Stop Chasing High CTR And Start Earning Loyalty

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We answer creator questions with the stuff people usually learn the hard way: pick a niche you can stick with, do not confuse high CTR with high reach, and stop treating every other channel as an enemy. We also get practical about sponsors, Shorts testing, series linking, and why trust is the real asset behind every review and brand deal.
• how our creator Discord started and why it works when people engage to learn
• what we would tell our younger selves about ego, competition, and learning faster
• choosing a niche you can enjoy long term to avoid burnout
• balancing fresh ideas with audience expectations in Dungeons and Dragons content
• handling developer review requests with consistent standards and clear disclosure
• protecting audience trust as the core product behind sponsorships
• why Shorts view graphs look like stairs and how YouTube tests distribution
• linking a returning seasonal series with playlists, YouTube Shows, end screens, and pinned comments
• whether to split a portfolio channel from tutorial content to avoid mixed audiences
• why the highest CTR can lead to fewer views as impressions scale
• what subscribers actually do now and why non subscribers often drive most views
• why one Short can blow up months later due to trends, announcements, and search demand

If you like advice like this, come check us out, vidIQ.com slash Discord
If you're new here, hit that subscribe and hit that like button.

Transcript

CTR Myths And Trust Teaser

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I've been thinking about getting the highest CTRs possible as well as more subs. Uh by the way, highest CTR does not necessarily mean most views. Weirdly enough, usually the highest CTR means fewer views because YouTube. Why my views for recent shorts view charts is like steps. It's nothing to worry about at all. I would be excited that you're getting stars at all. My channel has recently been approached to do video reviews for several developers. Any advice on the format if I okay the game versus if I don't okay the game?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

You build trust with your audience, that trust is what people value. That's why they want to sponsor you, that's why they want you to review their games. The trust is the product. So as soon as you cross that line and you break that trust, it's game over.

Welcome And The Discord Origin Story

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hey, welcome back to the OnlyPodcast. It's here to give you every single bit of information you've ever needed in your life, ever. I'm Travis, and I'm here today with Dan from the main channel. How are you doing, Dan? Hey, I'm good. How are you? I'm all right, and we're here to help you grow your YouTube channels. If you're new here, hey, we're here to help you grow. Uh listen, we're gonna answer your questions. We have a Discord that people have been uh hanging out in for a long time. I'm gonna talk about the beginning of that, how that started, and then also the questions that have been uh coming in. And if you're listening to audio only podcasts, there'll be links in the description or in the show notes and in YouTube uh description for the that that Discord, you should go in there and meet all these incredible thousands of creators just like you uh that are asking these questions. But Dan, a lot of people don't know that um this Discord, I actually put it together and you helped me after I put it together and didn't know what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, it's it's actually changed hands a few times with like management. Like you were managing it, then I was managing it, and then various uh social media community managers have come through and kind of out of their touch. And nowadays Vicky manages it, she does a great job, and it's just flourished into this amazing community of people who just hang out and talk about YouTube all day, and uh the moderators do a great job at trying to tamp down those more chaotic moments where everybody's like, ooh, a Discord about YouTube. I could promote my channel, which is obviously not what it's for. So it has those moments too. But overall, it it's I think if you are in there and engaging in there, you're gonna find a lot of value, and it's just a thing we have. It's a free thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

And for people who don't know what Discord is, it's this uh platform's free, and uh you can sign up and you can go in there and chat with other creators, and there's tons of creators in there in all different types of niches. Uh, and every once in a while, Dan and I are in there. What's interesting is um the fact that this thing exists was kind of an accident. I I remember this very distinctly. So this was years ago, probably like 2019 or something. And there was an email I think I had mentioned something about a Discord or something. And Rob Sandy, who's the CEO of VidIQ, in an email stream said something like, Oh, that's great. What where is the where's the Discord? Where is it? And it we had not we had not none of us on the team were like, Yeah, we're gonna make a Discord. We were just kind of talking about it. And I think Rob wanted it to actually have already happened. So I quickly threw something together and uh and I only was kind of I wasn't like a power user or an admin user of Discord at all. So while I was putting it together, I was frantically going, Dan, I I don't know anything about this. I'm just I threw it up and it I don't know how to moderate it. How does this work? Um and thank goodness that uh Dan had some knowledge in this because having a Discord uh can be great and can be very challenging all at the same time. Very interesting stuff. All right, but let's just get into the questions. There's people who have uh messaged us in Discord and left us questions for this podcast.

Advice We Would Give New Creators

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Let's get into it. This first one comes from just stranger. Does that mean that they're strange or or that they are a stranger? I don't know what it means, Dan. We'll have to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I I don't I don't know. Maybe uh maybe we're not supposed to.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Uh it says, hello Vid IQ team. If you could go back in time to when you were first starting out on YouTube, what is one piece of advice you would give your younger, newer self? Thank you for your time and energy, educating people like that's a gr I love that question. Dan, what would you have what would you go back to then Dan? What year did you start on YouTube?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Uh I started uh I remember pretty well. I started August 2011. So very long time ago. And I was going to school for like video and radio, filmmaking, things like that. So it's like all one like one big program I was in for all of those things. And so I went into YouTube with this these assumptions in my head, well, I have a step up amongst everybody on YouTube because I'm like going to school for this stuff. Like I know how to put together a video. And yeah, I do think it gave me like a little advantage. But what I'd probably tell myself is you don't know anything and shut the heck up and maybe go learn something. Because I, you know, it wasn't until I started like opening my mind a little bit to to learning from the community rather than seeing them all as my competition. That I actually that's when I started actually like feeling like I was making actual progress. But at the time, it was like even my channels I was watching before I became a YouTuber, they're like my favorite channels. I immediately saw them. Like it's like a switch just flipped. I'm like, okay, they're the enemy now. Like I need to, I need to be better than them. You know, I need to make sure my videos are that good and also better. And it it's like uh very it came very came very quickly a way to unhealthily try and grow a YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, you know, I um I was fortunate enough to have a ironically, a Discord of a couple of friends that were all creators kind of upcoming. We were all kind of helping each other out and stuff. Uh, I started in like January of 2018, and I will say that I did a lot of things right, but what I would definitely want to tell myself is to pick my niche and and understand it a lot more uh deeply. Uh I I tend to research things and I'm pretty good about those things, but you know, the understanding of YouTube, especially at the beginning, uh I didn't really, of course, no one really understands it at first. That first year, I did spend a lot of time um researching how YouTube worked and how to grow channels and stuff like that. And I just wish that I had thought a little bit deeper about the type of content I would do on my main channel so that in years after I wouldn't get bored of it or burned out by it or something like that. Um, so that all that time I could have been continuing to grow it rather than at some point kind of be like, okay, I did all the things now. I don't really care anymore. Like, you know, it's it's kind of um, I wish that I could go back and tell myself that because that's actually really important. Picking your niche and understanding that you have to love this thing for a long time is super important, even if you don't grow super fast right off the bat.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah. Because if you grow slow but you love what you do, you're not gonna mind it as much. If you grow fast and you don't like what you do, you're gonna mind it a whole heck of a lot. So uh just stranger, I hope that that helps. Uh, and hopefully you're you're thinking about these things too. All right.

Fresh Ideas Versus What Works

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Next question comes from RoboDad. He's not even a real dad. My DD content fits between trying to find what works amongst what I make and trying to create my own lane amongst other DD creators. Can you give your views on balancing fresh ideas and doing the expected stuff? Today's new will be next year's expected. Wow. What a great question. Yeah. Go ahead. How do you how do you approach this? So he has DD content, which is Dungeons and Dragons.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Um, and what he's saying is, how do you find what works versus creating his own lane? So copying other people and things that already work versus trying to spin your own stuff so that people come to you specifically. What what do you what comes to mind when you think of that, Dan?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Uh well, I I think the way it's phrased, I worry a little bit that this person might be falling into a trap of reinventing the wheel. Like if you were I because I I don't know, but I'm I'm speaking from my own experience, like my way of like trying to carve out my own lane was what was me trying to reinvent the wheel a long time ago. And so that when I when I hear phrasing like that, I'm like, ooh, are they doing like what I did, you know? And I I guess I guess with D with D D content, there's only so many things it could be. You can do like tutorial style things where you're trying to help people become better game masters, or you could play DD, right, on YouTube with a group of people. And it just feels like that way of doing a DD channel is particularly difficult to stand out. And there's a number of examples I can point to where people have tried that who otherwise are pretty successful, but it just it's hard to get off the ground because who who is the main competition there? There is one channel that that is like the gold standard and it's a critical role. And if you're just playing DD with your friends, like you are holding yourself like you're to their standard, I guess. They they've kind of like carved the way. And for some reason, I just I find it so difficult to find channels that are like also successful. I'm sure they're out there, I don't watch a lot of this content, but it's difficult, it's difficult to find a lot of examples of channels who are just sitting down and playing DD together as a group. Uh, one thing I learned recently, the you remember Rooster Teeth. A bunch of people from Rooster Teeth have since spun off their own like DD kind of channel. And I think, if I'm remembering right, I think this is the correct channel I'm thinking of. They use like puppets and stuff as like their visuals. Oh. And so like that was their way of like carving out their own lane. And I'm not gonna say it's doing poorly or anything, but it's certainly nowhere near uh, you know, critical roles numbers. And you would think with all this like clout that so many of those people have from being a rooster teeth for so long, it would be like this overnight success. But I was looking at the views and they were modest, they were just like, oh, cool, there it looks like they're having fun and they're getting some views, but it wasn't like it didn't blow me out of the water. So I it's it's tough, right? Like they they have a lot of experience doing this, they carved out their own way of presenting the content, and they're still do they feel like they're struggling? I don't know. Uh maybe, maybe they feel like they're growing at a good rate, but I know I'm just rambling now. It's it's just tough to get caught in the weeds of I need to carve out my own path. It's like yes, but also there's there's a right way to do that in a less efficient way to do that. And it's hard to know until you actually start trying things what that's gonna what the results are gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, and every niche has a different tolerance for this sort of thing, like being creative or wacky or silly might work in one niche and not in the other. Um and you know, what's expected, that term that you use, I think is really important to break down what's it's expected by the audience, right? Not necessarily what you expect of yourself. Uh what's expected by the audience is what's going to get you views. Will it bring you happiness? Maybe not. I mean, maybe what the audience wants from you is something you don't want to do. And that's where um the push and pull of content creation happens on a frequent basis. And I think it's super important to keep that in mind while you're content creating that you do have a choice to make. There will be times where you will make something that's for you and it may not perform. But that's okay as long as it keeps you keeps your fire burning for the other content that works. Again, this goes back to the last question we talked about. You should be starting with a channel idea with content you want to make. You shouldn't be doing it just to do it. Because if that content doesn't work, then you're doing something you don't want to do and it's not working and it's not getting views, and it's just misery, right? So you're at least better off making something you're proud of and that you like doing. And if it doesn't perform as well, at least you're still getting something out of it. And I know that most people listen to podcasts to get their stuff better, which is great. And you take all the advice we've been giving for all the years we've been giving it, you should do that. But fundamentally, um you need to enjoy what you're doing. Because if you don't, A, the audience will be able to tell. And B, you're gonna hate it. And the the person that's gonna stop you the most from doing content is yourself, especially if you don't like doing it. So the balance of fresh ideas, which should be happening all the time, versus expected stuff is you gotta do both. It's just a matter of figuring out what's gonna be best uh for your particular each.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah, and and hopefully you are having fun, you know, making the content the way you're making it. If you're playing DD, the biggest thing, I think, for getting views is showing people how much fun it is to hang out with you and your friends. And uh, how do you do that if they don't click your videos? I would say DD channels probably need to adopt the podcast shorts kind of pipeline, whereby you have a show with your friends and you make sure that you're taking good, fun clips from that and making that your shorts content so that you can like get people in the door because that's really what it's about is hey, this is a fun group to be around. I want to be with these people, I want to be like these people, and I'm gonna watch all of their content because they make me laugh and they make each other laugh, and that's really fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

That would be my general advice for that kind of content and for that particular type of content, whereas for other types of content, the environment might be different. But whatever that environment is, the blueprint typically is out there. There's very few people that are gonna be able to make content of a niche that doesn't exist. Uh, so you'll be able to find the people that are doing it well and looking at what works, looking at their comment section, finding videos that are that are working on their channel, and just kind of figure out what your version of that is. And that's the part where you're talking about you know, creating your own stuff versus what's expected. So uh hopefully, Robodad, uh, you have input that into your prompt for your robotic frame. So I assume that's what you are, RoboDad. All right, next one

Sponsored Reviews Without Losing Trust

SPEAKER_00 13:20

up. Mystery Master 3, because the other two Mystery Masters have already submitted questions, so we had to get down to the third one. Hello, Vidaiku gentleman, and Savage, if he is there today. Funny enough, Savage is uh he's about off vacation. I think he's gonna be back uh at some point, not too distant future. My channel has recently been approached to do video reviews for several developers. Any advice on the format uh if if I okay the game versus if I don't okay the game? I think what he's saying is if he likes the game versus if he doesn't like the game. Um but he says he's recently been approached to do review videos for several developers. My so the the tricky thing here is, so I assume this is about video games. The the tricky thing here is most people are going to, when they give you, especially early access or something, they're gonna expect somewhat of a, especially if you're a smaller creator, somewhat of a positive review. And this is where you've really got to be honest with yourself. Are you going to be influenced by the fact that you might have gotten access to something for free or early and bend to the will of, I want to just say something positive instead of saying the truth, versus being real and being like, well, you know, this game is early, or or or I played it and it's just not my cup of tea, and being okay with that. Like that is, and he's asking about the format. Forget about the format. Like your format should be the same for both. The question is, can you realistically do that? I will say early on in my content creation career, when I first started getting stuff sent to me, I had a positivity bias. I was like, I want to find something positive. They sent me something for free. I want to find the positive things from it. I don't want to say anything bad, even though I didn't necessarily like the thing. You need to be real with your audience. And if you don't like, but also don't do the opposite. Don't just be looking for bad things just for bad things. Uh and you do a lot of video game stuff. Dan, what are your thoughts here?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

When I ever, when I uh whenever I watch reviewers nowadays, there's there's a few different types. So there's the view reviewers that do get stuff for free, and they say, Listen, this company sent this to me. They don't get to see it beforehand. All of these opinions are my own. And they give what I see what I feel is a pretty fair review. They go over the pros, they go over the cons, and sometimes the cons list is longer, even though they got it for free and they're upfront about that. Then there's other reviewers I watch who are like, hey, I'm not going to I'm not going to do product reviews for things that I don't feel like are good. You know, if they send me it, I look at it ahead of time and I feel like, ooh, this is going to be a pretty rough review. I just don't do it. Which, you know, is also a way to go. And I think both of those things are valid. But yes, like you said, you what you don't want to do is feel like I already agreed to do this. Turns out I actually hate this game the more I play it, but now I feel like I have to say something nice because I don't want to like poop all over this person. They seem nice and they seem like, you know, they're doing a good job for them, you know, for what they're capable of. But uh, you know, I don't want to lie to my audience, and you don't want to be in that position. So, one, carefully like actually review the stuff for yourself first before you record any footage, is like, or record it, but before you release anything, you know, don't agree to anything. Say, hey, I'll take a look at your game, no promises. Take the game, try it. And if you don't like it and you don't want to be a jerk, then you know you don't have to play it. You said no promises. But yeah, that's the biggest thing is just agreeing to do something, getting a code, playing the game, you know, plugging in the code, playing the game, and then going, oh, this was a mistake. And I've done that. I've been in that position. I'm like, I'm gonna have to let them down and tell them I'm not gonna put this on the channel. And it's an awkward conversation.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

But that's better than than the opposite of just like trashing it, and then you're the jerk. The other thing is I will tell you, so uh mini story time, there was a uh I was listening to a podcast years ago, and during it, they had an ad for, and this this particular company does ads on a lot of different things, YouTube channels included, for like their quote healthy cereal or whatever it is. So I ordered it. I'm like, you know, in case they ever broach me about doing a sponsorship, because I get approached all the time about little random things. I want to know in advance if I like it. I was I like cereal and you know, a healthy version of cereal, I'm down with that. Let me try it. I taste I bought it, I got like three different flavors, tastes like cardboard. I it's the it's a brand I know now. They could not pay me enough to ever say anything good about them because I think it's trash. I will never do a sponsor deal for that product, no matter how much money they would offer me. And I think that's important to understand that, like, where we're talking about games, like a free game is whatever, but money will change people. And they some people will bend to the will of money. You've got to have it's so funny. I'm about to do like a one-on-one consultation with this huge YouTuber, and in one of their videos, they got huge backlash on a sponsor that they had, so much so that I think they actually removed it from the video, and I've not seen that before. That's a risky thing because you end up forfeiting that money, like however much money it was. I don't know how much it was. And when I because I was reading the comments, and people were just destroying this creator saying, This is a terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah. You shouldn't do this. You only have like an a finite audience. You know what I mean? If you burn them on a review of a product, a sponsor, a game, whatever, and they realize, uh, this guy or this guy or girl, whatever, it is just in it for whatever the cloud or the money or whatever, you will lose them as an audience. You will lose them. And I've had friends that have that have had YouTube channels that were successful and did similar things, and then they pretty much lost the audience because no one can trust them anymore. You just need to, before you even start going down that path, you need to have lines of what you're willing to accept, what you're not willing to accept, and you need to stay the line no matter how hard it is in that moment. Stay the line.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah. If you you end up in that position, like that's actually not what I want to say. You know what I want to say? Uh, trust. Like you build trust with your audience, that trust is what people value. That's why they want to sponsor you, that's why they want you to review their games, and they they see it, they see the trust that creators build their audience. The trust is the product for them, right? That is what they're paying for. That's the value. So as soon as you cross that line and you break that trust, it's it's game over. Like now, not only is does that sponsor not want to work with you, but future sponsors don't want to work with you because your audience clearly doesn't trust you. Your comments are are really toxic when they you do have comments, most of your viewers are gone now. So, yeah, don't don't break the trust. Man, rambling a latte. I hope your editor makes me sound good.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

No, it's it's it's so important. I know, listen, if someone goes, I keep saying trust. Trust me when I tell you you get one shot at this. If you do it wrong, uh people will not forget. All right, next one Master Joker one.

Why Shorts Views Come In Steps

SPEAKER_00 19:57

See, so there's apparently other Master Jokers, but we got the first one. We got the third of the first one. Yeah, we got the first one. I would like your professional help. Oh, this is this is great. I like the way this starts, Dan. We're professional helping. Why my views for recent shorts view charts is like steps for the first 24 hours of release. Maybe it's just YouTube is testing my short. Is it a good sign or a bad one? I don't upload very consistently, about one to three times a month. And a couple times a month, I didn't upload at all. So basically, what they're saying is why does it look like views go up and down or not up and down? Uh, why do they they shoot up and they stop? And they shoot up and they stop. Look like stairs, what they're saying. That's normal for most content creators making shorts. Um, we were some of the first channels that really dug into shorts when they first started coming out around 2020 or something like that, Dan. Um, they worked differently back then. Remember, it used to take almost three days, two or three days before they'd even get like shorts views, but now you can get them within the first hour. It goes right on the short shelf. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah, it's it's a very well-known behavior with shorts. And I think what you'll find is the more you make and the more popular they get as long as you continue to have that upward trajectory, the less staircases you'll see in the future. And they'll they'll get smaller and smaller to the point where your graphs on shorts will start to look like normal video graphs for long form. It it just that's how I've seen it with a lot of channels that have been doing it for a while, ours included. It's it's just kind of normal now, it just looks totally fine. But I I think they they kind of already suspect it, and I think they're right. It's YouTube's testing it with different segments of their audience, like across the entire app, and trying to figure out okay, where does this slot in nicely? And yeah, it's nothing to worry about at all. I I would be excited that you're getting stares at all when some folks are posting and then nothing happens. That can happen too.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

A quick reminder that um shorts are now counted differently than they were a couple of years ago uh when they started going with the more TikTok number, which as soon as someone sees your video, whether they swipe or whatever, it's good, it's considered a view. And quite frankly, views on shorts are really as much about impressions as anything. Don't have a CTR on shorts unless it goes uh into Browse stuff, but for the short shelf, which is where most views uh usually happen on shorts, the the common short. I mean, there are instances now where I mean you can get a lot of views in browse, but that's not the common thing. The common thing is short uh short shelf. You gotta remember that's the testing. Those views are are tests uh of the video. It's when you get above that kind of you might notice that a lot of your shorts get the same amount of views. Just think of that as like that's your you're being tested, that's your impressions. And um, anything beyond that is like, oh, it found a successful group of people to test against next. I've talked about this and like how the algorithm works before. If it's something that you're interested in hearing again, maybe you didn't hear that episode, leave me a comment and uh maybe I'll do another episode about that. But yeah, just remember that like that's kind of how shorts work. Uh most people are gonna get views on shorts, uh, the short shelf, and uh it's gonna spike and then it's gonna be done. It's over. You've been canceled. Congratulations. If you like advice like this, come check us out, vidIQ.com slash Discord, and you can come uh talk to people like Master Joker and many more uh as they're sending in these they're famous now. You've become famous by uh sending in a question to the podcast. That is the rule.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

If if we answer a question now, you have to answer questions from everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yes. You're on the same podcast that uh uh Mori Povich was on, among other great uh great people. So just know how how famous you are now. All

Linking A Seasonal Series With Shows

SPEAKER_00 23:19

right. Uh this one's from Grenade 44. Uh, this is the 44th grenade. Of course, the other 43 have already sent in questions. Hi, Travis, Rob, and Dan. Last year I ran a series of 12 scrapwood Christmas build videos and planning to start filming the new builds. I'm wondering how to link them back to last year's Christmas series. Is it worth doing a compilation of last year's videos in between the new builds, like Gronx related one or tr or a tree related to animal-related ones, or is there a better method to use? You know what's interesting, Dan. We were just talking about this. This new thing just rolled out called shows on YouTube. This sounds like something they could use shows for. I mean, the obvious answer is a playlist, right? But shows is interesting because it's different. And the way that they um explain shows in in the YouTube studio, again, this is a new thing. It's a version of a playlist, but it allows you to put a specific type of quote, like higher higher uh what do they call it? Like higher produced kind of uh video that would be a show specific to each other. Again, it's I'm I'm basically explaining a playlist, but this is what YouTube's saying. But you get to put like different artwork on it and stuff. Something interesting. I don't really know what's going on here. It sounds like a show thing, but how would you how would you do this where he has some videos he made last Christmas, he wants to link them and kind of get it promoted for this Christmas?

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, this sounds like season two of whatever this is, if we're doing shows. So yeah, you could put them all into one playlist and make it a show playlist, and I think it's more for TV viewers to be honest. I really don't know for sure. I I have yet to play with it myself, but I have a couple of good series to like test this with, so I'm getting excited to test that at some point. I'm just trying to understand the artwork part of it because I just don't know. Anyway, um, so that is that is the first very obvious thing. It should be in the same playlist, I think. You could also do a separate playlist for a season two. I don't know. Like now, see, now I'm getting really distracted by the show thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Oh, well, hold on. Let's let's show what the show looks like. So if you're watching on YouTube, I'm gonna real quick share my show. Uh, this is what it looks like when you create a new show. Uh, at the top, it you have the title for the show and the description. Again, this is just like a playlist and then the visibility and language. That's all the same. But now there's artwork, and it says add artwork that stands out to Drad, uh, it's almost like a thumbnail, but it's a 16 by nine banner and a 16 by nine backdrop. And then the so show structure. So it can be non-serial, which is the most common. Episodes can be watched in any order and are listed newest to oldest, which is like most playlists, or serial, and episodes are intended to be watched in a sequential order that are listed oldest to newest. So there are some different quote levers you can pull for this, and this is kind of what we're looking at here. I don't know, um, again, I I don't know how much difference this makes, but that it is something different than just the normal quote playlist, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

I've noticed that playlists are really difficult to, I've probably talked about it on the show before. It's really difficult to have a playlist and like find your spot in it again. If you watch half of a playlist one day and you come back, you're like, wait, where was I? It's really difficult because the playlist flow kind of disappears once you leave. It's so annoying. So maybe shows addresses that. I don't know. I actually am starting to develop another prediction whereby maybe they are trying to do away with playlists, but in doing so, they're going to replace it with all these different types of playlists. Eventually, we'll never have a generic playlist again. It'll just be if okay, you want a list of things? Is it a show? Is it a podcast? Is it this? Like they'll have a few categories and it makes more sense that way. And each one has like a specialty. So shows feels like it's a TV thing, podcast is obviously for YouTube music. So anyway, you could use shows. When I think of a show, uh the Friends. Friends is one show with like nine or ten seasons. They wouldn't make separate shows for each season. So if you use shows, I'd recommend keeping it all in one playlist. That was what I was gonna say about that. Uh, but there's other ways to connect it that are probably even more impactful. So you can use end screens. So your new content, you say, Hey, I did this last year. So if you like these builds and you're itching for the next episode and it's not ready yet, check out last year's. So you do that in like the first episode this year. You can also link your in your pinned comment to older episodes. And people click links in pinned comments. It's a very common way to get people to check out other videos. But yeah, ultimately it's just about informing your audience that more of this content exists. This is a series I do every year. I did it last year. Last year I made this. Go check it out. Like find different ways to do calls to action. And so then you'll have kind of this powerhouse. You'll have the playlist slash shows, you'll have the call to action at the end, and you'll have pinned comments. And those are three fantastic ways to kind of link everything together.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah, and it and it does work. But calls to action are really important. Obviously, if you want people, you gotta let them know in the video. Say, hey, there's that link. Here's the end screen, it's in the description, it's a pinned comment, whatever. All those things will work. But you can try the show thing because this sounds like it's a special thing, and these scrap wood Christmas builds could be a show of itself. All right, next one

Portfolio Channels And Mixed Niches

SPEAKER_00 28:13

up. Uh, this one's from Diover, I think that's the name. Hello, I'm an audio visual audio visual producer. I'd like to point out that I think we all are as YouTubers. We're all audio video producers, we are executive producers, we're writers, we're talent, we're we're the production staff, we are the the grip, we are the the the food people, we're the executives uh binning ideas that that we're the good people in the production and the bad people in the production. It's great. Uh I've had a channel since 2019 approximately, but I've never used it as my official YouTube channel. So this is the question. I want to use my channel to showcase my productions, and those videos might be different from different niches, that's fine. Teach techniques on how to produce lighting sets, etc. Teach color grading because one of my specialties is the production process, and maybe some other techniques like motion graphics or 3D animation. How can I begin so in the future the algorithm doesn't get confused by my niche? Well, that's gonna be tricky because you are trying to serve a lot of different things here. Um, to be clear, it I mean, it doesn't sound like you're trying to uh necessarily have like the biggest YouTube channel out there. It sounds like, like you said, he wants to use it to like showcase his stuff, but then also teach some things. I think if you are okay with mixed results across videos, you can keep it all on the same channel because they're all under one umbrella, right? But you should not believe that they will all they will all um perform the same because they won't. Um if you title and thumbnail some of these correctly for uh tutorials, then you will have evergreen content, which will be good. Your your productions are only gonna be interesting to the people who want to work with you or for you or you know, whatever. So don't expect those to necessarily go big because those are the ones you're probably gonna show to potential clients and go, these are the things I've done before. Also remember that anything else you put on that YouTube channel, they will see as well. So if you if you're doing silly stuff in your other videos, just know that. I'm not saying you're gonna do that, but it's it's if it's your if it's your platform to get yourself more business, just know that they're gonna watch other things too. Like, oh, what's this other thing? What's this color? Does he do color grading right? I don't know. Let me see. So just be very careful if you're using this as your portfolio. Uh, but things like teaching uh techniques how to produce lighting sets and color grading and stuff, those are completely different parts of the production process and aren't necessarily done by the same person watching your channel. There might be an editor who watches your videos for color grading, but they're not gonna watch the lighting stuff because they're not involved in that part, right? Um, so just know that, like, and motion graphics, there's only gonna be a smaller total address on market because not everyone who edits, shoots videos, and does production uses 3D animations or anything. So just understand you're serving different masters. Doesn't mean you can't do it, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Uh you're just gonna get different, uh different viewers and and and all that sort of thing. So uh Dan, what do you think about all this?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I basically the same thing I was gonna say. I I I think there's at least two channels there. If you have finished products that you want to show people and demonstrate that skill set, that feels like a different channel, but one that isn't gonna get like a ton of views. If you're doing that once in a while, those can probably be on the main channel. And then I would ask myself, like, okay, what's the purpose of this video? Is it to showcase and like teach somebody something? If so, what is that thing so I can title the video appropriately? Or could it be that the video just tells a cool story and stands on its own and you could just title it and thumbnail it like it's its own thing, and then people who watch it will start getting recommended or tutorial content, it won't be relevant to them, but hey, that's okay. Like, I've seen channels work where they kind of try and serve two different audiences, it's just it's more you know hairy in the back end, it's it's difficult to track, and that's why we don't recommend it. But if you are going into this knowing that, yeah, my channel's gonna look a little bit weird sometimes on the back end, but I don't mind. And that's that's fine too. There's that's kind of the thing about YouTube. We, as people who give YouTube advice, often will tell you this is the way to do something. There are no rules. We're trying to make it simple. So if you ever get coaching from us, for example, your channel doesn't confuse the heck out of us, you know what I mean? But that doesn't mean the channel isn't good or is doomed for failure just because you didn't perfectly niche down. But it's easier for us to teach, you should perfectly niche down. That's not gonna work for everybody. This is one of those examples.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

I also feel like if the priority again is to get more business for your you know your work, that should just be on its own channel, and then everything else can be under a second channel. Like you said, there's at least two channels here, and that's how I would separate. I'm like, listen, this is what I do professionally, all this other stuff. I'm just kind of helping other creators. I don't necessarily want you to look at that. I want you to look at this because this is what I'm gonna do for you, right? So for me, that's what I would do.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Um makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

It depends if that is that what they're trying to do, or they try to hire showcase my productions, but and that could just be to everyone, like it could just be to other people, but I would obviously use that for future clientele. Like, I I can't see why you wouldn't use it for that. I I wouldn't care if other people liked it, that's cool. But like if it's bringing in money, like hello, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Your future clients don't really care if you can teach color grading, they're just like, What is what does your finished product look like? What are you gonna do for this event?

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah.

CTR Versus Views And What Subs Mean

SPEAKER_00 33:11

All right, next up, MFO Gamer says, Hey, Travis Rob Dan. Hope you're having a good day. Oh, thank you. Uh so recently I've been thinking about getting the highest CTRs possible as well as more subs. Oh, I mean, oh, that's uh that's a pretty good idea, right? I guess. Also, what should I do to make uh the engaging community post? Wow. I would love to see what all three came up with a solution. Okay, there's a couple of questions here. Let's break them down one by one. Uh, the first one is I I'm thinking about getting the highest CTR possible as well as more subs. I think that's a question everyone wants the answer to. Uh, by the way, highest CTR does not necessarily mean most views. Weirdly enough, usually the highest CTR means fewer views because YouTube. Uh, if you know anything about how impressions work, as you get more impressions, your CTR naturally goes down. So technically, uh, more views is your CTR goes down. So wanting the highest CTR isn't always what you think it is. I've had many videos with like 8, 9, 10, 11% CTR that got barely any views. And uh that's always more frustrating. More subs is a different question. So there's different ways of getting that. Let's talk about subscribers first and then uh the engaging community posts other because we uh from vidIQ, we've done so many things with the community tab. I think we're kind of uniquely experts in the community tab area if we if we really think about it. Let's talk about subscribers. Why does someone subscribe? Dan, why, and I know you don't subscribe a lot, and I don't either. Um, why do you subscribe to a channel? I think this is where you can start. My memory sucks.

unknown 34:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

That's why. Yeah, that's why you subscribe to a channel. Yeah. If I if I see a channel and I'm like, I want to come back to this person has videos I'm gonna want to watch again, that's where I'm most likely to subscribe, especially if I've been on a tear watching similar channels because now I know my recommendation feed is gonna be full of all of their videos for a while. It's like I'm trying to signal to it that, like, well, this person really impressed me. So it really is for me. That's why I subscribe to somebody. And I think that's what we don't talk about enough. Like the subscribe button is just used differently and by different people too, but like different people will have a different use for it. I I guess in in other countries they use it as the like button. Yeah, and the problem with the like button is is that people never unlike something, you know. So that's why it's a vanity metric, it just goes up and up and up, and it never seems to go down for the most part. There'll be times where bot accounts get purged, or maybe we lose a couple subscribers because you went live, and people are like, what the heck is this? But for the most part, it's it's not a it's not a number that indicates the health of your channel. You can buy a channel for a with a million subscribers on it. You're not supposed to do that, but I'm saying, let's say you buy a channel with a million subscribers, and then you start posting on it. Very quickly will that audience realize it wasn't what they originally subscribed for, and they either won't watch or they'll even unsubscribe. So I I know creators that have over a million subscribers and they are struggling that to get like a couple thousand views because they got a million subscribers back in like a heyday, and then they didn't like continue adapting, or they just kind of like took another job for a while and took a break and then came back and they had to rebuild. So everyone talks about subscribers. It's a very easy thing to point out. You get these cool little plaques and stuff when you get milestones, and it's exciting, but it could it is the metric that can continues year after year to get less and less and less meaningful to the point where now the subscription feed button on your phone, what you click to like go see all of the stuff you're subscribed, your subscribed channels are up to. I think they're moving that somewhere else, they're making it like harder to find potentially. It's I I think it I think I actually think it could be easier to find depending on how you look at UI. But for a while, that's also been devalued because they started treating that like another recommended feed, so it's no longer in reverse chronological order, it's in the order of what you they think will be most interesting, which is like so annoying because I subscribe to these folks and I'm going there to see what they are doing right now. I don't want you to adjust the order which things are coming out, anyway. So that's that's subscriptions and 2026, and it wouldn't make it your ultimate goal.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah, I mean it's good for social proof, but little else. If some people think once you get uh subscribers, you get views. Let me show you something. This is from the main vid IQ channel. This is a video right now that has over 70,000 views and climbing. Uh, and if you look at the bell notifications for your subscribers, um at 0.8%, we're somewhere in the middle of the normal notification rate, and that we got 269 whole views for this video. Under under 300 views of the 70,000 came from the subscription notification feed. And if you look at like um viewers versus subscribers, it's gonna be kind of the same thing. It's gonna be a lot we know what we really want is we want a lot of people who aren't subscribed. So not subscribed 66% of those views, whereas subscribed is like 40%. You'll notice over time, looking again, you have to be watching the YouTube video for this. Um, you'll notice that the non-subscribed always stays above the subscribe because most views come from not subscribers. I mean, that's just the way it is. People don't use a subscription fact. So you just have to know that, like, while it's nice to have, it is a bucket from which you can grab people to watch some of your content if you think of it like that. Uh, it is not a guarantee of anything. No views, no nothing, no engagement, nothing. That work comes from you putting out content people want to watch, engage with, and be a part of. And uh it's easy and hard all at the same time. It is uh it's not it's not easy. Some people come to YouTube thinking it's gonna be the easiest thing. Nope. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

That could be TikTok's fault as well, because tick TikTok is just a completely different algorithm way of doing things, and there are people who go to TikTok, they find some success, and then they realize YouTube pays better. So they come to YouTube and they're like, well, wait a minute. I'm a big deal on TikTok. What's going on? Like it's just, yeah, it's completely different over here.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

I can't wait to do this next question because uh I haven't had one of these in a while, but I talk about all the time, so I'm glad that we actually have a question

Why One Short Suddenly Blows Up

SPEAKER_00 39:05

for it. This one's from the Light Reaper. Hey, Rob, Dan, Travis. Hope your podcast is going well. Over the year last year, or on my channel last year, I made a short. For me, it was just a fun short to make. Simple, and I used a trick that I honestly should capitalize on more. This short blew up compared to everything I've made since. It has become an evergreen video that eight months later still gets new views coming in in the hundreds, and I've linked the video below. This um, this short is not that great in quality, but I think there's something that I still haven't learned watching this short. I've made another evergreen short and I hope it could reach this one. But could you explain to me why and why this one short, even with its bad quality, has the most views of any short by a mile when my other shorts while I'm talking this has like 20k views. Yeah, the thing is, is like we could look at this, but it it's not gonna answer anything for us. To be honest, like ultimately, um the shorts are interesting because again, we're I'm just watching a little bit of it. Assassin's Creed thing. Okay, so according to our vid IQ tool, it didn't take off right away, it actually over time did well, right? It it took it took a couple of months before it got anywhere. So the thing about that is you don't looking back in time, we would have to Google what was going on in that time. Did Assassin's Creed have a big announcement or something during that time? So this stuff happens all the time. Matter of fact, it's happened to me recently. I have a video that I did two months ago, and I started seeing a bunch of views coming in from Google search over the last like week. And I was like, why is this happening? And I looked and I watched, I rewatched the video, and I realized I was talking about something that was going to happen in July, which is now. And that's why all the information, because all the people this thing was happening to all of a sudden started Google searching, what's happening? And my video is there, and they're seeing it and they're getting the views. So two months almost two months later, after I make the video, I'm getting a ton of views from something that's happening in the world. Same thing here. This is about Assassin's Creed. There was like a movie or something. I forget exactly what it was. No, a black flag resync is oh, right, right. They announced yeah, yeah, and the game came out. When didn't that come out? I I don't know if it's out yet, but they're talking about it. The marketing for it has been just everywhere. Yeah, so it could have been something just like that. So the way the reason that matters is because when people start watching that content, YouTube goes, Oh, everyone's watching the Assassin's Creed content. Let me find some shorts and some longs, and let me just start throwing it out there and seeing if you know something uh something would be interesting. This happened has this happened to you, Dan, where you've made something?

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Yeah, uh, but it also happened on the Viticue channel just the other day. Like they removed the dislike button on shorts. Rob Wilson made a dislike video that had nothing to do with them removing the button, I don't think. I can't remember exactly what it was about, but all of a sudden we see this old short just spike out of nowhere. We're like, what's happening? And it's because of the announcement that they removed the dislike button from YouTube Shorts that people started looking for shorts dislike, and boom, the short was there. So, yeah, just to back up what you were saying, it that's that was that's what happens. Uh, what I wanted to say is like sometimes the answer also doesn't lie in an event or the data, sometimes it's just the content itself. And when I watched that video just now, the first thing that happens is they ask, as an Assassin's Creed player or former Assassin's Creed player, they asked an interesting question. That that's what got me. I was like, oh, that is a good question. So sometimes it's just you strike gold because maybe you've been throwing stuff spay at the wall for a bit, and then you end up stumbling upon a question that a lot of people have had, and it's hard to know that until you just put something out there, and it's difficult to replicate that success because you can keep trying, and but hindsight's always what's is 2020, like once you when when you're trying to post something before you post it, you're like, I hope it's good, you know. So I think it was kind of a perfect storm, and let's just let's just be clear they're usually if they're usually getting 20,000 views and that short has 74,000 views. That's for shorts. I'm sorry to say this, that's not a large spread. When it comes to shorts, I thought we were gonna be looking at a short with like 300,000 views with the way they were kind of talking, but that's not too far off from because if you look, the even the graph we just showed was kind of a stair step, it was kind of doing normal and then boom, and then it went nor, you know, then it went back down. It it just sometimes you could get that many views in an afternoon on YouTube shorts because they're very short, they're easy to consume. And if YouTube is like, hey, a lot of people are talking about Assassin's Creed right now, boom, boom, boom, boom, throwing it out and all over the place, yeah, you could rack up those views very quickly. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of things going on, some of it explained by data, but some of it's not gonna be explained by data. Sometimes just like, oh no, you just you just ask the

Discord Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_01 43:43

good question.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah, and it's things like this that I think are what makes this podcast great. We can just kind of dive in in the moment. And if you like stuff like this, you should hit that subscribe button. Actually, you should go either on our Twitter slash X, which we did an episode about uh just this past week, or our Discord. Links in the description. Go over there and talk to us, and maybe we'll do another one of these QA's. If you like that, I mean leave me a comment below. Let me know. Hey, I was in the Discord, I love this, I want you to do it again, and uh maybe we'll do it again. Uh Dan, we should do uh when's the last time you did a stage in Discord? Have you done one recently? Uh it's been a while. We should probably both do it. Let's both do a stage soon. Let's do that. Uh, Vicky will like that. She loves when we do stuff like that. All right. If you're new here, hit that subscribe and hit that like button. And I got a video for you right here that's just as incredible. Make sure you check it out, and I'll see you in the next one.