TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

From $200 A Month To 32 Million Views

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We talk with Colin about building a YouTube career by turning travel into a repeatable format built on market bargaining and unpredictable human interaction. He shares the real logistics behind long-form videos, a TV-first second channel, and why authenticity plus volume of attempts beats waiting for the perfect plan.
• moving to China to teach English while starting YouTube with very little money
• publishing early travel vlogs without a niche then finding direction after 20 to 30 uploads
• breaking through with fake market videos then realising negotiation is the main hook
• handling awkwardness and ethics while haggling on camera
• filming in public across countries and learning confidence over time
• overshooting footage to protect pacing and retention when you cannot control outcomes
• editing realities including long edits and subtitling time
• building a second channel optimised for TV viewing with slower pacing and longer runtimes
• monetisation through AdSense and sponsorships plus the impact of viewer geography
• managing travel costs through low overhead living and fast travel
• recognising burnout early and staying authentic to attract the right audience
If you are new here, feel free to hit that subscribe button. Why not? And hit the like button because you know you love it.


Starting Broke And Going Viral

SPEAKER_00

I had like a thousand in the bank at the time, so not much for travel at all. My first job, I was only working like 10 hours a week, so I wasn't even making much at that job too. It was like$200 a month with free food. The biggest video I have that popped off. This lady was yelling at me at the beginning. Now that's at like 32 million views or something. I would say there there has been some months where the overall payment would match the main channel.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast. It's here to give you a great deal on some information about YouTube. I'm Travis and I'm here with an incredibly special guest today, Colin. Colin, welcome to uh the podcast today. Appreciate it. Great to be here and uh excited to get chatting today. We're gonna go over some really interesting things. Colin has one of the most interesting channels I've come across, and I I've been binging them, so I'm really excited to talk about that. But if you're new here, we are here to help you grow your YouTube channel in so many different ways. Sometimes we'll answer your questions through email. Other times we'll do things like this where we talk to Colin about things that he has experienced while growing on YouTube. If you like it that much and you're really enjoying it, hit that subscribe button if you're on YouTube. If you're listening to the audio podcast, the show notes will have all the links that you need. All right. So, Colin, tell us who the heck are you? What do you what do you do on YouTube? Tell us about you and your YouTube channels.

SPEAKER_00

I've been doing YouTube for maybe uh technically like 13 years, but I I didn't start taking it real seriously until like 10 years ago. So what I did was at that time I moved to China teaching English and just showing my experience to everybody around the world and what it's like to live in a different country. Now the channel has veered off into uh just market bargaining where I just go into the markets all around the world and bargain for goods. The people at the markets they see tourists and they try to get the most money they can out of you. So you gotta go hard with the haggling and uh yeah, it's just a fun experience. Sometimes people might think it's weird explaining it, but I just tell them to watch it and they'll probably get the idea, you know.

Moving To China To Create

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, totally. That it really your channel is one of the ones where it's like, I think I maybe get it, but when you watch it, you totally get it. But let's talk a little bit about before YouTube. So, what were you doing just before you started your YouTube channel? You said you had traveled and stuff, but like what were you? Were you a teacher? Like, what exactly were you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I was an English teacher. So I had started technically doing YouTube in my room. Uh I was doing like phone reviews. However, that wasn't like my passion. I was I was pretty good at it, I think, but I just realized what do I want to do? Because I know I want to be a YouTuber. That was like the number one thing, right? So my idea was if I go travel and experience the world, everything's brand new to me. I'll be excited to share it with you, and the ideas will just come, they just flow in because everything's new, you know.

SPEAKER_01

So, how how were you financing that though? Like what were you doing to travel? Because travel's not cheap.

SPEAKER_00

I didn't start teaching, or I didn't start traveling until I got a job teaching. So I already had a job lined up in China. Before that, I was just working odd jobs, dead-on jobs, in my opinion. Uh, before I had this grand idea to move abroad and start this YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_01

That's a big, that's a big step. Like leaving uh home. I assume you have family and friends that you were like, listen, I'm leaving literally leaving the country, starting a new life.

SPEAKER_00

Tell us about what that was like. It was pretty straightforward, actually. I just was able to sign up for or apply for a job, get my things in order, and uh, we just left. I had I had like a thousand in the bank at the time, so not much for travel at all. Um my first job, I was only working like 10 hours a week, so I was like, that's perfect to start YouTube because I get to dedicate the rest of my other part of the week to just focusing on YouTube and whatnot. So uh yeah, uh I wasn't even making much at that job, too. It was like$200 a month. How how do you live on that?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, how how what were the financials of like the first couple of months of you move for this job, but you also want to do the YouTube thing, which isn't paying much at the time. Like, how did you live?

Finding Direction After 20 Videos

SPEAKER_00

Housing was uh given to us, so we were on like a four-month contract. So I would go, we'd go live in this house with like a lot of bedrooms, I had a lot of other people, so we were all new, so we all supported each other, so that was great as well. So yeah, and on top of that, we'd get free lunch every day. But even then, I had to support myself by teaching English online just to get through. But I knew if I just did four months and get my foot in the door, get some experience, I would be able to apply for better jobs in bigger cities, and that's what happened.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, gotcha. Okay, so then after the grind of the first four months, which I assume somewhere in there you started your YouTube channel? Was it about that time?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I started I uploaded my first travel vlog like two months after I arrived there. So, like I said, I had I had content before that, but I don't really count that as starting my channel.

SPEAKER_01

And so the first couple of videos you start uploading, did you have a direction? Did you know what you wanted to do from the YouTube channel from like a niche perspective or an audience perspective, like who you were talking to, or were you just throwing stuff out because you just happened to be in a new land?

SPEAKER_00

For the first 20 or so videos, I was just throwing stuff out there because, like you said, I had no direction. I just wanted to show my experience moving to China because to me that's crazy, you know, especially back then. That wasn't really as big as it is now. Um so I would just do things that excited me. You know, we'd go to like this mountain, I'd vlog about that, you know, a typical travel vlog. And then about like 20, 20 to 30 videos in, I was started to see the direction of my channel. And I think that's very important, is because you shouldn't you shouldn't not do something because you you're not confident enough to do it, just do it, and then by the time you get 20, 30 videos in, you'll start to see the improvements and uh where your channel is directed.

SPEAKER_01

If you look back at some of those first couple of videos, uh what kind of mistakes, if any, were you making in the videos? Was it uh I mean sometimes when I talk to creators are like, well, my intro was terrible or my audio was terrible, or something like that. If you were to look back at some of those first ones, what do you think are some of the mistakes you were making?

SPEAKER_00

Video, well, I would say video length, because I was only uploading like five, seven-minute vlogs here and there, but back then that was normal, right? Yeah, um, so if I want to apply that to today, I I tend to upload longer videos, 20 minutes plus, 40 minutes plus. Um just because I feel like the audience gets more of the value out of that just in one sitting rather than just watching five minutes and moving on. Um, it's it's more of a commitment for the audience to do so. Uh as far as mistakes, maybe music, my music was too loud and some montages, so like leveling off the music, audio super important, more important than the actual video quality itself. Big tip there.

SPEAKER_01

Ten years ago, there weren't things like YouTube shorts. So this wasn't like it wasn't like you could just throw up a whole bunch of YouTube shorts and then you know, oh, that'll kind of get you popped off for a while and keep going. This was like long form only. There were live streams, of course, but it was mostly just long form stuff. And even, you know, even back then, everyone wanted to be a vlogger, and you know, there were some certainly some pretty big travel vloggers too. Were there anyone who was in was there anyone who was inspiring your type of content so that you kind of you know looked at them as like the blueprint, or were you just trying your best to make it work?

SPEAKER_00

I'd say for the most part, I was trying my best to make it work. Uh, I would get inspired randomly here and there by other people when it comes to like montage transitions or how to cut your story. Actually, thinking of it, there was a guy named uh he was on yeah, he was on YouTube, but then he ended up going to Twitch, Eric Abroad in Japan. Or his name is Eric Abroad, he was in Japan. And what I got from him is how he like formatted his video and narrated the story about what you know about what he's doing. Uh so he would use, you know, like the underscore background music. I thought that was a huge thing, you know, like the you could call it like the cartoon music or something, you know, that cheap generic music that just always playing in the background, you know, you can just hear it a little bit. I still that I still do that to this the I still do that to this day. Um I average probably 10 to 20 songs per video.

Fake Markets Become The Breakthrough

SPEAKER_01

We'll talk about the editing portion then a little bit later because that probably takes a while. We definitely do want to dig into that. Let's talk about when you first started seeing success on the channel after you started uploading, crazy. So you're you're in a new strange uh city, strange new country, really. Um you're uploading content, you're working a job. What was the first video that kind of started taking off? You're like, wait a minute, this is actually starting to work.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good question because it was very distinct. Uh my brother had come came to visit me, so I went to Shanghai to meet him in a different city, and we're just like, hmm, what kind of stuff should we make here, you know? Like uh, so I looked, top ten things to do in Shanghai. Sorry, it was my friend, my brother came later, but we still did the same thing. Top 10 things to do in Shanghai, and there was a fake market, and I'm like, fake market, like and I thought it'd be like in a sketchy back alley, but it was like this proper mall where it was just fine to go buy these fake Jordans or whatever. Uh so that was my biggest video at the time, but I kept on doing random vlogs. But then my brother came a few months later, filmed some more videos with him at the fake markets because he needed shoes and whatnot. And although every time I did a fake market, it was just like the best performing video, best performing video. So it got to a point where I'm just like, Alright, I can take this two directions. I can keep doing the random vlogs, or I can just focus on the fake market videos, fake market videos, and see how that grows my channel. And yeah, one day I was like, all right, let's do it. Just stick with the fake markets because I enjoy doing it. You know, I just want to create and have people watch. People get the value from the entertainment, right?

Why Negotiation Beats The Product

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. So that just for people who don't know, uh, that first fake market video for yours like your sixth video. And I mean, I'm sure the views were different then, but now it's uh 680,000 views, which is a ton. And then just a couple of videos later, you did it again and got millions of views again. So it obviously is an outline, even if it wasn't that many uh when you know, and it happened, obviously the time over time it gets more views. Um, you can see that something uh really interesting is happening. And in China, I mean China is known for manufacturing everything, uh both legitimate and illegitimate, right? So you have this this uh dichotomy of like you can go see the actual products being made, or you can see the things that look like the products that are being made for a lot cheaper. And there is something interesting about that. But what you've done is it's not just the fake products. So that's the first portion of it. Like you you found the part where you find fake products, and that's cool, and you could probably do that for a while. But there came a point at some point where the negotiation of price became kind of the hook. How long into this did you figure that part out?

SPEAKER_00

I thought it was all the fake stuff right away. I was like, oh, people just like the fake stuff, yeah. But it got to a point where I'm thinking of like series ideas for my channel, so I can have something more consistent. So I was like, you know, I can go to fake markets all around the world and it'll be a different story every time. And that's when I really started thinking, like, okay, it's mostly the it's mostly now just the interaction because people are it's first person point of view, people can put themselves in my shoes. Right around I started going full time, that's when I realized like the interaction because the biggest video I have that popped off, this lady was yelling at me at the beginning, and now that's at like 32 million views or something.

SPEAKER_01

Were you of the mindset like to even because for me, like uh sometimes I'm watching some of your videos and I almost feel bad for the seller, but I also understand that like they're charging more anyway, right? Like, I get it, but there's this moment of like awkwardness. Did you ever feel that when you're like filming this? You're like, Oh, I gotta try to get even a little bit less out of them. And I mean, I obviously makes for great content, but in the moment, it does it feel weird. I mean, now it probably doesn't, but did it at first?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, at first it did it's something I had to like practice, you know, just by going in and interacting. And you know, a lot of the practice it would just be like, Oh, I don't want to buy that, or I that's too much for me. I'd just start walking away, and then they come down on the price. So that was just like the easiest way to go about it at first to get used to it. Um, but yeah, nowadays it's I know they're trying to get much more out of me. I can tell when people are being fair though. So I I will give like the leeway and every everything like that. But yeah, it's just it's practice and it's a lot too, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I for anyone who's listening who haven't hasn't seen any of Khan's videos, go check them out. It's really interesting. So he'll walk into a market, and the markets in China are really interesting. Of course, you go other places too, but the markets in China are really interesting. They're kind of packed, and these are little stalls with different things. It could be electronics, it could be hair products, it could be anything, right? So then Colin walks up and uh you know, looks for something he wants to buy, maybe it's a wallet, and uh he'll ask how much it is, and then immediately they'll give a price. And it's funny because the person in the stall almost always says the same thing. This is the best price, this is a great price for you. It's a I just gave this price to someone else. It's great. Like if they they always seem to tell you that there's the best price. And um you can hear in Colin's voice, he doesn't believe it. It's like, look, I know that's not the right price, but how about this? And then he will go way lower than what they just offered. Um and then the the it's not even a battle, but the the the dance begins, the back and forth and the back and forth. Did you notice in the comment section at any point when you first started doing that that people started connecting with that specific aspect of the video? Like, uh or did you just kind of assume that maybe because that part was interesting, that like I'll just keep doing it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, a lot of the comments are mostly about the interactions, like, oh my god, that lady at five minutes 20 seconds, she would she would go crazy. I would never be able to stand up to that, you know. Uh so that's what I think that's where most of the comments are directed nowadays. Back then it was more towards like the quality of the goods because the whole concept of bargaining videos were new at the time. So and as you know, I started to realize more and more about the bargaining, the product is just a secondary thing, the interactions the main driver for it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. And and the personalities of some of these people are are interesting. I recently talked to Tommy G, who does a bunch of really interesting videos on YouTube, just crazy videos. He made accidentally a prisoner kind of famous, uh, this guy, Dudu Brown. And um, we talked a little bit about that, like how he felt about that particular instance. Has there ever been one of the sellers in your videos that people really connected with and they really just like they have a name for that person or it comes up often?

SPEAKER_00

No, because each each market is like different, so it's hard to refer back to a different video and bring it up in the comments.

SPEAKER_01

I just mean from like a personality perspective, like their interaction with you was so funny, or something that people were like, Oh, I like that lady or I like that guy or whatever.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, yeah. Um, especially in Vietnam, uh, a lot of the sellers there, they're very aggressive too, but they're they're quite humorous, more humorous than most other countries. Uh so you there you you can tell it's a game, you know. Oh there it feels more like a game rather than if I'm in let's say, I don't know, if I were if I were to go to Taiwan or something, where or a country where it's not you don't bargain as much, then that feels kind of going back to what you said, that feels kind of like am I doing this right? You know, like am I am I overstepping my bounds here? But at the end of the day, if the seller doesn't want to sell it, then it's not we're not it's a business transaction, right? It's not charity, it's just a few minutes wasted.

SPEAKER_01

Filming in public is a really interesting thing. Uh it can be difficult for people. It's easier probably now than it ever has been, mainly because uh it's more socially acceptable for people to film on their phone, it seems like even in some stores, some stores, some stores are really kind of stickety about it. Um, but back in the day, especially 10 years ago, uh phones were decent, but you would probably still want to have like some type of action camera or something. And people can get uptight about that. What is the process uh in other countries? What is that like? Do people care that you're filming? Do they know? Do they ask? Do you ask them in advance that you're gonna do this? Like, what's the setup for that?

SPEAKER_00

Even when I was starting and uh back in 2015, that was like a big thing of mine. But I was like, well, they're just gonna look at me as the crazy foreigner anyway, the crazy American. So it doesn't matter. I would be filming on a DSLR with a glide cam. So even back then I had yeah, it was huge with the mic on top and everything. Yeah, that's crazy. I was like, oh yeah, it doesn't matter how I look, because they're just gonna look at me weird anyway, you know? Or like I'm crazy.

SPEAKER_01

And everyone was accepting of it, like they were fine?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, uh, yeah, because uh in a lot of the countries, you know, they got cameras everywhere. So, like, I mean, if you go to Beijing, it's on every single street corner, you know. So people are used to being filmed, I guess you can say. Um, but yeah, I when I went to Hong Kong, when I first went to Hong Kong, that holy crap moment of oh, people can now understand me in public. I got you know, I got you get kind of nervous realizing people can understand what you're saying. So then that's when I started, you know, uh getting better and better at filming in public. However, uh I think that initial practice in China was great.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for the pe the people who don't know, Hong Kong has a large portion of people who actually can speak English. There's uh it's actually pretty common. Whereas you can be in other um other countries and English isn't necessarily uh even a secondary language, or or if even if it is, not as many people speak it. But in Hong Kong, uh for various reasons in their history, uh, has always had an English-speaking base. Um what were some of the things that you learned if you know from the beginning of doing this YouTube channel as a again, the thing that makes it interesting about this channel is while it is about you and stuff, it's more about the interaction. So it really very much hangs on other people that you have no control over. It's not like beforehand you can go over a script and say, make this interesting. We gotta like whatever happens, happens. Which means you can spend all day trying to get five minutes of good footage and it might not happen. Talk to us about that process and what you've learned and how you stack the deck stack the deck in your favorite at the very least.

SPEAKER_00

At the end of the day, just the more interactions I have, you know, the more I have to choose from, right? Uh so like so now I always overshoot. I always have extra bargains that won't fit the video just for like lengthwise or whatever, or like, you know, pacing and format. So I always overshoot now. Uh there's been times in the past where it's like, I could have used like five more minutes, you know. I could have got like, you know, but yeah. So and like you said, it's I don't control the situation. I'm just going through these markets trying to buy things, you know, and I think that's part of the appeal as well, is like it's not you don't know what's gonna happen.

Overshooting And The 100 Hour Edit

SPEAKER_01

Uh well your videos are all about 20 something minutes. I mean sometimes you go longer, which how long of a day is that to shoot?

SPEAKER_00

So bargaining I can get probably done in an hour if I really hammered. Yeah. But you know, after a couple bargains, I have to take a rest to kind of like catch back up because you know, um take a drink of water or whatnot. But uh I could I could probably knock out a video if I wanted to in like six hours, but a lot of that goes with having to figure out what I want to talk about along the way. So I'm taking lots of lots and lots of breaks. Uh figuring out my B-roll and my montages and like what kind of like cool because I get a I do a lot of pride in that. Um so that probably takes the most is because I need to have the montages, so I very overshoot for that. So but typically I'll go to the markets, it might be a couple day process, just so I get things sorted.

SPEAKER_01

And then the edit takes how long?

SPEAKER_00

Uh anywhere from I've had anywhere from like a 30-40 hours all the way up to like a hundred hours.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but the a hundred hours of video is for like an actual hour and twenty-minute long video. So like a movie, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, because then I get done. Oh sorry, I get done with the video edit, and then subtitling takes another seven to ten hours. Oh, it's like I'm double, you know, it's like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because you actually speak uh what what languages do you speak? Uh little Chinese. Little Chinese? Is it Mandarin or yeah, Mandarin? Mandarin. So um, because there's different there's different um dialects in China. So did you speak uh Mandarin before you moved there?

SPEAKER_00

No. Oh, so you actually learned it like and and you know what? After being because I've been to like I think 40 countries now, I started in the hardest probably place of all the countries I went to that I could have. Because most places if people I can get by with English, right? So but back then even it was like nobody really spoke English, so it was Google Translate all the time.

Building A TV First Second Channel

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that that's the other part of it. So a lot of your editing has to be translated, at least parts of it. Um some people can speak uh a little bit of English, but um, there's gonna be times where you might go back and forth for about small things in a different language, so you have to kind of translate that. Although YouTube now has like these auto-translate things that they can add to videos. I don't know what your experience has been with that. But I also noticed that on your you have multiple channels. I do want to talk about that strategy and when you started to do that. But on your quote, main channel, um, you know, you don't it's not like you upload you upload every month uh long-form content, like you have shorts and stuff, but you don't really upload that often on that channel. Talk to us about when that started happening, why you do that, and why there's other channels.

SPEAKER_00

Going back to why I wanted to travel is because ideas would come to me. And I think it's one of the probably the top niche where you don't really have to think too much about what you want to do. Like it's the easiest for ideas, but I think it's the biggest barrier of entry because you have to actually get up and go to a new country and film. So there's there's a trade off there. Uh so I have I have so many ideas written down I can't even do them all because it would just not be possible because so because of that though, and because I was I started out doing regular vlogging, I was like, let's do a second channel, take these ideas. Like I went to all the animal cafes in Tokyo, that was A fun time. Hit up every single one or every single unique animal cafe. And but for that channel, I try to aim for TV viewership. So I like to optimize for TV, film in 4K, 50 frames, 60 frames per second. Slow it down because my my main channel is a lot, you know, quicker and everything. I don't use any music. I don't use any too many jump cuts or anything like that because the TV viewership is going to be a slower viewership. People are on their phones, but they'll just keep it on, you know, just to have it in the background. So um so it was a mix of that. The ideas and wanting more TV time, I guess you could say it.

SPEAKER_01

I think you're one of you're one of the first people I've talked to that have acknowledged. I mean, I always talk to creators and we talk we talk about TV because it's growing, it is getting bigger, but that started a channel with TV in mind from the beginning. That is awesome. Uh awesome. Has it worked out in in that way as far as like devices and stuff?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I would say the only two bombs on that channel, meaning they didn't do as well as I thought they would. Um one was a short, shorter video, so I can understand why that didn't get pushed to the TV. Uh, but the old yeah, the only two bombs just didn't get it majority TV. So I if I can get like 50 to 80% TV, then it's it all these videos that have done well, in my opinion, on my channel, were all 50 to 80% TV time.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, that's high. 80% television watchers is crazy. So talk to me about how you because I I've talked about this in the past, and the the strategy is um for for a lot of people it it's one way, but you started to describe a little bit. But since you actually have a what I would consider a successful TV channel, um that sounds funny to say TV channel. Yeah. Um what does that look like in the edit, the preparation, the shooting? You said a little bit about like taking it slower and stuff, but can we dive into a little bit of detail as to that? And then also tell us what like a typical retention looks like over the course of time.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Uh yeah, so the if you want, yeah, so if I have this idea, like like I said with the Japanese uh animal cafes, I'll go with the like I'll obviously map it out. So this channel I actually get to plan things rather than just be chaotic in the markets. Yeah, so that's a nice trade-off, too. Um, so I'll just map it out and I'll walk down the street with my camera, and I I get interactions with people with my camera. Just because they see the camera, they come up and interact with you, those unexpected moments are always awesome. Because I'm aiming for TV time. I think for my opinion, mini minimum of 40 minutes. Like wow. Because if I I just think if I'm sitting down to watch something on the TV, I want it to be at least more than 30 minutes. You know, yeah, yeah. Like I want to like watch a good long video. So that plays a big part into it as well. So um, so if I don't hit 40 minutes with the topic, because I'll give them the topic straight away. You know, some you'll see some vlogs where the topic's at the end of the video. They just vlog for like 20 minutes and then the last five minutes are the topic of the packaging, the thumbnail, the title. Uh, I give that right away. So people don't want to click off right away. Plus they're on TV and it's hard to navigate the the controls. So if I can get them, or if I can make the topic of the video to 20 minutes, then I'll do other things that are totally unrelated to the topic of the video that I think are cool and fun to explore for the next 20-30 minutes. My hopes is that by the time they watch the topic of the video, the thing that they clicked on, that they like me enough to continue watching the rest, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so that obviously, the more the more people you have watching, or the more watch time you have on a video, the more likely it is to do well. So yeah, like I would say I would at least hit 20 minutes of video.

SPEAKER_01

What's the view duration look like on most of those videos? Like what are what your average?

SPEAKER_00

Like, oh sorry, yeah. The view view duration is about like 20 minutes, probably. Depending on the length. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That's great. So that definitely so did that channel grow fairly fast compared to your original, or did it take time as well?

SPEAKER_00

Because I'm I'm focusing still on the main channel as well. I haven't been able to produce as much content as I'd like, because starting a new channel, figuring out the format and everything takes time. You gotta find your style within this channel. So that took a little bit to find. I feel like I found it. Um sorry, what was the question?

SPEAKER_01

The growth of it. Like the are you like is it did it grow faster than because I'm looking at if this is the um this is the one with 42,000 subscribers, right?

SPEAKER_00

Correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I mean I'm looking at these view counts, and they're crazy. Like this last one you did is 347,000 views, which doesn't even make sense for a channel that's 42,000 subscribers. Like to me, I look at this and I go, you are crushing it on this channel. Yeah, but yeah, you you obviously are not able to upload as often. Does it make from a perspective of money? Uh does this one make more money per view than maybe your main channel? In other words, like RPM, is it higher?

SPEAKER_00

I haven't actually paid attention to much of that. Uh I would say there there has been some months where the overall payment would match the main channel. Wow. Yeah, so it would be like one to one.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, the main channel, for those who don't know, is 1.53 million subscribers, and you're talking about a 42,000 subscriber channel. And and from the outside looking in, you're like, that can't be possible. But it does make sense because those videos are really long and with a lot of ads in them, potentially could be good. Is your viewership? Here's one thing that does uh as far as AdSense goes, um, really affects that. Is where are your viewers coming from? What country are they coming from? Are both channels, are they the same or are they different?

SPEAKER_00

They're the same. So United States, Canada, UK in that order, or maybe United States, UK, Canada. But either way, it's dominated, it's US dominated. Uh 30, 40% maybe.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's kind of hard sometimes when you're uploading from another country. I've noticed that a lot of uh content creators um are having problems where the country that they upload in is typically their top viewership, and it's not necessarily what they want, especially if they're in like uh you know a country that doesn't have like high RPMs. So I think maybe it's because of the way that you're approaching each video and the way that you're packaging it, and it's obviously uh a foreigner's perspective of that country rather than being like a native person in that country, which might only get viewership there. Does that seem true to you?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. Uh in our in our little creator network, you know, the other you uh YouTube travelers I talked to, uh we we call that the trap. So if you go to say, like the Philippines, you can go really quickly, right? You can. Filipino content is heavily oh, it's so so popular. But Americans first time trying this, Americans first time trying that. That does extremely well, but as soon as you leave, since your viewership was mostly people from that country, they they don't care anymore, you know. So the way I kind of look at my main channel is travel doesn't even come first. Like travel is just like just a new idea or a new spot I can go to to film the main idea, which is bargaining in the markets. So I think that helps too as well.

Money Mix Sponsors And Audience Geography

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, that's that's awesome. So, how how does the overall empire work as far as like financials? Is it mostly AdSense? Is it some sponsorship? Is it affiliates? Like, how are you keeping this going as like a full-time gig?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's mostly AdSense uh sponsorships, and that's about it. I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_01

What kind of sponsorships would you get on a channel? I'm just curious, what kind of sponsorships are you getting for stuff like this?

SPEAKER_00

Uh like I've gotten VPN sponsorships, which work really hand in hand. Uh yeah. Because obviously I'm traveling, you know. Um what else have I got? Like uh Dollar Shave Club. Like you know, like the typical ones you see on YouTube, right?

SPEAKER_01

Of course.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I do get some crazy requests. Like I think a a Chinese supplier wanted to have me sponsor fake eyelashes. I'm like, I don't even think you watched my channel. You're just nasty.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a long time ago in my old channel, I got something from like uh uh maternity clothes or something. I'm like, bro, I don't know if you've been watching my channel, but I am neither pregnant nor a woman, so I don't know how that's gonna work. But thank you for offering. Sometimes you gotta think like some they're just wasting their time. They're really just they're just shotgunning it out. Um, so when you're buying all these things, I can't imagine that you're keeping all of them. What do you do with all these things you buy?

SPEAKER_00

So, yeah, uh when I first started doing it, it was for things that like I wanted or I thought was cool, you know. Um now it's just more on request of what people want to see, or maybe if I spot something unique that I haven't seen before. But yeah, I can't travel with it all. Uh so now I just give it out to random people. Like if I know somebody in the area, I'll be like, hey, I got all this stuff. You can literally come over and just grab anything for free. I don't care, I don't need it, I just need it gone. You know, um sometimes I'll try to give it to whole hotel staff, and they're they have no idea why I'm doing this. Like when I just left Indonesia a few months ago, I gave away like a Louis V leather bag with like watches and shoes inside it because it's like I just need this gone, you know? Yeah, I just but I'll that doesn't mean I don't keep some stuff. I do shop for myself here and there, but for to keep it going, I how much stuff do I want? You know, like a new wallet every once in a while is cool, but yeah, I saw the one of the wallet ones you did.

SPEAKER_01

I'm like, oh, that's a pretty cool wallet. What so what happens here with like I mean, AdSense is weird. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. And it's not like you're uploading every day or every week. How are you balancing that with every the projects you're doing and making sure that you have income to live a life? You know what I mean? It seems and is it just cheaper where you live? Does that make it easier for you?

SPEAKER_00

That's a huge, yeah, definitely 100%. That's a huge uh thing is because like I I stay mostly in Asia, so like you can get a three-bedroom apartment in China for like in a high rise for like I don't know, 500 a month, 400 a month. Whoa. Oh, that's crazy good. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So when my second city that I moved to with my friend while I was teaching English, um we found a six-bedroom, two-story apartment for 500 a month.

unknown

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

I think I might need to be able to do that. That was way too many rooms we did not need because they just sat and collected dust. But also that brings into consideration the city too as well. So that was at the time called uh it's classified as a tier three city in China. Still a big city, 11 million people. But if you go to like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, then the prices will be more Western for sure. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01

So you stay in kind of the what where would you say that you stay generally speaking?

Fast Travel Costs And Minimal Living

SPEAKER_00

Uh like a tier three, tier two, like what it I go through phases of wanting to base out of somewhere and wanting to just fast travel. So right now I'm just fast traveling. Uh what does that mean?

SPEAKER_01

What does fast traveling mean?

SPEAKER_00

Like not having a home base. Okay. So if I get a home base in China and then travel from there, I can always go back to that apartment, you know? Yeah. Uh fast travel for me. Otherwise, my definition is yeah, you don't have a home base, you just jump jump hotel, Airbnb, hotel, hotel, whatever.

SPEAKER_01

So then you don't have very many like personal own belongings? Is it mostly just clothes and stuff, or do you have stuff, but it's like stored somewhere? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00

It's mostly camera gear. Like my carry-on backpack is like 50 pounds worth of camera gear. Yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah, the clothes, I don't I don't really have uh much of a changing of a wardrobe because I like just you know, I have a ton of these black shirts, you know, a ton of black shorts with zippers, just because that's like the most comfortable to travel in, and that's kind of became the uniform for my YouTube channel anyway. Of course. Um so I won't I like I'll have like a pair of jeans and like a dress shirt to like look nice, but other than that, yeah, it's just mostly camera gear.

SPEAKER_01

So then what would your your overall like expenses be for a month? Like what would be an average month for your expenses? You have about$500 ish for like living expenses for a month-ish, and then like food and stuff. What would you if you had to like guess how much you spend on living and everything for a month, how much would that be?

SPEAKER_00

It's it's funny because I essentially I pay rent by the night instead of by the month. Okay. If I'm all right going to hotels and stuff. Sure. So it's like some nights you just wanna, you know, because there's one thing about travel is there's always a sense of slight discomfort because you're always you're worrying about visas and you know, you're on the move and everything, you're interacting with new people and it's just experiencing new countries, right? So there's always a slight sense of discomfort. So uh yeah, some some nights I'll splurge and get a nice hotel for like a week and then go back to like a cheaper Airbnb. So I think for expenses, yeah, you could do like 2,000, 2500 with flights and stuff, or trains, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01

So that's all include that's really inexpensive if you think about it. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

You could do that. Some some months I've gone to 5,000 though, because like I said, you're switching it up every night.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's a lot of people's like expense period, like for their every month thing in the States, anyway. Yeah. So and then you obviously can bring in more than that, even if you only upload uh, you know, every so often on different channels and stuff, just because someone can blow up and then we have that back catalog that's evergreen, which is really important. Having an evergreen channel can really make a difference between how often you have to upload. What would you say your cadence has to be in order to keep your kind of view baseline going? Because for someone who does news, it's like almost every day because your views drop immediately as soon as the news is over. But something that's evergreen can kind of sit there for a couple days or weeks even.

SPEAKER_00

So, as you've mentioned earlier, I haven't uploaded on the main channel as consistently as I used to. One in part is figuring out the second channel, wanting to get that off the ground. But now it's now because I haven't uploaded for a couple months, uh my ideal my ideal upload schedule would be like three to every three to five weeks, so like a month. Uh once a month for the main channel, once a month for the second channel, and then you know fill my time in between that with shorts and also I have a VR channel too. That's I love VR. Yeah. So I have a travel VR channel. I film it with a Canon 8K camera, it's got a dual fisheye lens, it's pretty cool. That's I might have to check that out. Yeah, it's on my channel page if you want to check it. Yeah, yeah. I will, I will. It when I first saw it, like because it's not like how do I explain this? Like you see the curvature of the person in front of you, it's not like a flat image. So it's like they're right there in front of you. Yeah. So give it a go.

Burnout Authenticity And Final Advice

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna check that out. I got my it's charging right now, as a matter of fact. Perfect. Uh so a couple of a few things. I guess I just want to finish up by asking just a couple of things. Number one, if you take all of your years on YouTube, because you've been on YouTube for a long time, over a decade is is, I mean, you've been through it. Um, can you tell us like the big thing you've learned that you think new creators need to know? And uh I'm also curious, did you ever have time where you were kind of burnt out and you were like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore? Because every creator I've talked to, no matter how successful they are, have all had that moment. Did you experience that at all?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I've experienced I don't think I went as far as I don't want to do this anymore, because that's all I've honestly ever wanted to do, even in like high school. Like I'll do PowerPoint projects and have the best PowerPoint project in class, you know. Like uh and I would always do like video projects for my friends, you know, because they needed like somebody to be in the video, right? Yeah, so it's something that I've grew up doing and I've always wanted to do, so it's I don't think there's ever gonna be a point where it's like, oh, I just want to quit content creation at all. But there are points, especially when traveling, that you do get burnt out, and you you gotta I think the important thing about burnout is you gotta recognize it. Because if you don't recognize it, then it's just gonna prolong, you know? Recognize it, just be aware of it and say this isn't right, and then you know treat yourself well on however you get out of that burnout.

SPEAKER_01

What was the the big thing, the big takeaway for your last 10 years, if you had to tell someone who's just starting their YouTube channel today that they need to be aware of going into making YouTube, maybe something to keep in mind?

SPEAKER_00

I think this might be a simple, obvious one, but I think it's very often overlooked, and especially for new creators, it's being your authentic self, even if you think that might feel cringe, um, unless you're unless you're like a sketch comic or something, uh play people can see if you're playing something else that you're really not. And I truly believe that there is an audience out there for everybody, because people will relate to you. Like there are how many different arch types of personalities in the world do we have? You know what I'm saying? Like, people will relate to you, they they just need to find you, or YouTube needs to find that audience to you know, to show them, whatever. Um might be obvious, but that's like probably the biggest thing. And then uh, like I mentioned earlier, if you don't know how to start, just start because it nobody's gonna, unless you get lucky, nobody's really gonna watch your first few videos anyway. But once you start to have a library of content, like I said, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 videos out, then you can really see the shape of your channel, and then you can adjust from there. And by then you'll have so much practice that you'll have so much more confidence going forward as well. Colin A Broadcast, crazy cool channel.

SPEAKER_01

I highly recommend you check it out. If you're watching on YouTube, there'll be a link in the description. Of course, if you listen to audio podcasts, there'll be links in the show notes there. I'll also take you directly to the video version of this interview. Definitely should check that out as well, have some b-roll from some of its uh this channel in here. Thank you so much, Colin, for joining us. Hey, uh appreciate it. If you are new here, feel free to hit that subscribe button. Why not? And hit the like button because you know you love it. If you're all the way at this point, you definitely love the interview. Make sure you check it out. Yeah, definitely subscribe. Uh actually, I have a great video for you if you want to watch it right here, and I'll see y'all in the next one. All right, well.