TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Why Does Bad Content Get More Views Than Your Good Content?

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 31

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We debunk the myth about YouTube demonetizing AI voices and discuss how to handle seemingly random view performance on videos. This is a deep dive into several creator conundrums from understanding what actually impacts monetization to why some channels succeed with seemingly less effort.

• YouTube is not broadly demonetizing AI voices, but rather clarifying existing rules about low-effort content
• "Total addressable market" explains the ceiling on how many potential viewers your content could reach
• Gaming + blacksmithing fusion channels create a unique value proposition that can stand out in saturated niches
• Technical quality doesn't guarantee views—content must be inherently interesting to the target audience
• YouTube's new "engaged views" metric for Shorts appears to be an attempt to compete with TikTok's approach
• Channel pivots typically take 6+ months to show significant results, requiring patience and consistent effort
• For product-based channels, becoming part of the community rather than constantly promoting can be more effective

Send us your custom Tube Talk intros by emailing theboost@vidIQ.com or try our script tool at vidIQ.com/create to write something for Jen and Travis to read on air!


Speaker 1:

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

Speaker 2:

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's here every single week, but with different people, just because I'm Travis and I'm here with Dan this time.

Speaker 3:

That intro was so loud. I'm begging you, please let with Dan this time. That intro was so loud, I'm begging you, please let me make you a new intro.

Speaker 2:

Please make me a new intro. By the way, sometimes people don't even hear the intro anymore Because of the way this show was edited. I just use it as like a timestampy thing. Audio podcast will hear it, video never hears it.

Speaker 3:

Can I take over for a second?

Speaker 2:

This is unprompted.

Speaker 3:

I have not asked you permission to do this so you can edit this out if you don't like it.

Speaker 2:

No no, feel free.

Speaker 3:

But instead of me making an intro, I think you should open it up and ask people to send you their intros for Tube Talk, and every week you use a different one.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of fun.

Speaker 3:

It could just be someone going blah Tube Talk time, and then that could be the intro. You'll probably get some that are really highly produced. You might get all kinds of cool intros, and every week you'll just have a different one.

Speaker 2:

You know, that's not a bad idea If y'all that are listening, because here's the nice thing, dan Our listeners are YouTubers. Yeah, it just so happens they have the skills able to do this. If some of y'all are interested in that sort of thing, I guess send me an intro, I don't know. Send an email to theboostvidIQcom with a link to what would be an intro video, I guess. Do you want audio or do you want video? I'll do video, because then we can just take the audio from it if needed. Let's just do the whole thing. There you go, why not? I think it would be a great surprise. Jen won't know about this because she won't hear this episode before we would have it. So feel free to send a boost at vidIQcom. And yeah, anyway, so we're here to help you grow YouTube channels. If you're new here, feel free to sit back, relax.

Speaker 2:

We like to talk in a very casual way about YouTuber-y things and it looks like just hot off the presses. So, before we get into some of these emails, something about and I Well, I see you going back and forth in Slack about this, because sometimes understanding what is true about what's going on YouTube and hearing the clickbait. I'll tell you about the first clickbait for this week. So, depending on when you listen to this, you may have already heard this. First of all, it's like YouTube is not monetizing AI voices, which is not terribly true. Even YouTube themselves have said that's not really it. This is just a tweak of and we kind of briefly talked about this in the last podcast. It's a tweak on the existing monetization rules, but people will take a headline from it or something that they're like this is what this means and then just throw it all over the place. If you use an AI voice, you will not get monetized.

Speaker 3:

That's not true. No to this was if you are a reaction channel, if you are re-uploading other people's videos, or if you are just mass producing like ai content with like zero effort on your part, then maybe you don't get monetized, but youtube is probably still going to allow you to have that content on the platform. And the truth is we we can all probably name reaction channels and channels like that that do seem to be monetized even under these rules, which, by the way, have existed the entire time. They've been around for a long time. I don't know how, when they started, but it's been. We've known these rules forever. They just change the language a little bit and everyone is blowing it out of proportion which is yeah, and it's really more specifically if I'm right travis, it's about monetization more than

Speaker 3:

anything else. Right, like they're just talking about hey, we only monetize quality content. And then I think what you should be outraged about is how, if you want to be outraged, how selective it seems the process is for deciding, well, who gets monetized making this type of content? And YouTube has to draw those lines. I think that's why it's vague, deliberately so, because YouTube is kind of like we know it when we see it. It's what I said in Rob's video about it.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, it's funny to see everyone blowing it out of proportion. Yeah, and I get it. I mean, I understand there's a lot of, and we found out by a poll a while back. I seem to remember, um, that a lot of the people who watch the main vid iq channel are actually quote faceless channels. But faceless channels can mean a lot of things.

Speaker 2:

By the way, um, I think that there's a connotation to faceless channels that mean like AI and all this, but that's not necessarily true. There are tons of faceless channels that are commentary channels and drama channels especially. They're almost always faceless, ironically. So there's entire niches that are faceless. That's normal. It's like it's fine, you're just seeing B-roll over top of the voice and that's a faceless channel. But I think when we talk about faceless channels, we're talking about the ones that are kind of what people call like ai, slop or or they're. They're the channels that are made specifically just to make money, because they're not really you're not into the creative side of things, and while that's technically a valid type of um, content creation, personally I like the people that love what they're making. I, I don't. I like to help those people. I'm not really here to help people make these. You know, click, click and now you've get a youtube channel that gets lots of views and get your money. That has nothing to do with the passion that you're, that you love I.

Speaker 3:

It's not for me right, I'm the same way. I think I mean there's going to be all kinds of channels that are even listening to the show, and I'm not here to judge specifically how you feel like creating, but I do feel like the vast majority of our audience is putting up some amount of themselves into their content. Whether they're using some AI or a lot of AI, I still feel like the people who are most successful at the end of the day are the ones who are adding themselves to whatever they're doing. If you're reacting to stuff, the reactions like you could even consider people who just talk about the news reaction channels to a degree, right, because they are putting up a news story and they are giving you their feedback on it, their reaction to it.

Speaker 3:

But there's always a line. There's nuance with everything, and the internet is famous for not being able to have a nuanced discussion, but there is a line that gets crossed with things like reaction channels, whereby the worst case scenario is they are uploading the video and just staring at it the whole time, and the best case scenario in our opinion I think't speak for you, but in my opinion is that we see somebody pause the video and say okay, so what they're saying right here that's nonsense. You know like that's. That's how I think a healthy reaction video looks, and the more they're putting themselves in that content, the more personable it's going to be and the more, I think, in YouTube's mind, deserving they are of an opportunity to be monetized.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's transformational, which is what you're supposed to do anyway. And then there's a new thing, something about what the trending page might go away, which is fine, I think, and I don't know, is this even true? I've only kind of briefly read the back and forth with the trending page might go away and there's something called charts coming out. What's that?

Speaker 3:

I'm I'm still getting, uh, a grip on this information myself. It sounds like youtube is just calling it charts now, and it sounds like, but the word chart to me indicates hey, we're going to be showing you more specifically why something is trending. Hey, look at this video and how it's performing against other things, like a more comparison kind of view but, that's my imagination.

Speaker 3:

The problem the things we're talking about right now, that travis is referring to uh is just in some one of our channels here at work, and we're trying to figure out where this information is coming from yeah and my frustration this is more of a general frustration with the internet is that have you ever gone on sites like just I don't want to name anyone specifically, but just sites that typically report on stories and they report on them with confidence, but they don't link to the original source right it's just like a trust me bro, trust me bro, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And it's really like frustrating, because I think the reason they have to do that is the way seo works, and I think I'm right about this. If you keep linking off of your website, that that's not great. They want any links on the page to go to another thing on their own website Sure. So We've gotten to this point now where it's gotten harder and harder for me as time has gone on to see the actual source of information. So I was looking at these like two different articles. I'm like where's the okay? They're referencing a YouTube blog or post somewhere and I don't know where it is. So now I'm like doing separate searches to even try and find the information. I'm getting results that are really old. It's a mess.

Speaker 3:

It's a mess right now to find information about anything.

Speaker 2:

Very. It's a mess right now to find information about anything. Very true, and it's one of the things that I think in this age of unfortunate misinformation, which is sad to say, but it really is true that the whole trust me bro thing is an unfortunate normality that we're kind of seeing. It's been very normalized and we just have to be careful. So basically, I guess what I'm saying for all the creators out there check your sources. Whenever you see something, don't immediately retweet it or go and tell all your friends oh my God, they're not going to check around and VidIQ, we're going to always try to figure out what the news is and what the truth is and then try to give you that information. But I mean, we might even get it wrong. So don't just trust us. Look at other sources as well and make sure that you're making decisions based off of facts and not things that are being said by someone else, which I say this and then I realize some of the thumbnails that Rob Wilson's in and I'm like well, listen All right?

Speaker 2:

Well, you can trust us, though, bro.

Speaker 3:

Oh, yeah, Trust us bro.

Speaker 2:

Trust us, bro. All right. So, with all that being said, we got a couple questions sent in um. You can do it a couple different ways. If you're listening to the audio only podcast, there's an option in the show notes that allows you to send a text message to us, and our first message um will be let's see this will be from oh well see, the thing is it doesn't actually say their name here we go so hi guys, I recently discovered vertical live streams and they are awesome.

Speaker 2:

I can get way more viewers on them than I can on standard lives. I also found out that vertical live stream watch time counts towards monetization, so my question is how do I grow my audience on these streams? I typically have 20 to 60 live viewers. I'm wondering how I can get even more. Thank you so much. Vertical live streams remember those?

Speaker 3:

it's like no one talks about them anymore yeah, well, they were really popular when they first came out and I think that was because youtube was pushing them in the regular shorts feed more often. Yeah, and I have a feeling that if you interacted with those by clicking like, oh, I want to watch this, you probably get those more often.

Speaker 3:

I barely get them because I almost never interact with them yeah so I think it's tailored to each individual and the reason I personally don't enjoy watching them is because of my mindset when I'm watching a live stream, which is, if I'm turning on a live stream, I am ready to lock in, or it's on as in the background as I'm doing something else, and vertical live streams are mobile, so I'm not going to. If I'm trying to like cook dinner and I want a live stream on, I'm not going to hold my phone in my hand.

Speaker 3:

You know I could prop it up whatever, but you know, you know what I mean it's it's all about the environment that I'm in at that time. What do I? What am I going to watch? So I typically put on like a twitch stream or a youtube stream. If I'm like cooking or doing something like that, I can have it on passively while I clean, and I like to do that on my tv, and I just don't think to go to vertical. Even if I can find them on my tv, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna go and see who's live that I already follow.

Speaker 3:

So I would say that growing these is tough. I'm just slowly breaking the bad news to you that I don't have great tips for you because I don't I've tried them, I don't enjoy doing them and I don't enjoy watching them. So I'm just trying to give you my reasons as to why I'm not the best person to ask. However, in my other opinion about live streams, they are great for growing a community and shorts as you've probably seen, if you've uploaded shorts, it's difficult to get people to move to your long form, and that's because shorts are not great for building a community. You know, you got to be at it for a long time and you're gonna get millions of views and then slowly, over time yeah you, maybe you start some live streams or a discord server and you notice how many people actually really are committed to you. But shorts are, so I want to use the word disposable, just in terms of like I use that term all the time yeah, and it, it's the, and the vertical live streams fall into that same category.

Speaker 3:

So, yes, it's cool that you're getting viewers. My question back to you would be like do you notice the same names coming back, or is it always new people? And that's going to make a huge difference when it comes to growth, because YouTube, you know, it, really helps to snowball your growth. If you're always getting 20 to 60 people and they're always new people, how are you supposed to break open to that next? I really lost that there. How are you supposed to break through to that next hurdle and go okay, now we have 160 people, now we have 300 people. How do you do that if you're not growing the community side of it?

Speaker 2:

Here's an interesting thought I just realized, because we know about these engaged views on shorts, which I think we even have a message coming in. We're talking about that in a second. Do you think the lives are engaged or are they just like the other one, the fake?

Speaker 3:

one. I wonder if they fall into the live tab. Therefore, there wouldn't be a differentiation between views and engaged views, because that only applies to shorts. There wouldn't be a differentiation between views and engaged views because only that only applies to shorts and, as this person pointed out, if these count towards watch time for monetization, then they're definitely more live stream than they are short I would think, I would think, so.

Speaker 2:

But the other thing is like, if you have 20, I mean, if you have like 50, 60 people watching, you should definitely have a pretty live chat and you should have a pretty good idea of what people are liking, what people are not liking. Um, I'm just unsure of like what that looks like in mobile. So I will say this um, getting views on shorts and getting viewers on live vertical which I consider live shorts, in my opinion, are easier because they're just kind of shotgunned out right, they're just kind of everywhere. Um, so I think you're almost going to have to be more spectacular in your vertical lives than you would be in a regular live, I guess in a weird way, if you want to continue to grow that, because in a regular live, kind of like what dan said, I feel like I'm going to have more time with you. You're going to hang out and chat with me and hang out with us while we, you know, do the, do the recording versus.

Speaker 2:

I can swipe you at any second yeah if you, just if I even squirrel, oh swipe, that's all squirrel um, like, I feel like you have to be almost spectacular every minute, so it might be something about doing that. That might be really um. The key to unlock the thing is we should have asked john before he left, like to do some vertical things, to see what that would look like I.

Speaker 3:

I have two more tips for this person. Yeah, go for it. I would say one a lot of people use vertical as an addition to something else. So if they're streaming on Twitch, they'll throw a vertical one on YouTube. Sometimes they'll do a vertical and a horizontal on YouTube at the same time.

Speaker 3:

Yes, what I've noticed is people like I'll be watching a regular looking live stream and then they'll mention by the way, if you're watching on youtube on the shorts feed, we're actually live on twitch right now. I'm like, oh, I'm watching on twitch already, so I guess they're. They're live in two places, so you can absolutely run multiple live streams at the same time. There are tools out there to do that. I would look those up, and that is one thing you can do. And then the other suggestion I have for you is to go and watch some tiktok live streams and see, take notes on what the community is like there, because really what this is is YouTube trying to eat into that market, and the people with the strategies on how to grow a vertical live stream are on TikTok. They've been on TikTok doing that for a while.

Speaker 2:

Jen actually talked about this before multiple times how she loves them, which is interesting, since she doesn't really like short form in general. But she said she loves the uh, the live stream that's on tiktok and that there there are a lot of nothing but she likes it, which is wild, yeah it's a wild person.

Speaker 3:

I think the thing people need to remember about shorts is that youtube is trying to eat into the tiktok market share and if you don't like shorts, you might not be the audience for them, and that's okay, but their, their, youtube is, is real, has realized a long time ago like there's an audience for vertical, there's an audience for vertical live streams and if you don't, if you, if you see this as a cheat code to grow but you're like, oh, but I hate it so much, then it's not a cheat code to grow. It's not for you like. Focus on doing the thing you like. It sounds like this this commenter likes doing them, which is great, uh, but if you're listening and going I don't know if this one's for me that's good. Like you understand yourself and what you enjoy making first and foremost, and focus on that love that as a reminder.

Speaker 2:

Um, we're going through some of the old messages and stuff. I think I said this in the last episode but if you missed that, for the next couple of weeks we're we're trying to pick some of the better emails and text messages we get and we're going to save them for when jen and I get in the studio, which will be in a couple of weeks. So that means, if you've sent an email or a text message and you're not seeing it show up on a show which, by the way, would take a couple weeks anyway um, it might even take longer because it might be one we think is so good that we want to talk about it in person, and then those have to come out over the course of a couple weeks. So send in your best questions and just be patient and hope for the best, but some of these are good that we can answer right now. This next one is another text message. Hey, videye crew, my name is Dylan.

Speaker 2:

I currently run a gaming channel, but I'm about to start learning blacksmithing and bladesmithing, okay, and I'm seriously considering documenting the entire journey. Part of it is accountability, fil, consider documenting the entire journey. Part of it is accountability. Filming my progress will help motivate me and get me out of there and keep learning, but I also feel like blacksmith. A blacksmithing channel could stand out more than gaming, since the creator space isn't quite as saturated. If I go forward with this, I plan to build up a backlog of videos ahead of time so I don't get overwhelmed.

Speaker 2:

I know forging with tools, daggers, swords and axes could take a week or more each, so I likely wouldn't have have enough to be able to maintain the weekly upload schedule I currently have on my gaming channel. What do you think? Would it make more sense to start a separate channel for this journey or try to manage both under one brand? Long term, I'd love to combine both worlds by forging Final Fantasy-style weapons or iconic gear from other games, which is the channel I'm just going to say that out loud that iconic gear from other games, which is the channel. I'm just going to say that out loud. That's your channel, at least right now. Right Like, go ahead and start doing that now, because that will separate you even more than a blacksmithing or forging channel. I think you could do that and it's definitely going to be less saturated than a gaming channel.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But you're going to be even less saturated with, you know, making a Final Fantasy weapon or something from other games yeah.

Speaker 2:

And the thing is that's going to bring in the people that are into gaming anyway to see the real thing Like make Cloud's big sword, his big ridiculous sword from Final Fantasy VII. That'd be crazy and people who are into the game are going to watch that. Plus, people that are into Forging are going to watch that. It's definitely the one of all the things you're talking about here that has probably the biggest potential overall. However, to your point, it's going to take a while to do these and I like the idea of building up the backlog before they even launch the channel. What do you think about all the things that were said here from Dylan?

Speaker 3:

I think Dylan is in the right spot in terms of mindset. Uh, here's what I would say. You mentioned the word brand. You want to run this under one brand. You can do that with two channels. Yes, and you should absolutely. In my opinion. My vote for you is to have a different channel for this. And you point to the other channels constantly. You know you're just reminding people towards the end of the videos, like constantly. You know you're just reminding people towards the end of the videos, like, by the way, I just made you. Let's say, you play final fantasy on the, on the, on the regular game or regular the gaming channel one day and you say, hey, by the way, this weapon that I'm holding right now, I made this it's over another channel.

Speaker 3:

Go check it out. You can absolutely be this one brand and have two channels. It just it feels like a different type of audience to me. But I will say this if your gaming channel is more of a video essay style vibe, anyway, and you're not really playing the games, but you're more talking about the culture of gaming, that's a little different. That's probably not what you're doing, because you just, you know, mentioned it's a gaming channel. Um, those most gaming channels don't do that. But I'm talking about, if you're the kind of person like annie austin who is always doing like deep dives on very specific things about specific games. I wonder if he could get away with doing something like this, where he's like I actually tried my hand at making this thing that I'm talking about in this game today. But if you're not that kind of creator, then this is two channels hands down, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, I think understanding the value prop of this specific channel where there's even less than if there are gaming channels and less than there are forging channels, there's this gaming forging channel. It's such a cool idea that I would almost be excited to watch that. I feel like that's the one you do right off the bat, because as a viewer, you can go to a gaming channel and be like, okay, I've seen, it's cool, maybe if there's another five videos I like I'll subscribe. Or or forging channel, like oh yeah, that's cool, but there's still some other ones. But how many forging gaming forging channels are? It's like, well, there's only like a couple.

Speaker 2:

So I'm definitely subscribing on, like the first view of a good video, like because I definitely want to see more of this. I won't see it everywhere else. So there's that as well, which is really an interesting value prop, and I think that I would love to see this channel. So, if you end up doing this, definitely send us an email Once you boot it up and get a couple videos going. We'd love to take a look at it. I think it'd be a lot of fun. What a cool idea.

Speaker 3:

That's awesome. I love when people use just hobbies and skills they're developing as their channel. I think it's kind of a winning strategy You're taking something you're passionate about and combining it with YouTube, which I hope, hopefully, you're passionate about.

Speaker 2:

I would hope so.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the two passions in one. It's like this snowball of motivation.

Speaker 2:

We should all hope for that. All right, our first email, theboostvidiqcom, comes from Orlando. Hey, jen and Travis, of course it's Dan this time.

Speaker 3:

Wow, yeah whatever I know right.

Speaker 2:

The other day I was watching a vidIQ video in which Rob was talking about the concept of total addressable market. Oh, this is great. Oh boy, yeah, the concept totally makes sense. You can't have more views than theoretical viewers. Simple, how is it that any Joe Schmo with less subscribers than me can post a video that's simply raw footage shot with a GoPro in the hood of a car, with no rhyme or reason, no one talking to music, and still get 4,200 views in 11 days? This is very specific, by the way.

Speaker 1:

And my videos seem to die they have an enemy.

Speaker 2:

They have a very specific enemy in this email. I've been following every rule in the book. My titles and thumbnails are good because I say so, but because vid iq says it, I cover every aspect of town. I include regular footage, action footage, drone footage. I spent over 40 hours writing a script, meticulously editing my program, providing detailed descriptions and nothing. Uh, now there's one thing that I do that no one else seems to do, at least I haven't seen it. I run a bug on top of the right hand corner of my entire screen with my channel logo.

Speaker 2:

Could that be the culprit? See, when I see stuff like this, I worry that you, you get into analysis paralysis. You start thinking that every little thing could be the reason. There are a lot of reasons that this could be the case. Yeah, um, and I understand what you're saying, because I've seen stuff like this before. So it is kind of frustrating when you put extra time and effort into a video and it's about something similar and you see, in this particular case, orlando's talking about someone that says, um, you know, they post a video with raw footage of a GoPro in the hood of a car and just kind of driving around and stuff, and they get more views. Now let me start with a couple things, and I'm not saying this is the case, right, but let me just say the first thing how do we know all those views are organic? How do we know all those views aren't embedded?

Speaker 3:

on like Reddit somewhere. You're talking about the, the enemy channel, the enemy channel right, yeah, how do we know?

Speaker 2:

I mean, let's just start there, right?

Speaker 2:

I don't want to end there, because I think that gets you thinking too evil about other people. But we don't even know that. So let's start there. Let's just say that maybe this thing is hitting like a google feed and those views are empty views. So then who cares? Right, right, okay. Now let's say they are all completely organic.

Speaker 2:

Youtube beubing sometimes and we see this happen a lot, where a video just pops off out of nowhere. You're like why does this have all this view Like what's going on? This is nothing special about it, but something connected and it was in the right place at the right time. Orlando's channel, if I remember correctly, is a pretty old channel. It's been around for a while. Has grown an audience specific to a specific thing. And this other channel you know they're saying it's, it's smaller probably hasn't grown a specific audience to anything yet yet, or maybe they have, and they've micro focused on just this one thing by not putting any additional kind of thing. And then YouTube's like well, I know who likes this type of thing, whereas Orlando talks about quite a bit of things and where he's from.

Speaker 2:

So I feel like there's a lot of things that you can't control, a lot of things that you can't worry about. You look at those channels and you try to figure out what connected with that audience, to see if that audience is something that you want to go after. And you do that by looking in the comments section. You look at the comments and you see kind of what things are connecting with people and if they say, oh, I like this area, or I like the way you shot this, or I like how simple it is, those are keys. Success leaves clues. Sean Cannell said that, and I think it's really important to look at those clues to figure out what type of things maybe you need to tweak in yours.

Speaker 2:

Maybe you're over-editing, maybe you're doing too much, maybe you're being overly perfectionist about the type of content you need, maybe you don't need that. So, for example, if I'm looking at how to unclog a toilet, I don't need Mr Beast type edits, I don't need that. I looking at how to unclog a toilet, I don't need mr beast type edits, I don't need that. I don't need the extra footage, I don't need a script for it, I just just show me the toilet. If I'm going somewhere to visit, I don't necessarily need a whole bunch of it's nice to have drone footage, so that's nice too, but if I just want to go to a specific place and figure out where to eat and stuff, I don't need all that extra stuff. I just need that thing. So it just depends on the type of content you're doing. What stood out to you about this message?

Speaker 3:

I what stood out to me is that they I feel like they're so in the weeds right now. Yeah, you mentioned analysis, paralysis, the, the bug in the corner of the screen. No, keep that, that's not. That's not doing nothing. I mean it's good If you feel like the watermark, keep it Sure.

Speaker 3:

I think now I have to make some assumptions and I have to make some hypothetical suggestions, because I don't know the channel, I don't have it in front of me, I don't know the channel you're also looking at and going. Well, they're doing this. So let's make some assumptions and say that the channel that's getting a lot of views let's assume they're organic they're not using the promote tab, so they're not getting views in some dubious way. You can check into into that a little bit, by the way, by just looking at their interactions on their two videos. Are they getting real comments and likes?

Speaker 3:

Anyway, let's assume this is legit and you sound like you're investing a lot of money and time into the quality of the videos, right. So you have a good camera, you have good editing, you have good thumbnails, everything is firing all cylinders with the quality. So what you did is you've learned how to get all of these tools and use them to make high-quality videos. Now, the definition of high-quality in this case would be literally the resolution of the videos, the pacing of the videos, all of the technical stuff Sounds like, if we just take your word for it, it's Orlando, right. If we take Orlando's word for it, it's all there it's all working, but we don't know the topics of your videos or the person you're talking about or any of the other people in your niche, and I'm wondering if the reason your competition seems to be doing well is because of just, I hate to say this, I'm really not trying to be brutal and again, I'm doing hypotheticals and assumptions right now. I hate to say this. I'm really not trying to be brutal and again, I'm doing hypotheticals and assumptions right now. But are their videos just more interesting sounding from a title thumbnail perspective? And when you get into the content, are their titles and thumbnails delivering on that interesting thing?

Speaker 3:

So an example I could give you if we're talking about dash cam footage, what sounds more interesting? A dash cam where you drive from your house to the grocery store, or a dash camera? You drive from your house to the grocery store and you witness a car crash on the way there? I'm not wishing for bad things to happen to anyone on the road, by the way. I'm just saying, unfortunately, people love a good train wreck they. They can't look away from it and that's the kind of thing that draws people in. So what is happening on their drives and what's happening on your drives and what can you do to make your videos interesting? Because all I can do is assume that your competition is just doing something that, inherently, is more interesting to the audiences that you're catering to.

Speaker 2:

I want to say something that you just said. First of all, russian dash cam channels are like huge, they're big things. And secondarily, speaking also about the dash cams, this is a true story. Back when I was doing tech reviews and stuff, I did a couple dash cam reviews and I will tell you that one thing I am passionate about when it comes to tech is I think everyone should have a dash cam. I know it seems extraneous, but trust me when I tell you you wish you had one, when you don't have one and you need one, right, you better to have it, not need it, to need it, not have it.

Speaker 2:

And almost every time that I would do a dash cam review, I would almost get into an accident. Weirdly, like twice and it was recorded, I actually had to put it in the review. I'm like I think I almost hit somebody, like jump out in front of me. I'm like, bro, I'm trying to literally review this dash cam. Thank you for proving the point as to why you should have a dash cam. Everyone go get a dash cam if you have a car.

Speaker 3:

So, like another example, you know that YouTube channel that shows the clips of that bridge that's too low and trucks and stuff always drive under it and just ruin the top of the trailer will be there and the air conditioner will catch on the bridge and there it goes. If you just watched the bridge all day long, it would be very boring, right? You know car drives under bridge, so that's kind of where I'm coming from is like, what are the topics of your videos? Like, like, and I really don't want to say this and have it misconstrued as like wow, so dan's advocating for me to deliberately cause and find accidents so I can get more views? Like, no, I don't know, the channels are talking.

Speaker 3:

I'm using extreme examples, but I do think that, based on the question and the way that was worded to us, that you are really focused on the quality, the technical aspects you can control, and I think it's time to. Now you've mastered that, let's assume you've mastered that. I want you to focus on just topics and ideas, and when I say topics and ideas, think about it from the perspective of the people seeing the title and thumbnails putting videos out there, what's going to make someone stop and go? Wait, that's. I'm sorry what happened. And make sure the thumbnails and titles support themselves. And like, like, make sure your thumbnail and title strategy is good. You claim it is great. Like, now let's talk about the actual meat and potatoes. What is the video about? And without get, I can't get any more specific than that. Unfortunately, because we don't, I don't have the channel in front of me right? I'm not asking you to send it or anything, but hopefully that was helpful and I think that's so smart on point and a lot of people miss the, the, the idea we get.

Speaker 2:

we get on the creator side and we just think about that part where we forget about the viewer side. That's the whole reason we're here. We have to have a good viewer experience. All right, next one. This one is not really a question.

Speaker 2:

I actually picked this just because I thought it was kind of funny and I knew you were going to be here. How much are we all loving seeing the new it's about shorts. This is from Chris. How much are we all loving seeing the new this is about shorts. This is from Chris. How much are we all loving seeing the new view counts and then looking at the engaged views and feeling like we were kicked in the pants. Love it right. Seriously. How demotivating. Why not give me false numbers on my monetization and then pay me less?

Speaker 3:

Great work YouTube. Yeah, I got to tell you I think this is I'm making another assumption here. Sorry, youtube, because, and for YouTube themselves, they are being selfish, and I think the reason they're being selfish is just my own little tinfoil hat. Okay, put your tinfoil hats on everybody. You should have your Tube Talk branded tinfoil hats in the mail if you haven't gotten them yet. And the conspiracy theory I have is that the thing I hear about TikTok all the time is how easy it is to get views on TikTok compared to other platforms. We mysteriously don't. We don't know much about tiktok's algorithm. It's a big mystery to us. Did youtube realize? Oh, they're just not counting engaged views like we are. Let's just change it.

Speaker 3:

They only changed it for shorts and again like I said earlier, youtube is trying to encroach on tiktok, so this was just youtube trying to make it look like shorts is also an easy place to get views. It was a selfish thing they did and the they gave us a little bit back by saying don't worry, you can still still see the real views. They're just not going to be public on your channel anymore, and I'm also very frustrated by this. I don't like this update. I think YouTube, all of YouTube's platforms, should be parallel to one another and I I don't want them to give us engaged versus non-engaged using long form. That's not what I'm saying, but long form still works the way it always has.

Speaker 3:

Now shorts counts views differently. They should all count views the same. I don't. I don't like how it's not parallel anymore. I don't like that. Shorts is this. It's the same app and it's all in the same place. All the analytics are in the same place, but it's like this whole different world caters to a different audience, has different analytics, and the more they change it, the more I'm like maybe they should make another app called YouTube shorts and and get shorts off the main app, which I'm not advocating for. I actually think these should be in the same place. I like that they're in the same place, but if it keeps getting changed like this and they keep doing like now we're doing vertical live streams and engaged views versus non-engaged views, it's so dramatically different and it causes confusion and it's weird and I don't. I also don't like this update.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't blame you and I I've said this since the very first time they announced they were doing this that this is literally a play to get more in line with TikTok, like that's all it is. Yeah, announced they were doing this, that this is literally a play to get more in line with tiktok, like that's all it is. Yeah, um and uh. You know you can tell that they care because routinely they'll come out with um specs every like month or two, with, like, oh, more watch time than tv. We're the most streamed channel in the world and most streamed platform in the world, like all these things that uh, don't matter to the people that are using the platform, but are interesting to people that are like, analytical about it, or I'm sure they care. So, yeah, absolutely, this was a play for that. There's no other reason to do it. It's to make people feel good about themselves and to use YouTube over TikTok.

Speaker 3:

It's what it is. It is what it is. I recommend storing your tinfoil hat in like a big Tupperware or something, so it doesn't get crushed and thank you for using that yeah all right.

Speaker 2:

uh, so the last email. I need to make sure that I say this person's name right, because they did put a pronunciation thing in the email, so I want to make sure I get this. Uh, so this person's name is veronique, veronique I know that looks like veronica or something like that, but it's veronique, okay. And she says hi, love your show. Sorry, I don't eat candy. Okay, that's fair, it's my regular Monday. Let's get this week started to watch your show. Love that. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

I pivoted my channel. Now I'm small, very small, but I originally had my channel to showcase my product. Then I decided to pivot to work on the how of making that product and the science behind it. Initially, some of my showcase product videos brought in a lot for me viewers, but they were the completely wrong audience. So I had to unlist those videos completely because I thought it might be confusing to the audience recommendation system, and I agree with that.

Speaker 2:

I'm now seven months into my true pivot and it's still very slow and hard in a hard climb. Now, before I finish, finish this. The reason that we're getting like this particular question is because the last episode was about pivots. Jen and I talked in, uh in depth about channel pivots and like, given her experience or anything, I think it was really fascinating. I think the last part of the podcast where I was almost interviewing um jen about, uh, about her pivot, was almost some of the most interesting stuff that we've done in a while, because I was literally asking her questions like so how did this go? Because I'm pivoting my channel too, so I just kind of wanted to see how she had done, and she had done some really interesting things that made her pivot a success, which is great. But anyway, I'm seven months into my true pivot. It's still very slow and hard climb 700 scrubs and barely 1,000 hours in a year.

Speaker 2:

The audience recommendation system seems to be still recommending my videos after videos that are nowhere near my niche. It is maddening. So I'm not sure if it's because of the pivot or because my niche is so well niche and specialized, but it's really slowly building my audience. Anyway, you were asking about the pivoting experience and here is mine a small channel Carry on being supportive and real at the same time. So I do want to talk about this because when we talked about the pivot, one of the things I asked jen was about how long did it take for her pivot to succeed, and she said about five months, but it was, you know, a video a week or so. She unlisted some older things, so she did some very specific things and if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to it. I think it was so good.

Speaker 2:

Even if you're not thinking about pivoting your channel, the question gets answered whether you should start a new channel or pivot a channel. And we do get a lot of people who send in emails that are like I want to do a new channel, should I start a new channel or pivot the one? And I feel like this one is kind of like well, I did it for even longer and it's still not working. Now a couple of things. What was said here was the recommendation videos are not related to the type of content they're making. That's actually normal for smaller channels, because typically it'll be random videos that they see, and they see in your recommendation. Oh, I know I watch a smaller channel. Let me click and watch it, so it'll show that video, even though it might have anything to do with your channel. That's normal and, by the way, it never completely goes away. You'll always have some random videos in your suggested videos. That's just the way it is. But as a smaller channel, it's almost all of it Like that's. You don't see anything related and you're like well, what the heck's going on here? Here's what you do. Um, hey, you just keep making great content. Look at the things that are working in your niche and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2:

But I want you to remember something that I talked about with hafu go, and hafu go said multiple times he wanted to quit. He was, you know, he kept going through this process. It didn't seem to work, um, and for a moment, like he was done. But he now looks at his growth over the course of a year. He doesn't look at it month to month, even he doesn't look at it week to week. He looks at it over the course of a year and he says if that number is still going up, then he's winning.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's kind of important here, because we talked earlier about total addressable market, which is really important. How many people are there that are even possible to watch your content? I don't know exactly what your niche is. Don't know exactly what your niche is. She said it's a niche of a niche, like a small niche. So your total addressable market might be 3,000 people total, which means you're probably not even going to get to 3,000. You might get to 500 or something like that at the top. If your total addressable market is 30 million, maybe you get to a million of that. Maybe right, maybe not, maybe 500,000. So it's really important to understand that whatever the total adjustable market is, you're only going to get a small slice of that and as long as it is still growing in some way, then you are succeeding. We talk to small channels all the time. Dan, what kind of things are you seeing when people do try to pivot?

Speaker 3:

I see I'll speak from experience too, because I've been through this I just see a little bit of like justified impatience, like I'm committing to this really hard and you tell yourself, going into it, like I know my first video is going to be crap because I'm pivoting. But when it's crap you still get really bummed because you also want to put your best foot forward. It's a new type of video, maybe it's a new type of editing, a new type of style, and so you put it all out there and you're like I know I said I was expecting this, but I'm still like it hurts and it makes you demotivated. It makes the next video harder to do, which maybe is another reason to batch a little bit. So you have like five videos and that way you're not making those the next four videos in like a state of demotivation because you need plenty of videos to start testing and getting the pivot rolling. And pivoting is about committing you are, you believe in this new idea. You know you got more views doing the other thing, but it doesn't matter, you're committing. Just just do it and and a year or two later, if you keep up with it, you will realize that you know your pivot worked and the views you were getting are they pale in comparison to what you're getting now? Um, um.

Speaker 3:

So I wanted to say that and I want to add um, for for this particular creator who reached out, something that a lot of people forget with vidIQ is that we are a product, like we have a product and we have YouTube channels and stuff and we, you'll notice, we don't talk about the product all the time. We mentioned it here and there and that's like a deliberate strategy, because our strategy for our product and business is let's be part of the discussion, let's be part of the community. That is just YouTube creating. Let's create content ourselves and have fun and show how fun it can be. And once in a while, we'll mention that we have a tool that helps creators.

Speaker 3:

I don't know what your helps creators, I don't know what your product is and I don't know what pivot you've done. I don't know what you're trying right now, but I I just wanted to kind of put that out there as a strategy for growing a channel around a product, just in general. Like maybe you can be part of the community that would use that product and then, once in a while, you can point people and say, by the way, I have one of these in myself. Or if you're wondering what the heck this thing is, by the way I made it.

Speaker 3:

There's just opportunities to kind of be in the community and you'll find a whole bunch of strategies for making videos in that community, versus making videos about a product, which when you make a video about a product, you're basically making an ad, right. So I don't know, I don't know that helps. I don't. Again, I don't know what your channel is or what you're doing, but if for anyone out there as a product and you're struggling a little bit, that's our strategy for promoting our own product. We don't really promote it much.

Speaker 2:

We talk about it once in a while and we just participate in the experience that everyone else is having on youtube we do debate how much we should promote our product which, by the way, I will point out, I talked about this in a couple episodes ago. One of the things we are going to be reading in the live stream sorry, not the live stream, the studio episodes are the script episodes the scripts that you're sending in. So I promoted and showed off our script tool in two episodes ago. I really love that tool and I challenged people to use that tool to make a script for me and Jen that we will read on air, which we've gotten some emails already. I can't wait to read them in the studio, but you can still send them into the boost at vidIQcom. All you got to do go to vidIQcom, go to create and create a script and write something for Jen and I and if it's good, we'll read it during the podcast and that's a tool.

Speaker 2:

That was a promotion, not because I was asked to do it, but because I actually liked that tool a lot. I actually really liked that tool a lot, so I thought it'd be fun if people use it as well. But the thing is, we argue all. I shouldn't say argue. We discuss all the time in meetings. Should we even be promoting ourselves. I don't know, maybe, maybe not.

Speaker 2:

It certainly name. That's synonymous with YouTube creation, which is great. It's almost like, does Pepsi and Coke really need to advertise anymore? I mean, yes, believe it or not, you kind of do, because as soon as you stop advertising, people forget about you. But by the same token it comes back to total dressable market, like that's never going to go away.

Speaker 2:

It's how many people are interested in what you're doing, and if there are more people that are interested in what you're doing than what you are currently tapping into, that might be the things you're making, the topics you're making, them on the type of story that you're telling or the information that you're giving. You've got to look out there and see who is really killing it in your niche and try to not copy but get inspiration from. And one of the things that we do here on the podcast is we talk about these things not so much in somewhat strategic ways. It's like we try to give you some strategy but we like to commiserate with you because we're creators too and we don't get all one of tens. We get a lot of ten of tens. We get a lot of videos that bomb we. We go through it too. There is no magic thing where every single thing works for every single person every single time. Just, it's just not the way youtube works. Doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2:

Um, and you know, if you feel like I just don't get it, you can send us a message and we'll sit here and we'll say you know what? Sometimes we don't either. Fortunately for us. We've been around it so much that, more times than not, we can succeed or help others succeed. That doesn't mean that we know every single little thing, and something that might be affecting you might be something we've literally never heard of before, but we want to hear about it and we'll definitely cover it, and we'll definitely cover it if we do so.

Speaker 2:

All that being said, dan, thank you so much for joining me today. I know that you're working on some cool projects. On the main channel, we've had some pretty cool things happen. John just left. He'll be coming on in a future episode chatting with us and stuff, so that leaves an opening for live streams during the course of the week. I'm thinking that we might have to do like a Savage Saturday or something. I don't know, maybe not a Saturday, but I think we're going to see some interesting creations along the way you should.

Speaker 3:

you should do Savage Saturday and do it on Wednesday. That's a great idea. That's just one of the bits.

Speaker 2:

That is the best idea. I didn't even come up with that. That's beautiful, all right. Well, we'll see.

Speaker 1:

We'll see Keep an eye out for that Everyone.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for joining us. Of course you can check us out on vidIQcom and if you're new here, feel free to hit that subscribe button. If you had some fun with us and if you're listening to the audio podcast, leave us a five-star review only because we love those and we will see.

Speaker 1:

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