Brighteon.com is experiencing a strong surge in viewers and video shares during the coronavirus pandemic and corresponding lockdowns, but the very large increase in bandwidth usage is putting the network into the red when it comes to cash flow.

This is an update from the founder of Brighteon. All these points are explained in more detail in the podcast below.

Over the last year, we’ve overcome many very large challenges with censorship and costs, and Brighteon is now surging in popularity:

• We overcame the “upstream” censorship issue following the New Zealand shooting, where Brighteon was threatened with across-the-board de-platforming for hosting videos related to that shooting.
• We overcame the “storage costs” issue by drastically reducing our costs for online storage. This solution has been working very well, and our storage costs are now well under control.
• We moved away from a third party login processor and built our own login system for increased security and more insulation against upstream censorship.
• We experienced a video migration glitch last year that caused many earlier videos to be corrupted, but most users have since re-uploaded those videos and they are now well preserved.
• We recently experienced a video processing glitch that caused a delay in the processing and posting of new videos, but we have since resolved that issue and processing time is back to normal.

Now, with the increased bandwidth surge, the new problem we’re facing is revenue. Brighteon.com is currently consuming considerably more money than is being earned by the Brighteon Store (BrighteonStore.com), which is itself undergoing some coding changes to make it more responsive and faster for users to navigate.

The Brighteon Store carries a wide array of nutritional supplements (including non-GMO vitamin C), topical silver products, clean personal care products and home care solutions. We fulfill all orders ourselves out of our warehouse in central Texas.

Our goal is to get Brighteon.com to maintain “break even” status. If it pays for itself, that’s victory. It doesn’t need to earn a profit, but we also can’t fund it losing money forever.

So we’re about to add Brighteon Store ads underneath the video player, both for on-site videos on Brighteon.com as well as embedded videos that play on other sites. These won’t obscure the videos and aren’t pre-roll ads or interruption ads. They will only advertise the Brighteon Store, which is being expanded with T-shirts and other Brighteon-branded products that help support the network.

Here’s a more detailed, straightforward explanation about the challenges we’re currently facing and some of the accomplishments we’ve achieved. Remember: Brighteon.com is free to use, and it’s one of the very few places remaining on the ‘net where you can talk about vaccines, criticize communist China or debate the coronavirus pandemic without being shadowbanned or de-platformed.

Thank you for your support of Brighteon and the Brighteon Store. If you’re tired of being censored by YouTube, join Brighteon.com today and start posting your videos (and gaining a following for your channel).