TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

The Best Feature YouTube Has EVER Released For Small Creators!

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 47

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We put YouTube’s new Collab feature through a real test and watched first-day impressions jump from 2,800 to 58,000 on a new channel. We dig into analytics, tradeoffs, and how smaller creators can partner smart without changing their format.

• How the Collab feature expands distribution into partner subscriptions and browse
• Why launch timing matters more than retroactive collabs
• What to expect when CTR and AVD dip but total watch time soars
• Practical steps for small-channel collaborations and shared analytics
• When to separate education from entertainment to avoid audience confusion
• Diagnosing big impression drops with traffic sources and seasonality
• Using AI to lift scripts, audio, and ideation without losing your voice
• Positioning in saturated niches and when identity should inform branding

Subscribe on the podcast channel for weekly Q&A and leave us a five star review on Apple if you’re enjoying the show


SPEAKER_01:

It's the first update that I can remember that legitimately helps you grow. This is finally a feature that I can without hesitation recommend to people. Hey, welcome to the only podcast that cares more about the way your channel grows than even you do. I am the host here, Travis, and I'm here with a good friend of the show and just all around cool dude, Rob Wilson. How are you doing, Rob? Hey yo.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey yo, indeed. Welcome to y'all hears that. I'm playing that because the only reason I'm here is because I drove in a one of ten on the podcast channel, and I want to do it again. I'm trying to push everybody else behind me.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm glad you brought this up because ironically, this is something I wanted to talk about. But before we do, if you're new here, this podcast is all about helping you grow your YouTube channel. If you're new here, we're gonna help you do that. And of course, you'll find out how you can send us messages that we can answer, and as we'll do here later in the episode, for people that have already sent in messages. So uh sit back, relax, enjoy uh this little journey we go on called uh YouTube. And I want to talk a little bit about that. So the podcast channel, this channel here, um, didn't exist before the audio podcast is. The audio podcast is old, it's been around for a long time, way before me. Um Leron and Viper, and a bunch of people have had access and started and kind of ran this thing before us. I think even Jeremy did at the very, very, very beginning of the video.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Jeremy was the founder. Then it came into VidIQ's hands. I think Dan and I did it for six months or so.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Many iterations.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the the actually the most downloaded episodes are um, I think I know with Dan's in them, you might have been in them, some of them too. The top one, the one I'm looking to beat, is one with uh Benji Travis, who we've actually had on this podcast before. On the video version. I started the YouTube channel because I'm like, why are we a YouTube podcast without a YouTube channel for the podcast? It didn't make any sense to me. I'm like, hello, wouldn't people want to watch this on YouTube? Uh I did that a little bit over a year ago and been just kind of crunching along on the growth thing and keeping everyone kind of up to date with where we are. And I want to talk about something that YouTube rolled out that finally can help small channels. And we've seen this not only on this channel, but on another channel that VidIQ just recently launched, the VidIQ Tutorials channel. So we actually have another channel on YouTube called VidIQ Tutorials. If you want to know how to use our tools better, that channel is just for that. Like you go over there, you learn a bunch of cool stuff. Rob, I think has a couple of videos over there, Dan and all the rest. Um, that tells you how to use our tools. And again, if you want to use our tools, there's a link in the show notes and in the description with also a discount. So you should go check that out. The free version and the and the discounted uh pay version. But what I'm talking about is the collab feature. And I want to talk about how this has impacted this channel and other channels that we are the other channel that we've dealt with directly. It's the first update, Rob, that I can remember that legitimately helps you grow. I've seen updates that YouTube will bring it out, and you're like, oh, maybe that'll help me grow, or in a in a if you put the numbers just right, maybe it'll be cool. Shorts will help me grow, which I guess in a way that definitely was one as well. But this one in in a much more significant way to me, because I don't have to change formats of videos. We just collab. So what some of you might have noticed is on any of the videos that have Dan or Rob in them because they're on the main channel, I've enabled the collab feature. I don't do it on the other ones because I I want people, you know, as soon as you understand how this feature works, you'll it'll make more sense. Once you do that, the video that's posted from this channel also gets shown to the viewership of the main channel. It does that in the subscription feed and and and I'll talk about later in the browse feed. Um, and the coolest thing about this is this is what makes collaborations actually powerful. In the past, when you've done collaborations, you usually got to help ask the other person, hey, like post a link to it. And the the return on investment, so to speak, like the growth potential, unless you're collaborating with Mr. Beast, not super huge. This has actually worked in a very significant way. Um, Rob, before I talk about my side of this, what do you think about this feature and what are the things you've seen so far?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so a couple of things. First of all, it's one of the rare occasions where YouTube announced a feature, and within literally days, it was available to use for pretty much everybody, as far as I remember. Like you think about the hype tool and everything else that's often announced, you're months sometimes years away from getting access to it. And like you say, a lot of tools that YouTube release, they're often keen to mention that this won't actually impact discovery of your content. Like this is not an algorithm hack, quote unquote. But when it comes to collaborations, it feels like it does have a significant impact on just raw discovery of content. Um so what I was doing, uh Travis, as you were introducing the tool, I was just looking at the back end of the tutorials channel. So the we we published a couple of videos before we could use a collaboration tool because it was being released at the same time. So I'm looking at a video here that after 24 hours, one day, it had 2,800 impressions. And you'd think that's probably fair. It's not it had absolutely none for the first 20 hours and then it picked up a bit. Like for the first 20 hours, it was under 10. But anyway, first day, 2800 subscribers. And that might equate to wait, not subscribers, not subscribers. Sorry, 2800. Um, goodness, I'm getting some muddled on now. 2800 impressions, and that might give you a couple of dozen, maybe a hundred views, right? That's what you might expect from a brand new channel.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So I go to the next video that we publish where we collabed from the very beginning. How many impressions do you think that video got? Bearing in mind that the previous one got 2800. Right. And this is the second video ever. This is the third video on the channel. A third video every year.

SPEAKER_01:

So I the thing is, is that I know something about this having tested something. If you're saying that you did it as it released, because this is the difference, versus putting it in later, I think it's probably got a lot, like over 10,000, I would imagine, uh, impressions. 58,000.

SPEAKER_00:

Whoa. So just by collabing with a 2 million plus subscriber channel, sure, it increased the impressions rate by what's that quick maps about 3,000%. And so what that tells me is that yes, literally, YouTube's discovery is taking the um you know the the size of this channel that you're collaborating with, and pulling that those viewers are suddenly pulling that video towards them because it has some sort of connection. Yes. So, yes, it does work, but there's a huge caveat in that we have the luxury of being able to share it with a ginormous channel that already is well established established.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but we're still going to tell you how like using this with other smaller channels can help you. But I want to I want to kind of clarify the thing that he just said. So when uh we got uh access to this feature on the podcast channel, I started retroactively putting it on older videos, and I saw a little bit of an increase. But we actually, it was funny because we were actually on an upward swing before we got access to this tool. Um the channel was started catching on and doing well, especially with starting with the uh the Eve Edwards, um, sorry, Eve Edwards, that's a friend of mine, Daryl Eve's video, um, which you should all watch if you haven't watched. And um, I noticed that they would get a little, they would get a little bit of a spike, especially if the video was like two or three days old. It did okay. For the first time ever on the video that Rob's talking about, I did it at launch. So instead of adding it 24, 48 hours later because maybe I either forgot or because I was just waiting, whatever, I did it so that as soon as it launched, it was it had access to being a part of that. That thing destroyed every other video in the first 24 hours that we've ever really done. Um, and it's I understand why. And I I suspected this at first, um, because when you put it into a video, a channel, or sorry, a video that's older that has already been released, and it's beyond like the 24-hour um kind of newness of a video, which is where you get a lot of impressions. Like as soon as you release a video, if you're a channel that has some type of user base, that's where you get a lot of your impressions first 24-48 hours. It's testing the video, trying to figure out like who's gonna watch this. When you do that with another channel, like Rob just said, it like Turbo Boost like steroids it. It puts so much more juice into that initial 24 hours that even though this last video that we're talking about, the the click-through rate was some of the worst for the first 24 hours on a video that did well for us, it didn't matter. We had so many impressions, the views overcame the bad click-through rate. And I mean it did affect our um CTR too, because again, it affected them too, because technically, like typically what happens is when you don't use club, if you're just using you know your normal videos uh you know, click-through rate uh from the you know, just releasing your video, you your first couple of your first day or so, a lot of times the average view duration is higher because it's people who come to watch your channel, they know it, they know what to expect, they'll stick around. So this was being exposed to a lot of people that don't watch the channel. So the average view duration was down by a couple minutes, but that's fine because our watch time was up uh 123 hours more than normal for this video. Uh the click-through rate again was a lot lower. Uh, 1,300 more views than normal. The impressions, it doesn't even tell me how many more were normal. I can tell you with this many impressions over the first two days, it's it's insane. And from a view perspective, it's eclipsing even our most, and it's funny because every week I was I was putting in Slack, we broke another record, got another one of 10 that's beating everything. This just destroyed everything. So I don't know where this is going to go, but it's on track to beat our most watched video. So of course, Rob wants to come back because he knows I'm gonna put I'm gonna put the collab feature on this from launch, and we'll see. Now, a lot of you are thinking, okay, that's great. It's cool that it works, but I don't have a two million subscriber channel to to collab with. That's okay. Because one of the things that we talk about on this channel is getting to know your community and getting to know your niche and being an expert in your niche. And with that, should be knowing peers in your niche. You should know other people in your niche making content. And hopefully you have met and and talked to some of them. If you have not, I'm gonna give you an option to be able to do that right now. Very easy. Can you um can you go down to the description of the the the show notes of this video and there's a link for our Discord? It's a free thing you can do. There are thousands of creators in our Discord. It's free. If you've never done Discord before, it's free. That you can meet up with, and someone's gonna be in your niche. I guarantee if you go into that Discord today, you will find someone in your niche. Find them. Now, you collab with them. The the collab feature is pretty easy. The way it works is one of you, and you can make two videos. So, like, let's say, Rob, you want to make a video on your channel, and I want to make a video on my channel about similar things. This is the way we used to do collabs, like in general. Like I would make a video that's like part one of something and go, you need to watch the second part of the video, go to Rob's channel. You can do the same thing here. You then go to the option in the um, I think it's in the details, collect you invite a collaborator, you search for the YouTube channel name, then it gives you a link. You just send that link over to the other person, they'll like click accept, and then if you post it on your channel, you get the monetization if you're a monetized channel, uh, and the views come to that video, and they can do vice versa. It's too easy. And the analytics are shared between both creators as well. You can, you can. You don't have to. You don't have to, yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Can you see? Matter of fact, I've shared some of them. Can you see them from your side? I'm not even sure how that works.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so if you go to the content section and then there's a new tab for collaborations, that's we can get more from there. I did have one more uh nerdy question or quiz for for all of us. So if you're bored of this section, jump forward maybe two minutes. But Travis, going back to that video that was talking about where there was that massive impressions jump, right? Let's now talk about views, right? The video as a whole has 1,500 views right now. But my question to you is what is the highest traffic source of okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Is this on the the tutorial channel? On the tutorial channel, yeah. Well, I so here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm gonna guess, but I'll tell you what, I'm gonna give you my methodology because I again looking at the analytics from my side. So one of the things YouTube tells us about collaborations is that one of the places it's shown is in the subscription feed of both channels, which is great because like if you're subscribing, if you're collabing with a bigger channel, you know, you can get some stuff there. So you should see that. However, what I've seen on our channel is the best, the best traffic source, which is browse. Um, for whatever reason, a lot of our impressions are coming through browse, and my guess is because it's not just showing it in the subscription fee, but it's also showing it to uh the channel. Now, for the the vid IQ tutorial channel, you would think it was the same thing. I I don't think it is browse. I think I mean it should be browse based on all the knowledge I have. But I think because I don't think it does um suggested videos, right? Is it the subscription feed?

SPEAKER_00:

That's your final answer, you're locking that one in. I mean it's probably browse, but I'm gonna say the subscription feed.

SPEAKER_01:

You are other YouTube or other YouTube features, that that weird, you know, where it doesn't even go.

SPEAKER_00:

I think because you've given me about 12 answers now. You are correct. Alright, which one is it? Now it's a little bit convoluted because for some reason now the subscription fee views are included in browse. I didn't think they were before, I thought it was its own separate traffic source, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

Should be.

SPEAKER_00:

I click on browse, where I get fifth where 1,500 views come from browse. Mmm. 798 of those views have come from subscriptions. So more than 50% of the views have come from subscriptions on a channel that had at the time probably less than 100 subscribers. And that is the evidence, I think the clearest evidence you can see that there is a significant influence of the collaborator sending traffic to your channel. And it's 51,000 impressions came from subscriptions alone, 25,000 impressions came from the home feed. So that is a again, 100% more impressions from a subscription feed than the home feed tells me that that's how collaborations are working predominantly, that you're getting more traffic through subscription sources. Their end of the geeky nerdy out bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, here's the thing. This was dumb because I should have known this answer. We literally talked about this in a meeting last week when I decided when I told people why this was happening and where to find it. And uh, we just did this exercise on this, and I forgot about that conversation. I'm old, Rob. I forgot we literally had this conversation last week in a meeting, but it's true. They did put, for whatever reason, they put the subscription feed, which didn't used to be in browse. It has its own. I didn't think it was.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I thought it had its own source.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, they put it in browse now, I think, because of this feature. I think. I mean, I used to be in the analytics all the time, so I I feel pretty strongly that it it did have its own traffic source, but I think because of this now, you're right. Um, the browse feature, which is technically where you want to be, it's like the quote algorithm. I mean, it it's a fantastic feature. I'm so happy that with all these other things we've talked about, like the A B thumbnail tool being kind of a bust, which by the way, sparked a lot of conversation in the comment section of our last video, um, and stuff like that. This to me just feels like a boon. You're almost waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I don't think it's gonna drop.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's a net positive. Underpromised and over-delivered, and it's rare for that to happen. I wonder if they even knew that.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, did they know it was gonna be? They must have known it was this good. Interesting. Uh, I here's one funny thing I just saw as I was looking through the analytics for um that video last video you and I were on. I was looking for that same um page where I could show the because I see browse features, but I don't remember how to break it down to show the subscription feed. Like, where do you go for that? I'm trying to find that. It should be a clickable link. Yeah, but is it on Seamore under the under the traffic source? Here, I'll actually share my screen so the people at home can watch.

SPEAKER_00:

You can share it to me and you can share it to our YouTube audience. All your listeners are probably checked out at this point. Right. So um yeah, so let's go back, go back. I would click on, so I'd scroll up and I'd click on see more on the on the main graph session. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I'd do content at the very top. Very top, very top. Up up. Very top up here. Up up, up, up, up, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, sorry. That's for the whole channel, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh no, this is for this video. It says controls for this video, right? You don't control it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but if you do reports, that's for all channels. I wasn't thinking when I looked at that.

SPEAKER_01:

So I don't know. No, I don't know. It's there somewhere. Here's what I think is funny for those watching on the YouTube channel. Uh, YouTube search terms. So, you know, we do fairly well on YouTube search.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry, I tell a lie, Travis, it does do it just for the video. So let's so yeah, go go back in. Yep, then yeah, up there, down there, left, right, up down, start. So traffic sources last 28 days. Okay. No, no, you've done top content. Okay, up here. No, click on report again. Report? Up here? Okay. Yeah, and then it's the second option, traffic sources in last 28 days. Then click on browse features. Ah, they didn't open up.

SPEAKER_01:

It didn't used to be that hard to find. Okay. So as you can see here, uh eight hundred for this particular uh video already, eight hundred and um twenty-three views, which is but the impressions, 38,000 impressions from that, definitely coming from the main channel. Um, and even though the click-through rate isn't super amazing for it when you compare it to the the main you know other stuff, the reality is these are impressions I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. This channel would not have gotten otherwise.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's add average view duration as well to that graph.

SPEAKER_01:

So average view duration is is going to be lower um because of uh because of um the new things, but I think we should show this. So oh wait, now look at that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So subscriptions is down to five minutes, and that's because and that's our lowest besides personalized playlists, which is weird. Because of the new viewership, our our existing is like 11 to 15 minutes, but that's okay. So, like I said, and I'll show this. Click-through rate really low for us, 2.6%. But I don't care because look how many more views I got. Audience retention, um, a lot lower than normal. But I don't care because I gained subscribers and I I've now shown this new channel or this channel to new people who've never seen it before and now might be fans of the channel now, right? Like, so it's okay to take a hit on something because people go, oh, it killed my click-through rate. Oh, it killed my average view duration. Okay, but did you get more views? Yes. Okay, well, isn't that what you wanted? Would you rather have a higher CTR and less views? Probably not. Um, but I do like this. So you can look up um YouTube search terms that people found that come to your video. And the number what, four third search term was Mr. Olympia 2025. I think that's that was you. Obviously, when they were looking up Mr. Olympia 2025, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, they found Rob Wilson. So let us know. Have you used the collab feature? If you're wanting to know other ways of using it, let us know. But I think also, I think what it's going to come down to is how to collab with other YouTubers. I've talked about this before, but if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't heard the podcast, I can't tell you which episode is on because we've done so many and you want to concentrate on it, we'll do another podcast about it. Because this feature is so powerful. I'm going to really encourage anyone out there who's listening to this to use it. Like, absolutely. This is finally a feature that I can without hesitation recommend to people and say, you should use this feature. Now, of course, who you collab with is a whole other conversation because you shouldn't just collab with anybody who's bigger. That's not necessarily what you want. But it's a great feature. So uh working well on this channel, and we I suspect it will work well for yours.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I don't think it can harm any channels, but I do feel as if it might be powerful for the privileged people who already have established people they can collaborate with or establish channels that they can collaborate from. It would be amazing to see some small channel data of like, you know, two channels that have 500 subscribers each collaborating and having outlier videos. That would be astonishing and amazing to see. I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_01:

I will also, but I will also put out there that in my first year on YouTube, uh, in my first year when I was still a small YouTuber, I managed to collaborate with a couple of our channels, including channels with over a million subscribers. That's a whole strategy in and of itself. Again, we'll save that for another time. So don't think that, oh, well, I'll never get to be, you know, you can. Like if you have good content and you approach it correctly, you'd be surprised who will collaborate with you. But yes, absolutely look for people in your niche around your size. So let's go to some questions. Uh, if you're listening to the audio podcast, there is a link in the podcast to send us a text message on your phone, which is wild, but you can do it. And we're gonna go to one of those text messages right now. Now, unfortunately, because of that, we don't know people's names, but that's all right. First text message comes in and says, I'm starting a channel around no budget short films I have made and no budget films making tips. Do you think it would be good or bad for my channel to post like movie ranking videos and reviews to help with consistency? So it sounds like while these things are somewhat connected, they're not exactly connected because it says I'm starting a channel around no budget short films that he has made, this person has made, or she, he or she. Yeah, no budget film making tips. So it's less about reviewing other videos and more about like, well, this is stuff I've made, and here's how you can make stuff like that. What do you think about this?

SPEAKER_00:

I think there's quite a definitive line between education and valuable information versus culture and entertainment. And I think if you start to lean into the culture and entertainment side, which is ranking videos that you you enjoy, it turns the view and experience into something that might be more described as lean back, where somebody's just chilling out watching something. They may be willing to learn something, but are they going to take action on it? Whereas your educational stuff about really um be enabling people to create stuff on without a budget, they're kind of leaning forward because they're ready to take advantage on your advice. And I think they're in a different mindset of content consumption. Could you possibly blend the two? I guess it's possible, but the worry is I think there is a possibility of one of your kind of listical ranking movie ones going well, it has a more potential to reach a bigger audience and therefore go viral. And if that happens, then unfortunately your education side of things may be dead on that channel. I think that's the the potential risk. But if it goes in that direction, you think, oh cool, I'm just gonna pivot to now being a uh a movie review channel, then fine, that's cool. But then you're in limbo with the intent as um suggested by the question initially.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's it's a good point because you do want something that is interesting to a lot of people so that they'll come watch your other content, right? Like your core content. So you it does make sense to do like reviews of other things, but if you go too wide or too off from what you are mainly going to be known for, you're not actually helping at all. So I like the thought process, and I think that there's something to it. However, ultimately, think about what you said your channel was going to be about, which is more about like you and like your specific thing. So before people care about you, they're gonna want something from you. Which will be things like reviews and stuff of other things that they care about. And then after watching a whole bunch of those, if they like and respect your opinion, then they might want to watch your stuff. But that means starting your channel the other way, not even doing stuff about your your tips and stuff because they're probably not gonna get a lot of views right off the bat and building up your audience first. But you know, if you want to see movement on your channel, like if you're not because I think the one thing about being a new content creator is you think you're gonna get a lot of views right up front. Um and as a YouTube shorts creator, you might, right? Like it might happen. But for the most part, 80-90% of creators that go out there and and create a new YouTube channel don't get any views. It's just that's just the way it is. So if you want to stack the deck in your favor, which is what I always advocate for, you gotta go wide. Get them into the teepee, so to speak. Get them into the house, get them to like you, feed them dinner. Then maybe they hang out and watch a movie with you. You know what I mean? Then you can that's a pun. Uh you know, maybe they'll want to stick around and know more about you. But you're gonna give them you need to give them something first.

SPEAKER_00:

There's probably a better example of this, but I'm thinking of MKBHD, who has his main channel, and basically all he does on there is tech reviews, conversation about tech, etc. etc. But then he has a spin-off channel called The Studio, which is a more in-depth look at how he operates his channel with all of a team that's behind him and talking about how to edit you know, more educational, valuable stuff. But there's there's a clear delineation between the two because the main channel has 20 million subscribers and videos get millions of views, but his studio channel has maybe a million subscribers or less, and they get tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views. And so to blend them into one channel, they're probably gonna be damaging each other in terms of audience interest if he did that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, sometimes that's why like some people will spin off channels, it makes sense in that instance. So I think you just need to really sit down and think okay, what are you gonna be comfortable making for years? Uh in order to get an audience that's of a size that you might be able to spin off something else, you need well, it depends on what your ideal of an audience is. If you're happy with a thousand views per video on personal projects, it won't take as long. It'll take some time, but it won't take as long. But if you feel like you need like tens of thousands of views on stuff that's really only interesting to you, it's gonna you need a big audience for that before that happens. Um I have helped creators do that um in the past, but it took uh you know a massive amount of of success on the primary channel before we were able to spin off a channel that's more just about them. I think my most successful one was when I had um I had a channel um that I was helping and they hit like a viral moment for a while. And I'm like, okay, we need to immediately start spinning off channels. Because I knew you know, one of the first things, whenever I used to work with creators that had like their moments of things start blowing up, the first thing that comes to my mind is okay, what do we do when that that momentum slows down? Like how do we diversify? So I had them create a uh a couple of new channels. They weren't even sure they like there were no interest in doing it. The first channel that we spun off before they uploaded their first video had 20,000 subscribers because I we hit it at the exact perfect time. So it's doable. Like when you have these moments, this stuff is doable. I think it's super important though to always think about the long the long thing, like what the long play. Like, what is what are you going to be making this channel about three years from now? Is it gonna be the same thing? And if so, are you gonna be happy with that? And that's a much tougher question to answer.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd one final thought. Um, given that they're a channel all about how to make movies for free or on a budget, your world is being turned upside down right now with VR3 and Sora 2. So I don't know if you're you're gonna go hard pivot away from it and like show how to continue doing the these things in the real world, so to speak. I guess it's similar. To how special effects in movies used to be done through uh miniatures and now it's all CGI, but that's some sometimes those miniature models still hold up today and look great. Whereas CGI from 20 years ago now looks absolutely terrible. I think about Star Wars Return of a Jedi still looks amazing to me because it was all shot through models. Anyway, I'm going down a bit of the garden.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00:

Are you gonna are you gonna embrace AI or are you gonna hard pivot away from it and like tell people that I'm I'm still gonna be a uh a creator in the real world doing it with zero dollars? That could be a unique proposition going forward.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree, and there is something to that, but again, that becomes more about the person watching and less about you. It doesn't mean you can't do what you were saying. I just want to be clear you can do exactly what you're saying, 100%. But your expectations need to be in line with what you're doing. Uh, if you're watching and you don't want to send us a text message, you want to send us an email, you can. Theboost at vidIQ.com. The email address is theboost at vidik.com. And this one comes from Richard. Uh, and this is in reference to the video about uh that Dan and I did about the YouTube views overall going down. Uh, your explanation uh to what had happened in August doesn't hold water, at least not in my case.

SPEAKER_00:

My impressions end the end the questionnaire. Fine, okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm gonna get to that in a minute.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna get to that in a minute, but yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, my impressions dropped from about 900,000 in July and August when the drop started to about 75,000 in September. This was all while my CTR was going up. Okay, so a couple of things.

SPEAKER_00:

90% drop, they're saying there, then, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So a couple of things before I even finish reading this. The video that you're talking about is I think it's called like uh YouTube Views Are Down. Here's why. I think I first of all go watch that video. It's great. Um, we we broke down an aspect of dropped views. I think the thing is Richard probably went in this thinking we were going to talk about his situation. Just because we talk about one thing doesn't mean it's it has anything to do with your situation. Nine times out of ten, when someone's views drops, it's it's a them problem. And I mean that, and I'm not saying that that's even in Richard's situation, but I'm just saying, as someone who has dealt with thousands of creators, 90% of the time when their views go down, I go to their channel, I can tell you exactly why their views went down. We were talking about something that was happening to a very specific group of people and channels, and I think we were pretty clear in that. And it was pretty easily defined, and I I believe still that exactly that's what happened for these channels. It might not be for your channel, and that's okay. That's a little bit like going to the doctor and saying, you know, my friend saw you and you fixed their elbow, my knee hurts. Uh, help do the same thing you did for him. Well, it's your knee, not your elbow, so it's it's not the same thing. But let's keep reading. By the way, my CTR is up because of the advice uh I got when VidIQ reviewed my channel on one of their Tuesday channel mid in mid-September. I've been improving thumbnails and titles, working on my hooks, and trying to create videos that address what my viewers want to see. However, none of this explains why my impressions fell off a cliff. The advice was good and helped, I think, Cowboy Survival. Um, so I can talk to this too. When you change things, things change. Impressions are YouTube trying to figure out who matches your content. Your CTR went up because you're connecting with the people who want to watch your content. A lot of impressions is the only way you can get views, right? Because you need impressions to get views. However, a lot of those impressions might be junk impressions. They might be impressions to people who would never watch your content anyway, but YouTube's still trying to figure that out. So, I mean, I can talk more about that, but let's keep reading. My channel is an outdoor camping bushcraft survival channel. My viewers are older, 40 plus. My viewers primarily use TV and mobile, not computers to view my vids. Finally, my vids are not long vids, they're average about 16 minutes long. I guess it depends on who you ask if that's long or not. It really depends because some people say that's very long. So your explanation of an ad blocker does not hold water for my channel. Then that's fair. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that it's not true. So just because something doesn't apply to you doesn't mean that it's not true. It's, I think, very demonstrably true for the channels we talked about. And thinking about your viewership, it probably doesn't apply to them because the people that are probably watching don't have ad blockers. So, yeah, of course. So your elbow hurts. But we were talking about knees. Now, as a business professor, my response is not to attack YouTube. My job is to try to figure out what YouTube is now rewarding to adjust my post-strategy and I definitely believe that YouTube did something, just not sure what it was. I believe in your case, of course, I haven't seen your channel specifically, that it's, and this is gonna sound I just need you to understand I do this podcast to help people and not sugarcoat anything. I I I want to give you actionable advice and things that are real. I'm not gonna sit here and say, all you gotta do is just do this and everything will be better. No. Sometimes it's a you problem. Now, is that the case here? I don't know that because I haven't looked at the channel. Because that's a big drop. That's a big drop in uh impressions. And I agree, it's probably not related to what we talked about, although we weren't again diagnosing your elbow, we were diagnosing a knee. Uh but it's probably a different problem. And the things you started changing would, of course, change those things. So when you change anything, you should expect change, which includes impressions. Should you get a dip like this? No, but I don't know everything about your channel either. So I like that you're trying to figure it out, and that's exactly what you should be doing. Um, but again, we weren't diagnosing your problem, we were diagnosing a different problem, just to kind of clear that up. But I like what Richard said here. He said a lot.

SPEAKER_00:

Can you imagine if the in this very first line it's a typo and it's impressions went from 900,000 to 750,000, not 75,000?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it would be, wouldn't it? That that would be answerable by hey, that's seasonal. Right. You're a seasonal you're a crafting channel. People aren't outdoors anymore because we're going from summer to fall. Or it could be that you had one video that was carrying a lot of a channel, and that video has died off, hence why the impressions have dropped by in that case, maybe 150,000 impressions. But to drop from 900,000 to 75,000 would always be alarming in such a short space of time. And the data must be able to reveal a bit more than what we can see here, and that would be as we've just been playing around with the traffic sources, and when we're looking at the collaboration tool, I think some more investigation into that area of your channel may reveal if like because it could have been you could have been getting tons of external traffic, like you could have had a really popular Reddit thread, and you were getting tons of impressions and views from there. Could be shorts, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Shorts can can be hugely affected too.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, shorts can uh can gift you in a day and then rob you in a second, yes in terms of like discoverability. Uh, so yeah, as you say, it's your business to try and figure out why YouTube is not rewarding you or is rewarding you. So more investigation into the analytics uh would be my main answer to that. Uh, other than that, everything else would be just speculation, and I'd like to not do it if I can.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, so there was a person who left a comment, I think I talked about this in the last episode, but I want to say it again because I think it's important. Um because we see a lot of people that'll say, Oh, I've done all these things, but my channel still isn't growing. Like you guys are you guys suck. And then you go to their channel, and inevitably, not all the time, and I certainly not talking about Richard in this particular conversation. I've taken his comment off the screen, so you know I'm not talking about Richard specifically, but I've seen it so much that I like I have to comment on this. It's not they never do any of the things we tell them. You know, like you go to their channel and you just know. I remember on a live stream one time, I I challenged someone because they kept talking when we're doing the live stream audits, someone was like, You guys never pick me, or whatever. I go, I okay, we're gonna pick you next week. And if you don't do the things that we have been telling you to do on your channel, I see that I'm gonna roast you on this stream. And we went to their channel and they immediately started copying people that we had audited the week before. So if I already knew that if I went to the channel, it's gonna be trashy. Like I knew that, right? Not only was I right, they quickly tried to, and when I say copy, I mean the week before when I made that comment, we were auditing a channel. They went and stole that person's thumbnail style and then started doing it. And I'm like, bro, this is exactly what I'm talking about. YouTube is not easy. We are here to help you, and the advice will not always be rainbows and and and you know, whatever. Like it's gonna be real. And the reality is YouTube is hard. So if you're you see you if things aren't working for you and you say you're doing the things that we tell you, you're probably not doing the things we tell you. You probably just think you are. Because if you're doing the things we're telling you, you're probably not even listening to us. You're too busy being successful a lot of the times.

SPEAKER_00:

Or to put it put it like maybe more like a more diplomatic way, is like you're not trying anything new, regardless of whether it's our advice or someone else's like doing exactly the same thing over and over again and expecting something different to.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my gosh, here you go.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Preach. Next email, the boost.videoq.com comes from Matthew. Matthew says there's been so much talk about AI slop that I think many folks are missing the bigger picture. When used properly, AI can provide a level of excellence that would otherwise be unattainable. I use AI in my workflow. I frequently find that AI helps me refine my video ideas. I find AI to be a great sounding board to sort through them. I write my own scripts, but I do ask AI to edit them. I found them to dramatically improve my scripts. I have a decent microphone, but I'm hearing impaired, and mixing and mastering audio is hard for me, so I use an AI processor that helped make my mic sound ten times better. I do sometimes generate AI clips for comedic effect when I can't find what I want in stock footage. The fact is AI is honestly part of the joke. My channel is tiny, but I'm proud of what I put out. Hiring a professional YouTube coach, editor, sound engineer, and actor is out of my reach. I can use AI through to execute ideas better, although once my channel is monetized, I'd love to invest in FedEQ coaching. Link in the description below. Uh the thing here is that all of the uses of AI um involve significant human input. It's not a one-sentence prompt. It's giving me access to quality that I would not have to be able to not be able to do otherwise. I think we're so focused on the floor being lowered that we've missed the ceiling being raised. I feel like there's a handful of people that succeed using one-sentence prompt videos, but it's going to be too competitive to be lucrative for most folks. I think the most productive thing is to explore how AI is used to achieve new levels of excellence. I a thousand percent agree with this and have been telling people they should be using the script thing that we have here on VidIQ because I think it's one of the coolest things we've ever created. 100% agree with Matthew.

SPEAKER_00:

There's I I think it comes down to late 2022 and the release of Chat GPT being an inflection point as to the interpretation of what AI means. Because AI wasn't invented when ChatGPT came out. Like, if you've used the green screen on one of your videos in the last 20 years, you've been using AI. Like if you've been using any of Vid IQ's tools before 2022, you've been using AI. The the challenge is that because the barrier of entry suddenly dropped 30,000 feet with like one tool, ChatGPT, the perception of it has just come changed completely. Now a lot of people see AI as the enemy, or it's it's the enabler to bad actors, which unfortunately, yes, there is that element. But I think as as Matthew's saying there, like if if as long as the human continues to drive the AI tools to create something that connects to the human viewer at the end of a process, then in the long run, hopefully, if YouTube, TikTok, Sora themselves all make sure that these algorithms are still trying to satisfy in some positive and transformational way the viewer, then we, fingers crossed, should be okay. But I'm not sure if that's gonna be the case given the volume of new creators with not malicious intent, but it's like they've found the shortcut now, and I'm gonna use it. I'm gonna see where I can go with these shortcuts.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the thing. And I like I said, I use AI for a lot of different things uh frequently, like descriptions and stuff like that. I I love it. To get a bunch of data and to kind of give you the gist of it, it's it's amazing. Highly recommend using AI for that purpose. Uh, I don't think we we're downplaying that at all. Obviously, VidIQ is a company, we have AI products and we and we love it. So I think that um it's just a very controversial subject amongst creators, and it really, to be honest, shouldn't be. I understand the polarizing nature of it, but it is a tool. There are aspects of it that are really good and will save you time. If you don't want to use though for the for the creative part of the process, that's fine. I think that's good. I think you should try to be creative, it's great. But there are parts of this process I guarantee you don't like that AI can help you with. I mean, it's just there's very few people that love every part of the process if you script it, whether or not you script or not. Shooting, editing, thumbnail design, description, SEO, like it's there's very few people that like every single bit of it. And AI can at least help you do the things you don't like. When once upon a time we would say hire somebody, which not many of us can do.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm certainly using uh Sora and VO3 at the moment to create clips. I think it's similar to Mafia, like just purely for comedic value. I'm not treating it as serious, factual uh footage that you should believe in. It's like I'm using it intentionally for humor's sake or entertainment purposes at the moment. I mean that might change in the future, but uh I can't see that being the case for me personally.

SPEAKER_01:

Final email today comes from Angela. Hi, Travis and Team. My name is Angela, and my partner Danny and I started a Van Life YouTube channel called Let's Go Free in June of 2025. Hey, congrats. Um have you guys heard of Tofaffee? It's a hazelnut in chocolate in toffee situation. Highly recommend. I've never heard of it. Sounds horrible. Yeah, I don't know that I like toffee in the first place. Uh and hazelnut, I don't like any kind of nut. So bingo, I'm with you then. We appreciate the suggestion anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry for alienating you, Angela, before you ask the question.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, thank you. We don't like it. Um, our question is about TAM. New term for us. Thanks, Rob. That's uh total addressable market. In our niche, there are loads of van life couples logging their journeys, but only a handful are same-sex couples like us. Oh, okay. The broader space feels pretty saturated. Our day our content isn't centered centered around our sexuality, it's just a natural part of our life. But we can lean more into it in titles and thumbnails to connect with a community that we know will be supportive, or we could aim for a wider van life audience and compete in a bigger pool, quantity versus quantity, I suppose. Any advice? And then the rest of the email was really long. It was specifically Rob related about going to Crete because you said you're going to Crete soon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We have a whole bunch of great feedback 500 words long, and like we now have our meals planned for the entire week. And not one of them suggested tofi fee as uh as a drink.

SPEAKER_01:

There's probably a reason for that. Uh, but this is a great question. Um, so okay, so should they lean into that part of their life? I I think that there's something to it to kind of differentiate yourself. Um, I don't know. Like, what do you think? What are your first feelings on this?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's a good question. This um is there a uh a community of same um sex couples, van life vlogging, who are unrep underrepresented on YouTube? And if that is the case, then yeah, potentially there is the the the thought of leaning into that as to to uniquely um brand yourself in this competitive niche. Um I I does it does this perhaps depend on the channel size at the moment?

SPEAKER_01:

I you know, I'll I'll give you my my honest advice. I don't really care. And what I mean by that, not in a disrespectful way, but let me say it like this show me interesting stuff. If I end up liking you and your partner as people, like just kind of like you're fun to watch together, that's cool. I mean, we can tell me more about your relationship, but like do it in a way that's entertaining. Like, I don't I don't even think you need to lean into it specifically. Let me be very clear about this. I can watch anything as long as it's entertaining. And maybe you two are really funny together. Maybe you guys have like these really funny interactions. Like, show me that. I don't you don't need to like lean in specifically to being a same-sex. Like, I don't care. Like, just show me something fun and interesting and entertaining, and then let me just love that for that, and then I'll fall in love with you guys just as people doing the thing that I like.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, I personally it's someone is I'm not sure if uh if the narrative that you've described is powerful enough for the people who are watching Vanlife content to care in a way that it influences whether to watch you or not. I I um my wife watches channels where it's like same sex uh couples who um they do um show showroom show house uh tours, you know, still going round round estates and showing people new builds for houses, and like they don't I don't think they make their um their um sexual orientation like relevant, but but obviously it's there and you get it, and it's like obviously that's cool, it's fine. Well now now maybe they may do a video specifically talking about that topic if enough people ask about it in their videos, and sure, like if there is an audience demand for it. But I I don't know if it as I said, I don't know if it's powerful enough to build your your branding around that part of the um part of the interest of the channel.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think it matters as much as as you think it would be a hook. I think it's cool, that's fine. And again, I think what Rob said was really powerful. It's like you just kind of watch and you're just like, yeah, it's it's okay, got it. But is that enough to hook me? It's like not really. Like, give me something interesting. Like if the interaction between you two is interesting, fun, intriguing, educational, I'm more interested in that. I understand what you're saying you want to represent, and I think that's great. I think it's fantastic, but you can do that by just being an excellent channel. Just by being a really excellent channel, you already are representing. So I feel like you don't have to worry about that as much. I don't think you shy away from it at all, but I don't think you need to like that's I think that's the most important thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

But that it should not be something that you have to hide in your content. I guess it's we're we're we're we're trying to think about the other thing. Is it is it something that you promote and celebrate? And like I don't know if that in the context of van lifing, I don't know if it needs to be unless unless you you feel that from your audience, you feel that kind of influence and and feedback kind of asking you to explore that side of of your um of your um journey, your lifestyle, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think it's important that the ant the full answer is you will know the answer more than we will. We're just kind of giving you our thoughts on it. Um I think it's cool. I think it's it's uh listen, Van Life channels. We heard about them a lot back in what was when that first lady's Van Life channel blew up. What was her name even? Where is she nowadays? Remember that one? Yeah, she liked blew up. Yes. Was that in 2020?

SPEAKER_00:

I feel it was pre-pandemic.

SPEAKER_01:

Was it maybe? What was her name? I can't even remember. It's sad to say that. Like, whatever happened to her. We should do a video about that. Like you two, like, what happened to that that later?

SPEAKER_00:

I think we did a video on that as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, at the time we would have had to because it was you couldn't ignore it. That was the first time I ever heard of Van Life. So, uh, you know, it's cool to see that it's still a thing. I mean, obviously, it is. Um, and yeah, we'd love to hear more about your stuff. And Rob is gonna probably check out a lot of those places you sent them. So thank you so much for sending. Yeah, it was bigger than the the original email, I think. That part of the email was bigger, and we love it. Thank you so much for joining us uh today. Uh, Rob and I love to have you here. Rob's going on vacation for a while, depending on when you're listening to his podcast, it might already get back to another.

SPEAKER_00:

Some at some unspecified time in the future. I don't know when I'm going on vacation. That's true.

SPEAKER_01:

I just am. Well, the thing is, he'll be gone. Let's just put it that way. So for a couple episodes, he probably won't be here. But again, you might be listening to this three years from now, in which case he's already back. So, or might be going on another one. Who knows? Uh, at any rate, you're either watching us from the main vid IQ channel or from the podcast channel. If you're watching from the main vid IQ channel, you should be subscribed here. We're here doing podcasts every single week, answering your questions and doing all the fun things. And if you're here from the podcast channel, you know what you can do. I saw someone recently do this. You can leave us a five star review if you're listening to the audio podcast. I saw someone do that. Thank you so much for that. Uh helps us in the um the Apple uh ecosystem algorithm, I believe it or not. Some good reviews help out. So leave us a five star review if you're liking this stuff, especially if you're listening to audio podcasts. Otherwise, we will see y'all in uh the next one.