Producer Profile: Dave Cryer
If there was an award for longevity and doggedness in the YouTube Creator space then surely Dave Cryer would in with a strong chance. Under the channel name “Geekanoids”, the 43-year-old’s been turning out gadget reviews from his base in Folkestone, Kent virtually since the dawn of YouTube. In that time, he’s covered mobile phones, action cameras, watches, laptops and, well, pretty much any electronic item you can imagine.
Mixing up the variety to keep viewers interested, Dave’s product reviews are interspersed with regular question-and-answer videos as well as gadget-based vlog commentaries. His most popular video, with a pretty staggering 2.9 million views, is a review of the Samsung Galaxy S2 II phone (amusingly, Apple’s first generation iPhone gets just 130,000 reviews albeit six years ago when YouTube was still in its infancy. Apple may be pleased to know that Dave now cites the iPhone 5s as his favourite piece of kit “because it enables me to do so many things”)
Unsurprisingly, new technology features heavily in Dave’s own arsenal. Filming is done on the recently-released Panasonic GH4 DSLR camera which shoots Ultra HD (aka 4K) resolution whilst his editing machine is a Mac Pro running Final Cut Pro X.
There’s no word on how much cash Dave generates from his 85,000 subscribers and 55 million channel views but he’s taken the interesting decision to try out Patreon to supplement his YouTube cash.
Patreon is a website that enables fans of video creators to pay regular fixed monthly sums in return for “members-only” benefits such as additional videos, longer duration cuts or behind the scenes tours and so on. Fans can decide which tier of membership they wish to subscribe to, with increasing cost leading to increasing returns.
Given how thin the pickings are for many Creators on YouTube via ad-revenue sharing alone, it’s hardly surprising that Patreon exists but whether Internet viewers are yet ready in their masses to accept paying for content which has long been assumed to be free as of right, is somewhat up in the air.
Other means of keeping the cash flowing for Geekanoids include sponsorship deals and lots (and lots) of affiliate marketing via Amazon shops in the USA, UK, Canada and several other European sites too.
He’s a busy bunny is Dave, not only producing the main channel and its associated website but a string of other, admittedly less subscribed, channels not to mention the full raft of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on.
His top tip for aspiring video producers? Be consistent, original and professional at all times. Check him out, if you feel so inclined, at www.youtube.com/geekanoids