“What are your long term goals for Blimey Cow?”

I sat in a room of people who had gathered to discuss our YouTube channel and pondered the question posed to me, adjusting myself awkwardly on the couch as I tried to formulate a response. Business meetings will probably never come naturally for me.

Where do I want Blimey Cow to go?

They inquired because we were discussing ways that they could help us grow Blimey Cow as a brand. In the short term, I had told them, I wanted us to be able to do Blimey Cow full time. I am not after fame and fortune, I told them… I want to be able to make a living doing this thing we love to do.

But long term? Well, I had not much thought about that.

After a few moments spent fumbling over my words, I finally formulated: “I just want to make people think.” Within the confines of the discussion, it was an admittedly strange response. No dollars and cents, no bottom lines, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… all I really want is to get people to think.

And therein lies our great dilemma. Let me back up.

Up until the writing of this letter, we have been playing very close to the chest all of the changes that have been going on behind the scenes at Blimey Cow. It is finally time to let you in on what exactly we have been up to.

Right now, Blimey Cow is an incredibly time-consuming hobby that brings in very little income.

We spend as much time throughout the week working on Blimey Cow as we responsibly can while still taking care of our more important and pressing obligations. Here’s the thing, though: we love doing Blimey Cow. At this point, we would be lost without it. It is our creative outlet, and we are honored that, for a lot of you, it is your online entertainment of choice.

So, we have spent the last few months in business meetings.

We have been comparing notes, discussing options, and listening to marketing strategies. We are attempting to find a way to make Blimey Cow financially viable so that we can do it full-time. Over the past several months, I have learned a lot about business and marketing. I know all of the terms that marketers use, and I understand a lot of the ins and outs of the business.

The problem is that there are very few ways to do this without making Blimey Cow something that it is not.

Whether we are talking about advertisers or integrated marketing or losing some amount of creative control over what we are doing… the bottom line is, Blimey Cow may have to become more than just Jordan, Kelli, and myself if it is going to make money. These are the kinds of discussions that we have begun having.

I will be completely upfront with you and say that I am uncomfortable with that idea.

I love the way we do things now, and I wish more than anything that we could find a way to do this full-time, while keeping everything “in house.” I feel as though lot of the appeal of Blimey Cow is that we are just three kids who decided to make videos- normal everyday people trying to figure life out, just like you.

If you take nothing else away from this letter, please know this:

When we go into marketing meetings, it is easy to start throwing around terms like “demographics,” “fans,” and “viewership,” while looking at numbers and figures and losing sight of the fact that every single one of you that watches us is a human being with hopes, dreams, and aspirations. You live a busy and hectic life, but still take time out of your day to drop in on us and see what we are up to. Many of you even make time to communicate with us. You invest in our lives, and for that, we are forever grateful.

You are not a demographic. You are a person.

And we work hard to remember that fact when we have these different meetings where things are looked at in terms of bottom lines, rather than relationships. We try our best to remember why it is that you enjoy our videos in the first place.

If you tuned in simply hoping that we would make you laugh, well, let’s be honest, there is a ton of much funnier stuff on the internet. Rather, we have gathered from the messages that you send us, that you enjoy viewing online video content that gives you something to think about. You like watching something every week that does not insult your intelligence or spoon-feed you solutions, but instead attempts to stop you in your tracks and simply ask…

“Does any of this make any sense? Or is there a better way?”

We understand we are doing something somewhat unique from the rest of the video content available on the internet, and we do not want to do anything to jeopardize the trust that we have built with you.

Bringing other people into the equation will inevitably change that relationship.

We would work hard to ensure that the change would be for the better, but there is no denying the fact that Blimey Cow is what it is because we have no one telling us how we need to approach our content or what we need to talk about on a weekly basis. There is no middleman whatsoever, even if that middleman says that we have complete creative freedom to do as we wish. No matter how great a deal or a contract that we sign is, bringing others into the fold inevitably affects the closeness of our relationship with you. There is no getting around that fact.

In Conclusion.

With all of that said, the questions we are working through right now are…

1. How do we make money when our long term goal ultimately is not to make millions and millions of dollars, but rather just to make an honest living, while getting people thinking?
2. How do we make money, while still remaining the YouTube channel that you know and trust?
3. And how do we remain intellectually honest with ourselves, while doing the things that appear necessary in order to make money?

We would love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and opinions as we navigate through this new adventure. Send us an email at contact@blimeycow.com.

Sincerely,
Josh Taylor