TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Is Long form content dying?

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 4

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We challenge the “long form is dying” narrative and lay out why feeds are surfacing more shorts and livestreams while long videos still win when they deliver deeper value. We answer creator emails on niche focus, audience shifts, variety channel pitfalls, comments etiquette, and whether to split shorts from long form.

• YouTube feed shifts toward shorts and streams
• Why live spikes on TV and autoplay matter
• Long form value versus quick answers in search
• Niche fit dictates format, not trends
• Variety channels dilute viewer intent
• Packaging for younger audiences without losing core
• When to split shorts and long form into separate channels
• Practical tactics: thumbnails, titles, related traffic, outliers




SPEAKER_00:

Audience, audience, audience. What are they intending to get from you? Is long form dying on YouTube? Not really, but it definitely something's going on. Hey, welcome to the only podcast. It's here to bust those myths when you see them come up. I'm Travis as always, and I'm here with Dan. How goes, Dan? Good. How are you? It goes. I see you have your cat there. People are watching on the YouTube channel. Love whenever your cat comes on because uh I I see it in the comments. Like cat time if people say things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh, she just knocked over a whole bunch of stuff on my desk and is awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Chewing on things, and it's great. This is great. Seems like she always knows exactly when you're gonna go in front of the camera. It's weird. Like it no, it's very odd. If you're watching YouTube, you can see she literally like in his chest. Like, listen, I need you to pay attention to me. Pay attention to me. Cat time. All right. Anyway, welcome to the podcast. We're here to help you grow your YouTube channel, hopefully anyway, and answer some of your questions. Later on, we'll be answering questions that have been sent in to us through our email and text messages, which we'll tell you how to do that a little bit later on. And um also talk about some things. And the number one thing I want to talk about today is what we've seen a lot of people talk about this. Uh, I've seen it talked about by a couple people, I know you have as well. And I'm just gonna say the clickbaity version of it, which is the death of long form on YouTube. Is it dying, is it dead, is it gone? Is this is it dead and gone? And if if you're not sure what I'm talking about, there's been a couple people that have noticed um that on the home YouTube homepage, which is where like 70% of all views come from, you're seeing a lot more push towards uh short content, um especially shorts content and um stuff like that rather than the long form content that YouTube has always been known for. And that's gonna be kind of scary for long-form content creators. And in talking to some content creators, and even in looking at the main YouTube YouTube channel or the mid main vidIQ channel, uh, we're seeing that our uh YouTube Shorts are kind of growing and getting a lot more views than our long-form content. And um, you know, there's a lot of people saying that this is a YouTube thing and that they are um actually uh pushing this. What has been your experience of what type of things have you seen people talk about?

SPEAKER_01:

I I feel like I could take the entire time we have up on this because there's I've talked to so many people, I've seen so many things, and I'm just utterly confused. So, on the one hand, I talk to people who feel like what you said, like long form videos seems to be deprioritized. We are seeing it on the main channel for VidIQ, but for my personal channel, way outside of our vidIQ niche, my long form videos are doing better than ever, and my shorts aren't, they're fine, like they're not doing anything. But then again, I'm I'm right now I'm prioritizing long form. It just goes to show that like there's a lot of nuance in whatever's happening. And I think as always, YouTube is doing its YouTube thing. So uh, this will be a good preference for this entire conversation. YouTube's always gonna be testing stuff, and one thing to really make clear here is what one person's home feed looks like doesn't necessarily mean it's what everybody's home feed looks like. So I guess that's a good way to start this off. But one of the things that I've been talking to my friends about, uh, because we all kind of live stream and stuff, is like how are your live streamers doing? Because uh one of the clips I saw was someone talking about how live streams were being prioritized in their home feed, and it was like live stream, live stream, live stream. And they were kind of confused by this. Like, I don't watch that many live streams. Why am I seeing all these live streams? And it made me feel like maybe live streams, since they're relevant and they're right now and YouTube loves relevance, maybe they are just being pushed to people more often. And my friends and myself are seeing jumps in views on our streams concurrently. Then again, we're also in a niche where some stuff has happened and there's more reason to watch us right now. Like our topic is starting to like gain more traction at the moment. And so I'm kind of in this echo chamber with my friends who are all kind of doing the same thing and it's doing well, and we're like, is this a YouTube thing or is this just the way things are right now? So it's just it's all very interesting, and uh my experience varies a lot, which is why I'm I enjoy talking about this because maybe this conversation will help me put some things into perspective. Um, if not, I at least hope that the chaotic stuff that's happening on all my home feeds explains maybe what's happening on other people's home feeds out there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I think it's important to acknowledge a couple things that just because one person sees something doesn't mean that everyone's gonna see the exact same thing, especially when it comes to YouTube. Can you talk about what Linus Tech Tips us all, which by the way is one of the larger tech YouTube channels on YouTube, and they've had a lot of things to say when it comes to uh the way things have worked. But what is what have they recently said about like their home feed?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh I don't know. Maybe we could pull this up. It's from their podcast. There's a clip, there's a few clips about it. And one of them I watched, uh, Linus pulls up his homepage, and it was for him, and he's like complaining about this. He's like, This is a live stream, this is a live stream, and this is an ad. And then that's the only three things at the very top row. It just had enough space for three thumbnails. Then you have to scroll down a little bit to see the short shelf. And then I think the next thing he saw was the playable shelf, or it was a VOD and then the playable shelf. But it he was basically saying, like, look how far I had to scroll to finally see a normal YouTube video, just a VOD. Yeah. And then they got really confused because they saw a video from the Outdoor Boys guy, but it was it was his old channel, and they spent most of their time talking about that and being confused about it, which is pretty funny. Um, but in any case, uh, I thought this was interesting given that my live stream numbers have been up, my friend's live stream numbers have been up, and something else has been happening, uh, just around my niche. I'm finding streamers that seem to be botting, or in their the the way they defend it, they're like, no, I'm not botting. YouTube is taking people who are falling asleep while I stream and pushing them to my live stream. Oh, interesting. And and so it's this weird thing where you kind of have to take them at their word, but if you watch their streams, their numbers go up like unnaturally, like 50 to 100 viewers every like few minutes, and the chat is dead. Like they'll have their normal audience there, maybe 20 people participating in chat, and their numbers are going up, going up, going up.

SPEAKER_00:

Could it be that thing where they now um simultaneously put it uh in pro in the shorts uh kind of live stream thing at the same time?

SPEAKER_01:

That be it if they did that, I think the numbers wouldn't reflect on only that long form I'm watching.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, see, that's what I don't know. When when you're you're streaming to both, when you look at the live stream numbers, is that aggregate of both, or is it just the one stream? That I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't I think when I did this before they introduced that feature of dual streaming at the same time, it was two different sets of numbers that I had access to. But maybe it's changed. Um, when they were asked about it um on social media, they said, no, what's happening is they they are convinced what it is is YouTube's recommendation system is basically pushing people towards live streams. And upon testing this lightly myself, what happened was I watched a video, I let the video end, and I let YouTube autoplay take over, and it pushed me to a live stream. So that could be happening. The person, the the person, the people I'm talking about, there's multiple people stream at night, and at least in like America, and it would make sense that their stream is just going and going, and the number keeps growing because people were watching a video and they let YouTube autoplay just do its thing. They're watching on TV. TV loves to prioritize live streams, and they just leave it on. They're not participating in chat because you can't really participate in chat on a television. So it that when when Linus is showing me that his top of his feed is live streams, it just kind of starts to make me conspiratorial in my head. I'm like, is this why some of the people I'm following are getting their numbers snowballing like this in this really weird, unnatural way? Because indeed, YouTube is prioritizing live streams both on the home feed and at recommended. And I know this wasn't really about live streams, we're talking about long form videos. Well, I mean, it's kind of like one thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, anything that's not long form, sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is just one piece of like, I don't know if we can even call it evidence, one piece of curiosity for me that is making me wonder what is shifting because this definitely wasn't happening a few months ago, but now like my numbers have increased, not in this weird, unnatural way, but they've increased for sure. My friends' numbers have increased. I did have one stream where my numbers went up unnaturally, and I know I wasn't botting. They didn't go up to the degree of some of the other people I'm talking about, but they were still like going up and no one was extra was chatting. Like, what is happening right now?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, it's with all the different platform with all the different uh ways that YouTube tries to do content, it's so difficult because the reality is could there be something conspiracy related going on? Maybe, but a lot of times there's something that else that actually um is the answer. And what YouTube will typically say in a situation like this is that um, you know, they always follow the audience and it's just the audience is changing. And that's totally possible. It's totally possible. People are really just into live streams now on YouTube, and a little bit of extra promotion on YouTube's side ends up being a lot more because YouTube will promote the videos that people want to watch. So, you know, I I don't think what we're saying is if you just sit there and let YouTube autoplay, that you're randomly going to get some live stream from a YouTuber you've never watched before. I don't think that's about a subject you probably don't care about. I don't think that's what we're saying. Um matter of fact, that'd be it would be almost not impossible, but it's unlikely that's happening. What's probably happening is is that next video or that next live stream is from someone that you either really like to watch or about content that you like, just like any other form of of video that you would be uh recommended. It's cool that live streaming could be a thing, and weirdly, like um you know, I was just pitched a live streamer for an upcoming uh podcast channel, and we actually do have an email of someone talking about shorts versus longs on their channel, so we'll we'll get to that later. Um but something is happening for sure. Like the one thing that's undeniable, something's happening, whether it be the audience and it's not some type of algorithmic change, or if it is YouTube themselves doing something, something is changing. We're seeing it in a lot of different places, and people are just trying to wrap their head around it because it seems like over the last year things have been very unstable just in general across the platform. It's hard to know how much of it is you know, a glitch or a problem versus humans doing different things because things are different now, right? That also is a potential answer. We just don't quite know yet. It's so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, YouTube's done a lot of work trying to get people excited about YouTube Shorts. That is going to bring in a new bunch of creators who see that as an opportunity, whether they don't feel like they have the skills to make long-form videos or we're just never interested in making long-form videos. We certainly know plenty of people who are not interested in making shorts. It can definitely go the other way. So the content on YouTube is going to start to change and as YouTube changes as a platform. So it makes sense that there's going to be a short shelf on your home feed where there could be long-form videos. You can also tell YouTube directly, I don't want to see as many shorts as you're showing me, which I tested recently on my phone, nervous that it was going to take away all of my shorts. And for that first five minutes, it did. I couldn't, I hit, I'm not interested because what it did, I don't know if you've seen this on your phone. You know how the shorts, it'll show you two side by side. You scroll and there's two more. And there's okay. So I used to only get one shelf worth of shorts. Then I got two shelves worth of shorts, and finally they brought me to three. I had to scroll past three short shelves before I saw a long form video. And that's when I hit the button and said, You're showing me too many shorts. And so for the first five minutes after hitting that, it I couldn't find any. And I'm like, wait, I I watched some of these. And so I had to refresh a few times and they came back. And now, and I don't know if this will start to tip back the other way, but for now, it shows me one short shelf and then I can scroll through some long form before seeing another. And that's me just trying to teach YouTube that I watch some shorts creators. It's cool to show me their videos when they pop up, but I also watch long form people, and I want to see them too. And it's going to continue being weird and confusing. And the only thing we really have to go on is like the data that YouTube presents us. And luckily, our channel, like the main vid IQ channel, and we have the podcast channel now, like we get a lot of interesting data points. And from our own data, our shorts are doing very, very well. And our long form videos, not as much as they used to. That could be for a number of reasons. But and I don't want to, I'm about to jump topics here. Um, I think a lot of it has to do with just regular user demand and things shifting, whereby we teach people a lot of things about YouTube, and those things are searchable. And we started before shorts doing searchable content, and now we're continuing to do that, but shorts are dominating search. So for VidIQ, it makes sense that our shorts would do very, very well, and our long form wouldn't do as well because we're just answering questions really fast with shorts, and people like quick answers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

For an entertainment channel, they might try shorts and people are like, I don't get it, you know. But the long form videos do really well. It's it's just so different depending on who you're talking to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and the type of content and where also you watch. So I just took a real quick look at my phone because I already know my computer, which I watch a lot of content on, and my TV, I watch a lot of content on. I actually don't watch a lot of content on my phone. I wanted to see what it would think uh about me because in the on my computer, it's mainly um long form content on my on my TV. It mostly is, although now you do see shorts there, but I never watch shorts on my TV. Um, so I'm looking at my home feed on my phone and it's mostly long form. Um at least I should say the first three videos are long form, and then there's a little bit of a shorts section, and then it goes back to long form. I think it knows because I just mainly watch short uh long form. I don't watch short form hardly at all. So it does give me an opportunity to watch some because every once in a while I watch one, but for the most part, it knows across any device what I'm watching. I'd be interested, what does your computer versus your phone look like? Is your phone more short um heavy than your computer? Because it should know device by device, like which you're watching from.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a good question. Let me log into the same channel on both.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And then go to YouTube Home on my computer. And so right now on my phone, I have a long form video, and then there's a short shelf with only two shorts. Then it goes to a long form video, a long form video, a long form video, two shorts. Okay, long form video, long form video, long form video, two shorts, and then I have a watch again. I can side scroll and start to get a now, it's testing a news thing with me. So as I scroll down, starting to test more weird stuff on my computer on the same exact account. I have four long form videos. I'm not zoomed in, so four across, then an entire short shelf, then four across, then an entire short shelf of four. So it's now similar. Now I'm seeing a whole page of only long form. So um it it is interesting, it is prioritizing long form for me on both devices, I would say. Um, but yes, I've always felt like by device it is gonna be a little different because before I hit this button on my phone, it was like, show me less shorts. I my phone was showing me way more, way more shorts. And I wasn't even clicking on them as much as I used to because I'm trying not to watch as many shorts because they're hurting my brain.

SPEAKER_00:

Fair. Um, so I think what over time, as people determine what the type of content they want, that's what you'll see change in um in things like the recommendation engine. So just understand as a YouTube creator, you go, okay, I got all that. What does that mean for me? Well, number one, you got to know your niche. Um, in your niche, are the most popular YouTubers in your niche short time short form creators or long form? There's gonna be some niches where there's almost no short form creators in that niche because you want to actually have more time with the subject, whatever it is, right? And then there'll be the exact opposite where there'll be some niches where there's almost no long form and lots of short form, and then there'll be niches where it's a good mix of both. So you should understand your niche and be the expert there. One thing I've always said, and I'll say it again, no matter how many people I've ever coached in, you know, on YouTube, I've always told them you are the subject matter expert in your niche. You know more about it than I do. I just understand humans and we can put those two things together and win, right? So you know what your viewers are looking for, at least people that like the same things you do. You should know that. If you don't, that's the first thing you need to learn. What are they looking for, right? And because of that, you should also know what type of content works for your niche. So if you're saying, well, should I try live streams? The answer I'm always going to give you is do live streams work in your niche? Is that something people want to watch a live stream of? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no. And that's your answer. It doesn't have to even come from a quote expert. It's kind of common sense as long as you understand what's going on in your niche. So I guess to answer the question, is long form dying on YouTube? Uh not really, but it's definitely something's going on.

SPEAKER_01:

Like it, yeah, you know, I think it's changing. I think the Vid IQ channel is just an interesting example. Yeah. Like speaking about your niche. I I think we know pretty well why people would choose to watch our shorts over our long form. Again, if we're making really highly searchable videos, and we don't always, sometimes we make stuff for browse for interviewers uh that aren't searching for anything in particular, but sometimes we make stuff and it hits in shorts really well because it just gets to the answer so fast. And I'm like this too. I will look up questions all the time. And I if if I see a short that just on the surface looks like it's gonna do a good job, I will tap on that before I'll sit through like a six-minute tutorial or something. And also, like a lot of times, depending on especially in like the kind of software space, if I'm looking for some answer to some technical question about Windows or something, I can't even tell you how many long form videos have burned me in the past because it's it's just loud music with like copyright music with uh text on the screen, or they'll open up a notepad because they just do not want to talk in a microphone, and they're trying to explain a problem in in way too much time. And then right next to that will be a short with someone who's talking, and it'll be 30 seconds, and they're like, Okay, if you want to turn off co-pilot on Microsoft, just click here, here, here, here, here, here. I'm like, Thank you. That's all I wanted. And it that's this how things are right now, and I think people people overall value their time, and that that is kind of what we as YouTubers need to kind of respect is hey, like you're competing against people who are some someone out there is going to help people get to their answer faster in less time, and that's your real competition.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to share something that uh us as a company are doing because you know, you again you listen to everything we say, and okay, well, that's great. Like, how do I figure out what I should make next? Well, it turns out uh vidIQ as a company has come out with something new. Uh the vid IQ feed. We've done a video about it on the main channel, but I want to real quick show what it looks like. So if you want to check this out, you actually can try for free. There's a link in the description below or in the show notes if you listen to the audio podcast. If you listen to the audio podcast, this part's gonna be a little bit more difficult because I'm gonna show a screen, but uh, you know, go over to YouTube, check it out. So, this is the new feed option. This is for the VidIQ podcast. You can see how many subscribers you have, how many views you have. And then what's cool is it gives you like these actionable things. I think a lot of tools, what they do is they waste a lot of time by just telling you things, but then you don't know what to do about it. So, like the first thing you can see here is a thumbnail on an old podcast we have, and then an enhanced thumbnail that's automatically been created. And I can actually apply that thumbnail to that video, which is really cool. Some title suggestions on some previous, um, uh some previous videos, just and you can just click click up apply title. Like if you like this new title, um, like the how to succeed on YouTube or this one decision changed my game YouTube game, that sounds great. I can hit apply title, it'll put it on the um on the YouTube video and you're good to go. This one's great. New traffic from five related videos. I love this because this one, for example, this video says if your video dies under 500 views, this is the problem. This sounds like something we should do content on. Like I love this, right? So I can go click this and watch this video, and I can see that it's like a video that people are watching and then coming to the VidIQ podcast channel and also watching. That's actually super critical. If you understand what people are watching before your video, then you know what else they're interested in. You can make videos just like that. And then we have this really cool thing called niche outliers, which looks in your niche and tries to find outliers of uh videos that are performing really well in your niche that maybe you should consider making videos on. And we look at this like there's one that says YouTube kill my out my income. Here's my plan moving forward. It has this thumbnail that says demonetized. So that's maybe a subject that we should look at and talk about. So this is a really cool tool, and this trending keyword tells you what a random keyword in your Niche that's working well that you can try today. You should just go do it. It's uh free. You go up to vidik.com and uh sign up for a new account. And uh if you have if you already have the account, just go to vidik.com, sign in, and it's on your homepage, the the homepage of that. And it's really cool, gives you some really cool things that you can do. I wanted to make sure you guys check that out. Wanted to make sure to mention that. Cool stuff that we're working on here. All right. So now we have some emails, and um, I think some of these might even touch on some of the things we've already talked about, but I like that we didn't necessarily now Dan didn't know any of that, so uh don't think that we did I did this just to you know tee up a great thing, but this is what happened. So if you want to email us, you can send us email to theboost at vidIQ.com, and the very first one comes from GeoSassy, longtime lurker, but never emailed. I make earth science educational videos and I monetize at about 9,000 subs. My main goal is just education and making enough to cover expenses, no intention of giving up the day job. Content is either outdoor walks and info or video essays under 15 minutes. My long form audience is very narrow and is normally 98% men over 45 in the US and UK. Short form is 80% male and spit and split fairly equal across all ages. So I know that I can find I know others can find me. I really appreciate these lovely lads, but would love to broaden my audience to maybe include um students, crystal girlies, and younger adults that are generally interested in nature, et cetera, who may like this field but don't realize it yet. I'm a 20-something woman myself, and so these are literally my people. I'm really struggling to hit these audiences despite rebranding my thumbnails, et cetera. I've spoken to other creators up to 300k subs in my niche and adjacent niches, and we all have similar audience analytics. Is it a lost cause because we all seem to have the same issue, or is there something I can do to hook a young audience? Because I exist. Any tips are welcome. Geo Sassy, that's amazing email. And I feel like sometimes this is this is a question that um, in my opinion, and Dan might have a different opinion, which is why I like to have other people here. Sometimes the answer is exactly what you think it is, which is the largest audience for your type of niche is exactly what you're getting. And the niche that you're wanting to get is so small, the the audience you want to get for your niche is so small that it's gonna be hard for you to make that number go up because kids your age, people your age, aren't as interested in that thing. Um period. I mean, you can even see, like in in in your thing you said, mostly are men over 45 and even men younger. Uh, you said in shorts a little bit, but that has more to do with the format than anything. It's easy to digest and move on. Uh, if you if you want to get long form stuff, it's gonna be difficult for you to get um some of the female audience that are younger, or even the male audience that are younger because they're out there doing uh six seven things or doing six sevens. They don't really care about uh things like like that you're talking about. There are some people out there, and you are probably already reaching them, you just may not realize it, but that number is substantially smaller than people that are already established either in their careers or in their uh their life journeys, and they want to know about this stuff. I mean, when I was 20, I didn't care about any of this stuff. I wouldn't have cared. I'd be like, what's the newest video game thing that I need to know about? Like, I'm not but now I'm I'm open to it, right? Because I'm an older guy now. So um, Dan, what are your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's really it's this is we get this question sometimes. It's really a difficult one to answer because I I know that like some of the things we talk about are hey, you should be making content and you should have an idea in your head about like who is your target audience, right? And you should give that person a persona and a name, just so in your just for you, just for your notes, so that you can like always be talking directly to that specific person. So it does kind of come down to like if you're trying to get like a younger audience, what do they value? I guess I go back to um there's a journalist named Dave Jorgensen, and Dave Jorgensen worked for the Washington Post, and he was like the person behind their TikTok strategy. So when COVID lockdowns hit and everything, he really wanted to say, he said, like, I really want to like go on TikTok and like try and present the news in like a fun, younger, cooler, hipper way. And he kind of had to twist some arms to get them to like try it. And eventually he became really well known for doing that. Like he it was very successful, so successful to the point where he left the Washington Post and he's now completely independent, doing what he always did, but now on his own channel. And he claims he's been successful in his mission to reach a younger audience. And if you look at his videos and the way he presents the news, you can see why it would appeal to a younger audience. It's not like a cable news dude sitting behind a desk, very dry and boring. He plays characters and he just he tells the story in a way where the characters just banter with each other. It's always just him talking to himself, and he wears different outfits and puts his hair up differently or whatever to like get the character vibe right. And he just tells the news in more of a fun way. He adds his jokes and sense of humor, and that was like his strategy for you know gaining that younger viewership, and he claims it worked. So I I don't know how that relates to like a more science, like curious audience. I'm not someone who watches that content a lot. Part of the issue is that like I you know, there's so many trending topics right now that are not very positive. And from what this email describes, I feel like their content is probably more leaning towards like the positive. It's just always a harder sell, especially this day and age, everything's so extreme. Yeah, um, but I guess it's just like you said earlier, you kind of know your niche better than we would. Um, it it is kind of trying to identify like how are other channels who who might be catering to a younger audience like going out of their way to speak that language, I guess.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and the other thing to think about is so one thing that she said at the beginning, which is like, I'm only trying to recover expenses, I'm not trying to become rich and famous and all that stuff. So that can free you in a way from chasing big numbers because you'd be chasing an audience that's underdeveloped and probably, while maybe underserved, also may not be as big as the other audience, which means as long as you're okay with that, potentially isolating the audience that you currently have that do enjoy your stuff by speaking to a younger audience, which may not connect with your current older audience and potentially making them leave, and you're okay with that because you're desperate to like talk to this other age group, that then great, go for it. But I do want to warn you that's very likely what you will do. If you're really genuinely trying to talk to 20-year-olds, you're not talking to 40 and 50 year olds anymore. And that's what your current audience is. So just understand that it's gonna be it's not impossible to talk to both at the same time, but it's literally like juggling. And 99% of the creators out there can't do it, maybe even myself included, which is fine, it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing.

SPEAKER_01:

But I wouldn't be I wouldn't be afraid to test it though, either. Yeah, yeah. Like you just see what happens when you try some different formats. Because even if you want to go back to what you were doing, because what you try doesn't work, YouTube isn't gonna, there's like this fear of like trying things on YouTube. I think a lot of creators get scared of like, oh, my channel's doing well, but I don't want to like hurt it. Try it, like try things. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I again I don't want to, I'm not trying to discourage anything, yeah, but I'm I'm one of those people that like to give you as much information as possible so you can make your own decision because ultimately that's it. Like you have to live with the decision you make. But I do want to put the caveats out there and say, just know that these things are possible and these things are likely to happen. And this is what you're doing when you change your format. You know, you might see a dip, but you might get the audience that you want. And whatever that means for you is is basically the direction you have to take. I don't think that I think what what Dan said is perfectly correct, like experiment, try different things, but it sounds like you also have kind of tried. Um, and the thing is, if it's not changing much, that means there's probably not as much of an audience for it. It doesn't mean there's no audience, just means it's gonna be harder to find. If there are a billion people out there that like science and a hundred thousand that like science at the age group you're targeting, I mean that means there's a hundred thousand people. That's great. That's a hundred thousand people, but you're not gonna get a hundred thousand people. You're gonna get a percentage of that, whatever that is, because they're not all gonna see you. So it's really up to you what you're what makes you happy, which brings you joy. And if you're only trying to cover expenses, you probably can shift your content to to more gravitate toward that audience, but you will almost assuredly, almost assuredly, be isolating the other audience. Unless, of course, you do two different series, one that is specifically aimed at that age group, and then another that's it's kind of the content you're already doing. You could try that. Do that in playlists. Remember official playlists, Dan? Those were cool. Yeah, those were those were cool. Like we're old people now. We're like, remember official play? Remember YouTube stories? Remember annotation? I mean, annotation, like people don't know what we're talking about. All right, next one. This email comes from Lance. By the way, I think this one is really long. If I remember correctly, a lot of these emails I get sometimes are really long, and I have to cut out bits and pieces. Yeah. And I think this might have been one of them. So I I I kept enough in that I think it makes sense. All right, my channel is 10 years old, it has never come close to 4,000 watch hours uh time requirement. I started an irregular trend with my videos a few years ago. What seemed to boost, what seemed like a boost, actually might be a burden. I desperately seek Vid IQ's advice. The majority of my channel has reaction videos to trailers for games and movies. Sometimes I will do an editorial review about professional wrestling films and politics. I'm a middle-aged dude that genuinely loves Paw Patrol as much as Resident Evil. So I do my best to keep my videos safe for all viewers. I occasionally attend an adult entertainment convention in my state. I will briefly interview my favorite stars and post the videos on my channel. Even though they're adult entertainers, the interviews are fairly clean cut. I mark them as age restricted because of YouTube requirements instead of what instead of what is featured on screen. I wonder if this has caused a problem for my channel's health. The mature videos get a lot of clicks and subscriber boosts, but for a very brief but very brief watch times. One of the interviews is five years old, but consistently is within the top three spots. If I post a new video about my usual topics, then that video might get number one or number two spots for a few days. Then the adult interviews are right back to the lead positions. After 10 years of time, money, effort, and struggle, I feel like the only option is to start completely fresh and hope for the best. Please, please, please advise. Thank you. That's from Lance. And I think this just comes back to something that we talk about very often on this channel, which is audience, audience, audience. Like who are you making your content for? And when someone comes to your channel and is recommended content for your channel, what are they getting and what are they expecting the next time they come? And I think that there's a huge disconnect with what you just said. You have a channel that is basically about you and everything you like. So that channel is for you. Done. If you want to channel for other people, you've got to do things in a consistent manner so they know what they're getting every time they come. If I come and I like to watch your reviews about like movies, probably not gonna watch the adult uh interview stuff. If I'm into the adult interview stuff, might not care about your thoughts on Paw Patrol. I I really hope that I don't care about the Paw Patrol. I really hope that I'm not interested in that. So I feel like you just have to understand that like when you put out random types of content, you will get random types of performance. That's just the way it always has been and the way it always will be. You're not gonna get consistent performance with inconsistent content. If you want to grow a channel, find a niche or a brand of different types of topics that make sense within each other and make a channel with that. If you want to be able to do everything, that's okay, but expect views that go up and down and all around and are never consistent because that's what you're doing. You're being inconsistent. What are your thoughts, Dan?

SPEAKER_01:

It it's really the intent of the viewer at that time. So, like if you are interviewing an adult entertainer, uh, I that that phrase can mean a couple different things, but I'll just leave it at that. If you're interviewing an adult entertainer, what is the intent of the viewer who's interested in that interview? And if you are then doing a review about a game you like or something, what is the intent of that viewer? Now, you want your channel to snowball. You want to attract a viewer hive mind that thinks like you at least on one specific topic. And what I said in my gaming video this year was at the very end of it, I said, be something to someone. And a channel that I got to speak to this year for that gaming video, or I guess in 2025, technically, was Austin John Place. And to me, Austin John Place is where I go when I specifically want information about one of the few Nintendo games he talks about. Pokemon is like the main one. New Pokemon game comes out. I'm gonna watch all of his videos on it because he's going to give me a ton of tips about that game. Now, if Austin John went out and then filmed a bunch of content at a convention that he went to, that might be cool for like his top viewers. He even said for him, like he has like 20,000-ish people that will always watch no matter what, but he gets hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views when he sticks to the main thing he's known for. To me, he's known as the Pokemon guy. And I like, I like the guy. I got to talk to him uh even off-camera about some stuff. He's seems genuinely cool. That doesn't mean like to me, I don't think of him in that light as like, oh, I get to like look at some behind the scenes, I get to look at his thoughts on a new movie. You know, I don't, he's not the person I go to for that content. So that is kind of what we're dealing with on YouTube. Now I know that like you might hear that and go, well, I like all of these things. There's gotta be more people out there like me. How do I get all of those people? It's like now you're narrowing the the pool of people you could possibly reach to just people exactly like you. But you can find a much wider audience if you focus on one viewer and think, don't just think about like that that through line in the sense of like, well, this person who happens to be an adult entertainer also likes Paw Patrol. Like, think about the intent of the viewer watching your content. Like, what are they intending to get from you? What's their intent coming onto YouTube that day and watching? And like what YouTube video is going to be recommended to them next, if you know, whether it's from your channel or somebody else's. It's probably gonna be more content about that interview they just watched, related to like that person you interviewed. It's not gonna be, hey, you watched this, how about an interview about the new Spider-Man movie? Or not an interview, sorry, how about a review of the new Spider-Man movie? It's like, no, that that's not that person's in like a different algorithmic track right now, and that's what YouTube loves to do, is put you on a track for a while and like set it off. So that's how I would think about this. I know what I'm saying has some nuance that I'm kind of putting to the side, but that's how I would think about it to try and get my channel's health back up. You gotta kind of pick a focus. Might even be time to start a new channel if you do decide what that focus is and it's outside of what you're doing right now. It's okay. You don't have to like delete anything. I wouldn't start a new channel with it. Take everything you learned, and you'll be surprised how fast it grows.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to talk about the reality of variety content. The reality of variety content is kind of like what I said earlier, if you put out variety content, you will get variety uh views. Like you're gonna get a variety of views, and not all gonna be great. Um, and some people will say, Well, but I know this one YouTuber who does all types of stuff and he gets all types of views. Well, there's like two answers to that. Number one, and this is gonna be the most common answer to that, which is what you think is successful is probably not what they think is successful. And I keep going back to this one content creator. I remember a while back that I was watching one of his videos. He had a series of videos I really enjoyed. He said he doesn't do them anymore because they don't perform well. When I went to look back at them, all of them had 100,000 views. And for me and you, that's like, oh, that's great, that's performing well. But for him, it's not. So that's relative, right? Performance is relative. And just because you think it performs well doesn't mean the creator does. And secondarily, and the times that even those things do perform well, it's because the content creators figured out a way for them to be the niche. And it's more interesting to find out what their take is about the subject more so more so than the subject. The vast majority of YouTubers are watched because of the subject, not because of them. There's a small percentage of people that people are watched just for them and their take on something. We should all be so lucky to be that person, and we won't be. Um, it's just not going to be the thing. You can be the one of the most talented Pokemon creators on YouTube, but that might be it. You people might not watch you for anything else. So the reality of variety content is it's very difficult to be the niche, to become the niche. And it's actually unlikely that um most people listening to this will be that, including myself. Like I would love to be the niche, but sometimes I'm not, and that's that's okay. Just be really great at what you're great at.

SPEAKER_01:

The one common person that gets brought up a lot in this conversation is like Moist Critical, Charlie, Penguin Zero, whichever name you prefer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's every day he posts something, and it's always like just the trending story of the day. He has a couple things going for him. One, people who like him like his opinions and takes on things. They they feel they like they relate to him, you know, and that was built slowly over time. But two, he focuses on the most trending thing possible and gets his videos out fast. It helps that he can do this full time. He is not somebody you want to look at as like, okay, that's goals, like that's who I'm going to be, and then I'm just gonna do exactly what he does until it works. When he started YouTube, he was gaming, and I didn't watch him back then, so I don't know his actual trajectory, but I should probably learn. My assume my assumption there uh was that he started with games and he dabbled in like giving his take on things, and it kind of started to become like a thing where he's like, I can give my take on things, and people watch it more than my gaming videos. When he streams, he'll stream games, or he'll just look at the news and just chat with his chat about it. And now he has these like two buckets that he gets to live in. But I'll tell you what, people talk about how he's like the guy, like he can do anything he wants. Well, he has other channels where he does do other things. If you look at his Let's Play channel that he recently started back up, the views on those videos compared to the views on his normal videos are so small by comparison. He's he's doing it for fun, he's doing it for him. He can't do anything. The reason he made a separate channel for it is because he knows his main channel is now him giving his take on something: a TV show, a trending story. It would be weird of him to do a let's play of a game that he likes on his main channel. So he made a separate space for it. Even he knows he can't, quote, do anything. He even he has that niche that he's carved out for himself where he's the star of it.

SPEAKER_00:

I agree. And um again, very difficult to do. Not everyone can do it. Uh, not to say that no one listening to this can't do it. You can always try, give it a shot. But just understand it's very difficult. And if you don't succeed in the way you want to succeed, that's normal. That's not doesn't mean you're terrible. It just means it's exceedingly hard to do that. Next email. This one comes from Toby. Hey Travis, when I comment on a video, should I sign it with my name or at my channel name or just leave it blank? Uh, are there implications in the tone of the language? I.e., a desire to collaborate versus I just think it's cool to this is cool content. And I think what Toby's talking about is just leaving a comment on a video and being like, hey, you know, this is Toby from you know Toby's R Us. I just made that up. It's not Toby's R Us. Um, you know, and I think it's just once you put your name there, you don't have to put your name again. You don't have to add yourself. You're already you're already there. And if there's adding the maybe they're talking about adding the creator, you don't even have to do that either. Like, just leave the comment. I feel like just be cool in the comment section. And it'd be amazed, you'd be amazed at how well sometimes that can work out for you. I've gotten large uh content creators to collab with me based because they've seen me in their content or in their content uh comment section. Um and just be cool, man. Just be cool.

SPEAKER_01:

That's all we did a video. I wish I remembered we the names of our videos just don't match sometimes, like in my brain, how I remember them. Uh, if you watch it, it makes sense why we called it that. But like we talked to a creator who uh did a collaboration with Curtis Connor. Now, Curtis Connor is like a comedy channel, he's very famous, he tours, you know, all this stuff. And the creator that uh did the collab with him had like, I think at the time, like 6,000 subscribers or something. And what he does is he animates people's stories using Lego. And he does a very good job. Like it's it's uh very professionally done. And so he invites Curtis to do a collab, and his advice for getting this collab was basically like, you know, I I wanted to make it as easy as possible for him. And so it's like, just come on and tell the story, I'll do the rest. And he showed Curtis's. Previous work and Curtis was interested. So he jumped on. And Curtis was told a story. And then later it was animated using the LEGO uh figures and all that stuff. And it was very fun to watch. And it that particular video did very, very well for him. And like my question was like, how did you land such a big guest? Like, you know, the size of your channels just don't, you know, most people will look at that and go, How what? You must be friends already. And he's like, No, like, and it the what it boiled down to was he just had something to offer that person that couldn't really be replicated by anybody. It's like, I have this particular skill and I like you, and I think you know, doing this for you would be fun. Do you want to come do this? It would be fun. And it's such an easy pitch, you know. He he gets to just talk about something that's already in his brain. He doesn't have to take notes or, you know, anything like that. And, you know, this person made this awesome video. Like, everybody wins. And I think that's like a fun, natural way to do a collab. And it's good to be in people's comments and like be familiar with them and everything. But if you're just going to comments hoping that they will collab with you, I want you to be thinking about what is it that they get out of it. And it doesn't have to be views, it needs to be like, what is this unique experience that collabing with you will bring them? Which is a very hard question to answer. But that is kind of the bottom line, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. And final email for today. Remember, you can email us at the boost at videoq.com comes from Mia. Hey Travis and the gang. I love watching, listening to you guys because I learned so much while I laugh. Oh well, that's great. I hope you laugh for the right reasons. All right. I have a relatively new channel that started in September of 24. I followed the trend of creating uh long form weekly and then uploading shorts to pull in subscribers every other day. Then I hit a problem. I noticed that the earlier long form began to get views. However, all of a sudden I was getting thousands of views on my shorts. And then it's like 50 to 100 on my long form. I was thinking no one liked my videos. So I experimented by stopping posting shorts. Then my long forms began to grow slowly and get views again. A long form video I posted four weeks ago now has 3,200 views and is still growing, 41 subs also. Wow, I was so blown away. So I have come to the conclusion that shorts on a new channel messes it up, in my opinion. Now I'm gaining a steady stream of subs who are not unsubbing. I I've created a shorts only channel to cater to my shorts only audience because I hear other creators are split on how shorts negatively impact your small channel if you're aiming to drive long form. What are your thoughts on this for small channels and what are the deals pushing shorts instead of long for? So we kind of talked a little bit about this earlier, but I do want to say that when shorts first came out, this was the common um advice. Start a new channel for shorts. We were hardcore on that. We were we were telling people even that. And I've softened a little bit over it on it over the last year because YouTube's done a better job of that. However, with the things we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, I'm starting to also now see that maybe going back to that is is the right move. Um, because uh YouTube, even though they should be looking at viewers separately, like you know, you like Travis's short form versus long form, let me get to the right people, doesn't always seem that to to come out that way. So for sh for what this creator is saying is for smaller channels, is it even more critical, Dan, to to separate these two? Or what do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

It's so like difficult. Like, so I don't know if channel size really ever matters in conversations like this. So I'm putting it aside for a second. My experience is gonna be a little different than yours because I'm I'm talking about channels that have either millions or tens of thousands of subscribers. On Vid IQ, we we mentioned earlier that our shorts are doing better than our long form, but in order for me to definitively say therefore shorts bad if we want long form to do well, um, I have to be able to look on the channel and see that all of our long form videos are underperforming. However, I just posted my big gaming video that I do every year, and it is performing just fine. It's doing what I was expecting it to do. The numbers are great, they are growing, it is snowballing, it is falling into search. Exactly what I want to have happen with it is happening. And we're posting shorts more than ever. So because I'm having that experience, it kind of busts the entire idea that someone would say, Well, shorts hurts your long form. But then again, again, a little bit jaded. I'm on a larger channel talking about this. On my personal channel, my priority was live stream, take clips from the stream, turn them into shorts, do long form when I have time. But lately I've started to prioritize doing long form again because I just want to see what would happen, you know, like what's gonna happen. And those long form videos are doing really, really well. I'm not posting shorts right now and I'm live streaming when I have time. And you would think, well, okay, cool. Your opinion should be that your shorts were hurting your long form performance. But keep in mind, what I'm saying is my personal like time and priorities just shifted. My focus shifted. So I was focused on making shorts that were really funny and compelling from clips of my streams. Once I stopped focusing on that and started focusing on my writing of long form content, then those started to perform. And I stopped doing shorts, not because I thought they were bad, but because I didn't give myself enough time to do them because I have a full-time job. Like I'm doing my channel for fun as a hobby on the side. So it's kind of like I feel like I get what I put into it. And if I had all the time in the world to make shorts, do live streams, and do long form videos, I would do all three. And I'd love to see how that would do. Um, but to me, like the bottom line is that shorts viewers be shorts viewers, long form be long form. There is crossover, but there's also an entire generation of people who prefer vertical short form content. And there's generations of people who came before them who like their long form. And again, there is crossover, but and and sometimes people, it's just a mood for me. I do like shorts. If I'm if I'm like standing around waiting for the phone call I'm waiting for or something, watching a few shorts while I'm waiting for my phone to ring, super easy. I can get a quick dopamine hit. If I'm sitting in front of my TV, I'm watching a long form video, and it better be a long one, so I don't have to keep changing the channel.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So it it is really like it just depends on where people are and who people are. And I think what you're finding, and I'm not, I don't have your channel in front of me. Maybe your data is way more compelling than I'm making it sound, but I think what you're finding is that when you put the time and energy into making sure your long form videos are doing really well, and you take shorts and just put them out of your mind, just we're gonna forget about this for now. You're getting what you put into it. You're you're reaping what you've sown, which is like I did a really good job making this long form video and it's performing, and people see my passion and everything else. When you're splitting your focus between shorts and longs, you're on two different platforms effectively, which is always difficult to do, especially if you have school or work or other things that demand your time. We only have so much creative energy, I think, as individuals. So I think that's what's going on when people say this. But again, I I have to put a big couple of caveats on it. I'm on larger channels than that sounds like the ones we're talking about here, and also like I don't I don't have this person's data in front of me. Right. That's my soapbox. I think I will step off of it now.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that, and I think you should take all that into consideration, but also honor what you're seeing happen on your channel. If you have if you feel like you're doing this thing and it's making it you know go better for your long form, continue to do that thing. Don't change back just because we've said something, but uh just acknowledge that there are a lot of different worlds where all this stuff is true simultaneously, just on different channels, which is kind of the unfortunate thing. There is no like one answer. Uh, YouTube will tell you, put it all on one channel now. We figured it out. We might tell you, well, I mean, sometimes they kind of figured out.

SPEAKER_01:

The uh yeah, and I think the reason it's easy to like look at a new channel and say, I'm gonna make this my shorts channel and this my long-form channel, is because it separates the data. Like, we that's why we have the podcast channel, because now we get way more accurate data about how long people are watching specifically the podcast, because that's the only thing that's here and shorts about the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Whereas before it was like, let's do the podcast on the main channel. Okay, it's getting some views, but like relative to the other content, it's not, and it's confusing. It's just confounding. Maybe both do work just fine, but it's hard to make decisions based off the data when you're doing two totally separate things in one place.

SPEAKER_00:

So true. So very true. If you're new here and you like this type of content or you want to learn more about how to grow on YouTube, of course, there's more videos here on the YouTube channel. If you listen to the audio podcast, there's tons and tons and years and years and years of worth of content. Make sure you're subscribed to both. Um, and definitely check us out everywhere. We're on uh YouTube or on any audio platform that you want. And I say all that to say for those of you that are here for the learning stuff, we're done. But for those of you that are here for a little fun stuff, we're gonna do something we did a couple of episodes ago, unless Dan's already done this today, which would be Wordle. Did you do today's Wordle? No. Okay, good, because we did this a couple of weeks ago. I think it went pretty well. So you and I are gonna play Wordle. For those who don't know, it's a game that's been around for a very long time where you have to guess a word based off letters. And uh this is gonna be more for the people watching on YouTube. Uh, if you're listening, um it may not be as good. And and and bye, I guess. Uh, but if you're listening, if you're watching on uh on YouTube, we're gonna start now. So what's our first word gonna be here, Dan?

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm gonna give you the word I always thought would be really cool, and every time I use it, it's it's detrimental. Oh ghost.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, G-O-S G-H-O-S-T. And then I guess I hit enter, yes, enter. Boom. And none of those letters.

SPEAKER_01:

Every time.

SPEAKER_00:

What's another five-letter word? There are like little cheats you can use. Plead? What did you say?

SPEAKER_01:

Plead. Like plead. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

P L E E D? E-A-D. E-A. Oh, plead. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, is that? I wonder if that's a word now.

SPEAKER_00:

I let's find out. Gives us a lot of- Oh, look at that. Hey, the first letter is P. So we know for sure that this this letter, the first letter is P. Right? We don't know what the second letter is. P-E-B-A.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

P B. That's not a word either. Oh my god, I'm never doing this again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is awful.

SPEAKER_00:

U T Y but. Butter.

SPEAKER_01:

Ooh, do knife.

SPEAKER_00:

Knife. Knifey.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so N is in the word.

SPEAKER_00:

N is is the And E is not the last letter.

SPEAKER_01:

So we know now we know it's P E E. It could be P-E-N-A.

SPEAKER_00:

Penal? There's no L. Penal?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh or N's in N. So try P-E-X-A-N. Okay, so what is that middle leg?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. What are we doing? For those of you watching the YouTube video, I hope I hope that got edited down to like 45 seconds. I'm gonna tell you, that took way longer than I'm willing to admit. That was ridiculous. We may never do that again. Anyway, thank you for joining us. We hope you had fun, and we'll see y'all in the next one.