The Myth of YouTube Gatekeeping

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We debunk the myth that YouTube intentionally gatekeeps content and explore what true success means for different creators at various stages.

• YouTube has no business incentive to suppress creators' content after allowing free uploads
• Initial video performance followed by sudden drops is normal algorithm testing, not punishment
• Success metrics should be personalized to your specific channel goals beyond just views
• Small channels (under 1,000 subscribers) shouldn't obsess over analytics with limited sample sizes 
• Measuring improvements in creative skills is valuable progress for newer creators
• Comparing yourself to established creators often overlooks their years of behind-the-scenes work
• The unpredictable nature of YouTube is part of what makes it challenging and rewarding
• Building a supportive community of fellow creators provides relevant feedback for improvement
• Avoid tying your self-worth to video performance metrics you cannot directly control

If you're struggling with defining success for your channel, email us at theboostvidi@com or join our Discord community at vidiq.com/discord where you can connect with other creators on similar journeys.

Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the only podcast that records at all times of the day, no matter if it's day or night. We're here for you. I'm here with Jen. Once again, what's?

Speaker 2 0:06

up, hi, everybody.

Speaker 1 0:08

We have done it again, except for this time we look different. You're dressed very nice. Look at you with your little pink thing. Whatever that is looking very bright. I'm very dark, I hope to blend into the background.

Speaker 2 0:19

It's a nice contrast we.

Speaker 1 0:20

Contrast. We are very contrasty. If you're new here, we are here to help you grow your YouTube channels and to answer your questions and, of all things, we get comments all the time on the YouTube videos, right, and people. They communicate with us, which I love by the way. And some people have hot takes.

Speaker 2 0:38

I like that. We went through some hot takes in the last episode.

Speaker 1 0:41

Yeah, y'all need to watch that. Yeah, that was a good one. Like, legitimately, you need to watch that because I think we talked about a lot of things that, uh, I love. I think people won't agree with everything, which is great well, that's what makes it a hot take it does, it does do. What do you have for this morning's hot take? Just, I don't just for giggles I don't have one this morning.

Speaker 2 1:01

You're gonna have to watch.

Speaker 1 1:01

I'll tell you exactly I tell you exactly where my hot take is today. Never record in the morning.

Speaker 2 1:05

Okay.

Addressing YouTube Gatekeeping Myths

Speaker 1 1:06

So let's go to this. There was a comment left in one of our recent videos and I wanted to address this because I feel like it's a perception that people have and people feel this way quite often. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it was about the algorithm video. And. But it was about the algorithm video and it says I largely agree that the algorithm pulls videos to viewers, but they're still gatekeeping. To have a video, long or short, suddenly have a large number of views in a two or three hour period, only to have it completely stop and experience what I'm sure most creators have had means that either viewers were only interested in that topic for a narrow window of existence, accidentally coinciding with the release of release of video, or YouTube throttles content being pulled. While it might not be pushing us out there, there are certainly deciding whom to hold back. That last part, that last sentence, implies that someone or something at YouTube is going nah, bro, not you, not today, not you.

Speaker 2 2:03

Well, I think they are like there's a reason why why do you think that reason is?

Speaker 1 2:08

I mean, maybe the content is bad well, I mean, is it bad, or is it just not as good as what else is out there for that particular topic?

Speaker 2 2:17

if it's going out and it's interesting to your core audience and your community, we're talking. They said the first, like several hours yeah so, like the people watching, should like, love it. They should literally like doesn't matter what you made, they should love that content yeah if you're getting like a bunch of views in a couple hours and then it stops yeah I don't think they love that content or someone didn't.

Speaker 1 2:37

I think what's really important to think about this is and we've said this, I think, back in the myth busting episode like a year, almost, almost a year ago is, if you just think about this rationally, to say that YouTube would gatekeep you.

Speaker 1 2:49

It doesn't make any sense From a business perspective. It doesn't make sense for them to allow you to upload something for free, store it for free, stream it for free which, by the way, all that stuff costs them money only to be like, nah, we're not really going to show this to anybody. It actually would cost them money, especially since some of these creators we're talking about are not monetized and ads aren't even running on their thing. So it literally costs them money. So it makes zero sense. It'd be easier for them to just block you altogether and just not let you upload that content. So it makes more sense for them to try to find the correct audience, and it could be that within that time period in which you've uploaded, they can't find anyone right now.

Speaker 1 3:24

Maybe they will Like. We've seen this on our channel as a matter of fact, one of the videos that just recently popped off about the Outdoor Boys. It took like six months, like it was dead, dead, and then all of a sudden boom, hundreds of thousands of views a month later. And we talk about that all the time too.

Speaker 1 3:38

So it could be part of that.

Speaker 2 3:40

I. I mean YouTube is always testing you and in this instance, you failed the test, like you did not pass and move on to the next round for them to be like. Let me show this to more people like this.

Speaker 2 3:50

Yeah, certainly right now, and it could have been something new, Like you could see this, like you made a new type of video and your community was like no Right. But that doesn't mean over the course of the next three days, seven days, month, it's not going to test that video again with different people. This is why we see 8 of 10s and 10 of 10s. I don't know why I never say 9 of 10. I feel like no video is ever a 9 of 10.

Speaker 1 4:09

It's a weird number.

Speaker 2 4:11

Like it's literally like I just don't even think like video, like 9 of 10 exists.

Speaker 1 4:14

You feel like it's 10 of 10 or 8 of 10.

Speaker 2 4:17

Never a 9 of 10. Yeah it weird, I don't know. They're just like. It's a place they just eventually float to.

Speaker 1 4:23

They never like register as a nine and ten. They never saw.

Speaker 2 4:26

They just kind of, they just kind of like yeah, get pushed around, but those videos find the right audience and then they start to see that traction. So, just because it didn't happen in three hours, you know it's. It's getting rid of like victim mentality on youtube. Yeah, and just moving past it and trying to do better.

Speaker 1 4:43

Yeah, the thing is, the vast majority of videos that go out experience this type of growth.

Speaker 2 4:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:48

They pop at first because you know your subscribers and people come to your channel, watch it, and then it slowly trickles off. Sometimes it shuts off immediately, but then if it's a good evergreen video, as we talked about in the show, then it'll continue on.

Speaker 2 5:02

Yeah, but what you said right there is so good the video, no matter what happens, it stops.

Speaker 1 5:06

Yeah, at some point it just stops.

Speaker 2 5:07

If yours stops after two or three hours. Well, that's when it stops. If yours stops after 24 hours well, that's when it stops.

Speaker 1 5:14

That's when it stops, right, right.

Speaker 2 5:16

But you have to change your mindset where you're being punished.

Speaker 1 5:19

Right.

Speaker 2 5:20

You're not. You did a great thing. You made a great video.

Speaker 1 5:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:24

You had that success Right, and now you have to figure out how to get more of whatever you're looking for.

Speaker 1 5:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:30

So how do you become better so that you move on to that next round?

Speaker 1 5:33

Right, and if you put, if you actually, especially if you've done research in it and you kind of know this is something that works, yeah, it doesn't mean every single one is going to work, even though you're like I'm positive.

Speaker 2 5:44

This video is going to work especially if it's the first one especially if it's the first one almost universally almost 99.9% of the chance, even if it's a brilliant idea. That's how my first video on the main channel did.

Speaker 1 6:00

That's a big ol' fat 10 out of 10 baby the difference is it was not a 9 out of 10, but 10, baby. Well, listen. The difference is Was it a 9 of 10? It was not a 9 of 10.

Speaker 2 6:05

But the difference is we knew what we all knew was coming. Right right right, right, I'm a new face, New style, thumbnail Sure, different kind of title.

Speaker 1 6:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2 6:18

Different way of delivering content. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The difference is I wasn't like no, I just have to keep pushing out content and continue to do a better job at the job I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1 6:28

I mean this channel alone. We were talking about this the other day. Over the first three or four videos we put out had one impression not view impression for like three days straight when we first put it out. Now look at us, we doing it. Things are happening.

Analyzing Jordi's Email About Success

Speaker 2 6:43

But it matters if we like, let that mindset beat us down into making worse content the next time we go to create or not at all. That's also not at all. But like, if you stay in that headspace, the next time you go to create, you're just going to be like I'm doing this for nothing.

Speaker 1 6:56

Yes. And like that's bad content, like you can't go into content and make like good content like already beat down, like that you better not, it's not gonna come out good, it's just not gonna come out good. And then you're just making bad content and getting mad that bad content performs bad right. And then who are you mad? Who's being punished? Then you're punishing yourself.

Speaker 2 7:13

Basically, yeah, it's true, yeah so I do think what you know this person is saying is you know, we all want to justify why we're not being chosen right which is fine. Just fight if you want.

Speaker 1 7:22

Absolutely. But, be realistic. Yeah, can we be real about it. Speaking of being real, we actually got an email kind of similar in subject.

Speaker 2 7:30

If you want to email us.

Speaker 1 7:31

You can send us an email at theboostvidiqcom. This one's from Jordi Jen. What does Jordi have to say?

Speaker 2 7:37

Jordi from the UK. So a little bit of backstory about Jordi is that both shorts and long form content managed to get the channel to a good place and had some good performing content that inevitably well stopped performing.

Speaker 1 7:53

As it tends to.

Speaker 2 7:55

But that's okay. And their question is I don't know if I should be doing better, because one of my videos I did doesn't have great views and then has 10 times the audience retention of the other videos.

Speaker 1 8:08

Okay.

Speaker 2 8:09

So we're talking about seeing success in different ways on the channel, which is great that Jordi's even looking at the retention and seeing that as 10 times, even though we're seeing the views are lower than we're seeing 26 views in this example and 200 was the success they mentioned before yeah so I think it's a good time for us to break down because of this, like how do you measure success on what is success?

Speaker 1 8:34

what and I think it's not even just measuring, but what is success, because success to you could be completely different to what success is to me agreed um, I always bring up the case in point. I was watching this YouTube creator that I'd watched for a long time still watch to this day and he was talking about a specific series of videos he wasn't going to do anymore because they were not successful. Those videos averaged over 100,000 views. He considered that not successful, so he's not going to do that series anymore.

Speaker 1 9:03

Most people would consider that successful, not gonna do that series anymore. Most people would consider that successful and would continue that series on. So there to know what success is, and it could also be. You know, if you're a how-to channel, it could be how many affiliate sales that I drive yeah, I care about the views.

Speaker 1 9:16

You don't even care about subscribers. It's like I want. I'm trying to make money off this um. So what is your level of success? If it's a number going up, what do we always say to do? If you just want the number to go up, what do you do?

Speaker 2 9:28

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 9:29

You do shorts, just stuff, no, just stuff. Do shorts, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 9:34

But yeah, yeah, if you want to feed your ego in like the most basic way. That's what you know do shorts.

Speaker 1 9:40

Right.

Speaker 2 9:40

That's that's. We say it all the time because that's what it is. But the community we have here, that's not usually their, their goal and that's why it's such like just blanket advice, like go make shorts.

Speaker 1 9:51

Yeah, but we we want to encourage you to deep, deeply think about what is going to make you happy.

What Defines Success on YouTube?

Speaker 2 9:57

Yeah, why do you want the views that you want? Like there's usually so much like such a bigger reason behind that number? Like, if you're like, I want a thousand subscribers.

Speaker 1 10:07

Why.

Speaker 2 10:07

Yeah, why do you want those thousand subscribers If you literally don't have a reason and you're just like I want a thousand subscribers, just go make those shorts.

Speaker 1 10:15

Yeah, and you'll be done, and you'll get it, you'll get it, you're done.

Speaker 2 10:26

But that's, I mean, I've never heard that just really be the case of like just literally like I just want this number of people to be following me.

Speaker 1 10:30

Yeah, um, I think it's very. It's a great exercise to do on your own, uh, to write down like four or five reasons that you want success and what you think success is, and just ask yourself why for each and every one of them and and be honest with yourself, if it's really just an ego boost, that's okay.

Speaker 2 10:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1 10:46

Write down the answer and then start looking at it.

Speaker 2 10:48

We all love a good ego boost from time to time. But, driving a channel, the longevity of it, off of an ego boost you're going to fail.

Speaker 1 10:54

You're definitely going to have problems.

Speaker 2 10:55

Like that's not, you don't need the advice podcast.

Speaker 1 11:00

You don't need main channel content.

Speaker 2 11:05

Don't need.

Speaker 1 11:05

No, we can tell you channel content. Don't do not here for the real strategy. It's not gonna work out, it's gonna be bad. We wish you the best. Yeah, we do. Peace and love. Uh, you know, we hope we're gonna pour one out for you once. Uh, you get them 10 of 10s in a row.

Speaker 2 11:16

I'm telling you, um, yeah, so besides success like again what do we look at then? What are? Some things like you would say are just examples of different ways of looking at success.

Speaker 1 11:29

So again, it depends on, like, what I'm trying to accomplish. If I've decided that I want to accomplish, that I want to have like and we can talk specifically about us. We want to have a community that really is not only invested in our channel and the advice and stuff we give, but also helping each other out and, can, you know, basically be a fun place for creators to come Right.

Speaker 2 11:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:48

That's our level of. How do we determine that? That's a little bit more difficult. It's not like a metric specifically you can see. What we have to do is look at kind of the, the aggregate of like, what kind of engagement we're getting. So it's, it's maybe likes a little bit, but it's more. Comments Are engagement we're getting. So it's, it's maybe he's likes a little bit, but it's more.

Speaker 1 12:05

Comments are people in our discord which, by the way, fit IQcom slash discord, and you can come hang out with us. We're there every once in a while, um, and things like that and engagement. Also, the emails that come in tell us a little bit harder to measure that, but it's easier for us to understand whether or not we're in the right direction because while it isn't a binary number, it's a feeling. And when we get these emails from people who have been binge watching and telling us that, hey, I just came across your podcast, I've literally listened to everything the last three months in like the end of a weekend, then that tells me, oh, we are heading the right direction, even if the video views or the downloads for the audio podcasts are down a little bit, if the sentiment is up, we're succeeding. That might not be the case for Jordi.

Speaker 2 12:44

Yeah, no, that's, I mean, that's true. So community building is, you know, obviously, the emphasis you're talking about. So in that case, you know you're not measuring your success by the views. You're measuring it by the comments and the engagement. So when you make videos, maybe that next video that you make is purely to get more comments do that throughout your video. You have to drive engagement. You have to listen to our community building episode, where we talk through so many strategies on how to cultivate a community, and those are the things that you want to be practicing. And I think this is where YouTube gets difficult, and even just viewers of you know our channel and other growth experts. There's so much being said and you're trying to apply and do all the things all at the same time.

Speaker 1 13:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:28

And that makes it really, really hard to gauge success when you want it in every single way. But it's not possible all at the same time.

Speaker 1 13:36

Yeah, and I think people look at what quote successful channels are and they think, oh, I should have that. I look at their content and I can do that easy, so I should get the same amount of views they get. I should be as rich as they are. Like I should have all these things, but it's such a paintbrush yes, it's such a paint you can't paint brush your, your your journey through someone else's journey.

Speaker 2 13:57

It's just not a thing, yeah, and you also don't know what that creator's been with. This was something I had to point out so many times to oh people, within one on one coaching, they would send me these viral moments from creators and I would go and break it down and be like, hi, hello, this is their third youtube channel right, right exactly yeah, they've worked six years for this moment, right, uh, they deserve this success yeah it's their time to shine.

Speaker 2 14:20

We all get a time to shine. Are you willing to wait for it? That's the game of youtube. Yeah, that's literally. Can you hang on long enough until it's your time and what are you going to do when that time comes? So that's literally can you hang on long enough until it's your time and what are you going to do when that time comes? So that's one thing. Like you have to break down what you're comparing yourself to when it comes to measuring your success, because you could be looking at a viral moment and then, on the other hand, there's tons of viral moments that completely break channels that's true and that's not.

Speaker 1 14:46

That's not success you, you got views.

Speaker 2 14:47

Fantastic.

Speaker 1 14:48

Right. Now you're screwed so if someone's like okay, I get all that but I just want to know what a good performing channel looks like. Okay, I'll give you a number that I typically use, but I want to be very clear about this. When I say this, this is something that I take into consideration. I don't use it as a definitive mark of a successful channel, but it is a good kind of line. Yeah, mark of a successful channel, but it is a good kind of line.

Speaker 1 15:08

Yeah, I usually look at 15% of subscriber to view ratio. So in other words, if a channel has 1 million subscribers and they're getting about 150,000 views per video-ish, I'm pretty happy with that. I think that's a pretty successful channel. You will find some under that. You will find some over that.

Speaker 2 15:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:23

We're talking about good, solid performance.

Speaker 2 15:25

Just a good number to gauge.

Speaker 1 15:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:27

It's the same with click-through rate. Everyone's click-through rate is going to be different, it's way different. Like way different. I mean niche dependent Absolutely.

Speaker 1 15:32

Like everything.

Speaker 2 15:33

Yeah, like it's crazy how click-through rates and like there's just some channels like you'll never see the click-through rate other channels have. No, no, no thing to look for is. Are you getting our 10% of your impressions?

Speaker 1 15:54

views.

Speaker 2 15:54

That's an average that it's a good standard. That'd be great to give or take you know, are you awesome? Are you above some fantastic? Yeah that's like a good gauge when we're talking about your content being surfaced. Is it being watched? Yeah, and a lot of times you'll see it's far under that and your content being surfaced. Is it being watched? Yeah, and a lot of times you'll see it's far under that and your content stops being surfaced.

Speaker 1 16:14

Yeah, because well we come back to that opener, which is you have to troubleshoot what happened right and I love looking at what we talked about retention graphs the other day and I and I just want to say that this is a this is something you actually can spend time on, and it it's an analytic that actually will pay back To look at what people are watching, what they're not watching is a great way to make your channel better in a fantastic way.

Measuring Growth Beyond Analytics

Speaker 1 16:38

Look at those dips. Try to figure out why people stopped watching at that moment. Sometimes it's something you said, sometimes it's something you showed on screen. It could be any number of things. Figure it out, alter, and you can do that with the peaks. Why did people peak? There was it. Did you have a time stamp? Or, if there wasn't a time stamp, what happened in that little 10 second range that made that little little triangle there? Uh, peak, true, and see if you can do more of those and less of the the other ones that's true.

Speaker 2 17:06

I'm to actually say the opposite. I'm going to say if you're under 1,000 subscribers stay out of your retention graphs.

Speaker 1 17:14

If you're not getting at least 100 views on these things, you might as well not even look at any of that.

Speaker 2 17:18

I'm going to say 1,000. I'm saying, if you're not getting like 1,000 views on a video, what good is your retention graph?

Speaker 1 17:23

So your retention graph. It's been my experience that over 100 views doesn't change very much from 100 up above. Everything under it can go all over the place. It's been. That's my experience, of course I think it comes down.

Speaker 2 17:35

It's not even the retention graph, to me, it's just your. Your content is surfacing to such a concentrated audience that you can allow that information to dictate creative decisions that could be a hit with more people.

Speaker 1 17:51

Potentially yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 17:52

And I think it's a. It's a hard place to get stuck in, because if you start making decisions based off of analytics really early on, you're solely basing them off of the people that you've already reached, not the people you haven't reached yet.

Speaker 1 18:06

Yeah, if you don't have a lot, if you don't have a good number there, you won't ever be able to make that decision of course if you do have a decent number of impressions of views, you can see people who are just being serviced to you, the unsubscribed, the, the people that are new, the true analytics for all that. But to your point, we get a lot of people that are writing in that are only getting 70, 80 views, yeah, and you can't make that determination off of that, which is very true yeah, I think there's a lot of times like we want to get to that next stage.

Speaker 2 18:31

We want to get to that next level of like monitoring success. Yeah, and like as a newer creator, like your videos probably aren't even at the place where you're confident in them enough let alone, making changes based off of retention yeah like.

Speaker 2 18:47

you got to keep working towards what you want to do and you got to feel confident in yourself as a creator, that you can push through things that you're like. No, I like this. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to see if it performs well for the next year and it's hard to get caught up in analytics and rush to make those decisions.

Speaker 1 19:04

Yeah. This is like when you want to change your title and thumbnail after an hour yeah, and you definitely shouldn't do that unless you're getting thousands of views per hour like that shouldn't even be on your mind yeah you shouldn't even be thinking about that.

Speaker 1 19:18

It does make a difference once you're getting thousands of views an hour, but before that you might be shooting yourself in the foot. That's why ab testing is kind of one of those things where, as a smaller channel, you maybe shouldn't even be using it, because nine times out of ten it's going to come back. That it's inconclusive.

Speaker 2 19:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1 19:34

Like almost every single time, and it'll take two weeks to get that, because you don't even have impressions for it. So it's like you waited all this time for nothing.

Speaker 2 19:40

It's true.

Speaker 1 19:42

And it could actually be hurting you more than helping you. The other thing is, like so many people we've talked about this before like they don't even use ab testing. Right anyway, like, but like three different shades of color in the thumb, they need to be completely different otherwise there is no point. And now, now we're hearing that there's a title ab testing which was something that they kind of said maybe they were going to do.

Speaker 1 20:03

But I think that's something they will do yeah and I think that it's really uh important to be able to know that that's not going to be much different than thumbnail testing. You can only do so much as a smaller creator, and you should just swing for the fences and give it a shot for a while and if it goes, it goes If it doesn't change it.

Speaker 2 20:23

Yeah, this is why you have to set your own ways to measure success. Yeah, this is why you have to set your own ways to measure success and, if it comes down to if you're really hooked on this retention, you can also be the judge of your own content. You can also watch through your own content if you don't have the data yet and just make a decision Like did I do better on that opening hook for the next video? You don't have to rely on analytics. This is also like creative growth. Maybe you watch back your content and you're like I felt really awkward in the way I delivered my opening hook and the next time I make a video, I want to make sure that I feel more confident when I watch it back, that I sound more natural on camera, that I'm practicing, you know different skills that aren't in your analytics, and that's a level of success too. Getting better as a creator, like that's just that's you know technically available in your analytics, but not really like it's not celebrated.

Speaker 1 21:16

So would you say that if you're shooting a video, uh, and you don't need to do as many takes or as many revisions or you stumble less, is that like a level of improvement that you'd be looking for, or do you think?

Speaker 2 21:32

that's irrelevant. A hundred percent. That's success as a small creator, Because as a small channel and new YouTuber, I mean you're not going to have that breakout moment. This is the time where you have to build those skills so that you allow yourself the strength to make content that's worth those breakout moments and just get better. There's tons of skills and habits that all of us have that we can watch back our content and be like, ooh, I gotta work on that.

Speaker 2 21:59

Ooh, I gotta work on that and that's just growth, and that you know, making that next video and being like, oh my gosh, I looked in the lens like 90% of the time, instead of wherever you were looking for Around the room, the ceiling, I don't know your script, your teleprompter, whatever it is and you watch that back and you're like that's amazing. I greatly improved my skills as a creator and I delivered that so much better. I think those are the things you should be focusing on, because at the end of the day, like, who's gonna want to watch a video? Say, that video does get like breakout, and youtube's like let's show this to a hundred thousand people, right?

Speaker 1 22:38

which happens right. Yeah, always the one you're like I spent the least amount of time on and I feel like as, and it just goes somewhere yeah, and people watch it and they're like, oh, you're not very good right like well, wait, no, I promise I'll get better.

Speaker 2 22:51

This video's three years old. Stop looking at it, please. So that's how you want to continue to measure success in so many different ways. It's not just analytics, it's thumbnail design. Like, obviously, that's going to be slightly measured by a click-through rate. Yeah, but also, like you as a designer, if you're making your own thumbnails, that's going to be slightly measured by a click through rate. Yeah, but also like you as a designer.

Speaker 1 23:13

If you're making your own thumbnails, that's a really challenging thing. Yeah, some of this will be helpful if you have a community of people that are creators just like you, and I highly recommend going to something like our Discord, where you will be surrounded by other creators, because one of the things that a lot of us kind of deal with is none of our family or friends understand what the heck we're doing and have no way of giving good feedback other than good job, johnny, you did good this time. It was great video, wonderful you loved it, yeah loved it.

Speaker 1 23:40

Thanks, mom, uh. So I think it's important to be surrounded by people, especially if they're in your niche. It's very helpful as well yeah. To be able to give you critical feedback that's honest and also something that's relevant.

Speaker 2 23:51

Yes, relevant, definitely Relevant feedback is the biggest thing. Yes.

Speaker 1 23:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2 23:56

Because imagine you like made a video and I do this with friends all the time where we critically like give each other feedback on like the story structure, ways to frame it differently next time, on like the story structure, ways to frame it differently next time, and this is after the fact, and then you're kind of like I didn't think about that ahead of time, but when I make the second edition of this, these are all things I'm going to work on. Yeah, and that's success.

Speaker 1 24:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:18

That's now not only trying something new is success in itself.

Speaker 1 24:22

Right.

Speaker 2 24:22

But practicing things like storytelling and that might be more advanced for some of the people we have listening, which is totally fine. It just goes to show like measuring success is like an endless yeah, endless scale.

Speaker 1 24:36

That just goes far and wide, and that's exactly what I was saying earlier is your um, your level of what you think success is for your own channel will change over time because, unfortunately, as humans, our bars tend to change yeah level.

Speaker 1 24:51

So, again, like um, I think jen and I were talking the other day we were saying, hey, you know it was cool, we were getting 100 views on the youtube channel per. Yeah, we were pretty happy with that. That's no longer acceptable. Um, we're looking for a thousand and in a year that will no longer be acceptable. So and that, okay, but you also have to be. You also have to be within yourself to go. Okay, I understand that this is going to move, but don't attach your, your feelings and your self worth yes To those numbers.

Speaker 1 25:21

The most dangerous thing you can do is to attach your self worth to the performance of a video that you really don't have any control over. You have control is to attach your self-worth to the performance of a video that you really don't have any control over. Yes, you have control over the video itself. You have no control over who sees it or how far it goes, or if YouTube's working that day. You have no control over any of that.

Speaker 2 25:37

The algorithm's on a break. You don't know. It's taking a smoke break Like you don't know.

Speaker 1 25:43

That's a good one for that short series that I was talking about. Like what is it? The?

The Title Game Challenge

Speaker 2 25:49

Aflac is taking a smoke thing.

Speaker 1 25:52

That's the algorithm.

Speaker 2 25:53

Yeah, your video comes out in the YouTube algorithm, but it's true, though, and I think that's the fun of YouTube. I literally do. I think that if you don't think that's the fun of YouTube, you're one of those creators that don't last as long on the platform as other people. You have to like that. You have to like the gamble, everything about you work so hard and then you put it out there and it could be a total flop. It could be a total hit. You literally never truly know.

Speaker 2 26:18

You could have gut feelings sure but you never truly know, and I think that's the most addicting part of youtube is this?

Speaker 1 26:26

this are you basically saying you have to marry YouTube for the better or worse?

Speaker 2 26:31

Yeah, yikes, pretty much yeah.

Speaker 1 26:33

And you have to really commit to it.

Speaker 2 26:36

Yeah, I mean you don't have to commit, but you have to be okay with their decision.

Speaker 1 26:42

That sounds like marriage, which is why I never got married, very worried about other people's decisions on my life. Yeah, no, it makes sense, and I think what people see when they first become a YouTuber is all the cool things that their creators, that they watch and they think oh, it must be easy to be successful. But they don't know everything before it, because, while it can be a great job, it can be a great career, it can be a great path forward, just like your nine to five that you have.

Speaker 2 27:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:11

You know that maybe someone comes to your job, Maybe you have a job that people think is really cool, maybe you're like a scientist and I go wow, I went to you know, you showed me your science job, whatever that is, and I think that's really cool, I think that looks cool, I think maybe I should do that, bro, all them hours of school that you had to do to get there, that I, in that moment, you're showcasing the end of it. Same thing with YouTube You're being shown the fruits of the labor that's true.

Speaker 1 27:38

You're not being shown that iceberg that's underneath the water that we talk about so often, all the things that happened before that. So for me, success is are you doing something that you love and you're passionate with that other people are finding happiness and passion with as well, like, are you reaching those people that are just like you, that love that same thing that you love? To me, that's success.

Speaker 2 27:58

I like that. That's you know your success. I think that that's really fun.

Speaker 1 28:04

Yeah, if you are struggling with success, why don't you leave us a message? Why don't you give us an email? Why don't you send us a comment? You can email us at theboostvideocuecom. You also can text us if you are listening to the audio podcast. There's a little text button there for that. One last thing Did you bring the game or no? Did you not steal the game from the hotel? I do have the game let's she stays in when she comes to Seattle. We don't want anyone to know what hotel it is, to know what game she's stealing. But it's irrelevant and you can't prove it anyway. That's why we don't want people to know. Allegedly, it's a game, not where I'm staying. No, no, allegedly, by the way, this is all alleged. You can't prove any of it, but here we go. So what is this game and what are we going to do with it? Oh, it's a pink box.

Speaker 1 28:54

Yeah, Well, you can while I get this out, you can intro what we did last time it looks like bubble gum, I think.

Speaker 1 28:58

The last time we did these cards have words on them and we made, I think, video titles just like quick fire off the words, and it was ridiculous. So my hope and desire is that it's maybe equally ridiculous, I think, very bubblegum flavor colored, which, by the way, if you haven't seen the last couple episodes where we ate gum of different types, you should probably watch those. Okay, all right, here we go. So am I picking here.

Speaker 2 29:27

You can take half.

Speaker 1 29:28

All right. So am I giving you a card, or am I just picking one and you have to make? How do you want to do this one?

Speaker 2 29:33

Let's see I don't think we pick. It's got to be random.

Speaker 1 29:39

Okay.

Speaker 2 29:39

We'll alternate and we'll see who can come up with the better title.

Speaker 1 29:43

Okay, topic or title Title. Title Okay, ready, this one's going to be yours is gonna be yours. Well, no, we both have to do it. Okay, ready, three, two, one it is uh, koala, koala, uh, one koala versus a hundred koalas versus one man koalas are meaner than you think. Here's why click all right, all right, fine, I'm definitely watching that one. What I thought?

Speaker 2 30:09

koalas were nice. I don't, I, I don't know. I just know that there's one place, I think in Sydney, where you can hold a koala. It's only in Australia there's a specific place you can hold a koala.

Speaker 1 30:20

Well, if you're meaner than you know, then that's terrible. You're going to bring down Australians. Thumbnail like koala claws ripping your hair out, bro, I'm good, then I'm good, all right, what? Ripping your hair out?

Speaker 2 30:30

I'm good, then I'm good, all right, what's yours?

Speaker 1 30:33

All right, let's see A koala.

Speaker 2 30:34

What's that? I know Random. What's that Cute?

Speaker 1 30:37

Cute. This is the cutest baby, and here are 10 reasons why.

Speaker 2 30:43

Five cute ways to grow your YouTube channel Five cute ways.

Speaker 1 30:48

This is the cutest way to grow your YouTube channel. This is the cutest way to grow your YouTube channel. You're not wrong. Cute baby's good though. Yeah, but I think you might have got me on that one. I was quick. I'm like I gotta think of something cute cute's hard.

Speaker 2 30:58

I mean I don't know why someone would click on mine. Well, it's weird. Maybe it's just like a weird thing where you're like wait what maybe I'll name this video we're going for the shock factor that's the name of this actual video. Okay, no, here we go Five cute ways to grow your channel.

Speaker 1 31:13

Wig. I'm wearing a wig and you don't know it. There you go. I think I wouldn't. No matter what you say, you can't beat that. You can't beat that Like. This is the worst wig I've ever bought. I bought it from Dollar Tree. You can't beat that slimy that candy we had yesterday was pretty slimy and I don't want to have it again.

Speaker 2 31:34

Here's why I don't know why my slip and slide is slimy why are you so good at this? I don't know, that's terrible. I don't know like some of my creators always called me like a title master, like I wouldn't give them titles, and they'd be like eventually, like if they were frustrated, I'd be like okay, here's a couple ideas. And they'd be like oh, you're such a title master.

Speaker 1 31:58

It's better to be a title master than a thrust master. Okay Mop, why your mop is dirty and three ways to clean it.

Speaker 2 32:13

I was going to say creative ways to mop up success on YouTube. Wow, you're just really in on the YouTube.

Speaker 1 32:19

Growth I'm in on the growth. Today. That's like what's stuck in my head. You are locked in.

Speaker 2 32:23

That was not good, though I was trying to think of mopping in other sense, besides mop.

Speaker 1 32:26

I think I won. Then I think you won that one for sure, which is good. What do you got? All right bath. I think that one's gonna be skipped I think we're gonna skip that one, because I I feel like that.

Speaker 2 32:40

One can get weird so quick. I sell my bath water for 20 dollars how to your new side hustle. How to sell your bath water on YouTube for $20 there you go, thumbnail, definitely not a pyramid scheme definitely not.

Speaker 1 32:57

Better not be who else is using my bath.

Speaker 2 32:58

Oh my gosh, we already did that one last time yeah, how did I just pick koala again?

Speaker 1 33:02

I yeah literally I got hair, which we did last time. Yeah, we did that lemon this how to make sure your youtube channel is not a lemon I don't know if my car is a lemon dot, dot dot but here's how to figure it out. But the windshield always cracks.

Speaker 1 33:23

Yeah, I think my windshield is a lemon my windshield is definitely a lemon yeah, if you don't know what we're talking about, you got to watch the previous episode. All right, I got. We got two more, I got one. How am I picking the same ones over again?

Speaker 2 33:33

That's so weird. What are you doing over there? There's only four different ones. It's like a magic trick.

Speaker 1 33:38

There's so many, but I'm only picking the same ones. Okay, here we go, leprechaun. We did Leprechaun before here. Why? How is there this many, but we're doing the same ones, okay here we go, we done pie, we did pie I think last time what is happening? They weren't shuffled peas. Okay, peas, peas. Um, my secret recipe for a pea pie a pea pie. Let me. Let me figure out what that could even possibly taste like. That are so many things wrong with that.

Speaker 2 34:16

I'm getting the rage click like the rage bait with that one.

Speaker 1 34:18

Bro, and that thumbnail better be hidden Like it's going to be a beautiful slice of like pea stuffed pie. It almost looked like. What is that called? I'm putting it out around Thanksgiving time too. You know what we need to make a pea pie now.

Speaker 2 34:31

Pea pie.

Speaker 1 34:34

Well, I like key lime pie. Key lime pie is actually good.

Speaker 2 34:37

I also want to add that it's not a savory pie. This is, in fact, a sweet pea pie. No, I'm done.

Speaker 1 34:41

You need to move on Now you're making me want to throw up. Now you're making me mad. I want to punch air now Go ahead.

Speaker 2 34:46

See, I don't like that.

Speaker 1 34:48

That's the best title, Nah bro, you just went over the line there. Okay, what's the last one?

Speaker 2 34:52

All right. Well, that's not a good, that's not a word. It was flat, that's kind of.

Speaker 1 34:57

Oh, mini, mini. I bought a mini pee pie and put it on my wig. Look at that, it's a callback. You ever know what a callback is when Callback. You ever know what a callback is when you call back to previous things. It's a TV term.

Speaker 2 35:13

Mini. I commuted to work on a mini bike for one week.

Speaker 1 35:18

A mini bike. Mini bike yeah, we've got mini bikes. Mini bike, yeah.

Final Thoughts on YouTube Success

Speaker 2 35:21

We'll just add, like in NYC, if we want to go highest clickability Exactly right In New York, or if we want to say like 30 miles 30 miles.

Speaker 1 35:34

Yeah, I, I rode a mini bike miles. So here's the thing, let's. This actually reminds me one thing before we close out. One time they asked uh, mr beast, in an interview, like he goes, I think, the interviewer asked him something about if you had to make a channel from trash, could you make a viral video? Because, yeah, of course I could. I guess, well, what would the video idea be? And this was the time where, after mr beast answered, I really thought to myself and I gotta be careful when I say this, because I have a lot of respect for the man but I really felt like it was a very out of touch thing to say, okay. He said, yeah, I would make a um, a video about how I walked from one end of the country to the other. And I was like, but is that realistic? For I don't know anyone who's starting a youtube channel like how is that realistic?

Speaker 2 36:11

I don't't think anything Mr B says is realistic.

Speaker 1 36:14

He lives in a world now where you have to come up with these absolutely outrageous ideas to get hundreds of millions of views, and props to him for being able to do it and build his way up there by the way he was not given this. He literally had to. Whether you like him or not, he started from nothing and had to work his way there.

Speaker 1 36:32

Yeah, his success is undeniable but I think his mindset is so detached from like what a newer creator could do that I don't know if he even understands what that even sounds like to a new creator. Oh, I just have to walk across the country and film it and then I can be viral, okay, also quit my job. Find someone to watch my kids right like and and not die walking across the country.

Speaker 2 36:54

Invest in shoes.

Speaker 1 36:56

All the things. I need a shoe sponsor at this point. If you would like to sponsor us for shoes, maybe we'll walk across the country in the next podcast.

Speaker 2 37:02

That's so funny.

Speaker 1 37:03

Thank you so much for joining us and we will see y'all in the next one.