Strange questions that sometimes need answering (or not asking in the first place really).

It strikes me as a huge grey area.

jon81uk said:

There is probably quite a lot of this sort of thing that vloggers and similar should be doing and likely don't.

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Some need to learn how to make a decent vlog for a start.

Think if you were a part time theme park YouTuber you'd be silly not be registered as self employed doing it for the possible tax advantages it could bring.

Obvious issues would always be the taxman arguing what's constiting doing it for work, or just a day out/holiday with friends.

John_P said:

Think if you were a part time theme park YouTuber you'd be silly not be registered as self employed doing it for the possible tax advantages it could bring.

Obvious issues would always be the taxman arguing what's constiting doing it for work, or just a day out/holiday with friends.

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The likelihood of the taxman arguing about anything with a self employed person is pretty remote.
They seem to be a bit rare generally since the early days of austerity...never had a single receipt or issue challenged in fifteen years of joyous self employment.
That volvo gearbox and torque converter receipt will come in handy this year after a long dry summer.
edit...the only one that bounced was trying to claim for speeding tickets...and that was by the accountant, not the taxman!

rob666 said:

The likelihood of the taxman arguing about anything with a self employed person is pretty remote.
They seem to be a bit rare generally since the early days of austerity...never had a single receipt or issue challenged in fifteen years of joyous self employment.
That volvo gearbox and torque converter receipt will come in handy this year after a long dry summer.
edit...the only one that bounced was trying to claim for speeding tickets...and that was by the accountant, not the taxman!

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They do go through periods of looking at and targeting specific industries when it comes to self employment, complete with national campaigns, surprised I've not seen a YouTuber/Twitch/influencer campaign if only to ensure people are correctly following the tax laws.

You're allowed to earn £1000 in the UK through Youtube and other platforms (such as Ebay profits) before you have to pay tax, even if you're already earning over the income tax threshold (I believe it comes under the 'trading allowance' heading if you want to check it out). Once you go over the £1000 allowance you have to file a self assessment with HMRC. I've recently had to do that for my earnings through Youtube in the last financial year. However, if you state that you're using that allowance, you CAN'T then also claim business expenses such as camera's, computers, travel etc (you have to register as a business to do that). With that in mind, unless you're earning quite a bit more than the £1000 allowance it's not really worth registering as a business and claiming expenses. I only earned around £2000 (97%ish from my non-Alton Towers channel) on top of my day job so it hasn't become worth it for me to go down the business route and my earnings have dropped a bit and I'm losing a bit of interest in the whole thing anyway due to the competition from AI slop taking eyes off legit channels anyway. I think I'd have to be consistently growing from now on to bother going down the business route and start claiming expenses etc. Unlikely for me personally. The big Youtube channels should all be registered as businesses if they have any sense. Shawn and similar sized channels will obviously be doing so. But yeah, hope that gives a little bit of insight.

I often think about those who are now full time doing this stuff and how much they actually earn with expenses and all that. The money can't be that fantastic.

Not only that, how do you keep the interest going? At what point does the hobby, become a job and burden? Costs start impacting life?

I'm no fan of the theme park vlogger, if you can earn enough to do it, fair enough.

Slugjc said:

Not only that, how do you keep the interest going? At what point does the hobby, become a job and burden? Costs start impacting life?

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You can tell the ones where it's a job for them. When it gets to that stage the algorithm doesn't allow you to back-off and take a break, as then you risk the next video not getting out to as many viewers. The person that always gets mentioned is the best example. Same park, different week, has to make a vlog even if there's nothing to report. As long as it's content that's put out to keep the algo happy and gets enough loyal viewers. Starting a family? No worries, go out almost every single day in this country and abroad. Where's the long term prize when you're missing out on quality time with your newborn child?

And there are many others. I don't blame them for making money from travelling around instead of having a boss and doing hard graft. My issue has always been that they're disingenous as they pretend to be loving what they're doing when I know that they're bored and just doing it for the sake of content and feeding the algo and their earnings. Fundamentally I just don't like fake people.

BarryZola said:

You can tell the ones where it's a job for them. When it gets to that stage the algorithm doesn't allow you to back-off and take a break, as then you risk the next video not getting out to as many viewers. The person that always gets mentioned is the best example. Same park, different week, has to make a vlog even if there's nothing to report. As long as it's content that's put out to keep the algo happy and gets enough loyal viewers. Starting a family? No worries, go out almost every single day in this country and abroad. Where's the long term prize when you're missing out on quality time with your newborn child?

And there are many others. I don't blame them for making money from travelling around instead of having a boss and doing hard graft. My issue has always been that they're disingenous as they pretend to be loving what they're doing when I know that they're bored and just doing it for the sake of content and feeding the algo and their earnings. Fundamentally I just don't like fake people.

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It took me a long while to get you tube to stop suggesting he who has been mentioned. It was only because I watched a couple of yours that it came up.

I have just looked at my YouTube account. The channels I engage the most all have 1 thing in common. They are faceless. Ok they add their own personality, but it keeps about the subject, not themselves. Well researched and have taken the time to make it short and sharp.

With theme park vlogs, especially around opening days. The need to get videos out first has taken over. Why do they all, have a amateur local news presenter vibe. What's the harm in filming, enjoying the day, think about what is needed to be said. Then getting back to the PC and editing the footage, doing a good voice over so it becomes something decent to view.

Slugjc said:

It took me a long while to get you tube to stop suggesting he who has been mentioned. It was only because I watched a couple of yours that it came up....

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All BarryZola's fault.
Again.
Keep em up mate.

On a broadly theme park-related note, but not related enough to go into any of the Alton Towers forums... what on Earth happened to Alton Towers Almanac?: https://www.towersalmanac.com/

When I was a budding enthusiast in the early to mid 2010s, I remember ATA being a brilliant resource for Alton Towers info, and I was legitimately excited to see the new version of the site get released! Yet it sadly didn't get updated after about 2014, and the new version never came...

The not getting updated isn't the part I'm wondering about, though. Being maintained as a time capsule is one thing... but some utterly bizarre content has now made its way onto the site. The most recent "news" article (reportedly written by site admin Dan Ketteringham, but I don't buy it...) is now some bizarre conspiracy theory rant about card payments being the stuff of the devil and advising viewers to always use cash, and some of the "trip tips" shown on the main page are... not family-friendly, to say the least! Someone seems to have gone on and inserted sex references and rude words into a lot of the trip tips and some other parts of the site...

This makes me wonder... was it hacked or something? Or did the old team who ran it just have a major change of heart about what to put on there at some point?

I remember Dan K. I really liked his website. He also made it onto the Alton Towers 'Customer Council' back in around 2007. An initiative launched by Alton Towers to get feedback from the public about what the general public liked about the park or what they would change etc. The general public were invited to apply via several forums or from wherever they saw the advertisements about it. They were then asked to write a paragraph or more about their journey as to why they ended up visiting Towers, what they enjoyed and why they thought they might be a good fit for the 'council'. Then, after all that, they just pretty much mostly appointed owners or mods of the couple of established Alton Towers forums to the council anyway, but threw in a few members of the public anyway on top. The ex-owner of one of the main sites who was a manager at Towers was also mates with at least a couple of those who made it to the 'customer council'.

Here's a pic of the Line-up:


Out of the 6 in the front line, 1 was an owner of a Towers forum, 2 were mods of a Towers forum and 2 were managers who may or may not have known the afore mentioned

At least one of the back row was an Alton Towers rep and who knows if the back row was chosen randomly?

Never forget, haha. There was a big argument lasting a few days instigated by me about all this back in the day. Couldn't believe that they'd marketed it as an equal chance for people to get involved and then they just 'at least' half filled the program with friends or those in positions of influence. I tried to hold my own but the general forum members did their best to destroy me for having my opinion. You know what I'm like. Dan K was particularly awkward about it. That's how I'll always remember him.

Still bitter and waiting for an apology or at least an acknowledgment that I was right about the disingenuous 'offer' of a fair run for places on the council, as my younger self was a lot more enthusiastic about the place at the time and I thought I could offer at least as much as the next person. It did at least offer the life lesson that it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Re: ATA, my guess is the team all lost interest in running the site, but the curious part is somebody is still paying for the hosting. It would've made sense to hand over the reigns to somebody that wanted to run it, or closed the site down completely, but to leave it abandoned and still pay for it makes little sense to me.

Regarding the obscure content, I imagine the site was written using an old version of PHP and somebody has used a vulnerability to make the changes. Another reason not to leave sites abandoned.

Also I think that TowersTimes started putting more effort into their site and then that split off and became this site as well. So as the ATA team were getting less interested, others were more interested in running sites. Its interesting that Towers Street is the only major forum to remain, Towers Times no longer has a forum, ATA is defunct and Rideas is a Facebook group now (although still a little active).

Also seeing the customer council stuff above, it is a shame Wayne Burton got promoted out of AT, he did seem genuinely enthusiastic and wanted to make changes (the original Towers Loving Care was his project), but once he was moved on to Merlin head office it seems he no longer cares or has influence over the smaller details in the park. I got a great reply from him complaining about the old Nescafe machines in the hotel, which got replaced with the bean to cup machines and now (this is where it seems evident his customer experience role no longer exists) we get lukewarm filter coffee.

It has been interesting to see the decline of theme park forums in my time reading them (I’ve probably been an active forum reader for about 11 years, at a guess? I’ve been a member on TS for 8, but I read forums without contributing for a few years beforehand). I haven’t been on the scene for as long as some on here, but even in the time I’ve been reading forums for, there’s been a step change in dynamics and user base.

When I first got into the theme park enthusiast forum and fan site scene, Alton Towers Almanac was still a thing, as was Towers Nerd, TowersTimes still had a very active forum, a site called Alton Towers Guide (?) was a thing, and TowersStreet, CoasterForce and other sites like Thorpe Park Mania had pretty healthy user bases. You also had Total Thorpe Park, Chessington Buzz and other sites as well!

Whereas now, I think the number of active theme park forums and fan sites around has reduced. And even the more active sites have probably had a reduction in regular user base.

Of the forums I’ve semi-regularly read over the years, TS is probably the most active. The Alton Towers and UK discussions remain particularly active, and I think the non-theme park discussions also remain interestingly active on TS compared to other sites, which I find quite curious.

CoasterForce also remains reasonably active; the non-theme park discussions there don’t seem quite as active as on TS, but the core park-based discussions are still a reasonable hive of activity and it’s still a site I use regularly and like. I find it particularly valuable for discussion around parks outside of the UK; there’s still very active non-UK discussion on CoasterForce, which I think widens my perspective a bit compared to just using TS!

Thorpe Park Mania still exists, but is considerably less active than it once was, so I don’t find myself going there as often.

But a lot of the other communities seem to have either moved away from forums (TowersTimes, Chessington Buzz) or just died a death completely (Almanac, Towers Nerd). It’s been interesting to see.