this for you within 30 days I will literally call them and tell them I want to cancel my membership because of what they are doing to you and other creators. I think if a-lot of us customers who pay for a premium membership complain and threaten to cancel their service maybe they will do something about it. We are with you!!!!
I got hit by the same bug, unfortunately the support team is useless, i can only hope this it will be fixed which i doubt it, i've seen content creators having this problem from last year.
TH-cam has no problem runining the livelihood of hard working creators and will go to length to ignore any of their concerns. But tell them that someone somewhere said something about the vaccines, or is spreading 'dangerous' information about elections, and they'll be right on top of it. 🤡
It's not just TH-cam it's anything attached to your AdSense account like a WordPress website, they never warned me about invalid traffic they just dismantled my AdSense account no questions asked I tried to fight it, but never heard back from TH-cam... it's terrible!
Thanks for sharing this informative video. A couple of things come to mind. Have you checked your traffic sources to see if there is anything strange in there? And, my theory is that a service is adding competing videos to their own playlist and using VPN services to loop play the videos, thus harming legit creators.
Perhaps the issue is occurring outside of TH-cam. I’m unfamiliar with the TH-cam backend. Are you able to track where your videos have been reposted on third-party websites?
I am so sorry this happened to you. This happened to another creator I watch and she has 38k subs so I agree that it seems to be happening to mid sized channels. I started a TH-cam channel in July and I watch the video I upload to make sure it looks ok and to pin the comment. I hope YT doesn't see this as a bad thing. Ugh!
I am sorry this is happening. It is really frightening what is going on with youtube. They really need to pay attention to the creators who literally make youtube what it is.
Hi everyone and thanks for all the amazing comments! Sadly the problem still isn't resolved - you can follow the latest here: smallbusinesstoolbox.uk/yt/x - Ironically this vid has now gone semi-viral so I'm struggling to reply to all the comments - thank you, please keep them coming as it's exposing how widespread this issue is! 👍 I'm hearing more and more conflicting opinions of what's going on too. Some saying it's a bug, some saying it's by design. Either way it's not good news for any small creators out there and if you're also impacted you have my deepest sympathies. Don't let it get you down and keep doing what you do. 👍😎
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have multiple other youtube channels associate with your google account that also has "Small Business Toolbox" under it? And I'm going to assume you've switched profiles on your videos with said other youtube accounts associated with your same google ID?
Poor clueless thing. it's not a bug. Read TOS. It's called Right to monetize. It's a scheme.
They push vids off unmonetized and demonetized channels to viewers pocketing 100% off ad revenue.
@@whiskeywisdomplus interesting thought I have 3 channels and wonder if where I switch it gives irregular views on my channels, I just have the issue of not knowing if its that, madness that youtube can't tell us...so question, do all those affected have multiple accounts on the same log in?
TH-cam chat support is the most usless thing
Always seems to be bots and / or copy paste from web.
@clarahenderson470 ChatGPT would help way more
What you mean is probably the normal automatic chatbots we had for the past 15 yrs
It’s a lot of “I’m sorry you feel that way” and no solutions. It is like speaking with HR.
Until TH-cam makes staff available to talk to (actual phone calls), these problems will persist.
Amen. Thousands of creators are having the same problem. I got it too. It makes no sense.
Yup, this must be a known problem. 👍🤷♂️
This happened on my channel basically the same day it happened to you. I was finally starting to make really good money from AdSense and now my RPM is half of what it used to be (and yes, the CPM for my niche is high compared to all of TH-cam). Support was no help in the multiple times I tried to contact them and this happened directly after my all time highest revenue day
Probably manually suppressing channels again.
I’ve noticed TH-cam randomly punishes people when they start doing well
Hey there. I'm so glad you did this video. It is nice to know I'm not alone, even though it totally sucks that this is going on.
Im so sorry this has happened to u am so scared it will happen to my faceless channel too 😢😢😢
I5s happening to me too, identical situation to yours
I'm not sure if you saw this recently, but another youtuber said it has to do with youtubes auto mid roll ad placement ai. So if you want to get your revenue back turn it off and place your ads manually and it should fix the problem.
Piss and moan about TH-cam and they pick that very video to toss into the algorithm, such a weird site. Hope it works out for you friend, you look to have some nice looking content.
As an individual you have zero sway on yohtube. They don't gaf, about individual creators unless you're famous, a Rogan $. Creators need to form a union and communicate to youtube in solidarity to have any say with youtube at all.
TH-cam is so huge that it's literally not worth their bother to care about individual creators aside from the very biggest. A small tweak to their systems on their end results in huge changes to people's lives down on the ground and it makes no difference to them at all. It's as if the message from TH-cam is "it takes full time effort to grow and maintain a channel but don't ever count on it for your living because it could go away at any time without warning."
but they should look at channels with a certain amount of views at least, i think only like less than 10% of youtubers have reached 1 mil views across their whole channel, but thats probably still a massive amount of people to accommodate for, maybe they should get a bigger staff team idk
This. The entire YT content creation is a catch-up game; I had another channel with 8k followers, The algo kept changing on us and YT get adding/making changes to features; It gets annoying.
I seen a video where even huge creators can have their channels taken.
You are right about individual TH-camrs. This problem is however bigger then a single TH-cam channel, as it seems. A lot of YT channels complain about this, so in that case it is going to effect business for YT. As I understand it now, what YT is detecting is that an abnormal amount of traffic is being generated by people that otherwise never would visit your channel. I saw one person finding a probable cause. He saw that one of his video's was suddenly visited a lot from the Philippines, while normally he does hardly have any visitors from the Philippines. He expected that some website embedded or linked to his channel. After some time his revenue went to normal levels again.
So sorry this is happening to you. It sucks that TH-cam (through AI) can wreck a successful business.
If it helps, your video came up randomly for me as a suggestion and I had never heard of your channel before, so TH-cam must still be recommending you.
This also came up in my feed.
Same
Same for me.
This happened to me too, I hope YT sort this bug out for all the creators
TH-cam AI has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
So, if you mention the name "TH-cam" it will just automatically start recommending your video to everyone. I might be joking, but AI is some of the STUPIDEST technology that humans have yet created, so I might be telling the truth.
Just for your information: I got recommended your channel just now. I`m not located in the UK, I am not particularly interested in the UK tax system, had never seen the channel before and your video was suddenly on the top of my page. So your channel is definitely not dead, it is apparently being recommended to new people.
Interesting! I don't think the bug has hit views much, just revenue. Hope you enjoy my next vid about data backup strategies for small businesses! 👍😉
@@SmallBusinessToolbox Same here, although, given the cost of providing quality content, the channel might as well be dead if the traffic is invalid and that's going to hit the ad revenue. I'm guessing it's only so long until the algorithm stops recommending it at all.
same here
Me too from Canada
Yeah,
I guess TH-cam wants to keep all the revenue.
The algorithm know it's a hot topic. Usually a video with the word Kill in the title being recommended to me when I have never watched the channel videos before.
Another thing to consider is this opens the door for malicious invalid traffic attacks on popular channels purely to take them down either by a competitor or just someone out to be destructive. It is very worrying.
Yup - in all honesty I suspect it could be something like this anyway. 😭
They are already doing this with false copyright claims. So someone can basically disrupt or destroy your work easily if they want.
@@SmallBusinessToolbox It is exactly this, I've been in this kind of field of work for a long time now, people used to pay for likes/views/engagements, that doesn't work as well anymore due to adsense and your main direction of channels, most channels that have direct competition, go straight at the throats of their competition. Now AI and its tools have advanced even more, chatbots or bots in general with extreme direction are able to do these things very easily. Has been a lot of people doing these sorts of attacks as well as copyright claims, also be extremely careful with doing counter claims, it's a way people Doxx you and get your info cause you have to provide all your legitimate details when you do a counter claim.
@@Synthetic-Chicken yep, the whole copyright thing is just to appease the big media corporations. Historically copyright law was put in place to serve the interests of the publishers. When copyright duration gets extended its still only about the interests of the publishers, agents, and managers, not the creators. Any benefit to creators is entirely collateral and handy for spin to sell the idea. So I'm not surprised by lack of action to fix the defects.
I have watched multiple videos on this topic. To me, it sounds like a scam by TH-cam to pocket extra money. TH-cam can tell creators about what is going on with traffic on their platform? Absolute BS!
Maybe this glitch is purposefully set in the algorithm so they can justify giving you less of your share of the Ad revenue. and TH-cam never has to speak to you or explain the algorithm. Like they are purposely stealing from creators with a random excuse like invalid traffic.
It's not a glitch. It's part of the plan. They want everyone to leave so that they can control ALL the narratives and then they can control the promise that way, or so they think.
I THINK THIS TOO!! TH-cam is pocketing the money!!! It’s happening to me right now too so unfair!!!!!!!!!!
@@kantnergirl08 Girl what happened, tell me?
@@kantnergirl08 Girl you are traveling around Tawain! That's what's up! I wanna do that too. So koooooool!
@@kantnergirl08 I’m so sorry to hear that. There are other video sites that monetize. 1 Monkey don’t stop the show!
What we need is a worldwide class action lawsuit against Google over this...
I honestly think this is the way
@@ToonShmix in fact, you can actuall sue Google in a Chinese court...this is the best way to do so, since US and China are in a very hot water right now. This is the only way to get attention.
I wish somebody would take Google down. They are everywhere. I can't get away from them. I lost my Xbox account because of their friggin phone verification. I changed my phone number years ago. I know my Xbox user ID & password but they're useless because my account used Gmail & Google won't let me access my account without a stupid SMS verification code. The phone on my Xbox account was a landline. It couldn't receive text messages anyway. I HATE GOOGLE!
I was just thinking the same.
NEVER ever start a TH-cam channel or website that solely relies on Google Adsense income. ALWAYS diversify your monetization with sponsors, affiliate marketing, courses, your own digital products, email marketing and more.
This kind of stuff is happening on all platforms- Etsy, TikTok, TH-cam, etc. feels like they don’t want anyone to use the internet to make good money so they are suppressing everyone so they can’t afford to live and have to go work.
It seems like they just want big companies to make any money and push individual creators away, like when you have a small but popular shop or a restaurant and a big supermarket chain or McDonalds comes and takes over
Isn't leftism great!? 😡
/sarc
But some TH-camrs r earning lot from yt..they r buying new homes ,cars etc...I don't know they r real or fake ppl
I can't believe "this youtube feature is threatening my channel" videos have just become a new genre at this point
It is so unethical for TH-cam to recommend this video to me (I haven’t watched you before), and then show me several ads when watching this video, while simultaneously telling YOU they won’t pay YOU. Wow. Just wow. Great video though. I’m an avid TH-cam consumer and worry all my content will be going away.
TH-cam has forgotten what made it great... videos produced by creators. Sadly, they are probably victims of their own success. There are now so many creators that it would be simply impossible to deal with each and every complaint using "a real person" -- hence 99 percent of the time you're left interacting with a bot which simply regurgitates the stock reference material.
I've had the same problems as you recently with copyright claims (albeit using a different source) and again, YT doesn't care a jot.
Unless YT starts recognising the harm they're doing to the essential creator community then eventually one of the YT-wannabe competitors will start gaining real traction and YT's dominance will begin to wane. Nothing lasts forever and YT needs to be aware of that.
Things have got so bad for me that I'm looking at the option of self-hosting my videos and relying on Patreon for funding because when I first entered the YT partner program (many years ago... when it was basically by invitation only) I was making very good money. Now, despite getting a *lot* more views and putting a lot more effort into production, my revenues are probably less than 20 percent of what I was earning back there. I already earn more from Patreon than from TH-cam so ditching TH-cam and its adsense revenues wouldn't be the end of the world for me -- in fact it might be a relief!
How ironic is it that I have been targeted with three ads and I am not even halfway through watching your video. The conclusion is that they have no problem advertising on your channel they just don't want to pay you for it?
Yes there is a clause that states google can stop paying you at anytime but continue to show ads on your videos. It´s absolutely disgusting but they are too powerful to be stopped
The whole "Oh noes, you posted something that isn't suitable for advertisers" thing was suspicious long ago. It's an excuse that almost makes sense until you realize they'll just run ads anyway, on the videos that supposedly no one wants to advertise on.
Wish you all the best. Creators like you have been my university for years.
Thank you! I doubt I'll stop making content... it just might have to be on a different platform. 😬
Not sure anyone can make youtube aware of this issue.... Mostly cause they are aware of it.
TH-cam themselves posted about that in November, and after they didn't fix the issue- deleted their tweets on the topic.
We wouldn't see a spike in viewers, as "invalid traffic" is for ads, not just for views. What you could see is if a specific video has a higher than normal RPM (that happens when you actively say in the video- please click on ads to help me make more money )
Sorry you're in this mess, I am as well...
This was a full time living for me as a disabled person looking for something to generate income for days/weeks that I am bedridden, but yeah... Goodbye to TH-cam? Opened a Patreon account, and substack, and blogging in writing more.
Hope you take your content to written format, it is in the rise, especially with a platform like Substack that makes a post become a newsletter.
Anyway... Hugs ? and support from Bulgaria
@MeyTribe I first thought of you when I watched this video. I had watched your’s first about the same problem. Sorry this is happening to so many. 😢
My channel was hit with this bug on the 19th of August. I chatted with Creator Support, and they sent me to all the generic 'help' links, but did nothing to actually help. When I asked if they could tell me the specific videos that were causing the problem, they told me this: "For the exact videos, our internal policies prohibit us from sharing these specifics to avoid partners from going around our policies. We empower you to check the articles I shared to avoid your future videos from being impacted by the same issue. We hope you understand our limitations." They also told me to avoid partnering with untrusted parties when it comes to video creation and building your channel, whatever that means. Anyway, best of luck with your situation.
Thank you for speaking up on this!🙏🏽My channel was hit by the glitch, too! A 90% drop for more than 3 months starting in April, it bounced back for 3 weeks, and for the last week, it's flatlined again. It DESTROYED my income. You're right, most of us have around the same number of subs.
Regarding the ads, I've seen expensive ads like Apple, running on my channel while YT refused to pay me.
We need to stay vocal about this. I've interviewed with Tasia, done livestreams,, and posted about it. We have to stay vocal. My advice, keep a blog, you own and start a Patreon (or other non-TH-cam membership) with exclusive content. Best of luck to you and everyone affected. 💖
I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Two of my channels were hit in late April and haven't recovered since. It's absolutely mind-blowing YT hasn't fixed this yet. I've heard stories about creators becoming heavily depressed, pulling their children out of school/kindergarten, selling their houses. It's really, really bad. We don't deserve this. :(
Ah man, so sorry to hear. It's a crazy situation and makes you question TH-cam's entire business model. 😬
It's because they don't care. There aren't many alternatives and none of the alternatives is large enough to pose much of a threat to them.
@@SmallSpoonBrigadetiktok
@@SmallSpoonBrigade it will change when enough people move.
@@LilyGazou Which is easier said than done. A good first step would be for people that are posting videos here to also post them somewhere else.
Thanks for your video. It‘s a really disappointing situation. I have 4 channels affected including this one with over 200k subs. I actually do have a partner manager team at youtube but unfortunately they weren‘t able to do anything either. They said that they‘ve spent a lot of time looking into it but they can‘t share any details with me. They say it‘s not a bug and it‘s just the system protecting advertisers from unvalid clicks. I tried to communicate to them our situation as creators multiple times along with the threads to the entire platform. But I can‘t seem to be getting on the same page with youtube so I‘ve given up on discussing it with them. I‘ve turned off the embedding feature on all videos on all channels but I haven‘t seen an improvemnt so far. I‘ll let you know if I find something helpful. All the best!
Cheers for the info! I've reached out to my partner manager for one of my other channels but I'm expecting a similar response. This could be the end of an era. 😥
Hey Andy, thanks for commenting about this and the shoutout. Sorry to hear you’re also facing this problem! It’s the worst I’ve ever experienced and faced after so many years on this platform. TH-cam continues to give us the PR safe answer (aka nothing). All we can really hope for is our channels are randomly fixed or if TH-cam ever truly addresses this. “In the dark” is an understatement! Wish you and all of us the best!
You're very welcome - thanks for making a vid too! Yup, same here. 12 years and I've never seen anything like this before. 😥
TH-cam falsely limited 4 of my videos in 90 days which lead to my self certification score going low and every video from then being limited. It took several months until it was fixed.
Andy, thank you for speaking out about this as well! We all need to stick together in this mess. I certainly won't be silenced! I wish we already had a solution for you. I've updated my running list of affected creators and so far I'm at 57 of us and counting! This is so brutal. Also, we ALL watch our own content once when it goes live. As you said, it's the only way to even pin a comment. One view? There is no way that is invalid traffic. This is clearly a bug and YT won't admit it. It's infuriating. EVERY content creator needs to get together right now and make some noise until we have actual solutions and real change. As I said in my Talk Techie To Me podcast episode about this, it's not okay for a company to hide behind 'it's your fault, even if it's not your fault'. AS IF!!! We'll keep in touch about this!
No worries Tasia and thanks for your great vid too! I'm coming out all guns blazing now. I have a few contacts up my sleeve who I'm hoping can help. I've also noticed they're still running high CPM ads against my content which is the icing on the cake. 🤬
@@SmallBusinessToolbox same thing with the ads on my channel too! 😡 keep us posted.
It hit me too.
@@Adamerhartvideo ugh I’m so sorry that you’re here with us, Adam. 😞 I’ve added you’re name to our growing list. It’s brutal and I hope we see a resolution soon.
@@TasiaCustode I am also affected by this issue. My revenue dropped heavily in November 2022. It stayed there for 4-5 months. That time TH-cam gave me no reason. Just said I am getting Low CPM ads and that is an automatic thing. 2 weeks before, I got the invalid traffic notification. I am getting low CPM ads again. I am earning only 25% of what I used to earn from TH-cam.
Andy this sounds like a bloody nightmare, particularly coming hot on the heels of the copyright claims on your GH channel.
I seem to recall you almost foreseeing this issue when you set up your websites and can only concur that putting so much power in the hands of these tech platforms with their increasingly poor customer service just ain’t a good idea.
I hope TH-cam sees this and sorts out whatever is going on and more than that recompenses you for the lost income.
All the best, Darren
The people who are making billions off of content creators don't care what so ever. They've made their billions, they are set for many lifetimes. They can do what they want, go where they want, buy what they want. WE ARE THE PRODUCT! What is the incentive for them to actually help everyone else make bank?
Precisely.
It happened to me, I’m also on a high CPM niche so you might be on to something. It seems to have resolved now, but for a few weeks some of my videos revenue flatlined.
This channel was just now randomly recommended to me and a bunch of ads played. I don’t have this issue but good luck!
I've got the same problem, started on 1st September. My channel seems to fit very well with your 'commonalities', yes? Views are about the same as normal, the percentage of views coming form YT search, YT recommendations etc are all normal, but my revenue is down about 30% for the same number of views. I also have the same 'invalid traffic message' and the useless help page with no option to appeal or do anything else. For whatever reason, just before I got to 100K subs, I got selected by YT to get onto a scheme where I have my own 'personal manager' on a six month program to help grow the LER channel as they say it has very high potential. Anyway I had the first face to face video call/chat with YT just about a month ago and my next one is scheduled for this coming Friday 15th Sept. I can assure you the only topic of the 30 minute session will be to fix this problem, unless I get it sorted quicker than that. So I can hopefully help or at least advise on this matter at the weekend after a proper face to face chat. I hope that helps.
I have no more faith on this, I think they're going to kill my channel, I'm waiting to see my revenues going away and earning nothing for the next 6 months ! I was hit in February, August was quite normal, but I received the notification again on past saturday
The problem is not you clicking on your own videos. The problem is a lot more people are using VPN's. So it looks to TH-cam like it's bots viewing your channel, some people will pay to get views. VPN activity is being detected on your channel views as bots.
I just got recommended your video and I’m in Australia and mostly watch art videos 😅
Same thing literally happened to me last week. I too was sent the form that made no sense. I too had normal views, didn't click on ads or anything else.
I have 2 million subscribers and I have been effected too. TH-cam doesn't care so I create on other platforms with better success
Which platforms because TikTok is doing the same thing to me over there too
So sorry to hear - that's awful. This is what terrifies me. I have another channel with nearly 250k subs - it's taken insane effort to build up and if TH-cam can pull the plug so easily, what's the point? 😭😭
My AdSense account got completely deactivated due to ‘invalid traffic’ just 7 days after joining the partnership programme. I’ve appealed twice with both times being denied with no reason as to why. Have not violated ToS, it’s ridiculous. TH-cam support was also VERY rude and condescending to me. Good luck!
Hi, just watching this as I write, but TH-cam recommended this video to me, and I've just had some ads. I hope it's slowly sorting itself out for you. 🤗.
Just to confirm what you’re saying, I haven’t been shown one single ad in this video :(
I’m so very sorry that you and other creators of high value to viewers are experiencing this. It’s awful. They need to sort this out asap.
Interesting! Good to know! Yup, crazy situation.
its a world wide thing as some us channels are getting the same thing
That happened to my sister's channel. She is making a virtual hike and travel videos. She made a video about a local event, then shared it on Facebook in a group of the town she lives, and then she got invalid traffic because of friend and family. Since then the channel is dead.
Not only you mean too I don’t make any money of my channel
I was hit with this like 9 years ago, no feedback from TH-cam. I gave up with this platform years ago because of it, I don't think it's a recent problem.
Interesting - wow!
I think that TH-cam is trying eliminate small channels.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but you could be right! 😬
@@SmallBusinessToolbox That would be really stupid. Every channel starts with 1 video, 1 view, and 1 subscriber.
Btw, now that I have watched your video, similar videos pop up, where they mention the same problem. Some are more than 6 months old!
I hate to say this my Friend, I believe that The TH-cam Company People, just do not want to Pay TH-cam Creators, Too Much Money at all, my Brothers and Sisters.
I'm another channel that has been hit and gone through the same thing with TH-cam, emails, twitter etc with no joy. My analytics are similar to yours with normal traffic levels and daily revenue numbers and then on the 25th August, a 90% drop in revenue with no explanation and I haven't even had the invalid traffic warning in my dashboard.
So sorry to hear! Very interesting that your channel is in a niche similar to a lot of other creators (including myself) who have been hit. 🤔
Your channel is gold! It has helped me alot and i have learned alot from this channel.
Thank you!
My channel got demonetized for a bug that led to an invalid click activity of which I knew nothing about
I reach out to them and they said I would have reach out to report the issue when I realized I had a lot of people clicking on my videos
This reason made no sense.
I can understand your frustration, I have been a TH-cam partner for many years. A few years back TH-cam started demonizing channels and I never look at TH-cam the same after that. We work hard making videos to hopefully build a solid foundation as a business only to have it taken away at any time
Same happened on Etsy.
Possible reason for the 'bug'. See if the following makes any sense.
I noticed while watching this video that I would get intermittent notices from my browser that it was being slowed by one of my ad blockers. This got me thinking, I'm only a few minutes into the video and the ad blocker reported over 80 ad's blocked on this page. Over 1,600 ad's blocked from youtube today. TH-cam see's it's ad's being reloaded over and over because they aren't being played and can't uniquely identify which computer the ad's are being reloaded due to tracking blockers. As such TH-cam automatically assigns the blame to the content creator. TH-cam's algorithm assumes the multiple ad reloads are the creator trying to game the system. Is it possible this is a cause of the 'invalid traffic' bug. I remember recently TH-cam made changes to try and prevent browsers with ad blockers from working on the site, which has lead to ad blockers publishing updates to get around TH-cam's changes and it's been an escalating battle. Possibly the algorithm has not been adjusted to properly monitor changes to the ad traffic over the network made by youtube in its efforts to push ad's through the blockers leading to this 'bug'. They can't backtrack without loosing their ad's. But the ad monitoring code may be too complex to figure out how it's being interfered with by youtubes ad pushing. Changes are just happening too fast. Guess it's just simpler to let hundreds of smaller creators crash and burn rather than spend the money trying to fix/identify the issues. The bug is likely happening to larger creators too, but youtube's giving them a pass as they need them.
Yours is not the first channel that I have seen with this issue. What I was wondering is if this issue might be caused by a form of "doxxing"? If some nefarious group decided to launch attacks against TH-cam channels for some reason, maybe as a way to eliminate competition for eyeballs for instance, or maybe just because they can cause drama. I don't know if there would be any way for a channel owner to be able to figure that out or not. I wonder if TH-cam could figure it out. Or have figured it out and can't talk about it because of potential criminal investigations going on to track down the nefarious entities behind it. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it seems like a possibility to me.
You had the word "killed" in the title and they still share it... I lost 90% of the traffic of an evergreen Shorts after converting it to a brand channel
TH-cam is coming to an end, if any advice to give to creators is to create there channels on other platforms and offer boosts to there supporters, TH-cam is always going to be a platform that comes to an end and it is on the path to that demise. They also do not give a toss about creators, harsh i know but true.
This is about de-platforming selected content creators. It isn't a bug.
Annie Dube has just done a video on this glitch. 1000s are affected and its since the new year
Really sorry!
How is it that none of the big companies fix the issues with the bot farms ran on their platforms, there is where the invalid traffic icomes from. Any time a big creator post a video there will be a massive wave of spam/scam comments same on IG you post anything, and get a wave of Sponsors/add bots telling you to go "promote it" on their bot pages.
Hi Andy - sorry to hear of your issues. It is awful what AI is doing to the world in general.
I lost my instagram business account (Thorsen Joinery) last year as Meta decided my age verification was not valid and locked my account with over 5.5k followers.
I left FB and IG completely and will not go back.
I'm only on youtube to watch quality content such as yours.
Big corporations do not care about individuals - only about profit.
You're joking! I used to follow you - thought I hadn't seen much from you lately. That would explain it! Crazy world. I enjoy your Twitter / X posts too... but I have to be careful what I say about that. All utter insanity. 👍👍 Oh, and btw for some reason your post was quarantined on here!! Wtf is going on ?!? 😬
@@SmallBusinessToolbox It's called sadistic leftism. 😡
I had the same issue but instead of dropping my revenue, they just closed my Adsense account entirely. 97% of my traffic was driven by TH-cam recommending my content themselves, so I believe that there is definitely a bug somewhere. I've been searching through my contacts to see if there's anyone I know that I can reach out to to help with this
That's crazy! And very scary. I've heard this is possible. The whole ecosystem seems to be incredibly fragile and nobody seems to know what's going on. 😬
Very worrying.
I thought (on your bigger channel) that once you got to 100k subscribers you got a dedicated TH-cam manager to chat to and help? Obviously not. Yes very worrying if Adsense was turned off, once a channel loses traction even if they fix it you then lose all that traction and traffic. Hope it gets sorted for you.
With regards to music I only ever use the free TH-cam Audio tracks, I’ve had issues with supposedly non copyright music from other sources!
Had the same problem with Envato Elements' music.
Did You solved the problem?
Nope. 😪
What is youtube playing at?! This is VERY scary! We really should have better customer service than this!
Yup! Crazy stuff. TH-cam just don't care. Blogs is where it's at!! 😁👍👍
I wonder if this could be due to other channels paying for bot views, and to make the paid views to their channels appear legit, they also have the bots view videos on other channels, such as yours. This is just a theory, but if someone wanted to pay for bot traffic, I could see how they'd want those bots to view content on other channels too, in addition to their own channel, to try to make the artificial views of their videos appear legit. Otherwise, if the bots/paid views only viewed the videos of their channel, it would likely be less effective for them and they'd be more likely to have their channel flagged. I think when people pay for bot traffic they want those bots to view videos on other people's channels too so that it doesn't appear that all of the bot traffic is just viewing the videos on their own channel.
Yep they just demonitized me for making too many shorts
What's mind blowing is that this "Invalid Traffic" problem has been around forever since the dawn of Adsense... and the tech whizzes at Adsense, while they can "identify" if traffic is invalid, have still NOT come up with a way to IGNORE that traffic on a case by case basis!!! Sounds a simple enough solution for me. It's certainly a LOT easier than a content creator trying to work out WTF is happening and how to "fix" it. Good luck mate!
TH-camrs should have gotten together years ago and created a better platform.
Hi, I have had the same issue occur twice. We run live cameras/streams that have been up for over a year at a time. My guess is that these live streams are embedded in third party sites that are dodgy or have been subject to dodgy click-bots. Or maybe something about the way they are accessed through external sites raises a flag. Here's the approach I took to get ad revenue restored:
- Email TH-cam Creator Support through the back end contact form - clearly outline the specifics of the issue.
- As someone who works at a place with chat and form -contact, I would recommend that you never use chat, it's frustrating for you and the (human) bot alike.
- TH-cam Creator Support will reply with an invalid traffic FAQ. Even when I explicitly linked the FAQ and said "Please don't reply with this FAQ as I have already read it" they sent it lol
- Reply to that and TH-cam Creator Support might follow any reply with an FAQ about 'appropriate content' which is irrelevant
- I had to request escalation
- Created a Twitter account strictly to @ Team TH-cam who said contact creator support and linked to the FAQ
- After an escalated reply to the email with no suggestion of definite resolve, ad revenue restored after about 10 days
Other things to note:
- You'll see it's only affecting specific videos - check each video's revenue > how much advertisers pay, and you'll see the drop. Some videos will be unaffected
- It's not only high CPM/RPM - we are a distinctly low-medium RPM channel but maybe creators getting $15-30 RPM (that's high) feel it a lot more
- It does affect views - check your impressions and you'll see a drop
- On the plus side you'll find a new audience - I don't search for UK tax/business but obviously my cookies aligned perfectly with this video...
- I guess this is why Think Media, Film Booth, VidIQ, Channel Makers/Nate Black, Oliur Online are always saying you that relying on ad revenue is unreliable
Hoping it gets resolved! If it does, maybe make a follow up video about the path to resolution in your case. The opaqueness of the issue is pretty painful.
TH-cam has been morally bereft for years, awash with adverts from business tutors whose only business has been to teach others how to make a business teaching others how to make a business (pyramid scheme). If I was to make video for youtube it would be to promote another project, in and of itself I never considered it to be a genuine income stream. Your content is great BTW so TH-cam's loss
TH-cam recommended this video to me, I don't know who you are or what your channel is about, but I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. I can't imagine the stress of it all. It's honestly terrifying and I wish there was something we could do. Really hope they get this mess in order!
Really sorry to hear this Andy. I refer people to both the Gosforth Handyman and Small Business Toolbox channels because you make really useful content. It's reasonable for you to want to receive ad revenue, if advertisers a bidding to place adverts within your content. I doubt it is a bug. It seems much more likely that it is a deliberate policy to make the algorithm oversensitive. I do hope this gets fixed, but if it doesn't, you should look for another platform and/or business model.
Thank you! It seems to have hit a lot of similar sized channels around the same time. Fingers crossed it's a bug and it gets fixed. 😬
YEEES !! This happened to me on Aug 17th! Down 65%!!! And it has not fixed itself in 3 weeks! Mirror image of what you are dealing with. ANd I have been doing videos for 10 years!!!! I am trying to make it to the end of the year, hoping it fixes itself but going on a month now and nothing has changed. And they answer my emails and chats with form emails and messages. so sad!
10k subscribers and experienced the same problem starting around September 3.
Views the same or up but revenue down 60-70%.
Finance niche
TH-cam has been trying to take as much as possible and giving back as little as possible (from creators), especially when they came up with the scheme where you have to pay to get more viewers...
It sounds like this problem comes from Google/TH-cam depending too much on AI tools. Everyone who has worked with machine learning app development knows that false positives, aka hallucinations, are a huge problem.
This hit me a month ago and has affected my larger videos. I have a smaller channel but a handful of viral videos with high CPM. Those are the ones affected. My smaller videos don’t seem to be affected. I don’t think it has anything to do with you clicking on your own videos. The algorithm only counts the first 2. It totally sucks.
Big thanks for this video, and so so sorry to hear about this. Absolutely rubbish system and reaction.
I'm terrified the same will happen to me, because I have a number of channels - and sometimes I watch through my videos, eg for captions - while I'm logged into 'the other channel'.
I'm sure it's not this - but noticed your mention at 8:32 that you have other channels.
It would still make no sense whatsoever, but my family watch my videos - on the same IP address. I'm paranoid enough to think that this will some time trigger this attack on Creators between 10k & 100k subs...
I'm sure you're contacting all you can but have you reached out to Rene Ritchie the TH-cam Creator Liaison?
Good luck with pressing on, it's a huge help for all of us.
YT puts a lot of obstacles in front of Creators. Even if they meet requirements, there are so many things that can go wrong, it's almost too risky to take it seriously. I struggled to get monetized because YT thought I used content from other channels. I did not, but it didn't matter; I was accused of the infamous "re-used content" spiel. After eleven months I tried one last time and presto, it worked. Now I'm finally monetized, but in the meantime I haven't uploaded anything. So it's like starting over.
Hey Andy,
Thankfully your video popped up in my feed because I too have been hit with this BS and have been researching this to death as well.
When I saw your screenshot at 6:40, my jaw dropped because that's the precise day my revenue dropped dramatically as well. The thing I noticed that stood out in the analytics for me was the Ad impressions per view. On and before August 11th my videos ALWAYS had a positive ratio of Ad impressions to views. To be precise, on August 11th my channel had 6692 views with 8807 ad impressions (or a ratio of 1.32 ad impressions for each view); whereas on August 12th, I had 7521 views with only 5866 ad impressions (or a ratio of 0.78 ad impressions for each view). Since then, my ratio has never been over 0.82/1 and has been as low as 0.6/1). Before August 12th, my ratio has never (excluding when I first started) been below 1.3/1 and has been as higher that 1.5/1 on several occasions.
I have been thinking of making a video like yours, and might do so in the near future. The accusations on TH-cam's part that implies that somehow we are at fault for this alleged "invalid traffic" is both ridiculous and insulting. I am sure there is such a thing as invalid traffic, but it's clear that their system is broke and needs to be fixed. I just hope that they step up at some point and admit there is a problem and fix it.
Good Luck with this. I'm going to look for your Tweet and RT it.
The thing is that artificial intelligence does not exist, but it is gonna ruin everything anyway.
Wow the more I hear you the more I am upset I pay TH-cam $26 a month for a premium account! Literally if they don’t fix this for you within 30 days I will literally call them and tell them I want to cancel my membership because of what they are doing to you and other creators. I think if a-lot of us customers who pay for a premium membership complain and threaten to cancel their service maybe they will do something about it. We are with you!!!!
Can i askHow are you making a full time living with 26,000 subs please , im not making anything anymore
Looks like time for a class action as it's happening everywhere.
I got hit by the same bug, unfortunately the support team is useless, i can only hope this it will be fixed which i doubt it, i've seen content creators having this problem from last year.
TH-cam has no problem runining the livelihood of hard working creators and will go to length to ignore any of their concerns. But tell them that someone somewhere said something about the vaccines, or is spreading 'dangerous' information about elections, and they'll be right on top of it. 🤡
Isn't leftism great!? 😡
/sarc
Make no mistake, that's EXACTLY what is driving all of this.
It's not just TH-cam it's anything attached to your AdSense account like a WordPress website, they never warned me about invalid traffic they just dismantled my AdSense account no questions asked I tried to fight it, but never heard back from TH-cam... it's terrible!
Crazy stuff! I only use AdSense for TH-cam but yes I've heard similar things.
Thanks for sharing this informative video. A couple of things come to mind.
Have you checked your traffic sources to see if there is anything strange in there?
And, my theory is that a service is adding competing videos to their own playlist and using VPN services to loop play the videos, thus harming legit creators.
Good luck resolving this mate. I've gotten huge value from your channel over the years.
Thank you so much!
Perhaps the issue is occurring outside of TH-cam. I’m unfamiliar with the TH-cam backend. Are you able to track where your videos have been reposted on third-party websites?
I am so sorry this happened to you. This happened to another creator I watch and she has 38k subs so I agree that it seems to be happening to mid sized channels. I started a TH-cam channel in July and I watch the video I upload to make sure it looks ok and to pin the comment. I hope YT doesn't see this as a bad thing. Ugh!
They did the same to me and they are putting it on many channels. When you started making such low revenue they put that note on it.
i had exactly the same issue ! they do not help us with it at all ! just copy pasting .. btw my cpm is low
Andy, this is interesting, especially as YT has just increasing the subscription (for ad free experience) price significantly!
Yup, I think there's problems behind the scenes. Massively more ads. Huge price increase for TH-cam Premium. Algorithm is all over the place. 🙄
This has happened to me on the 18th August.... Exactly the same and the cpm is way off the rpm now.
Sorry to hear! Crazy stuff. 😥
I am sorry this is happening. It is really frightening what is going on with youtube. They really need to pay attention to the creators who literally make youtube what it is.