Thanks To YouTube's Recent Announced Changes, The A.L.I.C.E. Files NEEDS Your Help!

With the storms that ripped across the Midwest, I had to relocate and hunker down until crews could start fixing some of the damage in my town. And while I was trying to deal with all of that, I found out that YouTube has just announced new guidelines that have put a massive ticking time clock on our attempts to make The A.L.I.C.E. Files self-sustaining. So if you want to help myself and Alice Liddell claw down a little piece of the sky, and actually keep telling stories to our audience, we really need your help before these new "guidelines" kick in!

Time really is of the essence on this one.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

The Changes (And How They're Going To Screw Creators)

Before I explain what's changing, I need to explain the base line of what YouTube requires, and how tough that already is for creators to deal with. So, let's start there! Because there are 2 levels of monetization that creators already have. Those are:

- 500 Subscribers and 3,000 Watch Hours: This opens things like super fans and smaller forms of monetization, but creators don't actually get any of the ad revenue their videos generate.

- 1,000 Subscribers and 4,000 Watch Hours: This opens up the final tier, allowing creators to make ad revenue off their channels.

To break those things down, the first requires you to get roughly 8 hours of watched content a day, every day, for an entire year. To get the second level, you need 11 hours a day, every day, for an entire year. And I make that for a year part explicit because if you go over that 365 day limit, it starts dropping off previously earned hours so you have to try to make them up.

Basically for a small creator to get monetized they need to have some kind of viral success. Because those watch hours? Those don't count if the viewer has a VPN, or they use an ad blocker, etc. So in reality you're going to need 2-3 times that traffic just to squeak by in the first place.

So how is YouTube gonna fuck this up?

The recent announcement that YouTube put out, though, is they are doubling the requirements to earn ad revenue. So that's 8,000 watch hours (or 20 million short views, if that's your thing), which translates to something like 22 hours of people watching your content every, single day for 365 days in a row.

Details of the announcement, and how bad it is for creators, can be found here on Notebook Check.

We Need Your Help (And Here's How To Do It)

First and foremost, these changes go into effect at the end of January 2027, and according to YouTube those who are already partners with the program will be grandfathered in under the new rules. I am suspicious of this, but it gives us, essentially, 4 months to try to hit the current goals so we can get The A.L.I.C.E. Files monetized (which is going to be a necessity for Alice and I to keep it going, much less to expand our scope).

At time of writing, we have 346 subscribers, and we're just shy of 1,300 watch hours. So, essentially, we're about 1/3 of the way to where we need to be. So, the immediate triage that will help us is:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes (preferably without a VPN or ad blocker to be sure your views count)

- Share the links on your social media channels

- Leave comments and upvotes to help boost engagement so more folks can see us

But what if you want to stop YouTube from putting these restrictions in place, and moving the goal posts for basically any small creator looking to actually become profitable? Well, you can also do some things to yell at YouTube to make it clear how disappointed you are in this announcement, and their proposed policy shift.

- Cancel your YouTube premium membership, and let the site know why

- Yell at them on Twitter (@TeamYouTube and @YTChannelTeam seem to be the best places)

It is, at the end of the day, unlikely that YouTube is going to back off on this, barring some massive backlash from its viewers and larger content creators (and I suggested Twitter because unless you're already a YouTube partner, you can't get hold of them directly). Worse, there aren't really any other places that you can go to make video content and monetize it. I've been looking, and aside from Rumble (which I can't recommend professionally OR politically) there really isn't a website that doesn't use a tip/subscription-based option for paying creators, and people are stretched to the absolute limit as it is.

This is corporate greed, plain and simple. And while I encourage people to raise their voices and yell at the company about it, it's also important to lift up and support the smaller creators who are going to get trampled under this oncoming boot.

So watch things. Subscribe to things. Leave comments, tell your friends, and help all of us out there who are trying to slide under that descending steel door before we're locked out of program eligibility forever... because we're doing our best out here, but most of us aren't going to be able to keep projects like this running if there's no hope that it will ever turn some kind of profit.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

The A.L.I.C.E. Files Crosses A New Threshold (As We Get Closer To Our Season 1 Finale)

It's been 5 months and some change since the trailer debuted on The A.L.I.C.E. Files, and we've been fighting the algorithm every step of the way. Since the series started we've explored the Cthulhu Mythos, the world of Exalted, stories of Old Testament angels in modern-day Los Angeles, tales of Victorian horror, and more! And in addition to that, we also have announcements from the Carroll Institute's staff, and an independent rendition of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

However, we recently crossed a rather important threshold that I wanted to tell folks about... and to ask those willing to listen to give us a hand up so we can blow past the next limit by the time we wrap up season 1!

Maybe two hands up... we're a lot further away than we'd like to be.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

1,000 Hours... Or 25% Of The Way To The Finish Line!

For those who haven't checked out the channel yet, The A.L.I.C.E. Files is an audio drama series with two separate but concurrent stories going on. The first story involves a young woman recruited by the Carroll Institute as a witness cataloger, and the job for the new "Alice" is to review the reports brought back by the Institute's agents from the other side of the rabbit hole... the colloquial name for the machine that opens rifts to other dimensions. The second track of stories are the reports themselves, where we see dramatized tales from these other dimensions, watching/listening to them right alongside Alice.

And we recently crossed the 1,000 hours benchmark!

Celebrate!

On the one hand, that's sort of a big deal. We've been recording, editing, and releasing stuff pretty regularly, and trying to get as many folks onboard for it as possible, so it's nice to get into that 4-digit range. On the other hand, though, YouTube's rules don't allow us to monetize any part of the channel until we have 3,000 watched hours, and 500 subscribers. We won't get a cut of the advertising revenue until we have 4,000 watched hours, and 1,000 subscribers.

 

We're currently at just over 1,000 watched hours, and we have 332 subscribers. Which isn't bad... but hoo boy do we have a long way to go from here!

So What's Happening Between Now And The Season Finale?

At time of writing, we're 11 chapters into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with 1 more to go, we're 9 episodes into Alice's experience in the Carroll Institute, and we have a couple of small asides and announcements from Director Harrington as he breaks the 4th wall to keep the audience updated on what's going on.

Such as his update on the real Alice's basement flooding during the 4th of July storms that tore across the Midwest.

So, that comes out to 24 videos, and a total of roughly 6 hours of content for folks who want to sit down and listen to everything. But there's more on the schedule, and I wanted to lay it out for folks who are interested.

Despite the flooding, Alice managed to get the final chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland recorded, and it should be out August 8. We have two more "regular" episodes of Alice at the Institute (one that is a cross over with the SCP Foundation, and one that delves into the grim darkness of the far future), which will go up on August 1 and August 15 respectively. And once those three videos are up, we'll have the season finale which ties everything together, and sets Alice up for the events of Season 2.

To sum up, that's a month or so of solid releases from where we are now, and an outline of what we'd like to do going forward... but we won't be able to get there without all of you!

Which is why if you'd like to see the channel grow, please consider doing the following to help us out:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes we have up (many of which have clues for the sharp-eyed who enjoy playing ARGs)

- Like and comment on the episodes you like (and to leave your theories about what's happening)

- Share the episodes around on your social media pages so we can drag some more folks into our orbit

If we could get 668 people to subscribe to the channel, that would get us over the subscriber requirement. If all of those new folks watched all of our videos, that would put us well over the 4,000 watched hour requirement as well! Hell, even if all the new folks just watched the Carroll Institute playlist, that would put us only a few hundred hours away from the goal.

On the one hand, this would take a lot of eyeballs and a lot of people to get done... but on the other hand, it's theoretically possible that we could get all of this done by the end of August, and then we could stride into season 2 with the ability to turn this show into a genuine income stream... and it won't cost our listeners a single dime!

So please, if you haven't checked out the channel, we could really use your support. And if you have 1, 2, or maybe even 668 friends (in person or online) we would really appreciate you putting in a good word for us.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Sponsorships Allow Art To Be Made (And We Need Your Help To Get One!)

Do you know why the melodramatic, over-the-top dramas were called soap operas? Because these series (which began as radio dramas, but which eventually made their way to television) were focusing on the housewife demographic, and these shows were sponsored by soap companies. The idea behind it was that the audience would be at home during the day folding laundry and doing chores, and when they heard a certain type of soap sponsored their favorite show they would be more likely to buy that brand because they associated their enjoyment of the program with the soap that helps make it possible.

This is all old hat to us in 2026, because sponsorship deals have become the order of the day in the era of YouTube and Spotify. However, the fact is that writers and creators need that kind of backing in order to keep making their art while also paying their bills... and not everyone can get sponsorship.

However, that's a goal I currently has as co-creator of the audio drama channel The A.L.I.C.E. Files, so I wanted to talk about how you could help us (and any other creators you like, really) start getting offers from sponsors!

 

After all, you can't write if you can't eat and pay your bills.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

The Difference Between Affiliates, Sponsors, and Crowdsourcing

So, there's a lot of terms that get thrown around when discussing how creators get paid, and they can often be confusing if you're a reader or a listener, and not someone who's operating on the business side of the equation when it comes to creating shows, series, and so on. As such, I wanted to break down the differences so that readers understand what the terms mean going forward, and to be sure everyone is on the same page.

- Affiliate: If someone is an affiliate, they don't actually make any money up-front; rather they get a commission based on their sales. As an example, I'm an affiliate for Dubby energy drinks. So if someone clicks this link to go to their sales page, and then makes a purchase (using my code LITERARYMERCENARY for 10% off), then I receive a commission for that sale. For those who are curious, I do use this powdered supplement, and I can highly recommend them for folks who want something that's a lot cheaper than the canned stuff. And because I'm an affiliate, I can put that link in blogs, in videos, etc., and I get paid for sales... but if no one buys anything, then I don't make any money. These deals are easy to get, and basically anyone can sign up for them. I made a video about them a while back, for those who want a deeper dive: Affiliate Earnings, What They Are, And Why You Need Them.

- Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing, or crowdfunding, is when you get your audience (or just random people who get hooked by your pitch) to give you money to help you cover expenses. This covers platforms like Kickstarter (for projects that need one, big push to get made) or like Patreon (for people who pay a subscription fee every month to help keep your work afloat). While this option is very useful for novelists, and for people looking to complete an entire season of a show all at once, this is a direct contribution from the audience to the creator, helping to fund a creative endeavor. Incidentally, check out the Literary Mercenary Patreon page if you want to help this blog keep going!

 

- Paid Sponsorship: When folks talk about sponsorship, this is typically the kind of sponsorship they're referring to. In this arrangement a company will go to the artist, and cut them a check to essentially put a plug for their product in an episode of a show, to review them on stream, or something similar. This is pretty much the same way that Firestone, Blue Coal, and other companies paid radio shows like The Shadow, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and others to have commercials for their products in the middle of an episode. Sometimes there's just the straight cash payment to the creator, and sometimes there might also be bonus earnings for each member or their audience who goes through a link, creating a hybrid between a paid sponsorship and an affiliate deal.

There, now that we're all on the same page as to what I'm talking about, what certain words mean, and how creators earn money, I want to talk a bit about how creators land these opportunities. Because, surprise, it's actually up to all of you whether or not creators can get sponsored when all is said and done!

Yep, It's All About Audience Participation

Let me get back on my old soapbox. Regular readers already know this one, but if you're new around this neck of the Internet, I'm going to explain something very simple. No matter how complicated the algorithms, no matter how much slop is out there, or how simple or complicated a project is, at the end of the day it is the audience that determines whether or not an artist of any stripe makes money. If you participate, and support a creator, then they will get noticed by folks with deeper pockets. And if you don't... well, then they're going to be that tree that fell in the forest that nobody saw or heard.

And some trees are harder to take down than others...

I say that because it's true, and I'm going to use YouTube as an example here. It doesn't matter how many videos you make, or how hard you work... until your channel has 1,000 subscribers, and 4,000 watch hours (or roughly 11 hours and change a day for an entire YEAR), you don't make money from it. And you have to hit those numbers in a single 365-day period of time if you want YouTube to actually share ad revenue with you.

At its core, the site doesn't allow you to make money off your videos unless you A) have an audience of a certain size, and B) a certain amount of eyes on the content that you've made... and getting sponsors is just an extension of this mentality!

Now, nothing is set in stone regarding the following figures. However, when it comes to paid sponsorships, the larger the audience you have, and the more attention your work gets, the better a deal you're going to get. Generally speaking, you shouldn't expect to get approached for a paid sponsorship until your channel has at least 10,000 subscribers (though some product reviewers may be approached if they have an active and loyal following that's smaller). However, all sponsorships are not created equal, and the more subscribers and followers you have, the more generous these deals are going to be.

Why? Well, it's pretty simple. Sponsors are paying for direct access to your community, and the bigger that community is, the more the partnership is going to be worth. That part, at least, is pretty cut and dry.

But I said this is all up to you, and I meant it. So let's take a hypothetical situation.

Let's say, for whatever reason, The A.L.I.C.E. Files becomes wildly popular over the next weekend. We're going to be talking to folks at the Chicago Steampunk Exposition, and the theme is Alice in Wonderland this year, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. We soar past the numbers we need for both subscribers and views as people watch the series, share it with their friends, and subscribe in record numbers for us. Not just the 1,000 subs we need for the basic monetization, but we scoot over the 10,000 subscriber line by the time we get back home and unpack after the long weekend.

If we kept seeing growth like that, even if it was slower and steadier, it would only be a matter of time until we had someone approach us with a sponsorship deal. Maybe it would be Raid: Shadow Legends (groan all you want, they're just an easy example), because they have an entire Alice in Wonderland set of characters, and they want to make the most out of that synergy. Maybe we even get approached by Raycon, and we can tell people how good their headphones are for privately listening to our terrifying tales, or how the clear sound is perfect for editing episodes without constantly interrupting work to recharge them. Regardless, the point is that sponsors will look at the size and fervor of your audience, but also at what kind of pitch they could make to them, and if they're a good fit. After all, you don't want to pitch a product that is antithetical to the needs and wants of a target audience.

The most frustrating part about all of this, though, is that we as creators have no control over this aspect of the business. All we can do is tell the best story possible, and use the tools we have available to try to engage with our audience, and hope that we can cut through all the algorithms, signal throttling, and the waves of slop to reach people who are interested in what we're trying to do.

So, on that note, check out The A.L.I.C.E. Files playlist, or watch the trailer, and see if you'd like to join the crusade to get us the numbers we need to at least get monetized, even if we never make it big enough to catch the eye of a paid sponsor.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

What Stories Would You Like To See On "The A.L.I.C.E. Files"?

As regular readers know, I recently launched a new audio drama YouTube channel in partnership with Alice Liddell called The A.L.I.C.E. Files! While the overarching story of this channel is about the mysterious Carroll Institute and the new "Alice" that's been hired as a witness cataloger, that overarching narrative is punctuated by the stories she finds in the files themselves. These stories come from my and Alice's previously published works, and we're also drawing on public domain books and collections, as well as writing a few fresh stories to add to the collection.

My question for you all this week is a simple one. What stories would you like to see turn up on Alice's desk in Workstation 17?

We have a lot of things to draw on, after all...

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

We're Taking Requests Now (Because They Take Time To Make)

When we sat down to start this channel, I had a handful of dramatized story videos already in the bag. I've been updating them with fresh intros and outros so they add to the channel's overarching story, but these were the seeds of the project that we've been steadily planting over the past month and change.

It started with my story Dead Man's Bluff, which came out of my short story collection The Rejects:

And then we moved on to an audio rendition of my 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, which was one of the most popular fiction posts in my Vocal.media archive:

And there are a handful of future episodes that we're recording fresh intros for. These include:

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Cthulhu Mythos Edition

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, SCP Edition

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Warhammer 40K Edition

- Suffer The Children (also from my collection The Rejects)

- An untitled story from the Exalted tabletop RPG

- A dramatization of my short story Devil's Night, from the Pathfinder adventure path Hell's Rebels

However, once we've finished with those episodes, we'll have a wide open field regarding what shows up on Alice's desk next. And that's why I wanted to take a moment to ask my readers what stories you'd like to see us tackle!

And I'm asking now because we still have some lead time. Because full audio dramas that last between 20 and 30 minutes aren't something we can just make in a single week. We have to check the scripts, corral the voice actors, edit, create the soundscape, create the video... it's a whole process! So we need to start slotting in our new audio dramas now to be sure they're ready in a month or two!

With that said, some of the options available include:

- More published short stories taken from books like The Rejects, or possibly from SNAFU: A Collection of Military Horror, and other anthologies Alice and myself have appeared in over the years.

- Samples of full books, like my novels Old Soldiers or Marked Territory, or some of Alice's books like the period vampire novel Succumb to Darkness or her mermaid fantasy novel Love of The Sea.

- Stories taken from public domain works, such as The King in Yellow, or the works of writers like Lovecraft, Poe, and other classic authors.

- Creepy pastas, such as the stairs in the woods, ritual games, and other instances that might come to the Institute's attention.

- Fresh stories that have never appeared anywhere else before, written just for the channel!

Whatever your vote is, please go to The A.L.I.C.E. Files Trailer, and in the comments leave your vote for the kinds of stories you'd like to see going forward! Please mention that this is in response to the Literary Mercenary post, so that we can keep track of how many folks are actually voting.

Also, if you want to help ensure that we have the momentum to make the episodes you're requesting, please subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files, watch the episodes that are already up (it's only about an hour and a half of stories so far, so it's easy to binge), leave comments, and tell your friends about us! We're still growing, and doing our best to get this thing monetized so we can keep the wheels turning, and telling stories for all of you to listen to!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.