The $695 in referred Gumroad subscriptions is not "half a pair of new Nikes", it's $695 a month in recurrent income. So, while $30,000 of monthly adrev didn't cconvert to subscriptions overnight, 5% did, and that could be a trend.
There are ways, even when banned, to claim content on YouTube with ContentID (and therefore get ad rev for it) without buying or destroying channels. MDE was banned off YouTube so there's a 90% chance that Lil Shitpost will now be banned as well since he just announced the channel is now his.
Only smart thing he did was hire Lil Shitpost to continue his editing. To be frank, his Gumroad content is not worth the money. I was a subscriber and I cancelled. His format sucks, his guests suck, his videos on Gumroad suck. I would suggest them to literally no one. However, I still watch Lil Shitpost and The New Pill on occasion. Their videos are a combination of clips from multiple videos, including very old pre-Gumroad videos, which tell a story or paint a picture which is entirely different than the sum of its parts. They are NOT just simple excerpts from a single stream - or what we'd traditionally refer to as a clip. Often times, people besides Sam Hyde are included in these videos. Honestly, if I was Lil Shitpost, I'd have claimed fair use and took it to court.
tl;dr: I believe this is a blunder, his channel will be banned/demonetized, this will cost him goodwill, and his efforts should be going to making better friends and doing better episodes.
