TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

YouTube Premium Bundles And Shorts Thumbnails Explained

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YouTube is starting to look less like a single app and more like the center of the streaming universe, and that shift has real consequences for creators. We break down the surprising news that YouTube Premium is adding access to Peacock and why bundling matters now that YouTube is beating major streamers in watch-time. We also talk about the tension baked into the deal: paying for “Premium” while still facing ads on the bundled service, and what that reveals about where advertising and subscriptions are heading.

From there, we unpack a feature YouTube teased a year ago that still hasn’t shown up in a meaningful way: the ability to remove and swap sponsor segments inside published videos. On paper, dynamic sponsorship insertion sounds like a creator’s dream. In practice, we challenge whether it fits how YouTube views actually work, especially for videos that spike and then fade. If brands start asking, “Why am I paying you to get less views?” creators will need clearer inventory expectations, better reporting, and smarter monetization strategy.

Then we hit the update Shorts creators have asked for forever: custom thumbnails for YouTube Shorts. Shorts are showing up on the homepage, in search, and on TV, which means packaging is becoming part of short-form growth. We share when thumbnails are worth the effort, design constraints like the crop “kill zone,” and why search-driven Shorts traffic can change everything.

To close, Travis sits down with Allison Yasnian, CEO of Uscreen, to talk about building a subscription business beyond the YouTube algorithm: owning your audience, collecting emails, launching apps, running premium communities, and creating recurring revenue with monthly subscriptions. If you’re serious about the creator economy, audience ownership, and sustainable monetization, hit subscribe, share this with a creator friend, and leave us a review.

Cold Open On Shorts Search Views

SPEAKER_02

72.4%. We get almost three three quarters of our views from shorts from search. Why am I gonna pay you to get less views? It doesn't make sense. Building a channel, I got it up to a hundred thousand subscribers, and I was making three figures a month ad revenue.

SPEAKER_03

Little do they know that thing gets 300 views a year after that. At some point, someone's gonna

Why We’re Doing React Format

SPEAKER_03

figure this out. Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that has more glasses than you have videos. I'm Travis and I'm here with Rob as always. How you doing, Rob?

SPEAKER_02

Hey Travis, good to be here once again. Can I maybe stealing your funder here, but can I just say a huge thank you to all of the listeners and viewers who gave us such a positive response to our uh I don't know, VidIQ Reacts podcast that we did a couple of weeks ago?

SPEAKER_03

Really good. Yeah, we we've done it a couple times, me and you and me and Dan. And I asked if people like the format. People like the format, so we're gonna continue with that today. So yay for you. And also, we're gonna do a little special thing here in this episode. Uh, at the end, we're gonna have an interview with someone who's gonna help you figure out another way to monetize your content beyond YouTube itself. It's actually super exciting. So we'll talk about that as well. But there's always things going on in the news, and that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. Today is the latest in YouTube news and something that they talked about a year ago that we still haven't seen. And it's one of those things we that YouTube will tell us that something's coming sometimes, and then we're like, hello? Hello, is it coming yet? Is not here yet? No, okay. Well, I guess we'll just continue to wait.

SPEAKER_02

Along with something that they told us was never going to come.

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_02

And all of a sudden it appeared.

SPEAKER_03

Why don't we just start there? I feel like we might as well just start.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's a tease of that's like the stick around until a little later on in the video, and I ru we'll reveal said thing.

SPEAKER_03

All right. Is that the is that the thing we talked about beforehand, or is this something else that's been aware of? We talked about many things. All right. Well, I'm gonna guess then. Uh and then not show it first because now I'm not even sure what Rob's talking about.

YouTube Premium Adds Peacock Access

SPEAKER_03

All right. So, first thing up, um, I I will talk all about this primarily because Rob doesn't exactly know what this is, but all right. First of all, YouTube Premium is the thing that uh I think they call it YouTube Red originally. Wasn't it called like YouTube Red or something originally? Yeah, I think you're right, YouTube Red. So if you don't know, it is a service you can pay for on YouTube to not have ads. And it's fantastic. If you watch a lot of YouTube, I I have to be honest, it's probably the best money I spend on any subscription service ever because I'm on YouTube all the time. And I don't, you know, I don't want to see a whole bunch of ads. And some people will complain and they'll say, Well, some content creators still have their sponsorships. I'm okay with that because you know, get your bag, but it is still some of the best money spent because I I watch so much YouTube. YouTube's doing something interesting now, they're now partnering with Peacock, which some people maybe not didn't see this. Um, YouTube Premium set to add free access to Peacock. Now, for those who don't know, Peacock is NBC. Uh for many years it had like uh WWE on it, but now it has things like The Office, Law and Order, like Shrek, all these different things. And it's again owned by NBC. And it it's basically uh giving you free access to a streaming service that um I think uh for your purposes, Rob, uh kind of lost a little shine when they lost WWE, but it's still a pretty cool streaming service. But it's interesting that this is not YouTube TV, which is a different service. YouTube TV is like actual broadcast TV and everything, and you get things like you know, NBC and stuff. This is the thing that's just normally just for YouTube. Now they're bringing in a broadcast partner. What do you think that says?

SPEAKER_02

The only two things I can say about uh Peacock is funnily enough, Travis, the references from wrestling because I I listened to a wrestling podcast by Conrad Thompson, who always used to describe it as peacock whenever he talks about the service. And then obviously, when I'm watching wrestling, I'm always told by Michael Cole to sign up to Peacock for $9.99. Beyond that, though, is this the case of if you can't beat them, join them? Because again, in the US, Nielsen ratings have been coming through that YouTube is now the most streamed service, beating Netflix and Disney quite considerably. So yeah, I guess it's trying to attach your um properties, your content to YouTube as well. I I am I right in thinking with this then, Travis, that you will just be able to search on the YouTube platform and Peacock shows are going to appear, or you still have to use a Peacock streaming service and app to watch those um watch those shows.

SPEAKER_03

That's a great question. I'm not actually sure. Sometimes what they'll do is they'll give you like a login or something, or they'll connect the account through some weird way.

SPEAKER_02

It doesn't say from from Canada where you'd you'd be connected to a TV streaming service, yeah. Where you had to go and put in a password somewhere else and then it redirected you to someone else.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I don't like that, but I don't know how they're doing it. It says um for those, so so for the price, this is why it's like a pretty decent deal. Um, normally the standalone YouTube uh premium thing itself is like 16 bucks. It goes for those subscribing to both platforms, bundling saves you $11 a month. It's the current price of Peacock by itself. Now, this is the ad support, is the irony of this. It's the ad supported version. So, in other words, you pay for um premium YouTube, you don't get ads, you get peacock for free, but you get ads on the peacock version. But at least it's free, right? Like, at least if you're already spending money on this, then it's cool. Now, the irony of this is about a year or so ago, uh, like I talked about YouTube TV, they actually had a dispute with NBC on the channels, and then a couple days later it came to an agreement, and maybe this was part of that agreement. They're like, Well, look, you gotta take Peacock if we're gonna do this. Take Peacock now. Um, again, not a bad streaming service. Just interesting that we're they're adding value to this service. And I wonder if we'll see more of that in the future. That would be exciting to me because again, now I already have peacock and I have the ad-free version, so I'm probably not gonna take advantage of this. But I think that the more value you add to premium and the people that don't necessarily know about it, the more likely they are to actually go, hey, actually, this is I already have Peacock. I've always wanted to have YouTube without ads. Let me just do it this way and then you know, do that.

SPEAKER_02

Travis, I'm imagining the Reddit keyboard warriors right now.

SPEAKER_01

I pay for YouTube Premium, and when I'm watching Peacock and I'm seeing all of these ads, it's a little talent I have there.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you very much. That's a great talent. That's uh, and I think you're probably right about that. But an interesting thing.

YouTube As The Default Streaming App

unknown

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03

Go you first, and then I've got a final thing to add. Yeah, I I feel like if this is if this was a one-off, it's just a weird one-off. But if it's uh you know uh an inkling of what we can see in the future, I am excited about it because I love getting more for my money.

SPEAKER_02

Although I can't talk strictly to this Peacock deal, what I can say is the BBC in the UK is starting to accept that YouTube is being consumed more and more by the television audience, so to speak. So they're now putting more of their content directly onto YouTube as opposed to their iPlayer service, which is like one of the pioneers of streaming services in the entire world. It's been around for almost 20 years at this point. But at the same time, there is a lot of controversy over uh the government slash BBC wanting to change the way the YouTube algorithm works in a country so that new services get prioritized in the algorithm so that we're forced new services onto our content. I think there was something similar in Canada, so you know we'll have to wait and see how that uh transpires. But it just it just shows again, uh Travis, how uh YouTube somehow has some incredible monopoly over how everybody consumes content. It's it feels like you know, you have Disney Plus, I have Netflix, Dan has um Hulu, but all of us have YouTube. And that that's it's just such a powerful thing in when you have so much choice.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, the funny thing is, is I have some multiple streaming services, and if they would all connect to YouTube, and even if they charge a little bit more but saves me overall, I would consider that. Um, I think YouTube's the one thing that I won't cut. I would consider cutting uh you know Netflix or or Hulu or whatever. I just don't see myself cutting YouTube. So very interesting. And again, this might be the beginning of something even bigger because, like you said, it you know, it came out uh I think it was earlier this year that uh it's like the biggest, pretty simply the big biggest streaming service uh anywhere.

SPEAKER_02

I I think you've just described the the circle circle of piracy there, where everybody pirates stuff, then one or two really good streaming services come out, then 70 streaming services come out, so everything's just split across all of all of these things that you've got to pay for, and then everybody goes back to piracy. I'm not condoning any of that, by the way. That just I've seen I've seen those types of um memes before where it's like it's really good, uh everything's really good for like five years, and then just businesses just want to take it over and it goes rubbish.

SPEAKER_03

Uh

Swappable Sponsor Segments Reality Check

SPEAKER_03

all right, next up, um, something that YouTube promised us uh a year ago and it really hasn't hasn't come to at least we haven't seen it yet. It could be being A-B tested, we're not sure. Uh, remember this from the um what was this made on YouTube uh uh last year?

SPEAKER_02

So we're almost a year past.

SPEAKER_03

So for some people, this might not be as important because it's about sponsorships, and maybe not everyone has sponsorships. Um, but they were talking about a way to take out certain uh sponsor segments from your YouTube videos and swapping them in with a newer sponsor so you could sell space in a video for a certain amount of time. Yes, which sounds great on the surface.

SPEAKER_02

You upload a 10-minute video and you don't have to burn in or put in your branded segment. You actually put that in afterwards, and let's say up to Christmas, it might be for the latest tech, and then after Christmas, it might be weight loss uh products. So, like you you are able to hot swap ads, or that's how we imagine it to work. But as you said, Travis, and we're showing the the gif on screen of how it would work, but we've not seen it, and YouTube have gone very quiet on it.

SPEAKER_03

I uh so I talked to March multiple large creators after this thing was announced, and they were all excited to see how it worked. Um but I think I think this is a really interesting concept because I don't know that it's a great idea. Well, I should say it's a great idea for the creator. Uh for the brand, I'm not sure if they know what they're buying into because anyone who's a creator knows that most of your views come at one point, unless you have a um an evergreen video that just happens to be like how to tie a tie. Okay, you're gonna get views on that forever, right? But most videos get a lot of their views at one point in time, whether it be the beginning or it blows up out of nowhere and then stops, and then there's nothing on it. So, what are you selling to a sponsor? Like, oh yeah, this video has a million views on it. You want to add a sponsor out of it? They're probably thinking, yeah, little do they know that thing gets 300 views a year after that. Like, what what are what are they at some point? Someone's gonna figure this out. So it doesn't, it's not as groundbreaking as I think it is. It goes, um, you know, the new format enables you to remove a sponsorship when the deal is complete, resell a slot to another brand, or eventually sell the same slot to multiple brands in different markets, transforming your videos into a living asset to grow your business. That sounds amazing, but that's not how YouTube videos work. It's not like you continually get a thousand views of a video every single day on the same video forever. That's not the way it works.

SPEAKER_02

It's almost like it's more a traditional way of um selling ads, really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03

Well, they say that we'll be testing this feature with a small group of creators early next year, it would have been earlier this year. We're in the middle part of this year, and we haven't heard anything. Doesn't mean they're not gonna do it. They probably still will try it, right? But I have a feeling they're gonna find out that this isn't as groundbreaking as it sounds. Because as a brand, I'm gonna be like, why am I gonna pay you to get less views? It doesn't make sense. I don't see the point in it for a brand.

SPEAKER_02

You would think that we're we're coming up to the fourth quarter soon where this type of functionality would be really interesting for creators, but would you want to test this during your quote unquote most profitable time of the year? I I think it this should have come out by now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

For us to get used to it, you know, both from a creator point of view and advertiser point of view. So, you know, I'm I'm probably gonna be completely wrong here, but this might be delayed until 2027.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. Yeah, because you need to know what the end of the year is when most sponsors come around. If this thing isn't launched in the next month or two and get out all the bugs that might be out, uh yeah, it's kind of dead in the water. Uh so good point. Um, and another story that we'll talk about, it's something I think you were kind of teasing at the beginning. Yes.

Custom Thumbnails Finally Reach Shorts

SPEAKER_03

Which is like making thumbnails for shorts. What is happening?

SPEAKER_02

So uh if you've been a longtime viewer or listener, you will know that I have been campaigning slash complaining about not having the ability to upload custom short custom thumbnails to YouTube shorts for many, many years. Now, when I say complaining, that doesn't mean I've actually done anything about it other than complained in videos and on this podcast. I've not spoken to anybody at YouTube, but apparently they must have been listening. So I'm gonna take full um responsibility maybe for the fact now that you can upload custom thumbnails to shorts, even though they said about a year ago or two years ago that they hadn't they had no plans to do it. So something's changed. The question is what and my answer to this is simply the fact that if you go into the YouTube homepage now, you will see a shelf of shorts. If you do a search, you will likely see two shelves of shorts, say that fast twice when you're on the mobile app, you will see a gallery of shorts. So viewers are now interacting a lot more with the packaging of shorts, the thumbnail and the title. And I can only imagine through uh creator pressure and maybe seeing their own analytics in terms of clip-through rates on certain types of thumbnails, because we know that there's been hacks to put on your own thumbnails, and I'm pretty sure. Well, maybe uh uh this is more of a conspiracy theory, but like people like Mr. Beast and maybe Jenny Hoyos, like the the leaders in this short space, have uh had access to some sort of custom thumbnail tool because I've seen custom thumbnails from them for many years, whether they've been hacking it or not. But yeah, here we are. Custom thumbnails for shorts. I guess the next question is, Travis. Yeah, should you upload a custom thumbnail for your short? Is it worth doing?

SPEAKER_03

That's a great question. Also, by the way, I just talked to Jenny Hoyle. She'll be on a future episode here in the coming weeks. So I think what I think to answer your question, some of it is what you've just answered. Um, previously, the vast majority, and probably even still to this day, the vast majority of views come on the short shelf, which doesn't need thumbnails. But we've seen over the last year and a half or so um that you're starting to see it everywhere on TV, starting to see it on the homepage, you're seeing it all these places where a thumbnail would be helpful in

When Thumbnails Matter For Shorts

SPEAKER_03

search. Hello?

SPEAKER_02

Uh definitely search. Yeah, if you get a lot of traffic from search, which we do, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Like we get a lot, right? Well, do you want to guess a number? How much percentage of of search views we get on our shorts? Like what that would be.

SPEAKER_02

I'm having I'm just confirming now. Um, so get one one chance.

SPEAKER_03

So for most channels, it's probably like less than than like 15%. I'm gonna say because we've had a lot of success with it.

SPEAKER_02

10%.

SPEAKER_03

Huh?

SPEAKER_02

You've got to be within 10%.

SPEAKER_03

Oh my gosh. Uh how about 60%? Because then I got 50 and 70.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, Travis. What you were so close, 72.4%. Oh, I was off by 2.4%. That's terrible. Good guess, sir. Good guess. But that's incredible, right? We get almost three, three quarters of our views from shorts from search, which means that people have a choice in what shorts they watch. And we I am now thumbnailing. I mean, I did in the past, you know, through hacks, but I am now starting to add thumbnails to our shorts. But I'm I'm doing it in a kind of a conservative way. Like I'm I'm time boxing myself to 10 minutes. I'm not trying to make um astounding thumbnails. I'm just, it's almost like this is literally what the thumb, the video is about, rather than it's you know, mostly text pointing to an icon, that type of stuff. And the other thing to be aware of is the thumbnail on the screen is not the same as the recommended aspect ratio. So the thumbnail is kind of like it's kind of stout, it's not full nine by what is it, 16, no, nine by sixteen. And so there's a there's a a kill zone at the top and the bottom of a short thumbnail. So you don't want to put anything right at the top and the bottom, you want to keep everything centered and build out from there.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think for people who get a lot of views from search or browse on their shorts, this is important and interesting. For most people that don't, you don't need to bother with this. Um, you can, you can if you want, but it's it's irrelevant.

SPEAKER_02

It's also hard to get the click-through rate analytics on shorts. So even if you are testing, it's yeah, it's difficult to measure it through click-through rate, and you can't A B test. It's one thumbnail and done. I guess you're only going to be able to test it between views on stuff. And uh, I watched a really good video from John about this, uh former um part of uh VidIQ Parish. He um was mentioning that he'd updated some of the thumbnails on his old shorts and it made no difference. It doesn't look as if repackaging revives or resurrects shorts content as it does long form content. Some try it on new stuff or research.

SPEAKER_03

Which it can for long form, yeah. If you have a video that uh has really good retention, maybe uh and people are really loving the comment section, but not getting a lot of views and the click-through rate is low, changing the title or thumbnail, or sometimes both, depending on what the problem is, can revitalize those. We've seen it multiple, multiple, multiple times. We've done it ourselves, uh, and it's definitely a thing. You know, one of the

Jobs And Diversified Creator Income

SPEAKER_03

things that people always talk about, Rob, uh, is try to get uh from a lot of creators we talk to is like, how do I become like a full-time creator? How do I get there? And monetization is something big that we talk about a lot on the channel. We've seen, we've seen creators who have all these shorts channels and have automation, we've seen affiliate people, uh, we've seen all different types of things. Of all the different ways that people are making money on YouTube, what's the one that's like that? One seems the most realistic. If I was a new creator, that's what I should go after.

SPEAKER_02

You see, the thing is, Travis, you ask anybody within the VidIQ fraternity, and our answer surely has to be find roles within the industry because that's essentially what all of us have done, right? Uh, to give you my backstory, I was building a channel, I got it up to 100,000 subscribers, and I was making three figures a month ad revenue. So, like it wasn't financially sustainable, but when the vid IQ opportunity came along, it was like that massive leap from three figures a month to four figures a month, and now it's like, oh, this is suddenly a career, and it was like a big jump. So, you know, is that true 10 years later? And I think the answer is yes, the industry has grown exponentially since then. There are you know, when we when we think back to when I was doing YouTube education, it was what, me, Mick Nick Niman, uh Daniel Battal, uh God. I'm struggling already for who else was doing it. Brian G. Johnson, you know, like a handful of people in this spurse. Now, there is an education expert for any type of niche, any time of type of format you want to create content for. Now, I'm not saying that you all become YouTube educators. What I'm saying is that YouTube has grown to such a point that there are likely roles, producers, editors, uh talents, uh search engine optimization, like backroom stuff. There are probably hundreds of thousands of roles globally at this point that are available to you. But as I said, Travis, I feel as if this is coming from a very biased perspective. Uh, in that I wasn't sure I was gonna turn my channel into a business and run it. So vidIQ was uh the doorway in, and 10 years later I still seem to be here, trapped. Help, please, somebody help me.

SPEAKER_03

You're right though, there are a lot of short form creator full time jobs. From companies I've seen. Um, they're actual, like, and it's mostly short form. There are some that are like, you know, help us make videos for YouTube and whatever, those things exist too. I've seen a lot more that are like help us with our short form content. Uh, give you know, and basically the interview is more or less show us what you've done. So there are jobs you can get with companies to make short form content as an actual regular full-time job. Like it's a thing. Um, and really thinking outside the box is super important for this. This is why, like, when we interviewed BZ Resales, um, that's one of the things that like a lot of people know about affiliates. But when he shows you, I can make six thousand dollars a month and I can get free products to review to make six thousand dollars a month every month, um, those type of things have always existed, but when people start to bring them to the surface, you're like, oh, oh my gosh, I didn't realize. And in order to get like, quote, full time, the best way to do it is to be diversified, get your your money and everything from everywhere. One of the things that YouTube does is it allows you to for more people to see your content, and whether that be sponsors or people who want to get into business with your people want to collab with you, it's a great format for it's a great platform for that. But what would be really interesting is what if you could own your own content and take it wherever you wanted

Owning Your Audience With Email Lists

SPEAKER_03

to. And one of the things that I've always been told to do, and I I know I want to do it, but I never do it, is get the emails, get people's emails. You know, like that's that's like the number one thing. They're like, if you really want to succeed, you need to get emails. I I've never been able to do it, I just can't figure out a way to do it. Once you get the emails, what do you do with them? Like all that, right? What if I told you it was a company that's actually helps you do all of that in once? I actually talked to the CEO of UScreen who does this. He's super passionate about getting creators to own their own content, um, get it out to people that want to to watch it, that want to pay to watch it, and also solve that that email thing that personally I have struggled with for years. I've like, I can't even figure out how to do this. Uh, interviewed her. So let's just throw that in here to give you a little bonus feature of this particular podcast. And again, if you like us talking about news and stuff, leave us a comment below and we'll just continue to do it because I like it. It's easy. It's the easiest thing to do. We like easy content. We love easy. But go ahead and check this part out. You're gonna love

Uscreen Explained For Creator Subscriptions

SPEAKER_03

this. Uh, here I am with uh Allison from uh USCreen. All right, we're here with the bonus part of the episode. I'm here with Allison from USCreen. I'm super excited to have you here. Uh, I don't get to talk to many CEOs, so uh uh thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, of course. I'm thrilled to be here. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03

Doing great. Today we're gonna help creators understand more about monetization. Now, everyone wants to make money in content creation, but the a lot of people are stuck on one thing. They think, oh, all I have to do is hit monetization goals on YouTube, and that's it. Everything else, I don't know anything about, I don't care, but they they don't realize what you're leaving on the table. So tell us what UScreen is and uh what you do and why people should care.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. So we basically work with content creators, video businesses across a lot of different verticals who actually want to have their own video destination, their own platform branded to their brand to be able to have a premium video and community experience for their audiences. We um most of our customers are making money on YouTube. It's just we want them to build a revenue stream that is not reliant on an algorithm where they can not only sort of own the revenue stream, but also own the data, own the content, the IP, and really feel like they're building their own business. Um, and so a lot of what we focus on is helping these creators get into a subscription business. So they're having that recurring monthly revenue come in.

SPEAKER_03

That sounds incredible. You said a couple of things there that I think are super important for content creators to know moving into uh the content creation space, or if you're already there. One of the things you said was like owning your own stuff, which is something that's kind of I think people think they own their own thing until they realize that YouTube can immediately shut down your stuff at any time and then you don't have anything, right? Then you have nothing. Owning your own content stream and money stream sounds intriguing. How is it that you're doing that? What does that look like specifically? And uh how does someone like learn more about this?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. So um a lot of our content creators, they've built these amazing libraries of video content on one side. Um they know how to like work the algorithms and build a ton of subscribers and an engaged audience. And a lot of them recognize that they're actually able to sort of um, well, they're not initially able to sort of like wrap their arms around the audience and reach them directly. And so what we help them do is really think through, first of all, how to build their own sort of incredible, beautiful, elegant experience where we build mobile apps, TV apps, where our customers can log into their specific apps. So this isn't a shared experience, it's specific to the creator and access not only the premium content, but also be able to participate in the community. And so our customers, we help them think through strategies of how do you actually port that audience? It's not gonna be all of them, it's gonna be the super fans, the people who love you, love, love the other community members and really create this like premium experience for them. Um, and we do it in a way so that it's like super rapid and scalable, right? Like we've over 4,000 apps that we've deployed uh in the ecosystem. And that's Apple, that's Google, that's Roku. But essentially, like we can get these apps live. Not all of our customers have apps, some will just do a web-based experience, but they can start to tell their audience hey, if you come to my own site, you are going to be able to access content early, behind the scenes content, have direct access to me, um, access my merch because we have integrations that allow these people to do it, but the revenue goes directly into their Stripe account. They know who these people are. They own the email addresses, they can reach out to them. And it's a way for them to again continue to build the business. Now, we always encourage them, you got to keep posting on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. That's how you're gonna reach the most of your audience, that's how you're gonna build your audience. But this is a way for you to take those super fans and really feel like you're starting your own business and bringing them even deeper into engagement.

SPEAKER_03

I think it sounds amazing that you can have your own app.

Apps Community And Premium Experiences

SPEAKER_03

It's something that a lot of content creators uh would probably like. They don't think about it because, like, I don't know how to program an app. Why would I, you know, why would I even think that way? Or that I would have something that could be on an Apple TV or a Roku right next to Netflix and Prime and all the other. That sounds incredible. That sounds it sounds expensive. It also sounds expensive. But it seems like what you're saying here is it you're taking yourself and your brand off of not off of YouTube, but like you're separating it to the point where like you are the destination more so than YouTube itself, which is absolutely smart. Um what does this look like in reality? Like I can if I come to you and go, this sounds really amazing. I definitely like maybe I have an audience of you know a couple thousand people that always come to my videos, and I know for a fact a couple hundred people would 100% want to support me better, and I just don't know how to do that. What do I do? Like I contact USCream, what are they what gets pitched to me? Like, what is this whole thing?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, great question. So um I encourage anyone to take a look now. We're UScreen.tv, and and we really want to meet creators where they are in their journey. So you'll see we have like low-priced options where you can actually start to dip your toe and start collecting email addresses, maybe monetize a few videos, maybe get your first groups of subscribers, your first couple live streams going just to see what it's like. Um that is we like by design affordable because we want this ownership to happen. And then as creators start to move along the journey, let's say they they know that they're gonna have more and more subscribers, they have the huge library, they have a vision for where it's gonna go. Then we can start to pull together and build a package for them where they can build the apps, they can bring in the community, et cetera. Not only do we have like this incredible product and technology team who've literally built out this SaaS. And again, it's not like, of course, we have these incredible end user Netflix-like experiences, but there's also a whole back end that our customers use to actually manage it. They can set subscriptions, they can moderate their community, they can upload video content, meta tagging, all the analytics. We have a built-in email marketing and CRM functionality so that they can continue to stay in touch with their audience, bring people back in to engage them because we want to help you manage subscriptions, acquisition churn. The list goes on, I'm out of breath even talking about it. But the point is, is we've built all this tech, but then like I frankly, and this is my favorite part of it, our customers rave about like the humans behind USCreen. So we have a success team, we have coaching team, we have support. These are actually humans who will sit with you, help you develop your strategy. Because it's one thing to say, I'm gonna build the app and launch it, but there's a lot that goes into like, how am I gonna price it? What's the value prop? What's my content strategy? How do I differentiate this from what I'm putting on YouTube without making my YouTube audience feel like I'm taking anything away? There's how do I market this? There's a lot to it. And so we really have this like phenomenal team that's best in class, humans, who are gonna help not only build the great tech, but also help you like actually turn it into like a sustainable business.

SPEAKER_03

One of the things I see that you guys support, and I think it's really fun for the people who are watching this channel is you do you support night live streaming. Talk about that. How does that work? How is that different than live streaming anywhere else?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, again, like I think one of the main value props when the fans are engaging is that they want more access, right? Like early access, more access. So we basically set up our own live streaming technology where you can announce to your audience that it's happening, there's countdowns in the app, and basically go live in the app. And it can be, again, behind the paywall. And we have some customers who may start part of a live stream on one of the social platforms and say, hey, if you want the rest of this, hop over to my app to do it. But in a world where everyone is like seeking connection, um, maybe like wanting to get away from slop if you, if, you know, if you will, we're seeing live streams as like this incredible way to like bring the community together, to like deepen that engagement. And so it is a big sort of linchpin of a lot of our customer strategies of having live stream um as a way to bring them in. And you can do sort of like the one-sided live stream where it's just you talking to the camera, but we also have like Zoom integrations because some of our uh content creators will offer like gated Zooms where like, hey, if you subscribe to this level of access, I'm gonna bring a small group together and we can talk to each other, right? Which is like pretty special. So yeah, I think the live is a is a big part of it.

SPEAKER_03

The gated Zoom thing is really interesting because to your point, there's no other there's not very many platforms where you can do like a one-on-one or one or a multiple uh and have it just for the people that are part of your community that's like gated behind a paywall or whatever the case may be, especially if you want to monetize. This sounds like a really cool value add for your viewers, which is the ultimate thing. Like we want to make the viewers feel like they're getting their money's worth. We're asking for money, we want to give them something good. What are what are some of the successful type of um content uh niches and stuff that you see people using on USCreen? Is it a specific niche or is it just the way that they're using the platform?

SPEAKER_00

Great question. So it's you know, and one of the things I love about our business is like we serve so many different verticals and niches. So we have Caleb Hammer, um, who is incredible at financial planning, who's using Hammer Elite as sort of a step up from his YouTube memberships, right? We have Theoryverse, uh, which is Theorist Media, Lunar X's, property across five channels, who are using us to create this engaged fandom. But then you also have like Kiki Palmer, who launched Practice by Palmer with us, which is a Pilates app. And so, and those are just some examples. We have it, so it's a lot of wellness, it's a lot of, we have education and coaching. Um, we have very specific, like we have a yarning community, we have a ceramics community. What it comes down to is if you have great premium video content and you have an audience or at least a subset of your audience who are super engaged and like-minded, they are likely going to want to pay to be part of this community. And for us, we are the tools kit, but we're also the ones providing the guidance on how to do it. Because we've done this for thousands of customers. We have benchmark data, we have a ton of best practices. So we we really want to help with the guidance. Uh, but it really spans across. I mean, we have live sports, live streaming, like there's a lot of different areas that we can support. Fate is another example.

SPEAKER_03

So you talked about like owning the content. How does that what does that look like? What does that actually mean? Um, because when you technically on YouTube, you quote, own the content, but it, you know, you do and you don't all at the same time because they can then copyright claim and all these other things, right? Like, what do you mean by that? What does that look like in actual practice?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I I think I think it's when you just described. It's your IP, your content. You can uh choose what you are putting um onto the platform. So like we have some customers who maybe that their content um is okay for YouTube, but it's not necessarily brand safe. So maybe they're unable to monetize those videos. Um it's for them to decide what they're putting onto the content within bounds, of course. Um, but it's it's knowing that their audience might want that much more that may not be on YouTube, or it's not they're it maybe it's not worth it to them to build it just for YouTube because they won't be able to get the the the ad tense dollars, but they would be able to on USCreen. So they can invest in those types of videos as well.

SPEAKER_03

So content freedom is that is what you're really kind of saying here. Yeah, because I'm noticing it's funny, I had a conversation with another large creator just the other day. We were talking about um the way a lot of creators are having to skirt the censorship system where um you they censor or blur out certain things that aren't necessarily bad. I'll give you an example just to be very clear. So, like there's a couple of television shows that are on uh YouTube. You'll see like TV channels now putting their back catalog on YouTube now. And there's this uh ch there's a channel where they show um airports and they're like confiscating things, and sometimes they'll find someone with drugs, right? So they'll they'll put the drugs out on the table and they'll blur out the drugs. And I'm thinking, well, okay, it's just a white powder, right? Is there something offensive about seeing a white powder in and of itself, or you know, a marijuana leaf, which is just a plant? I mean, whether you like it or not, it's just a plant, right? It's not like it's a an offensive image that gets blurred out. So you're saying basically on U screen, if you wanted to, you could just show that stuff because it's not like anything that's terrible or too.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. I mean, obviously there are content moderation guidelines. Yeah, of course. Yes, yes, absolutely. There's a there is more freedom for them to invest in that type of content.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm not saying showing needles and putting, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like it's getting to the point where we're like, we're blurring out plants. So I just I'm I'm just saying that like the opposite is happening on YouTube, and I'm just curious

Ownership Payments And Content Freedom

SPEAKER_03

if that's what you're saying here. Yeah. So when it what does it look like from a payment perspective? Are you getting paid once a month? Are you getting paid twice? Like, how does that all work?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so um basically our customers are getting paid in real time. So like that that's the other piece with us, is they like our customers, it's all about ownership for the content creators. So they have their their own stripe, their own PayPal accounts, they they link it into their U screen, and as they're getting paid by their customers, that goes straight into their account. We're not sitting on it and then adjudicating it and paying it out later. Um, so again, they have full freedom and you know, there's risk to us because like they own the developer key, they own the data, they own the payment rails, they own it, which means if they want to get up and leave one day, like they're, you know, we don't want them to, but like they're taking everything with them. And like that's what like true ownership feels like versus the other side of it, which is hey, algorithm shifts, you get shut down, you don't have direct access to the the payment. Uh, that's sort of it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's interesting you just said that because I guess I wasn't considering the fact that you're saying that like at the end of this, let's just say at the end, I'm like, I like the, I like I got my apps going, I got everything going. I'm good, I don't really need U screen anymore. When I stop my membership, I still keep my stuff, right? Like I don't, it's not on a U screen server somewhere where I can no longer get it. Is that right or wrong?

SPEAKER_00

You you get to pull out because again, we're we're sort of like that software layer, right? Like so building the apps, we're building the website, the catalog. But yes, like it's your content that you can migrate out of it. Um, yeah, we don't want our customers to leave them. The majority of them app can stay with us, but you know, again, like we want them to feel like they own this business.

SPEAKER_03

I think people just want to know that like when someone says, like, you own this, don't worry about it. Uh trust us, bro. Uh, there's a lot of the trust me, bro thing going on out there in the world, and it just ends up not being the case when you read the small fine print, which is why I'm asking kind of specific scenarios. So, I mean, it honestly sounds like yes, you literally have more of an ownership in your own success moving forward. So, at like what size should a channel look at saying something like, okay, what's a good number of people to have that come to my channel all the time that I think I should go into this? Because you know, smaller and upcoming creators, they don't know. Like they've never done this before. This sounds like a really great opportunity. I know I can think of a lot of people who have left comments or read messages that are going to hear this and be like, oh, this is that that next step that I want to do, but I don't know if people enough people are watching me. Am I big enough? Like, what's what's the typical like success range for something like this?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, like, I don't like to give a number of like subscribers because we're seeing folks with not many subscribers, but super high engagement do really well. And we see people who may have a lot of sets where like the engagement isn't there. Like, I actually think like watch time, engagement are are probably better proxies. Um, I I think another part of it too, and like our team will help you with this. Actually, if you go to our site, there's like a calculator where you can, and we have a special one that we can also get get folks access to to like run that math of like what your conversion rate would look like. Here's what it comes down to like depending on the type of content, you can charge different things. Like some verticals may charge 20, 30 bucks a month. Okay, run that math. 20 bucks a month. If you had a thousand subscribers, that is twenty thousand dollars in MRR.

SPEAKER_03

A lot of money.

SPEAKER_00

You know, not to say that a thousand is like stop your fingers in there, but like we have tons of customers who you've gotten a thousand. But like if you're, you know, if you're gonna charge more or less for the content, you can kind of run the math to see how do you bring in that like that MRR, that monthly recurring revenue. And then the other piece too, and this is where our team really comes in, is like it's not just about converting them, you got to keep them, right? And so a lot of what we focus on um with our customers is how do you mitigate churn, which isn't just like getting someone to not cancel, it's actually get keeping them engaged. Um, the minute, actually, the minute you get their email address, like how do you keep them, how do you get them excited, warm them up? How do you then convert them into a paying customer? And then how do you keep them coming back to watch more content, to go to the live stream, to engage with the community, right? Um, and like we're investing significantly in like a lot of these engagement features so that you're keeping them for a long time. Because if your churn is low and you get that group to engage and uh be acquired, then okay, then you're making good money. 20,000 a month and 240,000 annually, right? And we'll help you think through. We will help you build funnels, YouTube giveaways, things that you can do to get more and more people to engage with you.

SPEAKER_03

I that other part about email is really important because I've talked to multiple people on this podcast and talk about you need to have an email list. Like it's a it's a non-negotiable, you need to start collecting emails, but no one really gives you a great way to do it or how to be like, oh, you got to go get this software, this service, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What you're saying is, along with all the other things we've already talked about, that's kind of part of this. Like that really important part of getting emails, being able to engage with them, understanding even how to work an email

Pricing MRR Churn And Email Funnels

SPEAKER_03

system is part of this service.

SPEAKER_00

100%. So even on our like smallest package size, we offer unlimited contacts, meaning you could start collecting those email addresses, tagging where they're coming from. And then because it's all first party data, you can see what they're viewing. You can run analytics against that, you can segment them and start to send out sequence-based automations and triggers to them, um, broadcast emails, the list goes on. Because again, that is like the best way to stay in touch with phones. What we encourage customers is like, especially if this is their first time to launch a membership, because sometimes customers will be like, I have a membership, I'm migrating over because USCreen's the best. We're like, we got you, we're gonna help you take it to the next level. But if it's someone, if it's their first time doing it, we'll actually help them think through ways to like warm up their audience to even start colour. Maybe they don't even have the emails again yet. Okay, how do you what's the what's the value offering for getting emails? Is it a wait list? Is it an announcement? Is it a survey? Is there some cool offer you want to give them? Is it a meetup in real life, whatever it may be? And then how do you strategically use email to again to expand that relationship with your audience? And I'm just gonna say, like, the more you have that ownership and that direct relationship with the audience, it's actually gonna help you with other revenue streams. Because if you can tell a brand that wants to do a collab with you, hey, I have 30,000 email addresses, then you can build in the part of your brand offering, hey, let me send, I'll send them an email about this collab that I'm doing with you. Right. So, like owning that is portable beyond membership. It's just going to help you maintain the business and really turn it from being a content creator to actually like a business that can sustain and grow.

SPEAKER_03

What you just said there's actually true. We had a uh really great content creator who helps people with sponsorships, um, uh Justin Moron, multiple times on the podcast. And he always talks about email lists and that you use the That number when you're talking to sponsors about things, it's such a powerful number, but most creators don't have it. They don't again, you got to go find us other software that's like some email monkey thing, and you gotta write it's a whole other thing. But if you're already using yeah, something like mail monkey or something.

SPEAKER_00

Mailchip.

SPEAKER_03

Mailchip. All right, yeah, it's a monkey. Anyway, the thing is, like, when you're already using this for the other things that you come to for, like as a content creator, I'm like, oh, I'm really interested in owning my own stuff, figure out a way to monetize it. And that thing that I've always been told about doing, getting an email list that I've always wanted to do, but I just don't want to hassle with, being integrated into this one thing sounds super exciting to me as a content creator, going, wow, finally I can do that one thing that I know I should have been doing all this time. Really great.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. And you know, for what it's worth, like a lot of our customers were using MailChimp, and then they were like, I don't need to do it, I'll just use Uscreen. They're saving hundreds of dollars a month for that. Because we want this to really be like this all-in-one solution where they log in and they can manage that entire aspect of their business.

SPEAKER_03

Now I see that uh on here, you also talk about people with like Instagram and stuff. So really you're not just doing this for like YouTubers and stuff, you're doing it for like all types of content creation. Um, what do you see? Is there a difference between that you're seeing from like people that are primarily short form content creators versus uh like normal long-form YouTubers? Uh, is there any kind of differences in either in the the the type of success they're having and or the type of services that they're offering or the or the type of things that they're offering within their memberships?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I think long form like lends itself well to like something like what we're doing with the premium video content creation. But we do have some content creators who their primary platform is actually Instagram um or TikTok, which obviously is short form, and they're actually like they've built this amazing audience that now they're actually using their U screen as a springboard into the long form content. We see that a lot with fitness, right? So, like you might follow this person on fitness, their lifestyle, like they live this great life. Maybe they're showing you some of their workouts, and then they're like, okay, you want to get fit? Let's get, let's do this. Like, go subscribe, download my app, and like I'm gonna help you get fit together. Oh, and by the way, you're gonna talk to a bunch of other people like you who are like if you want to become, who wanna be become part of a community. I mean, I can't emphasize enough the community component of it. And that's why, like to your question before, like, niche is the best way to start this. I mean, I'm sure a lot of the people listening, they started super niche with their content, right? The deeper you go into a niche, that is actually the way that you're gonna like start to build that engagement, that audience, and build it out from there. And so even for fitness, there's you can go super niche with fitness and start to build a great audience and be able to springboard that into a pretty significant business.

SPEAKER_03

What would you say uh is one of the more surprise for content for people who come to you? What is the thing that surprises them most about a service like this or the experience that they have through this? What are people telling you? Like, oh my gosh, I actually didn't expect this to be whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I think it's it's I think the fact that it's it's just it's a way to really drive more engagement with their audience, right? Like obviously it's a it's a great monetization revenue stream, right? Like that's wonderful. But at the end of the day, like you want to keep these these customers for life, right? And so it's a really great way to be able to like deepen that engagement and deepen that relationship with them over the over the long

Why Community Matters To Uscreen

SPEAKER_00

haul. Like I think it's it's just a way to like have that relationship sustain any platform shift that will likely happen in the future.

SPEAKER_03

Alison, why are you as a CEO passionate about this?

SPEAKER_00

That's a great question. My entire career has really been dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs in small businesses. Um, I'm the daughter of one. And I think it takes a lot of a lot of sort of like risk to jump into this. There's a lot of heartache, there's a lot of hard work. And every business I've been a part of has really been about how do you help entrepreneurs like actually build businesses so that they can like have that financial freedom, have the time to spend with their family, their loved ones, what have you. And I just think that there is so much opportunity with content creators, like going through this shift towards like real entrepreneurship and businesses. So, like to know that like we are supporting people who are coming to us with like a vision and a dream and actually building out these like recurring revenue businesses, it's really like my why. And it's really incredible because I feel like it's like my dad, my sister, my brother, my cousin that I'm like supporting. And then on the flip side of this, and like this is really important to me as well. Like in a world where like people are like out there are like feeling more and more lonely. Like, I see our content creators as like sort of bridging that gap, that issue with the loneliness epidemic. Like they are building communities that are meaningful and we see it every day where the community members they meet digitally, but then like they realize they live in the same town or they're both going to the same conference or a group of them are, and then they meet up in person and it actually starts to like change their life. And just to know that like we're driving that connection, we're sort of meeting people where they are, making them feel like they're part of a broader community as like the whole concept of community is shifting. That like feels really good as well. So it's uh it's something that me and like the entire team at USCream, like we're really, really passionate about is supporting these entrepreneurs and supporting their communities uh in a world that's a little bit crazy.

SPEAKER_03

I appreciate that greatly.

Links In Notes And Final Subscribe

SPEAKER_03

I'll Alison Yasnian, the CEO of UScreen. There'll be links in the show notes if you listen to Audio Only Podcast, if you're listening to the YouTube channel, it'll be in the description below. All this entire podcast has been about is how to get you to full time as quickly and as as hopefully painlessly as possible. He's given you a whole bunch of different options, and UScreen is one darn cool integrated option. So if you like that, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and we'll see y'all in the next one.