Checking In: My Bachelor Recaps

As I’m sure is the case with you, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the future holds and how to move forward while still not really being able to do a whole lot. This applies to all arenas in my life, from my singing career to our home life to, yes, writing The Bachelor recaps. Do I want to continue writing recaps as I have been, or is it time to try something new?

The next Bachelorette season premieres two weeks from today, so I need your input, dear readers. I’m at a crossroads in many ways (I may or may not get a little teary eyed as I write parts of this!) and need your help to know what direction I should take moving forward. I intend to be very transparent (perhaps to a fault!) with you in this post, so you know precisely where I stand with our Pretty Panda community and the funny little “business” I’ve built here.

I want to get this out of the way first: I have no intention of stopping recapping this show. I am so grateful that enough of you read what I have to say about this show that over the last several years, I have somehow managed to make an income writing. In the past, I’ve viewed my recaps as side businesses, and even if and when I felt overwhelmed in juggling them with singing contracts, I’ve always been acutely aware of how lucky I was. No singer of any variety wants to be 100% dependent on income from singing, and that was before a pandemic that shuts down your entire industry. So, first and foremost, THANK YOU.

As I’m sure is the case with every one of you, 2020 has forced me to put on many different hats than I’m used to. (My new podcast is evidence of this!) One of those hats is my business hat, which I confess I don’t wear most of the time. As you’ve heard me declare before, I’m a creative type who really doesn’t think in terms of numbers, ROI, or growth. It comes far more naturally to me to analyze body language and seating arrangements, to dwell on the timing of .GIFs, to hunt down the exact match of a dress worn on the show, to obsess over sentence structure. I am very reliant on the help of agents and managers (both in singing and as an “influencer”) to pitch me, strategize, and negotiate on my behalf. Case in point, I’m sure with the hits this blog’s recaps generate, I could probably be making more money than I am with it. But because it was always just a side thing, it was too daunting an undertaking to really look under the hood and see what I could be doing differently. That time is now.

I’ll get right to it: I am seriously considering moving my future Pretty Pandas recaps over to YouTube. I realize this might be jarring and I assure you, I relate; I too enjoy reading content. There’s a peacefulness to reading, to curling up with a tea or glass of wine and consuming the written word. So I will go through this in detail, explain what it’d look like, get specific about WHY I’m doing this. Most importantly, I’m going to pass the microphone over to you. Because, as you know, the reason these recaps still exist is because of you, and therefore you really do have something of a say in what happens here. In other words, if 90% of you are going to lose interest in a video versus a written recap, obviously that change not a wise choice on my part!

If you don’t care about the inner workings of this site and its monetization, feel free to skip to the “What Would It Look Like?” section below!

Show Me The Money

I’ve expressed here and there over the years that my Pretty Panda recaps are a lot of work for what is really not a lot in terms of revenue. As I’ve shared in the past, the only way I monetize my recaps is via affiliate links in the fashion section, but if I divide the number of dollars earned by the number of hours spent, let’s just say it’s… er, not great. A passion project is cute for a few years, but after 6.5 years and unexplored potential, it just starts to be stupid. Like I said, I don’t wear my business hat enough. (I actually wonder if I’ve ever really worn it!)

In terms of revenue, many of you have suggested Patreon or some other donation system. Let me first say I am SO flattered that any of you feel what I produce is worth paying even a small amount for. But, and I don’t know how else to put this, it’s just really not my personality to do that. I’ve always hated asking for money (I’m like this in all aspects of my life; I even hate asking for favors) and the thought of asking for donations for Bachelor recaps—especially at a time when there are so many worthier causes—makes me cringe. More importantly, we’re all in the same boat. So many of us are without work, concerned about our financial futures, and living off savings. I would far rather keep my content free of charge and generate as many hits as humanly possible, get a sponsorship to advertise a product or service I genuinely like and use, and get paid by that brand. It feels like a greater win-win for you and for me, and it also feels like there’s more room for continued growth.

I’ve looked into regular ads but the gist I’m getting is that my blog, with its extreme up-and-down traffic (my numbers unsurprisingly spike during Bachelor seasons) wouldn’t get quite the consistent traffic necessary to make this fruitful. (I should add, though, that I haven’t totally written off this idea.)

As I mentioned in one of my most recent recaps, I’ve also looked into season-long brand sponsorships. I was really hoping something like this might come through but thanks to COVID and the admittedly strange sort of content I provide, I sadly haven’t gotten any promising bites. This isn’t surprising as the world of Instagram campaigns has also slowed (I’ve never been very active with Instagram ads but even I have noticed a difference!). If anything does materialize on this front in the next two weeks, maybe I’ll write another blog post telling you to disregard this one!

The reason I’m leaning towards YouTube for these recaps is that, with their built-in ads, the videos could just churn out passive revenue based on hits alone, whether or not someone buys something via an affiliate link. Further, a video has a set number of views that is an indisputable truth; it’s not a matter of me screenshotting my analytics pages (which can be nebulous considering my traffic spikes and dips, not to mention the non-Bachelor content on the blog… let’s just say I’ve gotten used to sending longwinded explanations when I’m asked for my website numbers). The hard number of views on a video is far easier to pitch, making sponsorships a better possibility.

Perhaps most importantly, based on my (limited) experience with YouTube so far (our podcast is also in video format), I suspect the recaps would be far more “discoverable” than they are currently. In the last several weeks, I’ve been amazed by how people sort of stumble across a podcast episode and then become a part of our audience, simply due to YouTube’s algorithm and suggestions. Meanwhile, on this blog, I’ve been relying more or less solely on word of mouth for growth (which is kind of amazing, really… again, thank you!). But truth be told, this blog hasn’t grown much in the last year or two. My audience has remained the same—it hasn’t decreased, but it hasn’t grown, either. I’m hoping that by moving to video, there’d at least be the chance for growth, which in turn would mean potential for revenue.

Risky Business

As I said above, the only way I monetize my recaps is via affiliate links. This is why I invest as much time as I do in the fashion section, ID-ing what I like and what you request, because I get a small commission from any purchases that are made using my links. The money isn’t huge but it can add up depending on the season.

Now, if all I did with this blog was ID fashion, I am sure the revenue-to-hours spent ratio would be worth my while. It is time consuming, but during “peak” times (meaning, during Bachelor seasons) this gradually produces a small but somewhat reliable side income. However, as I said above, the fashion IDs account for a third of the work. So, I’m essentially putting in 3x the work for the same return. (You business-minded folks are shaking your heads, I’m sure. 🙈) Now, I am used to this sort of thing—it’s not like I’ve gotten paid for every concert I’ve ever sung (not even close!). I understand the pros of creating (or performing) for free. But again, when we’re 6+ years in and I still can’t get a good fit sponsor-wise, I’m doing something wrong. I can recognize that.

Why don’t I only ID fashion and axe the recaps? Well, not only do I have little interest in that, I doubt that’s what you want from me. The fashion section has sort of spawned from the combination of you guys enjoying it and from the monetization I get from it, but it isn’t really where my heart is. Further, as more and more “as worn on TV” fashion sites include The Bachelor and its adjacent shows, I have more and more competition. I’ve learned some of these sites unfortunately go so far as to steal some of my harder-to-find IDs (which I get from manually writing each contestant) after I publish a recap, posting them to their site with their own affiliate link, making whatever “exclusive” ID I had no longer very exclusive. This may not sound like a big deal but to give you perspective, despite having higher traffic with Peter’s season, I made far less with it than I did with Nick’s season a few years earlier. I’ve noticed it becoming harder and harder to make commission using affiliate links—your link is only as good as the last time it was clicked.

There’s another reason I want to veer away from this, and it’s a more ethically-minded one. The fact is, I myself am trying to buy less new and non-sustainable fashion. I’m not perfect at all in this regard (I get weak in the knees for fashion that I love), but I've been making a concerted effort to rent or buy used as much as possible, so there’s a direct conflict of interest if the only money I make is from technically “selling” fast fashion. (Unfortunately, the “faster” the fashion, the better it typically sells.) That wouldn’t be preaching what I practice, and with the state of the environment right now and how the fashion industry contributes to that, it feels wrong. More recently, I’ve gone out of my way to link out secondhand options, but I don’t make a penny off those—sadly, sites like Poshmark and ThredUp do not offer affiliate programs or commission.

The risk: my plan would be to cut the fashion IDs (aka, the only way in which I currently monetize a recap). I would embed the recap video within a page on the site and (maybe) add a few fashion IDs over the days to follow, so the fashion would be more of an afterthought that wouldn’t delay the recap itself. If you guys have requests, I can try to fulfill them. And if I monetize those, great, but the goal is to not be reliant on them. That way I could also link out sustainable or secondhand options freely, without worrying about those non-commissionable links affecting my bottom line.

Time Is Of The Essence

One thing that has always bothered me (and I know bothers some of you) is how long it takes me to get recaps out. I’ve even had people tell me they don’t read them because of how “late” they are. 🙄 Trust me, I don’t love publishing a recap 5-7 days after its episode, either.

There are three main reasons why my recaps take as long as they do: the .GIFs, the writing, and the fashion IDs. With a video, I think I could cover 2 out of 3 of these factors in a fraction of the time. First, I think it’d take me less time to film myself talking about an episode than it would to write it. This breaks my heart a little bit because I do enjoy writing and think I am a better writer than a speaker, but I have to pick my battles. (I’m actually not 100% positive about this being more time effective given how picky I know I am, but it’s a reasonable assumption.)

When I make .GIFs, I make time stamps while watching, create screen recordings of those clips, upload those into Photoshop, shave the frames down so it’s only capturing my target moment. This may surprise you, but adding text is the worst part, because oftentimes the text is too long to fit, and other times it matters where it lines up (for example, if the purpose of the .GIF is to show that we didn’t actually see someone say something). In other words, while I actually kind of enjoy making .GIFs from a hypnotic, mundane-task perspective, but they’re a beast in the time consumption department. If I were to move to video, I would never have to create .GIFs at all; I could simply insert the moments I wish to point out within my own video. Further, I suspect I could actually point out MORE moments because I wouldn’t need to make .GIFs of them all (every recap has a graveyard of moments deemed non-GIF-worthy!). I even wonder if I’d feel more inclined to recap spinoffs like Paradise if every recap wasn’t such a daunting time investment.

As for the fashion IDs, as I said above, those would get cut. (Don’t worry—Best/Worst Dressed would remain!) Reaching out to contestants, sleuthing, and ID-ing the fashion is extremely time consuming and with the time I spend on all of that, they often hold up my entire recap by two or more days.

So, in one fell swoop I could eliminate a lot of the labor to get across more or less the same content, and I think the recaps themselves could drop far sooner after each episode airs. This isn’t necessarily a major factor in my decision making but it is a corollary I have my eye on.

What Would It Look Like?

For the upcoming The Bachelorette season (already sure to be a shit show!), I know I will be doing Flare recaps and The Morning After videos (my chatty initial takeaways). So, my goal would be for the Pretty Panda videos to be quite different from The Morning After and really resemble a classic recap in its focus on behavioral and production analysis. Using my new handy dandy video editing skills (a pandemic silver lining), I’d edit in my notable video (formerly .GIFs) and audio clips. I would keep the Best and Worst Dressed section at the end, but without ID-ing the fashion within the video.

Then, as I said above, I would embed the video here on the blog and (maybe?) add potential fashion IDs that I feel will be of interest or that come hotly requested by you. Most importantly, the comments section could remain the same and wouldn’t be limited to YouTube, allowing anyone who typically comments here anonymously to continue to do so.

Finally, I want to add that this is not an idea I’m necessarily married to in the long run! I may discover I despise making these (I already know I’m way more comfortable writing than I am videoing myself). I may suck at verbalizing my observations. It’s totally possible the content just won’t translate. Also, if you guys hate the videos and they’re a massive failure, I’d of course consider moving back to the written recap and see if there are better ways to leverage them. So this shouldn’t be seen as a be-all-end-all. This is just me thinking aloud and trying to be a better businesswoman (a strength I have never possessed).

Did I just write at length and with seriousness about Bachelor recaps (on the same day as the first presidential debate, no less)? Why yes, yes I did. But we all need escapism wherever we can get it right now, so hopefully you’re still with me and are welcoming the distraction!

This is where I pass the mic over to you, dear Pretty Panda readers. As I said at the start of this post, it matters a lot to me what you think and what you want. As I have expressed over the years, and as last year’s anniversary party hopefully suggested, I deeply value the community we’ve built here. What I don’t want is to lose that. So, let me know! Do you love or hate YouTube? Would videos drive you away, would they make you more likely to tune in, or would they make no difference? Do you have better ideas?

Use the comments below to chime in and tell me your thoughts…