TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

When YouTube Takes Away Without Asking

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 43

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YouTube's new restriction on Premium family plans requires all members to live in the same household, following similar moves by Amazon Prime and Netflix, drastically reducing the value proposition for subscribers who share with family members living elsewhere.

• YouTube now tracking IP addresses to verify household status with a 30-day verification system
• Family plan subscribers paying $22 monthly now limited to sharing only with people in their physical household
• Licensing agreements for music and movies likely pushing platforms to limit account sharing
• Two-person plan being tested in France, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong as a potential middle-ground solution
• The promote button on YouTube misleads creators into spending money for little subscriber or view returns
• Bot comments with identical text like "brilliant from start to finish" should be held for review to maintain authentic engagement
• Technical creators seeing retention drops during complex segments should consider creating separate channels for different audience needs
• Taking breaks from content creation helps generate better ideas and recharges creative energy


Speaker 1:

This is good for the viewer bad for the creator.

Speaker 2:

Don't promote videos that are not actually ads for something.

Speaker 1:

Are they sus? Are they robots? We don't know, but we're being taken over by AI anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:

I don't like calling YouTube out on things. I like YouTube. I just think whatever department is in charge of the specific feature, it's a misstep.

Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that comes at you live recorded, because we record ourselves live. I'm Travis. It's a misstep, don't even care about, but that's what makes us so amazing. But today we're actually going to talk about a lot of things. We've got a lot of questions from viewers, just like you. We'll tell you how you can send your own message and question into us. But we're going to start with something a little bit more newsy. Dan, you were saying right before you went on the air that something interesting has come to be and I'm a little interested in it. I actually told Dan I don't want to know exactly the details. I want to hear about it live. Give you my live reaction to it because I think that's interesting. So what do you got?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I want to get your live reaction to this, because this is something that affects both creators and viewers alike. If you are somebody who watches YouTube, here's what's going on. Maybe you heard recently that Amazon Prime is kind of ending their family sharing. So if you have an Amazon Prime account, you used to be able to have family members on it and they could benefit from all those things that you have access to, and they recently came out and said, hey, we're not going to let you do that unless you're in the same household. Oh yeah, and so not. A couple days later after that announcement, youtube's like us too. Whoa. So if you have youtube premium, the family plan, you have like six or eight slots. I think that you can like have other accounts on, and it's been the rule, apparently, that those accounts all need to live in the same household. And youtube is now implementing a netflix like crackdown by using your ip address to determine if you are in the same household as the people sharing your account.

Speaker 2:

It's going to have like a 30-day thing on it. This is all I'm looking at a pc mag article about it right now. Um, it's, it's a little disappointing. Yeah, because I I have, you know, a number of people in my family that are using it. I didn't know that they wanted us in the same household.

Speaker 2:

It's a family plan and yeah the word family to me doesn't inherently mean you have to live in the same household. It's a family plan. And yeah, the word family to me doesn't inherently mean you have to live in the same household. They should probably call it a household plan. Exactly that.

Speaker 1:

I agree with that.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, it's a pretty simple story. There's not too much to it. Um, it's just that I think you have a little bit of time to tell your family and friends, whoever's using your family account, that they're about to lose access to it.

Speaker 1:

I broke the news to my family today. They're mad, um, and I will say there's like one other thing happening. First of all, let me get your reaction to that though. Yeah, well, number one, I think it's gonna. You're gonna see a lot of people stop using it. I think they're gonna, they're gonna shoot themselves in the foot somewhat, uh, because people are like, well then, what's the point of having this? Uh, so I think you have a lot of that. I don't think you're going to see an uptick in purchases, and I know why they're doing this because, um, these companies have been doing this, uh, in steps for a couple of years now, where they had this grandiose, you know, buy one and everyone can use. I mean the netflix crackdown from years ago. You might remember everyone password sharing and they had a crackdown years ago. I feel like this is just an extension of that. I wonder there must be, like an uptick in usage and the licensing rights for certain things.

Speaker 1:

I don't know why youtube is doing this. It makes less sense to me, uh, since, uh, essentially, it's different than, like on netflix, where you're losing out on a membership. I don't think youtube, I mean worst case. I guess you could say youtube might be missing out on some. It just doesn't make sense for me on youtube. I just say that. I say it makes more sense for like a netflix situation than it does a youtube situation. Um and household, I think, is now the new term they have to use. You can't say family anymore, because family does not apply in the same house. Um, and I think that it's bad. There must be a financial reason they're doing this rather than raising the price, because what that's usually what they do They'll raise the price and that covers everything. But my guess is they'll still raise the price at some point and just give you less access to things, which is a bad direction to go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so basically I'm paying. I think I have an annual plan, but when I look at my pricing it's like 22-something a month for my family plan and spread amongst my family members, that's a good value. Now I can only share it with my wife because we're in the same household and that's it. I can't share it with my parents, siblings, anybody else. So I'm now paying this family plan that I now can use way less of. So I was pretty upset.

Speaker 2:

But then I learned this is another article I'll be sure to link there is a two-person plan. Youtube is testing and it's not in America yet, but they're testing it in France, india, taiwan and Hong Kong and basically you can have like couples or roommates or whatever. Like two individuals in the same household can share a YouTube premium subscription, and that is only going to be slightly more than an individual plan. So then the value kind of comes back and I can see myself just getting that in the future if we get it. They're only testing this in other countries. We don't know if we're getting that, but I will say it's very disappointing and I would love it if not just YouTube but companies in general would go back to those kind of value ads.

Speaker 2:

I really I promote YouTube premium despite getting nothing for it. When I'm streaming or anything, I tell people, hey, I, you know there's, there are ways to not see ads that YouTube doesn't like. But premium is actually pretty cool. It works on your phone, it works on your TV, like you know, and if you use a family plan, it's a really good value. I've been saying that that's how I've been pushing people to premium, because it was this really cool value where you get like six or eight or whatever it is, slots so your family can like benefit from this. You can all go in and split the cost. And now, no, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Again, it must be something that we're not aware of from a pricing perspective. I hope it's just not straight up greed. That's usually not the first reason behind things like this, because there's a lot for most corporations. I've worked in corporations where they make decisions like this all the time Amazon specifically where they think, okay, price increase, this is a risk. It's always a risk, right, and the only time that typically a company will make a price increase is when they have no choice.

Speaker 1:

This is different. This isn't a price increase. This is just a removal of features from something that exists. So they also have to look at is this legal everywhere where they do it? Because it probably is legal in America I'm pretty sure that it is if they're doing it but it might not be legal overseas. So there's a lot of little things that they have to look through before they go. We're doing this. They don't just do it because there's there's all types of traps, uh, set for them in this particular case. I think it's. I think it's bad.

Speaker 1:

I think if there was a way that they just raise the price a dollar or two and just leave it the way it is, that's probably the better solution, but maybe they've done the math and it's like no, we'd really have to charge more, and I don't know where that would come from, because, again, I think what's going to happen is they're going to see people stop using it and they're just going to lose on this. So it's very interesting. It could also be that the so YouTube Premium gives you a lot of things, but one of the things most people don't think about is it gives you access to certain movies and stuff. Like, a lot of people don't even realize that you have access to movies and stuff on YouTube. You do, and maybe that's what's pushing this and I don't know this. I'm just throwing this out there.

Speaker 1:

When you license these movies and stuff, those companies want a certain amount of payment for that, and there's all types of legalese that has to go back and forth. And music too, don't forget, forget, music is part of this as well. Yeah, there is a world in which these licensors went back to Amazon and said you guys are, we're not getting paid. What we should be getting paid for the amount of streams we're doing, is because you guys are sharing your stuff everywhere. We want more money, and they just looked at it and go well, we can't do it without telling people they can't share anymore, so that that also could be an aspect of it. That is not being said and you won't hear anyone say that because you know it's. It's confidential, uh, information between you know, the companies and and the licensors, so it could be any number of these reasons. I think it's just a net positive bad in my opinion negative, I think that negative, I think, is what you're saying.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's what I mean to say yeah, uh, and you know, when the netflix password crackdown crackdown came along, what they did, and I haven't seen it in the story. Maybe YouTube's thinking about this too. What Netflix did is said if you still want to share, like a family plan, the person who owns the account can actually add you and it'll cost them a little bit more. You know, you all figure it out. If you want to pay them for your share of it, whatever you want to do, we don't care. I haven't seen that as part of this story yet, but that makes the most sense to me because right now it's very disruptive. It's actually people are getting emails. They're saying like, hey, we're pausing your family plan because of this, and it's it is a disruption. I would rather say what does it cost to add my, my parents, my siblings to it, whatever? And let me decide for myself if I want to give you that extra money, because Because obviously you're going to make money either way, right? Either they're going to get individual accounts or you can just ask me to still bundle it and give me a little deal. So I feel good about my little deal and that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

But YouTube did go to your point of like. Is this going to cause people to just cancel? Youtube is going full disruption route right now by saying, hey, you can't use this right now. You have to figure this out, wow, and if I'm understanding it correctly, I have not gotten this email yet. I think, um, this is I'm just going off what the story is saying and my reading comprehension isn't great sometimes, so I'll just make sure, if you're leaking this somewhere, go read it. Um, but yeah, that's how I'm understanding this right now. I really do hope they at least give us a bundling option that includes people outside our household, because I'm not doing. I didn't know I was breaking the rules. I didn't think I was doing anything nefarious. I was making sure it's called a family plan. I only invited my family to it.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Here's a potential workaround, although I don't know that it works this way. I'll tell you how I came across this. Steam does the same thing, so you may or may not know that steam that which is a video game platform, a PC gaming platform allows you to have family members and you can share your library with your family members. I'm sure you're aware of this, right? Yeah, yeah, um, have you ever used it before?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I did it. I found it to be a little clunky and confusing. My, my, I was trying to share with my dad and he was like, uh, how do I do this?

Speaker 1:

but it's there. Yeah, it's there and it's cool. I mean, um, certainly, once you get access to, especially, someone else has a larger library cataloging everything, so that it makes sense. That can be the complicated part, but it's cool to get access to someone else's games, right, and that doesn't cost anything, which is weird. Because I'm like, how did they, how did they pull that off? Because that's a crazy one, but much like what we're talking about now. They only let you share with people in your house, kind of.

Speaker 1:

So the way it works is if I were to invite Dan to my family, you get like five family members. I could send him an invite, he would get it and if he tried to sign in, it would tell him that it doesn't appear. I forget the exact wording, but essentially it's saying you're not in the same household. It says it without saying it, but it's very obvious what they mean, right? So I found this out on accident. By doing so, I built a pc for my best friend's son a couple months back, which kind of got me into building pcs again and I wanted to. I forgot, I wanted to test, like one of my games on his, on his system. He didn't really have anything in steam. So I I signed into my steam account on his computer to test the games, make sure that the drivers were installed, everything was good, right. Then I signed myself, I signed myself out and put him on and then I I invited him to my family thing, cause he lives right down the street from me. I'm like you know, he's like my, he's like my little kid, but he's family to me and he had access to my games. I thought that was cool and then I tried to invite, because I didn't put together the connection of what had happened there. So I just invited another friend and it didn't work. Then I realized oh, when I built his PC, I logged in on my network, on his computer, and then I logged him in so it put the same IP address on that account and when I sent it back to him he had access to my games.

Speaker 1:

So when I went to Utah recently to hang out with a friend, I wanted to test the theory. I'm like, hey, buddy, I'm going to invite you, I'm going to invite you to my little family thing, let's see if it works. And when I got there, of course it didn't work. So I had him sign out of his computer. I signed into my Steam account on his computer quickly like, loaded up a game, turned it off, invited him all of a sudden, boom, now we're family, now he's still in Utah and I'm here in Seattle and we have access to all the games. So in that particular case and I don't know if YouTube is going to work the same way Very possible it will, though that the initial connection of the account has to be in the same IP address and then after that it might not keep checking. It might keep checking, like I mean, you know YouTube, they might keep checking.

Speaker 2:

But Steam doesn't appear to. Yeah, steam might not, but you did remind me. This is part of the story. It says YouTube uses a similar technology to Netflix, where it checks which IP address you've been using over the last 30 days. If it notices you haven't returned to the household, it will flag your account. So that's probably how they're getting around that. So if I travel to my parents' house and log into the account there, they'll have 30 days and I need to visit them again.

Speaker 1:

Or have them log in with your information, right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, it's which I don't want to do no, of course yeah, it's it is like pretty restrictive, and that is how netflix is getting around it as well yeah, so anyway, all that to say a little anti-consumer, um, but uh, I kind of.

Speaker 1:

I think it's the state of where we are and again, it might be more deep than we know. It could be this whole licensing thing. So who knows? It's true, it's expensive, it is, and the fact that you got to remember that Amazon and YouTube are licensing movies and music, it's not just one or the other. Yeah, so it could be one side or the other that's pushing, or both combined. Who knows that I or the other that's pushing are both combined? Who knows that? I hope got you up to date on the latest there. If you're a viewer, I use premium so it doesn't really affect me. I don't really share that with my family, but it definitely is something interesting. What's the price difference between individual and family? Do you know?

Speaker 2:

I just looked and I already forgot, but I think individual is about $12.99. Something like that, yeah, premium light as well, which still has ads, but you know, not everywhere on youtube. Yeah, and that's like 799, so I and that they're only like last I heard they're adding more ads to it, so like I don't know like I just just get premium.

Speaker 2:

It's like wow, anyway, if you have a spotify subscription, like it bundles youtube music in there, so I don't know that's. I always found that to be part of the value of YouTube. Premium is like you get music as well, and a lot of people don't know that. A lot of people have premium and don't even download the music app.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you absolutely should. Well, now we're going to answer your questions. If you want to send us a question, there's two ways to do it. If you listen to the show notes, you'll notice there's a link there to send us a text message. Or if you want to send us an email, you can send us one to the boost at vid iqcom. The boost at vid iqcom and this first one comes from miles. Miles says when I first launched my youtube channel, I run adsense I think he means adwords. Okay, uh, and picked up about 2500 subscribers. Yes, I know that was a bad choice, so this is why I think he he means AdWords. Or you know where you advertise your. Is that what they call it? Is it called AdWords?

Speaker 2:

I think back in the day it's Promote now, but yeah, back in the day you could promote your channel through AdWords, which is basically yeah, pay money, send traffic.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I interrupted you, yeah yeah, but since then the channel has been struggling. Could that be part of the issue? First of all, spoiler alert yes, that many of those early subscribers only joined because of how ads were targeted, rather than genuine interest in my content. Would it make more sense to shut this channel down and reupload the videos on a fresh channel? Or should I stay the course, keep building what I've already started? I love the direction I settled into and I don't intend to change it, but if those first 2,000 people aren't watching anyway, should I hit the reset button with a more grounded mindset? This is from Miles. What a great question. Because there's layers to this. We're going to peel this onion back. Give me your first kind of thoughts as you hear that email.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my first thought is like I like at the end they use the word mindset, because this really is a mindset. I'm a believer that if you do something with your channel and then you notice there's like a ripple effect, that doesn't necessarily mean you broke your channel. That's my belief. I don't work at YouTube, but I don't think your channel is physically broken in some irreparable way. But I do think that it looks broken because your numbers don't look like they once did. So it feels like something is off. I'm a believer that if you were to just stay the course, you probably would eventually get over that hurdle.

Speaker 2:

But it does feel weird to have like 2000 subscribers, for example, or whatever the number was, that aren't real. Like people hit the button but they didn't actually watch or they didn't. They don't continue to watch. So the more grounded mindset that's where that comes in. I don't see the harm either in starting a new channel purely on mindset reasons. But I'm just trying to make it clear that I don't think you should start one just because the channel is irreparably damaged. I don't think it is. But again, I don't work at YouTube. I don't know how their systems work. Maybe it is. I don't think it is though.

Speaker 1:

I agree with this, and this is based off of working with different creators and stuff. So, first of all, let's talk back to the AdWords promotion thing. We actually did a video that's on the main channel about how that thing works and why it looks like it works so well but ultimately doesn't help your channel at all. What it is you'll see when you're in studio. There's a button that says like promote, and it says hey, you get more views and subscribers with this and you go through this process, this, and you go through this process. You pay some money not that much and it shows your videos to a lot of people and you might gain a whole bunch of subscribers from it. But, number one, what you'll tend to find is, if you look at the geography of those subscribers, they're almost never in America, uk, canada any of the ones that you're probably targeting or even the country that you may be watching this video from. They tend to be from, like India and certain parts of Asia. It's not a bad thing per se, but it does let you know that the reason that it comes up as those countries is because the cheapest to make the most, take the most advantage of the money you've spent. Youtube knows this. I've actually talked to YouTube about this exact situation, um and a lot of times. In those countries they culturally use the subscribe button differently than we do, and there's something that YouTube called hyper subscribing, which I thought was a really interesting term, and the term basically means is that they use it like a like button. It's not even that they want to subscribe to your channel, they're just like oh, that was cool, like and just in. I guess in those parts of the world that's just kind of common. It's like whatever and it and it is what it is right. But those people aren't necessarily coming back to watch anything. So to this, to miles point, it's not driving any additional traffic.

Speaker 1:

Now what that puts him in, especially as a smaller creator although this happens to larger creator too you might have like 2500 subscribers where your videos might be getting 30 or 40 views now like, oh crap, that looks really bad. Well, let me just let you know something. Most channels on YouTube look like that. Most channels on YouTube have a lot more subscribers than they get views on a video, even on the biggest channels in the world, so that's normal. Have you ruined your channel? Doubt it, especially with that little bit of data that was put into there. Will it make things look more weird and maybe slightly difficult initially? Yeah, maybe so, because you got to remember how YouTube works.

Speaker 1:

For the first 24 to 48 hours, your content is shown to people who've just recently watched your channel and your subscribers. If these subscribers aren't watching, that's going to be a bad signal and if people aren't really coming to your channel, you might not get any more impressions. It doesn't mean it's over, of course. There's a whole other section where weeks and months and years later it gets shown to other people who've never been to your channel and people searching for things and all these other things. So there's still a chance for these videos to grow.

Speaker 1:

I like the idea of asking the question about starting a new channel because I feel like that's that is something you could do as a tightly connected channel right off the bat with like I don't know how many videos this channel had initially, but he says he likes the course he's on now. Well, if you just took those last 10 or so videos, you got this tightly connected video channel. Then, when you YouTube starts putting stuff out and they start seeing connecting people to multiple videos cause someone comes in and is like, oh, I like that video, I like that video. It's much easier to grow that channel At that point. It would still be potentially slow and it is starting over. It's not a terrible idea, but I don't. And I but I 100 agree with dan don't do it because you think it's going to fix the the ills of the other, because you still can probably do the same thing with this one.

Speaker 2:

It's just that if you wanted to jet start uh, you know a new channel with uh you know you want to uh fuel it up, that would be a good way to do it I want to real quick just circle back to the promote button too, because, uh, I've noticed an escalation in youtube's language at the promote button recently and I'm going to say, for at least on my channel, this has gotten worse, not better. So I uploaded a video recently. It was probably the most I've ever worked on a video before, right, um. So I was really surprised when this video, which is certainly not an ad for anything, goes up on my channel and it's, you know, after a few days of it being up, it was doing okay. I was hoping it would be better. I noticed that I get a thing in my dashboard that says you know, promote, and has a little icon on it and it's like hey, your video name of video could reach a lot more viewers and you can get a lot more subscribers if you promote it. I am just going to say this again and again and again, and won't be the last time I say it please use the promote button to only actually promote ads.

Speaker 2:

If you have a business, if you have a product, that is what it's for. It is for advertising purposes. Nobody I promote this video to, that is not an ad, is going to go. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad the thing I clicked on was interrupted by this other thing and it's so good I'm going to subscribe to this guy and watch all of this stuff. It's not going to happen.

Speaker 2:

People. Ads are disruptive and people need to see a lot of them before they want to even buy the thing. That's why there are still ads for Pepsi to this day, even though you know exactly what Pepsi is, because they just want you thinking about that next time you get thirsty. That's how they work. It's subliminal. So, no, don't promote videos that are not actually ads for something.

Speaker 2:

It makes total sense. If you have a product or a service, it's really. That is like that's the game. It doesn't make any sense sense. And the fact that youtube is using language that says you can get more subscribers and views from doing this is really awful. I don't like that and I I don't like calling youtube out on things. I like youtube. I I just think whatever department is in charge of the specific feature, it's a misstep. I I think it gets people's hopes up. I think people do shell out money for this because they come to us all the time and say I used it, but it didn't work, like, of course it didn't work. It's all logic. It's just it's the humans watching it. It disrupts the thing they clicked on. Why would they? They're not like looking upon you favorably for disrupting their other viewing experience they were trying to have.

Speaker 1:

I think what Dan said there is really important, because whenever someone asks questions about this, the easy answer is to go. Just put yourself in the shoes of the person. When's the last time you subscribed to a channel and you saw an ad for it and instantly it seems to click. For people it's like oh yeah, that's what you're doing. Just FYI, that's the experience you're giving, so you should not be surprised when it doesn't work the way you thought it was because it doesn't work on you. You know what I mean. Like, if it doesn't work on you, what are the chances of it working on someone who likes your content? It's just, it's unlikely. Now, does it mean it never works? No, and of course, there's always great targeted ads that can bear fruit, but nine times out of 10, it's for a product or a service or something. It's not um and uh. It's just there's better things to use your money on. Buy a better mic, you know. Instead of getting a 20 lab, get a 50 lab and don't use that 30 and promote. You know there's there's, you know, lots of options. Actually, mics are really cheap now. So even a good quality ones like under 50 bucks uh, here's an interesting. I love this one. Here's an interesting I love this one. Here's an interesting email and it's by Chris Hi.

Speaker 1:

If creators didn't say let's get right into it, they'd get right into it faster. If I watch a video called give me 10 minutes and I'll teach you the YouTube algorithm, and it took nearly two and a half minutes to waffle before he said let's get right into it, the title got me ready for the information. The fact that he's making the video suggests he knows about the YouTube algorithm. Just get right into it, I'm ready, damn it. Regards Chris. Oh, let's talk about this because this is so true.

Speaker 1:

You know, the thing is that we fall into trappings as creators sometimes, and this is one of them. Let's get right to it. I used to say right after this, not at all, like that's completely accurate. We fall into these things, especially as newer creators that we've seen bigger creators do, and then we just do it because we're like, oh, that must work, when there might be a whole story behind why they do the thing in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Maybe they don't know why they do it either, or maybe there is a reason they do something, but let's get right into it, or let's get right into it after this message or whatever. Whatever the case may be, all these different things that are said, what are some of the ones that, like you see, rob shared in the last episode that the one he hates is when they say only 56% of the people are watching, are unsubscribed to my channel, and I'm like, well, rob, the reason they do this because that works, but he doesn't like that. He hates that, right. So do you have one that you hear or see and you're like I don't like that?

Speaker 2:

I think I'm just on board with the email itself, because I can't think of any off the top of my head. It is just any time I click on a video and you know, okay, I'll tell you what I hate. I hate when people tell me, like, welcome back to my channel and and that's okay. Like, okay, maybe I'm a new viewer. I'm like, okay, I get it, I haven't been here for a while, but then they proceed to tell me all this stuff about maybe their life or their last video or something like something really irrelevant to what I clicked on. Like they feel like they're going to open their video with a bit of a personable like vlog and then get into it like no, you could say that for the end if you want to. But I like, if I'm trying to get to know you as a creator, drop me the value first. Uh.

Speaker 2:

I also don't like when it's hey, here's my hook and I'm like, yeah, I'm into this, and then they're like, but first, by the way, my name is so and so and this is my YouTube channel. Like, I know that, I know I saw your name when I click the video. But go on, do now, let's get into it. No, no, no, you don't understand. You know only this many people are subscribed and I make videos like this all the time. Like these are very normal assumptions that I can make myself. I don't know that, like, just save it for later, tell me later, like at the end. Um, by the way, I've been dan, and this has been my youtube channel subscribe because I'm trying to get to 100 000 subscribers before my, my friend so, and so I like that cool, you know, and then I might.

Speaker 2:

I'm more likely to, because you've actually given me the thing that I wanted and I got to know your personality through watching the content and I got to already start to decide for myself if I'm going to come back. That last punch at the end of you saying, okay, come back, it's like you're right, I will come back. That was a fun experience. But if you front load all that stuff, I'm like okay, so you don't take this seriously. I clicked on something that I want to know about right now and you're trying to waste all this time. Now, in reality, all I do is tap my phone to do the 10-second skips. I don't actually harbor resentment towards these folks, but since we're talking about it in my brain I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no and I'm tapping my phone.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know, what's funny about this is YouTube is combating this, and this is a thing that I don't know how much I like, even though I take advantage of it, and that is the go to the place where most people skip to option. That's been coming up, uh, on desktop, I think, it says skip ahead, or something like that. In the bottom right corner on tv, when you hit fast forward, one time it goes to a point in the video that most people stopped at. In other words, they, they rewound past, and 99 of the time it's the. It's the baked in ad from the, the sponsored part, yeah, but sometimes it's exactly what you're talking about. It's a long intro and people, and if you just hit once, boom it knows, it knows yeah because it's using the data people fast forwarding ahead.

Speaker 1:

This is good for the viewer, bad for the creator. It's bad for the creator on two ways. Number one as someone who might be telling a story or something you know you want, you hope that your audience is engaged, although I think most creators forget that the vast majority of people that are watching your video have never seen your content before. It's a very. It's a smaller percentage of people who've actually watched your content that are watching a video at that, so you also really have to be speaking to people who've never seen you before. To Dan's point the other part is the part I'm talking about the sponsorship thing. As soon as sponsors start seeing this, as soon as they realize this, they might stop sponsoring people on YouTube, which takes money away from the creator. This is bad. It's bad on a couple of reasons. Because, number one, people already skip over that stuff, but youtube is now making it overly easy and because of that, at some point, you know, a company that might be working with creators forever might be going. You know we've seen a lot less clicks on our links that we've given you. You know. I wonder why that is. Let me go watch the video and they see this thing come up and they click it like wait a minute, that entire segment's gone. Like it's gone, like what did I pay for? And then we're back to relying on adsense and it's like, well, that's not great, because youtube and I hate to say this like they'll say, well then youtube's getting less money. Now here's the thing about ads and people forget this by the time the ad is on youtube. Youtube's been paid. The creator hasn't been paid yet.

Speaker 1:

That's why pop-ups steal from the creator, not from youtube. I feel like sometimes people pop-up blockers, I should. People think the pop-up blockers are like you're fighting against the man and all this. Of course I don't like ads either, but stick it to YouTube. No, you're sticking it to the creator. Youtube got paid. If you've ever advertised something on YouTube, you pay up front. The money's gone. Youtube got it, the creator didn't get it. If you're trying to help the creator, you've actually done the opposite. So I'll take a hot take you're stealing from creators. You are because you're not stealing from youtube.

Speaker 2:

All that to be said you've raised an interesting question in my head too, before we move on from that. Um, if because I would I was going to say maybe you're stealing from the advertiser as well. But if the ad didn't play, does that mean it just goes somewhere else? It?

Speaker 2:

goes somewhere else it finds a slot where it can play. Yeah, supposed to, yeah, if it didn't show. So the advertiser still gets what their value. Youtube still gets their value. The creator missed out on the is that's what you're? That's kind of I never considered it working that way.

Speaker 1:

Those people don't, because they don't think deeply about it. They just think, oh, you know I you know it's an inconvenience for me to see this, but I also think a lot of people don't care about the creator. I don't, they'll watch it. It's like whatever, it's just a video. Go get a real job.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm like 100% with you, especially understanding it that way. It makes sense. I just never gave it that much thought. What I will say, though, is YouTube does need to do more work to filter the ads that are being purchased on their platform, because some of them have scams in them, and this has been proven. Have scams in them, and this has been proven. So, uh, it's very dangerous to to get certain ads on youtube, depending on the kind of person you are. If you can't pick up on some of these subtleties, you could be taken for a ride, and that's not good. So it is like a problem that has like a lot of different you know spokes coming out of it. It's it's a little scary on all fronts, but yeah, I see what you're saying. I forgot the question, though um it's yeah it's not even really a question.

Speaker 1:

It's just talking about the skipping of oh right, skipping stuff.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I was gonna ask you about jump ahead. Yeah, is, is jump ahead only for premium users?

Speaker 1:

I thought it was. Oh, that's a good question. I actually don't know, because I am premium. This is a good point, and I would also beg question does that work on TV only for premium users, which would make sense, because we've already paid? They are getting paid for our view anyway. This is a good point that I didn't think of. Look at that. Look how smart Dan is. I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 2:

I don't know either. So yeah, I guess don't quote me. Dan said it's for premium.

Speaker 1:

I, I'm a premium guy, I'm not a premium type of dude. I'm going to spend the money on that. It's a great point. But anyway, the whole email was like get to the point, get to the point, which I think we've finally gotten to the point We've circled around it for a while, but we talked about it in so many different ways.

Speaker 1:

I feel like you probably understand that getting to the point is a good thing and one of the things is, if you're creating a video that's specifically for search, your impetus is to get to the point right away because you have to remember the traffic source. Search is when someone is typing something into the bar and once that answer, they're not looking for you, they're looking for the answer, looking for them. I actually mentioned this in the video a couple of videos ago. Someone emailed in about this and it's important to understand that relationship. If you're doing a how to tie a tie video, I don't care that you're Johnny, and this is your third video on your YouTube with Dan said, I don't care about any of that. I got to go to this party and I got to learn how tight it's tying like 20 seconds. I need you to get to it and then maybe, if you're funny, maybe I'll come back to you later.

Speaker 1:

And what Dan said I think is really smart Do those calls to action towards the end, when people are already invested in you and have a much. You have a much likely, a better likelihood of making that connection. So I agree with that. Get to the point. Don't Boris with the chorus? No, don't Boris, get to the chorus, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah For music.

Speaker 1:

Don't, boris, get to the chorus? All right? This next email comes from Jake Jake. Jake says I appreciate what you're doing by helping us navigate the uncharted waters of YouTube. Say that again. I've been at it now for just over five years and gained 6,300 subscribers, most of which 4,000 have come from a single video 4,000 of them from a single video. That's crazy. I posted a year ago. It's been mostly a positive experience.

Speaker 1:

As of a couple weeks ago, I got a flurry of comments on a popular video from newly created accounts. At the same time, my views began to take a nosedive. After seeing the exact same comment brilliant from start to finish I began questioning if these were real people. Also, the usernames have symbols and letters in them, which means they could be bots or fake accounts. Though I like seeing positive feedback, such as impressive skills or the creativity here is unmatched I'm worried that these could be attempts to get my video taken down. It also makes my content seem less authentic, as if I'm the one behind the shenanigans. However, if they are real people, then I feel bad for not responding to their comments as I normally would. I'm not sure how to handle this if it continues and I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Speaker 1:

Jake, this is a great question. We really haven't talked specifically about this, really haven't talked specifically about this. We've talked about like it was like a year or so it was a little more a year ago when you got all those, um, a bunch of those bot uh comments, but, to be honest, or they were, they were making it look like they were from the creator, but they weren't. We have talked about that. This is different. We do definitely get these comments on the main vid iq channel. For sure, all small channels gather here is one of the one of the great ones. Um, what are your thoughts here? Uh, dan, I mean, he's got a channel where you got a whole bunch of subscribers from one video, um, but these comments are starting to seem sus I'm going to say that you're giving.

Speaker 2:

It's cool, that you're giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's okay. Look at the comments. If they're, if the words are exactly verbatim, like brilliant from start to finish, as like an example, and you have multiple comments that say that exact thing, it gives maybe even the same capitalization, punctuation. I want you to take that phrase, copy it. I want you to go into your content moderation. I want you to paste it into your content moderation thing so it can no longer be used on your channel.

Speaker 2:

The amount of people real people actually saying that in the future probably very low, and if you never check your held messages, you won't know about it. Anyway. I hold everything, like any comments I get that are even slightly suspicious. I just don't even question it. I hold it for review because this is such a common problem on YouTube. Like nine times out of ten you are going to be just dealing with bots. That's just when you see this stuff happen. That's pretty much what it is, because it's, if you okay, listen, just to be kind of funny. Mean for a second If your audience just keeps saying the same exact thing over and over again to compliment you, that's on them.

Speaker 2:

That's not very creative. You need a more creative viewer base. My actual question back to you would be do you remember that video? Did you actually ask them to say that in the comments and forget? That's the only other reason that would happen. It's either you told them hey, if you watch the whole video, I want you to say brilliant from start to finish in the comments below.

Speaker 2:

If you didn't do that, I would bet money that it's bots. It's safer to just put them in the held for review. As for what happens here, like if this continues to be like this thing happening on your channel, I would like to give you to them for the doubt and say that I think they have systems in place that can detect the stuff without you having to say a word. But you'll know you're in trouble if you get like a community guideline strike or something like that, and then you can appeal it and be like no, this has just been happening to me. I don't know what's going on, but I think when I see this stuff happen, youtube seems to like understand what's going on. But that's just again, everyone's experience is different.

Speaker 1:

It's whack-a-mole because as they figure things out, the the people who make these things make it different so they're not detected. It's it's very much whack-a-mole. I think at the end of the day, if it's happening to you, that's, in a weird way, kind of a good sign, because you've been found, which means you're somewhat relevant to somebody somewhere, which is interesting. I mean, you got to look at it. The positive side, right? Uh, definitely. I think what dan said is exactly what you should do. You know, definitely put those in the held for response, because you don't want people coming in going. Why does this all look the same? It's very suspicious.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it ruins. It ruins the commenting experience for your actual viewers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't worry too much about it. And no, it's not making your channel nosedive. I don't think that that has anything to do with any of those things. Just continue to make good content, continue to look about the thing you know, to consider the things that we say here on the podcast and and look at your content strategically and, whenever possible, removing your, your personal feelings from it and looking at it rationally and kind of, which is hard, by the way, you got to look at something that you maybe spent a lot of time on and go that sucks. And sometimes that is the answer, but look at it rationally and kind of pragmatically. All that to be said, are they sus? Are they robots? We don't know, but we're being taken over by AI anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. I guess you get used to it. I suppose Last message comes from Matthew.

Speaker 1:

I'm in the maker niche. In my videos I make cool things that are a hybrid of software, 3d printing, laser cutting and DIY electronics. Okay, before I go further cool, make me something that would be cool. I'll show it on the channel. Make me something that goes. Make a little Rob Wilson that I can bring up. It's like a robotic Rob Wilson or something I don't know. Okay, kind of fun.

Speaker 1:

I've noticed my audience is split. Some of them are highly technical and want a deep dive on the challenges I had to solve. Okay, before I continue on, unsurprising based on the niche that you're in. Okay, meanwhile, other parts of the audience just want the high-level story and to see the cool things I made in action. I know both of these people exist. I now have had several folks in the deep camp dive deep camp DM me directly through my socials to complain, which I'm actually flattered about. Meanwhile, my analytics have noticed a pattern that there's a drop every time I get technical, most notably the moment I pull out a circuit board, I can almost bank on the retention graph dropping.

Speaker 1:

My thought is I like to slip the content into two channels. The first one lets produce vlog style, where I deep dive when I'm working on down rabbit hole. Then, once a project is finished, I could take all that footage, edit it down to something more polished and share on my current channel. Thanks for all the great content. Learned a ton from y'all Podcasts you do about vlog. Content is what made me think about this in the first place. Okay, first of all, you said your channel sounds amazing, sounds very cool and the things that he points out, and I wanted to go over these individual things. They have a super technical uh viewer. They have a viewer that just thinks the thing is cool to look at and they've looked at the retention graph, which I love. I love talking about retention graphs. I do it all day and they noticed, when they get overly technical, bink everyone well, not everyone, a large portion of people leave. What are your thoughts about this email?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I will give you an actual example of a channel I watch that I'm sure has dealt with this, because they have a spinoff channel that gets way more technical. So there is a YouTuber I watch. I'm trying to find I actually have the second channel pulled up I'm trying to find the main channel and I can't. Uh, I think it's called jake simmons and he mods game boys and game cubes and you know. So he rips apart game consoles and mods them and sells that it's yeah, I'm really into this as a hobby, like it's just really fun.

Speaker 2:

Um, I actually just got all my parts for my game cube. I'm about to mod it. Based on just having watched so many of these videos, I wanted to do it anyway. His main channel is called Jake Simmons. It has 75 almost 76,000 subscribers and they are more of an overview of a cool thing that he made or found or whatever. And they are very not technical. They're more like hey, check out this cool new Game Boy IPS kit that I installed and it goes over like the features of the kit and things like that, and he shows a little bit of the B-roll from the installation. But it's for anybody, right, it's a very high level kind of overview for anybody who's interested in this stuff. And then he's like by the way, on the second channel I have the actual full breakdown of me like building this. So if you want to see that, that's down below in, you know, in the description.

Speaker 2:

Now the second channel is called jake64 and has 2500 subscribers, so not nearly as many, but uh, the views. It's very much like a tutorial channel, like the. Uh, the views on there are low, but I think there's a lot of value. The videos are longer and he's actually like going into a lot of technical detail about how to build this stuff. So they already mentioned that maybe they should put this stuff on the second channel. I kind of agree. The other thing I was going to say is that they could also give that as members content.

Speaker 1:

The members content could be more.

Speaker 2:

you could monetize them if you want to, but you don't necessarily have to do that.

Speaker 1:

That's an interesting take on that. I like that, putting it behind a paywall, because the people who are really into the technical part might actually pay for that. Yeah, I like what you said about the channel that you already have seen that does this, and it is two different audiences that could live on the same channel. However, I think if you do something like that, then one of them will perpetually suffer just because of the way YouTube works, that, generally speaking, one of those two buckets, so to speak, will work better than the other. Yet if the other one had its own channel, it might be able to live a little bit longer and deeper and fuller, and perhaps with more views. You could do either. I think they will both work.

Speaker 1:

I just think that having the second channel gives these deeper dives to people who are going to be interested in it and doesn't necessarily tank anything else on that channel. It's just I know exactly what I'm going to get, this is what I want, and, of course, you can promote it from your main channel. Go hey, for those of you that are wanting this deeper dive, I got it. There's a whole channel dedicated to it. Put it on your homepage. You can actually do that on your YouTube channel setup. You can actually put your channel there and even put a playlist there from the other channel on your existing channel. Some people don't know you can do that, but you can actually put a playlist from other channels on that channel and, um, you know, send people over that are interested in that sort of thing and keep the whichever the larger audiences for this channel, for this channel. I like that, um, I like the strategy behind that. It definitely gives you.

Speaker 1:

Now, the thing is, having two channels can be a bit of a hassle, but if you're already shooting the content anyway, it's just uploading to a different account. Not that big of a deal. And you can do both under the same email YouTube account. Some people don't know that you can have multiple channels under your main YouTube account. Also, last time I think your cat was on stream, we got some comments. They loved it, they loved the cameo, the cat cameo. Yeah, sorry about that no.

Speaker 1:

I mean the cat is popular.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm sorry, it's really just an attention thing on her part and we're working on it.

Speaker 1:

No, again. We got good comments. They were like I love Dan's cat coming in, so I'm like all right. I'm like all right, well, listen, if that gives us views, if the attention spike goes up when the cat comes on, I'm going to take it. It won't happen again, trust me. Anyway, if this has been helpful to you, we would love to hit that like button. If you'd like to do that here on the YouTube channel, if you're listening on the audio podcast, you can leave us a five star review. That'd be amazing. Tell your friends who are content creators as well that we're here every week and we answer your questions and do all the fun things right here for you. So, with that being said, dan, uh, do you have a piece of advice? A weekly piece of advice, but what's the what's the piece of advice for this week doesn't even have to be youtube related. What's the thing you learned this week? That's like I wish more people knew about this. Is there anything you can think of?

Speaker 2:

I honestly wish more people would uh, people do this, but I wish more people would take a break from YouTube and find something you can do that you're not tempted to make videos about. That helps you disconnect, because having experiences outside of YouTube is how you can be more creative, recharge the battery and get inspiration for making even better videos. But if you just constantly this is a problem I deal with because I talk about all the time if you constantly force yourself to come up with your next video idea, it usually isn't as good as it could be. I have way better ideas when I allow myself to enjoy something that is not exactly related to YouTube creation.

Speaker 1:

That was fire. That was actually a really good point. Taking a break is absolutely important. That's what we're going to do. We're going to take a break until the next time we're here on the podcast. We hope to.