TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
TubeTalk tackles the questions that real YouTubers are asking. Each week we discuss how to make money on YouTube, how to get your videos discovered, how to level up your gaming channel, or even how the latest YouTube update is going to impact you and your channel. If you've ever asked yourself, "How do I grow on YouTube?" or "Where can I learn how to turn my channel into a business?" you've come to the right podcast! TubeTalk is a vidIQ production. To learn more about how we help YouTube creators big and small, visit https://vidIQ.com
TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
Does Taking A Break Hurt Your Channel on YouTube?
Get the vidIQ plugin for FREE: https://vidiq.ink/boostplugin
Want a 1 on 1 coach? https://vidiq.ink/theboost1on1
Join our Discord! https://www.vidiq.com/discord
Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/8XMqY_vXyy4
Every creator faces those moments where momentum stalls, inspiration fades, and we question our place in the vast YouTube landscape. In this heartfelt discussion, Travis and Rob tackle the psychological side of content creation that often goes unmentioned beneath the surface-level metrics and strategies.
When a viewer asks about niching down their history animation channel, the conversation reveals something deeper than just topic selection—it highlights the delicate balance between creative passion and audience-building. Rob shares a personal insight: "I will consume anything about World War II, but have far less interest in the French Revolution." This simple preference demonstrates why creators must find the intersection between what excites them and what builds a consistent audience.
The most powerful segment emerges when discussing a creator who experienced viral success right before vacation, then returned unable to recapture their motivation. As Travis notes, "You have to disconnect your self-worth from view counts," highlighting the dangerous trap many creators fall into. The numbers game becomes a rollercoaster of emotion—when videos perform well, you feel invincible; when they struggle, worthless. This emotional cycle burns creators out faster than any algorithm change ever could.
We also explore fascinating technical questions about viewer spikes, audience demographics, and when to revive dormant channels versus starting fresh. Each question peels back another layer of the creator experience, revealing that success often requires as much psychological resilience as it does strategic thinking.
Whether you're struggling with burnout, confused by analytics, or simply trying to find your place in the creator ecosystem, this episode offers both practical wisdom and emotional validation. As Rob concludes with his word of wisdom: "Keep creating, no matter the challenges. You've got this."
Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that, like I said before, loves you more than you love us. I'm Travis, and today I'm here with Big Rob. We call him Big Rob.
Speaker 2:Hey yo, welcome back to Tube Talk, the Boost, the vidIQ podcast network. What do we call ourselves Travis these days? The Rob and Travis Show? I don't know, I've been gone for a cup of coffee and I'm back and we've got another channel name. Is that another?
Speaker 1:name. That's true. Yes, on the on the youtube side of things it's vid iq podcast, but tube talk on the other side has not changed, because I'm deathly afraid of changing the name of that thing and losing all seo so I'm refusing to do that, um, but welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:It helps you grow your youtube channel and sometimes talk about candy and other related and unrelated things. So we like to have fun here while we're talking on the podcast. And while some people might consider Rob a guest, really he's just like one of the many co-hosts that come through and we do have a lot of guests coming up and you might have seen Rob. I don't know if you've seen some of the studio episodes we've been doing recently. Where Jen and I were in the studio, which people seem to dig that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So which people seem to dig that a lot. Yeah, that's cool, cool vibe cool thing. I think it'd be great if we had like a studio. We went to all the time, but jen lives literally hours away, so she has to come up to seattle, uh, and then we record. When we do that, you live across the pond, as they say. So I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, so I think geographically, the meeting point would be like Halifax, nova Scotia, maybe Iceland.
Speaker 2:If you could set up a studio there and we all jet over once a month, I'd be up for that.
Speaker 1:Iceland. Is Iceland cool? I don't mean cool as in cold, I mean hey, I mean, is it like it's horrendously expensive?
Speaker 2:That's all I know, apparently.
Speaker 1:Weird. Why would it be so expensive? I guess people, I don't know. It's not a place that you think about.
Speaker 2:All Scandinavian countries are really expensive for some reason because I think they're really well-run countries and people have a good quality of life, but it means everything's expensive. Interesting Anybody listening from Iceland, norway, finland, sweden. Do please correct me at that point and I would love to hear it. Do you have any Scandinavian listeners?
Speaker 1:I would love to hear that we are worldwide and I see you. I see you because I see the analytics and you're all over the world. We appreciate you. But let's get into some of the questions you have sent us, as over the last couple of weeks they've been kind of storing up, and here's the thing I'm going to talk about the fact that not only do we have a backlog of questions and, moving forward, we'll always have a backlog, cause I had been warning for months that this was going to happen. We're going to have to have the Sophie's choice of questions um, where I went through what we have in the backlog plus knowing what's coming ahead.
Speaker 1:Um, for different content, where we won't be able to answer questions in some of those episodes. So if you wrote in over the last couple of weeks and you don't see your question here as of the date that you see this podcast or we're shooting it on whatever day today is Wednesday or whatever it's possible that your question won't get answered in the future Only because we had a lot of people who are, um, you know, frequent flyers who write in We'd love to hear from. I read every single one of them, I read them all, appreciate them all, but I had to pick some and, to be honest, uh, I had to. I, I, I go with the newer people first, because we want to give everyone an, so first up, I have a random fact just to interrupt you there, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I know it's really obnoxious and like I hate when people do to me on a live stream, but when you said we're recording on a certain day a video, I this. 45 years ago to that date, the Empire Strikes Back was released in Sydney.
Speaker 1:Nah, you're kidding.
Speaker 2:What a crazy coincidence. No way, that's wild, and I spoiled the film as well. In that video people were getting annoyed by it. But hey, it's 45 years old now, I think. Statute of limitations on copyright spoiling people, I think is expired I think it's 40.
Speaker 1:I think I think the copyright spoiler thing is like 46 years, so you might be a year early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know you have to be in your mid-50s before, uh, you can spoil anything I was gonna say I'm sorry, george lucas, but he doesn't own any of that content anymore.
Speaker 1:He doesn't do anything anymore.
Speaker 2:He sold out for billions of dollars. Well done, George.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to doing that one day as well. All right, so the first question comes from the audio podcast listener. So if you're listening on the audio podcast, no matter where you're listening from, there's an option there that says send us a text message. You can click on that send us good old text messages. And here is the first one Hi, travis and Jen, or in this case, rob, oh wow.
Speaker 2:I get to read it. This is cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're going to read one of these. You're going to read the next message as Jen now reads things. I'm going to have these up. Loving is how focused down should I make my niche? My target audience would skew older, I think. Now on to sweetie delights. Have you tried Tunnock's Tea Cakes, one of Scotland's finest gooey inventions? Thank you kindly. I don't even know what that is. What is Tunnock's?
Speaker 2:I've heard of a Tunnock, but I can't remember the last time I tried one. I'm going up to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks. I will try my best to try a tunic tea cake and let you know. But tea cakes from you. See, it's really weird. Tea cakes from my specific part of the UK are just bread rolls, whereas in other places it's a bread roll with raisins and nuts in it, but I don't know what it would be in Scotlandotland as a teatonic tea cake. I thought it might be a biscuit. Who knows?
Speaker 1:I'm actually part scottish, if you didn't know really yeah your surname would kind of allude to that.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed, um, all right. So they're saying they're 2d, 3d animator, looking to start the history history explainers, which is kind of cool, because I actually like youtube channels that have, like the, the animations behind them. There's something more interesting to them than a talking head, um, and they're. But they're asking, like, how, how focused, how down, how focused down should they make their niche? Um, for a history explainer? Now, you've watched history explainer channels before. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you have um, you watch all types of nerdy stuff, just like this. What would you like to see from a channel that's like this? How far down do you think they should niche before they're down too far?
Speaker 2:I think a certain period of time or event should be their niche. For example, I am a huge history buff. When it comes to the second world war, I will consume anything I can about it interesting. But let's say the french revolution, the war of independence, the civil war in america, the first War, I have far less interest in. So if a creator is jumping from one time period to another, that might put me off, unless their ability to we're talking about an animator their ability to uniquely tell those stories through the animation is so powerful enough that it draws you into that style of animation. That could be their, their through line, their superpower, which allows them to jump timelines. But for me personally, travis, I will be saying let's pick a historical timeline that I'm most passionate about and at least start there with maybe the first 20, 50, I mean, it depends how long it takes you to make a video and how long they are A set number of videos on that time period would be my suggestion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and historical explainers can mean anything. It could be the industrial age, it could be wars, it could be any of those things. So if you're talking about a time period, like Rob just said, then you could go through all those things. You go through wars and industrial periods, social economic situations for that time period, so you could do that and focus down to that. You also could niche in a different way and have the most interesting parts of unknown history and then go through different timelines. There's different ways to niche down.
Speaker 1:Niching down doesn't mean you can only talk about one year. It means a subject and, by the way, as we've talked about before on here, you can have buckets, so you can have a bucket of videos that are wars, a bucket of videos that are about economics and a bucket of videos about social issues, which can then have timelines within each. But if you're just starting out, I agree with Rob pick something, pick one time period and really nail it, because you know, if you're just kind of first starting out, one of the hardest things to do is tell a good story anyway, and as an animator, you're probably more worried about the animation than you are the details of the story, and I would recommend, as an expert in you know in animation, you should. You know you are the expert there you should make it good enough and then concentrate more of your time on the story and make it interesting. Don't make the animation Perfect. Make the story Perfect.
Speaker 1:I think that's the thing that's going to keep people. Just the animation itself is novel enough to at least get people to watch for a little while, but if the story isn't good? We actually saw this on the live stream. I think it was yesterday. You guys were doing an animation channel. It looked like a soap opera or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was interesting.
Speaker 1:Like the idea, the concept of that is really great and even the animation wasn't bad.
Speaker 2:The voice acting was. It was a bit scrappy, to be honest, almost to the point where it felt like it was a bit comedic satire but that could be okay. But I don't think that was the intention. I think it was take on on the soaps of that time period, whoops. But anyway, yeah, it was, it was. It was a tough one to talk about that really, because the creator had done like 1500 videos oh my gosh, and we're still just getting less than 100 views per per video.
Speaker 2:I did want to pick up something you mentioned there, travis, about their skill being the animation side of things. That is also something that is under threat at the moment, given the barrier to entry to more complex visuals is being eroded by ai, so this can be either a blessing for this creator or an Achilles heel. If they're still able to create animations that are so unique and cannot be replicated by AI, then that means that you are even more unique, but AI is so fast that it could potentially be able to duplicate what you're doing in a few weeks, a few months. So just be aware of that as well, in terms of YouTube already being flooded by these visual historic animations and storytelling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and it's just one of those things that you'll learn by doing. Definitely, I think, like anything else, content creation, definitely, I think, like anything else, content creation if you're really wanting to be successful, you know as quickly as possible, which is kind of a dangerous thing to put yourself under. But I mean, it's fine to have a goal. Having an idea of the direction you want to go is good, but then being flexible enough to go okay, that didn't work, but this other thing did is probably just as important. So keep that in mind when you're when you're doing your content. But we're super excited for you, can't wait to see all the best.
Speaker 2:Good luck on your youtube journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, next question I I love so, uh, as you know, rob, like we get people calling us everything vidi, crew and everything, all these different names, which is great. This one is very, very, I I think, very, very interesting. Hello, video, intelligent quotient personnel Because vidIQ. I don't even know what that word is. Quotient, quotient yeah, that's actually what IQ is. Intelligent quotient, that's what IQ means.
Speaker 2:Really you didn't know that I've been welcoming people to vidIQ for almost a decade. I never knew what IQ meant.
Speaker 1:Don't trust a word. I say folks, this is going in the uh water cooler slack uh, immediately, all right. So this is a text message from one of the one of the writers, who's very smart. They know what iq stands for. You want me to read this one out?
Speaker 2:yeah, go ahead, because they're from england yeah, I'll ask my questions first to get that out of the way. Firstly, how long shall I leave it before I change a thumbnail if I think it's not doing well? Secondly, what are the benefits of doing live streams on YouTube slash Twitch as regards to gaming?
Speaker 1:Thanks, yeah, I think it's great. There's a little part after that we'll talk about later.
Speaker 2:Read out the rest of it later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll read that out later because I want to answer the questions first. Sure, so let's figure this out. So how long before you change a thumbnail, which I'll tell you right now? Jen feels very strongly about not changing it too fast. And then, what have the benefits of doing live stream on the two different platforms? So let's talk about thumbnail first on the two different platforms. So let's talk about thumbnail first. And this varies based on the amount of impressions you get in a certain amount of time. So, as a larger creator, as vidIQ, we might change them very fast. What is the general thought behind this for the vidIQ channel?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I might give a bit of an anti-gen response to this. This is based on purely my personal experience and just knowing how my videos react on the vidI a high level of interest in that first hour that I'm thinking about changing the thumbnail and the title. Whether I actually do or not is another question. Ironically, today it was the complete opposite, travis, because the click-through rate remained above 10% in the first hour and it already picked the best thumbnail it wanted to use from the three we tested within the first hour. So that's like chef's kiss moment, like beautiful YouTube can do its thing.
Speaker 2:Now you do have to be conscious of the video's intent. If you're expecting it to be a performer right out of the gate and it has a short shelf life, then yes, you may want to think about tinkering with the packaging. You know this might be like a release on a new product or like you're reacting to a film that's just been released you know not, the Empire Strikes Back, because that was quite a long time ago, but let's say Mission Impossible, final Reckoning. Like you're making a video responding to it the day it's released and you need all of our audience as quickly as possible. But if you think your video has long shelf life. It's going to be evergreen content, but it's not necessarily of high interest on the day it's released. Then, yeah, you do need to give it a bit more time to breathe. Now, that would be my general attitude to whether or not to change something quickly or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it also depends on how many impressions you're getting, because if you only normally get like 10 views first day, that's not enough data to know whether or not your thumbnail worked. But I'll just quickly explain how as I've said many times before, how the YouTube algorithm works for the first 24, 48 hours and then you can make your own decision. So you got to remember for the first up to 48 hours maybe even longer, depending on how large your channel is your thumbnail is going to be shown to people who've been to your channel recently and subscribers, so it's going to get shown to all those people first. So you definitely want something that's going to appeal to that crowd and hopefully by this point you have a general idea of what works on your channel and what appeals to that crowd. After that time three days, and then onward, it's going to be shown to more people who have never seen your channel before, and then that thumbnail might actually have to be different. So, like Rob said, which I think is really important difference, if you have something that has a short shelf life, like maybe a news article or news report or something like that or something that's just interesting for like a couple of weeks. You're going to want to hit them hard and quick, and which means typically engaging your audience and then hoping for the best beyond.
Speaker 1:If you have an evergreen piece of content, you can change your thumbnail. You can have one that's good for the first couple of days for your audience, that you know works, and then make a completely different thumbnail or something that is definitely more interesting to people who don't know who your channel is. So, in other words, that might be things like not even having yourself in the thumbnail, like if you're in the thumbnail typically. Sometimes I'll do this where I'll have myself in the thumbnail early on so people know it's a video for me, and then later on, when people who watch you don't know who I am and don't care who I am anyway and are more interested in something else than I'm talking about, I will then focus that upfront. So that's kind of the strategy behind it. But yeah, I mean, generally speaking, you know kind of early on whether or not something's working.
Speaker 2:And you might want to look for data cues as well, such as if the average view duration or audience retention. That might tell you that the video is of good quality and those who get into it are satisfied by it. But it does need a bit more of a revamp of the packaging and you know the comments as well are kind of leading towards a good piece of content. But, like, if the audience view duration is low and people don't like it, then maybe changing the packaging is not necessarily going to rescue it. It might have just been a bad video idea that doesn't work.
Speaker 2:You have to accept that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lots of different cues on whether or not a thumbnail works, but I think hopefully, with all of that, you have a general idea of what you should do there. I think it's great, and one of the other things that Steve said was that he was one of the creators, because Jen and I talk a little bit about about what certain terms mean. There's a video coming up in the next couple of weeks, our podcast episode coming up in the next couple of weeks where we go through almost every term youtube term so that people can understand, because we realize when people write in the go, I don't know what one of 10 means, or I don't know what these different things mean, and we want to. We want to meet them where they are and go oh, okay, well, let me, let me help you understand what these things mean. And he goes. I was one of those that had no idea what one of 10 meant, but I'm currently on one of five subs and loving the journey. So, steve, we appreciate you and we're so glad that you have gotten so much from this podcast and we love hearing from people.
Speaker 1:All right, next one this one is also a text message. So, again, if you're listening to the audio podcast. Uh, you can uh click on that link and I'll send a text. Uh, hi vidi crew, I hope your candy has treated you well this week. I used to upload, oh, oh, you know what we forgot to answer the other question. I just realized this. The question from before about live streaming travis.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to say anything because, like there was another tons of preamble after that.
Speaker 1:No, you're right I, I, oh, listen, this is what happens to me. The other question was what are the benefits of doing live streaming on YouTube and Twitch? Yeah, okay, let's do that. So we live stream, we do. What are the benefits that we see?
Speaker 2:We do have a lot of fun, a hell of a lot of fun. Last week we were accusing creators of being high just because we called the video at the wrong time. We get interruptions from people trying to sell us Thrustmasters, whatever. I think what you need to appreciate with live streams is that it's a very different audience and you are talking directly down the lens at your audience and you're wanting them to interact with you. So try and make it casual, try and make it fun and appreciate at the same time that there's a lot more friction with a live stream.
Speaker 2:People have to turn up at a specific time and be in a particular type of mood to enjoy the live stream. So when you start live streaming is an interesting question. I mean, I always would recommend, if you want to do live streaming in the future, do it before you're ready, because then you can understand and appreciate how terrifying it can be and how many things are technically going to go wrong, because they will go wrong on a live stream. They're never flawless, um, but yeah, even if it's just one person in that live stream, you can talk to them and have a conversation with them and it can be quite fun. I think from a more holistic point of view. Live streams can be good for converting viewers into loyal fans or subscribers, or getting them onto a mailing list or selling them a product or service. But maybe Steve isn't quite there yet on his YouTube journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's um. First of all, it is a lot of fun, can be a lot of fun if people show up. Now the the hard thing is if you're a smaller creator and no one shows up, you still have got. It's almost more awkward. I remember the very first time, um, I was shooting a, a video for youtube. It was weird to talk to this inanimate object as if I was talking to a person. Now it's normal to me, like whatever just makes sense. It's almost weirder to talk to that same camera, knowing that normally people would be watching and no one's watching at that moment for a live stream. Because you know you've got to keep the energy up. So if someone comes in, you know they're in the middle of it and they're like, oh, this is interesting, but then when they leave, you've you still got to keep that energy out. Whatever it is you're doing, you got to pretend that there are people there. So you have to fake it till you make it. You have to pretend that people are there at all times. Um, but it can be a lot of fun. One. No editing, love that, I love that. Don't have to worry about editing um, you can make it a a thing that is interesting enough that people will have to show up, have to make time or and jeff is really great at this jeff from lfafe Reviews and one of our coaches here is to make sure that video is good enough to be watched later.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's got tons of live streams that have hundreds of thousands of views on them because the content itself is so good that even if you weren't there live, you still need to watch or want to watch the content. So I'm a master at that and I love that he has done that. So hopefully that's helpful. I like doing live streams. I think they're fun In a way, when the discord episode we just did recently was kind of like a live stream because we recorded the podcast while talking to people in discord.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of like a live stream.
Speaker 1:That was lots of fun and we'll do more of those as well. All right, so back to that text message. Hi, that I crew. I hope you can. Your candy has treated you well this week. I used to upload videos to YouTube back when I was a teenager and got about 10,000 subscribers and 1 million views. I quit at the time to focus on school and now, over 10 years later, I'd really like to pick it up again.
Speaker 1:I've heard the algorithm is unkind towards older channels compared to the new ones. Is this true? Would you recommend making a fresh channel, even though my planned content is in the same niche as it was back then. It's worth noting that I have all my videos set to private right now, as I was a teenager that spoke swear words into a bad microphone, so it'll be a zero video point regardless. Best regards, tony. This is interesting. I can see both ways of this. What are your initial thoughts on this?
Speaker 2:So I'm of a. It's one of these. I'm 49% one way, 51% the other, and I think I'm 51% start a new channel. Not because of conspiracy theories about YouTube punishing all the channels, but I just think from a mentality point of view, having that fresh start, a clean slate, you're starting brand new on YouTube and this is now your, your commitment to it. I just think from a complete mindset point of view, travis, I don't think the channel is going to benefit or be handicapped either way if they just continue on on their old channel, but it, I guess, from from one point of view, there is still data there on that channel and that's going to kind of muddy what you're doing today, and so I think that's why I would maybe start a new channel, but, as I say, I'm literally on the fence on it and maybe, travis, you're just going to be literally on the fence the other way I don't know.
Speaker 1:I I'm just kind of on the fence, but I'll tell you some thoughts that are going through my mind and maybe this creator can figure out through these thoughts what what they want to do. Um, I think the the the pros of having, you know, using that channels that you're already kind of set up, there might be some. I don't know if 10-year-old data even works anymore, I don't know, but at least you're kind of somewhat established. And he says within the same niche. So that doesn't sound like a bad thing. It sounds like he might be able to roll back in.
Speaker 1:I think the bad thing of this is because you privated all your videos. It's going to look like you bought the channel. So people are going to come in and say, of course your first couple of videos aren't going to have that many views because of course it's almost like it's a brand new channel. They're going to see a 10,000 subscriber channel with like 20 views and like, wait a minute, what's going on? You have three videos with 20 views each and you have 10,000, they're going to think about starting a new channel Plus. I think the other thing is it will set a false expectation potentially to yourself to have 10,000 subscribers, you put out a video, it gets 12 views and you're like that doesn't feel right. But if you have zero subscribers, you get 12 views. You're like all right, cool, I did well.
Speaker 1:And sometimes the big difference is not having this thing, this almost sort of Damocles holding over your head of like I need to do really well because there's this social proof that I should be doing better than what I am doing. So I like the idea of starting new. I think between these thoughts and what Rob said, I'm kind of convinced of that. I think before all that I would have said, yeah, I mean, just keep it on your channel, who cares? But yeah, the more I think about it, I think for a healthier journey, starting sounds sounds like a good idea here's an interesting question to you, travis and everybody listening what were you doing 10 years ago on youtube?
Speaker 2:if you were on youtube?
Speaker 1:that would have been 2015. I was not on youtube, so that was three years before I started so you were just, uh, consuming content.
Speaker 2:I was watching, yeah, yeah. So I think 10 years ago, I was May 2015. I think I was just about to discover my breakthrough niche, which was how to record your iPhone screen. I don't know if I've made a video on that topic yet. I had been covering the Asus Transformer Prime, nexus seven, nexus six. So, yeah, I I think I was. I was on the cusp of a breakthrough, from what I remember, and then I was just a year away from making the, the video for vid iq, which changed everything.
Speaker 2:yeah, and here you are he's already on youtube somewhere?
Speaker 1:that's wild that um that even that journey was almost 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was already maybe 300, 400 videos into it at that point.
Speaker 1:Sheesh, see, look at that. Some people don't think about that, that your journey here at vidIQ actually started before vidIQ and they don't realize you had 100,000 subscriber channel before you even came here. I think people just see, like I've talked about so much the tip of the iceberg and they don't see everything that went into the iceberg, everything's underneath the water. That built that little thing that you see above the water Like, oh they're really I could do that video. Sure you could. But to get to this point, do you have it? It's harder than it looks, funnily enough.
Speaker 2:I did have a nostalgia moment. Yesterday A video went out on vidIQ and somebody in the comments said hey, aren't you the Airshow guy from 20 years ago? And Airshow was like an app you used to record. Wow, yes, that's me.
Speaker 1:I love you, dude. That's insane, that's wild. Okay, All right. So next up are some emails. So here's an interesting thing, Rob, you probably don't know about this, so you can email us at theboostvidiqcom, but a lot of people in the comments will ask well, I can't figure out what the email address is. Now we say it every episode that we do these questions it's theboostvidiqcom.
Speaker 1:We do not write it anywhere for two reasons, and this will probably continue to be the case for a long time. Number one spam. So there are scrapers across the internet that look for email addresses to put them in the spam list and, by the way, we are already in the couple spam lists. But the spam lists we're in are targeted for podcast guests. So, in other words, there's websites out there that have like tube talk and stuff. They're like if you want to be a podcast, but this is one of the many podcasts you can go, and here's the contact information. I'm okay with that. It's interesting.
Speaker 1:Again, we have never written it anywhere and it's really important for that. I don't want that. And number two, because I don't want drive by people. In other words, I don't want people that hear oh you, if you just go to this channel and watch. There's a link there. You can ask them a question and they watch that answer and they never come back. I'm not in that for that. For the people who listen and who want to send us a question, send it in, we're going to answer it. So those are the two reasons. So I see a lot of people asking well, what's the email address? Well, that tells me you haven't watched very many episodes, because literally every single time we answer these, I say it's theboostatvidiqcom. So there's your answer. This next question comes from let's see, bring up the screen Ivan, Dear Travis and Jen. At the very beginning of oh wait, you read this one.
Speaker 2:This one's your turn, dear Travis and Rob. Rob, at the very beginning of the year, I went on a month-long vacation where I wasn't able to work on anything for my channel for the entirety that I was gone. The video that I posted right before I left went viral, getting a quarter of a million views, which should have given me a big boost in momentum after half a year of being stuck in the same spot. However, since I went on vacation, it stopped all that momentum and more, and I haven't been able to pick it up even all this while later. I want to keep working.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of cool ideas, I just can't motivate myself to put the work in, and editing videos that used to take me a day now take me two weeks. Not even my sub count jumping up a few subs excites me anymore. How do I regain my momentum and get excited about it again? I fear that this is the hardest obstacle I've had to face so far, and if I go by it wrongly, it could very well be the last. I'm sorry to hear that, ivan.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple of things. Number one imagine this All this time you're trying to work hard on your YouTube channel, Like I'm going on vacation, and you throw a video up and it does the thing you've been trying to do for however long Ivan's been trying to do this, Isn't this always the way? It's always the one you don't think anything of. It's always that one and, crucially, he wasn't able to double down while it was happening. He was away and he couldn't. That's the thing. That kind of sucks for him. I'm like dang, like, obviously you're supposed to double down. So he had all this momentum and stuff and by the time he got back to it, wasn't able to pick it back up.
Speaker 1:Now I mean, we don't know what the video was. We don't know anything about, like, what was going on or or if it was in the same niche or whatever all those things apply. So we have, we can't even assume this, but I'm going to say, let's assume that, um, Ivan did this correctly and it was in niche. A lot of times when I see messages like this, that video has nothing to do with their niche and the answer is completely different than what we're going to give. So, to be clear. We're going to assume it's in niche, because I think Ivan watches vidIQ quite a bit, so I think he's probably within niche. What do you think about this? I think there's a couple of things we need to respond to Number one, like how do you try to get back? But, more importantly, how do I gain momentum and get excited again? Because he's like he says, editing takes much longer now and it's the hardest and it's a mental obstacle and I've come across this myself personally.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear what you think about that. Yeah, again, this podcast seems full of coincidences, because I published a short yesterday from the now very famous YouTube ES man, and it was about going on holiday. The creator went on holiday for a month and youtube said that the algorithm was going to flush the channel down the toilet. It was all in jest, but I still maintain the attitude of you can take a break if your content is irreplaceable and viewers are only going to get the content from you. Therefore, they're willing to wait. But if you're a smaller creator who's trying to compete with so many other channels, the moment you get some momentum, you want to stack that momentum as quickly as possible, or YouTube is going to find other creators to replace you, and that is the eternal, the damn frustration of youtube, and that is relentless. But at the same time, you need to. You need to protect your mental health, and now I'm still trying to figure out what the solution is to that. I think it was to hire lots of other people to help me out on the channel. Yeah, right, we're able to do that. I know, uh, even you're not able to do that in this case. What I go to here, travis, is the bit where they mention that now videos take two weeks to edit. Right, and I'm wondering why that is the case. Like, do you assume that the video went viral because of the production quality in some sense? Or like, did that video that went viral only take you a couple of days to edit? It sounds like that's where the main source of burnout and frustration might be coming from. So I would certainly think about perhaps going back to basics so that you can make videos maybe a little more efficiently and take the editing time and push it into the video idea or the packaging or the hook. That might be something worth considering. And then also just to check because I don't think we've asked this question, travis did they actually double down on this viral piece of content? It may have gone viral and then they did other things in the niche, but did they revisit that specific topic in the niche? Those would be my, you know, path of least creative resistance to try and re rekindle that momentum.
Speaker 2:I guess the other thing to say is you know mindset, all right, a video went viral. With what was it? A quarter of a million views. That's not your expectation. Now, right, you're not expecting every video to a quarter of a million views. That's not your expectation. Now, right? You're not expecting every video to get a quarter of a million views. So prior to that viral moment, how many views were your videos getting? And then, after that video viral moment, how many views are your videos getting? If there is still like an incremental increase of like 10 or 20% on that baseline, then you are growing. It's just this viral moment that is completely screwed with your mindset and that happens to all of us at some point. We all have this viral moment and then we think we figured it out, and most of the time that's not actually the case. You've just had a moment and then you've got to try and figure out how to replicate bits and pieces of it.
Speaker 1:There's also the thought that like 80% of a channel's views come from like 20% of its videos, or maybe even less than that, maybe like 10% of its videos. So for the most part, your videos are going to go back to somewhere where they were, depending on what you've done. If you're continuing down the same path, the same niche, again, we're assuming some things which we probably shouldn't. But we have to kind of talk to the broader audience of. This is what would happen normally. Yeah, if your baseline has gone up, that's actually what those big videos are supposed to do make that baseline go up. It doesn't mean you're always going to have these bangers on bangers. So, without being able to know the specifics, hopefully that's somewhat helpful.
Speaker 1:But the mental aspect is hard. Period, like YouTube, it's a grind. It can keep you from making content made. It has done that to me personally on a personal level of like. I don't want it to not succeed. I don't want videos to not do well. It's kind of.
Speaker 1:You know you have to and Jen and I talk about this all the time you have to disconnect your self-worth from view counts and sometimes in subscriber growth. Sometimes it's hard to do because when things are good you're like I'm the best, I'm awesome. But that also means when things aren't going so well, the first thought is I suck, I've been canceled, I'm no longer good. So if you can disconnect yourself from that and look at it analytically and go okay, well, let me just try this different, then you have a much better chance of being successful. But perhaps, more importantly, you have a much better chance of being successful. But perhaps, more importantly, you have a much better chance of doing it long, long term. Because I think if you put too much pressure on yourself, it's no longer fun. Then what's the point?
Speaker 2:So to that point, travis, maybe Ivan needs almost like a throwaway video whereby he actually makes it for himself. I fall back in love with the creative process, why I love making YouTube videos.
Speaker 1:That might be worth exploring as well, and especially for that one don't worry about the views, right, just enjoy making videos again if you can very important and definitely, if you can't keep yourself going, then none of the performance matters, none of the bangers matter, because if you can't keep yourself going, then none of the performance matters, none of the bangers matter, because if you're like I've given up, then what was it for? But, yeah, a very real thing and people struggling with, like even mental health on YouTube is a major thing. It's something that we'll probably talk more about in the future. All right, another text message. I took April off a pause. I needed to all right. Another text message uh, I took april off a pause. I needed to quietly reset before returning in may with a clearer sense of direction. Since there's another pause, another person was like I needed some time.
Speaker 1:Since coming back, I've shifted my focus towards mental health and personal growth. Hey, look at that. Uh, it feels more aligned with where I am now and with that kind of space I want to create. But before that shift, I had already completed 25 videos as part of a personal challenge. 100 videos in total meant to document an awkward, uncertain YouTuber slowly finding his footing and, honestly, that part was real raw. Each one captured the stretch of trying, the growing pains and the effort to show up, even when it didn't feel polished. I love that, by the way. I think this is amazing.
Speaker 1:But now I'm wondering does that early chapter belong in the new story I'm telling, do I leave the first 25 videos visible, letting them speak from where I started, or do I tuck them away, honoring the growth but quietly letting go the parts that no longer fit? I think the quickest answer is look at MKBHD's channel. You can look at some of his very first videos ever made. Probably same thing with Casey Neistat some of his very first videos ever made. They don't hide that stuff and people go back and watch them, especially people that are part of your core audience, people that you want to be part of your tribe, so to speak, your actual audience, not just random viewers that come by, but people that come back over and over and over again, want to go back and see these things. So, unless it's actively holding your channel growth back by being completely off niche, that it's you know and even then like if you're doing good current content, that shouldn't matter, I say keep it up. But what do you think, rob?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was going to use Mr Beast as the example. I think you can go to his channel, sought by oldest, and he has three, four hundred utterly atrocious gaming videos on his channel that are still there. I don't think he even shows his face for the first two or three years. You know, if you was watching Mr Beast what maybe 12 years ago you would think well, this kid's not going to go anywhere. The rest is YouTube history.
Speaker 2:And yeah, travis, to reinforce your point, as long as those videos don't start to pick up traction and momentum, they shouldn't necessarily influence the content that you're publishing now. Because that is a bit of a conundrum. Like what if this YouTube journey and there's 25 parts of that series all of a sudden starts picking up views? You almost have to go back to that and address it, uh, audience, but we'll assume that those videos are just sat there not really doing anything. Now you're talking about mental health and personal growth. I almost feel as if those two stories could like intertwine at some point. We may almost like part 26. It's like, hey, I took a break from this, uh, journaling my YouTube adventure to talk about mental health, but now those two intertwined and I'm going to carry on that series. That might be an opportunity, if it's successful.
Speaker 1:The other thing you could do is unlist them all, put them in a playlist and put the playlist on your homepage it's talking about, like your early journey, if you don't want them to be seen on your video. So that would also work. That's an idea. Yeah See, I'm smart, I know things. Next up, another email A member of the boost at vidIQcom. As I've said before, this one comes from Mark. You want to read this one.
Speaker 2:Hi Robin Travis, Is it possible to have more than one YouTube audience and, if so, how can you capitalize on it? The screenshot below shows two sets of peaks 9 slash 10 pm, and then 5 slash 6 am the following morning. This happens regularly and doesn't follow what I see in the when your viewers are on YouTube analytic, so I'm thinking of ignoring that and only going for those peak hours shown below. Trouble is, though, I don't have a time to post twice a day thoughts.
Speaker 1:So what we're, looking?
Speaker 2:at here. I guess for the benefit of the listeners is they're getting 170,000 views every 48 hours. That's pretty cool, like 90,000 a day, that's a lot, that's a lot of views every 48 hours.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. Like 90,000 a day, that's a lot. That's a lot of views in 48 hours.
Speaker 2:There are four peaks in the real-time analytics, because it's over 48 hours. It kind of peaks and then drops down a little bit and then peaks even more each day, you know during the 9-10pm and then 5-6am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have thoughts about that. I think that tells a lot.
Speaker 2:By the way, have you picked up on?
Speaker 1:what that actually tells the story that tells yeah, Go ahead, travis, let's hear your thoughts, so we don't know what time this person releases their content or what language, I think language has a big influence here, in terms of why the spikes.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. So, but I do think that and I'm definitely one of these people who goes to bed watching youtube so 9 to 10 pm, but also wakes up and one of the first things I do is watch youtube 5 6 am. So I mean, I'm not getting up at 5 am, but a lot of people do. And you gotta remember again, depending on where your time zone is time zone that could actually be 9 am, might not be 5 am for them, might be 9 am, it might not be 5 am. For them it might be 9 am, which is, hey, I woke up, let me put on YouTube while I'm making coffee and dinner, breakfast I mean, and you're off to the races.
Speaker 1:So you're getting people that watch at night and getting people that watch in the morning. That doesn't mean it's two different audiences, it just means their availability is different. But again to Rob's point, a different country where that is the same time. Generally speaking, it's like not it's 10 pm here, but it's 10 pm in asia or somewhere like that, and maybe you're in asia, I don't know, um, and it's 10 pm everywhere when they're watching it.
Speaker 2:So it could be either one of those I'm gonna takea guess right this this will be completely wrong probably, but I guess this might be a popular Australian creator, so English speaking. But Australia is in like the opposite side of the world for the rest of the English speaking world. That's why, like, we have a conundrum of when we publish our videos, because Australia and New Zealand always get excluded in a sense. So I think they have like a bit of an audience in Australia, but then when the rest of the English speaking world wakes up, they have like a bit of an audience in australia, but then when the rest of the english speaking world wakes up, they get like a bigger boost in audience. I could be wrong. I'm just trying to figure out why there might be two spikes I like that.
Speaker 1:I think that's interesting, but no, I don't. I don't actually think you have two different audiences. I just think that they're watching at different times and I think the explanations that between rob and I have given you one of those is true. Um, so I don't think you need to post twice a day. I don't think it's two audiences. I don't think it's any of those things. And, by the way, this is actually pretty common. Um, I've seen a lot of larger channels where this ebb and flow happens every single day. Um, it tends to happen more on larger channels than smaller channels, uh, but I've seen it so many times that it's if I don't see it I'm more, I'm more worried if I don't see it than if I do see it.
Speaker 2:I've just never seen this double spike. I guess one of it. There could be one other answer. It could be that they make shorts as well and the shorts discovery is peaking at that certain time, for whatever reason. Shorts could be funny thing.
Speaker 2:And then to try and address the more general point about you know when is the best time to post your content, traditionally speaking I'm really emphasizing the word traditionally there, what we try and do is we post our content two or three hours before that peak in the real-time analytics.
Speaker 2:So in my part of the world it peaks around about 3, 4 pm. So I publish the content around 1 pm, 2 pm, whatever. That is, assuming that that's when our viewers are online most. Having said that, I think generally if your viewers audience are going on YouTube every single day, which we assume they are, then YouTube is intelligent enough to recommend that new content from you, even if it is eight hours old or 12 hours old, as long as it's not time-sensitive content. Do you know what I mean by that Travis? Like, let's say, I publish a video at midnight your time and you're asleep. You wake up at 8 o'clock. Youtube is intelligent enough to know that. All right, the video's been live for eight hours and the views aren't as high as what they were, but I know this viewer, travis, really likes this channel, so we need to recommend it to Travis on the homepage, even though it is a slightly older piece of content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and multiple times until I click it. Sometimes A lot of times, you'll see that on your homepage, Like I've seen this thumbnail forever. Like okay, I'm finally going to click it. Yeah, we've talked about how the algorithm knows your viewing habits better than probably you even know. So if you see a thumbnail that continues to come up on your homepage, I would say give it a click. You'd be surprised at how good it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like MKBHD, he usually publishes videos like midnight my time, so I'm always watching the videos when it's been up for eight hours. But it's in the top left-hand corner of the homepage recommending it to me because it knows I'm going to click and, as you say, travis, it will be there for a couple of days like begging me to click on it because it knows I'm satisfied by the content. Yeah, it knows I'm satisfied by the content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really smart. It handles that stuff for you. You don't really have to worry about it Again. If your thumbnail and title and topic are good, YouTube's going to try to take care of it for you, so I think that's always the important thing.
Speaker 2:And let's congratulate the. I can't remember their name. I do apologize. Who was it who sent that message? That was Mark. Congratulations, Mark. On what seems to be a flourishing channel, You've got momentum and a serious amount of audience coming in every single day, so well done on that and well done for asking the nuanced question and trying to dig into it. I think that shows a deep insight into trying to find the marginal gains.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. Final question to again email theboost boost at videoqcom. Uh, this one comes from laura. Uh, hi, genvis. Now that's a joke that we talked about a couple weeks ago. We talked about travis and gen genvis.
Speaker 2:We were doing trend was one of the options let's change it to oh, that's coming one person to ask like, even when I'm not here, just like, hey, robert, yeah because Jen won't know what that is, which will be great when she comes back.
Speaker 1:She won't know what. That is All right, your turn to read this one. It's the last one for today.
Speaker 2:Hey, robert, hope all is well that side of the world. My question today is around target audience that side of the world. My question today is around target audience. My target is women over 30, but somehow I find that it is mostly men between 25 and 35 viewing my videos. This needs Jen needs to answer this. Why would that be? Could it be that they're reported incorrectly? My recent analytics does not show any viewer demographics anymore. My recent analytics does not show any viewer demographics anymore.
Speaker 1:So this one's difficult in general and we don't typically look at channels because it just creates a precedence where we can't always do that. But I thought it was kind of important to just briefly bring up her channel, just because otherwise you have no idea even remotely how to answer this question and even then there's still maybe some hardships of trying to figure out, like, what exactly is the issue here? Um, first of all, there's there's all these videos don't have a whole bunch of views, so I think your analytics are going to be skewed anyway. If we look at it that way, that's, it's definitely skewed. Um, and to your point, this does appear to be focused mostly on women of that age group. I mean eye treatment, yeah, I'm not interested. Birthday wish list for women over 40. I'm not interested, unless you're trying to buy for your significant other that happens to be that age group. So it is weird. But again, I think really what the deal is is your analytics mainly because a lot of the views aren't super high and it's not an insult, I'm just, I'm just trying to answer the question means that they'll be skewed one way substantially, even if the number is only like.
Speaker 1:So, for example, this one has 75 views. If 10 of those people are female and maybe 15 of those people are male and then the rest don't have their thing checked, then it's going to look like more male than female watched it, which is true to a certain degree, but a lot of people don't have that checked and the rest might be all female right. So you might actually still be hitting the right people. The other side of this could be that maybe men are looking at this going, oh, this is interesting, like this looks. You know, let me take a look.
Speaker 1:Oh, look this going. Oh, this is interesting like this looks. So, you know, let me take a look. Oh, look, she looks fancy. Let me let me click this right and then just click out and don't come back. I don't know like, but looking at this, I do believe you are kind of targeting the right channel. I would definitely challenge some of these thumbnails a little bit like this one right here. There's just a lot going on in one picture, um, but yeah, what are you, what are your thoughts when you see this?
Speaker 2:can we just sort by most popular just to see if there isn't an outlier, really skewing the numbers? So that's only 1,000 views, isn't it? And it's a hair makeover, so you wouldn't expect necessarily that to appeal to a predominantly male audience. I think how I might approach this going forward is to, first of all, great, you've got a target audience and that's who you want to go after. Now let's do some research into the best videos that represent that audience and then remake those pieces of content with your own voice, your own angle, so that you are definitely appealing to the audience that you want to appeal to.
Speaker 2:It is a tricky one to answer. I agree, travis. There didn't seem to be anything on there that would be suggesting that there's a, you know, an eye candy reason for males to particularly be going onto that site, onto that page. There was nothing odd there, I think, and, as you say, the sample size was relatively small enough to, I would hope, not worry you when you start to build some traction and momentum with your audience. And also, I'd just check the comments as well. Are the comments from your target audience? And if they are, then at least those who you are trying to engage with the most are being receptive to your content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's all good. By the way, you're sounding a little robotic, so I paused your upload during that part. I'm not sure if that's. If that's uh, it probably might be okay. So if people listening back I don't know what I was talking about, ignore me, it's fine. Um, anyway, that uh kind of conclude everything. So I thank you, rob, for coming through. We appreciate you, as always. Yeah, have a lot of fun doing these and we got lots more episodes, still a couple more episodes of uh in studio stuff and then we got guests galore coming. So make sure if you're here on the youtube channel you hit that subscribe button. If you're listening on the audio podcast, you gotta leave us five stars. We need that. We appreciate that greatly. And, rob, what is your word of wisdom for this week?
Speaker 2:Keep creating, no matter the challenges. You've got this I love it. We'll see you on the next one.