TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Faceless Channels, Demonetization, And The New Rules

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We talk through what’s changing on YouTube right now, from thumbnail copying to the wave of “inauthentic content” demonetizations hitting faceless and animated channels. We share what we’ve seen actually work, how to think about originality, and how to build a shorts business without getting treated like slop. 

• Where “thumbnail bending” becomes thumbnail theft and how to adapt formats ethically 
• Why demonetization appeals fail fast and how human review changes outcomes 
• Going public on X to break through AI appeal loops 
• How a shorts portfolio channel hits $30K months and what profit really looks like 
• Monetizing shorts across TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook programs, and Spotify 
• Practical ways to start with no money including investors or AI workflows 
• A shadowban-style experiment and what “zero views jail” looks like 
• Trust signals like Gmail history, separating channels, and advanced verification 
• Answering listener questions on delayed distribution, subscriber notifications, and creator comparison 
• Why A/B thumbnail testing feels muddy and how Gemini inside YouTube Studio can help 




Slop Vs The YouTube Economy

SPEAKER_03

In short form, it's not the follower that we monetize, it's the piece of content. As long as YouTube treats you as slop, you have absolutely no chance in the current YouTube economy. So the answer is don't be slop. You never get into the algorithm by thinking about what to post or by creating thumbnails or by writing scripts. You only get into the algorithm by clicking the post button.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that has more guests and co-hosts than we have regular hosts. I'm Travis, as always, and I got a really special episode for you today. I know some of you have been asking to answer the questions you've been emailing, and this will be that episode, but we also have some really cool things to go over today. And I'm joined with a friend, a companion, Rob Wilson. Welcome back to the podcast. I know you've been wanting to come back, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Hey, Travis, how are you? Was anybody asking for the return of me, or was it just for you to answer some YouTube questions?

SPEAKER_01

I will not answer that question. And we have another guest. I'm super excited to bring back Tim Danilov. Uh, Tim, it's so good to see you. Thank you for coming back.

SPEAKER_03

Of course. Thank you for having me. I'm sure that people have been asking.

Thumbnail Bending And Where It Crosses

SPEAKER_01

Yes, exactly. After that first episode, that's actually true. That's actually true. Uh, in that episode, people were asking. So if you're new here, we're here to help you grow your YouTube channel in so many different ways. Sometimes I'll interview content creators all over the place. And sometimes episodes like this will answer your questions and also dive into things that are going on on YouTube. And man, is it an interesting time on YouTube right now with the inauthentic uh demonetizations we're seeing on uh faceless channels and everything else? Uh, I wanted to have uh Rob and Tim kind of talk about a lot of this stuff, mainly because the last time Tim was on, we talked about faceless channels and and how um they are exploding, and they still are, I think. Um, but we're seeing a lot of things uh regarding like demonetization and stuff. So we're definitely gonna talk about that. It's been a hot topic. But before we get into that, there was a uh our tweet that Tim had recently, which I thought was really interesting um because uh Tim has coined the Ferry's uh niche bending uh months ago, which is kind of a concept that's been around, but it's finally got a name behind it so you can kind of understand what's going on, and then started talking about like thumbnail bending as kind of a joke. So I'm gonna share my screen real quick to show you exactly this tweet that he sent and who responded to it, which I think is really interesting. So here's the tweet uh thumbnail bending. So you can see on the, and if you're listening to the audio podcast, you definitely don't need to watch a YouTube video for this. Um we have Mr. Beast thumbnail on the left hand side, and then on the right hand side you have an exact replica of this thumbnail by another content creator, and the only thing they did is they removed Mr. Beast from the image and then put uh like a red uh character in there. Like they just changed one aspect of it and changed it. And of course, Tim says, Thumbnail bending, no joke though, taking a thumbnail format from the best creators and applying it to Faceless Space is by far the strategy beyond the best track record. Now we've seen this before where you look for a thumbnail that works and then try to put your own spin on it. But this one is weird. This one looks like straight up theft. And Mr. Beast replied to Tim, which is crazy. And he says, Did they literally just swap me on my thumbnail for a red guy and get 1.8 million views? What the hell? So, Tim, tell us about when you found this, when you posted this, and when Mr. Beast replied what you were thinking.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so um obviously this one is an obvious steal. I don't recommend anyone do that because uh it's just uh way too close to the original. And uh the whole concept of niche bending, thumbnail bending, whatever you want to ban on YouTube, make sure that you're changing the key aspect of it. Uh, not like in this case when you're changing a character, literally just making him faceless and thinking that it's enough, but uh you have to change it enough so it's still your original uh piece of content. Uh I hope that these guys are fine because uh you don't want Mr. Beast to be angry uh on you on YouTube. Uh but uh yeah, they did get a lot of views. I think by now it's more than two million in five days, which is again incredible success for them. But uh obviously that's not how uh you should bend uh thumbnails.

SPEAKER_02

Just to uh uh establish some things uh in the sense that the original Mr. Beast thumbnail was heavily edited itself, like you have to appreciate that it wasn't just a uh classic picture, it was treated through Photoshop, looks very different. So, you know, you know, if we if we think about how thumbnails were made five years ago, that might be described as an AI generated thumbnail and it was manipulated so much. And then the uh one that quote unquote has has bent into their own content. Can we just check, uh Tim? What sort of outlier is it turning into for that channel? Uh because you said two million views, but like how big is a channel?

SPEAKER_03

I I I think it's uh like 10x outlier for them easily. So I think they're averaging about like 800 million views. So getting two mil in like five days, it's absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_02

And then the other, I guess, interesting aspects of this is that the the thumbnail itself, when you think about the context of the title, there is a bit of a mishmash there, isn't there, Travis? Because like I think the title talks about uh airlines, and the thumbnail just has like a golden hotel in the background. So this feels a lot like the thumbnail just designed to stop the scroll, uh, have it be visually um almost like a Pavlovian signal in the person's brain that this is a Mr. Beast thumbnail. Oh no, it isn't actually, but now I'm intrigued enough that I've stopped scrolling and now I want to click on on the thumbnail itself.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's strange, it's strange because to me the thumbnail doesn't have really anything to do, almost anything to do with what you would think the video is. And it makes me wonder how can this work in other niches that you know where it's not an exact match for the the content, but because the thumbnail is so interesting that it actually stops the scrolling and gets people to click, I'm super interested in this. Um, again, there is like a gray line, and I think like there is a there is a portion where you have to think to yourself as a creator, um, you know, if you created that thumbnail, how would you feel if someone else took it? And I don't know. Um I I miss I think Mr. Beast is at a a point where he's like, he kind of expects it probably. I think he's just a little shocked that the channel got that many views. I don't know whether he cares that they took his thumbnail or not, but uh, I think as a smaller creator, you would definitely care, I would think. Um I want to talk a little bit about uh another thumbnail that uh we came up with Tim. We're not calling you out on anything, to be clear. I'm actually curious. I am okay. Well, Rob is, but I'm super curious about let me show you something. Um, so here's a thumbnail that um Rob did about a month ago about uh go ahead.

SPEAKER_02

Let me just go through the time, but let me just go through the timeline here.

SPEAKER_03

All right, okay, I'm in for our for our podcast. I just released this video two days ago.

SPEAKER_02

So about a year ago, I bought a 3D printer. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna be able to create some interesting, unique items to have in the thumbnails. And I've used them every once in a while, but obviously this demonetization imminent authentic content um topic came along. So I just thought I'd do something super simple. 3D print a big red uh YouTube icon and then have my finger pointing to it. Make the thumbnail like this is like all real, like none of it is generated or anything. Cool. Then two weeks later, there was a channel called Tricked Entertained who did a very, very similar thumbnail to this that we're showing on screen now, but it was more cartoonized to fit the creator's content. And now it is all of a sudden it's become not AI generated, but it's graphically generated. Okay, cool. I think there's been a few more creators who've used similar thumbnails. And then Travis shows me Tim with a similar uh sad face. But now the 3D printed icon, it looks actually like a US dollar bill. It looks it looks good, it looks better than my original, isn't it? So Tim, uh thumbnail bending or thumbnail theft.

SPEAKER_03

You decide. Uh in this case, absolutely, like all credit goes to you. I just stole the thumbnail. But uh the whole reason the whole reason behind it was actually way funnier because Strict Entertain is a good friend of mine and uh actually a client of mine as well. So uh there was a funny story uh in our DMs. If you want, I can send you the screen. I would love to hear it. Like, yeah, just put it on the screen because uh I like when he got demonetized, we actually talked and I told him, like, look, let's let's put out a video about this on YouTube, and then we'll try to get some attention and uh hopefully we get the channel back. Spoiler, we did. So this video helped a lot, and the channel is now back uh and the monetization is reinstored. Uh, but uh basically uh he was like, I don't know what to put on a thumbnail, and I was like, just put anything, doesn't really matter. And then he sends me his thumbnail and your thumbnail as well, Rob, and he says, thumbnail bending. So this is the first time it's not me who who said it, thumbnail bending, like it's it was actually him joking about me adding bending to anything, like niche bending, script bending, but we never talked about thumbnail bending. So he sends me this.

SPEAKER_02

Well I can take credit for the inspiration. I inspired thumbnail bending, everybody. That's Rob Wilson. I'm not saying I'm not hearing anyone deny this.

SPEAKER_03

Thumbnail bending is yours for sure. So Mr. B should be mad at you, huh? Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. We don't want that.

SPEAKER_02

This is purely for the uh YouTube uh audience.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and then I was like, okay, cool. If uh if tripped into the kitane like went crazy viral with this thumbnail, I should just make my own spin and it just works. So uh yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01

I want to know I want to know more about the demomitation story. I'm sorry, Rob. I really want to hear about this demonitation story because a lot of people get hit with this and they don't know how to fix it. And you said you fix it. I I want to hit that before Rob uh gets into his question.

SPEAKER_03

Unlucky for me, I'm running a portfolio of channels uh that are just getting absolutely wiped out from the platform right now. 2D and 3D animated channels, in my opinion, with my data, got uh hit the most. And uh obviously uh most of the time they're wrongfully demonetized because the inauthentic content uh claim is basically uh saying that look, guys, you are stealing content, you are inauthentic, you're not doing anything original on the platform while all of those creators are actually spending thousands of dollars making those videos uh by hand, animating every little detail. Um, I think the cause of that is that uh it looks very similar to the algorithm, to Gemini, obviously, that is now running the whole YouTube algorithm. Uh, this type of content looks pretty similar to AI. It's almost indistinguishable with how you know fast AI develops. And this is why most of those channels get wrongfully demonetized. Um, in my opinion, none of it should happen to 3D animated faceless or 2D animated faceless YouTube channels. And this is why uh two of my close uh friends and two of my clients as well, uh, they got demonetized first. Uh, within one week or two weeks, we were able to get them back by getting the human review. So as long as it's AI who reviews your appeal, or as long as it's AI who decides whether to hit you with that or not, uh you're gonna get hit and you're gonna get denied. But once you get the human on that, most of the time they reinstore the monetization and uh they give you the monetization back because 100% you should be monetized on the platform. You're bringing value, you're creating something original, you're creating something new, you have a whole team behind it. And uh this is how like by proving that we most of the time get the monetization back. Um, but yeah, tough times, definitely.

SPEAKER_02

Uh Tim, I have been seeing uh because there's been all you need to do at the moment is search demonetization on YouTube, and you just get a raft of videos like every 24 hours. I've been seeing some people who have uh submitted with like their video appeals, like showing the production behind it. And they they still seem to be getting rejected and sometimes with almost instant responses as if AI has checked it again. Uh I like again, I I I that's to the best of my knowledge what's going on. Like, do you have any further insight into that, or is it you just as flummoxed as as we are?

SPEAKER_03

Most of the time you get rejected within a few hours because again, it's AI reviewing the uh AI decision, and uh AI just confirms AI, like robots are conquering the uh the world. Uh it's actually it it sucks that uh there's no real way for you to get a human review without going public. So, in our cases, uh what really worked is going public on uh Twitter, because uh obviously YouTube like cares about its reputation, and the moment there's uh like thousands of people commenting and tagging team YouTube and uh asking for a human review on a specific channel, uh, most of the time they're kind of forced by their SOPs and guidelines to actually look into this. Uh, because if it goes too viral, then you know someone is gonna get fired. So they don't want to do that. Uh and uh uh like one of my clients got their monetization back uh within a week after uh the appeal was rejected. And actually, Team YouTube commented under their tweet because uh he he didn't have any audience. Uh it was like one or two likes. Team YouTube replied, like, uh, no, I'm sorry, like we're sorry, we cannot get your monetization back. Then I came along with my audience, I retweeted, I reshared it, and uh in 24 hours they got the monetization back without saying anything because they saw that like a big audience is now supporting this, and uh uh this tweet is now going viral. So I think that this uh helped a lot. Uh with Chicken Tane, the channel that we talked about, it was a little bit harder. And uh uh Oli had to, I think Oli even posted a good threat about uh how he got his channel back. Besides because besides just posting a video on YouTube, besides posting uh videos and multiple tweets on uh on X, uh, he also started emailing YouTube asking for um, I don't remember the exact terms, but uh there's uh some part of the law that forces YouTube to mention the exact pieces of content that uh you know uh cause the decision that the channel was demonetized. And uh he started pointing that out, and uh that's when YouTube just was just like, okay, cool, sorry, we made the mistake, here's your monetization back. So it seems like there's multiple AI walls between you and the real human review. And if you're able to go you know through the walls and you get uh get the human review, if you actually deserve your monetization, you're gonna get it back. If you're reusing someone else's content or if you're doing you know complete AI slop, then no matter what you do, you're not gonna get monetized. That's just the current YouTube policy. So as long as you're original, uh there is hope, and uh obviously try to get yourself in a uh community of like friends around you who can help you and support your uh tweets because so far Axe and previously Twitter uh is probably the best place to get those human reviews.

SPEAKER_02

Have you ever heard of the term Tim, jumped the shark? No. No, no, I I that that's cool, right? I'm dating myself. Like with some people are gonna know what I mean here, and the complete set of the audiences isn't gonna have a clue. But YouTubers jumped the shark in terms of you have to when you get when you get demonetized, you have to go viral to get demonetized. To to get enough of a groundswell of audience to to root for you and to get YouTube's attention. And that just sucks, doesn't it? Like this is this is the w the worst of AI that we're going through right now, and hopefully, YouTube will fix it.

Building A Shorts Portfolio Business

SPEAKER_01

Uh let's talk a little bit about so that's that's really cool that you were able to help that uh creator, but the problem is there were someone you knew and you had an audience to help do that. So there's not really a fix right now. It's it sucks to say that. But um, I know that people click this video to try to figure out like, well, what do I do? The best thing you can actually do is to tweet at a team YouTube on Twitter. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it's certainly a better line of quote defense than going through the existing process because that doesn't seem to work. If you don't have a Twitter, you can sign up, it's free. Uh go to axe.com and uh it's pretty simple. Um but other than that, um, that's kind of where we are. Tim was able to do it a couple times. So I I'm really curious as to what you think about this, um Rob. When when Tim posts stuff like this, because I I get jealous. Um, it says a portfolio channel finally crossed the$30,000 a month mark. Uh I look at this and I'm like, I need to borrow a dollar, Tim. We're friends, right? You can you can lend me a dollar. Uh what do you think when you see stuff like this, uh Rob?

SPEAKER_02

It tells me that the creator economy and YouTube itself has kind of been fully realized as now a money uh making enterprise, uh, which is incredible for those it's kind of like a blurred line here, creatorslash entrepreneurs who have this mindset of how to uh create uh uh like a a business portfolio or or an empire, as opposed to like five, ten years ago, when it felt more weighted towards the the individual who just had something that they wanted to share on YouTube and create a community out of it, and the turn it into a career was almost like a byproduct. And I I feel this type of um stuff that I see, it does honestly make me feel like a complete dinosaur. Like I I I would not know how to do this myself. Uh I don't know if I have the the energy or the mental capacity to to to try and replicate myself. Um and do I like uh what this is doing to a platform? It's it's a tricky one to answer without getting really kind of biased or emotional on one side. So I haven't really given you an answer there, Travis. I'll just give you like uh incoherent uh I I think it I think it's a monument.

SPEAKER_01

Uh tell us about this channel, Tim. What is this channel like? What kind of content is it? Uh how much of this is actual profit? Because the one thing that Tim and I talked about last time is that you see these big numbers, but not all of it. Yeah, profit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So talk to us about this channel.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, sure. So uh this is a portfolio channel, uh 3D animated short form channel only, no long form, just shorts. And uh uh obviously there is the cost, but uh pretty much like we talked uh last time, um, because of the hiring systems that uh we have and the pool of talent that I have access to, uh, we're actually paying way less than uh we could if we just uh went on Upwork or Fiverr to try and find talent there. Um so the cost of this channel is pretty much six to seven thousand dollars a month right now, which puts us at 23, 24k in profit. Uh pretty good. And uh uh obviously the founder is happy. We as partners, as investors, are uh extremely happy as well uh with the progress. Uh the channel recently crossed uh just four days ago, crossed a million follower mark. So uh another one is about to come to another gold one, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another gold play button. So uh yeah, it's going good. Uh which like the thing that I'm surprised the most uh by is that uh this channel was never hit by inauthentic content, and uh uh that tells me that it's not all of the channels that are getting hit. Uh there are still some causes and uh some things that you might have done that you know uh somehow attracted YouTube's attention. Uh, but uh overall, again, uh just another proof of the niche bending framework because all we did is we took Zagdie Films style uh videos and uh we just applied it to the market where uh it was never done before. Uh wholesome content and uh um you know all of those uh uh wholesome videos, uh like short form, preferably that uh preferably women 45 plus love to share on WhatsApp. This kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

What uh are you gonna go into long form at some point, or is it just short form for where you're at?

SPEAKER_03

For this channel, it's purely short form. Uh we uh obviously we we just scan the the audience and we try to imagine the uh target audience that we speak to and uh uh rationally thinking that this is not the audience who's gonna watch like a 15-minute long video on something. So some channels.

SPEAKER_01

Well, but I don't mean this particular channel, I mean you as a business owner.

SPEAKER_03

I know you're actually me as a of course. Me as a business owner, of course. Uh I I was like uh very successful with shorts, but nothing pays better than long form. So uh I do have some long form channels running already uh within the portfolio. Um some of them are obviously like we're trying to go as viral as possible, and some of them we're just using affiliate deals to, and we don't really care about that much like views that much. Uh, but overall, obviously, long form is way more stable, um, is paying way more money uh for you know uh a set of views that you can get. Short form is just my you know uh the uh the fun thing to do, and uh uh obviously the thing that also pays well.

SPEAKER_02

Tim, another Let's say traditional attitude might be that AdSense is a poor man's game in the sense that you never have control over it. And there are way better means to make a lot more income, affiliate deal sponsorships and so on and so forth. I appreciate that is uh more difficult in short. At at this point, I are your clients, your portfolio, is it almost exclusively AdSense, or are you still trying to figure out how to broaden the income streams there?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, very good question. Uh short form is definitely we tree care, uh primarily because uh when brands like pay you for for a short, uh they never get uh link under it. It's very hard to track how many like collects, uh I don't know, purchases, like uh like subscriptions they got from a specific video, and that's why they don't do it. So the target audience for branded shorts are uh brands who don't care about conversions and they only want the awareness, which is obviously uh, I don't know, one to five percent of all of the companies. Uh I don't have data, so it's a random number. But uh what I'm trying to say is that long form is where you get all of those brand deals, all of those affiliates, and uh where you can actually expand. With short form, we're doing a little uh we're using a little bit uh different strategy because with short form, it's not the um, let's say a follower that we monetize, it's the piece of content. So we distribute it across TikTok that pays uh uh good money if you um in US or UK and there are like three, four more countries. Uh Snapchat as well, uh, because if you can't get inside of the monetization program there, you can also good uh make some good extra income. I'm not saying it's a good sustainable income, it's a good extra income uh to what you make on YouTube. Uh and Facebook as well recently launched uh an amazing program for now only for US creators, but uh they're paying you a 3k a month retainer for just posting there, and they also pay you for views. So all three of those platforms uh provide significant extra income. We have um uh clients making like 20k months on YouTube and an extra 30k across other three platforms, so like 50k total with only 20 coming from uh YouTube. So uh there's ways to monetize shorts. Uh, one of the coolest ones recently I saw uh not a client of mine, just a random friend. Uh, he was monetized on uh Spotify and he was making uh uh like very good money there. So this is something that I'm getting into uh next month as well.

SPEAKER_02

When you just it sometimes feels as if you're just casually mentioning my clients are earning 20k a month. Uh so you know, these people are making some serious cash. Can anybody do this? Or are we already reaching a point of I don't know what the right term is, market penetration terminal velocity? Like there are only so many people who can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month from making just to generalize it a little bit, animated short form content. Where where does it where do you think there might become a uh ceiling and if and when it happens, how might you pivot from that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So I feel like uh there is just uh as much space in the market for copies, but as long as you're original, there's unlimited opportunities, pretty much like with your thumbnail, right? Uh you did it first, you got the most views. Someone copied you, he got a little bit less views. I copied you, I got way less views than you. And then uh the next guy who's gonna copy is gonna get even less views. So basically, all of the players that enter the same market with the same format, they're just getting the market saturated, and the uh like next player is uh is getting less and less views, and this trend continues. Um, as long as you create something new that people actually desire, uh, you can always create a market for yourself. YouTube is very good for creating those markets. Uh, it's very hard to, let's say, invent an app and get it to an app store and get it to like thousands of people uh who'd use it. It's it's very rare someone does that. Same with, let's say, some um extremely rare coffee shop with uh, I don't know, the sort of coffee that no no one has ever tried. But on YouTube, it's actually quite simple. All you really need to do is to take the uh format that worked for someone else and apply it to the uh market or sphere where you are the most skilled, because all of us have uh different sets of skills and experience that make us unique as humans. And uh we as humans always tend to be curious about other people's experiences. So as long as you can share it in a very unique and interesting way, you're gonna get uh this attention. I strongly believe that uh information is what we can endlessly consume, meaning there's no like limit to the size of that market.

SPEAKER_02

Do you think this opportunity uh has always existed? Well, let me put it let me add to that. Do you think this opportunity slash business plan has all has uh existed on YouTube for a while, or its advances in technology, uh maturity of a platform that has now enabled this new wave of I need to find a good name for this, entrepreneur creator or something like that. Um as I class as I class you, like I'm I'm thinking like if if you joined YouTube 15 years ago, would you just be saying, hey guys, welcome to my channel, let's check out you know whatever you're interested in.

Starting From Zero Money

SPEAKER_03

Uh so I think that the the the market, uh, people's minds, we we just all reached the point where everyone understands that it's a solid business model, it's not just some finding videos on that you're put out online. And uh that's where uh like obviously 15 years ago, I bet YouTube was a thing, I don't remember exactly when they started paying for views, but even like let's say five years ago, YouTube was already a good business model. Not so many people believed in it, and uh that was the difference. Right now, almost every single like kit, I think that was a study 60% of kids wants to make uh want to become YouTubers. Uh then obviously now older generation starts to realize oh shit, all of those kids are now making thousands of dollars and I'm you know stuck there at my nine to five. Why don't I just do what they do? Because I'm like, I don't know, 3D animator, like why don't I just start my own channel? And uh uh right now we're at a point where anyone can do YouTube, anyone can succeed as long as they are creative and they're putting in the work because it's still the work. No matter how many AI tools get introduced, if you don't know how to use those tools, if you're just putting out the AI slop type of content that those AI tools create for you, then obviously nothing's gonna work for you. But um, as long as you're putting on your own spin, you understand what you do, you track the data and you dissect the algorithm, obviously everyone can do it. There's nothing like nothing special about what I do with those channels, with the one that you just showed, and uh with with all ours as well.

SPEAKER_02

You mentioned Shadowban there. I want to get back to that because there's uh an interesting little experiment I want to share with you. Um but uh so forgive me, Travis, if um you asked this question last time. But uh from what I remember when you were you were last on the podcast, Tim, you were talking about uh how to start a channel, but it still required uh a bit of capital, hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, because you're looking at getting the editors. Let's say that for whatever reason this uh creator just does not have access to any funds whatsoever. They're starting with zip we're starting with essentially let's give them a computer and they've got a mobile phone, so if they have access to the internet and they've got and they they can access a browser, so they could probably use some AI tools. Yeah. What would be like just uh first steps to get that person started with zero money?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Uh good question. I think uh that there are two ways that uh this person can actually get started. Uh, number one is the easiest. Many people would not believe that it's possible, but I actually went that way. So um you can find an investor. There is a lot of people, 35, 45, uh, 55-year-olds uh that are just tired of like just having all of their cash sitting in an SOP SP 500 and growing by like 10% a year. They want to play around with it, they want to do something cool. And uh like the way I started the Art of World channel was actually by finding that person in my uh basically uh in my phone book, uh just calling him and telling him about the cool project that I'm about to start. And uh all I asked for was back then, I think it was um it was$10,000 for three months of salaries of uh people that I plan to hire. And he was more than happy to do that for 10% of the future company. So this was the deal that get um, you know, uh got me started with the art of war because I also didn't have those thousands of dollars to spend to burn on the channel.

SPEAKER_02

Um I'll just pause you there. Like, how did you um I guess sell yourself, uh build up a rapport with this person? Like that's a very good question. Where'd you build up the connection to for somebody to put some trust in you to give you a five-figure sum?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so I think that uh first of all it comes uh comes down to like you reaching out to people you truly know, because I know that it's gonna be extremely hard for you to reach out to a random like person on Facebook and just ask them for 10 grand for like whatever. Uh but as long as uh like with this uh with my investor, we were actually good friends for like two years. We were uh we spoke here and there. I knew that he's running an agency, I knew that he's in business, I knew that he has uh that kind of money. And uh I also knew that he wanted to expand on different social media. He is uh uh he's very domestic, he doesn't speak English, and uh he wanted to go and uh like uh expand his agency on YouTube and other platforms. And I was like, can I be your case study? Can I just you know open you this kind of like uh door uh to YouTube and I'm gonna do everything myself? You're gonna give me some consulting here and there, but all I really need is three months of salaries. He was down to do that. Um so it comes down to building connections while you don't need that cash so that by the time you need it, you have the connections. If you can't do that, if you think that your phone book is empty, there's no one to um to give you that kind of money, whatever, uh then basically the second way is to start with AI. Like you need a few hundred bucks in subscriptions, but you can start the channel uh entirely with AI. Uh and the uh inauthentic content has nothing to do with AI itself. It has uh something to do with like the way you present this information. But as long as you are original, you're new, you're uh delivering value to your followers, you're gonna be fine creating fully AI generated videos and editing them by uh yourself in Capcat. So I think that the best way to start is A, find a niche in order for you to find a niche, take the format that works, bring it to a market where it was never used before. You can use tools like VI2, for example, to find those markets, to analyze them, to find out.

SPEAKER_02

Nice, you remember to put the plug-in. Good work. Yes, I like it. Like it. Please continue.

SPEAKER_03

Uh and uh obviously after you found a niche, then just make sure that uh your videos are as good as the original ones, or even better, because I see it like way more often than I want to. People are just create like entering niches by creating content that is than the original and by like copying what the original does. And I'm like, there's literally no reason someone would watch you instead of your competitor. Like, why do you think you deserve those views? And then they're obviously complaining, like, yo, team, I'm getting like zero views or like a few uh hundred views, but like your content is literally not better than uh your competitors. YouTube is very democratized and very honest market. Like YouTube will always give you views when you deserve them. It's like um it's probably the only market that rewards quality and rewards uh your ability to grab the attention and hold the attention throughout the entire video. That's it. Um so figure out your content style, make sure that you're editing and make sure that your content itself is better than your uh the guy next to you, and uh stay consistent for long enough for YouTube to notice you and never give up, I guess. Uh I heard this quote from one of my good friends. Um never stop posting, because that's the only way you get into the algorithm. You never get into the algorithm by thinking about what to post or by creating thumbnails or by writing scripts. You only get into the algorithm by clicking the post button. So never stop posting.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Uh, let me also mention one thing. Um, so when you talked about you were able to find someone to invest in your channel, that sounds all impossible. But if I hadn't just had this interview with a uh creator just recently, so depending on when you're watching this episode, there is an episode coming out by a content creator called Tayo who lives or was born in Nigeria, a very poor part of Nigeria, uh Lagos, Nigeria. And uh he's now a very successful traveling YouTuber. But he, in order for him to get the money to even get cameras and stuff, he had to become an Uber driver. But he didn't own a car or a phone. He borrowed both. Um, that there is, if you want something bad enough, you will find a way. And I understand that maybe you don't have a friend with$10,000, but he got a job doing Uber when he didn't have a car. If you really want it bad enough, you can find a way. I do want to ask one more question before we get into some of these emails from you, Tim. You posted this a while back, is uh where you talked about because you had talked about before that you buy sometimes you have channel YouTube channels or a stake in them. Is this one the one you showed that had the 30,000, or is this a different one? And if it's different, how where are we now with this?

SPEAKER_03

Uh it's it's still in uh uh in a process. This one is a tough cookie. Uh and it's funny because like we uh the whole podcast we were talking about my wins and how awesome I am, but uh it's not always like that. Sometimes uh you know she hits the fan. So with this channel, I posted it on April 10th. Right now it's what? April 29th, and uh it's been 19 days, and we haven't posted a single video. So uh yeah, we need to keep posting. What's going on?

SPEAKER_02

Let's just stop posting. Come on.

SPEAKER_03

Well in this uh in this case, it's uh it's the team building problem. We we had problems with the animator, uh then we had to find another one. Now uh he's working on the video. Um I'm gonna get it back on track, I promise you guys. Uh the third time I see you, Travis. Um we're gonna talk about this uh this channel and its success, but uh it's not always the the wins. Sometimes you go through you know tough times, but you have to keep going, huh? I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01

Because if it sounded like you won on everything, it would sound impossible. So I appreciate uh the rawness there. All right.

Shadowban Test And Trust Scores

SPEAKER_02

But that's uh that's the new YouTube dilemma, isn't it? Like HR, managing people. It's not like uh I'm rubbish at editing or like uh the lightning in my room is terrible. It's like my editors, uh my staff's let me down again. I'm sorry, Travis, I've got tons more questions. Yeah, no, go ahead. I'm I'm fine with it. Go ahead. Go free. Right. So um we mentioned shadow banning uh a little earlier, Tim. Uh I don't know if you saw a video that we uh made recently. Um I'm sure you've seen the videos around which state stuff along the lines of I blew up my channel in seven days to prove it's not luck. Right. I decided to do the opposite, which was I tried to get shadow banned to prove it's not luck. Because people like people think they get shadow banned and YouTube tells us it doesn't exist. So what I did is I I need so much, huh? I need to bend in I need to bend in the in the best way possible. I saw uh cat AI videos getting 40 million views, so I thought I'm gonna do a dog AI channel that was called It's AI Dogs Life. Uh I'm gonna be honest, all I did was typed into a prompt, cartoon dogs playing poker. And then I said, uh same dogs doing all of these different activities. And you can imagine what was generated. Uh so I started uploading and posting every single day like you uh recommended. Uh and uh what happened to begin with is uh as I understand it, YouTube was testing this with a seed audience of around about 1,500 views in the first 24 hours, and then every single time it would plummet to zero views by the end of the first day. And I did that for about three weeks, 25 videos. And then we had a week of where YouTube seemed less convinced. It was now giving me a lot fewer views. Uh and then all of a sudden it's like it's a snap of a finger. We went down to one view, two views, zero views for every single short, as if YouTube wasn't even testing it at all. So I think I successfully managed to shadow ban uh an AI slot channel. Yeah. Um to prove it's not luck. Like, is there anything like you can add to that in terms of your knowledge of how YouTube gives a channel a chance, but when it decides it's not gonna be good for the audience, it just kills it completely.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, obviously uh YouTube does that, it's just easier for them to run the platform this way. And uh honestly speaking, I kind of agree with that. Like as long as you um make the same mistake over and over again, you deserve a jail, you know. In this case, the creator's jail, uh, zero views jail, 15,000 views jail, whatever it is. Uh there's many uh, let's say, stages to that. But uh uh yeah, I guess that uh in your case, the the main reason why the channel was shadow bent. Again, I haven't seen the content, but uh I guess low effort and uh uh the amount like the likelihood of a uh of YouTube treating your channel as AI slop was pretty much almost 100%, I guess. Guaranteed yeah, it it was very high. And uh this is the kind of content that YouTube is now uh removing. I don't know if you uh noticed that or not, but uh around uh September last year, uh if you looked at uh the top performing YouTube shorts last seven days, like any given day, you could pull up the stats, you can look at the most popular YouTube shorts in the last seven days. It was always a slope. It was always a four-second video of something unthinkable happening, like the person turning into a cat, the person like uh I don't know, uh smashing himself into the wall, like whatever it is. Uh, and it was like hundreds of millions of views, like 400 million views, 500 million views. And uh Mr. Beast in that least was like fifth after like four AI slop videos. And uh, if you pull up this list now, you will see that there's no AI slop in the first like 10, like 15 videos. So YouTube is doing an awesome job, if I'm being honest, like it's doing an awesome job at uh removing those videos from the platform. Yes, it also removes a bunch of our regional creators with it, but you know, uh there's always a cost to uh to the good results. So I guess uh uh as long as YouTube treats you as slop, you have absolutely no chance in the current YouTube economy. Um so the answer is don't be slop, I guess.

SPEAKER_02

And I've got a few quick fire questions there, if you could just gonna answer them relatively quickly. Is that channel now cursed and dead? Like if I just suddenly started posting high quality content, could it be rescued?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think that if you give it some time and uh let's say after a few months uh you come back, there is a chance. However, I would only give it like two, three videos, so like two, three shots if you see that it's still there, then just start a new one.

SPEAKER_02

So it'd probably be better to start a new channel in that case if it was new stuff anyway. Um does an aged account make any difference? I've seen this so many times on YouTube creators in this space saying, uh, make sure the channel is a couple of months old and then it'll be uh trusted more by the algorithm.

SPEAKER_03

It's not the age, it's the trust established between you and Google. So, right now, what we recommend for newcomers who start a new channel, take that Gmail that you've been using for a while. You used Chrome, you used Gemini, you used Google Maps, you used uh uh Gmail itself. All of it comes down to the trust score, uh so to say. Again, the metric that doesn't really exist, but it does uh on the YouTube side of things. And uh as long as your Gmail under which you created the YouTube channel was already trusted by Google, this trust now goes to your YouTube channel because uh this is how YouTube understands that you're not a bot who's trying to uh inject the algorithm with a bunch of um so if you've been using your Gmail for a while, then it's a higher trust call. The reason why people are so obsessed about uh aged accounts is because typically people use them for a while, uh for years, and now the trust is there and you can just start a YouTube channel fresh.

SPEAKER_02

So now it's got me worried because on this trash AI slot channel, I did do on a uh an account like a it's over a decade old with a hundred thousand subscriber channel on it as well. Could that potentially damage infect the the rest of my uh presence on that account?

SPEAKER_03

I uh I obviously don't recommend you do that any uh anymore because if this channel is uh is gonna get hit with obviously you're not monetized now, so you cannot get hit with that. But if uh one of your YouTube channels gets hit within the thingy content and you have more channels linked to the same Gmail, most likely all of them are gonna get wiped out. It's not Guaranteed, it's not 100%. I've seen cases where it didn't happen. However, it's the likelihood of that is very high. So for your safety, one Gmail, one channel, one AdSense, and then you just, you know, stack those layers if you need multiple.

SPEAKER_02

That's another thing we've been seeing, isn't it, in the inauthentic demonetized space right now? Is that people are thinking, oh my, this channel got demonetized because of some tenuous link to something that I forgot I had, or like it's been dormant for years, has suddenly come back to haunt me. And then the final question was Does channel verification make any difference? Because you have basic, intermediate, and then advanced. So would it help to get your channel to the advanced verification, which requires you to submit some ID or the channel history of like you've just got to be present on YouTube for a couple of months?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so there's channel ID, there's uh face verification, and there's uh be present for a couple of months. Uh it does help. It helps a lot. Like obviously, you should not start posting without you um basically making all of the three stages uh eligible. Uh the reason for it is because again, it it just comes down to the trust and the obviously if you're a bot, let's imagine you're a bot and you create a YouTube channel, you cannot complete those stages. So YouTube instantly thinks that you're a bot if you don't do that.

Listener Q: Delayed Distribution For News

SPEAKER_01

Anyway, we have some questions from Yeah, no further questions, Your Honor. Thank you. Questions sent in. Uh, you can send us emails and uh text messages, especially if you're listening to the audio podcast. There'll be links in the show notes. First one comes from Mark. Mark says, Big fan of your show and truly appreciate the insights and info that you share. I started my own YouTube channel back in early November and reached the monetization threshold at the beginning of March. First of all, Mark, that's crazy. That's really, really good. Uh overall, I'm fairly happy with my uh overall growth in YouTube's distribution given the size of the channel. My channel focuses on Major League Baseball, offering longer mini docs type content to highlight player stories or interesting stats from around the league. But with the new season now underway, I'm expanding into daily two to four minute videos that highlight something worth noting from that day's games. My challenge is that while I find YouTube's ultimate distribution of my content fair, it always seems to hold it back uh for 24 to 72 hours after showing it to an initial sample group of about 150 to 300 people upon release. Understand this when the results from the sample are poor. It seems to do this even when I get strong CTR, 7 to 10% with great uh average view duration. It's okay when my content isn't time sensitive, but this new daily project of mine is meant to be timely when the potential viewers would be most interested. Have you ever come across this content distribution delay before? So I can definitely say yes as a coach and as someone who's been in this space, um, not that particular space, but in the uh news space. Yes. Um, here's here's the the pros and the cons of this. Number one, first of all, it's great you have something that has a large, a total adjustable market, people who are fans of baseball, right? Um, so that's gonna be good for your upside. And doing these mini docs, um, and something Tim has talked about is having like a unique take on something, your take's probably gonna be pretty unique for these players. So that's gonna be great evergreen stuff. The problem with with daily slash news stuff is that it's shorts, the short uh shelf life. Um, if it's not spectacularly interesting, it's not gonna burst after that first couple of days. And like any other channel, especially when you're smaller, um, the first 70, 42 to the 24 to 48 hours all through your people who've come to your channel recently, whether it be subscribers or people who've watched your uh content recently. So that's where you're getting that first kind of burst of views. After that, it then goes to people who've never seen your channel before or people might be interested in your content. And that's why you're seeing some videos get views well after that uh 72-hour uh space. The problem with, again, that you're running into with these daily videos is the newsworthiness is good for a day or two, but you only have a small sample size that it can test against anyway. And by the time it goes to people who would be interested in it, it's old news. So I feel it's not to say you shouldn't do those anymore, but your expectations need to be in line with the type of content you're doing. The stuff that's going to grow your channel over time are the little mini docs you've been doing. Continue to do those. And the new stuff, once you get a larger channel going and you got more viewers to coming through your channel, will pop on those days when that happens. The one exception will be if something spectacular happens in a game, maybe the first time something's ever happened, and you quickly cover it, that might be able to blow up in the first couple of days or so. I don't know how often you're seeing this sort of thing in the niches you do, Tim, but um, do you have any thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so obviously YouTube sometimes uh sometimes take days or sometimes weeks to test your channel against multiple audiences and figure out like who's this video for. Um YouTube is not the one to blame here. Like it's A, protecting itself from spum content this way, uh, so they have more time to make a decision to kill your channel. And uh B, they also uh like their uh system of matching the content and the viewer is probably like unmatched. Like TikTok, Instagram, all of those platforms, they also do a good job, but YouTube, in my opinion, is the best at like serving you with what you want to see. Um, so that's that. Now I did notice that uh in uh news-related niches, the niches where something just happened and then like all of a sudden everyone talks about it, uh, it can actually like boost your channel that you uh started using this uh this new strategy. So I feel like right now we're discussing the problem that have not appeared yet. And uh what could happen is that the moment you start posting those uh those videos like that are related to the events that just happened, uh you might see that uh there's no threshold for you anymore because uh YouTube now sees that you're posting about the events that are uh recently trending, uh there are uh that many people are searching for, and all of a sudden YouTube gives you 10,000 views in the first day uh instead of uh a few hundreds. And uh uh you might just solve your own problem by you know just sticking to the strategy, which I think that uh um you got the right one. So um that's one. Then uh two, if you still notice that uh let's say your your videos are now getting a few hundred views in the first few days, and then uh they die out because the the views became uh the news became irrelevant, then just stop and uh uh focus on, like you've mentioned, the events that do shake the world, the events that uh everyone wants to know about, like I don't know, Jake Paul fighting, and then basically this fight being absolutely I don't know, uh incredible or mind-blowing or whatever, whatever, and then all of a sudden the entire YouTube feed next day is all in those quats and the faceless videos, just obsessing over every little detail of that fight on new channels, on aged channels, on random channels, on like on any channel, because YouTube just needs like YouTube has this demand for this topic, and uh YouTube doesn't have enough creators, so it gives views to absolutely everyone. So if that happens, then definitely hop on that trend.

SPEAKER_02

The the timeliness is especially sensitive in baseball as well, isn't it? Because I still can't believe this that they play what 162 games a season in a regular season. So the news cycle is uh sometimes minutes long. And this creator's kind of moved into a new space. It sounds like they were doing uh evergreen content that would stand the test of time, and now they've moved into a new space where there's going to be a lot more competition just from all of the new sites and the sports coverage. So they may need to think about how they can repackage their content so it's more SEO friendly if people are searching for like a particular match or highlights for a particular day, and just accept that the metrics will be different. Like, yeah, you could be getting a higher click-through rate, but you might get that higher click-through rate because you're we're at the top of the search rankings for five minutes before somebody else replaced it. And it's a very cutt-throat uh area that you're moving into, but hey, you got monetized in six months, and it sounds like you're you're falling in love with content creation. So, like just remember to enjoy that process as well, and I think you'll figure it out.

When Not To Notify Subscribers

SPEAKER_01

I love that. I love that. Okay, we have an edge case here, and this one's from Andy. Hi, girls, guys, and guests. Uh, there's an option before you publish a video to make it public, but to not push it to subscribers. I've used this option before without much success. I'm guessing most people would think it'd be the worst possible choice to make. But what tactical options could be beneficial? I can think of one. I've actually done this a couple times on my channel, but it's only this one instance, and there's probably others, but the one instance I can think of is uh dedicated sponsored videos. Um, for me personally, I don't want to um bombard my viewership with uh a video that they might find completely irrelevant. Um, it's not something I I you I mean you could definitely lose subscribers over if you're doing something like that. If you're doing something that's completely um not something that you think your subscribers will enjoy and you're just doing it for some reason, I I would check that. But for the most part, Rob, have we ever even used that option?

SPEAKER_02

I think tactically we've used it for a channel trailer. You might not want to uh inform your subscribers. There may be a case for this if you are a shorts channel pumping out several videos a day, and like you have three premier shorts that you definitely want to notify your audience with, because you can only send out three notifications in 24 hours. But yeah, the the use cases are um quite rare for for for getting lots of views and going viral.

Why Your Shorts Stall At 1K

SPEAKER_01

For you know what's funny about that is that with so many things that they've launched and then retracted, I think there's things that are used more than this, and it's interesting that they keep this. I'm I'm fine with them keeping it because again I can use it, but you know, you think about a lot of things that they've they've launched and then removed, uh, and this thing still lives. It's very interesting. Um, all right. So, Andy, hopefully that answers your question. Uh, Judah sends an email and says, uh, hi, Vidai crew. Uh, why are wildlife um bird shorts why are my wildlife bird shorts only getting 1k views while I'm constantly seeing others people's shorts get 200k and they aren't even as good as mine? What should I do? I want to I want to talk to Tim about this because um I Rob and I are gonna talk about comparison as a thief of joy, but I want to get into the analytics of like, I know you've seen this before, and I want to get your thoughts on this. But before we get into that, first of all, um it's good to understand what the total address on the world market is in your in your niche, to understand that and know what like the top end is. But I think as soon as you start comparing yourself to other creators and thinking, oh, I'm better than them, um, you're gonna start hating YouTube. Now, there are reasons that you should compare your content to others, uh, but I think you need to do it more analytically rather than emotionally. Uh Rob, what do you think? I know that you've been on this platform forever doing this. Um, what are your thoughts when you hear a creator say this?

SPEAKER_02

It's always subjective. Whenever I see that sentence, uh, my short, my content is better than theirs, like in your opinion. And there's there's obviously elements of truth to it, but hey, let's say your particular audience likes a certain quality of content, whereas the audience that's getting hundreds of thousands of views appeals to a younger audience that wants like a dopamine rush hit type of content. There's no judging um people's tests on YouTube. The the weirdest things get popular. And we we have to think about how much of a history this channel has, how many times it's reached wider audiences to get those positive signals. I I kind of it's one of those things where like I just wish you wouldn't worry about comparing yourself to others. Uh compare compare to your own metrics, and as long as you're continuing to grow and things are in a positive way, eventually, I think as you uh Tim alluded to earlier, like YouTube is a reward system based on quality and viewer satisfaction. If you are meeting those demands, great, do it again, do it again, do it again. And there will be that moment where you go over the threshold and that momentum just starts building so quickly that this will no longer become uh like a concern. You know, always fingers crossed. There's always a caveat with YouTube.

SPEAKER_01

Rob and I are of the mindset to worry more about your actual videos and to make sure that they're getting better and to use those comparisons as seeing what works in the niche. But Tim has a business that is completely reliant on going viral or semi-viral to be successful. Let's just be honest. That's what it is. So he's at the top level of the game in shorts. So when you see stuff like this, what tell us your thoughts of what you what you think.

SPEAKER_03

This is where I have to argue with you. I disagree because uh I uh I just finished watching the Mr. Beast documentary on how they uh created Beast games. I highly recommend any creator watch it, it's a masterpiece. But uh there was a part where it's like 3 a.m. in the morning, they just finished recording the third video of the day, and he goes into Walmart and he starts eating all of the uh like chocolate bars of his competitors, and he's like, I want to try like what they are doing because uh I want to see how we can get better than them. Uh so I think that comparison is the only way you get better, and by like like uh like you said, by hating yourself or hating YouTube, you actually grow and you get uh you get better. So I think that you should definitely look at your competitors. And uh uh uh I don't think that YouTube is subjective. I think that there are just so many little details that a human eye can't notice them all. But if you dissect the hook, the first uh uh half a second of your video, the first one second of your video, the first three seconds of your video, if you then can uh like dissect every bit of your short, every little detail, zoom in, zoom outs, like all of the little arrows and circles, all of the uh basically um like attention points where you want your users to uh you you want your followers to pay attention to. Uh, if you dissect your competitor scripts uh and you put them um like next to your scripts and you compare them, like are your hooks better? Are your like stories better? Are you coming up with more original twists? Uh is the payoff at the very end? Like, there's so many details that you can like analyze, even though you can't analyze them all, because as I said, it's impossible for a human eye. Sometimes you just watch the video and you don't really know why it's great, but you know that it's great. Um, so you have to develop some kind of a sixth sense for it. Um but in your case, if you're getting 1k views and uh your competitors are getting 200k, it's either one of two problems. Number one, you are in a saturated niche and you was not the first one to enter it, meaning like YouTube treats you as a copycat of those uh original like big competitor of yours. Uh, in this case, consider niching down to a specific audience. So, for example, uh wildlife bird market is is huge. I bet that there's a few sub-niches to that that you can think of where you will become the biggest uh by just talking about it specifically. That's what we did with Zagde Films and Art of War. So Zagde Films was like a general channel about like anything that interests him. Art of War was the channel about war and history. The same format, the same uh structure of the scripts, but specifically for war, specifically for history. Um so that's one. And then the second uh is that uh you're actually biased and uh your videos are not better. And uh, I'm sorry to say that sometimes that's the case. Sometimes uh you just think that they are better, but if you look at the actual objective numbers and objective metrics, you find out that they're not as uh fast-paced as your competitors. Uh, you're not using the highest quality, I don't know, AI models or like uh footage if you if you use the real-life footage, B-roll footage uh for your videos. And if you actually put your videos next to your competitors, you see that they're not really better, maybe even slightly worse, and then you understand where the problem is coming from.

A/B Thumbnail Testing And Gemini Insights

SPEAKER_01

I like having both sides of the of the coin. We got one more from Leo. Hey Travis, I recently uh had a realization that they about the A-B testing tool on my YouTube channel, and I honestly don't know how I missed this uh for so long. But now it raises even more questions. Up until now, I assume that the percentage shown in the tool reflected how long viewers watched the video. But if I understand it correctly, the number actually represents how much of the total watch time on that video was generated by the specific thumbnail. That is true, by the way. Um, here's where I'm confused. No matter what I test, whether it's a video with a few hundred or a few thousand views, the result always uh says that the first thumbnail is selected because all variants perform well. However, the first one is never the one with the highest watch time. So I'm wondering, is it possible that the thumbnail with a lower watch time, for example, 24.7% versus 40%, actually gets more clicks, but the viewers don't watch as long. I'm struggling to understand the metric. I think it's really important to state that um number one, YouTube for years was trying to bring out a um an A B test tool, which is one of the reasons Vida IQ never did, because we were under the impression that they were going to come out with one for years, and that's why we didn't. When they finally came out with it, they're now testing it against watch time, but they tell you that algorithmically, raw watch time is not how things get pushed. It's there's other signals. So it's very strange. When they came out with this tool, they also said that they were going to refine it and give it more metrics that are along the lines of the algorithm. I have not seen them do that. I don't know if they ever will. And I know that Rob, you we've used the A-B test tool for a long time. We have definitive thoughts on it. So I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. And then I I don't know that it really affects you, Tim. So I'll, but if you have thoughts, feel free to share them. But uh, Rob, we've done a lot of testing with this. What do we think?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we've done a lot of testing, but I have completely indefinitive thoughts about it. I'm exhausted trying to use it, understand it, test it. And I think there is a certain element of user error. Like I do, I don't think uh I have the discipline to create a series of thumbnails that differ greatly from each other to do like proper testing. Ultimately, what we tend to do is end up having thumbnails that look relatively similar, so the percentage points don't move enough. So, like, you know, hands up there, I I a confession. But what other people have mentioned in the past is that sometimes just pressurizing yourself so much to have a collection of thumbnails and titles kind of do dilutes, probably the one that you instinctively think, yeah, that's a one. I know that's gonna work. But because I've got this tool, I've got to test it to make sure that um I'm I'm doing the you know the the proper procedure. I'm going through the the hoops to maybe get convinced that YouTube has a better result. So I I I don't have a good answer right now, Travis, if I'm honest. Like I think that is the answer though.

SPEAKER_01

I've had it for two years.

SPEAKER_02

I've got so tired using it, I just want to go back to instinct of title and thumbnail. And I know that's probably not very scientific, but it's just exhausted me trying to figure out uh better templates for our uh channel. It feels as if it's made it worse over the last couple of years, that we've lost our consistency because we've been testing too much.

SPEAKER_01

Well, Dan says a lot of the same things, and I think that's the answer. It's that uh it has been it has muddied the waters for us at VidIQ. Um I know Tim doesn't really need to deal with that with short form, but for your long form stuff, are you dabbling with that at all, or do you just go with a concept that you guys have researched and and don't worry too much about it after that?

SPEAKER_03

I do a testing on my uh on my personal channel. I also noticed the inconsistency in results in terms of like my expectations versus what I actually see uh inside of the uh YouTube Studio. I don't think that uh you as a creator should blindly trust the tool, any tool, not necessarily like this one, basically any tool, you should think critically and uh uh ask your audience. Uh the one tool that I'm pretty excited about is the AI Studio that they added to the YouTube Studio. So now you can actually chat to uh Gemini inside of your YouTube Studio, and you can ask uh your questions about certain metrics and you can understand them better. Um, one use case I'm gonna give you there, uh you can ask uh Gemini to analyze your comment section and give you some ideas that people are asking you for. This one is sick. Uh, but uh overall, even with thumbnail tests, uh I I found some, let's say, explanation uh by just asking like AI why this specific thumbnail was uh was chosen. So um sometimes you can just uh chat with Jim and I and it will give you a brief understanding of like how it worked in this particular case.

SPEAKER_02

Uh I should also clarify as well, uh Travis, that when I was saying that sometimes now I just want to go with one title, one thumbnail, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't in the uh creation of a content come up with many different concepts and like write down like 10 different titles and have three or four different thumbnail concepts. But I'm just I've reached to a point now where I'm usually I've I've very strongly favor one type of packaging that I just want to go with. But that's like a very personal attitude at this point.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you, if you're watching on YouTube, can leave us a comment below and let us know what you think about the A B test tool and anything else that we've talked about today. We want to thank Tim for coming on. He's he's given a lot of information as always. We really are genuinely happy that you're able to show and share with us. If you're listening to the audio. podcast will be links in the show notes there. It'll take you over to the YouTube channel, which I'll have links to Tim's uh channel and everything else. Um and if you're watching on YouTube, guess what? I got something for you. If you want to be real nice and hit the subscribe button, I got a video for you right here that'll be perfect for what you're wanting to learn next. And we'll see y'all in the next one.