TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
TubeTalk tackles the questions that real YouTubers are asking. Each week we discuss how to make money on YouTube, how to get your videos discovered, how to level up your gaming channel, or even how the latest YouTube update is going to impact you and your channel. If you've ever asked yourself, "How do I grow on YouTube?" or "Where can I learn how to turn my channel into a business?" you've come to the right podcast! TubeTalk is a vidIQ production. To learn more about how we help YouTube creators big and small, visit https://vidIQ.com
TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
AI Brain Rot & YouTube's Real Monetization Rules: What Creators Should Know
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Recent YouTube policy changes regarding "inauthentic content" have been widely misinterpreted, with no evidence that AI content is specifically being targeted for demonetization.
• YouTube has rebranded "repetitious content" policy as "inauthentic content" with minimal actual changes
• Title and thumbnail A/B testing capabilities are expanding to allow testing of up to three variations
• Understanding viewer psychology is more valuable than focusing on technical metrics
• When considering channel pivots, examine analytics to see where most views and subscribers come from
• Apply the 70/30 rule: 70% established content formats, 30% experimental content
• Success comes from predicting what humans will watch next, not understanding algorithms
• Think like a viewer by analyzing why you skip certain videos from channels you're subscribed to
Send us your podcast intro videos and we might use them in future episodes!
I'm about to tell you something that I usually used to only tell coaching clients, and I'm gonna do it for free here on the podcast right now.
Speaker 2:I think YouTube does have a problem right now with AI brain rot, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:This could be one of the things that YouTube should have never done, because it's just stirred up too much stuff.
Speaker 2:You as a creator are probably concerned about this, but the viewer doesn't care.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that talks in microphones about youtube. I'm travis and I'm here with special guest rob, how you doing hello question for you, travis.
Speaker 2:The intro that this time was, what was it more? We talked to you with microphones, through headphones. I can't remember what you said then, but do you create a new one every single week? By yourself, or do you have ai to assist you?
Speaker 1:I literally say it. The second it comes out of my mouth, I have no idea what I'm going to say until I say it oh, every day, every episode is new.
Speaker 1:I have no idea what I'm going to say, um, but welcome to the podcast of everyone. Uh, if you're new here, we just talk about youtube usually, sometimes candy, but youtube and how to grow your youtube channel. Um, travis and rob is the face of the main new vid iq channel. Uh, and, by the way, speaking of intros, uh, we said in the last episode that we would be over the moon if people want to send us intros that we can use for the beginning part of the podcast. So, send us a video, uh, that just kind of intros the podcast and if it's good we'll use it because why not?
Speaker 1:it can be, uh, it can be silly, it can be whatever speaking also travis of behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Uh, you sent me a slack message recently where you had said curly, whirly in your hand, yes, and you now have a review of said a chocolate bar so funny thing is I was actually going to mention that in this episode.
Speaker 1:I did not set this up. Uh, rob thought of this because he remembers what I sent him. So it was last weekend, I think it was. I was, I was at the mall, for it was fourth of july, uh and uh, across the street from where they were doing all the things there's a big mall, went in there and they had a candy shop and I was walking around and they had um, different types of candy, uh, but international, like different, like all over the place.
Speaker 1:It wasn't just like the Ukrainian thing, and I saw a Curly Whirly. And this is the fame. If you haven't again, if you're not part of the lore of this podcast. Many months ago, when we started talking about Cadbury eggs and candy corn, rob had mentioned that he liked Curly Whirlies and I thought this was just the funniest name thing. And I found a Curly Whirly in the candy store. So, funniest name thing and I found a curly whirly in the candy store. So I'm like I'm buying this, the only thing I bought. It's literally the only thing I bought. I did not know what to expect. By the way, I couldn't remember what type of chocolate it was, but it was very thin, yes, which I'm surprised by. Um, and I, you know because of where I was when I was doing, I actually had to put in my pocket for a little while I was walking around, which made it not real, not real nice, so that I'm opening it up and it does keep.
Speaker 1:In fairness, even though it was in my pocket for a little while, it did um, it didn't completely melt or anything, but it definitely was looser than it was. When I bought pretty soft, I imagine it was very soft. Yes, yeah and uh, I will just say that, um, because it's caramel in the middle, right, I don't know if it's fudge or caramel.
Speaker 2:It didn't taste like fudge, uh toffee, I don't know yeah, it's something like ingredients, but yeah, it's got like a uh, how would you describe it? Like a a, so it's hard on the outside and then very, uh, not liquidy, but yeah, very yeah, that and that, that, that aspect of it not a fan.
Speaker 1:Uh, that the whole kind of tearing it I, I don't really like that. Anyway, I get that. Yeah, I think that's really what kind of turned. Plus, of course, it was soft and weak. So maybe, maybe, if it was a little bit, you know, in the refrigerator for a while and a little bit more crisp or something, maybe I would have dug it, but it wasn't for me. I didn't even eat the whole thing, which is wild.
Speaker 2:And so this is from like an international candy store in the US, right, apparently Because we have American candy stores in the UK where you get things like Reese's and Milk Duds. That's one of our um things that we miss from canada. But what I've, what I've now learned, is that american candy stores and vape shops in the uk are just fronts for laundering money no, I think so.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there's a donut allegedly after after that um statement, but there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1:There's a donut allegedly after after that um statement, but there you go well, here's the thing there's a donut shop down the street from my house that I never see people in. I'm like how are they still in business? How are they still in business anyway? Yeah, all that to say. This is a silly podcast and I love talking about silly things. Um, real quick, we're gonna hit a couple news notes. Um, very recently, the very scary I think jen and I talked about this a couple weeks ago uh monetization, uh update, which really wasn't even an update, came out, but it seemed to stir a big thing in the in the entire uh youtube community, where youtube said that you know, they were going to clarify some wording on AI or just videos in general.
Speaker 2:Right, it wasn't even that, it was repetitious content.
Speaker 1:Repetitious content.
Speaker 2:They never used AI at any point.
Speaker 1:But it got. It's like the what is it that thing called? You know, when one person says something and then someone else, like telephone or whatever they call that, when one person says something. By the time you saw the news articles, it's like people who don't use their voice aren't going to get paid. Ai videos are going to be demonetized, like all these things were said by people covering it that weren't ever said by YouTube. So clear up everything, rob. What's going on?
Speaker 2:So the update essentially is they've changed their repetitious content policy to inauthentic content. Maybe that's what led people down. The AI is getting banned garden path and in the section on the monetization policy, which has been there for years, there are changes to, I think, one sentence. I think another section has gone from bold font to regular font font and they removed the word mindless content from one of the bullet points and that is pretty much it. So as far as I'm concerned, if YouTube are removing something that says mindless content, then I don't think this is a danger for AI content. This sounds like a boo for me. Let's get more mindless AI.
Speaker 1:Slop out there in my judgment and opinion, of course what's the difference between my uh brain rot and mindless?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't brain for either.
Speaker 2:I don't think so so as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to see here. The tldr is. I don't think the policies have changed dramatically in any way. Shape form, I think when we get to the real subtleties, you know, maybe dozens, hundreds of channels may be affected and they're going to shout about it on social media and then there'll be another scare. But yeah, you know, youtube is releasing AI tools. They're using AI tools all of the time to encourage creators to make content. All of the time to encourage creators to make content. They are far from wanting to scare creators away from using those tools. That's going to lead to demonetization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like this is. This is just a case of people. It's hard to know whether it was the people who wanted to report just to make it sound worse than it was so that you could get clicks, kind of like click baiting, rage baiting or if it really was just a genuine misunderstanding of what was going on, because youtube sometimes is in a black box and we don't know everything exactly that they're doing. Um, at the end of the day, if you're listening to this podcast, the chances of your channel being demonetized, I'm going to say, is lower, just because you care enough to listen to a podcast about how to grow a channel rather than what a lot of people do is.
Speaker 1:They'll find a video that goes here make money on youtube without doing anything and, like those channels might be the ones that are in danger yeah, but I feel like agree more yeah almost anyone who pays attention to vid iq.
Speaker 2:I almost don't feel like you're gonna have to worry about it, generally speaking again I guess what we will, I all admit to is that I think YouTube does have a problem right now with AI brain rot, whatever you want to call it flooding our recommendations. Is there going to be a way to resolve that more through discovery rather than demonetization, like lower the discovery threshold or something along those lines, which I guess that makes it sound a little bit more clandestine than just straight out demonetizing people? And you know, again, if we think about YouTube's communication on this Travis, did they get this right? Because what I thought they did is they created an opportunity for a vacuum of information, Like we're making this minor update in a week's time, but we're not going to tell you what that is exactly, and so everybody's like, oh well, let's just assume the worst and talk about it and get some clicks for that reason. So you know, YouTube maybe could have done a little bit better.
Speaker 1:I almost think that if they'd not made any teaser announcement in the first place and just announced it with everything, so that people could just go to that document and see exactly the changes, although even then, I think some people would just drawn conclusions that ai content was in trouble yeah, I feel like and this is this might be just as much for the editor as anyone because I want to do these things at the beginning now, of course, if you're watching the video, you've already seen this, where there's like a little intro with all the best bits at the beginning of the podcast. You're like, oh, would they say this? And they say this. I'm going to say it right now. I'm going to just tell you right now I'm setting it up.
Speaker 1:This could be one of the things that YouTube should have never done, because it's just stirred up too much stuff. So you can take that section at the beginning of the video. I like what you know anyway, um, but yeah, I agree, like that's uh, it was a weird thing. I think they were. This is the thing when you're trying to be transparent but at the same time, making it worse.
Speaker 2:So uh, it's called the streisand effect, more or less.
Speaker 1:Basically nothing to see here, but here I am. Uh, along with that, there was a one other thing that happened. What were we? I forget exactly what was it again?
Speaker 2:it was the rumor that's now turned into a confirmation that we have thumbnail A-B testing and now that has been upgraded to title A-B testing and within the last 24 hours we are here at vidIQ being fortunate to gain access to it. I think that means like two things essentially First of all, we're going to make a deep dive on it, probably on the podcast and on the channel, and it means that all we're going to make a deep dive on it, probably on a podcast and on the channel, and it means that if we're getting it and full disclosure, we don't really have any special privileges or access to to youtube for us to give them the tools. You know we are a larger channel so like we do have I guess you call it a partner manager, but many channels of our size have that. So we do sometimes get early access to stuff and I think if it's reached us, then that means it's 100 going to be rolled out to everybody who's eligible, which I think is like advanced features and like not even monetized.
Speaker 1:Just as long as you've got advanced features, you should be able to do this title and thumbnail testing, I would guess in the next six months, you know, by the end of this year I like this because I think it titles and I've been a title guy for a long time I feel like they're just as important as uh thumbnails in a lot of ways and perhaps most importantly, the title in conjunction with the thumbnail are really everything like you need to have. All of that. The content obviously has to be good. We're going to make a large assumption that your content's good. That probably is not a good assumption to make, but we're just going to assume that you're making good content if you're listening to the podcast. Um, so the title, the packaging, which is what we call it the title and thumbnail are so important, and to be able to change different things and have youtube test them, I think is a good thing. Of course, there's going to be people out there that'll say, oh, it doesn't work, and same thing they'll say with you know, the thumbnail um AB test tool, which, you know, depending on how it's implemented, could not be a great thing, but at least it does something that a lot of advanced users were doing anyway and does it for them automatically, cause I would do this all the time and change title quite often on things. Um, because you got to remember when you first release a video.
Speaker 1:Think about the stages of a video release. The very first 24, 48 hours or so. It's being shown mostly to people that have seen your channel before right, like people who are familiar with you. So you can use a more familiar type title, thumbnail combination to get those people to click. After that point it's going out to people who maybe have never seen you before. And now you've got to be competitive with everything else that's on their homepage or everything else that's in the up next and that might look a little different. That might be more clickbaity, that might be more wide-ranging colors on the thumbnail, that might be more kind of over the top, depending on your niche, right, it could be all these things. So, kind of over the top, depending on your niche, right, it could be all these things. So I feel like this is good because you'll be able to test it in the beginning and then test it later on, which is what you really should be using these tools, how you should be using these tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with you, Travis, in the sense that the thumbnail is typically what stops you scrolling, but in my user experience on YouTube, it's usually the title that convinces me to actually click. Now, that's what gives me the context, that creates the intrigue, so on and so forth. So, as you said, the ability to maybe have three different titles, like one might be a control test, what you typically use. Another one might be the opposite of a controls test. So maybe that's like very SEO heavy, or it's very emotively heavy, like very emotionally triggering, and then you could just have one wild card as well, just to keep to try to try something new. That might be an interesting test and to give you, like the, the basic rundown. You can test either just different thumbnails the title says stays the same, or just different titles and the thumbnail stays the same, or you can have a different thumbnail and title on all of your tests, up to a maximum of three, and it still measures by watch time, not click through rates I think that's a whole other discussion.
Speaker 2:Continue to argue that, whether that's right or not, but I think that's what YouTube's sticking with, I think. To me, it feels like YouTube uses watch time because it's a bit more of a muddy metric that they can hide behind, as opposed to click-through rate, which is very definite as a number, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the one thing that messes them up is they'll say that we're using it to figure out the quality of the click, more or less kind of like that's the whole purpose because you're watching longer, but the reality is later on.
Speaker 1:If you were to search through all their things, you'll find out that the recommendation engine doesn't just use watch time, it uses like a whole bunch of other signals. So why don't you connect it to that? Why can't it be connected to the recommendation engine and whatever is being recommended? More use that thumbnail title like that to me, is more important. I guess.
Speaker 2:The question there is how do you quantify that? To the, to the creator. Not my problem, or a percentage, all right.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, I don't care, just tell me the thumbnail, tell me which one. Which one are you going to give more impressions to? That's all I need to know. I don't need the other shenanigans. Just tell me that that's what we all want. And people are going to say we want more views, but really that's more about people clicking. The only thing YouTube can give you is impressions. They can't give you views, they can give you impressions. People will click, so give me more impressions, all right.
Speaker 1:So us the boost at vidIQcom, and also we're doing a little contest where Jen and I are going in the studio in a couple of weeks and we would love for you to use our script maker here at vidIQ. And we have a couple of submissions already, which I can't wait to read, where you will use the script maker to make a skit for Jen and I. I saw one of them. I think it's something. I haven't read the script yet, but I saw the. The. The subject line, I think, has something to do with candy. So I mean, we're super excited about this. So if you want to use our script maker, so you go to VidIQcom, you sign in and you go to create and there's a script maker and I've talked about this on a previous episode. I love it. I think it's amazing. Send us a script that Jen and I and today we're going to go over some emails and that is at theboostatvidiqcom. We have a couple that we're going to talk to today and the first one comes from Mark Mark says hey, jen and Travis, or, in this particular case, we want to say Rob Yo. Please help me understand this.
Speaker 1:The screenshot below shows the same outlier short. Sorry, jen, that's why she's obvious question and just didn't turn up. I know, right, uh. Posted in uh early march of 2025, before youtube updated their view count strategy. While I'm more than grateful for the initial success of this short, the overall count seemed wildly exaggerated after the update. I have a few other outliers. This happened to as well, though not as really dramatic as the examples below.
Speaker 1:Do you feel this is a misrepresentation of the value of a video to the YouTube viewer? At first, I thought YouTube had been combining the old shown in feed metric, but I have no idea now. To put this in some context, I'm a small creator. My channel consists of silly Lego builds. Most of my videos are 6.9 seconds in length. I do this, so YouTube rounds it up to seven seconds. That seems to be my sweet spot, but that's another story. I'm in the us with more than half of my audience spread out in other countries. At any rate, I realize this letter. Uh feels a little braggy, but we must celebrate each other's victories and what he's showing is, within the first uh, you know however many days? Uh, three million views, um, on both, but the uh the views are 18 million views versus the engaged views of 11 million views.
Speaker 1:Ironically, dan and I talked about this exact metric in the last episode and that we believe that the only reason YouTube did this at all was because of TikTok, and that it's easy when you can say to people that you can get more views on YouTube for your shorts, regardless of how they're counted, then you can at TikTok. Where do you think creators are going to go? Uh?
Speaker 2:yeah, so give me more views.
Speaker 2:Uh answer really isn't it I think in a lot of ways this almost is closer to being impressions now the regular view number is like impressions and then the engaged views are the actual like views this is a long question and I'm trying to remember what the actual question is a misrepresentation, misrepresentation of value, value of view? I? I guess to all of us who've been making short form content for the last four or five years and all of a sudden YouTube flicks a switch. Then the answer is yes. In one sense, however, this is a completely level playing field. It's not just impacted you and no one else. Everybody is now having to deal with these new view counts and, somewhat unfortunately, from one perspective, this doesn't impact how much you get paid, because you're still paid based on engaged views. So that's a bit of a learning curve for creators.
Speaker 2:Uh, I, I have to be just kind of blunt and honest because I can't think of a more nuanced uh answer to this mark. But, like you're worrying about the wrong metric, I think the focusing on, like your average view duration and making sure that your content is shared out is to file. More important thing, and I will be thinking more about, is the value of a view misrepresented. Now I'll be thinking more about how, how can I replicate this success? How can I get people, how can I get another 11 million engaged people to watch my next shot?
Speaker 1:yeah, it is. I forget every single see I? We do shorts now on the on the podcast channel, and I haven't done shorts in many, in many, many months, and watching them I'm going oh, these videos are getting better views than when I used to do shorts and I just now realize oh, it's annoying, it's annoying yes, uh, it doesn't.
Speaker 1:They're not doing any better. They're probably doing about the same. They just look different because the views are a little different and this is just a weird, and dan brought up some really good points about this. Uh, I you know I give dan a lot of hard time about stuff, but he brought up some really good points about the views being kind of uh, misleading and it and it just makes for a confusing experience and it's the one thing where they it's not actually he was wrong. This one thing I forgot to mention this it's the one he was saying like it's the one place in the metrics and stuff where the numbers are way different. But they also do it with live streams, because they do it while it's live and then they treat it as a, as a published video later, and so those numbers look weird too. It's very confusing for a lot of creators. They're like wait a minute. It said I had this many views when I was live and now it says I have less views. Well, that's because now it's considered a VOD, a video on demand, so they're counting it differently.
Speaker 1:Youtube needs, you know they talk about wanting to simplify things. They want you to put all your uploads everywhere, just make everything. Then they do this and it's like have you really simplified anything? How simple is this? Not very simple.
Speaker 2:I think I will also say this. I'm trying to work out if this is actually true, because I don't watch that many shorts in the shorts feed. But I'm right in thinking, Travis, if you're just flicking through the shorts, you never see the view count right. You want to see the engagement.
Speaker 1:I can't find the view count on a short period or when it was posted.
Speaker 2:I can't find the view count on a short period like I look or when it was, when it was posted, like I can't figure that out. So if you go to like somebody's channel and go in the shots, you can see the views there, because we see that yeah, that, yeah I think the majority, the vast majority of people watching your shots don't know.
Speaker 2:Although they don't, there's not that immediate social proof of how many views the video has, like sure you can see from the likes and whatnot. So it's somewhat hidden from the viewer's perspective. Like, you, as a creator, are probably concerned about this, but the viewer doesn't care because they don't think they're seeing that. And also just an interesting little side story. I made a short about this change and some of you know my YouTube. Yes, man right, man Right.
Speaker 1:The guy I love that.
Speaker 2:Yes, so everything Right. So I filmed a short which was like how's get more YouTube shorts for using 2025. And it's basically the YouTube shorts man, and this is going to be good for video views, but not the audio podcast. But, like me holding a phone going yes, yes, yes, yes, because you're doing it as quickly as that and you're getting a view right and that's short. Now, where I say yes, eight times, that is literally short. Yes, eight times, it's got 418,000 views. No, no, sorry, that's 418,000 short views. How many engaged views has it got? I can't tell. Now Where's that figure. It should be in like the uh, engagement engagement all right, okay, 418 000 views, all right, 186 000 engaged views right, so it's less than half sure. But the hilarious thing is is because I titled it how to get more youtube shorts views. It's ranking at the top of youtube search for that term for shorts that's hilarious.
Speaker 2:Now I'm getting like 600 views an hour on a video which literally says yes eight times and then just loops over I want, I want to do like a thing.
Speaker 1:As you're saying this. I'm like it would be great to have a series of videos where dr savage tries to get the yes man to say no one time. And it's just a challenge of like and it just gets, oh my god, like strong, bad if you ever used to watch, uh, homestar runner anyway, um, all that to say don't worry about it, make better content all right so next, I'll make the same content if you get an 11 million views.
Speaker 2:I'll take that that's true.
Speaker 1:That's actually not a bad thing. Uh, next one comes from ivan. Again, the boost at videoqcom enormous.
Speaker 2:Oh so here's the look.
Speaker 1:Wait until you see later on, there's one I had to cut down and so I had to cut it so many ways just to get it in there. Uh, hello, jen travis, how goes it now? Here's something interesting uh, rob, I watch a lot of, uh, british television. Yeah, I know which is kind of weird to say, but, um, I love the show, can't pay, we'll take it away. Uh. And then also there's another one that's about like, uh, evicting people and stuff, which is really interesting. I love that stuff. Um, and one of the things you'll hear some of the people say and again, I've watched british comedy and stuff for years, british shows for years but I hear them say this one phrase I had never really heard before I started watching the show, and that's um, when you come up to someone, they'll say, uh, all right, are you or no? What did they say? Um, uh, how you? Not? It's not like how you like, we would say how you're doing with the like, uh, you're all right, right, or something like that, all right you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's like you're actually like telling them what they're supposed to say. That's part of the greeting, you're all right. So how goes? It is american, but like you're all right and I'm like like no, you're kicking me out of my house.
Speaker 2:So even my response to you is how goes what?
Speaker 1:how goes? What exactly? Oh man, all right, with the recent cancellation and small possibility of the resurrection of the game hightail a very popular upcoming minecraft-like game that I planned on creating a new channel for, and it's brought a few questions to mind. Hytale has had millions of people super excited for its release for years, meaning that if the game were to release, there would be a great flood of creators all joining in to cover the game, including many very popular, well-known creators with millions of subscribers already. In a case like this, assuming this game or niche sticks out around or sticks around for a long while, what would be the best way for a smaller creator to stand out amongst the rush? I have almost three K subs on my Minecraft channel. A few good of them are interested in what I would do in Hytale. However, even if I can get all those subs over, I doubt it would be enough to stand out amongst the overpopulation. It is estimated that I only have 1% chance of encountering this situation.
Speaker 1:First of all, who estimated that? I just want to know what. But I'm curious to know what the best plan of action would be to stand up in a sub-popularity like this. Thanks for taking the time. Have a great candy corn-filled day.
Speaker 1:So I like this question because I've seen a couple of channels that have established primary channels and then something new is coming out that they're interested in and they start a new channel. They want to kind of get in early on and it is possible to break through early in on a topic that's big, especially if you know it's going to be big and you know Ivan says here that he knows this game is going to be big Now. First of all, if it's going to get canceled, that would be terrible, but knowing that in advance, for me I'm saying the strategy early on is what are the videos that people who will be new to that game will want to know immediately? Make those first. That's how you stand out, because a lot of them are going to be news-related stuff, which is fine and you can do that and you maybe should do that.
Speaker 1:But then you're going to want to answer all the questions that any new player is going to want to know about this game and why they should want to play it, and I think some of the bigger channels may not necessarily do that right off the bat until the game is released, um, and maybe not even then, because they'll be doing like new stuff and like watch me play and stuff. But if you're trying to just get in there, I'm answering every single question. A new player would want to know what would you do, rob?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I guess there's a certain element of hedging your bets. Is it worth my time to invest all of this content in something that may never get released? And I think, ultimately, you've got to answer that question first.
Speaker 2:If the answer is yes, then you have to treat it like this yeah, those big creators are going to steamroll the trending aspect of this when it gets released, but you're going to be there for the long-term gamers quote-unquote forever.
Speaker 2:You're not going to abandon them once the trend is gone. You're going to be, as you said, travis, giving them all of the right tips, advice, update, not only during the the craze, when it's most popular, but also beforehand and afterwards, when there are still probably you say millions, maybe there's still hundreds of thousands of people playing this game once the initial craze has died down. So I think absolutely. If you know there's a chance that this is going to go big, then you want to establish yourself as one of the authorities in that space and you know who knows. You may find that these big creators are kind of referencing your stuff because, like, you know all of these things before anyone else, and then there's almost maybe that collaborative opportunity or something, you know, that big break that comes along from it. But it goes back to our question, doesn't it? If there's only a 1% chance of it happening, I don't know. It's a big risk to take.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I think you want to wait to find out if it's going to happen. If you have extra time and you're interested in it any way, you can always do a news channel about it and that's very light lift. You just sit there and do speculation and talk about it, upload it. Don't put a whole bunch of editing in it, don't put a whole bunch of time in it. But you know, if you're wanting to dive in, I would wait to know more definitively that this thing's going to happen. Uh, because, like you said, it may or may not happen and if it doesn't, that's a bummer. But if it does, just do those things, and I'm sure you'll do.
Speaker 1:Well, ivan's been around for a while. Next email again theboostatvidiqcom is where you can send your question. Hi, jen and Travis. First of all, I want to just start off and say that Jen spells her name with two N's, and this actually makes sense because it's Jennifer. Right, it's two N's when you type Jennifer, and I only really realized this very recently that, well, yeah, if you shorten the name Jennifer, wouldn't it be two N's?
Speaker 2:rather than one.
Speaker 1:Like how much are you trying to shorten the name? I guess it's interesting. Like Travis is Trav T-R-A-V. I mean no one calls me that, but hi, Travis and Jen Love your sound and entertaining YouTube advice. I have a YouTube channel focusing on the topic of extending healthy human lifespan. The channel has been growing relatively well and now I'm at 8,100 subscribers. The bulk of these subscribers came from videos I made that highlight the longevity protocols, primarily types of exercise, diet, sleep supplements.
Speaker 1:Some individuals follow to become healthier and age slower. From what I can tell, most of my current audience is interested in supplements, a quick fix, and cutting-edge experimental medications, therapies to extend their healthy lifespans. Over the last two to three months, I've been interviewing some of the individuals on the channel, but some of those videos are not even getting very many views, under 1,000. After a few weeks of reflecting, I've decided to pivot my channel again, but this time to align with my day career and expertise a PhD we have a PhD listener. We have the smartest listeners Dr Luke Doctor. Human genetics and health. I'm working on a series of videos that will outline how genetic testing can improve health and extend lifespan. My question is do I publish this series of videos on my current channel, since it loosely overlaps with the interest of my audience, or do I genesis a new channel? I've got to send that over to her.
Speaker 1:I've heard the latter advice multiple times for people in similar situations to me, most recently Callaway. So we did a recent podcast about pivoting and it seemed to really connect with people. We got a fair number of emails. We're not going through all those today, but we've gotten some um that might show up in the studio, uh questions later. Um and uh. It's been very intriguing for people. They've really felt connected to that because they have a subject that they started their youtube channel with and either they are not as interested anymore or they see popularity in something else they're interested in and then the question is like new channel or pivot? And this is kind of what this person is asking. They let's be real. Uh, rob, for a second.
Speaker 1:When it comes to people lose like I've, I've been on a weight loss journey for the last couple of months. I've lost a significant amount of weight, but I the initial. When I first started it, the initial question was all right, what do I got to do for a Zen pick? Because it's the quick and easy Everyone was doing. It Works out. When I found out that it didn't do what I thought it would do, I just did it the natural hard way. But most people don't want to do that. That's why when he says that most of his subscribers come from the what do they say? Highlighted the luxury primary types of exercise, sleep, diet supplements. Highlighted the luxury primary types of exercise, sleep, diet supplements, supplements, sleep are easy things to do, so it's unsurprising to me that people are watching and subscribing for that because they want the easy thing. So now he's saying he's he wants to switch over to how genetic testing can improve health and extend lifespan that feels like a different listenership.
Speaker 1:What?
Speaker 2:do you think their new idea sounds more academic and educational and for people who maybe want to learn about this for their own uh, education like that maybe they don't necessarily need that solution, but they have other motives wanting to learn about the genetic testing and the weight loss. So I think it's almost similar to the interviews you know, cause I mentioned that I did some interviews and they didn't really get any results either. And again, maybe it's the audience to see, listen to these people have a 40 minute chat and it's like, yeah, this is all very good, but like, how do I get put OZENPIC? You that question please, yeah, uh. So I think are we in alignment here that this sounds more like a new channel rather than a pivot, unless you're deciding that you are not going to cover that previous content on the channel. You know, maybe if you are doing a permanent pivot, it might be worth trying to pull some of our audience with you, but it sounds new channel-ish to me without knowing more about the specifics of a topic and the content.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do another one of those clips for the editor.
Speaker 2:Help her out, I'm going to do it right now.
Speaker 1:I'm about to tell you something that I usually used to only tell coaching clients, and I'm going to do it for free, here on the podcast right now, on how you can figure this all out. See, that was a pretty good clip, right, but actually I'm going to do that, so it's not like just clickbait, I'm actually going to do that. Actually, it's super simple. It's not like anything over the moon. Think about this.
Speaker 1:I want you to go to one of the YouTube channels that you like to watch that you don't watch every video, because some people you know you'll subscribe to channel. You'll watch every single video, but there's some channels that you'll watch most and ask yourself, why didn't you watch them? And compare that to why you did watch all the other videos. And it's the same exact equation for any of the viewers for your content. It's the same thing. There's probably a reason that you watched all the ones you did watch and a reason you didn't watch the other ones. You didn't watch Cause you probably don't have an interest in it. Maybe you've seen too much stuff about it, maybe it just doesn't align with everything that's on that channel.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing. That's exactly how you figure out your channel. That's exactly how you do it. It's so simple to think of it that way. But one of the things I've noticed with creators is it's easy for us to get in a creator mindset and completely forget about the viewer mindset, which is literally everything as soon as you figure out the thing is uh, rob, what I've noticed about like all these I've coached channels that have millions of subscribers and blown their minds with simple little things like that, because it's really just that simple and I've noticed that over time, to be a good like YouTube um person, a person that can help people grow their YouTube channels Isn't so much about knowing how many click through rates you get, isn't so much about knowing how many click-through rates you get. It's not so much that it's about understanding what humans like and what they do and what they'll do next.
Speaker 2:That's where you actually get all that stuff. I think that's really important to say what is a viewer going to watch next? That's it. If you figure that out, then it doesn't matter what type of content you make. You're going to grow very rapidly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, last question, then it doesn't matter what type of content you make, you're gonna grow very rapidly. Yeah, uh, last question, and remember what I said earlier that, uh, some of these I need to like. I never put a limit on how long an email message is, because I like getting emails, but when I put them into these little things that you can see on the on the youtube channel, I have to crunch them. So this one I had to edit and crunch and I don't know, it's kind of big. Anyway, let me read it.
Speaker 1:Greetings, jen and Travis, from this 72-year-old retired engineering and IT manager who jumped into the YouTube world almost exactly a year ago. I just finished listening to your Pivot vs Quitting podcast, see, like I was saying, which I thoroughly enjoy, just like all of your podcasts. Of course you do, because you're an intelligent PhD, like everyone else. We have only PhDs that listen to this podcast, but this one was such perfect timing for me. A little background For the last 15 years I've helped friends and many seniors with their tech issues and really enjoyed doing that. So I created my YouTube channel to share my tech knowledge with others, helping others shed the fear of using tech and help them enjoy the benefits that tech can offer. The good news I monetized in about five months with 1300 subscribers, 120 000 views and 12 000 watch wow, 12 000.
Speaker 2:That's massive. That's a lot like usually when somebody has like 1300 subscribers.
Speaker 1:They've got like 300 hours of watch time I feel good that this old guy was able to do it in this first year. Now the bad news except for one video that went crazy, my channel has been crawling along before I finished reading this email. That's 99% of YouTube, which is to be clear that's not bad news.
Speaker 1:Just the way it works is the way it works. After hearing your pockets today, I'm now wondering if I've made a mistake including my drone videos in with my tech how to's. A few of the drone videos have gotten more than 500 to 600 views, so I'm thinking I messed up the channel's focus and consequently, the YouTube algorithm doesn't know who to show my videos to. So should I A stop with the drone videos on my channel and refocus on the tech tips. Niche B keep the drone videos but still refocus on the tech tips. Aspect C keep the channel only for tech tips and create a new channel for my drone videos. I believe my tech tip videos help will probably be where I'll get the most views and subscribers, but I really enjoy droning and sharing my drone adventures with others. Great question, and you know your analytics should be able to answer this for you, because you can see, like, where most of your views and subscribers are coming from, and that's pretty much the channel that it becomes, and then the other channel can be the other thing.
Speaker 1:I think that's what he said, basically that he thinks that that's what's uh, that most of his uh tech videos are the ones that have the views and subscribers. If that's the case, pretty easy to answer. But what do you think of that? It's pretty cool that an older gentleman got out there like, listen, I, I'm doing this and has done it.
Speaker 2:That's what I want to focus on first, actually, that this creates like a very unique proposition to the audience. Like you are a baby boomer who can actually teach fellow baby boomers how to use tech, Because usually you know, see the granddad or the grandma apologies if I'm aging you a little bit going to their grandson or granddaughter like how do I use this iPhone thing here? Et cetera, et cetera. So for you to be able to lean into that aspect, if you're not already, I think that's a great opportunity. I've got my head in this topic a little bit because I was making a video about it and essentially, what you're trying to do here is discover more and more buckets that work on your channel content buckets and so what you've already done is you've established a content bucket for tech tutorials Brilliant. Continue to use that as a foundation of your channel.
Speaker 2:There is nothing wrong with also doing a few droning or drone videos on your channel to test a new content bucket. But again, if we think about it from the viewer's point of view, if I'm trying to figure out how to turn on push notifications for my phone like that's the level of my technical abilities maybe I'm pitching them, pitching that too high, too low. Common sense says it's unlikely that they're also they're a drone enthusiast. That feels a little too technically advanced. But if that's something that you want to test, cool, all right. It didn't work, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't test other ideas on your channel.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking of like a 70-30 rule here, whereby 70% of the content is established buckets of content that you know to work with your audience, 30% testing other things, and if they don't work then obviously you want to reduce the number of those videos on the channel. But if you still have a passion for it, then yeah, that probably is a very specialized uh, droning what? How would you uh what would be a fun channel name for a drone enthusiast who's droning on? Yeah, like droning on and droning up. Like you know, I'm 72 year old who drone, drones in the sky and drones out of my mouth type of these are the drones you're looking for that could be like your passion project, if you want.
Speaker 2:But you know, maybe this one which you have now monetized, there's now a bit more of a pressure and responsibility to give your current audience what they want, to make it a little bit more fast, financially sustainable. If that's your goal, if your goal is just to make content that you love making, then sure, make droning content. But you know, maybe think about a new channel again in my my humble opinion I.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think you're. You're spot on. I also love um. I have a drone. I have several drones actually, but only the one that I use actively, and I'm actively. It's got dust on it right now, so, obviously, which one have you got recently? Uh, I have two different ones.
Speaker 2:I have the, I think this, I think it's called the spark, and then I have the uh mini two ah, I got the, so I had a mavic for ages and then I got the neo, you know the really small one, and actually that's really cool because I know you just put it on your palm and it does very quick things immediately and everything else takes a bit of setup.
Speaker 1:I almost wanted to buy the newest one of those and I'm like wait a minute. How often am I even leaving my house?
Speaker 2:So I can't justify it, but I want it. I made the mistake of getting the VR headset, which is cool, but it's a complete gimmick. You never really use it.
Speaker 1:I wanted that too. I almost wanted. Anyway, we can go on and on.
Speaker 2:We are we are droning at the we're droning on, alright, anyway so we hope that you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we have tons more. If you're new here, hit that subscribe button, why not? You've made it this far. I mean really you should at this point it's kind of compulsory if you're listening to the audio podcast leave us a five-star review because it helps us in the in the podcasting algorithms type things which kind of exists but not really. Regardless, we hope that you enjoy your video making day.
Speaker 2:That's a callback.