Please read, especially if you are signed up to the mailing list or are subscribed to the Podcast / YouTube channel.
When I started Understand the Bible over five years ago, I decided the best platform to use was YouTube: it was (and is) the premiere video sharing site on the internet. However, it also has some serious shortcomings. In particular, I feel that YouTube’s whole business model is incompatible with what I want to do: YouTube is designed to keep people watching for as long as possible. In a sense, your videos are there to serve their agenda – selling more adverts and making more money.
I am finding that, while the number of subscribers to Understand the Bible is increasing steadily, the number of people actually watching and engaging with UTB content is not. I suspect this is to do with the UTB algorithm and the fact that subscribing to a channel on YouTube really doesn’t mean that much. (It may also be to do with the fact that there isn’t much of an appetite for Christian content out there at the moment, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.)
The whole design of YouTube encourages a ‘consumer’ mentality, where people only watch things which they think are going to entertain them. There is so much choice and competition, it’s very difficult for new channels to find a foothold – especially for someone like me, who doesn’t want to compete by ‘playing the game’. I hope that people subscribe to UTB because they find the content Biblically faithful and relevant to their lives, and want to listen to what I have to say because it them connect with God. I want people to watch the sermons because they want to hear from God’s word, and not because they’ve been enticed in with a catchy title.
What I’d like to do with UTB is build a community of people who really want to learn from God. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small community, but regular engagement is far better than occasionally dipping in for a video title which grabs attention. I have discovered that YouTube is simply not the right place to do this.
This is why I have decided to move Understand the Bible to substack. I have been using Substack for another podcast for a year now, and I have found it a much better experience. Substack has a few features which make it more attractive than YouTube, at least for the kind of content I want to create.
What does all this mean for you?
- I am going to retire the UTB mailing list. If you are signed up, please sign up on Substack instead. All new content will be posted there.
- I am going to close the UTB Patreon account. If you’d like to support UTB, please become a paying subscriber on Substack.
- Substack can automatically post videos to YouTube, so I will continue to post videos there. However, I may not continue doing this indefinitely, so if you’d like to be sure of receiving UTB videos then please sign up to Substack.
- Podcast listeners should find themselves updated automatically, but the show is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts if you have any problems.
Thank you for reading, and please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
