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Interview
Neil Stokes - 5 March 2017 2.00 h

Your 'friend' on the Internet

Roc Massaguer Every Monday, English Hour airs the interview series Going Native. This time Neil talks to influencer Roc Massaguer, known online under his alias OutConsumer.
- Neil Stokes
Do I call you a YouTu­ber? Or an in­flu­encer?
I don't like any of those names; I just try to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, but I sup­pose in­flu­encer is the word.
What does that en­tail?
I tell sto­ries re­lated to video games. I play video games and I have fun, and try to ex­plain how it makes me feel so that peo­ple can re­late. When I'm play­ing, sto­ries come into my head and I try to ex­plain them, like you would to a friend. I try to do so with a lit­tle hu­mour. I also do video blogs and some­times just talk to the cam­era about my life. For ex­am­ple, I am a par­ent now and I have a very young au­di­ence, so I think it's in­ter­est­ing for them to hear from a ‘friend' who has more ex­pe­ri­ence than them who can ex­plain some­thing use­ful. That is the main goal.
How did it come about?
I started six years ago but it was never planned. I don't have a busi­ness plan, it's just what­ever hap­pens and it feels more nat­ural like that. I started out be­cause I wanted to ex­plain things to peo­ple, and then it started grow­ing and I started mak­ing money until it be­came im­pos­si­ble to do my job and at the same time the YouTube chan­nel, so I had to de­cide be­tween them. Since then it has evolved as I evolve and the busi­ness evolves. I see it as an op­por­tu­nity to do dif­fer­ent things and I am in a very priv­i­leged po­si­tion in which peo­ple lis­ten to me, so I try to take ad­van­tage of that. But it wasn't planned.
How do you make money?
There are four sources of in­come. One is di­rect ad­ver­tis­ing on the site, the ban­ners and so on, which you get a share of. An­other is spon­sor­ship, when com­pa­nies pay you to say some­thing, to wear some­thing, to show some­thing. Then there is you own mer­chan­dis­ing: you write a book, you get shirts made, which the peo­ple who like you pay for. And the fourth is do­na­tions, like crowd­fund­ing. Most YouTu­bers have a bal­ance be­tween the four types.
Is it hard main­tain­ing these sources?
You are on you own, which is the beauty of it. That makes it hard but also re­ward­ing. It is still not an es­tab­lished in­dus­try, but now it is eas­ier. In the be­gin­ning it was like the Wild West. Your cap­i­tal, your value comes from your fans – how many you have are and what your re­la­tion­ship with them is. If you have a good re­la­tion­ship and they are en­gaged and lis­ten to you, then you have a lot of value. And if you have a lot of value, the rest just comes. But the first thing, and the hard­est, is har­vest­ing your fan base. And what is very im­por­tant is that it is not just the num­ber of fans, but the re­la­tion­ship you have with them.
Ex­plain that re­la­tion­ship.
I may have more than 700,000 sub­scribers but not every one might want to watch every video, or maybe they watch it but don't care about what you say. How­ever, if you say this video game is re­ally good and you should buy it, and they go and buy it, then you have value, be­cause you are able to in­flu­ence them. Let's say you have a prob­lem and you need money, and they send you money, then you have real en­gage­ment. It's not al­ways about money, but imag­ine you have 2,000 fol­low­ers, which doesn't seem like a lot, but if they all do what you say, for ex­am­ple, about trains, mak­ing you strong in that sec­tor, then you have value. You might have con­tent that goes viral and every­one sees it, but if they don't en­gage and react to it, then there is no value. If a com­pany says its prod­uct is the best, no one be­lieves them, but if my ‘friend' on the in­ter­net says it's good and he uses it, then maybe I'll be­lieve it.
That's a big re­spon­si­bil­ity.
As your value is your re­la­tion­ship with your view­ers, if you lie to them then your cap­i­tal falls. That makes it risky to lie or mis­lead be­cause in the long run you lose out. And if your cap­i­tal drops then it is hard to come back from that. It's just you and so it's easy to fall into the trap of feel­ing you are per­fect, which is ob­vi­ously not true. There is the temp­ta­tion to take a lot of money to say what they want you to say. What I do now is I only ad­ver­tise prod­ucts I re­ally like and use, and I al­ways say it is an ad­ver­tise­ment. You don't lie to your friends, and on YouTube it is the same.
What about the temp­ta­tion just to please your fol­low­ers?
That's tricky be­cause it is a con­tra­dic­tion: you want to please them but at the same time you want to be au­then­tic and true to your­self. I de­cided I was going to do my thing, what I like and hope­fully you will like it too. If not, you can go crazy. Imag­ine ask­ing a thou­sand peo­ple what they like, it's im­pos­si­ble to please them all. That makes it im­por­tant to do what I like.
Is there much ri­valry be­tween YouTu­bers?
It was nasty five years ago, be­cause it was the Wild West and we didn't know any bet­ter. Then we saw that way every­one loses. If two YouTu­bers are fight­ing, both lose be­cause you share the same fans. The best idea is to col­lab­o­rate, if you work to­gether then it is win-win.
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