CHAPTER 76: GENIE ESCAPING THE BOTTLE

YOUTUBE CREATOR DASHBOARD

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CHANNEL: Fatih Yıldırım

SUBSCRIBERS: 5,000

TOTAL VIEWS: 69,000

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[ LATEST UPLOAD ]

TITLE: Road to Formula 1 | S01E01 - My Name is Fatih Yıldırım.

PUBLISHED: 1 Day Ago

VIEWS: 68,000

It had been only a day since he uploaded the first episode of his docutainment series, and that amount of views in itself for a new channel with no prior subscribers or audience would be considered a very large success. However, Fatih found it very underwhelming for obvious reasons.

The motorsport scene was currently starved of any high-quality video content, and in 2012, YouTube had yet to experience the rise of emotionally and narratively driven docutainment. It was still graduating from vlogs and other individual-based entertainment avenues, with high production value still associated with TV channels. This was especially true in motorsport, particularly Formula 1, as Bernie Ecclestone was still tightly controlling the sport. His belief in strict TV rights management was still reigning, reducing the amount of Formula 1 content on YouTube, and even teams didn’t have permission to post freely.

Under these conditions, his video should have been a cold cup of water to a very thirsty man in a desert. However, he knew it was only temporary and would gain traction over time. But why wait for it to take that long when you can accelerate the progress by delivering it to the audience in the first place?

He leaned back in his chair, rereading the article he’d just finished. It was an opinion piece published on TheConqueror.com, disguised as a recommendation from the site’s editorial team. The headline read: "A New Era of Motorsport Storytelling: Why You Should Watch This Docutainment Series"

Fatih smiled. The article didn’t mention him directly, but it praised the video’s emotional depth, production quality, and narrative structure. It was the perfect way to promote his personal brand without revealing his ownership of the site.

"Let’s see how many of them will trust me and go watch it," he said aloud, clicking "Publish," and within seconds, the article was live.

In just three years, TheConqueror.com had gone from being a forum to what would now be considered the most trusted home for Formula 1-related content. It had already shifted from the forum and moved to a very professional website that had everything anyone interested in Formula 1 would need: articles, guides, videos, technological breakdowns, regulation breakdowns, and all of those were of very high quality compared to anyone else on the motorsports scene. There were even rumors that F1 teams used Fatih’s articles to study competitors’ advantages.

Fatih had been reinvesting most of the first year’s subscription money into bettering the website. Freelancers were hired to appear in and edit videos. The content was then posted both on the website and on TheConqueror’s YouTube channel.

But with the brand growing rapidly, Fatih realized he needed to separate his personal identity from TheConqueror. If the site were ever acquired, he didn’t want his personal brand entangled in the deal.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t advertise himself through them; it only meant he needed to do it as if the TheConqueror site owner had discovered the video and loved it so much that he promoted it for free to its large audience so that they could go and enjoy the video like he did.

Not stopping there, he immediately went to TheConqueror social media accounts before uploading the trailer under the caption: [We have come upon a very interesting, high-quality motorsport docutainment that we believe those interested in motorsports would be interested in. Please go, watch, and show your support to the creator.]

Within minutes, the post was live on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit’s r/formula1

"Now we wait," he said before he started opening and double-checking some things unrelated to his promotion for about half an hour. He then left his room, heading to the living room as a Formula 1 race was about to begin, one he’d been looking forward to all week. Italy.

His betting business had already been decoupled from the main site. It still operated within the original forum, capped at a subscriber limit he’d set years ago. After all, betting markets adjust quickly, and too many participants dilute the pot.

By the second year, Fatih had removed the single-race subscription tier, it was too much of a headache. Then he phased out the lower tiers one by one until only the new $1000 tier remained, capped at 250 participants. That earned him a stable $250,000 per month, with a long waitlist of hopefuls ready to jump in.

The exclusivity made current members fiercely loyal. Even during off-season months, they paid to retain their spots, knowing they’d earn it back easily once the races resumed.

This financial stability was another reason Fatih couldn’t publicly associate himself with The Conqueror, not at his age, and not without legal protection.

"Hi, Mom," Fatih said as he jumped onto the sofa, laying his head on his mother’s lap. She had already changed the channel to the race.

"Did you finish the questions?" Rümeysa asked, playing with his hair and enjoying the moment.

"Yes, I’ll show you after the race," Fatih answered without even lifting his head before he asked with an amused smile on his face, "Wanna bet?"

"Have some shame. Do you think I’ll continue accepting bets when I’m the only one having to pay every time? Even big rats sometimes let small rats win in order to give them the hope that they have a chance of winning, but you seem to have a sense of wanting to squeeze me dry," Rümeysa answered as she pinched his cheek lightly, venting her emotions.

For the last three years, every time they watched a race together, Fatih proposed a bet. Rümeysa, initially being naive and thinking it was a fun game, accepted. With her competitiveness, she kept accepting them again and again until she was sure that Fatih had some sort of intuition that was right when it came to racing. She then started only accepting wild bets, like a weak team winning the race or someone recovering from last to P2, and things like that, to reduce Fatih’s winning odds. But even that hadn’t worked, as he continued to be right, and she had to continue paying money or the promised bets, which ranged from taking him to parks all the way to him sleeping late on the weekend.

"But I always gave you an advantage, Mom. Do you know how much people are paying me for......." Fatih had to stop himself mid-sentence, turning to his mother as he had just realized what he was saying and wondered if she had heard him.

"What?" Rümeysa looked down at Fatih, her smile disappearing as she asked again, "What do you mean, people are paying you? And what are they paying you for?" She caught and turned Fatih’s head, which had subtly returned to watching the TV, to face her, showing that she was serious.

Inside her mind, hundreds of questions began to swirl. A deep worry gripped her. What if he had been mingling with older people who were using him, manipulating him, even abusing him? Every nightmare scenario a child could face started flooding her thoughts. For a moment, she regretted ever buying him a computer.

"People are paying me to post my guesses," Fatih said, with the look of someone smart but unaware of the full implications of his actions, perfectly reminding his mother that, despite how mature he sounded, he was still a child with mature reasoning but limited experience.

"What? No, sit down and tell me everything from the start," Rümeysa said as she pulled him up, bringing him face to face in order to have a serious conversation.

"What are you two talking about?" Güldane asked as she entered the living room, finding mother and son face to face, with her daughter having a serious expression.

"He says people have been paying him to give them his guesses about F1," Rümeysa gave a brief but condensed summary of the situation.

"I can show you," Fatih said, pointing at his room while making a face showing he was starting to get worried and scared at his mother’s reaction.

"Stop scaring him and have him explain himself fully first," Güldane said upon seeing Fatih’s expression.

’Sorry, Mom, Grandma,’ Fatih thought, apologizing internally for lying and manipulating them. But he saw no other way to reduce the number of valid questions that would arise if he simply sat them down and told them he had a website that was now the leader in F1-related news and information, and a group of people paying him for betting insights.

"Yeah, I need to see everything to understand when it started and how it reached this point," Rümeysa said after closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm down.

Fatih stood from the chair and started walking to his room as the two followed behind him, worried that he had been doing something wrong.