TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

When Your Passion Should NOT Become Your YouTube Channel

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 18

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Ever wonder why you can freely use popular music in Shorts but not in long-form videos? The mystery gets solved in this eye-opening episode where Travis and Dan break down YouTube's complex music licensing deals. Rather than YouTube plotting to annoy viewers with ads, they reveal how streaming economics actually work—the platform has already been paid by advertisers, but when viewers block ads, it's creators who lose out on revenue.

This conversation takes several fascinating turns, from exploring whether turning passions into content kills the joy (spoiler: it sometimes does), to sharing a listener success story proving that patience pays off. One creator watched their video flatline for 100 days before suddenly gaining 1,800+ views when the algorithm finally discovered it. This real-world example demonstrates why deleting "failed" videos too quickly might be a mistake.

The most thought-provoking segment tackles the tough question many creators face: should you turn every hobby into content? Both hosts share personal stories of how transforming leisure activities into YouTube material sometimes drained the enjoyment completely. "Not everything you do should have a financial thing attached to it because it's going to burn you out," Dan wisely notes. This balance between content creation and personal fulfillment might be the secret to long-term creator sustainability.

Whether you're wondering about using music in your shorts, considering a second channel for your cycling adventures, or trying to understand YouTube's recommendation system, this episode delivers practical insights wrapped in the hosts' trademark conversational style. Check out our Discord community at vidIQ.com/Discord for even more creator support and join the conversation!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Tube Talk, the show dedicated to helping you become a better video creator so you can get more views, subscribers and build your audience. Brought to you by vidIQ. Download for free at vidIQcom.

Speaker 2:

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that has so many hosts. You have no idea who's going to show up. I'm Travis, I'm always here and I'm here with Dan today. Oh, I was waiting for the person to show up. They didn't show up, so here you are. Oh, it's you instead. Okay.

Speaker 3:

But it's good to have you back. Yeah, no, thank you for having me. I appreciate the invite. I know that usually they keep me locked away in a little room and sometimes they bring me out to answer some questions or something, and I look forward to this time. I like being out of the room.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's been a minute since we've talked, so it's good to have you back.

Speaker 3:

Please don't make me go back.

Speaker 2:

I know, right, you've got to go back to the live streams, dan, I don't know what to tell you. It's going to happen. Okay, if you're new here, welcome to the podcast channel. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll notice some changes around here and we're just the same great stuff, just different dressing. We still live in the same house. We just got it painted or something. I live in the basement. We keep Dan in the basement. He's just above Savage, savage has the sub-basement, and then it's Dan, and then Rob and me and Jen somewhere else.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so if you're new here, we try to help you grow your YouTube channel and sometimes talk about other shenanigans, but we're going to go ahead and take some of the messages from you. Y'all send us emails all the time. You can send us an email at theboostvidiqcom, where we will read it here and try to give you answers as best that we can anyway, and this first one comes from someone you see on the live streams a lot MC Ivan. You know MC Ivan, right? Oh, oh, yeah, everyone knows MC Ivan. Let's see what he has to say today. Hello, travis and Jen, or whoever has shown up today. You are whoever has shown up today, dan. Congratulations.

Speaker 2:

That's me, that is you, on YouTube Shorts. I've seen it said by YouTube and other sources that you can use whatever music you like, even if it is not royalty free. Is this true, and how is it possible? And why can I use Star Wars music and long-form videos too? And since this was pretty short, I was wondering if my favorite candy podcast would tell me their opinions on the candy Smarties. I really like them, even though one can last me several days. Oh, because one can last me several days. Thanks for the answer. Have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 3:

I always mix up the Smarties that Ivan is talking about with the ones that are just chalk that's been cut up into little circles. Aren't they the same thing? No, there's like a hard candy that. I think about because they last the whole day. The Smarties packets will last you a couple seconds because you'll spit them out immediately and go on with your day, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because in the coming weeks you're going to see Jen and I in the studio trying different candies and we did not get Smarties. We should have different candies and we did not get Smarties we should have. Maybe next time we'll do Smarties. It's been a long time since I've had any. I'm not a super fan, but I would try it again for the podcast. I'd do it for content. I'd do almost anything for content, dan. Okay. Okay, but let's answer the question about shorts, about music and stuff. So I think maybe the confusion here is it says you can use whatever music you would like. So there is when you're making a short using the tool, it does give you option to use a lot of different music sources, including like quote copyrighted music, which all music is copyrighted technically. Talk to us a little bit about that and why that even is. It is confusing at first because you know, for the longest time creators are like I'm not supposed to use music and all of a sudden YouTube's like use music.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so quick disclaimer, and we just, you know, we feel like we have to say this sometimes. We don't work for YouTube and also I don't work for the music industry, so all I can do is make assumptions. And I think what happened was TikTok came around and let people use music. I don't know how those deals work, but as I understand it, youtube has sat down with studios that produce music, manage artists, things like that, and they've come up with deals to allow people to use not royalty-free stuff on their shorts. And if you think about this from the music perspective side of it, it makes sense, because a short now that could be three minutes. I don't know how that complicates things, but a short is shorter and so really, you only get a sample of the song, which for them, they probably see that as a selling point for the music. I like that song, I like that artist. The artist is usually, if they did it right, it's credited at the bottom. So when you upload a short, you should be using that tool that credits the actual artist instead of just using. I think a lot of people just edit in their editing software and put the music in that way. It seems to also be okay, okay, but I think what they want you to do is use their music selection tools. Uh, what you'll also find is, I, I don't know, maybe you can pull this up later, uh, and put in the show notes or something.

Speaker 3:

There was a news story not that long ago where, for a hot minute, the music industry and youtube a deal fell apart. I don't know if it's universal, or some record company was like hey, you know, we want more money. Basically, oh, yeah, yeah. So for a minute there, a whole bunch of artists were removed from TikTok and YouTube, and so it isn't like they can use any song. It's songs that YouTube has worked, or artists that YouTube is working with through the record labels, and it just so happens that these record labels have there's not too many of them, so it feels like pretty much everything is at your disposal, and it's really should, for, in their minds, work as an advertising platform. Also, that's probably one of the reasons shorts make less money than long form videos. I'm making an assumption there, but shorts notoriously make less money, even if they're longer shorts. Why is that? Because that money is being divvied up to you, to YouTube and the record labels.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely Record labels are involved with this Also. I mean, all the way up until the implementation of three-minute shorts, you really couldn't play an entire song through a short, and Dan kind of touched on this, so it was more of a like oh, let me get a piece of that. Weirdly now a lot of music now is like two minutes long, I've noticed. So you technically could play an entire song. So it is kind of weird now if you have a long form three minute video that you wouldn't necessarily you might get claimed there, but you probably won't get claimed in a short that's two minutes.

Speaker 3:

Don't forget there's also the feature that no one ever talks about, which is YouTube has given us, as creators for long form, the ability to grab songs and license them ourselves. Right, so you can use certain music in your long form videos if you're willing to pay the licensing for it. If you're willing to pay for it, yeah. Youtube has made that a lot easier than it used to be, whereas you would have to go to the record label and talk to them yourself.

Speaker 2:

Sorry to interrupt you, if you even knew which songs were going to do what, because some would claim you, some would strike you, some wouldn't do anything. Uh, and for a while there they had a little bit of a database where you could type in a song and it would tell you what would happen. But that's not a guarantee of anything. At least now you can license it. But the thing is, the funny thing about the licensing thing is you are licensing it for a period of time and youtube tells you after that time period, who knows? They might claim it after that, which is kind of a ripoff. Like you sign this, you pay these people money for their song and in like two or three years four, I don't know how many years they are they could then say, nope, now we're claiming it, but you get you double dipping, you double dipping how dare you?

Speaker 3:

yeah, it's, I mean, I've seen it so okay. Invato elements, for example, is a, is a company that lets you license all kinds of stuff uh, photos, videos. They videos. They're all like stock footage. That's where a lot of people get their stock. I think that's where we get ours. That's one of the sources.

Speaker 3:

And the way the licensing is supposed to work is, if you cancel your Envato subscription, you are still allowed to have those videos up on your channel and no one's going to come after you, but you're not allowed to continue using that footage. If you save it to your hard drive, you're not allowed to use it. So these deals are written in such a way to try to make it easy for the content creators, so no one gets in any trouble. And the music is the same way. Envato used to have songs and then they removed those songs from their library. And how it's supposed to work is that anyone who used that song in the past should be good, but if you don't know that they remove those songs, I've had it happen where I'm like, oh, I'll use the song I like, and then it was removed and then now my video is getting claimed, like what happened and turns out oh well, they lost the rights to that song, so the rights, even on royalty free stuff, can change, which is super frustrating.

Speaker 3:

Um, so it's just something that you always have to watch out for. Uh, I will say just as a quick aside I'm noticing more and more creators just not use any music and that kind of plays into this whole world of authenticity we're entering into, and you might not need that Star Wars music under your video. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I think you should have the Star Wars music under your video all the time.

Speaker 3:

You should have the right to Star Wars music under your video.

Speaker 2:

Dag nabbit, as long as it's not the whole song, why not? So hopefully that answers your question somewhat Basically. You know there's been deals made and I think at one time you couldn't play the whole song but technically now you can, which complicates things. But anyway, there's deals made. Is the end of that answer. So thank you for that, mc Ivan.

Speaker 2:

Okay, next up is a email from Paul who says my name is Paul and I'm from Bychester in the UK. I was supposed to be listening to how to Get your Two-Year-Old to Sleep audiobook but I found you and Jen at the same time and you won out. Suffice to say, I haven't slept in three months and I'm nearly up to date with all your episodes and listen every day driving to and from work, and you keep the inspiration. Your inspiration keeps me going, which is amazing. I love that. Yeah, food first cream eggs Too much cream. I love Cadbury cream, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Mini eggs amazing, but have to be cold, like out in the fridge. Candy corn never had, but I'm afraid it looks like it got OD on sugar. What is your stance on candy corn again, Dan?

Speaker 3:

I mean, I don't really eat candy anymore these days, but I used to think it was fine. But if I ate too much of it then I would hate it. But yeah, I was always that weird person that actually didn't mind a little bit of candy corn every year. But it's limited. I can only eat too much or so much. I guess some is too much for some people, but whatever 100%.

Speaker 2:

It's too much Curly Whirly, which is what Rob told us about. Oh, yes, but don't forget Smarties, which is ironic. So we just talked about Smarties, and I do love a wine gum. I've never heard of wine gum. I don't know what that is. It sounds made up. It does sound made up.

Speaker 2:

I have a children's YouTube channel called Stories to Grow, where I read stories for children. I've been involved in this over the past three years just from reading the pages from the books edited to turn as I read from picture files to me being on screen and having some puppets too, as well as the pages moving. As it is a children's channel, I'm not able to have comments on it, so I'm not able to gain insight from the community as to what it's like and disliked. However, I've looked at other big creators in the niche and try to take snippets from each of them that do well. I've had early success with two to 3000 views that have ebbed and flow off. Now, and with a new format, it's about three to 400 views on the latest video and it seems to slow off. So the question is with a channel that doesn't have a community, what do you do? How do you gauge it. I've been engaging quite well with small authors and getting them to submit stories, which is cool.

Speaker 3:

That's a good way. I was going to ask about where they're getting the stories from.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's smart and add a channel to the likes of Instagram and such. Should I be using end screens and best utilize them? I've never used them before, not sure how to go about this. That's really cool. The thing is with kids channels, though. Typically you don't have access to that, so I don't know.

Speaker 3:

And last but not, least Anyone watching on regular YouTube would sorry go ahead.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh, and last but not least, it shows amateur. You know that we do an entire episode about all the different youtube uh terms, uh, so we're gonna save that for a future episode, um, but be on the lookout for that. But so for these first two small channel, um kids channel, which typically you don't get access to end screens and stuff, but maybe theirs isn't categorized as a as one, they said their videos get in between two to three thousand views and sometimes get three to four hundred, and I like how they've gone out and and they're talking with the small authors and getting them on board so they can use their it's.

Speaker 2:

It's a everyone wins, yeah I love that super smart um, but things like how do you get more engagement and such and use? I love end screens. I'm an end screen enthusiast yeah, I do too.

Speaker 3:

I so, if any, if you're getting any views from youtube proper, because just because it's on youtube, kids, doesn't mean it doesn't also show up somewhere on YouTube proper, right, correct. It's just that's where you see the comment sections empty and it's kind of weird. You can use them there, and the way we typically recommend to use them is you can. I like one call to action for an end screen so it can be to subscribe, but then it shouldn't be for anything else. But what I like doing is Travis you've probably talked about this a great length at this point on the podcast, but you create a session by a watch session, by having people watch more than one of your videos. So people are during their overall session on YouTube that day. You need to occupy so many of those videos to have a session of your own within it. Does that make sense? So right now, if you're watching this podcast on YouTube and we tell you to go watch this other one, your watch session with the Tube Talk podcast would be two videos right, and that helps us a lot because it shows YouTube that you are getting a lot of clicks from, or you're clicking on, this podcast a lot, and it's helping to identify the type of person who YouTube can recommend the podcast to and all that stuff.

Speaker 3:

So the way to do it, I think, is to if you're reading a children's book and, let's say, the theme is like puppies or whatever, you would probably want to point to another children's book with a similar theme, so maybe kittens or also puppies or something like that. And a way to think about this is you could make playlists, and I'm not saying you point to a playlist. Playlists are not a great thing to point to, in my opinion, but for your own mental sake, a playlist can help you categorize the different subcategories of children's books that you have. And then you're like, okay, this is a puppy children's book, it's going into my puppy playlist and therefore I'm going to push to another book in that playlist. So that is how I would be using them in your case. Yeah, yeah, that is how I would be using them in your case.

Speaker 2:

That, yeah, yeah that sounds right, and I've dealt with some kids' channels in the past and a lot of times it comes down to thumbnails.

Speaker 2:

To be honest, especially depending on how young the kids are, it's all about a very colorful thumbnail with some really cute imagery and then, beyond that, like they were saying, it's hard to see their likes and dislikes because, again, you don't really see that stuff. I think the views really tell the story here. Again, without access to certain metrics that we look at to see for success, you can still see retention, you can still see how long they're watching and such and depending on the age, some kids just press play or the parent presses play and it just plays right and then it just auto plays to the next thing. So having content that naturally plays into each other is good, but I mean really it's a thumbnail game. In kids' content it really is just a thumbnail game. So look at what works in your particular niche and especially for the type of books and stuff you're reading, and get some really amazing art for it, and you'll be surprised that that alone can change the course of your channel.

Speaker 3:

Engagement-wise, because they were asking about that with our comments. You have very little work with. You have views and I believe kids can subscribe to channels. I think I could be wrong about that, but that's how you have to measure it. I guess If you're getting views, you're doing something right and that's just kind of the nature of kids' content. We should talk to a channel who's been doing content on that platform for a long time and see yeah what they would say I I would love to know from a, a creator, who's like made it.

Speaker 3:

You know and had and had these questions answered for them at one point like what they feel like their engagement metrics look like yeah, I mean kids channels and music channels have always been kind of a hard to coach channel for me personally.

Speaker 2:

They've been kind of not my blind spots, but certainly my weak points, music being the worst for me. Kids, I can usually figure out a way through, but they're very difficult because they're very limiting. You can't. It's not like in a song you go well, for your next song, you know that part where you use the horn. Don't use a horn next time. Well, no, I'm an artist, I'm gonna use a horn if I want to use a horn. It's like well, but your retention dropped. But did your retention drop because the horn came in or was something completely irrelevant? Like it's different there. Um, there might not even be visuals on on. You know what I mean. So it's like it's very difficult, um, but yeah, I think what we've, what we've said, is, uh, gonna put you in a right direction. All right.

Speaker 2:

Next up, chris says hey, hi, tren which, by the way, I don't know if you know this, it's Travis and Jen. That's what Tren is. I was picking up on that. You were picking up what they were putting down. Thanks to Jen for reviewing my D&D channel on the live stream. Yes, being a Dungeon Matterer is a great title. I don't know. Talk about the changes to ads coming from people turning off during ad spots, which I definitely used to do myself. I'm not sure what that's in reference to.

Speaker 3:

I'm trying to do you. I know there's a lot of stuff going on with ads right now, but I guess that sentence specifically is a little confusing to me.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So from people turning off, I think what they're saying is when they would watch a video, people would turn off. During the ad spots they would maybe drop off the video Like two now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what they're saying. Do you think there's any truth to the idea that they'll keep upping ads in order to? I've noticed I get 60 seconds of unstoppable ads nowadays, which I didn't know that used to be unheard of. The reason I didn't know that is because I've been using YouTube Premium for a very long time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I can never go back. I can't. No, if I stumble upon, because I have a few YouTube accounts that I use, right, and if one of them is not on Premium, I immediately click off of it, I'm like oh no, this is unwatchable. Yeah, and I've become very jaded. I just forget that there's a whole youtube experience out there that includes 60 second unskippable ads.

Speaker 3:

We're so right about that. So what I will say is that emails seem to have a little bit of a conspiracy theory attached to it whereby youtube is deliberately pumping up ads to sell premium subscriptions. Here's what I think, and again, I don't work for youtube and I don't know how much money they make premium versus ads, but I will say that they probably, if I had to guess, make a lot more money on the ads than premium.

Speaker 3:

Personally, I don't know that's true, you're probably right but ad rates fluctuate wildly and premium is what it costs. They change it every couple years, right? So YouTube would probably prefer it. Honestly, we all just shut up and watched ads, but they know they need to create an experience that's more premium, sorry, so that people will stick around. Here's something for everybody. If you're going to pay us the money to make up for the ad, spend fine. So I don't think that is what youtube is doing. I think we are moving into a place where the world is just becoming a more expensive place to live in and ads are going to be, you know, I mean, like youtube needs more ads to pay their employees to run their servers and, and it's kind of this infinite problem, because YouTube does something that other platforms, like Twitch, don't do they hold onto your content forever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And so guess what that storage is still? There's a physical place in the world with your videos on it, and those videos can be 20 years old now, because YouTube is 20 years old and those are still accessible on the servers old, now because YouTube is 20 years old and those are still accessible on the servers.

Speaker 3:

It only can get more expensive to run YouTube at the end of the day until we get some more technology that lets us, like, compress data even better and blah blah, blah, blah blah. So so that's what I think is happening. I think the world is just continuing to evolve, Technology is continuing to grow and it's just going to get worse before it gets better, and premium is one solution to the problem. I don't think it's a conspiracy where YouTube is like I know Well, piss them off, that will sell premium.

Speaker 3:

I don't think that's what they're doing.

Speaker 2:

No, I think the thing is you also have to remember YouTube is a business, even though a lot of it's free. Like you upload for free, which is kind of wild when you really start to think about it. Your videos get promoted for free, which is again wild if you really think about it, and you can watch for free, which again is wild when you think about what's out there and how much subscriptions cost. They have to recoup their costs somewhere. They literally can't not make money. Now are they saying that they're upping the ads because of that? I mean, are there people that are in meetings saying we need to make more money in our premium service? Probably. Are they trying to figure out ways to do that? I mean probably. Are they doing it in a way that's like Scrooge McDuck? No, I don't think so, having worked at corporate companies that needed to make more money and things typically there's. Every company is different, but there's usually people in there or at least a set of guidelines is like you know, let's not kill the user experience. You know, let's see if we can make a little bit more money, but let's not kill the user experience, because if you kill that, it's over, it's a wrap and now you really need to make more money, right? So are they making? I mean, the 60-second unskippable ad is that's wild. But you know what? There are other services that do this. So, for example, when I'm in my kitchen, I have an Echo show in there, right, no-transcript? Something about that is very nostalgic and I like that because I don't have broadcast TV anymore. I just stream everything. Yeah, something very cool about that. Plus, I just throw something on and you don't pay for it. But they have ads. So because of that, then of course they're unskippable. They just it's like, but it's like a commercial, it's basically a commercial, and that's their way of making money for something that's otherwise completely free, like YouTube, except they have actual television programs. So it's the same thing with YouTube. They've got to make money somehow. I never begrudge them that, and I'll even go a step further.

Speaker 2:

People that are using, you know, ad bloggers and stuff are stealing, and I, I, you know, there's that's kind of one of those things that some people go oh, is it? Is it? Yeah, it is a hundred percent, it is. Um, and you know, while people think, well, I'm just sticking it to the man, no, you're not, you're sticking it to the creator, because the creators are the ones that are getting screwed out of the money. Youtube getting screwed out of the money. Youtube already has their check. What people don't understand about the way this works is the ad payers. The ad advertisers have already paid. Google has been paid. You know who hasn't been paid the creator. So when you block that ad on that creator, it's not that YouTube didn't get paid. The creator didn't get paid. So you've literally taken money out of a creator's pocket, and I've never seen that argument anywhere. But that's literally how it works. You pay first.

Speaker 3:

My only counterpoint to this I'm not fully disagreeing with you my only counterpoint to this is that, as creators, we don't get to control the frequency. And this is, I think, the crux of their original question was about, I think, that change coming to ad frequency and things like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and maybe this is one solution to that, but as a creator, I don't typically get involved with how many ads they play on my videos, before my videos, after my videos, and so when the platform gets to a point where people feel like it is unwatchable, it pushes people in the direction of ad blockers so.

Speaker 3:

I don't personally blame anybody for using them in a way, in a sense, because they are just trying to create a viewable experience. They people I think people get pushed into ad blockers after they reach a saturation point a hundred percent.

Speaker 2:

I I feel like the internet is unusable without.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, some something to help. Yeah, and the solution isn't to, I think, go into into point individual creators and say you shouldn't do that. It's a solution that I think youtube needs to get involved with and the internet as a whole needs to get involved with. It's like, hey, we've reached a point where advertising has gotten so pervasive that I here's my thing I can't load a blog or an article on my phone without the page jumping around. It's not like if the experience was smoother, I wouldn't mind as much, but I don't read articles on my phone anymore because I can't block the ads.

Speaker 3:

And I don't like blocking the ads because I like the publications that are publishing these things, but their blogs, their articles, are literally unreadable. It's so frustrating. I sympathize with the ad blocking side of that argument, but also understanding what Travis is saying is like YouTube got. Like you said, youtube is going to cut our check after they take their share. So that's. I've never thought of it from that perspective and that's very interesting. So it's. We're in this really weird time where we just, I think and this is like a internet in its infancy kind of problem I think you know what I mean it's still the internet is still relatively young. In the grand scheme of things, we haven't quite figured this out, so I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I look at it like this. I'm not coming at you, just like I'm not coming at you. I mean, I'm not coming at the people who use ad blockers. It's the same thing as speeding. I think a lot of people drive and they speed. You are breaking the law. There is no three ways about that. Am I going to at you about it? I'm not saying you're a terrible person. I'm not saying don't do that. I'm not saying that, but you're doing it and there's no three ways about that. So you just have to live with that. And if you're okay with it, I mean okay. I'm not going to say anything more.

Speaker 2:

The content creator has not, and maybe you don't care, and that's fine. And I think everyone has to look at everything, every decision they make, as a risk reward, return on investment. You know morals versus whatever, whatever the case may be. For me, youtube Premium and it's solved. Everyone gets paid, everyone's happy, I'm happy, it's all good. I know not everyone can pay that, because I think it even went up in price recently. It is what it is, but I watch so much YouTube that it's worth it for me.

Speaker 3:

YouTube premium tip. I've given this one before, but if you were thinking about YouTube premium, they have a family subscription and if you pay annually, that's the best deal always is. What I would recommend doing is talk to people in your family who watch YouTube which is probably all of them and split the cost of an annual subscription, and it will be so much cheaper than doing a solo YouTube premium. I haven't looked at their prices recently, but I assume it's still that way you get a family subscription. You literally you sell each other the money. Whoever is in charge of the account gets it, and I think you can have up to eight accounts sharing a premium subscription on a family plan. Wow, so that's I, I, my, my premium subscription is full of family, literally family members. You I'm sure friends share this stuff too, but I I literally have shared it with my family, and if your family is coming to help you pay for it, it dramatically reduces the cost in my experience. So that's like one tip, uh, one cost saving tip for me.

Speaker 3:

But do we answer the crux of their question. They they asked about ads and the new.

Speaker 2:

So do we think I understood them better. They basically just asked like do we think that they're going to continue to make, push more or longer ads so that you everyone is forced to buy that? I mean, maybe I don't think there's anyone in a meeting that's saying that in those words uh, I think they look at what they need to make and they make decisions based off that.

Speaker 3:

I'm struggling to understand YouTube's new changes where you can set up manual ads and YouTube is encouraging you to let them just do automatic ads. I'm in a couple creator discords and I have noticed some discourse around this where people are saying I can't let YouTube automatically place them because they're putting them in the worst spots. So YouTube is probably using an AI that tries to detect the best spots to put breaks in. But my thing is I just think that you could spend time messing with those. But YouTube, like every video, has this problem, and so I don't think the average viewer is looking at you and going, oh wow, you really put that in a stupid place, that ad. I think they're probably just seeing the ad and going, oh yeah, youtube has ads. Yeah, that's how I think of of it. But yeah, I don't know if you need to take it on as like a weekly thing you do to move all your ads around. You certainly can. I just don't know if that's time well spent.

Speaker 2:

Personally, I don't do it yeah, I don't do it because I know youtube knows a couple of things about the viewer that I don't, which is their tolerance for ads. They know how often someone will watch something and when in a video they'll watch it, and you can try to assume that, but you'll probably be wrong and YouTube will probably be right.

Speaker 3:

You can litter your video with thousands of ads if you want to. I don't know if thousands, but like, you can litter your video with as many ads as you want, at like every few seconds. That doesn't mean YouTube is going to put ads there. It's going to show the user only so many ads per session and it's going to space them out in a way it feels like the user will tolerate. So what you're doing is basically telling YouTube I invite you to put an ad at these spots, sure, and YouTube will then automatically decide which spots to utilize.

Speaker 2:

Basically, Yep, totally. And if you love discussions like this, we have a Discord which I've been promoting a lot lately because I think it's cool. This is the vidIQ Discord. This is the general chat. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see it. This is really cool.

Speaker 2:

This is where a bunch of great this part right here is free, by the way vidIQcom slash Discord you can come in and talk to other people, get feedback on your thumbnails, titles, everything. Again, this was free. You just go to vidIQcom slash Discord. But if you have something like one-on-one or boost, there's a whole section specifically for you guys where there are people who will review your videos that are not just other creators but like people that are actual experts and sometimes I'm in there, but people like PowerDragon is what we call an advisor, super, super, super smart guy Watchtower. There's a bunch of people in there that can really help you with your thumbnails, titles and more, and again, that's if you have Boost or 101. You can still get that in the free section as well, but that section is really special and, of course, the free section as well.

Speaker 2:

You can come to the VidEye Crew channel and talk to us about the podcast you can see in here right now, derek's lawn rescue is back. He's showing uh some pictures about a video he's going to make. He has some questions about it and uh, I'll probably go in there after this podcast and give my two words of of thoughts. So make sure you check out, uh the vidicrew discord. Uh, we'll leave a link in the description and the show notes next. Next question is from Neil, who is a longtime listener, and he says Hi Peeps, which is actually a joke about Peeps the candy, not just hey Peeps, you know it's like because Peeps-.

Speaker 3:

Are those candy? Do they qualify as candy?

Speaker 2:

Okay, this is a great question. I think they qualify as trash, but it's a good question because I actually uh, Jen made me eat a peep on one of the episodes. Um, it was terrible it was it's wild that they make that. Peeps are the water of candy? It's not even. It's not even the water of candy, it's like the sewage water of candy. I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 3:

This is from Neil.

Speaker 2:

I know you love hearing a new viewers and creators contact you, but I thought I needed to email my old friends. Really, at this point I didn't have a question, but consider this as encouragement for other tiny channel creators. It also touches on a couple of videos from the main vidIQ channel I know you fab folks have talked about. I posted a video on the 15th of November and up to the 14th of February of this year it was at 570 views and gave me 12 subscribers. Then I started to see a boost in views and since February it's gained an extra 1,800 views, with 2,387 views total and 39 subscribers. I think this is awesome and if you're looking on the YouTube channel, you can see the screenshot where it shows that for almost 100 days this video did nothing. It just kind of sat there and then YouTube did its thing, and we've talked about this so many times, but I'm so glad someone who listens to the podcast actually sent in a screenshot to prove the point. Yeah, it can happen at any time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I feel like, with the way the graph looks, it's going to keep going. I don't think it stops at 2,400 views, I just think it's going to. This video looks like it's going to just continue going up for a while and, yeah, I think all videos flatline after a bit, but this is a really strong signal. I've had videos do this and they've gone on to be some of my most successful videos just across the board. So, yeah, congrats, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, neil's a great woodworking guy and so a lot of his content is going to be evergreen, which means videos that take off after 100 days are going to be not uncommon. Evergreen content doesn't necessarily take off at the beginning and a lot of times, just straight up does not take off at the beginning. It takes time for it to find the audience that's going to resonate with it and it just goes to show like don't panic if something out of the gate doesn't do well. I mean you had the Outdoor Boys video on our main channel. Same thing happened. It was dead in the water and then all of a sudden one day it was like you know what Algorithm comes in and goes. We're going to bless this video right now. And there you go. All, right, now this next one. I just saw the intro for it and I get it. I get what they're saying here. I know what you're saying and that's why I love this community, because they get us.

Speaker 2:

Hey, travis and Jan and that's a callback to a previous episode, if you're new here to the podcast you're saying what are these little inside jokes? You just got to hang out Binge. Watch this stuff, you'll see it. It's Leo from Germany, a mid-time viewer here. Unfortunately I can't contribute to the candy corn discussion Maybe luckily, since it's not really a thing over here but I do love dark chocolate. How are you about dark chocolate, dan? I know you don't eat a lot of candy or anything but chocolate. Milk chocolate versus dark chocolate Okay.

Speaker 3:

Milk chocolate is candy and dark chocolate is like a cooking ingredient.

Speaker 2:

I couldn't even put that better. Like you, literally. I'm not even going to add to that that. You just dunked on it. I love it. All right, we're going to keep moving. That was, that was fire.

Speaker 2:

I studied film, film music composition and started my YouTube journey last November. So far, things are going well. I'm about to hit three K subs and my returning viewers are growing. However, a lot of my videos are flatlining. Jeff, my coach hey, I'll have a you shout out to Jeff has helped me a ton, especially with the emotional roller coaster which, by the way, a real thing.

Speaker 2:

Besides making music, I'm a passionate cyclist. Every year, a friend and I head out on a big adventure with our tents. In two weeks, we'll be cycling from Munich to North Cape around 2,500 miles. That's ridiculous. I would never do such a thing. I wouldn't even drive 2,500 miles, let alone cycle 2,500 miles. Yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 2:

Recently, I've heard about using your unfair advantages for content creation, which got me thinking. Should I start a second channel featuring my bike packing trips, maybe even in my native language, german? Why? Because I need variety in my life. Music has been with me since I was five years old and while it will stay close to my heart. I don't want to focus solely on it forever.

Speaker 2:

That said, I'm not really sure if I want to put another personal hobby out there for everyone to see it. How do you decide, when you've reached a point where you should turn a tan line activity into a flat line passion, when it might be smarter to just keep some things for yourself? And, dan, I think you can probably speak to this as much as anyone, probably on the entire thing, because you really keep some things to yourself privately, and I respect that. You've drawn borders and lines around your life and said I'm willing to share this, I'm willing to do this out in the public, but the rest of this is mine. Talk to us about that and talk to us about this question, because this is a really good question.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm actively working on a video right now about should you start a second channel that's going to be basically the name of it actively working on a video right now about should you start a second channel that's going to be basically the name of it and it goes into this type of discussion of like why, like, when, why, what are the, what are the pros, what are the cons? And just to give it to you really briefly, the pros are what this creator is saying. Like I have this passion. I, and I don't want to do this one thing forever. I, I want to explore other passions on on youtube. The cons, of course, the biggest one we talk about in the video, is going to revolve around actually how you spend your time. That new channel is like adopting a new pet You're just going to need to feed it and water it and take care of it and take it out to go poop, and it's really important that you spend time nurturing it, just like your main channel, depending on what your goals are. So, with that out of the way, what I will say is that I'm the kind of person who's a hard time telling myself no, um. So, for a little bit of insight, the, the gaming channels and stuff that I've worked on. The past, like the one I more actively work on in my free time, is about a specific genre of game, and there is a new game that just came out that I'm, that, I'm very, and I'm like I should do something with this because I know I'm going to make myself more time to play it if I stream it or whatever, but my audience doesn't watch. I've not nurtured that kind of audience, so I don't think I'd make a new channel about it, but the line I drew for that is it does making streams or videos on this game create an opportunity for me? Like, am I going to get more views? Am I going to attract even more viewers to my channel or whatever, the answer is typically no. When I, when I switch genres, like my viewers don't watch and therefore youtube is like well, this is a dud and it's not going. Maybe over time it will, but doesn't typically go out to that new audience that I want. So I tell myself, no, this does not create an opportunity for me and therefore I'm going to enjoy this new game on my own on my free time, which, as I predicted, I'm not playing it as much because I'm focused on my YouTube channel In my free time. I like working on this YouTube channel, so that is how I drew that line. And then the other thing I've considered, when I have gotten into a habit of not telling myself no, is I have made these decisions and played these other games or did these other things on youtube and I realized that at a certain point it created more burnout, because now I'm having to. Yes, it was fun in the moment to play this new game, but now I got to make a thumbnail for it, for a completely different format of game. So I'm not used to making those, and I got to figure out a title, but a title that attracts a totally different audience. I have to think about how that audience what if they join my Discord? Will those two audiences have anything in common with each other? So the fun part was playing the game.

Speaker 3:

In your case it would be cycling, right. And then it's all the stuff you have to do after your trip is over, or that night when you're editing, or whatever. Do you want to spend that time or is it going to ruin this thing that you're doing? And that's that's been my issue. And so you really so, and it just depends on the kind of person you are, what your goals are. You really need to think about those specific problems and decide, for it's gonna. It's gonna be up to you every single thing you choose to make a video about. It's gonna be up to you whether or not that's a whole endeavor you want to like carry with you for a while yeah, you know what's interesting is.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad you said it like that because I can speak to this. I um, I had I had one at one point started a secondary channel, uh, about something. Well, let me rewind. I love video games, play video games. I was thinking, oh, I should just stream when I play video games, and the times that I did it was of fun. But I noticed that I was so distracted by chat and everything that I couldn't enjoy the video game. So instead of just turning my brain off and playing the video game, I was like actively doing stuff and it felt like I'd never played the game. I was playing it for someone else and there's nothing wrong with that. But the reason that I play games is to kind of relax and have fun and whatever, and I noticed that that wasn't as fun. So I haven't done that in a long time. I still might from time to time, here and there, just for fun, but I noticed I don't have as much fun.

Speaker 2:

Now fast forward to a couple years later, when I decided to. I was watching a bunch of reality TV shows and I'm like I should just do reactions to these TV shows and just put it on YouTube. I'm watching them anyway, I'll just record myself reacting to them. Great, I started doing them. I started doing the videos they actually did really well for like a channel that wasn't even. It was just a completely separate channel. I never I didn't shout out for my other channel, cause you couldn't. It was completely different subject matter. It just was literally what it was and I was getting hundreds of views in the first videos, like I think a couple have like a thousand, a thousand views or something at this point.

Speaker 2:

But here's a problem, exactly what you said. Uh, you did have to. I did have to go back and kind of edit, not really, but just a little bit and even just that, and even just having to react in the way stopping the to play the, stopping the video to make the reaction, made me not like watching the show anymore because it somehow associated itself with work. Yeah, that I actually stopped. Despite the fact I was hardcore into watching those shows. I stopped watching and have not watched them since, like years ago.

Speaker 2:

It was almost like when your parents find you smoking, you go well, you're going to smoke all these three packs of cigarettes and you better smoke them all back to back to back.

Speaker 2:

I smoked all them cigarettes and I'm done, I'm like no negative, never again. So there is the danger and it doesn't happen to everybody, but there is the danger that you could mix, take the thing that you really love to do, just to relax and kind of take away from and you kind of like, oh, I do want to share that with people, but realize that once you put the youtube rework with it, it for some people it enhances it, for some it destroys it. So I, I would, while I would say normally the answer this is yeah, I'd do a secondary channel, just be fun. Whatever, you have to look within yourself to know whether or not you're going to be able to release yourself from the expectations of oh, I need to make sure this video is a one of 10. And you know, the more important thing is the activity, not the YouTube part of it. If you want to share it, that's fine, but if you connect those two, it will quickly not become as fun.

Speaker 3:

And the last point I'll make there is it is so important and I think new YouTubers put this aside a lot. I know I certainly did it is so important to have activities outside of YouTube that you can use to take a break from YouTube, that you can use to take a break from your daily life work, shopping, shopping, all that stuff like you know shopping for groceries and boring stuff like that washing your car like it's so important to do fun things to fill your own soul. And you'll find, in a lot of cases it gives you inspiration in places you just wouldn't expect it. You know. Yes, if gaming is my hobby and it's also a thing I do on youtube, it's. It's a little bit different, but if I'm playing a game for myself, I'll find myself later on it's easier for me to come up with ideas for new videos.

Speaker 3:

Ideas that I feel like these are bangers. These are actually pretty decent ideas is when I'm trying to force it, when I'm forcing myself into work mode and I'm trying to force myself to come up with good ideas. They're not bangers, they're really hard-fought ideas that I'm struggling to come up with and maybe I land on something in that brainstorming moment, but a lot of times I just get frustrated and I'm like, well, I gotta make something. I said I would and I'm now you're doing youtube out of obligation, like give yourself, and I'm not. Now I'm not even answering this for the the person asking the question, because I do feel like if they're you know, I I don't. I don't want them to think that I oh, your cycling is your hobby't do this. It kind of sounds like I'm probably talking you out of it If you probably have other hobbies. I'm just saying for anybody out there don't make every single hobby. You have a, a skill that needs to be marketed on YouTube.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Like I really don't want to go for a huge tangent.

Speaker 3:

No, I love this here's like an example. I started collecting pokemon cards. Now I started this recently at a time that was really bad because everyone was suddenly doing it. I think I just whatever hive mind controls all the people buying pokemon cards. I accidentally fell into it and I started doing it the same time and they became like impossible to get. Yeah, what did I do? I will. I will unfurl these pokemon cards on my live stream. That should be fun. Yeah, it's a little bit outside my normal thing, but I'm buying them anyway and it seems like a fun niche to get into. Maybe I make a channel about it, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3:

The youtube stuff did make it more difficult. Um, there was suddenly like there was a portion of my audience really enjoyed it. So now I'm like buying more of these things. At the end of the day, I'm not trying to sell these cards. I'm not doing this as a thing to make money. I'm literally doing it for fun. I'm like, oh, I used to collect those and this set set looks kind of cool.

Speaker 3:

I I remember starting pokemon card binders. I want to do that again. That sounds kind of nostalgic and fun and it just takes the fun out of it when it becomes something you do on youtube, especially if you're a monetized channel you're, you are doing it for money. There's that hope in my head that, hey, this can kind of maybe fund itself. And as soon as that thought enter my mind. Now I have an obligation to these videos you know like, and if they donate now they're expecting me to do another one, because they gave me a super chat and that was enough to cover the price of like some cards.

Speaker 3:

So it just like it turns into a job and not every hobby has to be a thing. There's this huge scalper market with pokemon cards and again, these are not collectors. These are people seeing a hobby and trying to turn it into money for themselves, and there's a time and a place to make money in life. Not everything you do should have a financial thing attached to it because it's going to burn you out. Every it all will become some form of work. It'll create those negative connotations. You know, like travis was saying with the tv shows, like I don't like this show anymore because it's work. Now, even if it's a little bit of work, it's's still. There's that thing. It's like I could watch the show. I was the game, the game example I gave earlier, I could play this game on my Steam Deck. But I can't record on my Steam Deck, so what does that?

Speaker 3:

mean, well, I better go upstairs where I'm less comfortable, and then I can play the game as long as my recording software is running. That's not fun, right, like and be in work mode. For what if I just need to unplug? So I don't know. That's my very convoluted rant. The point is, you should have some hobbies that maybe cost you money and don't make you money just to fill your soul. And if you can find hobbies like cycling that don't cost you money every time you do it, that's even better. But that's what I have to say about that I love it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, last question for the show. This one comes from Winged Hawk. This was actually a comment from a video. I have a question in regards to your own videos recommending the next video in a series. I had a video do really well for my channel and was super excited about it, and then I made a second episode. It isn't doing quite as great and I can see in analytics that my previous video isn't recommending it at all.

Speaker 2:

Is there a way, without end screens, to manually have the algorithm recommend? My second video is completely up to the audience, other than end screens. I'm just going to tell you end screens and linked um links in like pin comments is the way to do it. Uh, I wouldn't avoid end screens at all. Like I'm an end screen dude, I love end screens.

Speaker 2:

If, for some reason, there's a reason you can't do an end screen which I only time that really would be the case is uh, kids, um, then the way it's done is YouTube looks at what people watch and then what they watch next, and if enough people do that, that will become the up next on the watch page, which will sometimes autoplay as well, and that's how you get that I've been able to do this with videos before on my own channel, but I've done them through end screens. I end screen the old one to the new one, the new one to the old one, and after a while it just naturally happens. It's naturally the up next thing, super easy to do. I don't know why you'd want to avoid end screens and, by the way, even if you do that, it's not a guarantee that it's going to work, but it definitely stacks the deck in your favor and I'm all about stacking the deck in my favor when it comes to anything youtube related.

Speaker 2:

I know that this works. I know how youtube suggests these things, so I'm going to do things in that way make things that are topically related. After watching this video, what's the next video someone's going to want to watch from my channel? I'm going to do that. Enough, youtube will figure out the rest. Um, and we've done that even on the vid iq channel, I think, for a couple of videos.

Speaker 3:

I would also add to that that sometimes videos just don't do well, for whatever reason. Maybe it was an audience mismatch. In general, that no amount of end screens will save you yeah, and that's okay too. I think, being that you're listening to this particular podcast maybe you watch the vidIQ main channel you are going to naturally be a more analytical person. You're going to feel like we are encouraging you to constantly be in your analytics and keep up with these things, and in a way, we are. But I also understand that at a certain point, you have to get on with making your next video.

Speaker 3:

I don't want you to abandon the series because one video did well and one video did not, and therefore 50% of these videos aren't going to do well. That's not how it works. You're just going to have ebbs and flows. You will get a million subscribers and still have ebbs and flows, like we do. We have 2 million subscribers and we still have videos where we try something and it doesn't work, and we'll do it four or five times before we kill it completely because we're like well, wait a minute, maybe this one.

Speaker 3:

We thought about it. It didn't reach the audience like we thought it would, so let's just make another one. Let's stick to the plan, and doing that generally is even if all of the videos flop. We learn so much more from that than if we turn and run at the first sign of trouble. So give your video a second to breathe and, yes, look at the analytics, try to learn from them, but don't dwell on them to the point where it's stopping you from creating. Yeah, your next, your third video in the series. Like you also do still need to do that if, especially with a plan, if you're just trying something a couple times and you didn't have anything planned anyway, sure if you're enjoying it, sure, but like you had a plan, like, stick to the plan, adapt where you can and don't don't just like turn on something.

Speaker 3:

Well, this series is a dud. No, no, the first video did well. The third video can also do well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so just a note for people watching in the future. We have Jen and I got together and we did six episodes in a studio, which is great, so those next couple episodes will be coming out over the next couple of weeks. You may see other episodes like this sprinkled in between, so don't get confused. It's not like you missed anything. Just keep an eye on the youtube channel if you're watching those, if you're an audio podcast listener, they're pretty much mostly going to sound the same anyway, so it's not that big of a deal, but if you're a youtube watcher, you might see you know things coming.

Speaker 2:

I say it all to say that an email came in while we were recording this. I won't be able to get to it for a while. You may not see your email get answered for weeks at this point, but don't worry about it. If it's a good question, we'll get to it. Um, just be patient and hopefully you're enjoying the content anyway. So, uh, you know, let's, let's see what happens. Uh, anything great and exciting happening on the main channel. Uh, as of the recording of this, dan, that you're excited about uh, I'll just go back to promoting the.

Speaker 3:

Should you start a second channel video?

Speaker 2:

at this point.

Speaker 3:

I think it's going to come out at the end of the month or maybe early next month. Okay, because we're getting ahead on content, but I don't want to promote too many. We've already promoted a lot of stuff. I don't want you to forget about it because I think it sounds like a lot of folks here, based on these questions, are thinking in that same kind of realm. You all sound like you were a step past the very beginning. Early creator and a second channel video is definitely for I.

Speaker 3:

I imagine that video is not going to do as well because we cater to the brand new youtubers a lot um. But folks like yourselves seem like you are thinking in those terms, like maybe maybe a second channel is right for me, maybe it's not.

Speaker 2:

So I'm trying to make a case for both sides of that argument in that video and I'm excited about it I think it'll be great and we need to be, and we're trying to expand the creativity on the main channel for different things and figuring out what other things you want us to talk about. As a matter of fact, you can always send us an email at theboostvidacuecom or, if you're listening to the audio podcast, there's a link Send us a text message. Tell us what type of content you'd like to see here, either on Well, with that, we're going to say adieu and we'll catch y'all in the next one.

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Tube Talk brought to you by vidIQ. Head over to vidIQcom. Slash Tube Talk for today's show notes and previous episodes. Enjoy the rest of your video making day.