Hey there Ross!
Congratulations on your freedom, thank you for blogging about it.
As I was reading your latest post, I began to ruminate on the chart you listed with the activity of your videos. There was one section you circled which you listed as @ the time when Google tweaked their search algorithms. To me, it stands to reason that your traffic should actually go down during this time as well, since a more lean and accurate search engine should in theory lead to less clicks on your videos from unintended search results.
Now, mind you, the chart did take a dramatic nose-dive during this period. When did your postings of FM begin to slow down? I would love to see a superimposition of the release-dates of your new vids in Youtube, the correlation of that information would be interesting.
Don't stop making content, you do wonderful work! I hope you can monetize it in a fair fashion!
(On a tangent, I was shocked at just how much Machinima used cross-linking to stimulate the views of their own content. It got pretty frustrating with the stupid amount of Top 5/Top10 videos that multiple channels simply cut/paste...all within the Machinima network! Did they cease & desist, or at least lessen this aggressive advertising? That may have also been a factor to your drop in views, not to mention your contract dispute.)
