TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Should You Quit Your YouTube Channel When THIS Happens?

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 30

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We explore the critical decision of whether to quit a YouTube channel, pivot, or persevere through algorithmic changes and seasonal downturns. Through success stories, personal experiences, and practical advice, we break down the emotional and strategic aspects of these tough creator choices.

• YouTube updating monetization policies on July 15th to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content
• New analytics breakdown showing more detailed viewer information (new, casual, and regular viewers)
• David's inspiring success story of starting a weight loss channel that transformed his life and built a supportive community
• Summer typically brings significant viewership declines across many content categories
• The general rule: same/similar audience = pivot; completely different audience = new channel
• Pivoting typically means fighting against your back catalog and can lead to months of negative growth
• Starting a new channel means building from scratch with potentially very low initial viewership
• Unlisting or privatizing high-performing old content can significantly speed up a successful pivot
• Even YouTube experts struggle with emotional attachment to their own analytics when pivoting

If you're struggling with the decision to pivot or start fresh, send us your channel details at theboostvidiq.com and we might feature your case in our upcoming studio episodes.


Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the only podcast that hopes you're more successful than us. I'm Travis and I'm here with Jen.

Speaker 2:

Hello.

Speaker 1:

Hey, we're back, ladies and gentlemen, and yes, we're going to come at you every single week until we fall. We're riding this to the wheels fall off. You ever heard that expression before there, jen?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Riding to, the wheels fall off.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then you're just stuck.

Speaker 1:

Then you're stuck with a car with broken wheels. You're just stuck Terrible. Well, if you're new here, I'm Travis and I'm here with Jen, and the FiniteQ Podcast is here to help you grow your YouTube channel.

Speaker 2:

So if you're new here, grab a seat, grab some popcorn, sit down, sit back, relax, Wait.

Speaker 1:

I weirdly feel like your expression sums up what we're going to talk about today, literally.

Speaker 2:

Did you really today, literally did you do that on purpose.

Speaker 1:

I'm smart, not that smart. Sometimes I get lucky. The question is should you quit your youtube channel? We will be getting to that shortly, but before that, we do want to get into some uh, youtube news that is important and will affect some of you in a good way, and sometimes not in such a great way. So let's, let's start with the newest news that we can get into YouTube announced and this is what's interesting. It's kind of a policy, I want to say, it's a policy update, so let me share the screen so you can see what it says. So they say and we're in July. Now can you believe that? My gosh?

Speaker 2:

what happened? No, we're like at the peak of summer and I'm like wait, what?

Speaker 1:

how? I haven't left the house to be able to even understand what's going on. Okay, I literally didn't have no idea. Uh, updates to the youtube partner program monetization policies. Now, this is upcoming in the next couple of weeks in order to monetize as part of the youtube partner program. Youtube has always required creators to upload original and authentic content, which Jen and I always promote. We always say you should do original and authentic content. On July 15th 2025, youtube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update reflects better what inauthentic content looks like today. Now, what does that mean? Well, they don't tell us. That's right now.

Speaker 2:

That's that's all we know, but it sounds good it sounds good.

Speaker 1:

Potentially it depends on who you are if you're doing inauthentic repetition contest it's a terrible day for you. It's a terrible day your wheels have fallen off. You wrote it till the wheels fell off that's exactly.

Speaker 2:

Oh gosh, this is going to come into play too many times.

Speaker 1:

Today it's the july 15th, those wheels are falling off, no, so what we think it means a is that on the 15th, they'll probably actually have the guidelines. You have actually know, uh, specifically what's happening. But just as important to that, we I I believe that it has to do with so on you Twitter, they actually said this is the same rules as before, but they're just detailing them more clearly. So you'll see a lot of channels with, like, ai voices over content that they've just taken from somewhere else. I think those are the type of channels that are probably going to run afoul of this, and it doesn't mean they're going to take your content away. They're just not going to monetize it. So I think that's what they're aiming for is. Is that how you read that too, jen, or what are you thinking it might be?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I feel like I'm on the same page. I feel like it's youtube just kind of doing a crackdown, like things are just getting a little out of hand. There's a lot of new tools as far as ai and you know, stuff like I don't know if that's I don't know, we don't know. But that to me is just like, as my mom would say, new rules and regulations. That's what she would say when things just get a little too out of hand, like schedules just get a little wild and like that's it. New rules and regulations. You gotta like reset it. You gotta go back to the beginning.

Speaker 1:

So if you didn't come to the dinner table on time, no rules and regulations new rules and regulations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's like you don't come to the dinner table on time if you take out your phone, if they're like all these little things add up and then eventually you're just like boom, we gotta start over. Everybody's out of control. That's youtube. Youtube's like we gotta over. Things are getting wild.

Speaker 1:

Your family is crazy. I've heard so much about your family. It sounds like I know them. I would love to meet them someday. They sound amazing.

Speaker 2:

I mean my family watches the podcast Like they know you. They talk about you like as if you're just like I don't know. I mean obviously your real life, but like they've never met.

Speaker 1:

It's funny because this actually happened on a previous podcast of mine when I was on with. It was a tech podcast and my friend's parents and sister and stuff would watch. I guess for him right. But they ended up liking me more, which I think is great. I think that's fantastic, that's so good.

Speaker 1:

I am related everywhere to all my podcast co-hosts, which is amazing. So, again, we don't think most people are going to be affected by this, but there will definitely be a group of people that I think, if you think about it, as the people who watch those YouTube videos that like here's how to make money fast without creating content.

Speaker 2:

I feel like those are the channels that are going to be the ones that are probably yeah, I don't think this is going to affect anybody, who's just doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1:

No one who listens to this podcast anyway? Never that. So that's the youtube policy update. Um, and another thing that kind of popped up which I think is really cool, and uh, jen I, I am kind of excited about this update. They are now showing more detailed information about audience people, who, many audience members who come to watch your content. They split it up into new users, new viewers, casual and regular viewers. Before the very beginning, back in my day Back in.

Speaker 2:

Travis' day, when YouTube didn't exist yet.

Speaker 1:

We had subscribers and non-subscribers and then we got the new viewers. I think metric or whatever. This one breaks it down even more. We're going to take a look real quick. And if you're listening to the audio viewers, I think metric or whatever. This one breaks it down even more. We're going to take a look real quick. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, I apologize, come to the YouTube channel Links in the show notes. We're going to show you what vidIQ's channel looks like in this particular thing. So this is the main channel. So what this shows is new viewers and the way they define that are watched your channel for the very first time, which is what we love for people to come watch for the first time, because that means that's how we grow our channels right. Casual viewers say they've watched in up to five months over the past year. Now I got to be honest. This text is really badly written. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. My assumption is.

Speaker 2:

It's a little wonky, but like.

Speaker 1:

Let me say the words again, watched in up to five months over the past year. Huh, what? So here's what I think.

Speaker 2:

You know a little, I assume interpretation.

Speaker 1:

I assume that means that they've watched at least once or maybe multiple times within the last five months, and then this is regular viewers watched in six or more months over the past year. So they've been watching more regularly. Again, not super definitive. I've actually reached out to YouTube to ask more detail as to what the wording here is trying to get across. But, as you can see here some interesting information you can see watch time per these types of viewers, the average view per viewer, which to me is the most interesting metric here, the average view duration and the average percentage viewed. Now, the average view duration and average percentage viewed we talked about in all the different terms. You need to know which people love. By the way, jen, people love that episode, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

They're like this is so helpful, they love it. That's just so amazing. Oh my gosh, we didn't even finish it. We could do part two, just so amazing.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, we didn't even finish it. We could do part two. I think this was Jen's idea too, so shout out to Jen for coming up with a banger idea.

Speaker 1:

Guys, relax, she just flexed. She just flexed on me, but anyway, one of the things I want to show here that I think is really interesting is when you look at regular viewers, you can see that they've watched three and a half times and our our time zone here is 28 days. So a regular viewer is watching three and a half videos, um, in a 28 day period, which is great. That means to come and watch, you know content regularly casual viewers looking like they're looking at two or so, and then a new viewer looks like they're watching 1.2, 1.7 here on um the vid IQ main channel. So that means they've watched one and they might come back again, which is good. You can see the view durations here for the main channel stuff. Now the podcast channel's content or information is better, I would say, because people come and love us. Our new viewers watch for six minutes and our return viewers are almost like 17 minutes. Y'all love us, thank you. Thank you for that.

Speaker 2:

I think this is the coolest update to analytics that has happened in so long, because one this is how we refer to our audiences anyways yes so now the way that we talk about our audience is actually matching up with the analytics themselves. The way that it was before was so confusing and also like we didn't have this information. This information is just going to get better and better and it is just. I think this is the most fun metric to have, and when it all makes sense it'll be even better.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, and that's the thing is. Once I understand kind of the details of what they're saying here, we'll be able to dive deeper into what that means for you and how you can use that information to make better content. Right now it's brand new. We just kind of got access to this just a year or so ago.

Speaker 1:

Yesterday, yeah, so like barely had time to even take it in and go. Okay, what do we do with this information? All I can tell you is that I can tell it's powerful already and we'll have a deeper dive into it in the coming weeks. Speaking of the coming weeks in a couple of weeks Jen and I are headed back to the studio. We all seem to love that content and with that we're going to take some of your best emails over the next couple of weeks and by your emails. But that means if you send in a banger email and you haven't heard or won't hear anything for the next week or two being answered, it could be that it's so good we took it into the studio and we had to do it in studio worthy.

Speaker 1:

And I'll tell you what one of those is. Uh, and there's a couple of them. Uh, in the last episode, we encourage you to use the script writer, the vidIQ script writer, and write scripts for us and we're going to read them. This is going to be wild, jen. Don't be reading those emails. I'm not reading.

Speaker 2:

I'm not reading those, I only read the one that had that really powerful header yeah, we're going to talk about that here in a minute.

Speaker 1:

But basically, you use the vidIQ script writer tool and write a script about Jen and I and we'll read it out, if it's really good, on one of the one of the studio episodes. So make sure you go watch the last episode to see what that is and how we talked about it, and we might even pick a winner and do something cool for them. I don't know exactly what that'll be, but again, a couple of weeks from now, keep sending your emails and keep sending your script ideas. We love the ones we've gotten already. They're really great. Okay, so we got a couple of emails. We're going to get to real quick and our main subject is should you quit your channel, or the option which could be pivot, which we're definitely talking about today. But let's get through a couple of these and then we'll get into that subject matter, which is a powerful piece of subject matter as a matter of fact. Okay, so let's get to the first message, which is from David, and this one was an incredible message.

Speaker 1:

Jen Travis, I sent an email in November of last year and asked you whether or not I should start a weight loss channel and at the starting point of my journey or wait until I had reached my weight loss goal, then start. You said, start now. Well, I didn't start straight away, but once the pain got too much of being overweight, I started a weight loss program and my channel at the same time. The channel has changed my life. I was in a very dark place and the response has been stunning. Here are my results from the first 28 days 1,858 subs, 48,000 views, 2,700 watch hours Wow 380 comments, 1,743 likes, 12 dislikes. But the thing is been utterly mind blowing is how many people have reached out to comment with full paragraphs telling me what they are going through and wanting to share and support me on my journey. I've been fortunate to have a pretty sick to been, have been pretty successful, but this is different. Thank you for giving me the nudge I need from David David.

Speaker 2:

I can't tell you how amazing that was to read. It's like speechless, because this kind of thing is something like you have to experience yourself to understand that this does exist. And like people, don't just say this. Like people just don't say like, oh, my community, my community, like no, you have to experience this firsthand to be like holy cow.

Speaker 1:

community is seriously so powerful and we talk about community all the time on this podcast, because in a lot of ways, when you get messages like this, so here's the interesting thing. So he got messages that really inspired him and then he sends this message to us, which then re-inspires.

Speaker 2:

I was gonna say that I was gonna be like.

Speaker 1:

This message is his message to him, like to us this is a virtual pay it forward in the coffee line or pay it for the person behind you in the coffee line that's so true our coffee's been paid for.

Speaker 2:

What do you think, oh, my gosh yeah, that's the truth right before our wheels fall off. I love how jen remembers these that's the truth Right before our wheels fall off.

Speaker 1:

I love how Jen remembers these things. She's the best. Our wheels fall off at the drive-in we can't pay for the guy behind us.

Speaker 1:

We got free coffee. At least we got free coffee. Dave, this is really nice, and if you're new here, theboostvidiqcom is how you email us this. But yeah, I remember when David emailed us and talked about he wanted to pay attention to his weight loss journey and video it through, which is great, by the way, people love to watch that sort of thing. I guess I had forgotten to mention that and, by the way, if you look at this, 40,000 views with 1,800 subs is high. But there's a reason for this and it's something that I think some viewers are going to look at this and go. That's way too many subscribers for that many views. I never get that many subscribers, but it depends on the type of content you're doing. If people connect with you in a very genuine way, they want to subscribe right away. Most videos take 7 or 10 channels take seven or ten views before someone's like I'll subscribe to you, but when you go in, this is deep and Dave is like yeah, and being vulnerable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is storytelling at its peak. Like this is hard to do and hard to follow through with On every single level.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and being vulnerable in front of strangers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like this is the highest form of connection, of course people are going to want to subscribe. They're also going to want to follow along the journey. Like there's so many working components to this setup, yeah, and most people want to lose weight.

Speaker 1:

So there you go sorry I.

Speaker 2:

I also think that we should do an episode talking about, like how youtube changes your life, in this type of way because, not only that, I guarantee you the accountability for his channel is making david more consistent with his weight loss, with his productivity, with his diet. Like there's an accountability factor to filming. When you're doing lifestyle content that some people will think of like, oh, you're doing it for the camera. Other people are like, oh, this is making my life better, because this is the accountability I need.

Speaker 1:

Spot on, spot on, absolutely spot on. Yeah, David, thank you so much for sharing that with us. We're so proud of you and we can't wait to see where you go next. Next email theboostvidqcom from Tim Travis and Jen. This might sound weird, but I think in YouTube titles this is something Jen had said in a previous episode.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that short didn't go live yet. Oh my gosh, that's so funny.

Speaker 1:

Every time I have a thought, this happens, my brain writes clickbait. While I'm brushing my teeth, I can't stop optimizing my life for CTR. Want to know how I wrote this email? I wrote a simple AI prompt and this is the result I turned a simple message into a title. Avalanche YouTube titles have entered the chat and they're not leaving.

Speaker 2:

Optimized wishes.

Speaker 1:

That's from Tim.

Speaker 2:

That is so funny. I know we're all out there, we're all the same. That's why we're here. It's like toxic, but it's so.

Speaker 1:

Jen has this thing where she thinks a lot in youtube titles. She mentioned this a couple episodes ago. She doesn't want to be thought of as weird. However, when I say that I hover over videos, she thinks I'm weird. But then everyone in the comments is like yeah, I hover tab and everyone does that I hover, I'm gonna get a hover tab and everyone does that.

Speaker 2:

I hover, I'm going to get a hover tab shirt. I'm going to get a hover tab Hashtag hover and tab.

Speaker 1:

I'm telling you People hover tab.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, tim, for sending us an email. That's literally so funny. I know the rest of us are out there. I mean I have friends who do it too. Like it's just so funny. Like you just think, in YouTube titles, I in YouTube titles I should start making an active list and then just brain dump every single title.

Speaker 1:

I think that's what we'll have to do. Like for sure, when you come to Seattle, do the next studio thing. We'll definitely have to do some YouTube shorts where you're thinking in titles like during lunch or whatever.

Speaker 2:

I'll order my sandwich in YouTube titles oh my Lord. I ordered the number four, and then this happened. Oh, my God, I ordered the number four, and then this happened. Oh my God. You guys would be like I don't, what can I get you? What is happening right now?

Speaker 1:

This is wild, all right. Last last message is actually from our text messages. So if you listen to the audio podcast in the show notes, there's an option there you can click to send us a text message. And this one says hey, travis and Jen, my name is Nate. I messaged you quite a while back about doing Warhammer 40,000 hobby content on my channel and your advice was extremely helpful. Go us. I ended up focusing on the hobby and lore niche and I've seen some significant growth from the time I started up until this point.

Speaker 1:

But, Going from 50 at the start to over 130 in a couple of months. Because I'm a dad with a full-time job, it's pretty difficult for me to dedicate enough time to put in to produce content. However, I've dedicated myself to weekly hobby live streams and occasional hobby short on YouTube that up until a couple of weeks ago. We're getting great traction with about 200 to 300 views per stream and a considerable amount of chatter and average about five to 10 subs gained by the time the stream was over which, by the way amazing.

Speaker 2:

That's very high. That's crazy yeah for live streams.

Speaker 1:

That actually is yeah, but a couple of weeks ago that all came to a cold hard stop. My streams are lucky to break 100 views, with only two or three chatters and zero subs growth, Not to mention the fact that my shorts would average about 1 to 2,000 views. Now I'm lucky to break 300. I've changed nothing in my format of presentation, which all brings me to that age-old question Is it me or the algorithm? Ps? Can't we just agree that both candy corn and Cadbury eggs are the pinnacles of their own perspective? Holiday seasons.

Speaker 2:

Is it him or the?

Speaker 1:

algorithm, and that's what brings us to kind of the whole thing that we're going to talk about today, which is, should you quit your YouTube channel or should you pivot, or what's going on. But let's kind of answer his question first, Jen. So he had success by following us unsurprisingly right. We give good advice and then things kind of stopped.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

This is not uncommon, nope. Also, we're in a time of year where I would absolutely expect things to kind of slow down, stop. Yep, you can go outside and touch grass right now, because it's actually kind of nice. We're in the middle of summer, it's beautiful and, believe it or not, for a lot of content styles, it actually kills a lot of those channels, and when I say kills, I mean, like your videos kind of just stop because everyone's outside doing things, uh, whereas other channels, like barbecue channels, kind of do well, because what are you doing outside, barbecuing, and you know 4th of July videos do well, because I don't know it's 4th of July. What do you tell people, jen, when you see things like this happen to a creator? Like, what were you telling people when you were coaching them?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's actually really funny. I have a main channel video going out that is exactly on this topic, focused around summer views, the dip, and like really, should you quit, should you pivot? What should you be doing when your views suck? And, honestly, like there's no way around it, like summer is inevitably like the hardest season and even us, like we have conversation like last week we're like the views like blah, blah, blah. We're like oh yeah, it's summer we're like oh wait, hold on.

Speaker 2:

We tell everybody this and like we don't even like think about it ourselves, but it's true. It's very easy to forget that there's just seasonal dips where your channel is not going to do well and it's not you, it's not your fault, because there's just things past your control. But it can make for a really good opportunity to do new things. That's my favorite advice for when things are just kind of sucking real bad on youtube and I mean, what do you have to lose?

Speaker 1:

right, because the thing is like everyone goes through dips during the course of their YouTube journey and everyone goes through dips during the course of a year, not even just through your journey, but pretty much every year, so yeah, the question then comes to when do you need to look at this as okay, I need to quit this channel and start a new channel, or I need to just pivot this channel?

Speaker 1:

This is something that Jen and I are actually kind of going through right now. I will, first off, tell you that we're going to try to tell you what to know, which to do, right, we'll try to do that, but before we get there, I just want to tell you something. Regardless of which one you choose, it's painful, it's incredibly painful, it sucks very bad, and I just want you to know. I want to put that up front before we get to the good stuff yeah it sucks all right.

Speaker 1:

Having said that, jen, how do you tell if you should pivot versus start a new channel?

Speaker 2:

slash, quit your old one well, I think, no matter what, we have to go back to the original, which is like new audience, new channel, to see it also. It does get very complicated, though, because I think it depends how large or how small your channel is. If your channel is so small that it doesn't matter, then either direction there's not enough data you could pivot or you could start a new channel. At that point you really don't have anything to lose. I would say if you just hit monetization, I would probably not start a new channel. That's a good place to be at and also not a tremendous amount of data where you're trying to override something.

Speaker 2:

So the difference between pivoting and starting a new channel is one you're trying to override something. So, like, the difference between pivoting and starting a new channel is one you're starting with a fresh slate, where everything you're doing is actively building the proper data into the channel, and pivoting is you're working against everything that you've done in the past and you're trying to create in a new direction and rewrite the data that is already existing. So, honestly, it's kind of the same thing. But retree monetization is obviously difficult. So if you're right around that, typically I say just leave your channel if you have a lot of data that you're working against. If you're 20 to 100 000 subscribers, that's a hard decision to just start a new channel. So I think it would have to be a very like absolutely no overlap in the audience at all and then, like you, go for it. What do you think?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so well talked about, because some of the things you said there aren't typically mentioned. When it comes to pivoting versus starting a new channel, like the monetization idea and like smaller you know how much data you have really has a lot to do with whether you do it. Plus, as YouTube's always told us, same audience or similar audience you can probably pivot, different audience, start a new channel and this is true because of the things that Jen just said, which is literally like you're fighting against your back catalog when you're doing something completely different. So let me give you an example You're a baking channel, so we always talk about baking channel, right?

Speaker 2:

All of a sudden, you want to be a skateboarding channel.

Speaker 1:

That's a new channel.

Speaker 2:

That's just a new channel. That's a new channel.

Speaker 1:

But if you're a baking channel and you want to do some other type of cooking that isn't baking, you could probably pivot that you could probably pivot that right. That's a good pivot, and it doesn't mean that you're still going to. I think you should just set expectations, because the reality is the views are going to be terrible.

Speaker 2:

It's so brutal? Oh especially pivoting a channel, because if you're pivoting a channel, you're accustomed to a certain amount of views.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And when you start to pivot that channel, your views are going to go down drastically. Your subscribers, you are going to be in the negative every month. That is not fun. Open your analytics and it's like negative 500 subscribers for the month and you're like what yeah? And the more you upload and the more that you are consistent with the pivot, the worse the analytics are going to look until they flip yes and then you're good.

Speaker 1:

So let me give you an idea so when we started remember when we we started this channel a year ago this month, by the way, I got a thing in the studio. I was like this is your first year. Yeah, it's been a year for this channel, which is amazing, to give you an idea. So I started a new channel as kind of an experiment to see what would happen if I put what is it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven videos that are pretty well edited and put together and using kind of all my knowledge, into a channel, and to see what would happen if I posted them within like a day. So I posted most of them within the same day and then the rest I just spread out. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven videos. They have a total and they've been, let's see, posted since the 28, 28th, so about about a week. Ish, uh, some only have four days, but about a week. We have, uh, 10, 16, 17, 22 views across all of them, with two of them having zero views and the like the one with the most impressions has 48 impressions and they've been out for almost a week and you think, wow, that's terrible. I mean, that's, that's heartbreaking. Um, I can put these same videos on a channel that I'm trying to pivot and I have done and the the viewership still is terrible for that pivoted channel when you compare it to older content. However, there is more data there to take it to another level that the other channel may not hit for a long time. What will probably happen, though, is if I was able to continue to put more content on that new channel that was all in line with that stuff rather than the pivoted channel. There'll be this moment where they will cross, so, for the longest time, the bigger channel, even though it won't be hitting the views it used to hit, will have a lot better views than the small channel. My thought is, and I'm almost positive, this will happen at some point. The other channel is going to cross and get more views, because it's going to be laser focused on the proper viewership and even the pivoted channel, which you can eventually pivot to success.

Speaker 1:

We've we talked to Hafu Go. He did the thing, but it took a while, and it took a lot, of, a lot of work that if he had just done it on the main channel, it would have worked better for him, and and Hafu Go literally said a couple of weeks ago we interviewed him, literally said if he had it to do over again, despite the fact his channel is like 20 something million subscribers, whatever it is, if he had to do it over again he would have started a new channel, even though he was able to pivot it. He's even said to this day he would have gone back and started a new channel. So if it's the different channel, if a different audience, new channel is best. But you've got to have the gumption, you've got to have the stick to it, isn't this?

Speaker 2:

I think it's easier for us to talk about pivot, since we've both pivoted channels and we both do youtube as a hobby. Obviously youtube is our full-time job. So when we do youtube on the side and we're talking about personal channels that we have, it's for fun, it's for experimentation, like there's there's very low stakes and it's just like the fun part of YouTube for us versus like the job side of YouTube for us. So it makes it a lot easier to push through that period of time when you kind of know what to expect but also you're doing it to really see, like the time yeah see what happens yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so like I pivoted a channel that I definitely should have started a new channel for like no questions asked 100 okay and it took five months of consistent uploads until my audience had changed okay, now let's, let's dig into this.

Speaker 1:

I want to know more specifics, jen, you can't just say some stuff like that and not get more specific. So you're what was the original niche style or the?

Speaker 2:

original niche was, I would say, a kind of like kind of travel.

Speaker 1:

It was very vlog, very like lifestyle, not super focused, and and what was your view average views for videos on that ish oh, I would say between like 10 and 20 for like a a video okay 10 to 20 views a thousand oh 10 to 20 000 views yeah, yeah so over the course of five months. So what did you pivot into so?

Speaker 2:

that that channel I had for I want to say I uploaded on for six months. It was a new channel, so I uploaded on for six months and then I didn't touch it for probably a year and then I went to pivot it. That's a lot of elements.

Speaker 1:

So what did you pivot into? What was the new pivot into?

Speaker 2:

The pivot is a very different lifestyle audience, which I will keep vague, for just work-life balance.

Speaker 1:

But it is still a lifestyle.

Speaker 2:

It is a different audience.

Speaker 1:

But it's a different audience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, give an example, even if it isn't specific.

Speaker 1:

What would you say?

Speaker 2:

How different audience would it be, it would be going from a travel channel to a cooking channel.

Speaker 1:

Oh, oh yeah. So why did you pivot rather than start a new channel be?

Speaker 2:

honest um to just actually pivot okay, you wanted to put myself through the actual hell of pivoting and see what happened, and I tried like a couple different experiments during that time. Like I don't know. If you remember, I tried like a 30-day shorts challenge to see if the audience data would change faster it did not. It did not, all right, all right I probably could have looking back now, done it in a more controlled way or a more planned out way I remember you were going.

Speaker 2:

I like decided the day before and I was like yeah I'm gonna see what happens if I upload shorts for 30 days and monitor the audience and you.

Speaker 1:

But you did say some stuff happened during the course of it, but in the end it didn't help you at all.

Speaker 2:

It's nothing that I noticed definitively. That's the thing I couldn't confidently say yes, do this, Absolutely try it. But it was. Yeah, I mean it was part of the experiment, but yeah, it took five months and every single month I was looking at analytics and every single thing was negative.

Speaker 1:

How many, how many, how many videos.

Speaker 2:

I could barely break a thousand views on a video when I was pivoting.

Speaker 1:

I was constantly negative.

Speaker 2:

At least 500 subscribers a month.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that feeling. So about how many videos was that over the course of five months ish?

Speaker 2:

I was trying to put out a video a week and there's definitely some weeks that I probably missed, but the goal was a video a week, okay, so then, if you do the math, that's, you know it's about 20 ish or so videos over the course of five or so months.

Speaker 1:

What? Where was the point where you're like, oh, it's actually starting to work. What was that? What was that like? What did you see? What? What indicated that that was something that was actually working?

Speaker 2:

finally, I was tracking every week my audience, like their demographics okay on my travel channel. It was it's super common to have a very old male audience, so my audience was primarily like older men. It's just honestly, like all of my friends are in the travel space, like it's the same. It's just an older and primarily like male dominated audience.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And my new channel. I was going for a young female audience, so the polar opposite. Yeah, no doubt so monitoring the audience change was very easy to do in terms of just like what youtube is classifying as their age, um, their sex and also content suggesting my content. That was what I checked for every single upload to see when I was finally going to get similar creators suggesting my content, and that's where I was like holy crap, I did it.

Speaker 1:

And what's like your gender change now? Like what's your demographic now?

Speaker 2:

Now I am 97% female. What yes In between? Like the 18 to 34 or whatever the Holy crap. Like two youngest.

Speaker 1:

And did you unlist any of your old content?

Speaker 2:

Hell, yeah, I did. That's what really turned that. I was stubborn, I was like every creator I ever yelled at was like, unless your content, unless your content and for me it probably took me. It was like one of the hardest things that I like had to do was like unlisting like all of my best performing content, and as soon as I did that, I noticed changes within a week.

Speaker 1:

How deep into your journey was that?

Speaker 2:

Into the pit, probably like halfway through the pivot, like I could not like any. Yeah, like any other creator, like I could not part with unlisting content. I was like I work so hard for those views. I don't want to see him go so you unlisted them.

Speaker 1:

But I mean, you can still again.

Speaker 2:

We've talked about this I had to private them. Actually, they were still picking up views unlisted oh no, so you yeah, completely I oh yeah, so I had unlisted them.

Speaker 2:

Finally, like took the jump and I unlisted it and then in like my real-time views, I was seeing like it was still somehow getting like a hundred views for one video and I was like, yeah, that's not a lot of views, but like that shouldn't be possible and like not a lot of views in comparison to what it was regularly collecting. Yeah, so I had I had to private it. It had to be in a playlist somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Like it had to be somewhere where obviously a playlist where it was picking up for, like your, your biggest ones, or just like everything, everything um, just my uh, like your, because here's the here's the reason why I think now so it was absolutely my biggest ones.

Speaker 2:

I probably, over the course of time, unlisted other ones um, just like during a channel cleanup because I I feel like it's important.

Speaker 1:

So if you have a lot of subscribers, let me check actually and that's relative, right.

Speaker 1:

So like, a lot can mean anything. But let's say you have, you know, 60, 70 000 subscribers, um, and you do this thing where you're like I gotta pivot you know, jen said to pivot, so I'm gonna pivot uh, and you unlist all of your videos, which, again, is is something, and if you've listened to the podcast enough, you should probably know why this works. Again, the recommendation engine is about all of this. Then you have a channel with only a couple of videos but more subscribers than it makes sense for you to have, and then it looks like you just bought everything, right, so that's also something you want to kind of avoid.

Speaker 1:

So that's why I'm asking if you only did your biggest videos or if you just there's some older.

Speaker 2:

I just looked at the channel. There's some older videos on there that I left up the ones that kept dripping and driving in content to change your yeah. The heavy hitters are definitely gone. That was a knife in the heart, but there's other like random content, sure, and then I probably cleaned up some of them that were just not relevant to my new audience and also not doing anything anyways.

Speaker 1:

So at the end you're now doing well. Are you even still uploading to it, or are you done now that you pivoted successfully?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but now I want to start a new channel.

Speaker 1:

Of course you do, because you do that every week. Where did you end Like? What did your view range end at?

Speaker 2:

when you're like okay, I succeeded uh, my discoverable content was um breaking a hundred thousand views jen you are savage you're a savage so doing better than what the original some of the original stuff was doing yeah, for my discoverable content and then the community content or like regular uploads were um back in that, back in that range but that, but, but.

Speaker 1:

That's a successful pivot, but that's still a successful pivot. That's a a legitimate switch from one thing to another, which is listen, my hat's off to you.

Speaker 2:

That's I'm I'm super proud of it. I'm like so you should be that is amazing.

Speaker 1:

I'm so proud of you. I am over the moon proud of you, because that is not easy.

Speaker 2:

It was crazy. There was like a handful of times where I'm like why am I? Bothering. When is this going to happen?

Speaker 1:

I'm going through that right now.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I was going to say Travis, your turn now, because we're talking about personal pivots.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm early on in what I'm doing, so I'm not even I month in. Um, I think, uh, I think, I think at the end of the day, I think at the end of the day, it's humbling, but I knew that going into it. So here's what's going on, uh, and I don't really want, I don't like to talk too much about my stuff.

Speaker 2:

Uh, I think we should just say like a disclaimer, like when it comes to us talking about our personal channels, it's not from a place where, like, we're hiding information. It's just a work-life balance thing and and.

Speaker 1:

For me, it's more about the people listening than it is about me. I'm not here to, yeah, pump myself up, but I do want to share the experience, which I do know we're here.

Speaker 2:

Well, I I think it's always a little bit awkward when we're talking about personal channels and we're being a little bit more vague. Yes, and it's more about the point not to go see the actual channel itself, and a lot of times I hate sending people to channels that I know I'm actively doing stuff like this on yes like I would say creators would like that.

Speaker 2:

I would coach, would find like one of my channels and I'd be like oh my god, please don't look at that channel. Like I'm running like two experiments. Like two experiments on it.

Speaker 1:

God, please don't look at that channel, like I'm running like two experiments on it right now. Please don't look at that channel for advice. Yeah, I feel like the thing is is that I've had success. I've been, I've been to I don't want to say the top, but I have been in a very successful place in my in my niche, Great time on YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Not just like, not just views and subscribers, but I was mingling with the biggest creators in my niche period, end of story. I was collaborating with them. They are some of the biggest creators, uh, in the niche period.

Speaker 1:

So I've done that, which is cool, but now I kind of do something different and I, you know, I thought I could just start a new channel altogether, or I could just try to pivot this thing, which I know I'm not going to do this content anymore. It's adjacent content, so I'm going to try it. It is painful, though. I will tell you, it is very painful and I think you just have to get over your um, your ego as to how this stuff works and just just believe in what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

I know that I can get wherever it is I want to go, because I've done it before and I've helped other creators do it many times over. I know that, but in the moment it's very easy to second guess yourself oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

People think we're like different, like, oh, we like know all the answers. Like we're the youtube experts and it's like okay, at the end of the day. Like we're still creators taking risks and dealing with the analytics too.

Speaker 1:

Like there's blinders that come on when it's just you on your channel and you got three wheels left on the car, literally about to say this. I can do this easier with someone else's channel than I can.

Speaker 2:

Oh, oh, 100, that's. That's why we're good at our jobs.

Speaker 1:

Yes, if someone else was in my position, I would pivot them and get them up and running within the next couple of months. Easy For myself.

Speaker 2:

We know too much.

Speaker 1:

Brother, let me tell you something. Talk about having blinders on. Okay, look, I do want to talk more about this, but we'll probably do it in studio. I think this is a great subject. So why don't you send us emails and text messages and let us know what you want to know about pivoting or quitting a channel and you know what? Tell us your stories If you've done either, or send us an email at theboostvideqcom. Or, of course, you can send us a text message if you're listening to the audio podcast using the link in the show notes Jen, what a cool episode.

Speaker 2:

I know we should have people submit like new channel or pivot and we have like little signs that we flip. That is a great idea.

Speaker 1:

Actually send us an email. If you're thinking about pivoting or doing a new channel, send us an email with the information about your channel and we'll do a new channel pivot. I think we should do that in studio as well. Again, if you send us an email now, it's going to take a couple weeks before we get into the studio and then more weeks to release those content. Release that content. But if it's a good question and we think we can do it in studio, it makes sense we'll do that. Otherwise, we'll do it in one of these episodes so all that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for joining us. If you're new here, hit that subscribe button. If you're listening to the audio podcast, leave us only. What is it, jen?

Speaker 2:

five stars only.