Episode 285 - By The Numbers!!

This episode is for the nerds!!  We go through all the numbers with our YouTube videos and see which of our video series are more popular.

Is Explore the best?  Do people like Let's Eat or Merch more.  Let's find out together

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the 125 Roller Coaster Challenge Trimmed and Staple Podcast, guys. And today we are doing an episode called by the numbers. Now, what does this mean? Well, this is going to be a complete nerdfest for you guys. So we are going to be going into, and I gotta be honest with you, I got comments, people wanted this. At least 35 people have reached out to us saying, you know what? I am either starting a YouTube channel or I'm interested in how YouTube works. Uh love to get you know the numbers on this stuff here. So kind of throwing open the door here, showing you the numbers on the different videos that we do and that kind of stuff here. But before we get started, guys, if you like what we do, if you love this podcast, if you like this podcast, if you slightly tolerate this podcast, make sure you follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Is it Audible? Is it Apple? Is it Spotify? Is it Podbean? Is it Buzz Sprout or wherever you get your podcasts? Make sure you hit that follow button because because this has actually been growing, this um podcast in the last month, month and a half has seen numbers we haven't seen before ever with this podcast. It's been growing. And because of that, we're gonna actually continuously do a few more episodes than we did in the past. Um we were doing probably two a week. Now it might be two and a half, maybe three a week. Um, as as we do these, more and more people are enjoying them, and we want to just keep it going. So make sure you follow. And if you have a comment or anything like that, and you want to get in touch with us uh quicker, Facebook, Instagram, and uh TikTok. We're on there all the time. Uh it's one two five roller coaster. Uh, you can definitely check it out. And if you leave a message, we will get back to you there. Uh, we have X. We've been starting to use X more and more every day. Um, and that's 125 Roller Coast. We did not get the ER. Sorry, but Elon said no ER for you. So we're not doing er. So it's Roller Coast, 125 Roller Coast, and of course our YouTube channel. We're closing in on 8,000 subs as we uh do this episode, and we are striving to get to 10,000. So if you like videos and if you like explores or basically if you want to see in real time what we're gonna be talking about today, because that's what this episode's all about, is that YouTube channel uh and all the different videos that we do. Definitely make sure you like and subscribe to the channel. It's a simple click for you, but guys, it really means a lot to me. Now, without further ado here, let's talk about in the uh by the numbers. So, we have over 1,500 videos on our YouTube channel. However, a thousand of them are shorts. So we did a lot of shorts early on. When I wanted to go and get it monetized, I realized that you have to do two things. I don't know if it's changed since then. I think they watered it down, but in the olden days, you had to have a thousand subscribers and you had to have over 4,000 watch hours. So I came up with this philosophy, okay, when I drop a short, I'm getting two to five to ten new subscribers. And when I drop an explore, I'm getting 45 minutes of watch time as it goes on. So when I kicked off this channel, I was doing everyday content, which we're still close to it. We do about five days a week content now, and we were doing maybe one full length, two full lengths, and then uh shorts. And because of that, we are actually one of the few channels that actually got the watch hours taken care of way before we got the subscribers. Uh, it's funny because when you drop a Hershey Park Explorer, a full park walkthrough, that's a 50-minute to an hour video. If you get you know a hundred people sitting there watching that, you already got a thousand watch hours. So within nine months, we hit those thresholds. But because of how that worked, we kept on doing everyday content up until like about a month ago. And we were dropping a lot of shorts and we're dropping a lot of full length. Well, I've noticed over time that the shorts were getting less and less um responses because there's so many of them. And then I was uh realizing that the people were probably slowing down our subscribers because if you don't like shorts, you don't want to keep getting alerts five times a week that, hey, they dropped a short, hey, they dropped a short, hey, they dropped a short. So now we're like cutting our shorts down to uh, for lack of a better word, maybe two a week and then one or two full lengths a week. And um that's why at one point we had over a thousand shorts. Now we're gonna be talking about the full length videos. Now, these are the ones that are horizontal, they look great on TV, and these are the ones that when we go to the park, we do or we write the script and we create. So without further ado, I break these down into three categories. I have the one takes, I have, which are basically an explorer. I walk right through, I do one take, we're done. I can dump it. We do what I like to call the cuts. These are the let's eat, the let's plays where I'm cutting to different aspects of the park. So with the let's eat, I'm cutting each restaurant, talking about each restaurant, stuff like that. And then we have the produced videos. These are the ones where I sit down, I write a script, and then I grab the B-roll from the Explorers and the other videos, and I put the video together. All right. Those are the three categories. So without further ado, let me break down what I call uh the one takes. The one takes are the explore series, the unplugged series, which is so the explore series is a full park walkthrough with my commentary. So if you like me talking, kind of like what we're doing right now, you want the explore series. The unplugged series came about because I had I like to picture her as a little old lady, but I had somebody leave a comment a few years ago going, oh my god, I really like the video, but can you just let us hear the park instead of talking the entire time? And my first thought was like, shut up, bitch. But then I was like, you know what? Maybe we do an unplug series where people can hear the sights and sounds of the parks. Now, what I've noticed is the bigger parks play music, especially at Six Flags parks. So the unplugs I can't do at every park because if I don't talk and you hear Taylor Swift in the background, now Taylor Swift is making money, not me. All right. The next one's all called the spotlights. Now, spotlights, uh, these are two to five minute videos that highlight a certain aspect of the park. It might be um a little section or a ride or something like that. And then we also have the POV series. So the POV series is point of view. With these, this year we're going to hopefully do log films, but in the past they were like train rides or sky views or observation towers. I'm not a big roller coaster filming guy. Let Coaster Force, let um, you know, uh Three uh theme park review, let those guys do it. They do it better, they have more expertise on it. They do the parks, they do uh that kind of stuff. So those are the four one takes as I like to do it. Because here we go, this is what we're doing. For the cuts, we do what's new, which is usually the year after the explores uh and before the next explorer, we basically highlight what's new at the park. We we dropped two so far, Hershey Park and uh King's Dominion, they're doing very well. Revisited used to be the third year of it. So my original plan was you do the explore, then you do a what's new, then you do a revisit it, then it's time for another explorer. What this year, after a lot of thought, because Hershey Park was supposed to be revisited this year, and I realized that what's new is more in line with what they do. So now the revisited is going to be the smaller parks. So if I go to Del Grosso next year, I don't need to do a new full park walkthrough because the chances are there's nothing really um big that's new that would um void the old explore. You know, these parks tend not to change, like Cunnobles is a perfect example. They add stuff, that's more of a what's new, but they haven't really like re-themed an area, they haven't really ripped something apart. So that's where the uh revisit's gonna go. The next one is our park day series, which is a vlog. It literally is me talking about what I'm doing that day at the park, and then we do the four big guys let's eat, let's play, let's go shopping or merch, and showtime. What these are is cuts to highlight those aspects of the park. So let's eat focuses on the food, let's play is the games on that end there too. Uh merch is kind of uh all the stores showing the different merchandise that's there, and showtime is not special events. I haven't really hit the special events, but these are the daily shows. Like you go to Dorney Park, you might have a peanut show going all the time there, and here's where you can find the mascots. So those are there. And then one of the new ones I haven't really done much with yet. I've done maybe four or five. Actually, I did five videos of it. It's called Challenge Accepted. And I want to play around with this one a little bit more next year, where this is um the one I'm most proud of, which hasn't gotten to much views, but I'm really proud of it, is how much fun can you have at Cnobles for$50 a day? And then here's what we did for a$50 budget. Or can you ride all the Hershey Park coasters without buying the FastPass in one day? That's what challenge accepted is. And then last but not least is the produce videos. And here there's a lot of them here, but I haven't done many. I think I've only done about 39, 40 of them so far. Uh, these are must ride. Must ride goes with the philosophy is if you have one day at the park, here's what you must ride to have a great day. I also go over the history of the park in that one. Making the grade is coaster uh rankings, but instead of saying this one's better than this one, the the whole thought of it is if I am at the park, A is I have to ride it, B is okay, you know what, I'll wait a little bit for it. D is like one and done, uh, F is like one and done, D is no line I can walk on. So the grades are more. I'm going to, well, perfect example is Six Flags New England. And A the A coasters had to be Superman and Wicked Cyclone and Quantum Accelerator. The B ones, okay, if I can get on Dark Knight, that would be good. Uh, if I can get on this, C was kind of like Riddler's Revenge, okay. It was too big of a line. I walked away from it. Um, you know, that kind of stuff there. So that's kind of what making the great is. Helpful hints is what exactly what it says. Here's the park. Let me give you some helpful hints so when you visit this park, it can make your day go smoother. Focus on uh originally had a totally different concept, but now focus on became the park review, where we actually go through 10 or 12 different aspects of the park and we review them. Okay, you know, how does the ticketing at Chernobyl's work? How is the family rides over at Maury's Pier? Uh so that's what the focus on is. And then one of the newer ones we did, and we've done a few of these already, we've done six of them. We did, and it's called Power Rankings. So originally, focus on was focusing on the flat rides, the family rides, the kids' rides, thrill rides, not the coasters, but the other rides. That's what power rankings became. Power rankings is the top 10 with two honorable mentions ranking the flat rides. And that one's been doing pretty good. Another one that we just kicked off is Hot Topic, where we are very much a YouTube channel that focuses on what they call in the industry evergreens. These are videos that you can watch them when they first come out. You can watch them a couple months later, a year later, two years later, and they still have value. All right. A lot of channels do um, here we are at opening day at Kenobles. Well, that's great for like a week or two, but after that, nobody really cares about opening day at Kenobles because now it's July. We kind of go with uh with our channel, our explorers are good all year round. Our let's eat is good for two or three years because restaurants sometimes change, sometimes don't. A couple changes here or there is more of a what's new, unless there's a big overhaul with the game section of like right now, Six Flags uh Great Adventure. We're gonna have to do another let's play because of the changing there. Hot Topic actually takes a topic. Uh at one point it was which uh Six Flags parks are going to survive. The one we most recently did was uh does Hershey Park have room to expand? So it goes over a concept and then we explain that. The old fudge series, you know what? I want to write off my fudge purchases. I now rank fudge. That's what that is. Faceoff is two parks going against each other. So Clement Park versus Niagara. How do they compare? Coaster Clash, same concept. How is Nitro and Candy Amonium compare? And then last but not least is simply the best series. Now, originally this was an end of the year. Here's my coaster rankings 50 to 25, 26, and then 25 to number one. But now I'm thinking about expanding that out into um simply the best top 10 inverts, 10 top RMCs that we've written, that kind of stuff here, top 10 um parks and stuff like that. So those are going to be expanded out. So those are all the ones we do. Believe it or not, we got a lot of series that we do with this YouTube channel. So here's the first things total number. So there were 520 um full-length videos at the time about two weeks ago when I started compiling these numbers. And it's really interesting to see which ones get a lot of love and which ones don't. Now, right off the bat, the explore series is 21%, 22% of all the videos we've done. We've done 113 explore videos. Now, to put that in perspective, we've only done 18 what's new and eight revisited. So we do a lot of explores. When we go into the park, that is my top priority every time is to get the explorer. If it's a new park, like we go to Cedar Point this year, we go to King's Island. I actually did it with King's Island, but I lost the footage, so I messed up. Um, we're gonna do the Explorers. Um, to my surprise, the second most popular series that we do is the Spotlight Series. When I first started the channel uh about two, two, about three, almost four years ago, I was still under the impression that people wanted shorts. They wanted short things, they weren't gonna sit there and watch it. So we actually have 103 spotlights, uh, which is about 20% of all the videos that we shot. So between the both of those, 42% of the videos are either spotlights or explorers. Uh the spotlights, you know, we we kind of slowed those down and I'll explain why in a few minutes. Uh, but I was surprised how many those were. But the biggest surprise to me was at 64, which is about 12% of all the videos we did, were our park days. These are the vlogs. And seeing that number really threw me for a loop because I only started doing those about a year, year and a half ago. And then I realized I was doing those for every trip. Every time I went to Hershey Park, I did an aura park day. Every time I went to Dorney Park, I did an R park day. And some of these parks I go to four or five, six times a year. So what's really interesting to me is, and we're going to see that in the second half, is again the bang for the buck? Uh, it does it justify 12% of the videos that we've done in all time falling into that category. We're gonna find out. Another thing that kind of shocked me was we've done 40 POVs, which is about seven to eight percent of the videos we shot. And what why that shocks me is we only do trains, we only do sky rides and stuff like that, uh, observation towers, uh, maybe antique cars. We don't do this for like, I can understand if we did coasters, that would make sense. That number should increase with the metaglasses and the log flumes, but is it going to be worth it? We have to find out. Uh, and then a couple other things that caught my eye were um the unplugged series, we did that 26 times. Uh, we've been lucky because not knock on wood, none of them have been copyrighted yet. But and that's because we've done parks like Waldemere and that. In the early days, we were able to do Hershey Park in those, but now when I go to a park like the other day, uh last year, I was looking to do the explor uh the unplugged at Kennywood. And when I was doing the Explorer, I noticed over by Still Curtain and by the antique uh well, the uh paddle boats and stuff, they really played a lot of music. And because they played a lot of loud music, I kind of had to abort that. Um, so there's gonna be probably less of those over the years. But let's eat and let's go shopping, both of those have had 33 each, which is about 6% of those. Let's play had 25%. Uh Showtime only had 11% uh on those. So those are the raw numbers. So if you're looking for the raw numbers, uh number one was explore, number two was spotlight, number three was our park day, uh, number four was POVs, number five was basically uh tied between let's play and wait, let's eat and let's go shopping. And then um after that, it looks like unplugged and let's play. So that's how they broke down. We did for when it comes to our produced videos, the ones that we had the most of was uh making the grade. We had 10 of those, and then we had focus on and power rankings both at six. All the other ones were under five. I need to sit down and you know, is it worth doing these produced videos? We're gonna see how these numbers are. Because now let's talk about how they break down and what our average view per video is. And off the bat, get ready for this number, because this number kind of blew me away. We've actually view-wise in the entire channel have one point one point nine three million views. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. One point nine million times people have watched a video. It might have been a short, it might have been a long, doesn't matter. 1.9 million views on a channel that's three maybe four years old. Guys, that blows me away. Thank you guys so much. And like I said, if you like what we do, make sure you like and subscribe. We're trying to get to 10,000. So when it comes to the Explorers, 450,000 views with the Explorers, which means an average of 3,974 views per um Explorer. Now, some of them we have, you know, 25,000 views with the uh with the um Sesame place, and then some of these have as little as 200,000, 300 views. It averages almost 4,000 views when we drop a um Explore video. By far number one. By far number one. What really threw me, and we're talking about with these numbers, we're talking about the one takes and the cuts. All right. We're talking about the produced ones later. But the second most popular video average at 1,943 per video is Let's Eat. And that blows me away because I'm sitting there like, really? That passes everything else. But then when I looked at it, we had two outliers, which I think skewed the numbers. We have our second most popular video right now with 20,000 views, is Let's Eat at Liberty of the Seas cruise. So, first of all, that's a cruise ship. We've only ever been on one cruise ship in my life, so that skews it a little bit. But also, the food aspect of it, anybody who goes into that ship types in Liberty of the Seas, they're gonna see the Let's Eat and they want to see the menus. So, and then the other one is Hershey Park has 15,000 views. And I'm planning planning on redoing that one this year just because there's a lot of new things. So those two skew the numbers, but that is number two right now on average. Number three is the what's new series. That is why I changed revisit it, was because the what's new series is so much more popular right now that it doesn't make sense for us to keep it as a revisited it when people are looking at for the what's new. Now, don't get me wrong, revisit it has 1600, so it has a higher number, but yet again, there's one that really skews those numbers. Unplugged is doing really good at 725 views per uh per video. But the one that shocked me the most, the one that kind of like really, it's really not that great, is our park day. Our park day, we have sixty four videos, twenty seven thousand five hundred and sixty views, but that average. Comes to 430. That's incredibly low. It's one of the lowest averages. Showtime beats it. Um, you know, POVs beat it, and stuff like that. Spotlight series beats it. So maybe I don't do as much on the POVs. Now, when it comes to the produced videos, our most popular one is the focus on. We've done six of them and it averages 2,400 views, which is fantastic. For it's 14,000 views on those. Helpful Hits is also 5,124 views. So those are two series that I need to work on more. Making the grade is only 250 um average views. So making the grade, people aren't really liking to make in the grade. Maybe I'll turn that into a power ranking, um, uh a coaster thing and kill that whole concept of ABCDF on that end there because I thought that was gonna be a lot higher and it actually was not. So in conclusion, now that I have the data, I now know when I do a park what I need to focus on the most. So if I'm doing produced videos, if I'm gonna sit down and write a script, number one has to be focused on. I have to do park reviews of all the parks we've been to because it's very popular. Right behind it is helpful hints. People want to know helpful hints. The one at Kennobles and Hershey Park is through the roof. Number three is power rankings. People are really liking the flat rides and the family rides and the thrill rides, and the fact that they have their own thing now, people are really enjoying the power rankings. Must rides, even though they take a lot of time, the time is worth the effort because those do very well. Our third most popular video right now is Must Rides at Darien Lake. So, and then the other one I really need to spend some time with is Hot Topic. Um, the ones that we've done, we've only done limited ones. We've only done, how many have we done? Three. But each one of those does very well and gets a lot of engagement. Now, for the ones that matter, when we're doing uh going to the park, I'm going to a brand new park. Here are the order that I need to do it. Number one is the explore, not even close, the explore. People love it when I walk into the park, knowing the park or not knowing the park, and actually show every aspect of the park by far our most popular. Number two is what's new, along with um revisit it. Those two, if I've already got the explore, I need to make sure I have a revisited or what's new every year when I go to the park. Hence, Hershey Park got a what's new. Uh Dwerty Park's going to get a what's new. Uh when I go to Del Grosso or go to Waldemar next time, it's going to be revisited. But those are tops. People want to know what's new and people want to see the park. Obviously. Number four is let's eat. The food, even with the numbers being skewed, is worth my time. And that's why I'm glad I didn't have these numbers going into Six Flags New England, but when I went to Six Flags New England, my gut told me do a uh explore and then do the let's eat. All right. Number five, surprising to me, but that lady, sorry I called you a name earlier, you had a good point. People do like the unplugs, people do like walking around the park without me talking. Not as much as me talking. People like me talking, apparently, but they also like it when I just go through the park. And the one thing I've always done is say I'm over at Great Adventure. When you go into Great Adventure, you have you can go to the right or go to your left. If I go to my left to start off the explore, for the unplugged, I'm going to my right. So it's not the same video. It's actually the exact opposite way that I went the first time. I like it because that gives me B-roll from the front and the back when I'm doing stuff. Uh, but also it gives you a different experience. So you can watch an explore and then watch the unplugged and still see things that are different. Number six kind of threw me. Let's play. I was always going with merch. My gut was always telling me people want to see the merchandise, people want to see the merchandise, show them the stores, show them the merchandise. The numbers, if I'm looking real quick here, um, let's play averages 667 views. The show, uh, the let's go shopping, 338 averages per video. So my assumption was wrong on that. Merch is not as popular as let's play. People like to see the games, so we're gonna keep giving them the games. So that's number six. Number seven, POV. And the truth be told, when I go to a park, I kind of seek out the POVs. Uh like Clement Park, when I went there, okay, they have a train. Make sure I POV the train. If I'm going to um over at um Niagara Amusement Park, okay, I could do the antique cars, but I can also do this. So I've always kind of sought out the POVs, just not the roller coasters. Those numbers I'll be curious to see once I add log flumes in there. But right now it's number seven. Number eight is the spotlight. Even though it is our second most videos that we've done, uh, and it's 20% of the videos that we shot, it only has 50,000 views, which comes to 494 uh average view. Yet again, a lot of these are under triple digits. There's a lot of spotlights that are 50 or 40 or, you know, god forbid, 22 or something like that. So I need to pick and choose my spotlights more and not just do them to do them. But is this really worth the spotlight? Is this something that somebody would like to watch a four or five-minute video on? So that opened my eyes on that. Number nine is Showtime. Showtime, their numbers. I've only done um 11 of them, but they average uh 443 um views. I need to do some more showtimes. I definitely need to do more showtimes. Now, is it more important than a POV or Let's Play? No. But the Showtimes definitely um are a lot more popular than I thought. Uh, so I definitely need to make sure if I go to a Niagara, make sure I get a showtime. If I'm going to um like Dollywood, uh if we make it out there this year, showtime might be higher up in the priorities than uh let's play. Number 10, our park days. I don't know if it's because I flooded the market last year. Um, you know, there's 64 of those videos. Um, you know, basically 12% of what I shot uh since I had this channel has been our park days. But they're only getting on average a little bit over 420. And this year, I my gut was telling me I need to not do it every visit. And to follow through on that, when I went to Hershey Park already this year, and that's gonna be uh an upcoming episode. I didn't do an hour park day. I decided not to do an hour park day. Um, I figure now there needs to be a reason. If it's a park I haven't been to before or a park that we rarely go to, okay. Six Flags, uh, you know, well, uh trying to think real quick here. Uh Dreamworks. Yeah, never been there before. Do an R park day. If there's a reason why I'm there, I did uh Six Flags uh New England, I got my 400th coaster. But at this point, do I need to do one at Dorney Park? Maybe uh with the water slide challenge, but definitely need to cut back on those. And I also think I need to get those out within a week. I think in the past we've had some of these drag out and it'll be like November, December, and I'm showing an August our park day. No, this one needs to be bumped to be more um in line. It needs to be out quicker. And then the one that really threw me, merch. Merch is not as popular as I thought. It averages, it's had over 11,000 views, and I think the people who like merchandise really like this, but it averages 338 views per video. And you gotta remember, this is average. There's a lot that are below it. So merch at this point, if it's between showtime and merch, do the showtime. If it's between uh showtime and let's play, let's play. If it's let's eat and merch, not even close. It's gonna be let's eat. So that is how the numbers went. Uh, let me know if you like this episode. If you want to know a little bit more behind the scenes uh stuff that we do for the channel, uh, like I said, if you got this far, thank you. Uh, and definitely you're somebody you should definitely consider a membership. Uh, it's less than a half a gallon of gas, guys. It's$1.99 a month. You get exclusive content, you get all the um back episodes of the um podcast, and um, you know, we're gonna start doing more chats and more live feeds and stuff like that. But once again, guys, can't wait to see you in the queue in 2026.