eurogaguest1980 wrote:
I’ve been considering doing this, but I read somewhere that after a while they give you ads even if you paid for premium – I take that this is not actually true?
I’ve had YT premium for probably a year and a half, and never seen a single ad since. I’d be extremely pissed if I saw one.
I eventually paid because the quality of the ads were really pissing me off. For example, ads for random mind-numbing online games, which annoy me two fold because A) I have precisely 0 interest in spending my time doing that stuff and B) the fact that apparently there are humans who do waste their finite existence on this. It’s worth the £12.99 a month to avoid such frustration :)
@Peter I’m not sure what the problem is though. TV has had adverts for ever, and trust me an advert for “love island” or “married at first sight” is just as mind numbing/infuriating as one for “hero wars”.
In fact most paid TV services, such as Sky for example, are still full of ads.
If someone wants to make videos that other people enjoy watching then that’s great.
Sure but we mostly record, or just watch with a delay by going for a pee after it starts, and then fast-skip the ads. YT stops you skipping ads for some seconds.
Peter wrote:
It doesn’t actually work.
Not as stand alone, most people also use patreon or similar fund risers plus product placement. But then it can work quite well. It’s also a question what you expect, particularly in the aviation field. Live of it, not the first priority there but to get some money to run the airplane with it, pay for fuel, maintenance, maybe get some product placement freebees, all of this helps to operate a plane.
eurogaguest1980 wrote:
I read somewhere that after a while they give you ads even if you paid for premium – I take that this is not actually true?
Not in my experience, no.
Peter wrote:
BTW I think you can download a YT video anyway, using one of the various YT downloaders.
Yes, but that is a different story. YT Download keeps the video local and you use the YT app to watch it offline. If you download it via a download app (many of which include malware apparently) it is in a converted format, depending on which program you use in good or bad quality. And the downloaders which do work are mostly not free either unless you wish watermarks and similar things on the videos.
IO390 wrote:
It’s worth the £12.99 a month to avoid such frustration :)
Yep.
Peter wrote:
The other (vast majority) dream of getting rich but all that happens is that YT makes money (while collecting valuable user data which is then flogged to other media channels) while they make pennies.
True for most. But I suspect that there might be a small group who see something else in it. A tax saving.
When someone does their private flying then they have to spend all their costs from their after tax income.
But if they now do the same flights as they would have done anyway, but now record it and put it onto a YT channel, do a little promotion, maybe some product placement, they can write off all the costs of the flight against that income. In most cases the expenses will out weight the income and thus the business is loss making. In some countries (I suspect many) they will be able to use this loss to reduce tax on other income. Hence they will have significantly reduced flying costs!
How long they can go being loss making before the tax authorities reach the conclusion that this is a hobby and not a serious business will probably depend on the country. But for some it may be motivation to make a YT channel but not to put a huge effort into it! Just enough to be a legitimate (but bad) attempt at being a business.
Loads of free downloaders out there, and you get .mp4 in a chosen resolution. Or just a .mp3 if you wanted just the sound track.
Obviously I can’t speak for others but I don’t have time to watch mostly over-dramatised videos on, ahem, flying a plane 
I’ve been doing it for > 3000hrs and haven’t killed myself yet.
How long they can go being loss making before the tax authorities reach the conclusion that this is a hobby and not a serious business will probably depend on the country
Nobody cares if you run a company making a loss. Every Ltd Co syndicate does that. What gets tax people excited is if you then relieve that loss into another business which is paying corporation tax 
Peter wrote:
Sure but we mostly record, or just watch with a delay by going for a pee after it starts, and then fast-skip the ads. YT stops you skipping ads for some seconds.
You can pay for YT premium for £20 a month and get YT music (basically Spotify). Then you also have ad free YT and the ability to download videos and watch them offline and in the background. I personally think just the YT music itself is worth the price, getting the ad-free YT on top is a bonus.
We get hardly any Youtube ads in the Isle of Man. I always notice how many more ads there are whenever we go to the UK or Europe, it’s almost unwatchable they are so frequent (far worse than commercial TV).
From here
Nobody cares if you run a company making a loss. Every Ltd Co syndicate does that. What gets tax people excited is if you then relieve that loss into another business which is paying corporation tax
You wouldn’t do it inside a company. You’d do it personally (sole trader) so that the losses are available to use personally, against other income. And that was my point, that eventually the tax authorities would likely say that this want a real business, but you probably get lots of tax efficient flying until then!
And then, in any modern country, you will get busted retrospectively Also, in any modern country, the tax office has a right to demand separate accounts for each distinct activity, so you can’t offset stuff like that…
I think YT is shooting itself in the foot with adverts, because those who spend their lives on YT like to sit back and just watch it, not have to get up regularly and Skip each advert.
