So yesterday was the deadline for me paying the annual fee to vimeo for their video hosting services (which is how I share embedded video in posts here). They had unexpectedly jacked up the price this year with only 3 weeks notice AND I had unexpected expenses this month so I'm way short of the mark currently. I'll have the money I need in a couple weeks but its got me thinking is Vimeo worth the money at this point? Here are the factors in play:
1) My account is currently at 3.8 terrabytes of memory (which is literally thousands of videos) and I only get a lifetime amount of 4 TB of memory. So all year I've been deleting old files to make room for new uploads. That isn't sustainable forever and each session of deleting wastes a lot time because I have to reload pages and pages of videos to get to what I need to delete. To upgrade to 7 TB would cost $720 a year, when my current plan is $300 a year and I struggle to make that. $300 is more than I make from one full month of Patreon subscriptions. So that's not the answer.
2) The Vimeo analytics tell me out of all those thousands of videos, in June I only got 6 views for a total of 52 minutes of watch time. That's it. 6 total views. Now, I'm aware that some of you use VPN cloaking devices or whatever so that websites can't tell you're watching something which means your views don't show up. So it's possible all those videos got more than 6 views, but I can only use the info I have access to.
3) A few years ago, the last time I was in this position, Vimeo offered me a reduced rate to keep my business because they thought I was about to cancel. It's possible that if I try to cancel my account they'll do the same thing again. But even if they offer me a sweetheart deal that doesn't solve the memory problem.
4) Google Drive is currently offering 2 TB of storage for $3 a month for the first 3 months then $10 a month thereafter. For the first year that would be $99. The second year that would be $120. So I get half the storage for less than half the price.
5) Lately I've been shifting more and more to full reactions for everything which nobody seems to have a problem with and which doesn't cost me anything in video hosting. So the only real issue here is my years of backlog of edited reactions.
So, to summarize, it seems to be a waste to pay $300 for something people are barely using these days. And I can probably offer most of my edited backlog on Google Drive for a fraction of the cost. And moving forward I would mostly do full reactions for everything which solves everything.
So my inclination is to just cancel Vimeo, and start shifting my backlog to Google Drive.
But I wanted to open the floor to your input in case I've missed anything. I don't have to decide anything right away, Vimeo is giving me until the end of the month to figure things out before they start deleting anything.
PS. This is why I haven't posted the Jujusu Kaisen reactions today, I can't upload the final 4 episodes until I get this sorted out.