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Product Updates

As a company that specializes in creating media sites for content creators, Cereal understands the importance of monetizing your content. Offering premium subscriptions is a great way for content creators to supplement their income and give their fans exclusive access to additional content and community experience.

In this article, we will provide a comprehensive guide for content creators on how to get started with offering premium subscriptions on their own site.
 
### **Understanding your audience**

The first step in offering premium subscriptions is to understand your audience. Knowing your core audience will help you determine the potential demand for premium subscriptions and give you insights into what type of content they may be interested in. To understand your audience, you can do the following:

1. **Conduct audience research**: Use tools such as YouTube Analytics and social media insights to understand who your audience is, where they come from, and what type of content they enjoy. It's worth separating out your general audience from your "super fans", those that will rewatch your videos, comment, and engage with your content above and beyond your regular audience.
2. **Determine their interests**: Look at the type of content that receives the most engagement and try to understand what type of content your audience is interested in. This will help you determine what type of premium content to offer. Often creators will see that the engagement from their "super fans" will have a different profile from their overall audience base, such as enjoying more experimental content, behind the scenes, or other videos that deviates from their norm.
3. **Evaluate the potential demand for premium subscriptions**: Consider factors such as the size of your audience, their engagement levels, and their willingness to pay for premium content. This will help you determine whether offering premium subscriptions is a viable option for your content. Quality over quantity matters here, while you need to have some audience established, creators often over estimate how many super fans they need to have a successful premium subscription offering.

### **Creating premium content**

Once you have a good understanding of your audience, it's time to start planning and creating high-quality premium content. The following steps will help you create premium content that your fans will love:

1. **Determine what type of content to offer as premium**: Consider what type of content your audience is interested in and what type of premium content they may be willing to pay for. Some popular options include exclusive videos, podcasts, and articles, behind-the-scenes content, and access to a private community.
2. **Plan and create high-quality premium content**: Make sure your premium content is of high quality and provides value to your subscribers. This will help keep your subscribers engaged and encourage them to continue subscribing.
3. **Use a variety of formats**: Offering a mix of different formats, such as a behind the scenes podcast for a video series, or supplementary articles for an online course, will keep your subscribers interested and engaged. This will also help you easily communicated the added value of the premium subscription.

### Setting up the subscription system

Once you have your premium content in place, it's time to set up the subscription system. The following steps will help you get started:

1. **Choose a platform for managing subscriptions**: There's no shortage of subscription management software out there, such as Patreon, Substack, or Cereal, which allow content creators to manage their subscribers and offer exclusive content.
2. **Integrate with your website**: Make sure your subscription system integrates seamlessly with your website and is easy for your subscribers to use. Consolidating content your subscribers can experience for free alongside premium content will make it easy for fans to see the value of the upgrading to a paid membership. Even better if you can [import all of your existing content](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/573b2216-2fe0-49e1-912b-f98a34360902) to get you started quickly.
3. **Determine the pricing and payment options**: Consider different pricing options, and determine the best payment options for your audience. Make sure to test different pricing options to find what works best for you and your audience. Additionally, it's important to have a free tier so users on the fence can see the value of your offering and gives them a chance to upgrade down the line.

Looking for an option that gives you your own media website, and gives you full you control over your subscriber base, with creator-friendly pricing? Look no further than [creating your own subscription media site with Cereal](https://www.trycereal.com).

### **Promoting premium subscriptions**

Promoting your premium subscriptions is key to attracting subscribers and making your offering a success. The following steps will help you promote your premium subscriptions:

1. **Utilize social media**: Use your social media accounts to promote your premium content and build excitement around your new offering. Consider creating a dedicated social media campaign to promote your premium subscriptions, and highlighting your membership site in YouTube's out reel, Twitch chat, and with a Discord bot.
2. **Offer incentives for early subscribers**: Consider offering incentives such as exclusive access to additional content or discounts to encourage people to sign up for your premium subscriptions. Cereal gives your day one fans an immediate "Day One Supporter" badge as an additional incentive for launch day sign ups.
3. **Engage with your audience**: Regularly engage with your audience to keep them interested in your premium content. This can be done through private community forums, Q&A sessions, polls on your Cereal site, and by offering personalized content recommendations.
4. **Collaborate with other content creators**: Consider collaborating with other content creators to reach a wider audience and promote your premium subscriptions. When reaching out to other content creators, you can offer perks like [adding a "creator" page on your site for them](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/blog__408cbcbb-34c9-43ef-9ed2-cebd8d75f57d) with links they'd like to promote as well.
5. **Utilize email marketing**: Use email marketing to promote your premium subscriptions and provide updates on new content and exclusive offers.

### In Conclusion

Offering premium subscriptions is a great way for content creators to monetize their content and provide their fans with exclusive access to high-quality content. By understanding your audience, creating premium content, setting up the subscription system, and promoting your premium subscriptions, content creators can build a successful premium subscription business.

At Cereal, we understand the challenges of building a successful subscription media site and are here to help. Our platform is designed to help content creators create a professional-looking and user-friendly media site for managing their content and offering premium memberships. With your Cereal site in place, you can focus on what you do best - creating great content.

We hope this article has provided valuable insights into how to get started with offering premium subscriptions on your own site. Good luck!

The Content Creator's Guide to Offering Premium Subscriptions in 2023

As we do when a New Year comes around, we look at improving ourselves where it matters (for some of us, ironically that means eating less cereal). For Cereal, that means hitting the ground running with updates that directly improve the ability for content creators to offer a better experience to their fans, and level up their business.

We recently migrated all creators from Cereal 2.0 (codename Pantry) to Cereal 3.0 (codename Next). All creators will now need to go to [https://cereal.studio](https://cereal.studio/) to manage their content, [https://admin.cereal.studio](https://admin.cereal.studio/) will no longer update your site content.
 
### **What’s New:**

* Admin Page Builder
* Site-Wide Content Search
* New Post and Series Types
* Sync Existing Series
* Major Performance Improvements
* And More

### **Admin Page Builder**

We given a huge update to the Pages you can make with Cereal sites. These changes give more flexibility and customization to creators while preserving the premium look and feel on the front end.
![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/ba1bd0fb-6b41-48b8-b97e-7e87f50badb9/upload-1674079394055.gif)
In addition to setting hero images, call to actions, and rich text content, as before, creators can now add Section List Components. Section List Components are blocks of content that creators can customize, so you can add a carousel of your latest series episodes to a page, or show a list of your top collections on a page, and even highlight specific content from an artist on your network.
![](https://vault.hnxt.dev/uploads/attachment/upload/thumb-5286a38d441c0bad00b6c314598d95e3.png)
Read more about how to use Section List Components to generate truly dynamic content pages for your audience [here](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/blog__4a936262-f217-42c0-bf56-4ca60f6126d9).
 
### **Site-Wide Content Search**

Cereal sites now get content search out of the box, so your community can tap into your backlog with ease and easily discover new shows and videos that they’ve missed.
![](https://vault.hnxt.dev/uploads/attachment/upload/thumb-4914f6182515563120432cb1919dadde.png)

### **New Post and Series Types**

Cereal creators have been using video posts, blog posts, and poll posts to share their work with their audience. Today Cereal is adding Audio posts, so podcasts, interviews, and audiobooks are also getting first class support for your community.
![](https://vault.hnxt.dev/uploads/attachment/upload/thumb-c80cd888d136a6553639d28be957b854.jpg)
With adding Audio posts, we are also adding support for Audio Series, so creators can create a multi-episode podcast and take advantage of podcast specific display to their fans.

Creators can also choose to import an existing podcast in its entirety to get every episode to your fans.
 
### **Syncing Existing Series**

One of our most requested features is finally here! Creators have been telling us that they would like if that YouTube playlists that are imported into Cereal as a series would be kept up to date instead of having to re-upload newer episodes on Cereal. We heard you, and now you can sync a YouTube playlist within Cereal, and when a new video is available it’ll be added to your catalog automagically.

If you already have playlists imported in Cereal there’s nothing you need to do, those playlists are on autopilot be updated on a daily basis.
![](https://vault.hnxt.dev/uploads/attachment/upload/thumb-fca81da476192169dbef8ac76ac25399.png)
Series Syncing also applies to audio content imported with an RSS feed, so podcasts and audio based shows can easily be kept up to date on your site.
 
### **Major Performance Improvements**

Content moves fast, so your site needs to move fast too. In this update we focused on rewriting major portions of Cereal’s site infrastructure to speed up the audience experience, and importantly, how quickly changes you make as a creator get pushed to your site.
 
### **And More**

* Sleeker content carousel
* Color picker in Studio
* [Mastodon social option](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/blog__37b17051-78d1-4270-91f1-9d3e1c8a7b27)

Cereal 3.0 - New Year Update

If there's one thing we know being a content creator going into 2023, it's that it's easier with friends.

From having an editor to streamline your storytelling, to another pair of eyes to help pick a thumbnail, or even other content creators to manage a podcast; collaboration shows up in many ways through the creation process.

In Cereal, bringing your team to help manage your site, or other creators to join your content network, is easy as a few clicks. Creators can add two types of user roles to their site, “Admins” and “Creators”. Based on the roles you’ve selected, the team member has different level of access and control across the site.

1. **Admin** roles are for users that need to be able to manage the site fully. These users will have full access to all the content and site settings, and be able to manage content such as view draft and published posts, and make edits. They will also be able to view analytics for member signup, update membership plans and offerings, and view the list of members across the site. This role is a best fit for a partner or editor that you want as a team mate in managing your site.
2. **Creator** roles are for users that need to be able to independently manage content and have their own page as a content creator. These uses will be able to scoped to a specific creator profile and manage and publish content only under that profile. They will be able to manage their own creator profile, and [publish their own series](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/390f9de4-c3c1-492b-ba6d-a4c08f77dcff), videos, posts, and more. This role is a best fit for a creator contributing to your site, such as a frequent guest blogger, or a content creator in your network.

 
Setting up users in either case is very simple, so let’s get to it!

1. Navigate to the Authors tab on the side navigation menu, and select the Admin Users tab on the page.
2. Select “Create a new admin user” and fill out the form with the email of the user you want to invite. Note that users that are already members of your site can also be invited.
3. If you’re creating an “Admin” user, find the user’s name on the page and update their “Role” to “NetworkAdmin”.
4. If you’re creating a “Creator” user, there is an extra step of navigating to the Creators tab on the page and creating a new creator. All you need to do is add their Creator Name on this form for now, once they’re in they can update everything on this form including their name.
5. Lastly for a “Creator” user, navigate back to the Admin Users tab and open up their profile. You should be able change their role to “Creator” and then select the creator profile you created under the Assigned Creator from field.

 
And you’re done!

Users invited will receive an email with a temporary password and be able to login to the [Cereal Studio](https://cereal.studio) and start contributing. If you’ve invited a user that was already a member of the site, simply instruct them to visit the Cereal Studio and reset their password to login.

Admin roles are available to all Cereal sites on the Creator tier and up, and additional Creator roles are available to creator sites on the Network tier. If you are interested in upgrading or learning more, reach out to our team via email or chat bot.

Adding Collaborators to Your Cereal Site

Social media is often the number one strategy for content creators and businesses in reaching new audiences, communicating with their community, and monetizing with advertisements. With Twitter's recent takeover, there's a lot to say that's already been said, but suffice to say it's bringing different levels of uncertainty into the lives of content creators everywhere.
 
#### **What is happening at Twitter?**
 
Twitter went private in late 2022 with a purchase by Elon Musk. A fairly controversial figure on his own, but love him or hate him, undeniably he has shaken up both the public discourse and product offerings on the platform quite substantially. We aren't here to comment on what this means for the future of the platform, or our democracy, or social media and independent conversation as a whole. That's a huge can of worms, and a lot of it is speculative and unnecessary to how it impacts content creators running their business today.

What we'll focus on instead is how to look at this change as a content creator in 2023 faced with uncertainty.
 
#### **Social Media's role in a creator's toolkit**
 
There are three goals\* that creators achieve in using social media like Twitter:

**1\. Acquisition**
 - Using them as an audience acquisition channel, meaning that they focus on gathering a following in order to redirect that attention towards the engagement on their content, in other places like YouTube, Twitch, their own newsletter, website, or blog.

**2\. Notification**
 - Using them as a direct notification tool, amplifying those existing platform's ability to notify their fans of new content, complementing email notifications, YouTube notifications, and so on.

**3\. Engagement**
 - Using them as a community engagement tool. Giving frequent updates to their fans in short form or images so that they are engaged makes it more relevant when you want to promote new content.

\* Twitter also (sometimes) does monetization, like through their short lived acquisition of Revel, and sure to launch premium tweets at some point, but as that's not a prevalent use case we're leaving it out of consideration for now.
 
#### **What Twitter’s uncertainty means for creators**
 
When content creators talk to us about the uncertainty in Twitter's latest phase of turbulence, they mean their approach towards the above items are at risk. Twitter is incredibly effective place to acquire, notify, and engage your fans.

The impact of Twitter on creator's ability to continue to achieve those goals is quite simple. The existential platform-wide conversations focusing on its own leadership can make it harder for creators, as audiences have their attention divided or distracted by these conversations. Additionally, some users are using the platform less, or disengaging entirely. The last concern is the biggest, what happens if Twitter disappears overnight (probably unlikely, but still)?

It's a good thought experiment because it's an opportunity to reflect on how you acquire, notify, and engage your community overall. The biggest risk for creators that are overly dependent on one platform is whether they will be able to access their community if their key platform disappears overnight. How will your fans find you again? And how will you find them? Social media platforms lock businesses and creators in by not allowing users to access emails directly, so you will be able to export a user name and Twitter handle. The same goes for YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, etc.
 
#### **What content creators should do to protect their business**
 
**1\. Diversify\!**
 - Creators seeing this risk are adding alternate handles on other platforms such as Instagram or Mastodon. Twitter recently marked marking Mastodon links as dangerous but have reversed that well thought out policy. Members of the Cereal team are a huge fan of Mastodon as an approach to Twitter alternatives, so much so we’ve added it as a footer social link option on all the sites (I promise our product updates are usually more exciting than this).

**2\. Capture\!**
 - Cutting to the chase, email is probably one of the most consistent ways to reach your users. Using a email capture tool lets you build a list of your fans that are platform agnostic and you can reach in case of a rainy day in San Francisco. Twitter acquired and offered Revue that would support this, but they just shut it down. Whether for this reason or not, shutting it down certainly makes it harder for creators to capture emails of their fans and take the conversation elsewhere.

**3\. Own\!**
 - Maybe you've guessed it at this point (gold stars all around), but creators best positioned to weather this storm are the ones that [have their own website](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/8fdde602-a5f7-4938-897a-4374c9165255) their users can signup to, stay in touch, and engage with all of your content in the same place. This gives creators the added benefit of control over their future, and an email list that is up to date and works for them. While it might seem daunting to some, the barrier to owning and running your own content and membership site as a creator has never been easier. Any creator can create and launch a Cereal site under a minute with their content and brand, and be ready to bring on their fans (and export them if they ever need to).

Any way you choose to adapt to keep your ship upright (Dear reader, I think we both just realized we walked into a nautical theme), this means rethinking your social media into predominantly an acquisition channel for bringing users to a system you control. Your goals around notification and engagement need to be operated in a way where you control as much as possible, so that you can be confident that you can run your business if one social media platform suddenly can't serve you and your community effectively.

Navigating Uncertainty as a Content Creator on Twitter

Managing a content site can be a challenging task. From launching new content and keeping everything up-to-date, to ensuring your site reflects your brand and content, it's easy to let your site fall by the wayside. That's why we're excited to share the launch of our new feature: Section Components.

Section Components are a powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing your media site. It allows you to customize your site to fit your needs and your audience, and helps you keep your site up-to-date with new content. Here's how it works:
![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/4e63ec49-644c-4244-99b0-1fd6abf4c592/upload-1672955072081.png)

* Navigate to the Page section of the Cereal Studio and select a new or existing page.

![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/9783fba5-1476-4f96-84ad-83a200271656/upload-1672955610373.png)

* Find the Page Building and add a Section List Component to select and display the content you want to display. You can choose from a Carousel or Grid display for your content, or add a Rich Text section.

![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/711abd4c-74a9-4aa9-9bc0-a1108b68632e/upload-1672955803843.png)

* You can pick a style of card to display your content, Tile is smallest and Spotlight is largest, with Simple and Feature in between.

![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/d31b68a8-6829-4448-8b24-2afeadbaf237/upload-1672956143665.jpeg)

* You can choose from a variety of content types, including videos, text posts, polls, series, podcast episodes, collections, categories, audio episodes, and creators (if you're part of a network).
* Set your filter criteria for that content and the sort order for it to appear in.

![alt text test](https://cdn.cerealapis.com/page/9cc4615f-b14e-4f40-b86b-8f129ca70e21/upload-1672956447683.jpeg)

* Save the page, and let your site adapt to new content automatically. For example, if you're only highlighting the 5 latest episodes in a specific series on your home page, and you upload a new episode, then your fans will get an email notification of the new episode and see it on your home page when they visit.

You can add as many Section Components to a page as you want!

In summary, the Section Components feature is a level up for media site management. It allows you to create a site that is tailored to your needs and your audience, and makes it easier for you to manage and maintain. We're confident that this feature will greatly benefit content creators and their fans, and we can't wait to see how it helps you grow your business.

Streamline Your Content Site with Section Components

If you have a video series you're interested in hosting under your own brand on Cereal, you might be wondering how best to set up your series to get the most out of the platform. You are in the right place! We'll cover how to set up the series, how to upload videos to a series, as well as some tips and tricks on membership features as it relates to video content. Before we get started, if instead you're looking to import a series or playlist that has already been completed, check out [this article instead](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/573b2216-2fe0-49e1-912b-f98a34360902).

Let's get to it!
 
## 1\. Create a Series

Navigate to the Series tab on your admin view, and create a new Series. It's important that since this is a new series that you leave the "YouTube Playlist ID" blank. Otherwise, make sure to include a title, description, and a series cover image.

The series cover image will be displayed with the following safe zones, the horizontal slice will be user for the series page itself, while the vertical slice will be used as the series card image throughout the site.

![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/930958617623003237/930962847335329834/series-safezone.png)

Two other options in creating a series that are worth mentioning are the "Default Post Access" field and "Feature Options" section.

Default Post Access lets you set the access to the series across all posts within the series. You will be able to override the access level on each individual post. This is useful if you want the Series itself to be accessible for paid tier members, but make the first episode available for free tier members, as an example.

Feature Options lets you decide if you'd like to feature (or highlight) this particular series on the front page of your Cereal site. All featured series will be shown right under the home page banner, in the order you indicate, and with an additional line of text from the "Featured Headline" displayed when the user hovers over it.

![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/fe386196-a031-4439-9fc5-a8fbd0f454cc/upload-1643053623512.png)
 
## 2\. Create the First Episode

Now that you have your Series created, we need to create the first Video Post (or episode) for the Series. To do this, navigate to the Post tab, create a post, and select Video Post. Note that Blog Posts and Poll Posts can also be assigned to a series, and will show up in a separate tab. For now we'll focus on video.
Once you're on the "Create a new Video Post" screen, you can add your video link from YouTube, Vimeo, or Twitch. Unlisted videos are supported as well. Once you have the link and paste it into the upload field, you'll get a prompt to automatically populate the post with information from the video. Select Yes to populate, and then edit or update fields as needed.
![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/32ea8d53-e557-4cda-954b-e6953c3dd2e1/upload-1643054132142.png)
Once you're happy with the content on the page, make sure to update the "Series" field to tag it against the series you created in the previous step. This is also the time to assign it the "Post Access" that you would like for the episode, note that the access level you set when you created the series is the default selection. Lastly click "Save and Publish" and your video and series will be pushed out to subscribers as well as displayed on your Cereal site.

Voila! You have your series and first episode created and online!

## 3\. Tips and Tricks

In this article we reviewed the steps to create a series and launch the first episode, but you may have noticed a lot of tools and fields available that we didn't cover. In this section we will briefly review a few strategies to customize and get the most out of Cereal.

**Tip #1 Mix access levels**

A great way many creators on Cereal get engagement and incentivize fans to subscribe to paid tiers is by creating a premium series, and making a few adjustments. Creators have seen results in making the first episode free, or by changing the access level on the episode from paid to free after a certain amount of time, or even making it free but require a sign up before watching. The sky is the limit, so of course feel free to experiment with what works best for your content, audience, and offering.

**Tip #2 Add text and poll posts**

While many of the creators on Cereal focus on video content, often the most valuable content they produce is either text or poll based. Since creators are able to tag blog posts and poll posts to a series, and post access applies to those posts as well, it's a great opportunity to publish supporting material to a series. As an example, a creator hosting a series on best restaurants during travel can publish a restaurant guide as a post, or even create a poll to ask their fans where to visit next.

How to Host a Series 

Having people organically discovering your content is an important way to grow your audience, and it's one of the important things that your Cereal site will do for you over time. You may heard of phrases like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or have heard talk about how important keywords are to your brand. In this article, we'll focus on the clear and meaningful things you can do within Cereal to make sure you are best positioned for organic discovery on search engines.
 
## 1\. Set Up your Site Info

This step one should be easy to knock out, after all it's the first thing you do when you start your Cereal site! Specifically, Site Title and Site Description are two fields that will be returned with every single page of your Cereal site, in the "Meta Data" of the page, which is used by search engines like Google to decide how to label your content (and its relevance to the user that performed the search), and by platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn in labeling the link card when you share a link to your site.

The key to this is to be clear, succinct, and make sure to call out your brand name.

![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/c87d8fba-f0ef-464d-a6a7-8d079fc11498/upload-1643050773323.png)

## 2\. Use a Clear Post Excerpt

The Post Excerpt is a field that's available on Video posts. Think of this field as the "summary" field, which is used by platforms to determine what the show when you share the link to the post, or search engines as an option for a description for the page. This is generated automatically as a truncated version of your post description, but should be edited for clarity.

## 3\. Cross Link Appropriately

A great way to build up a reputation as a high quality content site, is to have other high quality sites vouch for you. That means other sites, news sources, or other creators you collaborate with linking to your site. This is one area to be careful with, as low quality site links or spamming platforms with your link will have the opposite impact, and can reduce your ranking on search engines (not to mention diminish trust from your audience).

The best thing to do as a growing creator will be to have your collaborations with other creators cross linked between your site and theirs, building a positive link web over time.

## 4\. Post relevant content consistently

What's good for audiences tends to be good for being discovered by new audiences. So this step is an ongoing, never ending step (kinda like running up the endless staircase in the Mushroom Castle from Super Mario 64). Search engines will favor high quality, relevant content created over time, and a creator that keeps delivering to their audience will see the same favor with their fans.

![Super Mario Runs Up The Stairs In Super Mario 64](http://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Super-Mario-Runs-Up-The-Stairs-In-Super-Mario-64.gif)

How to Master Search Engines as a Creator

If this isn't the first series you've put together before starting your Cereal site, you're in luck! Cereal helps creators bring in all of their existing video content from YouTube easily, so your site is ready to go in minutes. Before we get started, if you're interested in hosting a series that isn't complete, or hasn't started yet, make sure to [use this guide](https://blog.trycereal.com/blog/390f9de4-c3c1-492b-ba6d-a4c08f77dcff) as a reference instead. Now let's take a look at how the import process works in Cereal.
 
## 1\. Create a new Series

Navigate to the Series tab, and click "New" to start creating a new series. This is how you'll begin whether it's to import an existing series, or get set up for a new series you're planning to run.
![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/55c5a145-d4ed-4edd-9535-8b88b44c14bc/upload-1643049314915.png)

 
## 2\. Get the YouTube Playlist ID

Identify the YouTube playlist you want to import, and copy the Playlist ID from its URL. This will be everything after the "list=" part of the url.

![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/5167f53e-4eae-4da6-a4ce-5f6464922db7/upload-1643049639642.png)

 
## 3\. Paste in the YouTube Playlist ID and Save

Once you've filled out the YouTube Playlist ID field like below, this series will be used to import the playlist from your YouTube channel and serve it as a series.

![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/57878aae-1516-4198-b5e6-4a27e69d1c88/upload-1643049738722.png)
You can come back to the series and verify that everything's been imported by opening up the series in the admin view, and scrolling down to see the video list. This will show all imported videos now tied to the series.
![alt text test](https://cdn-prod.cereal.app/page/4e59c716-5416-4373-84c1-031560c33c8e/upload-1643049957763.png)

How to Import an Existing Series

With the growth of social media and video streaming platforms, more content creators are seeing tremendous growth, but even more are experiencing the darker side of hosting their content on these platforms. In this Breakfast Chat, we'll talk about some of the downsides of exclusively hosting your content on major platforms, and what content creators can do to mitigate the risks.

Let's get into it!

## Your content might be modified

Creators that are active on streaming sites know the impact of this one the best. Both YouTube and Twitch streamers will frequently report their content getting proactive copyright strikes against their videos, leading to blackouts on the video, muting portions of the video, or even removal entirely. Copyright strikes are a reasonable measure for legitimate breaches of these strikes, but the majority of cases on these sites are due to the platform or major brands having bots proactively scanning and reporting content. This creates many false reports for which there is not a clear recourse for creators. Since advertisers and large brands pay the bill, these platforms will rather take action against creators first than make sure that it's a legitimate complaint before taking action.

## Your content risks being demonetized

Discussion is always healthy, but for platforms that generate all their revenue from advertising there will always be a need to cater to baseline popularity in order to keep advertisers continuing to spend money on the platform. This is how you see creators getting demonetized by Youtube for discussion on themes like recreational drug use or even the use of inappropriate language. YouTube's own terms even say "controversial issues" are grounds for demonetization, leaving it wide open for them to interpret as convenient. While we at Cereal believe there is a line for appropriate content to distribute, we don't believe advertisers should be the ones drawing it.

## Your audience can be redirected away from you

The core issue on this list most clearly shows where content creators are vulnerable, and that is, at the end of the day each of these platforms care more about promoting themselves than you as a creator. When a loyal fan of yours finishes the latest episode in a series you've shared, YouTube doesn't make sure that they go onto something else that you've created next. They send them off to whatever the algorithm believes will keep them on their website, not on your channel.

## So what can I do about this?

What can content creators do to de-risk themselves from the way platforms operate? The best strategy is to reduce your direct dependency on individual platforms, and move your loyal fans somewhere you control. That doesn't mean not using the major platforms anymore, it just means to use them with a better understanding of the risks, and using them as ways for new fans to discover you.

Some of the ways creators that you follow do this today are:

* Create a link aggregator page, so you can swap out content and platforms to where they are investing the most energy
* Create a direct subscription, so you can email your fans directly when new content is available
* Launch a website, hosting your content directly can be time-consuming but you have control over your true fans
* Create multiple video channels, so actions taken against one channel doesn't impact another

At Cereal, we take this a step further. By creating a [Cereal site](https://www.trycereal.com/), you can easily accomplish all of the above in 5 minutes or less and even attach your own domain name, and automatically sync videos from multiple sources.

 
*Photo by [Nubelson Fernandes](https://unsplash.com/@nublson?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/content-creator?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)*

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