YouTube has been hounding me for several months now to partner 4 videos. At first, I was very hesitant and I really didn’t want to partner anything on my YouTube channel. I figured that it was a fair trade. My excellent content for some free exposure. But YouTube does not see it this way and they do react if you do not partner.

After refusing the partnership about 3 times, I noticed my activity on the YouTube channel and videos dropped quite drastically. Believe it or not I also noticed a drop in traffic to the website too. Remember that Google owns YouTube. So I got the impression that YouTube and Google tend to “punish” you if you do not accept their partnership offers. I have heard the same thing from other larger YouTube channels as well. Other channels that are far more successful than mine. It seems some of them suffered this punitive action as well and ended up partnering with YouTube in the end for the good of the channel.

That is where we are today. After sticking to my refusal for about 2 months I realized that it was not in the best interest of the YouTube channel or the website. Therefore, as of last week sometime, 4 Catspit videos have been partnered by YouTube and display advertisements in the small pop ups that appear at the bottom of the video player. There will certainly be more videos coming up soon that will be eligible for the same partnership and I will allow it for those as well.

I just figured that cooperating with YouTube and Google will be in the best interest of the entire Catspit internet project and allow for as much exposure as possible through the free venues such as YouTube and the Google search engines which rely on website content. I am not interested in earning money from the YouTube partnership, although any revenue earned will help keep the project going.

I just want to make it clear that this is not about money. It is about getting the most traffic out of these free venues. If no one visits my website or watches my videos, then what is the point of my continuing efforts? I am also going to be adding some Google AdSense to the home page of the Catspit website. I believe this may help with the Google search results.

If you think that Google treats every website fairly and bases search results solely on website content, I think you are mistaken. I believe, with good reason, that cooperating with Google or YouTube will put you in good standing with them. If you partner with them and let them advertise with you, I think they will be more prone to index my content and display it on search results. After all, if they never show your page with AdSense advertisements on it, they will never earn anything from it.

Therefore, as I have said, I am going to play with having some AdSense advertisements on the home page of the Catspit website. I will study the results and see if the traffic improves as a result. If not, I will remove the ads. If it does prove to be beneficial to search engine results on Google, then they will stay on the homepage only.

Please know that I am interested only in increasing traffic to YouTube and the Catspit website. I am not trying to make money from YouTube or Google AdSense. It is just a tactical maneuver which I hope will ensure the continued traffic to my YouTube channel and website. Maybe it will even increase the activity for both venues.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading!