Good morning. Quiet on set. We’re excited to finally announce the venue for Press Publish LA: The Hollywood Creator Summit.

We’ll be meeting at the FOX Studio Lot, the very place where movies like Titanic, Avatar, and Die Hard were made. If this is a space you want to be in, please consider joining us 👇

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Travel creator Drew Binsky makes around $50K per month on Facebook alone—but Binsky told us he doesn’t even have the app downloaded on his phone. So how’s he doing it?

Catch up quick: 

“We were able to scale from $5-10K a month about three years ago to a stable $50K a month the past year or so,” Binsky’s content manager Anete Ilmete told us via email. “Some months it still fluctuates, so it can be anywhere between $35K-100K a month.”

So what makes Facebook work? Binsky has been able to grow his revenue by playing the numbers game. 

“YouTube is really consistent and you know what you're getting into,” Binsky told us. “But Facebook algorithms change week to week and what's working now won't work next month.”

What this means for creators: Success on Facebook may be as much about content style as it is about volume. While some creators like Dhar Mann and magician Justin Flom have also found success on Facebook, it can be harder for creators in different niches to scale monetization on the platform. 

For example, after a 40-day experiment on Facebook, Colin and Samir gained 20K followers and 207K views—but only made $3.68 in revenue. Why? Their niche doesn’t have an audience on Facebook.

Meta is trying to rectify creator concerns by offering incentives like its Fast Track program, which pays large creators from other platforms a stipend to post on Facebook—a feature that 54% of you told us would entice you to post more. But with shifty algorithms and inconsistent payouts, will it be enough?

Last year, Ludwig Ahgren and Michael Reeves ran a "Tip to Tip" YouTube series, where they vlogged daily as they traveled the length of Japan with no map or phone.

To make that happen, they hired an editor to follow them in a van. The result? Over 28 million views across 14 episodes, but a strained workflow. 

This year, they upped the ante with Tip to Tip China, a country more than double Japan’s size—and adjusted their strategy.

Here's how they pulled off 16 daily vlogs across China  →

The setup: Ahgren’s team split between remote US editors, Mandarin translators for subtitling, and a four-person RV (two producers and two editors) following him and Reeves through China. They worked on 4-5 episodes at any given time, operating on a multi-day lead between filming and posting:

“A lot of what we’re doing is watching what they're doing, knowing their habits that they've done before, and trying to guess what they're going to do and where they're going to go,” producer Dan Najarian said in a behind-the-scenes vlog.

Learning from last year’s mistakes: During Tip-to-Tip Japan, Ahgren started with one mobile editor, adding more after footage came in faster than one person could edit. This year, they were more prepared to tackle the longer journey with increased staff numbers.

Trend watch: Large-scale vlog series have become increasingly popular among creators like IShowSpeed and Ryan Trahan, who have each uploaded in 30-day and 50-day increments in different countries. As more creators hop on the wave, many are building in-house teams to accommodate the new genre.

In step with its Coachella livestreams this weekend, YouTube is premiering artist Stations—its own version of FAST channels with 24/7, ad-supported linear streams playing preprogrammed videos.

Context: Creators including Mark Rober, Nick Digiovanni, Dude Perfect, and more have inked FAST channel partnerships with brands like Roku, Samsung, and Tubi.

YouTube is now entering the arena, first testing the feature with music artists like Bruno Mars, with plans to open up the feature to all creators. 

Worth noting: Some creators have been utilizing YouTube’s Live feature to set up their own broadcast, such as Curious George playing videos on loop. Those feeds require separate software. Stations will be easier to set up, where creators can create a playlist of existing catalog videos.

Stations comes on the heels of other new TV features, including Ask, where viewers can use their remote microphone to ask questions about videos while it's playing.