How A Math Teacher Built A PC Hardware Channel Without Editing

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We talk with Daniel Owen about building a respected PC hardware news and GPU review channel while staying a full-time high school math teacher. He breaks down how one-take videos, smart reinvestment, and hard time boundaries can beat burnout and keep your voice honest. 
• starting YouTube during remote teaching and using the same gear setup 
• posting daily early on to learn faster from the algorithm 
• narrowing from broad tech into PC gaming hardware news 
• reinvesting early revenue into graphics cards to expand content options 
• handling seasonality in both YouTube trends and product release cycles 
• protecting mental health from analytics swings and comparison traps 
• choosing stability by keeping a salaried job even when income matches 
• using YouTube income to buy back time with shorter commutes and outsourcing 
• deciding how to package news videos versus search-driven GPU reviews 
• setting boundaries to prevent burnout and adjusting upload expectations 
• staying honest with reviews even when brands send samples 
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Transcript

The Anti-YouTube Approach

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're the anti-thumbnail, anti-title, anti-editing guy. The vast majority of my videos are shot in one take with no script and no editing. I just film it and upload it.

Welcome And Meet Daniel Owen

Teaching Background And Channel Origin

SPEAKER_01 0:11

It's everything that's not supposed to work on YouTube, and somehow it works. Hey, welcome back to the OnlyPodcast. It's here to tell you more about your YouTube channel than even you know. I am Travis here as always, and I have a cool special guest today, someone I actually watched myself, Daniel Owen. How are you doing, Daniel? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Super excited to have Daniel. He actually has some really cool things going on in his channel. We'll talk about that here in a minute. But if you're new here, we're here to help you grow your YouTube channel in so many different ways, whether it's answering your questions by email or interviewing people that are doing it big on the platform. So if you feel like it and you're feeling real special, hit that like button. Of course, you can subscribe. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, all the information will be in the show notes below. Daniel, welcome to the show. I appreciate you for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Um, well, I'm a high school math teacher, and I, back during the whole uh pandemic thing, teaching from home, uh, started up a YouTube channel when I was already getting some video gear for doing that, talking about my hobby, PC, gaming, news, and tech, uh, kind of on the hardware side of things. And it's just kind of grown and grown and grown. But I I've kept doing the teaching as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

And that's actually why I have you on today, because you have kept, even though you have what many would uh describe as a very successful YouTube channel, and you're even like a voice within the industry now. I feel it's not because you can have channels that are successful, but they don't necessarily uh maybe taste maker is a little bit too strong of a word, but they their voice is is definitely validated within the niche. Um, they usually don't have their full-time job anymore. So let's rewind. Before you started YouTube, you were already a teacher. And can you tell us a little bit about that and how the first YouTube video came to be?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah. Um, so I've been a high school math teacher for, geez, this must be my 15th year now. No, I started the channel in 2020. Uh so you know, I'd already been teaching math for a long time there. And uh, due to global circumstances, had to start teaching from home through video. And I thought, you know, my students are like like I'm competing for their attention with streamers, et cetera. So I'm actually gonna get like a good quality camera and microphone and go through OBS and green screen background and try to at least uh, even if maybe my content's not gonna grab their attention like like uh their gaming stuff, I might at least have a better presentation than some sloppy webcam video or something. And also had in the back of my mind I'd all already been interested in maybe doing YouTube channel stuff. And hey, this is also an excuse to invest in that kind of uh equipment to get started with the decent quality. And uh so then I just also used that same setup I was setting up to teach online to, hey, I'll start recording some videos about my hobbies. I had even considered a fitness channel because I like uh powerlifting, but uh decided, you know what, uh probably easier to make content on the uh the gaming and technology and PC stuff. I didn't have a real firm grasp on exactly what how to niche down on that or what that even meant, but I thought, you know what, tech stuff. I'll start just making videos on things that sound interesting and see what happens. Didn't expect anybody to really listen, but you're what was the experience like so?

SPEAKER_01 3:20

I mean, a lot of people when they start YouTube, they think it's going to be easy because they see other people doing, oh, I can do that. I just put up a video about video games or something, it's gonna do very well. What was your experience first going into it? Uh, what was your experience actually making the videos? And what was your experience when you uploaded and you waited for the views to come?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because I didn't really have any expectation of a large viewership or anything like that. Uh, I've always liked creative outlets. I uh play music and do uh other sorts of things. And uh I'd even briefly start uh, you know, tried like Twitch streaming games and whatnot, but I just didn't have the free time for a lot of uh dedicated time to like having a set schedule and that sort of thing. So, you know, this sort of thing had always interested me, but I didn't have any real uh expectation of success or it being easy, it was more just a creative outlet and thought I would just post stuff and see what happens. I'd send it to friends who might be interested. Uh, part of it was just like, I don't have a lot of people who are as interested in the nitty-gritty details of the PC tech stuff as I am in person. So rather than like uh uh talk to my wife about stuff who she'll patiently listen and smile and nod her head, but she's not actually interested. I thought maybe uh broadcast my uh thoughts out into the the internet and just uh see if somebody who actually may be interested uh ends up uh finding it and just kind of went from there.

Daily Uploads And Zero Editing

SPEAKER_01 4:50

So you have the full-time job, you have a family. How much time uh initially, because this is something we get a lot of emails about, is like, how do you balance this stuff? How much time initially were you spending making content and like how often were you uploading it at the first?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Um, so I think let me put it this way my first hundred days on YouTube, I believe I posted a video every single day, um, which I think is unusual. Now, I will say that I have an ability to speak off the cuff without a script, which I'm not saying couldn't be improved if there was a script or editing it, but the vast majority of my videos are shot in one take with no script and no editing. I just film it and upload it.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

We're we're gonna talk about that because it's highly unusual. The thing, the way you do content is so highly unusual. I can't wait till we get to that point. But yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Uh yeah, so I mean, that's really, I think, a now now initially there it was actually a little bit more editing involved, to be honest. Uh, one reason I slowed uh down how much I I would edit videos or actually entirely stopped editing a lot of videos was from, yeah, it's really a time commitment thing. It's one of those things where as soon as you film a video and then edit and uh open an editing program, like you could just go hours into that editing. And uh honestly, I also don't have a lot of experience video editing. I I had some experience with uh editing uh music production, but you know, that's different than video production, although there's some similarities in how the programs kind of feel to use. So uh I didn't really have a talent for video editing or anything like that. So I learned a bit of it, but I was just realizing, you know what? I don't actually enjoy editing videos, and I'm doing this for fun anyway, so I'm just gonna not listen, we're all jealous of that.

Finding A Niche That Sticks

SPEAKER_01 6:43

We none of a lot of us don't want to edit. I know I'm definitely one of those people. What how long did it take before you felt like the channel really started getting traction?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, so uh like I said, my initial strategy was I realized I should have some kind of a topic. Uh, I I understood that. I'm not sure I understood exactly how niche I should go with that. Uh I grew to understand that better by by watching, you know, how many views am I getting and looking at uh what is seeming to gain more traction than other things. Uh that helped me narrow it down because initially the thought was uh not even gaming PC hardware tech necessarily, but just literally technology channel. Like I'm interested in that. And you know, some of the biggest technology channels, like Linus Tech Tips, they're very general, they're very broad. They do cover like PC builds and they do graphics card reviews, but they also just talk about all sorts of other technology things. And I think initially I thought that that could work for a smaller channel starting out. I didn't really understand that there is some benefits to getting really, really specific. So I started my initial, you know, 30 videos could be all sorts of vaguely technology-related content. Just it was literally just whatever I happen to be thinking about that day. I was like, okay, I'll just record myself, talk about that for uh you know 10 minutes or whatever, upload that, see what happens. But I started uh noticing that certain topics seem to gather views more uh quickly and effectively. And then I realized that there it would make sense that there'd be some kind of a synergistic effect of, okay, so if people who watch about that topic are uh now seeing my channel, and I had noticed you just in my own use of YouTube that, okay, if I click on a channel, it is more likely to show me videos on my homepage of that channel, whether or not I I subscribe to them. It'll at least give a little shot at seeing my interest in more content. I started to realize that, okay, so I should make a video that's going to be interesting to the same person who clicked on my previous video. Uh and as I realized that, that helped me kind of narrow in more specifically into PC gaming hardware news. And I kind of zeroed in on that as my main focus, and that that seemed to help build. Now, I like I said, there's some pros and cons to posting a video every single day. Um, one of the pros I noticed is that I can just rapid fire a million different things uh into the YouTube algorithm and get a lot of feedback quickly on what's sticking and what isn't. Uh, because if you post, you know, one video a week or one video a month, uh, it could take uh a lot longer to find what is sticking. Um and so by just rapid firing content out there initially, it helped me learn who my audience was, at least initially, and then kind of build off of that, I think quicker. So by the end of my first month, I'd uploaded 30 videos and I had hit the like 1000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of time or whatever it was in 2020 to uh uh get the YouTube partnership. And then so then my second month, I was like starting to look at what does ad revenue look like and all of that kind of stuff.

Reinvesting Money Into Hardware

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Wow. That's so that's really fast because most uh content creators, even if they do upload a lot, won't get monetized within the first month. That's really um, especially for someone who didn't have a background really in this at all, it was kind of doing it uh as a side as a side quest in a in a lot of ways, right? Like you were just kind of doing it for fun, which is cool. Um so at some point things started kind of going well, and you would put out videos and they would get maybe tens of thousands of views. Um, but you're still working, and by the way, you're still still working, but we're we're we're gonna talk about like where things are starting to take off on the YouTube channel and the paychecks coming in from YouTube, not too bad anymore. So we're at the point where it's subsidizing. Were you buying hardware at that point, or were you just doing video game stuff?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Uh yeah, so uh we could talk a little bit about that. So yeah, so as as the channel starts to build, there starts to be some income. What do I do with that? Et cetera. So um I will say that all of the initial money I got off the channel, I did by uh PC gaming hardware, specifically graphics cards. And that's where I started being able to produce content where I test the performance of uh popular video games when they came out. I'm not making gaming content, I'm not playing the game. I might play through a bit of the game, but that's not the focus. The focus is how is it performing on this graphics card? And so I would target the most popular graphics cards. What do most people have? Uh, and that kind of opened up an additional uh content stream that I could do that was very related to PC hardware news, but I could also then, okay, a new game comes out, that is news, and some news related could be how does it perform? And so, yeah, all of my initial earnings were just reinvested into purchasing uh hardware to then produce more content with. Uh that that's how I saw it initially. And um, I wasn't uh making any kind of lifestyle increases, you know, buying a new car or whatever. It was it was just reinvesting into stuff for the the channel to produce more content.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

And we hear people say that a lot. Now that you can look back on that part, um would you say that was a smart play? Did it did you see that the return on investment for reinvesting actually kind of helped it uh grow maybe faster or exponentially or in any way? Or was it kind of just a wash?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, um, like I said, it it opened up at a new type of thing I could make videos about. Like I said, I make a lot of videos. I I'm not quite at the video every single day uh thing. Uh that what we could probably get into this later, but you can talk about like YouTube burnout, it's like that kind of thing where I had initially just been like, that's my posting schedule, I'm doing it. And then there starts to be some stress over, but there's nothing to make a video about. What do I do? Uh so buying the graphics cards to open up that additional thing I can make videos about was extremely helpful because when I started my channel, if we want to talk about also, I think this does relate to the uh I think initial I my channel I think did grow quicker than most. Um, and I think one thing that was helpful was I was launching when I'm covering news related to a topic that was and I know some of the viewers right now might not be familiar with PC gaming hardware, but graphics cards are the most important component for running video games on your computer. And they tend to release in about once every two year cycles for major refreshes. I was starting right at the beginning of a new graphics card cycle, and it happened to be an incredibly well-received one. This is for those in the know, this is the RTX 3000 series, which uh were supposed to be very good bang for the buck increase over the last generation. Now crypto mining happened and prices, you know, pricing went out the window. But the point is, initially there was a lot of excitement about those, that series of cards. And so I was covering those as they were coming out. And then uh AMD, who's the competitor uh brand, uh, was also uh seemed to be cooking up something, but they hadn't quite released it yet. And I jumped in and started making content right at that time where a lot of people were searching for that information. So initially there was always the next leaker rumor about the next graphic card that's come gonna come out, or what's AMD gonna do? And so there was something to talk about every day uh that actually had people actively searching for that uh that content, and and that helped out a lot. But once that initial release window slows down, uh it started drying up. Like, how do I do a video every day? There's not that much interesting to talk about right now. So it was important to be able to expand into something that would still be interesting to my viewers, but uh was less dependent on new hardware coming out right now. Because I realize that this is going to be kind of a once-every two-year cycle kind of a thing. So if I want to keep doing this, I need to do something else. And it did absolutely pay off in that now I have I there's something else to do videos about, and also paid off in the sense that, you know, over time uh I bought more and more content. My graphics card reviews got better and better to the point where eventually my channel grew to a point and my review content was respected and viewed enough that the brands like AMD and NVIDIA that produced the hardware did reach out to offer review samples. Um, so then I could be part of the larger review scene rather than having to buy it all myself now. So uh that's kind of how that that went. So it definitely paid off over time, both in um getting more things to make content about. So that was less stressful, as well as growing my um ability to do that type of content and and getting to the point where I didn't have to buy them anymore.

Seasonality And Creator Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, and that's important. But you you mentioned something I want to talk to creators who maybe aren't in this space but are still wondering. So YouTube itself has this has a lot of seasonality, and a lot of it has to do with what's going on in the world at the time. Sometimes it's summertime, people want to go out, maybe not watch as much YouTube. School September tends to be kind of slow because all the kids are going back. So families are they're watching slightly different. Uh, but then uh Daniel has this additional seasonality of when products are released. So there's this hype when it's about to happen, all the rumors when it happens, there's a hype. And then as it's been out for a while, it kind of slows down. Now, if that slowdown happens with the overall YouTube slowdown, you might see a terrible dip between what's the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Have you have you experienced that? And if so, like what was going through your mind?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

I've absolutely experienced that. Uh so I'll say a couple of things. I mean, initially, when I say like my first, you know, three months on YouTube, I was doing a video every single day, and this was doing that big hype cycle. And also, again, a lot of people were having to work from home at that time. Uh, 2020 was a big year for things like YouTube and PC gaming in general. I started with a wave in my niche, and then it started to be, like I said, harder to find things to make videos about. What do I do? Uh, I had to go back to the classroom, but things were really weird with the restrictions there. So my free time was a little bit rough as I tried to figure out the teaching side of things. I actually stopped making videos for a couple of months after my initial hundred videos uh that actually saw a lot of success very quickly. And uh so there was uh a little bit there after my initial few months of success where I almost just stopped. I was like, oh, that was kind of fun. Guess I'm I did it. Thanks. Goodbye. But because of exactly what we're you're bringing up here, that initially there was all this interest in what I was doing, and it was easy to find topics to talk about. And then it wasn't, you know. Um, so after a few months, and plus, like I said, life things where um, you know, teaching is one of those things where your first few years are very difficult as you learn how the heck to teach. Uh, probably similar to YouTube in that matter, where you learn how to how do I actually do this? Um, but then you kind of get some routines, and so it's uh a little bit less overload outside of work hours, et cetera. But with the whole 2020 business, and we were not in the classroom, then we're back in the classroom, but half the students are it was it was weird. Let's just say it was weird. And so I was having to learn a whole new setting for teaching from scratch, basically, again. And so at that point, it was like my my free time that I was spending on the YouTube was drying up, the interest in my niche was drying up. And that had a big effect of like, I don't know what to do with this. It was very tempting to just quit. And like I said, for a few months I kind of did. But then I just started uh getting my feet under me with the teaching again. It was heading into summer break as well. So I'd have additional free time on that. I was like, okay, you know what, let's give that another shot. And I approached it more from this thought of uh that's where I started again getting into more of the buying graphics cards, etc. I was like, okay, I'm gonna need to find ways to produce content related to my niche that is not so seasonal. And also I need to give myself a little bit of permission to not expect my success to be at the same level that it was during a hot time period. Because I need to like YouTube can be very uh you can be very hard on yourself. And the, you know, from the creator side, you have the YouTube Studio, which throws a bunch of numbers at your face that sometimes aren't, you know, they're they feel very good when you're doing better than you usually do. And they feel very bad when your numbers are worse than they usually are. And that's a huge mental health aspect of this whole thing and finding a way to manage that. So I think by taking that little step back for a minute there and realizing, first of all, I just don't even need to do this, so I can give myself permission to fail. Like it's okay. Um and then also just understanding logically that it is not necessarily my fault or my content being worse for my views to be down right now, because I cover a niche that is seasonal. So interest level will vary. And so I just need to accept that and try not to let the YouTube studio get into my head uh with this video performed worse than your last one. Okay, there's less interesting things happening. That's not my fault. It doesn't mean my video was worse, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

That's very practical, and I actually really appreciate that mindset because uh we do as uh content creators go through these kind of mental hurdles. And for viewers, they may not understand that like this can be very stressful, especially if it's your only kind of income. Um, and and it's definitely can hurt your ego a little bit too. I think most YouTubers, whether they want to admit it or not, have some sort of ego going into content creation because it's like, look at what I'm creating and you should like it. Um, so I really like that that's kind of a healthy way of looking at the hey, you know, my content's probably just as good as it ever was, just that the interest isn't necessarily there in that moment. And it's I like that. It's really cool. Is that how you like tell um other if you have any other creators that come to you and talk about things, is that how you would uh kind of explain it, or is that just something that works for you personally?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

I mean, I'll say I don't have a lot of other creators I actually talk to about YouTube stuff. What's interesting being a high school teacher is a lot of my high school students are interested in uh uh being YouTubers, content creation. And uh so sometimes after class they will ask me stuff about it. And so I I do get into some aspects of that, but most of them aren't actually actively creating content. So I don't need to get into too much into the weeds on that. But it isn't, you know, I have had some practice trying to think about how do I get some just like really general thoughts on this whole thing. And I have certainly like some of my students legitimately ask me, like, why do you still teach? Right, and we're gonna get into that.

Why Keep Teaching After Big Income

SPEAKER_01 21:53

I really genuinely want to know the answer to this. I feel like it's the question that anyone who's watching this really wants to know. So let's talk before we get to that answer. Let's talk a little bit about when things started to kind of go so well that the money from YouTube either matched or surpassed your full-time job and what that was like. And were there conversations with your family about what that means? Like, tell me that whole situation.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, I mean, definitely having conversations with my wife about that. Um uh and a lot of reflection on it. So there was a point after a couple of years where I was making about as much on YouTube as I was teaching. And at that point, I was thinking to myself, so it seems like everybody who's you know aware of my situation expects me to just switch to doing YouTube as my full-time job. Now, uh, so at first I almost felt some sort of outside pressure to do that, because that's kind of just what seems to be expected of me. But um, as I was doing that, I started thinking, okay, so I also understood that seasonality, right? So where I understand that my content is can have interest levels that are outside of my control. So I am somebody who is very, very risk averse. So I like predictability. I like to plan. Again, I'm a math teacher. If you, if if I know exactly what my income is, with which teaching you have a salaried contract. I know exactly what my income is going to be. And, you know, I've been there long enough that my job security is pretty much locked in, right? So like I that is such a predictable thing. And there's so I can plan all of my life expenses around that predictable income stream. And YouTube is so much not that. Um, especially in my niche where um I I can have months that do great and months that are that are way less. So even if my average income for the year is equal to what I made teaching, some months were certainly worse, and some months were orders of magnitude better. So it's like, so part of that was me thinking, okay, so I want um if I want to entertain the idea of letting go of my job teaching, I would want more data than just a few months or even one year showing that uh the income was equivalent. So I first set that goal. I was like, I want to see multiple years of consistent ability to earn at this level, at a level that I could live, my family could live off of. Uh so I didn't want just like one month did really well and like, okay, quit my job. Right, right, right. Then the next month nothing, no interesting PC hardware comes out and I come crawling for my job back. Um, so I didn't uh so that was one thing is I wanted to see long-term evidence of uh of that uh ability. But then I realized actually, as I spent about a year really focusing on the income side, really as an experiment. Like, could I live off of this? And so I started actually looking more into uh getting sponsorship deals and you know, how do you become an Amazon affiliate? Like, you know, right, right, right. Where you get some income stream that way, that kind of thing. So I started looking into increasing income streams, how does this work on the business side and taking that a little bit more seriously? Uh, I also found myself just stressing out more. The more I did that, though, the more I thought about, man, if I this is all less fun. I don't know. Because again, I started the whole thing as really just like I wanted to talk to people about stuff I'm interested in for fun. And I really had no expectation of this being an income stream. So uh I did hit a point, I think I did a video on it even uh at that point where I kind of came to a bit of a that, you know, like I said, the YouTube Studio mental health thing where it's like, I'm trying to work towards seeing if I could do this full time, and yet, you know, there's nothing interesting happening. So my I'm having less success than I did last month, and like, oh, this is stressful. And then I really just hit a point where I was like, you know what? I don't need to stop teaching. And suddenly all of that stress is just gone because my income from teaching, I haven't done any like major like lifestyle creep with the YouTube income. So I'm all of my expenses can be paid off of my teaching income. Like everything still to this day can be paid completely off of my teaching income. So that just makes the financial side of YouTube completely stress-free. I just like everything is a bonus. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Do you use that money just to invest back in the channel, or do you like invest it, or what do you do with that money that comes in?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So uh a variety of things. I mean, yes, I invest in things for the channel. Again, covering the the uh PC hardware. Well, I do get some review samples. Not everything gets covered as a review sample, especially the graphics cards that maybe the companies don't think I would uh review well. Right. We'll talk about that too. They might not get a positive review, in which case, okay, fine, I'll buy it myself. Um, because like I'm still perfectly capable of doing that, and I'll keep doing that if they stop sending me review samples, no problem. So it's nice to have that income at that point where I don't feel uh I I don't feel any pressure to say anything than my honest opinion in my reviews because I can just buy them. So it's fine. Right, right. Um, and then also um, yeah, so that's in in one sense investing in the channel and just building up, you know, more gaming PCs. I eventually bought a better microphone, you know, uh so that kind of stuff. But then also investing in time, my time my free time. So uh to continue doing teaching full-time, and I've got kids and a family, and I I block out a lot of my day as like this is dedicated family time. I'm not doing YouTube, I'm not doing teaching, and I keep that blocked out. So that means that I need to find ways to efficiently use my time. So one of the biggest investments that I've done is buying a different house. Um, not primarily just to be a nicer house, but it was actually to be closer to my job teaching. So I can leave where I'm at right now and be in my classroom. Uh uh in a walk, it would take about three minutes. And if I jog, it's one minute. So I can be from here to in my classroom in one minute if I jog. So uh like I can pop over here on a lunch break and uh, you know, set up for a video that I'll film after school and also get in my sets of bench press, uh, which I got my uh home gym behind me, you know. So things like that. Like I used to go to the gym. Uh I was like, okay, I don't want to stop exercising, but I'm gonna buy a house where I have room for a home gym where I can like in between, you know, testing out graphics cards, I can do a set of bench press and then come back over and do some editing. So it's efficiency gains like that. And I have zero commute now, whereas my wife and kids still have some commute time. So, like uh when I'm done teaching, I can be in my class, uh, I can be out of my classroom and in my YouTube studio. It's it's in my basement. My this is just my basement. Anyway, I can be in my basement in um uh a minute flat if I jog, and then I can have a good hour to an hour and a half before my kids actually make it home from school with my wife, uh, where I can dedicate some uh filming time directly to that. Uh so if I also use some of my lunch break to because a lot of my content is news content, I can be my and that's another thing is like before ever starting any of this, I would read all of the PC hardware-related news because I just enjoy it. It's just a hobby of mine. I like to stay on top of it. So basically, I still do that. It's not an additional time sync, but I just all those news articles that I find most interesting, I'm organizing in browser tabs, uh, which are then behind me on a green screen when I actually film a video about it. And I've already read the articles, I've already ordered the tabs as basic like I don't write a script, but the tabs are like ordered as the order I want to speak about into like groups that kind of flow. So they're sort of my my bullet point note notes are really just the uh articles that I'd been reading. So it's really just that efficiency where stuff I'd already be doing is um, you know, feeding into preparing for the content. I bought a house to have zero commute time. And um also like uh when I bought this house, there was a lot more yard work to do here than at my last place and trimming bushes and whatnot. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna invest some of my YouTube income in having a weekly, you know, gardening service come by, which I probably couldn't afford if I wasn't doing YouTube. But if I wasn't doing YouTube, I'd have time to do it myself, right? So um, so those are some examples of investing the money in not really hardware for the channel exactly, but time gains. So cutting out my commute, uh and uh, you know, having some help with the you know yard work, et cetera, things that buy me back time um to allow this to be more possible to do both.

Being Recognised By Students And Strangers

SPEAKER_01 30:37

I've always said that the only currency that matters is time, uh, because you can't make more of it. You can make more money. Uh, you just can't make more time. So I love that you you validate that thought in prioritizing it in your life. I think that's amazing. Let me ask you a question about when things started going really well in your channel, what was the first time that a student uh saw one of your channels? Tell me like one of your videos and tell me what that experience was like because it had to be a little bit odd, right? Wasn't that weird?

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Uh yeah, I mean, to be honest, I never made any real uh secret of it or anything like that. Um and so, like, uh I can't remember exactly who the first student to notice it was. Um, but it was fairly early on before I think the channel had maybe like 6,000 subscribers or something like that. It wasn't super big. Uh like I mean, I realize that that that's a lot bigger than than many, but like compared compared to where I'm at now, it's not like I was some major known voice in tech news or whatever, you know. Um, so uh yeah, it was uh, you know, I just never really cared or made it a secret at all. I know some people are like hesitant for people to find out about their YouTube channel or what will people think of it. Uh one thing is just always that I've, you know, nothing I do or say in my YouTube videos is anything I wouldn't do or say to anybody or my students up front. Like I don't, just as just personal in general, just as a teacher, I've had to learn about, you know, controlling my language, et cetera, you know. Um so I really just kind of still am in that framework when I'm making the YouTube videos anyway. So there's nothing really in them that where I'm like, yeah, sure, watch it. I don't care. My my mom watches my videos sometimes. She has no idea what I'm talking about. She's like, there's my son. Uh so like uh yeah, so I never really made any secret of it. The the first time I uh well, there's been a couple recent ones where I felt like, okay, I'm I'm actually getting noticed where I wouldn't expect it. Um, where uh things like if you're trying to get into like being noticed because of your YouTube channel thing. Yeah. Um so uh last summer I was at a small town on the coast where my dad lives. Um uh on the 4th of July, we're gonna watch some fireworks. I'm just wandering around the little old town shops, and uh some group of teenagers is walking by, I and one of them just looks at me as like, hey, PC gaming hardware news. I'm just like, Yep. That's me. And then I just kept walking. It's just like, uh, so that was one of the first times I'd just been randomly noticed uh by a complete stranger, um, who at least that they called it out in a way where I noticed that they noticed. Um another one that happened to me uh actually at the beginning of this school year, speaking of the interesting overlap between the teaching and and not, is so uh, you know, at the beginning of the school year, there's new new staff being introduced, new teachers to the school. A lot of them moved in from out of state. And one of them uh came up and introduced himself to me afterwards as like a big fan of my YouTube channel. Because you know, he'd been living in a completely other state, watching my YouTube channel, and then just happened to get a job at the school that I teach at and noticed me. It was like, hey, I don't watch your YouTube. And I was like, you know, that's cool. We talked about it and whatever, but it was just like so things like that where it's um uh people that I wouldn't expect to have where where their first uh uh interact, their first getting to know me, I guess, was through the YouTube channel, and then they meet me in person. That was kind of a new experience um that's happen happening a little bit more frequently now, not super frequently, you know, but um it's just yeah, that that that's been a little bit just weirder, uh not bad, just like it's kind of a different sort of experience.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

What do your friends and family think? Is it kind of the same thing?

Titles Thumbnails And Breaking The Rules

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Yeah, I mean, like I said, my friends and family are all aware of my YouTube channel and that it's uh having a good deal of success. But um, you know, I don't think anybody really, you know, you know, really like it's an interest, like I think people are interested in it at first. And like when I get new students for the year, like at this point, like as soon as one student knows their teacher has uh a successful YouTube channel, like that spreads around the school. So then anytime I get a new crop of students, there'll be many who don't know initially, but then somebody you know spreads the word, and then I usually get a bunch of questions about that for a few days, but then it's like I'm still just their math teacher teaching them math. So eventually that usually kind of dies down in the unless they actually have some questions about either, hey, I'm interested in doing YouTube. You know, do you have any advice? Or sometimes they're interested in my content, which is like, I want to build a gaming PC, like to help me, you know. So uh, but yeah, usually just with friends, family, and my students, it just kind of like comes up a lot when they find out at first, and then it just sort of dies down into the background unless there's a particular reason it gets brought up.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

I want to talk about your your uh your channel and your videos because uh I even remember a couple months ago, one of your videos went up and someone in the Slack here at VidIQ had mentioned like, oh, look at his title, it's just got a bunch of exclamation points because we talk about titles and things. You're the anti-thumbnail, anti-title, anti-editing guy in a space that is generally speaking, uh takes that at a higher level of like, well, thumbnails in PCs probably not as high as in other niches, but certainly titles and editing are done in a way that uh definitely you could say high-end, especially when you look at like hardware and box, love hardware and box. Um, their reviews and stuff are amazing. And yours is just a one take. You have uh usually maybe your face and maybe just a couple of things. Sometimes you'll use red lettering on your text with on thumbnails, which we say never do. Uh, your titles sometimes are just GPU news and about 27 exclamation points. It's everything that's not supposed to work on YouTube and somehow it works. Tell me how you came up with that and why do you think it works?

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Um, so I'll say like I mean, if we're getting into the exclamation part points um uh specifically, honestly, uh the first time I did that was mostly uh as like a sarcastic, uh, you know, I was doing a news video and literally there wasn't actually anything particularly exciting. And I was just sitting there thinking about what to make my title, and I'm like, you know what? We're just gonna have the most sarcastically excited thumbnail. GPU news, and then I filled out the rest of the hundred character limit with mostly exclamation points, but a couple uh uh a couple ones in there where the it's like you're you're so excited you can't even hold down the shift key while you're you know, which is probably like I I'm getting older these days. Older internet memes of uh you know you know fake excitement. But anyway, so I tried that out, and then interestingly, it did actually perform fairly well. And then, you know, you can do some of the like uh this was actually the first time I did it was before you could do the ABC testing of titles uh directly uh in the studio. But I would try some other uh you know more normal news topics, and then occasionally I would just slip in one of those styles, and oftentimes they would perform better, but uh not always. I think it's a thing where if you did it all like like for every video, it's gonna lose its novelty. So I think there's just some novelty to it that that stood out. Um, but I don't think it would be a successful title strategy for every video. It now it's more like an inside joke when I slip them in from time to time. Um and sometimes I'll even now throw in a for the ones, I'll even throw in like a math formula that's complicated but evaluates to one, where it's like, okay, so you've got your uh exclamation points where you actually slip and hit the one key, but somehow I'm a math teacher, so I uh typed in some complicated math expression that's equivalent to one in my excitement. You know, so I'll do that occasionally, but it's yeah, it's really more I I view that as an inside joke rather than a uh super effective uh titling strategy for every single video or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

What would you say then are your like um your pillars of like what a video because you know, packaging of a video is really everything about how the thing is going to perform, like the thumbnail title and kind of idea topic. So when you're going into a video, is that something you do at the end? Are you doing it at the beginning? Do you know in advance like this is what I want people to get from this video? Like, how are you looking at each video?

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Okay, so there's uh different type uh different types of content that I produce. And I actually have a different strategy for each of those. Um, so one type of content is gonna be GPU reviews, where I'm doing an incredibly in-depth review, tons of tests. This is not entertainment. Uh, this is somebody wants to buy one of these products and is searching for information to help them buy this product. So they are probably arriving here through search traffic uh rather than this popping up on their home feed. Or if it popped up on their home feed, it's because they've been searching this topic and watched other videos on it. So those titles and thumbnails I package as just I describe exactly what the video is, like this graphics card versus this graphics card, uh tested in a bunch of tests. Like, like I sometimes I'll throw in some hook like don't get ripped off or or whatever, you know, to but it's it's it's really trying to just show somebody that I'm thinking of the viewer, right? That that's gonna be finding this. And these are people who are gonna find it who are wanting information, not entertainment, about this topic. And I try to make it very clear that that's what you're gonna get here. And I will see that that those videos, um, when I initially post the graphics card reviews, unless it's a particularly big launch that people are very excited about, oftentimes they'll actually initially not get many views compared to my typical like news video. But my news videos tend to trail off in views after a couple of days. Whereas, and and most of the views come through showing up on like somebody's homepage. Uh, whereas my GPU reviews, I have some of my viewers who are my regular viewers who will click on that when I first post it, but a lot of the traffic comes in over the course of a year or even two years, uh, where there's some, you know, a few hundred views a day, but for a year or more. And then they end up sometimes as my highest viewed videos with hundreds of thousands of views, uh, whereas a typical news video could bounce anywhere between like, you know, 20,000 and 100,000, depending on if there's particularly interesting news that day. Um so those are kind of packaged differently. So if if it's something that I'm expecting to be primarily driven through search traffic, I'll package that differently than if it's a news video, where if there is breaking news on a topic that I know is extremely interesting that a lot of my viewers are gonna want to click on, I will title it something directly related to that. Like, like let and maybe with some, like if I have some uh hot take about it, you know, you can apply that in the thumbnail and the title in some way. So with the ones that are gonna be more driven by uh showing up on a home screen and somebody needs to click on it, I think that's where I need to be more thoughtful on. Uh and you know, there's your personal thoughts on clickbait, you know, you know, how like what is clickbait? How how do I go in uh do I entirely focus on on what is most successful versus what I'm happy with doing? Uh and I and I think every content creator has to find a balance on that. You'll get negative comments if you go too clickbaity-y and whatever. But uh anyway, uh so I guess with certain types of content that are more immediate and I need to stand out on the home screen, those are ones where I'll try to make sure there's some some kind of hook. There needs to be some kind of question, like, uh, why would I click on this? Uh, you know, but it I also, my personal take is it does need to be clear what the topic of the video is. Um, I I need people to, I just feel bad if somebody doesn't have a clear understanding of at least the topic of the video, even if the detailed information about that topic has to be clicked to find that information. Like I don't feel the need to write my like thesis statement as my title. Um, you know, you could ask a question or something, but it does need to have some thought too. Why would anybody click on this? And then some videos are just topics where I do think uh, like I said, some of my content is the review content that's mostly search traffic, that's one thing. Then I have my news content where it's very immediate. Uh, and then there's other content that's just other topics related to, in some way, PC hardware and PC gaming. And those could be all sorts of topics, and they're not always uh news and they're not always reviews. And with those, I since they're not so immediate, um, I guess I can sometimes think about okay, so what would be the best way to package this um to be successful for whatever it is? So I think there's really big differences in what kind of packaging is successful for what type of content and who's gonna be viewing that type of content. And I do have some mind to that, but I'll be the first to admit that I am still learning that process. And also, given my time constraints with doing this in a very limited amount of time, um I do have to be very quick with how I make my titles and thumbnails. So I am a hundred percent aware that if I spent hours planning out the perfect package for my video, I would probably have a lot more views. Um, and if I spent hours editing each video, I would probably have a lot more views. If I do all those things, I want to be completely clear that my strategy of not doing those things probably is holding back my view counts. Like I think it is. But uh, this is a similar thing I had to learn with teaching, where it's um teaching is a job where you could easily invest every waking moment and not feel done. And I think YouTube is also a job where you could easily invest every waking moment and not feel done. You could always feel like there's more that you could be doing. And so I one thing I'd learned with teaching before I learned it, I just kind of applied it to YouTube is at some point you have to just call it a day. Like, like you, you've allocated this much time and you do the absolute best job you possibly can in that amount of time. And then you've just got to shut it off and do something else, um, or else you just burn out. Because man, talk about careers where I think there's a lot of burnout potential. I think YouTube and teaching are both very high burnout rates. And so, yeah, that was something I learned early on with teaching, where initially, you know, every waking minute was focused on it. And after the first two years, I was like, I either have to do something different uh to limit how much time I'm spending on this, or I need to find a new job. And I loved the actual teaching part of teaching. So I just found, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna set up systems with the amount of time I'm actually willing to dedicate to this and leave it at that. And I will not spend one more minute on it. And yeah, so it's really just setting boundaries uh on on your time. You just have to do the best you can in the time that you can allot to that. And so I've I've taken that same outlook with YouTube. I have certain amounts of time in my day that I have dedicated to working on YouTube and other time that is dedicated to family, and other time that is dedicated to teaching. And so I do the best I can in the time that I have allotted for it. And that means I don't have time for doing a lot of editing or a lot of work on my YouTube titles and thumbnails. Uh so I don't. And um, I think I get good success that I'm happy with given the amount of time I'm putting into it. But um it's one of those things where I have a feeling it's kind of like a you can put in, uh, you know, you know, you can get like 80% of the results, uh, but then getting that last 20% of the results would be orders of magnitude more work. Where I think I've found that like, you know, I'm probably I'm getting a good um percentage of the total success that's probably, you know, could be possible. And there's more on the table, but it would be orders of magnitude multiple times more more time investment to chase that last bit. So I'm just finding a uh a happy medium that works in the amount of time that I have.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Which also sounds like it's your safeguards against burnout, but I assume you've at least experienced that once or twice where you're like, maybe, I mean, but beside, I'm not talking about the part where you kind of quit for a couple months, but I mean, since then, since you've been back, where you've been like, uh, might maybe this is too much or it's too stressful, or are these safeguards keeping that from happening?

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Yeah. So um, I think it's been adjusting those safeguards, I think is uh one of it. So, like I said, I initially posted a video every single day. Then that was like uh just a routine, like I had established I'm going to do a video every single day. And so at a certain point where I was kind of hitting that, uh, like I said, I had been chasing, trying to find out if I could establish a couple years of financial success where I could pursue doing this full time and that was feeling stressful. And then the amount of time I was dedicating to this was feeling stressful and never taking literally, like if I'm gonna take a day off, I make two videos the day before, you know, so I have something ready to post. Like that was really getting to a burnout point. So then I adjusted those boundaries of I don't need to post every day. Uh, and so that was an adjustment. Um, and so now I've kind of ballparked it to like, I'd like to post every other day, but if there's nothing super important to talk about, you know, if I go two or three days without posting a video, that is okay. Like I have allowed myself to do that. Now, I know some people are like, man, I'd love to just post a video a week or a video a month. So this has to be like whatever makes sense to you. But like, um, for me, I was every day and I just had to allow myself to like, you know what? Nobody is making that rule except for me. And I can just change the rule. And I did. So um, and yeah, and I combined that with my decision to not um to not quit teaching. Um, I just made that decision. So I was like, okay, where is my stress coming from? Uh my stress was coming from uh the unpredictability of the financials, that some of the view count is out of my control due to just things going on with my niche, uh, and the just that uh every single day uh burden. So I just released myself of all of those burdens to some extent and bought a house to reduce commute time. So this was simultaneously with okay, I'm gonna invest the money I've earned in uh buying myself back some time. I'm also going to just relieve myself of the burden of posting every single day. Uh and I'm also just gonna say, look, I'm just not going to quit my job teaching. And therefore, all of the financial stress is just gone. Completely, 100% gone. And when I made all of those decisions, my mood has improved. Great.

Getting Cited By Bigger Creators

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Um, let's wrap the wrap up here, but I do want to get to a couple quick things. Um, you're uh undeniably an authority in the space, in the PC space. I mean, larger creators who've been around for a long time are referencing you, they're talking to you, they're sometimes collabing with you. Um, talk to us a little bit about the first couple times that happened. Was that uh kind of cool, or were you just kind of uh it's like, oh, just more people to talk to? Because as a viewer, it's cool to see you uh mentioned on other channels that we watch, like uh Gamers Nexus or Harbor and Box. That's really cool from a viewer perspective, but what was it like for you?

SPEAKER_00 50:27

Yeah, I mean, uh again, a little bit weird. And I'll be a hundred percent honest. I still don't really see myself as a big hardware channel that uh is like a newsworthy thing that lots of people pay attention to. I I don't know, it's weird. Like like my mental image of my channel has really not changed since I started it. This is a fun hobby that I do in my free time. And um, especially since I've, like I said, decided not to pursue it as a full-time thing. So uh having that mental image of it, but then uh I do start seeing myself referenced on other bigger channels and uh see, you know, as I'm doing my research for uh news videos, I see articles that are using me as the source and my testing and uh and and things like that. Like it did it does hit a little bit weird. And to be a hundred percent honest, it still feels a little bit weird. And then I haven't done a lot of actual collaborations with other creators. I've been on one other podcast. I was on the Hardware Unbox podcast, and um, yeah, and uh so that was uh you know my first time kind of doing this. Is this actually the second podcast uh I I've been on here. I've been invited to another one where just the scheduling didn't work out because again, my my schedule is not uh like right now is spring break for me. That's one reason I can I can be here right now. But um uh so yeah, it it it feels uh a little bit surreal. I'm getting, I guess, a little bit more used to it, but I I I still it it's weird to balance my image of what my channel is, is a a small, tiny hobby channel that I do for fun is still literally my mental image of it. Uh, but then I am starting to encounter evidence that it has grown beyond that. And I'm still sort of, I guess, processing that. I don't know.

Honest Reviews Without Brand Fear

SPEAKER_01 52:12

Which is cool. I love to hear that. And with that responsibility comes, or with that kind of uh that uh that respect comes some responsibility. And this is where we get into the final thing. And I think it's probably the most interesting part because um as a content creator myself, and I was in a tech space as well. Reviews and stuff can be interesting because while the most amount of views come when the product first comes out, and the only way you typically get it early is if you're in a good relationship with that uh that manufacturer, there are times when the product is not good or you have to because you know your loyalty really is to your audience, give some bad news. And uh NVIDIA, who's one of the largest, uh well, they are the largest graphics creator for like video games and for AI. Um, they are a monster. If you're for people who don't can't quite understand, just think if you were like a soda channel and this is Coca-Cola, I think would probably be the best kind of way I could uh you know give you an idea. They've had a lot of controversies recently, and you have to cover them in some way, um, because it's news in your niche. But sometimes it puts a negative light on the very company that kind of help, I wouldn't say they help grow your channel, but their products help grow your channel. How do you balance the truth with burning a bridge? Because this is something that as content creators get bigger, if they're doing reviews, they have to they encounter all the time.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Yeah, I mean, fantastic question. And it's uh interesting because you see a lot of like comments on my videos, but other other videos too, where they're like, this content creator is biased towards this company or the other or whatever. And uh I've sort of looked at it as like, I guess if I'm getting uh accused by all of the different various uh fan fans of uh hating or loving all of the different companies, then maybe I'm doing uh somewhat good job of actually just giving my honest opinion and offending who it offends. Um one of the things I mentioned is that I had already grown my uh graphics card reviews, which is the only thing I really do dedicated reviews of, is the graphics cards. Um and I had already grown my review content uh considerably just buying them myself and producing content that way. And I didn't have the reviews out day one. Sometimes I was buying the graphic card months after it was already out and just producing uh content that, like I said, just picked up in search traffic and did well. So I already have evidence that I don't need to receive the product as a review sample in order to have successful review content about it. Also, I still view my channel as primarily a news channel. Um, the review aspect has grown, but it started as a news channel, and the news news topics are certainly uh less time consuming to produce. So uh I've I've thought of this as uh uh uh even just in related to like quit quitting YouTube or not kind of thing from the time perspective, like I can continue doing the news content in indefinitely. It's it's not an inordinate burden on my free time. Uh it's actually the review content that's more burdensome. So, like one option is like I could just stop reviewing it and just do news content if if there was some issue. But right now, as long as my news content produces enough income that I can buy the cards myself, and I've already proven that I can just produce a review whenever I uh uh whenever I get access to it myself through purchasing, and those still perform well. Uh, I have absolutely zero uh uh thought or worry given to is this going to stop me from getting review sample products? Um I just like I my my job is to give my honest take on this. And um, I like I said, I already had success doing that well before I was ever receiving review products from one brand or another. So um uh I'm perfectly happy to go back to doing it that way or just being a news channel. If I just really if I stopped doing the reviews, it wouldn't be a financial thing, it would just be a time commitment thing because the reviews are the real time sink on the content that I produce. Hours.

Wrap Up And Where To Find Daniel

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Hours for those who don't know. Daniel, it's been an incredible conversation. You've you've given us a lot of things to think about. And for people who have uh watched your content, maybe even pull the curtain back a little bit and kind of get to know you a little bit better, which I think is great. If you're new here and you have never heard about Daniel, and all of a sudden now you want to know more about him, there'll be links in the show notes for the audio podcast and in the description for the YouTube channel. Um, Daniel, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I'm excited to see what happens uh for your channel moving forward and how long you continue to teach, and maybe you teach your way all the way into retirement. We'll we'll have to see. That's the plan. We'll we'll all find out together. For everyone else, I got a new video for you right here. Make sure you check it out, and we'll see y'all in the next one.