TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

The 5 Reasons Your Channel Isn't Growing and How to Fix It Today

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 54

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We break down five core reasons channels stall and show how to restart growth with viewer-first strategy, stronger hooks, and a system you can sustain. We share practical fixes for niche confusion, retention drop-offs, and perfectionism while offering accountability tools to keep you moving.

• redefining consistency as creator accountability not algorithm worship
• building realistic schedules for full-time workers
• defining a clear viewer and choosing three to five content buckets
• becoming the through line so topics can broaden over time
• matching title and thumbnail promises in the first 15 seconds
• rehooking through sections and removing early ending cues
• using shorts to practice hooks and pacing
• planning story in pre-production to raise quality faster
• shipping, measuring, and improving one lever per video
• committing to a no-quit window and pivoting with purpose
• joining community for feedback and accountability

Subscribe if you like it. Email us your questions at theboost@vidIQ.com. Join our free Discord to meet other creators and get feedback. We have one-on-one coaching linked in the show notes. Leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts.


SPEAKER_01:

Hey, welcome to the Only Podcast. It's here to teach you about how to grow your YouTube channel no matter what year it is, 2024, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, all the way into Infinity and Beyond. I'm Travis and I'm here with my very special guest, Dan. Hello. How goes it? It's good. Everything is good and nothing is wrong. That's great. I love to hear that nothing is wrong in this perfect world of ours that we call YouTube. And in today's video podcast, we are going to talk about why your channel isn't growing and how to fix it today. We have like five different ways that your channel's probably not growing, five different things that have probably happened that you've either chosen to do or not chosen to do in some situations. We're going to talk about them and then also how to solve those things. Because YouTube is a thing that people consistently try to understand, but it always seems to change. But there's some fundamental truths about growing on YouTube, Dan, that never really ever seem to change, no matter if there's new formats like shorts or if there's new options like collabs. Some things never change.

SPEAKER_00:

I literally just said everything is good and nothing's wrong, but sure, okay, we can we can talk about the things that are wrong.

SPEAKER_01:

There are things wrong that are always good. All right. Anyway, if you're new here, of course, we're going to help you grow your YouTube podcast or your YouTube channel on this video podcast. And of course, uh, we actually do answer questions on occasion. We won't we are not going to do that today. But if you're interested in future episodes, send us a question and you want us to answer it, you can send us an email at theboost at vidIQ.com. But today, like I said, we want to talk about why your channel isn't growing and ways to fix it. So let's talk about one of the top reasons that people talk about. There's a bit of a myth behind it, but also there's some truth behind it, which is upload consistency. Now, when you hear that, a lot of people will tell you in a lot of the um, and I like to say it's kind of old school advice about being consistent with uploads. You would always hear that as a new creator, like, oh, be consistent in your uploads, be consistent, be consistent. But I think a lot of people don't even understand what that means and if that even actually makes any sense. We're actually going to take two sides of this. We're going to take one side that it does matter and a whole other side that it doesn't matter. So let me start with the subversive, the part that says it doesn't matter. Dan, I'm sure you watch at least one channel that does not upload every single week. Oh. And maybe even of them. Yeah, maybe not even by just kind of randomly it pops up. Tell me about one of those channels.

SPEAKER_00:

I I watch channels that upload every day, and I watch channels that upload once a month. The one channel I always point to, but there's a like he's friends with a whole bunch of similar channels, would be Drew Gooden and and similar video essayists and commentary channels. They tend to upload very infrequently, and I therefore am not constantly in their watch history, but it doesn't matter because I've watched enough of their videos to where YouTube knows, hey, when Drew Gooden uploads, we can show it to Dan. He'll absolutely watch it. And he did just upload, and I did just watch it, and I, you know, it was great. It always is because the guy takes his time with his videos. And I've always appreciated that. You could just tell by watching them how much care goes into every word that is uttered.

SPEAKER_01:

So basically, we're we're busting a myth about having to be consistent. Some people might say, well, once a month is consistent, but it does, I think when you're told to be consistent, people typically will tell you twice a week, three times a week. And there is a truth to that. I'll explain what that is later. But it also, and to the exact opposite, doesn't have to be completely true because what Dan just said is super critical. This channel uploads around once a month, right? And it doesn't necessarily mean that you've watched every single video. Like you might have missed one, which means there might be an occasion where you've missed content from it for over two months. Like if you miss one, there's two months between what you get you get to watch something, right? And typical thought would be, okay, well, you'll never be recommended that channel again. That's just not true. Um, to your point. And as a matter of fact, there's channels that I'm not even subscribed to that I get um updates on very regularly because I watch their content. And even if they don't upload every two, three days or even every week, I will get videos suggested to me regardless, especially if they're just good videos. That has a lot to do with it. I've also found, Dan, and tell me if you've noticed this, where for certain channels, I won't get recommended all the videos, but I will get recommended ones about subjects that I'm interested in because some channels cover different things. Um, and like, for example, if you're watching a game gaming channel, maybe they they cover one game and you never watch that, but they cover another game you always watch. That one seems to always get surfaced to me. The ones that I'm interested in. Have you ever recognized that or acknowledged that or seen that?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. I've discovered a lot of new creators as my interests shift, and a creator I've never heard of will pop up and they're covering that topic. And I'm like, why haven't I seen this person before? And I go look at their channel, and it's because they don't normally cover that topic. But it works for them. Like there's a through line there. For Drew Gooden, what was interesting is his latest video is about like corporate greed and how everything's like out of control right now and all this stuff. A lot of stuff you've probably been hearing about in your day-to-day life. And he normally does all kinds of things, usually way more comedy-focused. A lot of times, some of my favorite videos from him are it would be him sitting down and watching a movie and making fun of it in different ways and breaking it down and things he liked about it. Like, but he you can see he's starting to do the shift towards these more like relevant, broader topics. And I imagine, I'm not in his analytics, but I imagine he is getting a larger audience now who are learning who he is as a like a comedian and a presenter, but they get to see him in a different light because they didn't normally get his video recommendations about how he watched a Hallmark Christmas movie and made fun of it. It now they now they might. And those videos to me, this is why I think the through line is there. He's so I don't know, he's always covering things from a perspective of you don't really need background knowledge to get into it. So I I'm anyway, I'm trying to like balance this right now. I don't want people to think that they can just do whatever they want on their channel, it's gonna keep growing and growing, growing. Like that's what we want, but there always needs to be a through line. So I think he does a good job of like balancing his through line, which is like, you know, him being like having that humorous kind of perspective on things, but also broadening his scope to bring in new people who have not watched his videos previously. It's like a really good balance.

SPEAKER_01:

And the point of that is that the content that connects with you can connects so strongly that YouTube knows based on signals if you're watching and liking all these other things to surface that to you whenever the newer videos come out. And even if you miss it a day or two, I'm sure you still see them even a day or a week or so later, as long as they're videos that you would enjoy. So uploading consistently isn't necessarily a thing that you need to do. However, let's talk about the aspect of it that is true. So we've shown the part that isn't true, which is if you don't ever upload consistently, you'll never grow. That's just false. Having said that, there are a lot of pros to uploading consistently, especially if you're a new content creator. Because if you don't have a back catalog of content that can be discoverable and have new audiences always come to your channel, you like maybe you just started, maybe this year is the first year you've ever started, then you need to have content out there. And consistently uploading is a good idea, just so that you get your own um, your own kind of uh juices flowing. And certainly you you might want to do one thing, which I think is actually really useful. We'll talk about here in a second, which is committing to a schedule at the very least for yourself. Not really so much for the audience. I mean, it can be a little bit for the audience. They can look forward to Tuesdays at 8 p.m. or whatever when you upload, like that's cool, but for yourself, because life gets in the way. And and when you're first starting out, typically YouTube isn't paying you anything. So essentially you've got to find free time in your schedule to upload. So the consistency factor is more about you. It's less about the viewer, more about you. So keeping yourself accountable and having some type of realistic schedule is really important. So, what what would you think a realistic schedule is for someone who has a full-time job? I actually get this question quite a bit when we get emails, Dan. What do you I know it's different for everyone, but if you had to like give someone an answer, what would you say?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I'm in this situation because I I have uh my own YouTube-related hobbies that I do outside of this, my full-time job. And I for myself, I try and say, okay, can I get at least one video a month out? And oftentimes I can't even meet that, but I tend to just stream and stuff because it's way easier to do and I can do it more consistently. And that is that like that is for me the ideal, though. Like if I'm doing that much with my full-time work, getting myself in a position where I can upload once a month would be awesome. If you have enough time to do it once a week, it that that would be even better. But I say once a week, once a month, not because it's better for, oh, that's when the algorithm really notices you. It's it's better because it's always better to have more shots at the target. To because the you have to remember, not every video you make is going to be good. So you're gonna try things and you should try things, and some of those things are going to fail, and that's okay. You learn from them, you keep iterating. But if you're only uploading once a month, that feeling of failure feels like it's more detrimental. So even someone like me who's tried to do once a month, I've found it kind of paralyzes me in a way because I'm like, well, then those videos better count, you know? Right. That's that's what runs through my head, and I don't even make once a month because of that. So anyway, it it really is about you at the end of the day. Like, but if anyone's telling you, oh, you have to upload at least this many videos this often, they are just giving you, I think, in my opinion, old advice that has been disproven time and time again if you've spent any meaningful amount of time on this platform as a viewer.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. So it's it's about a keeping yourself accountable, getting yourself into a rhythm that is actually something you can consistently do. Let again, less about the algorithm, more about you. And also, it's like I said, it's a numbers game. The more videos you have out there, the more chances you have for success. If you only do, like Dan said, once a month, you have 12 chances in a year. 12, think about this 365 days, you're giving yourself 12 chances to get a good video. The chances of you getting two one of tens in 12 chances, not great. It's actually kind of hard to do. And you're only gonna give yourself 12. So if you're only gonna do 12 in a year, then you should expect you know the results that may come from that if all 12 of them are 10 of 10s, which I guess is not mathematically possible, but you know what I'm saying. Um, so yeah, give yourself a lot more options. And that could be something as simple as using a calendar uh and and putting in uh, you know, uh scheduling out your your day and saying, hey, every Friday I'm gonna edit, every Monday I'm gonna shoot, every Wednesday I'm going to post, you know, whatever it is, um, you know, whatever that schedule looks like, put it into a calendar, put it into Google uh calendar or whatever you have, and just stick to it. Uh make it a part of your normal journey for work. Like if you go to work, um, what do you do? I when I used to uh work at a corporate job uh before I worked at uh VidIQ and I was doing YouTube, my lunch breaks were YouTube research. Like I was watching live streams about how to grow on YouTube, and then when I got home, I was shooting and then editing, and then I'd go to sleep and I'd wake up. If I had enough time before I left to go to work, I would do some stuff. Like it's a grind, it's not easy. It's not no one said it's gonna be easy, um, but uh that's part of it. So consistency is more about you and less about the viewer. So I hope that that helps. If you have questions, of course, you can send us an email about that. Number two, and this one's kind of obvious, I think, because we hear this all the time, Dan. All the time. Like, what niche should I choose? Or someone who has like a scattering of all different types of niches. So many channels are being held back by their choices and the type of content they make, the niche confusion problem. And the problem is they're trying to appeal to everyone when that really means you're appealing to no one. Um, really, you should be defining your core audience. You should be thinking about like maybe an age. We talk about the avatar where you really sit down and you think, who is your viewer? And you speak to that viewer. Like what's their age, their interests, their problems. You know, look at your last 10 videos. Do they serve the same viewer? You know, pick three to five main topics and stick to them for about 90 days. Like there's a lot of a lot of things you can do here. So the niche confusion problem, Dan, what are your thoughts on niching down?

SPEAKER_00:

I have taken I've tried to adopt a different way of thinking about this for 2026. And I hope that what's in my brain gets conveyed correctly. Uh, I'll go back to my word salad about Drew Gooden, which most was probably cut because it was so word salad-y, but I I'm basically what I'm trying to say about him is that his niche, he is the niche, right? He's really good at presenting, he's really good at presenting topics, he's really good at adding humor to it. And if you become really good at something and you identify that in yourself, suddenly the amount of things you can talk about broadens quite a bit because you become the through line to that content. Uh, a more clear example here would be like in the gaming realm. I I talk about this in my big gaming video for the year. If you do guides and update videos about a specific game and you've made your niche this whole game, you're gonna trap yourself because eventually that game's gonna stop getting updates and you're gonna cover all the guides you need to cover. And or you could just get sick of the game. But what if you've built a skill for doing guides for games? What if you're really, really, really good at that? What if you could take that skill and apply it to another game and suddenly your niche is not a game, your niche is doing guides. Now, the games you cover should have some relevance to that similar audience, but you got to admit that people aren't gonna always follow you. But the goal is to get a lot more people following you from another audience. So if you cover games that are on the Nintendo Switch, you should probably keep doing games that are on Nintendo Switch because you're you've built an audience that already has that equipment. If you go to PC games and do guides and update videos about a PC only game, yes, expect more fallout from that. So thoughtfulness still plays a role here. Your niche still needs to be somewhat honed in. But I think if people get rid of the idea that my niche has to be this hyper-specific thing, it can always start there, and maybe it should. But you to broaden it, which is something you're going to want to do as you do this longer and longer on YouTube, you have to consider that yourself and the skills you've built, that is the real niche. That is like where you can take it, you can take that thing you've done and reapply it to other things so that you can keep growing as a human, not just as a YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, the funny thing is, um, I've coached so many different channels uh about different things from different sizes, from not even started to seven million subscribers, everyone. And I give a lot of the same advice to each one because ultimately it's all the same platform. And I'm gonna give some of that special sauce right now, and it's gonna fly over people's heads.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no.

SPEAKER_01:

Some people are gonna hear me like, okay. Um, but now what? Why'd you fling sauce at my head? I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it over your head, Dan. Um, and uh, but I'm just gonna make it really simple. Um, when you watch YouTube as a viewer, think about why you're watching videos. And that is an you are an audience member in that moment, you're not a creator. So much of content creation, we get into the secondary mindset of being a creator and thinking that the problems are different and thinking that there's something else different that we have to solve when we are the actual viewer, we already know what the problems are. We know why we didn't watch a video, we know why we stopped halfway through, we know all these things because we're watching them. If you just sit back for a moment and as you watch a video, go, these are the things, the reasons I either did or did not like this video, and then just apply that to your content, you're immediately going to see uh a marked improvement in your content. But we forget about that. For some reason, we separate that in our minds that oh, I'm watching, so I don't need to think as a creator. I'm a creator now, it's completely different. It's like this weird world. I need to do all these things and use tags and wait a minute, when's the last time you you clicked on a video because of a tag? You can't even see them unless you use our tool. Like, what are you talking about? So put yourself in your viewer mindset. And when you're watching a video, think about why did you watch it? And the niche is exactly part of that. When you go to a channel, it's unlikely you watch every single one of their videos unless Dan said, like, they are the niche. So uh, for example, we had uh Nomad push on just a couple weeks ago, which is amazing, such an incredible content creator. But the whole purpose of his channel is him. Like that's why he does so well, and he can talk about anything because you're not watching to really talk about the topic. Like that's interesting, it's kind of window dressing, so to speak, but you're there for him.

SPEAKER_00:

His perspective, too. Exactly. And his perspective.

SPEAKER_01:

How he lives that topic. Exactly. And that's so important that and it's very hard to do, by the way. Very hard. Not everyone has the charisma to be able to pull that off. But regardless, like that's what you're trying to get. And we say niche down not just because it's some type of algorithmic thing. That's not it at all. It's the way humans watch things. Like, I'm watching specific channels for certain things. I watched this guy just recently came out through the algorithm I've been watching, this bee guy who goes and like gets rid of hornets' nest or bees' nests everywhere. It's really interesting. Uh bee, uh you know, bee infestations or whatever. Now, if this dude tomorrow had a baking channel, I wouldn't watch any of that. I don't care. I want to watch the bees. He's niched into bees. Is that because algorithmically, huh?

SPEAKER_00:

What if he uses the honey from the bees to make the food?

SPEAKER_01:

I'll watch one of those, Dan. I'll watch one, but I'm not watching the rest of them.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's just and it's just common sense, right? You went there to watch this guy, he's a professional bee guy. He he he gets rid of these bees without a suit sometimes. He's wild. He's crazy. He's insane. I mean, it's crazy what he does. And I'll watch for that, right? It's very interesting. But I'm there for that. Now, did he niche down? Yeah, because it's his job and everything, so that makes sense. But is it for algorithmic reasons? So, yes and no. Uh, it's more about human reasons. I'm not there to watch anything else except for what I came for in the first place. And that's why. And YouTube, the algorithm itself, will honor that and notices that that's what I'm there to watch. So, are you trying to trick the algorithm? No. You are trying to understand what humans come to your channel about. And if it's about one specific thing, that's where they're going to come from. Will you be, quote, punished for doing something outside of that? I mean, kind of, it depends on how you look at it, but it's not because algorithmically it's looking at your channel going, ah, you can't do that anymore. It's people aren't watching your stuff. They're what they came for the other stuff. So, how do we get around that? You give them hyper-focused stuff that's really great. And if what, like Dan said, if you can make yourself the most interesting thing out of that, then you can kind of go out and do other things. Who else who have you seen that's kind of done this, Dan, that you watch?

SPEAKER_00:

I I mean, uh, all those guys in that commentary space, like Eddie Burbach, for example, is a great example. He uh literally puts himself in these situations and they range a lot. So hit one of his most popular videos is when he visited uh every single rainforest cafe in the country. Oh, wow. Or or I think of the franchise, maybe it took my other country at the time. One here. I wonder if he came here. No, he definitely did. And that's cool. He went to all of them, but he also recently did a video where he wanted to see how far AI would push him if he let it believe a fantasy or if he if he pretended like he was believing it's fantasy. And that's a way more relevant video about a topic that people are really talking about a lot right now. It's like, are these chatbots good for us? And that was the crux of his video. So he did the same thing he always does, where he puts himself in a situation for a prolonged period of time and documents the entire thing, but you can tell the topics are completely different. And one's there's it's whimsical. He's visiting a restaurant, eating the same food all the time and getting sick from it. And the other one, he is testing like a theory and and going deeper on a subject that is way more broad and it's affecting all of our lives right now. And that to me is like again another example of somebody who becomes the niche, right? But it's it's his skill set, it's his ability to like do journalism without even really considering himself a journalist necessarily.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it's again very difficult to have that charisma if you're not built, if you're not born with it. Um so you should still, but if you're a creator, you probably have something that's interesting about you and creative that people can latch on to. You just gotta figure out what that is and implement that into your content. Think about two or three buckets. We've talked about uh content buckets before. On this channel. I think there's a video on the YouTube channel here about that. To help figure out exactly what type of content you can be doing that should be successful because there's some type of through line between them. Just as a quick example, I'm going to do baking just as so easy. You could have baking a cake, baking uh so you have like the cake itself, the best frostings that could be another bucket, different types of you know, frostings and stuff. And then you can have something that's still kind of tied together, which might be uh vegetarian versions of those um, you know, uh foods. Now, it doesn't mean each one's gonna get the same amount of views, they probably won't. However, there's enough of a through line that there's gonna be enough of a uh Venn diagram of people in the middle to watch all three that YouTube will be able to find new audiences for that content. So, but you don't want like a matchbox channel that also does uh high-speed skiing and then on the side paints houses. Like that that that doesn't connect uh unless you do all at the same time, in which case I might watch that channel. Uh so that's just something to think about when it comes to niching. Do you need to niche down? Yeah, but probably not for the reasons you think you do. Like it's it's really to kind of rein you in and make sure that you're focusing on the viewer.

SPEAKER_00:

And and I would say, as a last note, there is just not to hold yourself to any kind of like standard of some of the creators I've mentioned here or Travis has mentioned, like you've got to start somewhere, which is also why the niche down advice becomes so relevant so quickly to new creators, especially, because we know it takes practice, we've done this for a long time, and telling someone it takes practice is very cliche and annoying, but telling them, giving them an actionable thing they can do to practice is a lot easier for both us and you. So if we tell you you should niche down, it's not coming from a place of us sticking our heads in the sand. We know there's creators that uh seem like they're a lot more broad than one particular niche, but that nuance is hard to convey. And we know if you niche down and you're successful, you will be getting your reps in and you're going to get experience, and it starts to hopefully open up for you and you start to understand what your niche actually is. You're not just the game that you play on your channel. You know, you have skills that you can apply to other things that are somewhat related. And it's hard to build that overnight. That's why when channels start like that, we've seen them fail and fall on their face over and over again because they haven't gotten their reps and they're holding themselves to this really, really high standard. And maybe you're good at shooting videos, maybe you're really good at editing, but you, you know, if you're not maybe a great presenter just yet, you need that practice. And so it's always easier to start small and build a foundation. And this stuff takes time. You're not going to get a million subscribers overnight, but you could reach that one day. You just have to practice. And it's just harder for me to sit here and go, Well, you need to practice. Because I hated when people said that. Like, what does that mean? You know, well, for me, it meant niching down for a bit until I kind of learned some things.

SPEAKER_01:

The next one, the retention blind spot, which I think is really important because I actually love uh talking about average view duration and retention graphs. Like it was one of the things that I've always been really good at and I like to dig into. Um, and the problem is something like getting clicks but losing viewers in the first 30 seconds. And for a new creator, that's probably really common and probably don't even understand exactly how to do that. How do you fix it? So there's a couple different things. Number one, average view duration percentages and stuff vary wildly depending on how long your content is. So for YouTube Shorts, you got to be like 100% or over. If you're doing long-form content that's like up to 10 minutes, you want to be somewhere around 50, hopefully, if you're not doing nice stuff, 60%, if you're like really good at it. But if you don't like 20, 30 minute videos, uh getting 50% retention is nigh impossible. Uh, I mean, it's it's it's not easy. So I wouldn't even look at that. Like 30 actually is not too bad, believe it or not, for like a 20 to 30 minute video. So you're gonna see it differ depending on how long your content is. But regardless, you need to look at the hook. One thing that's pretty universally uh accurate, depending on not and it's irrelevant what length of your video is the hook at the very beginning. In the first 15 minutes, the question you need to answer is why should I keep watching? You said 15 minutes, you meant seconds, right? 15 seconds. Well, 15 minutes to it. 15 seconds. In the first 15 seconds, you should be answering why should I keep watching? Uh, whether it be educational, inspirational, you know, entertainment, whatever it is, doesn't matter why, but you do need to answer that question because if I'm watching and I don't get it, like I I you got me enough to click. Your thumbnail and title were interesting enough for me to click, and I have a preconceived notion of what's going to happen. And that first 15 seconds, I'm like, I don't get it. This doesn't even match my expectations. I'm out. I'm out. Do you even give them 15 seconds, Dan? I feel like you're a you're a five to 10 second guy.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, actually, I can be kind of patient if I feel like they they made the title and thumbnail something that they're going to get to in the video. Like, I I will give people a chance to build up if I feel like they're going to tell me a story, if I feel like they're just they like if I feel like there's intent behind why the hook doesn't perfectly match the title and thumbnail. I'm sure if you're listening, you've you've seen videos like this too. But I have been frustrated. There's there's one channel I'm not going to name because just in case, uh, but I'm I'm they've made me mad enough to where I've I I think I told my YouTube account to stop recommending their channel. Uh they talk about a popular piece of gaming hardware, and they clickbait people constantly. Their thumbnails are fantastic. Their titles make sense when I click on them. I'm like, okay, I know what I'm getting. And I can't even tell you how many videos from this person I've watched that couldn't be less relevant to the title and thumbnail. They had other interesting things to say, but it usually it's stuff that I already kind of know, and I'm like, yeah, okay, I can see how this is relevant to the title, and I'm waiting for them to get to it, waiting for them to get it. They're a good presenter, right? So I'm waiting and waiting. And as a viewer, I've become so distrustful of their titles and thumbnails that I literally avoid their videos now. So uh like that, I guess that shows me on a bit of a spectrum of people who are like, yeah, I can't, I can definitely leave them the first 15 seconds. If I feel like, oh, they're just gonna, I'm trying to do a tutorial and they're doing uh a robotic voice or text on the screen, they're not gonna talk me through this problem. Boom, I'm gone in five seconds. But if I feel like they're going somewhere with it and they're good at presenting and they seem like they have experience, I'm willing to give them a little bit of license for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna give a little secret sauce on some uh retention hacks, which I really like. And I call them hacks just because it's kind of a cool word to use, not because it's actually like a hack of any sort. Because again, this is humans. This is again, forget about the the quote algorithm and stuff. These are humans watching and when they stop watching, so you need to understand humans more than you need to understand an algorithm. Period, end of story. That's how you succeed on YouTube. Um, so if you hook them in the first couple of seconds and they're willing to watch and give you that grace, like uh Dan just said. I have this theory um that I like to tell people, and that is that the earlier in a video you have, the more times you have to prove to them they should continue to watch. So you might have bought a period of time. For example, uh maybe even in this podcast episode, um, we have the little stinger at the beginning that kind of shows little interesting clips that happen in the podcast. You're like, okay, that's interesting. I'll uh you know, I'm gonna hang and see if that's any good. Then you get into the first minute or so of this podcast, and you're like, okay, they seem interesting. I I'll watch for a little bit longer. So I've bought, I've basically bought more time from you in a way. I'm almost like I'm paying for time by being interesting. As soon as you stop paying for that time, the person has less reason to stick around. Now that switches the longer into the video you get. So just expect that anyone who comes into the video has no reason to watch any of the part of the video. And you just have to practically beg for them to watch. And I don't mean literally like, please watch this video, please don't do that. I hate when people do that. Please watch to the end. No, give me a reason to watch the end. I might watch the end, give me a reason, but don't beg me. Don't but what I'm saying is they are coming to you and and they're looking for a reason to leave. Just think about that in your mind. Every viewer is looking for a reason to leave. Don't give them one. And the longer into the video you go, where you keep engaging them, keep rehooking them with like, oh, and now with this next thing, we're gonna tell you how to do this. Okay, oh, I see, maybe I'll watch this. The deeper you get into it, the less likely a core group of people will actually leave. Because they're committed at this point. They're like, okay, I've been here for four and a half minutes. There's only like four minutes left. I'll hang out, right? You still will lose some people, but if you look at almost any retention graph, it's pretty rare that you'll see a huge drop-off after about the middle part of the video, unless you either do something weird or you use the language that the video is about to end. You do that's another thing you never want to do. Oh, so anyway, I would say thanks for liking subscribing. You still got like a minute and a half left. They're like, nah, I'm out, son. You can say the most interesting thing in the last five seconds, but if you said, Well, thanks for coming, uh, you know, like and subscribe, they're already gone. You might as well not say nothing else for the rest of the last minute and a half. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it to yourself, Dan. Stop it, Dan. Stop doing it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've caught those moments too, especially. You know, uh for all the the flack people give shorts, making shorts can help with that problem because if you watch back your shorts, maybe you have to take a little bit of time from editing them and you listen to them, sometimes you'll catch it early. You'll be like, oh, that's the swipe away moment, and you need to correct for that before you upload it. And I'm trying to get really good at that because yes, I want my shorts to I want people to stick around. And for the same for long form, but of course, with a short, you're dealing with like usually like a 30-second video versus an eight-minute video. So it's they're great practice for storytelling and for all that stuff. But yeah, you want to look for those swipe away moments or click away moments, and uh they can be they can be really easy to stumble into for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, doubling uh your attention in one section can double your growth depending on what exactly is happening, right? Because people are engaged for another section of time. So, in other words, if you if you lost a lot of people four minutes into your video and you figured out a way to keep people an extra minute, the algorithmically that looks good. Like people are engaged longer, so it's it's more likely that you will be shown to new a newer group of people. So just being able to expand your average view duration just a little bit longer, give yourself some realistic goals, uh, can be uh exponential in your growth. So make sure you keep uh thinking about that. And of course, hey, we're here to talk about that. I love talking about retention graphs and average view duration, so I'm sure we'll do it into the new next year. Fourth one, quality versus quantity, the quality versus quantity trap. The problem is spending weeks perfecting one video instead of learning through volume. And this happens, I'm I'll be honest, this is one for me. Uh, this is probably speaking directly to me. The analysis paralysis, the fear of just not doing something that's good enough and getting to the next one. You need to set a good enough standard, not perfect. Focus on one improvement per video, might be the hook, the thumbnail, the title, and then committing to publishing, uh, even when it feels not ready sometimes. Sometimes, especially if you spend a lot of time on something, you're like, it's not ready, it's not ready. You just need to get it out. Learn from it, watch the retention graphs, watch the views, watch the comments, make those improvements to the next video, and then continue down that path. Has this ever happened to you? Do you ever find yourself in this uh quality versus quality trap?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I only have found myself in this trap in recent years from that problem I described earlier, where you you want you're only uploading so many times, so you want that video to be really, really good, so you do nothing because it's you know, uh you know, at least you can't fail then. And I've fallen into that. But when I when I think about my quality, when I'm not in that trap, I try to remember that I I can plan ahead and make the quality of my video improve in the pre-production phase. So, for example, let's say I'm playing a game and I want to create a bit of a side narrative. So let's say I'm doing a challenge where I'm trying to survive 100 days in Minecraft. All right. Well, that's all well and good, but if I want the quality of that video to go up, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm gonna over-edit it. For me, it's like, well, I should plan to create a side story where I find a critter and I adopt this critter as my own, and maybe something bad happens to it, maybe not, but I need to make sure I emphasize to the audience that this this critter has a name, and we love this more than anything else. If anything were to happen to it, it would ruin everything we're working for. We're doing this for them, you know. You plan that stuff ahead of time, and hopefully you do find a critter in the game and it makes sense and it all works out. Usually it does. Like you do find that critter, and then you know, you suddenly have this side narrative, and you couldn't have had that side narrative unless you were thinking about that in advance. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I've upped the quality of my videos with storytelling, and I've always planned that ahead of time. Once you're editing, you're not gonna be able to up the quality in the story, and your edit should just be as good as you can make it. And if you're gonna spend, if you're if your problem is in post-production, spending a lot of time, that's where I feel like a lot of time can get wasted. You should, like Travis said, you're improving that one thing at a time. Maybe you're really, really bad at color grading. And so you're trying to practice color grading in every video a little bit, but you're not worried about the other stuff. You know, you just that can definitely that happen. We've we've met plenty of creators that fall into that. My thing is plan ahead. That will improve the quality of your video significantly because storytelling is like everything, and you won't have to worry as much about you know, those more like tactile skills of video editing, things like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, you just have to find what your barry, what your line is for good enough, and then release because when that happens. Now, there's gonna be ones where you do a video and you're like, I have one big video I want to do every three to four months and you need extra time. And okay, that's fine. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about uh when people ask which is more important, quantity or quality, I say both. Because if you put a bunch of crappy videos out that just aren't any good, it's not gonna help you grow. Uh, if you put out one banger video a month, that might help you grow. But if you only ever do one a month, and you again, we talked about this earlier, and some of them aren't bangers, you got 12 videos in a year, now you're hedging your entire year's growth on 12 videos, and that's just not necessarily the answer either. So the answer to me is both is quantity and quality. But making sure that you understand whatever that level is to release then. And the other thing is, it doesn't mean you release everything. There have been many videos that I have either been in the process of editing or even in the process of shooting and been like, no. Like you can feel it as a creator. You know, you know where your line is. And if the line, if it doesn't feel genuine, if it doesn't feel like something doesn't feel right, that's different. We're talking about this, oh, I can do this to make it better. This that's the feeling we're talking about. No, let it go. The feeling of, oh man, that was just terrible. Uh uh bin it, throw it away, uh, maybe use it for outtakes. I don't know, but don't release that. But inevitably, most videos that um that go not necessarily viral, but do really well for creators are the ones you're like, I didn't spend that much time on it, I didn't think too much about it. I just kind of did it and threw it up there, and now all of a sudden it's got 200,000 views. Like, how many creators have we talked to that have said that? Like, ah, that was the one I didn't even spend that much time on. They didn't ever have a think thought that it was a bad video, they just didn't think it was good as the other ones. So that let me just separate those two things. We're not talking about putting out bad videos, we're talking about putting out videos when they're done, which could be anything.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I think the fears I've had that have prevented me from uploading, a lot of it comes down to will this be quality enough and overthinking that as well. Like that is the other thing. I'm trying to do this from memory of just the situations I've been in just this year alone. And that was the that's been a big one. Like, is this idea good enough? And I've I've scrapped entire ideas just because I've gotten in my own head. So that could cut both ways too. Sometimes you should scrap those ideas. Sometimes, though, you're overthinking it a little bit. Maybe that would be a fun video. Maybe you should just try it. Maybe you should hit record and just see how it feels to make it, you know, and and try it. You don't even have to post it, just try it. And I I wish I had done that more this year.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, same. Like I wish I done, yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, because the thing is, there's very few videos you can do that's gonna tank your channel forever. Like there's there's almost there's almost none. I mean, there's probably a couple, like if you just cancel yourself, that's on you. But generally speaking, um, if you just put out a bad video and it doesn't do well, okay, it's fine. It's not gonna kill your channel. It's never it's not doesn't mean you can't rebound from it. It's not a thing. Um, there are very rare occasions where that's ever the thing. So I feel like if it's if it's decent and and you're thinking about it, you go, yeah, I mean, this might do okay, then just put those expectations in play as well and just be okay with putting it out there. Because again, it's a numbers game. The more content you have out, the more opportunity you have for videos that do well. And by the way, sometimes really good videos don't give views up front. They get them much, much, much later, sometimes a year or two later, and you'd be surprised. You look back on some of those videos, you're like, oh, that video didn't do well. Like, I've done this multiple times. I look back at a video, I'm like, this thing was a 10 of 10 for like four straight months. And then you look and it's like, oh yeah, it's got 70,000 views. That's pretty freaking good. Like, I'm happy with that. So I think it's really important to give yourself a little bit of grace along with figuring out where your line is, let stuff go, and just do it. Now, the last one is an interesting one. I love to talk about this because hopefully it's a little bit of encouragement here. It's the premature quit. So the problem is a lot of high percentage of creators quit before their breakthrough moment. And there are um, and there's listen, first of all, there's no uh quit date like minimum uh set, or you could say you could set a no quit date. In other words, I'm gonna do at least a hundred videos or a year. And I did this. Actually, I actually did this for my first channel. I gave myself a year to get at least 10,000 subscribers, or I would quit. And that helped me stick with it because it was hard for a while. There was there were moments in that first year where I was like, I just want to give up. Uh, but I didn't because I committed to it. So that's really cool. If you have a uh creator accountability group, which by the way, you can have for free. There's a link in the show notes and the description for our Discord channel, which is free. And you can go in there, meet other creators, talk to them, kind of get feedback, have an accountability friend. Maybe you don't know anyone in your regular life that's a creator as well. We have act you have access to it right now. Just go down the link, click it. Discord's free, get in there, have some fun, talk to some more people. But do not quit. Don't quit. It's it's so easy to go, I this was never for me. You know, I shouldn't have done this, or you know, I'll never be as good as these other people. You'd be surprised how many people were as good as those people who have thought that same exact thing and just didn't quit. Same thing happened to Robin from uh Nomad Push. He said in in the videos we did, like his first channel failed, and that he just couldn't quit. There were times that he was very much considering it, but he just pushed a little bit further, a little bit further, and now look for it.

SPEAKER_00:

I I love that you brought that example up because I was afraid I was gonna like rain on this parade of don't quit, only because I I want to make sure that again I add some confusion to the mix. I call it nuance. I think some people will be confused by it, but sure. You should not quit. However, uh, we did a video recently about another creator, uh, they go by Kryptonite Corner, and this person uh joined our they happened to join our coaching program, and this is what helped them kind of like make this like push finally. They were doing like a YouTube growth style channel like we do, and they've been doing it for a while, seeing not the success they wanted to. And eventually they uh came to the conclusion of like maybe this is not like the thing I'm most passionate about. And so started a new channel all about Superman, the movies, you know, comics, things like that, and crushing it now, like doing so much better. So Kryptonite Corner didn't quit YouTube, but he did quit his first channel. Uh and I think he had good reason to, because again, like he wasn't following like his passion. And that can be like a great reason. So I guess the counterpoint to don't quit is like check in with yourself, sure, make sure that you're like doing something on YouTube that you feel strongly about. Like if you if you're running out of ideas after your first like maybe four videos or something. Something. Did you ever like that thing? Right. Like, you know, maybe maybe you had a lot of things to say at first, and then it's like, well, that's all I want. I scratched the itch. That's all I wanted to do. And maybe your channel is a four-video hit wonder. I who knows. But you know, it's like, don't be afraid to quit, but also don't be afraid to admit to yourself when you're not having fun anymore either. Don't don't keep spinning your wheels forever.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I this is a conversation I have with creators a lot, which is um, you know, like, well, what kind of niche or what should I do? And I say, whatever it is you do, you got to be confident and comfortable doing content about it forever, like just never stopping. And if you can only think of 10 ideas and then you're kind of out of juice, that's not it. That's not it. There must be something in your life that you just passionately talk about and have for years. Unfortunately for me, I just I keep changing. Like there's very few things that I love all the time. I just like things for like six months at a time. So it's a little bit hard for me. But in general, uh most people have something that they're just constantly passionate about. And that's the thing you should probably be doing. So it's, you know, for some people it's like just going out and eating. Some people it's models, it's trains, it's planes, it's automobiles, it's food, you know, whatever. Like it could be anything. And that's the thing that's probably, and even if you're like, well, but I tried it, it doesn't really grow that fast. There might be other things wrong. And again, come into Discord, talk to people. People have will be able to look at your channel objectively and go, yeah, well, this is good, this is not. Think about changing this. And I think what we're saying, um, the premature quit is like you're doing something that could potentially work, but then you quit too early. And I think people expect to come to YouTube and get thousands of views right off the bat. It is not that easy. And it's typically because you've watched someone else, you're like, I could do that, and then you try to do it, and it doesn't work. I get it. I totally get it. It's actually, I, in my, in my estimation, one of the harder platforms to grow on, however, has a lot of opportunity to grow on it. So by that, you know, it's like hard and easy at the same time. I think it's really important to just like you, like Dan said, check in with yourself, but also try to find a group of people that they can understand what you're going through and kind of say without hurting your feelings, like because your friends are gonna say, oh, that's great, man. That was great. Your family's gonna be like, oh, my boy Chad, he has his own YouTube channel. That's great. Nah, talk to your friend that's like, bro, that was terrible. Why are you doing this to yourself? And then go, okay, well, what would you like better? And then, you know, kind of, but uh hopefully that person's a creator, not just a terrible person.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I and that's yeah, that's really the key right there. I think it's just a matter of because a lot of people watch these videos and stuff, they they aren't kind of maybe the people I'm describing where it's like maybe they didn't they're not passionate. Some of them are wholly passionate about what it is they're talking about, and they aren't getting views, and it it it that comes from like a true place of frustration. And there have been a lot of people who have quit after hitting those walls, and that is certainly where you should not give up. You should be, yes, lean on other people. Every use every tool in your toolbox before you admit defeat, you know. Uh, there is, I do think there is probably a group of people out there where you know, maybe making content isn't for them, but I also believe that you discover that on you know only by making the content first. And then usually when you discover something isn't for you, you it starts to open the door to what the thing is that is for you. You know what I mean? So like even those people who you know will learn one day that, oh, this isn't for me, are probably also on a really good path if they don't quit. You see it through, whatever it is, because you're going to eventually hit that point where it's like, oh, this clicks with me, I get it. Or actually, maybe I don't like YouTube, but instead, like doing an audio podcast would be freaking awesome. I would love to do that instead. You know, you you that is what self-discovery and living life is all about, is you know, trying things and seeing them through to whatever their natural conclusion is.

SPEAKER_01:

So back in 2018, before there were YouTube shorts, I told myself, hey, I'll give myself a year to get 10,000 subscribers, which is wild. Don't do that to yourself. Um, probably easier with shorts now, but again, we didn't have shorts back then. Uh, and about nine months in, I got 10,000 subscribers, and by the end of the year I had 20,000. So it was totally doable. It was something that kept me accountable because six months in, I was like, I don't know. I couldn't do this anymore. Um, but at the very least, I was committed. So give yourself some type of commitment. And if it's coming into the new year, you're like, all right, I'm doing the YouTube for the first time, or I'm switching channels, I'm gonna start a new channel and go all this information I've learned from Fid IQ over the last however long. I'm now gonna commit it to a brand new channel. Give yourself that amount of time to say, I'm gonna give it my best, and use all the other things we just talked about, all the other uh four things that maybe are keeping most channels from growing here on YouTube. Now, maybe you need a professional, maybe you need someone to coach you through it. Well, we have that. We have uh one-on-one coaches available. If you hit the link in the description or the show notes, you'll be able to sign up with that and get someone who can literally walk you through uh your channel. Literally look at your channel, audit it, and give you actionable feedback. We offer that as a service here at VitIQ, so we hope you'll check that out. And if you're new here, you can hit that subscribe button if you like it. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, you should leave us a five star review, especially on Apple Podcasts. Uh they tend to like that over there. So we would appreciate that. Dan will be on the main channel, and we'll see him around here on the podcast as well. And I will see y'all in the next one.