TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

You Don’t Grow On YouTube By Accident

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 46

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We grapple with AI’s blurry line between prompting and creating, then dig into practical, grounded tactics for pivots, thumbnails, and growth that hold up under pressure. Along the way, we unpack niche strategy, device behavior, and how to build repeatable “luck” on YouTube.

• creator vs prompter with AI ethics and friction
• pivoting a monetized reaction channel into parenting
• leveraging a unique life story as a moat
• why inconclusive A/B tests default and what to do instead
• when to stop testing and enforce visual consistency
• YouTube variance vs luck and how skill compounds
• packaging tiny niches for broader curiosity
• translations and auto-dubbing realities
• TV vs mobile: lean-back design and length experiments
• experiment scope: three to five videos before judging

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SPEAKER_02:

It's a YouTube variance. If you can repeatedly do that over and over again, you'll get more and more quote unquote lucky.

SPEAKER_00:

Like YouTube is not the easiest platform to grow on, although it has the most opportunity. But don't confuse that with it being easy. This is the only podcast that comes to you live and living color, recorded with no AI included. My name's Travis, and I'm here with Rob. Welcome back, Rob. It's been a minute.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey everybody, my name is Rob Wilson, and I represent VidIQ. I am not an AI avatar.

SPEAKER_00:

I love this. And you know, we did an episode, Dan and I, just the other day, well, actually would have been last week when you're listening to this, about AI, and I never got your feelings on it. Although, if you're on the main vidIQ channel, you've seen some of Rob's thoughts. But let's talk about here on the podcast before we get into some of these questions that have been sent in. All right. And of course, if you're new here, this is a podcast to help you grow a YouTube channel. We talk about a lot of different things. The news of YouTube, and of course, we answer your questions as you send them in. Uh last episode, we talked AI and Sora 2, and you've gotten uh you've done a lot with it. What are your thoughts now?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I guess you might describe me as reluctantly embracing it at the moment, just because uh I am part of a team that is all about YouTube education, and we can't ignore the fact that AI is here, here to stay, and this time next year it's gonna be unrecognizable from what it is today, and I think we need to be aware of that regardless of or not of whether we use it. I have found myself maybe not subconscious as not the right word, but I have found myself trying to dab my feet into it for little bits here and there, and it's not usually for like B-roll where you might expect it could be useful. For me, Travis, right now I just seem to be using it for nothing but comedy. Like when I want to do something fun and entertaining that isn't serious, like it's almost intentionally bad AI, and you know it is, but it's used to emphasize a joke in the video. I think that's the extent of where I am using it comfortably right now. And I think I'm I'm more than happy to use myself in a self-deprecating manner with AI, and and and you as well, if you've seen the video that went out today, and some some wonderful vocals you've got on your yourself. Very impressive. But yeah, for the for the broader creative domain, I kind of am bowing down to the thoughts of people like Casey Neistat, who seem to have a much more rounded and thoughtful uh opinion on it, in the sense he's talking about the funnel is getting bigger and bigger at the top, in the sense that pretty much anybody now can make content using a it's not even like a camera anymore. You can make a video with a sentence and access to the internet. Now you that that's that's where we've got to. Uh, but that funnel is enormous, and how much good content is coming out of it at the moment is a question that I uh can't fathom or answer.

SPEAKER_00:

If I'm on the Yeah, and uh Dan and I dove in this for about an hour in the last podcast. So if you're interested in the subject, make sure you go back and listen. And one of the things we did talk about, I be I want to take get your take on this one thing that Dan came up with that I started to agree with the comments on that video or both ways, and that is that you aren't necessarily creating your prompting, so you're a prompting engineer. I saw a comment in the video saying that no, I'm still a creator because somehow they created it with the sentence. And I I still feel like you've prompted something else to create for you. I can see where see here's my thought on it. I think I'm I'm still on the side of it being prompted. I could always be, I'm pretty open-minded about things. Someone can change my mind. But you're prompting an engine to do all the creative work for you. No matter what you've described, it is not as descriptive of as what ends up happening in the video. Um, sometimes it's pretty close to it. Sometimes it does something you didn't even think to do, and you're like, oh, that's even better. But so did you create that? I feel like you prompted someone. It's almost like me going to an artist and saying, paint this picture of a lovely beach, and then coming back, and this amazing pick painting has been done, and you go, Yeah, I created that. Um you prompted the painter to paint it. But I don't know, what do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_02:

I was ready to disagree with you up to the point of where you said yeah, I got someone else to do it, but I'm claiming it as my work. It's like, yeah, yeah, I kind of see what you're where you're coming from there because there is this bit in the video that I did today where I prompted Sam Altman to say something along the lines of we're embarking on the greatest project in global history of I have a asking for forgiveness, not permission, in the sense that they have seemingly downloaded the internet and are now offering that back up to us in this huge cement mixer of uh results. Right, wow. It kind of makes it feel a bit icky. When uh when you consider that there are going to be people out there who see the the financial benefits and opportunities from that. But I'm I'm trying I was uh I was I was uh gonna respond initially with the idea of but yeah, but think about a script maker who wants to turn their prose into something visual, but they don't have the they don't have a cast, they don't have the equipment, they don't have uh the budget to go on s on on location and do all of these things. And uh Kisten Isle was talking about this in terms of f friction. You know, you can remove all of this crit friction to make creativity accessible to all, but yeah, I guess rem the removal of the friction is actually what's like a it's like a placeholder if it's been put there, or like a boilerplate. You know, OpenAI has has has given you all of these boilerplates, but they've maybe required them acquired them through nefarious actions. I don't know, is that is that liable? Do we need to edit that out of a book? No, I think you can say that. I mean it's been controversial.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, people have shouted up because you know they they scour the internet and YouTube videos and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, if you if you prompt into a video generator from wherever, open AI or whatever, give me SpongeBob SquarePants doing a funny dance, and it generates that, there is only one way they were able to get that source material by accessing it from somewhere. And as far as we know, was that permission granted to the generative program where it was made?

SPEAKER_00:

And that's another subject that Dan and I talked about in the last podcast. So make sure you check that out. If you have not already and you like the subject, it's very deep. It's not just, oh, is AI good or bad? Like we really dove into it. So this podcast is where we answer your questions, and you can send us messages. How do you do that, you ask? As you always ask. I'll tell you. If you're listening to the audio-only podcast, there's an option in the show notes that says text us. And if you click that, it'll send us a text message, much like the one we have today. Um, sometimes it doesn't people don't leave their names, so I don't necessarily know who the person is, but here's what they sent us. I'm a 50-old, 50-year-old new YouTuber. I have a reaction channel that was just monetized. Congratulations. I want to pivot into parenting content as I'm a mom of six across three decades. Whoa. I have four adult children and two under seven. I'm sorry, what? You have two kids under seven and you're 50? Well, let me take my hat off to you because I'm gonna tell you something right now. I'm not trying to be around no kids under seven right now. Too old for that. I want to pivot into content around the world I grew up in and raise my first four children in, no longer existing and navigating the parenting in today's world. I think what they're basically asking is, how do they do that? That's a great question because it depends on what your reaction channel was of. Like, I don't know, that's the one thing you don't tell us. Yep. So I feel like what they're saying is that you know they want to pivot a content around the world I grew up in and raised their first four children in that no longer exist, I guess. Especially considering that today is so different. Like, so if you are reacting to the news, then being able to pivot to a channel about how things are different now versus you know back then, that there could be like some Venn diagram overlap there, right? But if you're reacting to funny TikToks and now you want to do something serious, that sounds like a new channel to me. I don't know. What do you think there, Rob?

SPEAKER_02:

It sounds like a new channel just on the limited information that we have, but I I think the encouraging thing to say is that if this creator has already been able to monetize a reaction channel, I see no reason why they can't monetize a parenting channel, but do it faster because you've already learned a lot of the things that you need to learn and you've already done a lot of the mistakes that many creators uh make. And it sounds like you got a pretty unique perspective on this given uh the the experience you have in parenting, and uh so their their parenting now covers, I guess, a time frame of uh grown adults who may already uh be married and having their own children and continuing to raise uh uh uh younger children themselves. So I think that felt seems like a really interesting dynamic that we always talk about this uh skill or superpower of being uh irreplaceable, you know, whether it's the DIY aficionado who has this big um shed that they can work in or this big space. This creator, I think, has this unique super superpower that's hard to really hard to replicate by anyone else.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I a hundred percent agree. Their story is interesting. And over the course of many videos, they could tell their story and then give tips. Like as you're older, I don't know, I'm gonna speak for myself. I'm not gonna speak for this person, I don't know them. Uh at my age, I have less patience. A seven-year-old around me would not live very long because I do not have the patience for it. I just don't have the patience for things right now. If I was 30, maybe I'd have more patience. So I feel like that's an interesting subject. Like, as an older parent, there's you know plenty of older parents out there. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with the I mean it's it's one thing when you're just a regular parent of quote normal age, whatever that even is, say in your mid-30s, and your kid comes home and says a bunch of words that you don't understand. I feel more disconnected from that age group than ever. Like, I I just got a got on to what Cap was just a couple years ago, and they keep coming up with Skippity Doo toilets and all this other stuff. I don't know what any of this stuff means. I don't need to know it. Um, but imagine that's like you got to deal with your kids every day coming home saying some new stuff and trying to understand what it is or and plus now they're growing up with things like AI. AI was in the movies when I grew up, that wasn't a real thing. It was like cool, oh, that looks really cool. No, this is on your phone now. And by the way, you have a phone that you can walk around with. That wasn't something I had when I was growing up either. So I feel like that's such an interesting story that you could tell that um, and it sounds similar to what you're talking about. Um, that just I would just make a new channel with that. I wouldn't even pivot the other channel.

SPEAKER_02:

I would just keep it. Let's not pollute your uh current reaction channel if it's continue to do well and continue to support that channel and uh the audience there, that is gonna bring in some revenue, which may help you with this new channel. Hey, maybe this could be the opportunity where you think about the let's say you earn a hundred dollars a month from the main channel, you take that hundred dollars and you give it to an editor, or whatever you hate doing, you can outsource that for the second channel, uh, and that allows you to scale it a little bit quicker.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. That's so smart, and it's something that um we have encouraged people to do, like as they get monetized or whatever, find that thing that you need to off, you know, put off with it's thumbnails or whatever. Of course, we have you know thumbnail generation stuff here at vidIQ, but whatever it is, and invest back into the channel, you'd be surprised how much how much faster that helps you grow. This next one is an email. Of course, you can send us an email, theboost at vidIQ.com. Very short message, but the picture tells a thousand words. And I know you're gonna have thoughts about this. Why did second place win? And for the audio podcast listeners, Chris sent in an email with a picture of the thumbnail uh A-B test thing. And um it shows three thumbnails, all different, which by the way, in my opinion, well, two of them are different, two of them are the same, and one's kind of way different. I like the fact that they went with completely different-looking thumbnails for the most part. For audio, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_02:

I've had to put on my over glasses so I can see so he can zoom in and look.

SPEAKER_00:

And um it says the test finished without a conclusive result, which is pretty common for smaller channels and stuff. That's actually very common. And what he's showing here is um that thumbnail one, which is 41%, is now being shown versus thumbnail two, which has 42%. So technically it's the winner, yeah, and then thumbnail three had 16%. So he's asking, why did second place win? Um and the real answer is that here at the top, but I want to go deeper into like why this is a thing, but the test finished without a conclusive result means it's pretty much going to put whatever your default thumbnail is as the winner. Yeah, so that's why that quote won. And because it's a 0.6% difference between first and second place, it's just like it's not really conclusive. Now, we had a meeting recently where you were kind of talking a little bit about this tool and the title tool and such. And Dan has given his thoughts on it too. And I've I'm kind of somewhere in the middle. Can you share your thoughts after having used this tool and the title tool for a while now? Kind of your overarching thought on the use of it. You know, we waited for years for this tool. Was it worth the wait? That sort of thing. Give us everything.

SPEAKER_02:

I want us to give some feedback on the results there first. Do you mind?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, all right, let me I'll pull it back up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so because what I find interesting here is that there's three thumbnails, but again, for audio listeners, thumbnail one and thumbnail three to me look pretty similar. The the colours are a little different, like one's brighter than the other, but it looks like it's using the same two pieces of box art, maybe, and the same text. But thumbnail one has 41% watch time share, and thumbnail three has 16.1% share. My guess is that the sample size here probably wasn't that big because the test also took an entire week as well. Whereas we will probably get results in about two or three hours, which means that you're probably looking at maybe tens of thousands of impressions, a couple of thousand views. That's what it usually needs to get a result. So I'm not sure if the test has been big enough for sample size. Because the thing that's always missing from this, and I think this is where I move on to the broader question of how useful I find it, it gives you the watch time share, but it doesn't give you the actual share of uh or impressions. Right. We would assume that this would be 33.3% for all of these. It would equally share out this thumbnail to everybody. But just looking at some of the results over the last two years that we've had it, I'm I'm not convinced that is a case.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think it is.

SPEAKER_02:

I almost feel as if it might be 40% for one of them, 33% for another one, and then 27% share, you know, like impression share. Maybe that's a conspiracy theory. Um and and maybe over time, even though it's doing a test, it starts to weight itself more to the one that's performing better.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I think. That's actually what I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But I'm sure people, anyone at YouTube listening to that is just gonna say, this is just somebody who doesn't know how to use a tool, and uh they're trying to think of reasons why their thumbnails aren't performing that well. I'm getting more and more to the point where I feel as if thumbnail testing has screwed with my head. Because now I don't think we can uh put out a video without either title testing or thumbnail testing. Even though we have never come to a conclusive result about what thumbnails perform best on our channel, like either with a person in the face or using a certain background or a certain emotive text. That may be blame that can be put on us, maybe we're not disciplined and scientific enough to do these tests properly. That we kind of just say, oh, we're just gonna throw these thumbnails at it and see what happens. It may be blame needs to be put on us, and if we're not doing it right, then imagine the resources and people and uh patience you you do have to put up against these tools for them to give you really good results and feedback. Like I'm I'm thinking about channels with tens of millions of subscribers, the Mr. Beast of the World, who can have a full-time thumbnail maker and a full-time title writer who does nothing but test these. Like for us, it's what five-10% of our effort and time. And the last point I wanted to make is because the tool's there, you feel as if you have to use it. And I really want to go through a period of time on our content where we actually don't use a tool just to see if we can determine whether or not our gut feeling with the the title and the thumbnail that we feel strongest about, we use rather than testing against three. Because again, another thing to think about is in the first 24 to 48 hours, that's when you're getting a high degree of your initial impressions, and it feels like you're almost wasting those impressions on testing something that you think's probably not gonna work, but you want to test it.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, that's right. And the other thing is that's actually important because the viewership is different. So, quite frankly, you should already kind of know what's gonna work for that initial group because it's the people who watch you the most. The A-B thumbnail testing and title testing actually would be more uh interesting and more helpful after it goes out of that group and goes into people who don't know you. Unfortunately, by that point, there's so few impressions that the test takes so darn long that sometimes it's inconclusive. But that's actually when you need it. Because if you've grown any type of audience, or if you have an audience that watches you, you kind of know what they're gonna click on already. So you don't need it as much. But most people don't even think about it like that. They think, well, the only exception really to this is if you have a uh a topic that pops off and it gets shown to a whole bunch of people that are new to your channel right off the bat, and then it might be somewhat helpful. But by and large, 99% of the time, you really actually need it towards the end, not the beginning, uh, for the exact reasons that you explained. So it puts us in a pickle. Like, do we use it or don't we? I know you're almost leaning towards not using it anymore, period, or just in certain circumstances? Like, do are there just certain circumstances where you're like, I feel so strong about this that I just don't need it, or well, I'm like, what are you what's your conclusion?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like I just need a clean slate, Travis, from from this. I just I've been using it for two years and I I can't tell you conclusively how it's benefited the channel at all. Because you look at our channel right now, and every thumbnail is I'm not gonna say significantly different to each one, but there are differences which I think means that our branding and our consistency is a little lost in them. And I I would just I would I'd like the idea of just forcing our channel to look in a in a consistent and similar way for like 20 videos. So, like, you know, when you go to the channel and you see the canvas of thumbnails, they all look similar to a certain degree uh rather than now where there's that association through our faces, but sometimes we're using a white background with really harsh black text, and then another one we'll have a graph in a background, and so it just feels as if it loses its consistency, even though we have a thumbnail editor, like Mena does an amazing job on our thumbnails, but we're getting multiple concepts, and I just I don't think I'm I'm fixed on any of them right now.

SPEAKER_00:

It's very difficult to know what to take away from it. And I think it's different for different people. I think depending on what you're trying to accomplish and kind of what what kind of uh my my Zora just went off. Uh what kind of um what kind of things you're trying to accomplish, whether it be growing your existing audience or deepening that connection or growing a new audience, which I think most people want. And YouTube doesn't do a good enough job explaining like what should this be used for, because I don't know if they actually know. In other words, they gave us a tool after testing it that came back with some results, but what are the best results for a creator? The best results are for the first 24-48 hours appealing to people that know the channel or know the subject, and then well after that, bringing in new people, but they don't really explain that to you, they don't give you a a way and a tool to A-B test in two different time periods, like one first 24 hours, one week later. They just kind of give you this tool and say, make it work. There you go, you've asked for it for years, here it is, and it's not even I don't know that it's measuring the right thing, and they've admitted this too. Because they even tell us that not all watch time is equal. So why is it that they're measuring it against watch time? That's weird. I don't know, it's it's strange. So, anywho, that's that.

SPEAKER_02:

I think to play a devil's advocate a little bit, I think we're we're um conversing as power users, where we kind of have a strong knowledge of what a thumbnail should be and the analytics behind it. But you have to accept that like 99% of creators just see a tool and oh upload three upload three thumbnails and the highest percentage wins, and that's all you need to know. And I I understand the simplicity that I do go back to that idea of it just works in terms of how easy it is to implement. Uh and I was just looking at our analytics here because I wanted to see if our channel-wide click-through rate had moved at all since we got it. So in 2023, this time in 2023, which I think was just before we got OB thumbnail testing, it hovered around I would say at the very top, 5%, at the very bottom, 3-3.5%. And now if I go to now it's maybe increased by half a percent. So I don't know, does that mean that Airbnb testing is working? But our impressions are wear down compared to where they were two years ago.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's the thing, impressions are important.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So maybe the thumbnails are working more for our concentrated audience, but not for a new audience. Perhaps. And that's that's where you have to dive into statistics even more. And by the way, if you need someone to dive into your statistics, we have a link uh down in the description in the show notes for our one-on-one coaching where an actual human coach will go into your analytics and help you figure out what you need to do to move forward on your YouTube channel. All right, next email. The boost at vidik.com. If you want to send us a message, it's the boost at vidik.com comes from frequent emailer Frank the Dang. I was listening to the podcast today and had a sudden starting important realization. There was no talk of candy, which is true. There's been a couple episodes where there weren't. As an OG listener, it left my sweet tooth aching rather than craving. So here's a real important question of the day for me. Where do y'all stand on circus peanuts? You know, the orange foam marshmallow peanuts. I think I know exactly what he's talking about. I have no clue. Google it. Google it. Circus peanut peanuts. Uh hot take here, but I love them, especially the soft ones. Or if I leave them in the bag car for a couple hours in the summer, just don't microwave them, trust me on this one. Uh, much like a lot of those types of candies, trash. Not worth your time. Don't do that to yourself. You can use it for uh shipping things, like packing peanuts. A B testing, this is ironic. A B testing still feels like a cop-out to me, titles or thumbnails. Spend that extra time putting the love and passion of your existing formula. I think it'll go further in the long run. One good genuine effort is best than better than three half-hearted tickets in the algorithmic lottery. That's a cool little sentence there at the end.

SPEAKER_02:

It's an interesting way of thinking about it in the sense that now we have this tool, maybe our focus is being diluted by the fact that we're immediately thinking I've got to come up with at least two or three thumbnails, or I've got to come up with at least two or three titles, rather than just saying, right, what's the best title I can come up with here? But there's also the other argument that strategists will say that you should always be coming up with like 10 or 50 titles and then narrowing it down to the to the best one. But yeah, it's an idea I can understand and appreciate and kind of embrace in a moment.

SPEAKER_00:

99% of the time when I'm creating content, I know the title before I ever shoot the video, which I still think is a good best practice. And even better if you have the title and thumbnail already in mind. The podcast is the big exception because a lot of times I don't know exactly where the meat of this video is going to go, and it's a long video, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I don't know until after the fact. Um, I don't recommend that for regular content. I feel like if you do that, you're trying to stuff the most important part of a video into the last second. And sometimes you're failing the video. Like maybe you made this incredible video, uh, you don't know how to title it, and then no one clicks on it because no one knows that it's an incredible video because your title and thumbnails suck. And that comes back to a quick subject I want to jump into, which is a lot of times we'll see um I'll see comments because I see tons of comments every week. Doing this for a job is like you see comment YouTube comments and everything all day. And a lot of times you'll see people complain about what's happening to them on YouTube. And I just got to tell you that like YouTube is not the easiest platform to grow on. It's just plain not. And in some instances, it might be one of the hardest, although it has the most opportunity. Um, but don't confuse that with it being easy. I think some people think that if you do A plus B, C happens. If you put in some good work, some titles and thumbnails you think are good, you get views. No, that's not the way it works. Um, I've talked to a bunch of like successful creators who will even say there's a little bit of luck in there. Because sometimes there is. It just depends on like what you're doing. Of course, you got to do all the right things, but sometimes there's a little luck. Like a viral hit is rarely a viral hit on purpose. Rarely. Sometimes it is, but it's rarely. Most of the time, it's like crap, I just had five extra minutes and I wanted to shoot this thing, and then 300, 700,000, 800,000 views later, two million views later, things are different. Um, but what I notice is frequently, and I'm not gonna say all the time, I don't like to carpet answer anything, but I blanket statement anything. But I will say that this is routinely true in our comment section, here on the podcast or on the main channel. Someone complains about something not working, or maybe that our advice isn't good, or something like that. What it's never anything like that. I go to their channel and they've never done any of the things that are the obvious things that you should do. There was one I saw the other day, and they were like, you know, YouTube's like holding me back, they're not giving me views, I do all these things. I go to their channel, I couldn't tell you what their channel was about at all. Like, I wouldn't be like if a gun to my head, I wouldn't know. And I'm not saying that to to be like downplaying anything. I Literally was trying to figure it out. And the reason why this is important is because, as a viewer, if I go to your channel, what am I watching? If I if I, as someone who does this for a living, couldn't tell you, a viewer would not only not be able to tell you, they wouldn't care long enough to try to figure it out. They're not trying here to try to figure out puzzles, they're here to be entertained or educated. So you get I think some people just think that when they watch um, you know, YouTube advice videos and stuff, oh, I'm already doing that. Nine times out of ten, you're not. I'm just gonna be honest, you're not doing these things. Because if you were, you probably wouldn't be watching those videos because you'd already be doing the things. I don't know. Am I just am I an old curmudgeon now, Rob? Am I just becoming grumpy, like grumpy Dan but Travis?

SPEAKER_02:

I think I think we probably are to a certain extent. And I think from the uh viewers' point of view, they're probably watching like the sixth or seventh video from us or any other uh YouTube educator, and we're kind of saying the same things. And so because we're all saying the same things, uh by osmosis, they think they're doing those things, but they're just hearing the same thing over and over again, never applying it and think, Oh, yeah, I'm doing that because I've heard it so many times. The thing I wanted to just um come back to there was the idea of luck. Have you ever played poker?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I mean uh blackjack more than poker, but I've played games like poker, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, poker is a game that's based on a certain amount of luck. But there is something in poker called variance, and what that means is that while there is luck, over time that luck will balance itself out. So if you're a really good player, then yeah, you'll have these tournaments where you go out on a second hand because you just got really unlucky, right? And there'll be other tournaments where you get really lucky and win it. But overall, if you're a good player and you understand the fundamentals and you you know how to read other players and so on and so forth, over the long term, you'll make a profit from poker. And I feel as if there is a certain element of that in YouTube as well, not as much, but like there is perhaps a an intangible look where you just time that video to come out at exactly the right time with the perfect packaging and all of these stars aligned so that the viewers who watched it first gave really positive feedback to YouTube, and then that increased the discovery, and so on and so on. And so, yeah, maybe there was a certain element of luck there, but you still had to make that video of a certain standard to get lucky, if that makes sense. So, yeah, I I I might make a video about this at some point in the future where I can figure out how to visualize this or explain it in a more concise manner. But it's it's a YouTube variance. Yeah, there may be that are brilliant and that don't work in enough ones where you spend 10 minutes on it and it gets tons of views. But if you if you can repeatedly do that over and over again, you'll get more and more quote unquote lucky.

SPEAKER_00:

I love the title, like this is why YouTube Advice Doesn't Work For You with a capitalized YOU. Yeah. I I like that as a title. Um, if we had spoken more about this on this podcast, I'd probably make that the title of this channel, of this video. But uh, we have other things we gotta get to. Another email from a creator, the boost at videoq.com. I don't know if we're gonna get an exact answer for this one's a little complicated. This one's from Dustin. I am 90 days new to posting content on YouTube and find a lot of the advice you and other channels similar give to be non-benficial to my specific niche floreography. Before I go further into this, uh Rob, whenever I see someone say something like this, I think you're not really listening to the advice then. Because the number one advice is obsess over your viewer. That applies to everybody. Second advice is make content people want to see. That applies to everybody. And the third advice is research your niche. Deep. That applies to everybody. Uh, but let's continue on. A major inconvenience with my niche is the number of words that do not translate over for captions and that simplified for the amplified for my audience that speaks to Arabic and Hindi. I've been creating a separate video file, an SRT file for each language and uploading in an English-speaking video with a subtitle file that is pre-translated. Right or wrong, I have no idea if most of my views from my support channel and my subscribers I invited over from social media. More of the information you present will be useful when my channel gets enough data to start up uh for more analytics until then I have enough information uh to know what is going on. I just curse a lot of this grow on YouTube content as I try my best in confusion. So this is an interesting email because there is like a question here, even though it's not really a question. And then the actual question they have, I think I don't know that I have the answer to as far as like getting their translation stuff. First of all, YouTube is doing the new translation thing, auto-dubbing thing, which whether or not it's great, definitely up for argument, should do most of this for you anyway, should auto-translate into other languages anyway, so you shouldn't have to worry about this. Um, having said that, this is a little bit deeper than what I would be able to help you with. I think uh team YouTube is the probably the best place to get an answer for for that. Uh, but you know, the first part which we already talked about, which is like it's not beneficial to your niche. Uh again, the stuff we're really teaching is beneficial to every niche. But the this last part, it's actually really important. Most of the information you present will be useful when my channel gets enough data to start opening up more analytics. This is true. We actually have this as a problem for some of the aspects of the um vidIQ plugin. We're trying to be better about it using AI to give you more kind of uh results that aren't necessarily specific to the data you don't have because you don't have it. But when you have more data, you can make some better decisions. So I understand the the thing there. Now that's one thing we don't really talk enough about, maybe on the channel, even Rob, is when you don't have a lot of the data that we talk about, how do you how do you make some of these decisions, even?

SPEAKER_02:

So uh I was having a look just in the background to find out what floreography is. Yeah, what is that even? And so its definition is a practice of communicating messages through the use of flowers and their symbolic meanings. That sounds like a pretty uh tight niche. So when I did when I did a search on YouTube, here are the videos at the top of the search rankings, okay 10,000 subscribers, 46,000 views, 70,000, 21,000 views, this is the third result, 98 subscribers, two and a half thousand views, and all of those videos are over a year old. So the thing we have to accept and appreciate the moment is that there is a pretty low ceiling when it comes to audience on YouTube. There there is an audience there, there's an audience for everything on the platform, but it is pretty low. So you I guess in one sense you already have this big handicap of trying to uh reach an audience that isn't particularly that big big. Now, it could mean that in your favour you don't have much competition, so you could become the dominant floreography creator on YouTube, which is uh which are good. But yeah, I think going back to the question then of what if you don't have the data uh on your channel, well I've just done some external research on data there to show like the potential audience that it's not that big. So like how how then do you maybe um think about broadening the what's called the TAM, the total addressable market? It could be something along the lines of uh this form of communication is this is a secret form of communication that nobody knows. Well, I'm really struggling with a title to come up with a few, but you can kind of see where I'm going here. Like there's this form of communication that probably nobody's ever heard of before might actually be fascinating. But if you start with your niche as a packaging, floreography, then I'm afraid it's only going to reach that audience. Where we uh think about topics that have a certain internal audience. But if you just make it interesting and appealing to a broader audience, then you can really tap into the idea of almost like learning something by accident, just by the strength and the quality of the content. I learned something brand new, even though I wasn't interested in it this time yesterday. And there's many occasions on YouTube where I've gone into those rabbit holes just thanks to really good uh content on the subject.

SPEAKER_00:

What was that creator that used to come through chat that had a drywall channel?

SPEAKER_02:

Pete Peck Drywall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Over 100,000 subscribers talking about drywall. I seem to remember every live stream. I said, I don't know how you do it, Paul. 100,000 subscribers. You are the most boring channel on YouTube. But you can put a silver play button on that wall now.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. And that really says everything you need to know. Final email. This one, uh so the subject was uh you won't believe these numbers. And that's important because of what is said first on this email, which is this. Now that you've bitten on the title, it's time to confirm the click by bunkers. I love this because the title was you won't believe these numbers. Really great. After some recent discussions on previous podcasts about TV becoming the preferred device for viewers, I did some digging in my own analytics, and here's what I found. I already knew that 48% of my watch time hours comes from TV because that is a helpful analytic that you can see in the YouTube Studio Phone app. What I didn't know until I took a little deep dive into the end of the end of the swimming pool is that only 25% of my viewers consume my long-form content via TV. 47% of viewers are still on mobile, which is now concerning me because I've been making longer videos targeted at that audience. Mobile has my worst average view duration out of any device, about three minutes, while TV is almost 10 minutes, which by the way should not be surprising. Yeah. This question is like a Cadbury top deck. It has two elements that need to be consumed together. Do you think I should mix up the length of my videos and try to focus on my mobile users? Or shall I focus on how to get more clicks on TV? As it shows, once they click, they enjoy the video more. The AI coach from VidIQ has been great, but I figured this was a question for the experts. Yeah, the experts.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm trying to get my head around all of those numbers without seeing the graph in YouTube.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so like they say that 48% of the watch time comes from TV, but then they immediately say that only 25% of their viewers watch long form via TV, which is a weird number. 47% are still viewers. So how does it how does 48% come from TV, but only 25 watch via TV?

SPEAKER_02:

Because I think they said that the long form. So I guess a lot of their shorts maybe are via TV. I thought it was because the watch time is 10 minutes on TV when it's when it three minutes on mobile.

SPEAKER_00:

You're right. The watch time. Right. Exactly. And there's a couple reasons for that I've explained in previous episodes. But yes. Um, so he's basically saying, so should I focus more on mobile or TV? What do you think when you just hear this? Like I I have my own thoughts, but I'm interested what you think.

SPEAKER_02:

I think what YouTube would love you to do is focus on TV just because they love to brag about being the biggest streaming platform on TV now, above Netflix and uh Disney uh and all the rest. So I think there's probably uh a push there for TV content. How do you focus on that? It's I think there's two elements to this. It's obviously increasing the production quality if you can, because if people are probably watching a 4K television, are you able to create content in that format? But also this idea of the what's called the lean back experience, where somebody is watching TV, but they're also multitasking. So they might be watching your YouTube channel, but they're also scrolling through their um Reddit on their phone. Um that means that you can kind of create uh more casual content where the viewer doesn't have to be um really attentively watching the the uh the television. They kind of they might just be listening to you rather than watching you, which means then that the the narrative uh and your uh presenting and voice over becomes quite important as well. Those are the two things that immediately come to mind, Travis. I'd love to know what you think.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I think you're right. Um TV is growing, and it's something you should be aware of depending on your niche. It's not growing in every niche, by the way. It's not like universal. I think that there's just a lot more content that's easier to watch on TV, but plus, it's much easier to watch YouTube on TV than it ever has been. So that actually doesn't hurt either. I think you just make good content. I think ultimately YouTube's gonna find yeah, right. YouTube's gonna find the place to put it. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year getting their AI to understand what people like. So leverage that. Just make some good content. And you know, if you're a much bigger channel, I might give you slightly different advice. I'm gonna tell you not to worry about it.

SPEAKER_02:

My suggestion might be uh make even longer content. Yeah, you can do that as well. This might be an experiment, like so. Let's say your average video is 10 minutes. Why not try a 25-minute video? Yeah, and for your own sanity, you don't spend twice as long on it on it. So like you maybe make the edit simpler, or you just leave in more of a conversational stuff of things that you would usually trim out purely as an experiment. It might not work, but if you're finding uh better, more valuable results coming from TV, then that usually does give you permission to try longer, even longer form content.

SPEAKER_00:

The longer you become a content creator, the better your instincts are. So I just want to remind you that if you if you feel like, oh, I think this new direction might work on my channel, an experiment is not one video. You gotta do several. Because one is probably going to draw, it's probably not going to do well initially. It doesn't mean it won't ever do well, but you can't just do it on one video and say, okay, well, that's it didn't work, so I'm not gonna do it anymore. Because it's probably not gonna work, at least initially. You need to have several videos, anywhere between three to five, and if you're really brave, ten, especially if you're gonna do a pivot. But three to five, if you're if you really want to know if a new format's gonna work, and then you kind of wait a little while and see what happens. That will give you the definition of whether or not it's going to work for you. Uh, you're not gonna break your channel, generally speaking, as long as you've thought about the you thought about it, it makes sense for partially at least your existing audience, and then to also take your your hopefully new audience and bring them in as well. So consider all those things. With that, another successful uh episode has been complete with Mr. Wilson, which is great.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we can get on to the rest of our days and weekends ahead. What kind of cool, amazing things are you looking forward to in the next couple of days there, uh Rob?

SPEAKER_02:

So uh from a gaming perspective, I have been enjoying Silksong, as many games have been. Incredibly hard game. I got to the final, final boss. Have you ever played it, Travis, by the way? Like no, no.

SPEAKER_00:

I just found out last night that both games are on Game Pass, so I could play them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, oh absolutely. Uh certainly uh I'd I'd start with Hollow Knight. Uh yeah, I got to the final boss, tried it maybe 30 times because that's the type of game it is, like you just die over and over again, learning the tactics of a boss. And I just said, okay, this is cool. I'm not gonna get frustrated, I'm not gonna let this ruin my experience of this amazing game. I'm gonna peace out, I'm not gonna complete it now, I'm gonna start playing else, and I move on to Mario Galaxy. So, like blast from the past 15 years since I played it, and it's like a nice refreshing a palette cleanser of a video game. So that's my gaming uh stuff. Um I'm actually getting a bit of OOO soon, Travis. Out of office to Crete, uh, which is uh an island off Greece now because we went to Cyprus earlier on in the year, really enjoyed that. So yeah, Crete. Let me know what restaurant I should try in Crete.

SPEAKER_00:

There might be a Crete listener. Yeah, maybe there is. Shout out to that'd be cool. Shout out to the people in Crete. Uh, I've been playing um I'm finishing up my season NBA 2K25. Uh, I went back into Borderlands 3 a couple of weeks back, and I'm really enjoying that. Was getting ready for Borderlands 4. I'm gonna wait until that's patched and on sale. Battlefield 56 comes out this weekend. I'm really tempted to get it, but I want to get it when other friends have it because super fun game, but it's fun with friends. And I still have on my backlog Final Fantasy Rebirth, which I'm a couple hours in but haven't played in a couple weeks. Um, Spider-Man 2, which I really want to get through. I haven't tasted it all yet. Yeah. I know. They're both installed, ready to go. I have my backlog's ridiculous. So I'll definitely be doing those things. And uh I'm watching some um some fighting tournaments this weekend. So just uh a fun little relaxing weekend. You know, of course, people listen to this on a Monday like my weekend's over. Well, ours is about to begin. That's what happens when the time speaks.

SPEAKER_02:

Mine started an hour ago. I just love talking to Travis so much. I'd make Travis part of my weekend.

SPEAKER_00:

I appreciate that so much. Anyway, thank y'all for joining us. Of course, if you're here on the YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button if you feel like it. If you're listening to the audio podcast, listen, uh, leave us a little five uh star uh review. Why not? Just cuz because we love you that much. And we'll see y'all in the next one.