If you're a content creator, I encourage you to allow everyone to use your videos and never file copyright strikes. The best thing you could possibly hope for is that somebody else loves your videos so much that they'll actually clip them and turn them into highlights. I want to tell you what I contributed to this and explain what happened.
I'm Jerry Banfield, and I have six YouTube channels. I'm grateful I've been on YouTube since 2011. I deleted everything last year and started over fresh with six new channels this year, and I've gotten a million views on my new channels this year organically. Then on September 3rd, exactly a month ago today, a channel named The Barry Janfield Show started up. All this channel does is take videos I've made and make highlight videos out of them. I put out an average of 90 minutes of content every day, and The Barry Janfield Show goes through all of my content and makes amazing edits of my videos. He uses an avatar, so he doesn't even have to put his own face on it. Some of his videos about whatever I talked about get more views than the videos I made myself, and it's amazing because he's out there and new people are able to discover me directly off his videos.
If you're a Jerry Banfield fan, these videos are awesome. You can make sure you didn't miss anything in all my new videos, because he goes through all six of my channels, including my gaming videos, and pulls the highlights together. I'm so grateful for this channel. It's a dream come true, because if I were to pay somebody to do this, it would cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. In the past I've spent that money. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars paying people to go through my videos and do something that wasn't even this good in quality, and then I still had to upload it myself.
Why I don't want a share of the revenue
You might wonder, "Are you sure you don't want to monetize this channel or claim it somehow?" Anybody is welcome to make a fan channel from my videos. Anybody is welcome to take any of my videos and do whatever they want with them. I've never filed a copyright strike in 15 years, regardless of what people have said about me. With The Barry Janfield Show, what he set up is something that could pay him out hundreds of dollars, and if I keep blowing up, this channel might make him thousands of dollars one day, and he gets to keep all of the revenue. If he has other stuff he wants to promote, he can slip that in there too. That's what's amazing: this channel promotes me, so it's a symbiotic relationship. I celebrate it, and I encourage anyone who wants to take my videos to just make videos and do whatever you want with them.
Some people in my position might try to claim a share of the revenue. I don't need that, because this channel is giving value to all the people who follow me and it's expanding my reach. For every view on these videos, he probably got at least 10, if not 20 or 30 thousand impressions, and there are people who saw this who had never seen one of my videos before.
Fan channels are how Andrew Tate blew up. Andrew Tate blew up because there were a whole bunch of people taking his videos and putting them out on their own channels, and they were keeping all the income. On top of that, if The Barry Janfield Show sold a call off his website, he'd get an affiliate percentage. I need to set all of that up on the backend, and I'm exploring it.
How I got somebody to make an entire channel about me
You might wonder how I got somebody to make an entire channel about me. I did videos that people were reacting to. I did videos that were very raw, like I'm doing now: raw, authentic videos telling my personal stories. If you notice, these videos are getting watched because they're interesting. "Jerry Banfield said his integrity made him broke." "Jerry paid $625 for a date and said no to Zoom." "Jerry versus ICP." These early videos immediately started getting views. "Jerry spent $1,300 on dating apps and sold a video for $2,000." "Jerry watched his date walk out and finished his tea." "Jerry goes on Pat Dixon," so there he gets Pat Dixon in the audience. "Jerry gives Jesus an ultimatum." Barry is making awesome titles here. When I went on Who Are These Podcasts, he made "Jerry Banfield on Who Are These Podcasts." "Jerry's wild $2,300 strip club adventure." Because I'm sharing my own personal stories, which are often embarrassing, I have content that's worth reacting to.
To me, the meta going forward is to be the content people react to. While so many people are just reacting to content, if you really want to get some views, you want to create content that people react to. In order to do that, I put out videos that often embarrass me. I tell my worst stories and my biggest failures, and that's what most people don't want to do. Then I clip them and put them into Shorts. Shorts help someone like Barry Janfield discover me in the first place, and then my long-form videos deliver on the content.
If you look at my dating channel, for example, it has been a perfect example of videos that have gotten popular off of this. Here's one: "I paid $625 to argue with a woman for 30 minutes." What a lot of YouTubers are trying to do is give advice and tell people what to do, but especially as AI continues to take over, I've come to believe that's pointless. What humans are looking for is to hear what other humans are going through. There are a few people who have reacted to that video, and they've gotten a lot more views on some of their reactions than I have on the video itself. Making videos like this gets people to react, and when you keep doing that over and over again, you attract people like this. I'm very grateful to have attracted The Barry Janfield Show to me. I wanted this in the past so badly. I wanted someone who would go through and edit my videos, and now it just happened.
Why it happened, and how I support fan channels
It also happened because I don't try to fight with other people about my content. I don't usually react to other people using my content unless it's positive like this. I'll even supply the Google Drive files if that would help. He has done all of this without any intervention on my part. The thumbnails are awesome, and this is promoting both of us. That's why I promote his show. Anyone who does a great fan channel for me, I will promote your channel and encourage people to follow it. I hope you get monetized, and I hope you can make a living doing videos about me. He could also pivot to doing whatever he wanted at any time.
In fact, here's another fan channel someone made, called Jerry Banfield Viral Sensation. This channel actually paid $2,000 to buy the queen video from me and premiere the video first. I still haven't shown the video on any of my own channels, but this channel paid because they wanted to premiere it on theirs. This is another channel that went through hundreds of my videos and made all kinds of clips from them, and it even re-uploaded entire videos of mine, literally just re-uploading videos I deleted. I don't have any problem with that.
To me, the ideal position to be in as a content creator is to generate content that brings in people who make fan channels like this, and to encourage your fans to use your content, to copy your content, to re-upload your content, and to do whatever they want with it. I'm extremely grateful for everybody. To the guy who does this channel, Barry Janfield: I love my fans. A fan channel is the biggest compliment, and any money you make off of it, please keep all of it and enjoy all of it. Anything I can do to help, just let me know. You can find more of my thoughts on growing on YouTube in my Content Creators playlist.
So, a big thank you. I hope other YouTubers realize that you should encourage people to use and react to your content as much as possible.