I adore tie necked tops (a.k.a pussy bow blouses) so I thought I’d try and transform a frumpy, long sleeved 80’s shirt into an awesome bow tie blouse!
That video may seem familiar as I had to reupload it to Youtube – grab the hilarious (yet frustrating) story below:
According to the powers that be at Youtube my vintage blouse refashion tutorial deserved a hard R rating and should only be viewed by those 18 years and older, harumph!
I received this puzzling auto-message from Youtube a few days ago:
After re-watching my quirky character video tutorial I was quite certain that it was simply the title that the Youtube algorithm bots were having a problem with. Unfortunately the incredibly innocent name of the blouse style seemed to have been flagged as “adult content”. I clicked the appeal link, sent over an explanation & a brief history of the garment name and inquired if changing the video title would remove the restriction.
Sadly, it appears that actual humans do not read or respond to the appeal messages as I very quickly received this auto-response:
My video was obviously not “carefully reviewed” as it clearly did not contain adult content of any kind or violate any community guidelines. Sadly, this is just one of the frustrating aspects that online content creators have to deal with. (My 44th birthday post is constantly flagged as “pornographic” by google adsense but that’s a whole other story of frustrating silliness)
Having to delete and remove the original video meant that I not only had to shoot a new, updated outro, re-edit the video + come up with a new “pussy bow” free title, description and design a new thumbnail image but, worst of all, I lost all of the views and engagement on the original upload.
Sadly, Youtube only promotes videos (and channels) with a massive amount of views, engagement and subscribers. Losing any amount of view minutes, comments and reactions shoves small channels like mine even further down in the search results and makes it even more difficult to reach the minimum amount of watch hours required to be monetized and start making money from the content I create for free for my channel.
Luckily the Youtube algorithm bots hadn’t yet discovered and flagged my oldie but goodie vintage dress to pussy bow blouse tutorial so I was able to change the title and redesign the thumbnail image before it was also inexplicably rated R:
How can you help creators on Youtube?
1. Watch videos for at least 30 seconds. Videos viewed for less are not counted towards that all-important 4000 hours of watch time per 12 month threshold that a channel requires to become monetized and receive creator support on Youtube.
2. Subscribe to channels you enjoy. Subscribing is the best way to keep up with new video uploads and community content from the creators you like. Youtube also requires a minimum of 1000 subscribers + 4000 hours of watch time to receive creator support and monetization so subscribing absolutely helps small channels grow and reach their goals.
3. Comment and like. I don’t think there’s anyone online who doesn’t appreciate a quick thumbs up and/or a kind comment, especially when so many of us are the victims of trolls every single day. Engaging with videos lets creators know what their audiences want to see more (or less) of and can can also grab the attention of those algorithm bots to increase search visibility.
Find out how to easily support your fave bloggers here and check out all of my behind the scenes articles right over here!
Want to transform your entire wardrobe for pennies? Grab all of my groovy CoaR tutorial collections right here:
