TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Why Your Channel Died (And How To Fix It)

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We lay out a practical plan to revive a stalling YouTube channel by shifting with audience interests, refreshing formats, and resurrecting older videos with smarter packaging. We share how to read AVD, CTR, and cadence, design for strangers, and adapt to policy shifts you can’t control.

• busting the shadowban myth and reframing blame
• spotting audience drift and competition pressure
• reading average view duration and click-through rate
• tracking channel cadence and views per hour
• testing topics to avoid fatigue and when to pivot
• using content buckets to build coherent variety
• flipping formats and finding unique angles
• mapping viewer intent from discovery to action
• applying the Lazarus strategy to old uploads
• reuploading, retention-led edits, and packaging
• onboarding new viewers with quick context
• navigating policy changes on reuse and AI

Hit the link in the show notes or the description below. Check out our Discord, we have a lot of helpful people there. We literally have one-on-one coaching with experts that'll help you grow your channel. There's a link in the description and in the show notes. Hit that subscribe button, leave us a five star audio review, and we'll see y'all in the next one.


SPEAKER_00:

Hey, welcome to the only podcast that's here to help you more than you're there to help yourself. I'm Travis, and I'm here with a very special guest, Rob. And this day, today, we've chosen today in this podcast to help you fix your broken channel. You know, that channel that's dying, barely getting any views, maybe you got two impressions this week. It's a really depressive, sit depressing situation. We're here to fix it for you. Rob, we I hope we're gonna do this. Are we gonna do this?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, Travis, glad to be here. I don't know about two impressions. Uh, if your channel's getting two impressions, there might not be any hope for you there.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's not many.

SPEAKER_00:

Unless you're like a brand new channel, in which case that's actually normal. Every week we come here to help you fix your channel and maybe sometimes help you launch your channel. And uh, if you're new here, you know, take a listen. We'll see if we can help you out. We also answer questions from people who send in emails, but today we're actually not doing that. We're gonna talk about a very specific subject because we want you to get out of the doldrums, to get out of this pit of despair that sounds impossible to get out of. But uh hopefully by the time you're done listening to this podcast, you'll realize that it's A, pretty normal. A lot of creators go through this, and B, nine times out of ten is fixable. So, Rob, let's talk a little bit about why typically why channels die. And there are a lot of different reasons, but one thing that I think as humans we tend to do is look for things to blame that maybe aren't the reason. And the number one thing people say right off the bat, I've been shadow banned. Like YouTube hates me. Um, you know, they they stop showing my content because uh they don't like what I have to say. Um, and I'll just say that nine times out of ten when people say that, it's just simply not true. Uh for the most part, and this might sound rude, Rob. I'll have to say it though. Uh, when people say, Oh, YouTube hates me, they don't want to show my, they don't know who you are. I'm just gonna be honest, they have zero idea who you are.

SPEAKER_01:

Neil Mohan is not going through his roller decks and saying Gamer Hound 7489. Shadowban.

SPEAKER_00:

Shadow band, yeah. Get out of here with that. Um, they don't know who you are. It's something else that's going on, which we'll talk about. But let's talk a little about that. Because a lot of times the reason views go down um isn't because of a shadow ban or anything like that. Typically, it's because it's not because the algorithm hates you, which is another thing we hear. They go down because the audience attention has shifted and you didn't move with it a lot of times. And what do you think that means? Like what typically, in your in your experience, Rob, what does it mean when like the audience shifts and you just kind of keep doing the same thing?

SPEAKER_01:

I think maybe the the best analogy might be if you consider television and comedy series, like dramas, they have a natural shelf life, don't they? Like you think Game of Thrones, Friends, Sex in a City, and so on and so on. The longevity tends to be five to ten years, even for something very successful. And the challenge with a television series is it's very difficult to reinvent the characters and the setting and a scenario unless you like launch a new series, such as Joey. That didn't last very long, did it, from what I remember? The friends spin-off, was it two seasons? So, this idea of staying relevant and almost kind of doing these mini reinventions of yourself, pivoting depending on how the audience is reacting to the content. I think that is something that you've really got to consider, given how mature the YouTube platform is now and how long it's just been going on. Like YouTube is over 20 years old now, and you think of how many creators have come and gone and how many have stood the test of time. Like I'm trying, I was as I was I was saying, Travis, I was walking my dog and I was thinking about who do I feel is is is a kind of a timeless creator? And the one that I can think of most, who I still watch today, is MKBHD. Just because he, as a tech reviewer, has continued to evolve not only with the quality of his content, but also the the topics that he discusses. It's not just phone reviews now because there's so many other creators have moved into that space. He's kind of reinventing himself with these bigger, broader conversations about technology. So I guess in a nutshell, it it's about seeing that you cannot stand still as a creator and expect the audience to come back time and time again.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's that's so the point. And you look at um like PewDiePie's been on the platform forever and he does not do the same things that he's done years ago. I think he he cares slightly less about any kind of strategies now. I think he's just kind of doing whatever because he can. But I mean, even him, uh over the course of over a decade, he's been able to change with the times and and keep relevant for a lot of that time. Uh and it is difficult, it's part of the the job though. Like if you're doing this and you want it to be your job, you know, you want it to be your livelihood. It's one of the things you're gonna have to get used to, is changing. Um, and it's not necessarily as easy as you might think because sometimes the change from within the niche that you're in or whatever it is you're doing is something that you may not like at first. I mean, it might be like, oh, well, everyone, like if you're a Minecraft channel or whatever, maybe uh we did a uh an audit the other day with like a Bed uh Bed Wars channel. Maybe the the new hotness is the Bed Wars channel thing. And you're you're not really into that, you're more about building and stuff. And you have to figure out how do I get the audience that's watching that to still be interested in stuff that I'm doing, but also uh knowing that you yourself have to change. Like you yourself have to change your your content, the way you think about things, because if you keep doing the same, just think about yourself as a viewer on YouTube. This is one of the things that I think is like a super secret thing that's not a super secret thing when you're trying to figure out like what's going on YouTube, why am I losing my views? Think about how you watch YouTube videos. Do you watch a person who does the exact same thing for five straight years? I I doubt it. I I highly doubt you're watching anyone do the exact same thing without changing for five straight years. And even if you do, you're in the minority. I'm just gonna put it up, you're just in the minority. So you have to consider how to change that. Now, if you're thinking, well, I don't understand what may or may not be working on my channel. Well, there's a couple ways of figuring that out. Number one, of course, the comment section. Sometimes people in comments will will tell you things. Uh, you may not always like what they're saying, but uh a lot of times truths come from there. But the uh one of the best ways to look at is um your CTR and average view duration. If your average view duration, uh if your typical video length is about the same, and you've noticed over the last three to five videos, your average view duration is going down. That means either people are bored with the content or they're getting the value very early on, or something about your content is no longer connecting with people as much as it perhaps used to. Now I'm saying going down. I don't mean that like you're not gonna see variance between them, because you will. There will be, you know, 30 seconds a minute, depending on how long your video is of variance. But like let's say you've been putting out 12 minute videos for like three years, and your average iteration was six, six and a half minutes, and now all of a sudden it's like three, three and a half. That might be a bad thing. If you're not getting more views, because your views will go down as new people who don't know, or your average iteration will go down as people who don't know you watch your content, but your views are going down or staying the same, and your average view duration is going down, it's typically not good. Generally speaking. How do you look at average view duration, Rob? Because I know that you don't some things you obsess over and some things you don't.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, here's the thing to consider that what happens if your average view duration goes up like ever so slightly, and yet you're still getting less views, less impressions. The unknown uh quantity might be there that you can't really measure is that you have new competitors in your space, yeah, and their videos are getting even higher average view duration because they're something new, something fresh, something better. And so, like this idea of a of like a the attaching yourself to one analytic and seeing that as a golden number can be a bit of a risk, uh, I think. And so another thing that you mentioned as well, which I thought was kind of a light bulb went off in my head. Like, when you're looking at the comments, I mean the comments may represent in reality just a small percentage of the audience, but they tend to be like the canaries in the coal mine, in that they're saying they're saying something that the silent majority are probably thinking, yes, but aren't necessarily saying themselves. So, like you've got to be careful as well, just taking the advice from one comment, but you've also got to really consider if you start to see patterns, people saying the same things over and over again. Like uh going back to the metrics question, click-through rate tends to be something that's very fluid, yeah. In the same way that if impressions go up, click-through rate, click-through rate goes down. It could be impressions go down and the click-through rate's going up, and you confuse as to again why your audience is seems to be um drifting off. I think the thing I always the the the metrics I tend to obsess over are like just the the general cadence of the channel, because I'm tracking this kind of subconsciously every single day. Like I know on the VidIQ channel that our views per hour tends to range between 4,000 to 6,000 views per hour every day. And when you see to when when you see that kind of deviating up or down over a prolonged period of time, like say maybe a week or two, so like all of a sudden your views per hour goes from, let's put it in the context of a smaller channel, like it goes from 100 views per hour and then it's suddenly down to like 50 views per hour for about two or three weeks. That seems to suggest to me that just generally that the heartbeat, the resting cadence of a channel, something isn't where it should be as it was previously.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, one thing you said there, uh I like to bring up, you mentioned like uh what if your average view duration goes up but your views go down or stay the same. And that would be typically because the only people watching your content are people that like you or subscribe to you, because they tend to watch longer. So that might be an indication that you're not getting to new viewers, which we'll talk about later, because that's actually really critical to you know revitalizing your channel. So just understanding that you can't keep doing the same thing and and not blaming the algorithm or something like that. Like I get it, I understand it. Trust me, been there, done that, hate the algorithm for what it is, but also love the algorithm for what it is. But you can't change any of that. So it's more about taking what you are doing, looking at it um, if not strategically, which by the way, if you need someone to help you do that, you can do two different things. Number one, if you are low on cash, you can go to our Discord. We have lots of creators in there, tons, and it's free. You can hit the link in the show notes or the description below. Check out our Discord, we have a lot of helpful people there. Or we have coaching. We literally have one-on-one coaching with experts that'll help you grow your channel. There's a link in the description and in the show notes if you're listening to the audio podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

So maybe we um we can throw a question here, Travis, um, to the viewers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And you know, just think about in terms of your viewing habits, are there any creators you're still watching now who you were watching three to five years ago, who haven't changed in any way, shape, or form? Oh, that's interesting. I guess there may be some answers along the lines of podcasters. I can see how that has more of a timeless uh evergreen quality to it. But like individual creators, you may think that they're still doing the same things they were three to five years ago, but you know, maybe this is a point of where you two think, hang on, let me just check back what they were doing in 2022 and see oh, yeah, actually, they've got a new studio, or like the way they uh present themselves to camera now is so much more enthusiastic or energetic, or like you know, they were previously talking about this issue, but now they've moved on to this, which is like much more um confrontational. It brings up a lot more uh conversation in the comments. There will be things that you can spot when you jump from like um three or four years ago to now, rather than just progressively over time as as you've delayed developed as a viewer along with the creator themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So the point we'll leave you with, and we'll just say it again because I think it really um warrants repeating. Views rarely go down because the algorithm hates you, they go down because the audience has shifted and you didn't move with it. So really critically think about your content and think about what's going on in your niche. And are other creators doing different things you're not doing for some reason? And is that connecting with an audience that you want to have? That's one thing. There's another thing that's actually kind of interesting, you can do with your content to kind of keep an idea for topics. So obviously, as you have a channel, you'll you know, you'll shift between topics on your channel, and not everything works, but I always say if you if you've done the research or if you're interested in a particular topic within your niche, you should do it no minute, no less than three times just to know whether or not it's going to work for your audience. If you do something one time and it doesn't work, that doesn't mean anything. Um, a, it could work over the course of time, like it might take a couple months before it catches on and finds the right audience. But one time it's just not enough to know. So let's say you did uh, you know, a playlist or a topic about something three to five videos long. Uh if you if you post about that specific topic three or four times in a row and the views decline each time, there's a good chance the topic is fatigued. It doesn't necessarily mean that's the only thing, but it's definitely an indication because what should happen is as you're growing content about around a particular subject that's popular, they should over time go up. Like as you release stuff, they should go up. Every once in a while, you'll you'll start on your content, the first video pops off, you're like, oh, I need to double down on that. And then you'll see them go down a little bit. But if you're seeing something started, let's say, you know, you get something that has 10,000 views, like, oh my God, that's a great subject. You put the next one out and it's like 4,000 views. Like, okay, that's still really good for my channel. You put out a third video, and over two weeks it gets like 500 views. Okay, I think maybe the time has passed. Like, if we were to do a Sora video now, probably not gonna do as well as when we did them initially, right? So that that topic has passed. Um, what do you think about something like this where you put out a string of video types, and we've done this on the Videcu channel, um, and then looking at how the popularity in that video goes either up, down, or if it kind of stays in the middle. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01:

First of all, you have to consider how current the topic is. Some topics will just have a natural shelf life, especially if it's associated to something in the real world that's happening now. Like, as an example, Stranger Things Series 5, tons of trending content on it right now. And, you know, for for channels that have a huge following, they will probably have quite a long uh how do I uh a cool down period where you know after the new year when it's finished, they'll be able to talk about it for a little longer. But people just sort of diving into a topic for a couple of weeks, you have to realize that it's gonna be fresh and hot, but then you've got to go and do something else. Now, topics that have more of a longevity to them. I I agree with you, Travis, in the sense that you do have to give a topic a number of shots or opportunities on the channel to maybe build up that trust and relationship and passion with your audience there. Um, but I think what you also have to realize is that once you've found a what we call content bucket that is one of the pillars of the foundations of your channel, cool. It's great to cover that on a consistent basis to re-engage with the existing audience, but you also want to be continuing to try and reach new audiences, and that involves experimenting with new topics, new conversations. And this is gonna differ for channel to channel, topic to topic. But the general recommendation is like once you found a bucket or a couple of buckets, you want to be continuously going back to those buckets and recycling those buckets a little bit. But also like one or two videos in every five or ten, whatever your cadence is, should be something that's new and experimental, just to kind of you know reach back into that pool of of YouTube audience to see if you can pull anyone else out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you know, uh I let's talk a little bit about buckets because this is actually really important. Uh, a lot of people uh listen, we've we've talked about buckets before, but not everyone has watched every video. And that's actually another thing, real quick, I'll just mention. Don't assume that your viewers have seen every video you've ever made. Don't assume that when you start talking about it. That's a real challenge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

Like both respecting the new audience who doesn't know what you're talking about sometimes, versus the regulars who like, oh god, come on. We've heard about this. I've heard about this before.

SPEAKER_00:

So the regulars hang tight. Hang tight. We're gonna talk a little bit about buckets right quick for the new people who are coming in and are like, I don't know what you're talking about, but what is this bucket thing? It's a great strategy that that when you think about your overall channel, I'll give you an example. Let's say your channel, and I know I give the same example every time. Your channel's about baking, right? Like you're just a baking fanatic, you just love to bake. Uh, one bucket might be uh cakes, uh, another bucket might be um pies, and then another bucket might be uh toppings for those cakes and pies. And those buckets are different strategies and different content that you will make under the overarching niche of baking. So you'll do a video about pies, you'll do one about cakes, and you'll do one about frostings, and you just you know cycle through those on your channel. So we're talking about here is the reason you do that is A, um, people like repetition, believe it or not, at least to a certain degree. Uh this is why we eat the same foods that we like so much, rather than eating at one time tasting and go, yep, I've had that, never need it again. Like humans like repetition. They like um, it's not even repetition, it's um consistency. So, for example, uh I come to your channel and I watch this amazing apple pie video, right? And and this is just the way that we think as humans. We go, oh, that was a great channel, a great video. I'm gonna make that pie. I made that pie. Everyone loves it, everyone thinks I'm the best baker in the world. They don't know I watched a YouTube video on it. They're like, oh my gosh, well, I need to I need to make another pie. I don't know how to make no other pies, I don't know how to make this apple pie. You have a pumpkin pie video? Let me watch that. Now, um, the cool thing about that is is I might only be interested in pies, but maybe I become really connected to you and then you might you make a cake video. You go, well, I'm not really a cake guy, but I mean I am. I personally am a cake guy, but let's just say I'm not. And you know what? I'll watch this video. I like this creator. Let me watch this video about cakes. I'm never gonna make a cake, but I really like just spending time with them. Now you've done something where you're starting to hook them in as like a real hardcore viewer, even though they wouldn't have necessarily come to your video about cakes. And this bucket strategy should be there should be a through line. You hear Dan talk about this all the time, where one is connected to the other to the other, so that people can watch through your channel, get that watch history, and then of course, uh be suggested to new audiences. So when you have a bucket strategy, it's basically trying to allow that to happen naturally through your content. So when you have the your cake videos, your pie videos, and your and your frosting videos, hopefully someone's watching all three. We have diabetes. Even if I'm living through uh Travis's appetite, right? I am very hungry right now, so that has a lot to do with it. Um, but anyway, so what we were saying was uh, you know, if you have a topic that seems to be losing uh momentum and losing uh you know views over time, might be time to pivot something into something else. Um, you could also just flip the format. Sometimes it's not just the information, like if you're again a Minecraft channel or something and you're doing content, you know, you look at other videos and other channels and you're like, they're still getting views about this particular topic. Maybe it's the way you're presenting it. Maybe you just need to do a different type of format. Maybe your angle at it has to be completely different than everyone else's. If uh let's say someone's speed running the game and that seems to be really big, what if you what if you do the the slowest possible way to beat the game but while still trying to beat the game? I mean do something completely different. Be the only person that people can come to for that content. And that eliminates a lot of uh competition. Just do something different. Of course don't do something dumb uh but do something different sometimes can help you uh break the cycle of your channel dying.

SPEAKER_01:

Since we've uh now talked about formats and bookets it's probably also worth mentioning like viewer intent or like what's your audience intent and I think it's kind of uh dialed down into like three basic types which is discovery. This is where you're trying to make a video for the highest broadest potential reach like you want this to be maybe your viral moment. Cool brilliant now there are other videos you may make on the same topic might even be the same formats which don't get as much of a uh reach because you don't realize that this is more about the community the the the regular viewers who you've already built up some trust and relationship with and that just naturally reaches a smaller group of viewers. And then finally like when we think about the next level of audience intent and viewer intent is maybe the the call to action. So you've reached this audience with your discovery content you've built up trust and relationship with them and now you're actually offering them uh something whether it's like free advice mailing list like you want them to buy a product or a service you have to naturally expect that the viewers for that content are going to be a lot smaller in size but much more intentional and perhaps you know purely from a monetization perspective more valuable to you. So just be aware of all of those different things the buckets the formats and the audience intent of each video that you make.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's interesting we have a YouTube short where I talked about the intent of a search audience and I got some comments from it uh that people are like oh wow that actually makes a lot of sense I didn't know that before so I think what we're gonna do is in a future video we'll talk more about um the algorithm specifically I've done a video called like everything you need to know about the algorithm but I don't even remember if that's on the main channel or on this I don't know. So I'll do it again here. So for those that missed it, well again because not everyone who's watching now has been watching the entire time again don't ignore the new people um but let's talk about older content because not all views need to come from your new videos. Here's the problem with like uh because I had a my personal channel was very much news related so in other words I had to keep pumping out stuff to get views and that it became very tiring and it can definitely burn you out. So having evergreen content is amazing and it it helps lift your channel and it also takes some of the pressure off you if you don't have time or even sometimes the creative energy to create new content. So we'll do something called the Lazarus strategy which is trying to bring your dead videos back from the dead you don't always need new videos to get views you can sometimes fix the old ones now how do you do that and how do you know which ones to pick I get this question quite often one of the best ways to figure out um what videos you should choose you go back in your back catalog, look at videos that performed pretty well they either performed excellently or pretty well then you what I tend to do is I'll go to let's say the videos like a year old I'll go to the um the metrics portion of that video and I will list the last 28 days of um views and metrics I don't look at the the overall once I know that hey this video got a pretty good amount of views so it was successful in some degree I'm then going to look at the last 28 days and see what's been happening there. If you notice that maybe your click through rate is low but your view duration is pretty high that means when people get in they're enjoying the video but they're just not clicking. So that's just a package read it's just redoing the package that could be the title or the thumbnail. So maybe you redo the thumbnail maybe you redo the title maybe you redo both. You just have to see like what the problem is you then you might see the opposite problem. You might see high click through rate low view duration. Not a lot you can do about that. I mean technically you can go in and edit the video using the YouTube editor. I don't necessarily recommend that um because that takes that's like a very surgical touch. I'm what I'm basically saying especially for content creators that are new or smaller go in find the ones that have kind of low CTR for the last 28 days but high view durations and see if you can just change the packaging a little bit start with one thing the title or the thumbnail um our our actually the vid IQ plugin can help you with some really great title ideas. See give it it'll give you a suggestion of what your title can be. Try that see what happens um and if that doesn't work then change the thumbnail so do one or the other not both at the same time because then you'll never know what fixed the issue.

SPEAKER_01:

Can I read this there Travis while uh while I'm thinking about the vidIQ tools um because depending on when this goes out I know that the um the title generation has undergone quite a major of haul like it I was using it earlier this week and it was pretty damn good. Yeah yeah but also now that we have a b title testing I uh when I was playing with it on again last week I was like oh I've noticed a bit of a blind spot here we're going into a B testing but the the tool isn't there that's coming imminently whereby you go into A B testing and it'll have recommendations there for you like three different suggestions from the vidIQ tool just bangs them straight in there. Oh wow and I'm about to get a little bit of a plug but I don't often uh shout about our tools until like I see some of it's like wow this is really going to help me. So do keep an eye out on um when you're doing Air B testing there's the new feature from vidIQ that allow you to just throw three titles in there suggested to you.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that I didn't even know that um I've been using it lately because uh one and it works really good for shorts too because it's able to look at the um the transcript and then kind of go okay this is a good title for that and that's what makes it good. So definitely if you're having a hard time coming up with good titles take a look at our tool um you can download there's a link in the description below there's a free version there's a paid version uh go check it out it's something that um you know you got to look at these things as tools to help you get to where you want to go there's very few creators that love every single part of content creation some people love editing some people hate editing some people love shooting some people hate shooting some people love doing the the SEO and the the title and thumbnail some people don't right so you have all these different things so figure out the things that you're maybe not as good at and find tools to help you do those things so that you can concentrate on things that you love and get good at that part. But again back to like the Lazarus strategy what what have you seen um or have you seen success in kind of bringing back videos that were either performed pretty well or maybe even a little bit under what you expected and then gone back and changed anything. Have you seen that work?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm sure everybody if they're on Twitter or X as it's called these days has seen somebody posting a graph whereby the video did nothing for like 300 days and then all of a sudden it has an upwards curve which uh tells us that YouTube doesn't completely give up on videos even if they've been out for a long time but also if you make changes to an old video it can have an impact way down the line. So I I'm agreeing with um everything you suggested um previously there Travis especially in terms of packaging and especially in terms of looking at the engagement metrics those being like likes to dislikes ratio and comments if if it's high and the comments are positive and yet the video isn't doing as you had hoped then yeah there's probably a packaging opportunity to be had there. Some other things you can also try as well like the classic one is you've made a video six to 12 months ago and it performed well well chances are you're a better creator or you have a new opinion or you have a better way of communicating this message of this value, you can recreate that video in that new style there's certainly that opportunity. And I've also heard of other people having this radical idea of just if a video's performed well but it's reached its natural end of life cycle unlisting that video and then re-uploading the pretty much exactly the same video but with an adjusted intro and outro so it isn't detected as exactly the same video. And the thought here is well the video that I put out has now come to its final end you know it's the end of its natural life but I want to reuse his content but I don't want to spend all of his time making a brand new video. So let's just try and see what happens. And you know this is when the video's maybe getting like one or two views an hour it's clearly just kind of dead in the you know so-called algorithm so there is that um technique or these the technique of you basically take the the script of a video and just kind of refilm it again like in your new setup but it's pretty much the same video but I think the key is that you have to unlist or private the the previous video almost like kind of re-releasing it. Now the the challenge is here that you're gonna worry about your viewers saying hang on I've already seen this video but I actually tested this earlier this year and I maybe saw just one or two comments from hundreds possibly thousands saying this feels like a reupload or I've seen this before and you know when you're down to like less than 1% are thinking it's reused content then I think the opportunity's there for you. Because again we have to remember how quickly you cycle cycle through audiences. When you look at your new viewers casual viewers regular viewers new viewers is always up by like 50 60% casual viewers is 20-30% they don't even watch all of your videos and regular viewers who are probably watching all of your content over a six to 12 months period you're down in like the three or four percent and even those don't all hang around for a long period of time. Right in terms of recycling the content there are opportunities there I think creators are just scared to do it because they think once it's on YouTube that's it it needs to be completely fresh and completely new.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll give you a a way to supercharge that um because you already know to a certain degree how successful it can be use the retention graph to re-edit it because you'll see where the dips are edit those out. So now you have a supercharged version of that video one that already worked assuming it's evergreen right I mean obviously you talk about something that happened in 2020 it's yeah it's usually going to be like search based content yeah yeah yeah but you can go back look at the retention graph and take out any of the dips and just make sure it's just a banger video from start to end and it could perform better. I actually considered doing that for this channel mainly because um a lot a lot of the stuff we put out initially which I still think is very valuable um most of our viewership now was not around for that and I would love to share that again. And while you can still go back and watch it um I thought you know I'd do the same thing you just mentioned. I'll just you know unlist it and then you know repackage it and put it up for the end of this year. Problem is I've lost like 30 something pounds. So the last thing I want to do is answer a bunch of questions that's a good problem to have like I mean it's great but by the same token I don't want to go oh my God did Travis gain a bunch of weight today and then and then I come back and I'm back and I'm like whoa what's happening here that's too obvious. So if you've had things like that happened Thanksgiving and a half Travis well it's the holiday season I could do a new intro where like I'm skinny and I go or skinnier and I go uh this happened right after Thanksgiving. Uh I'll be back to normal right after after this video. So anyway I try I was thinking about doing it decided not to just for that exact reason. Okay so that's how to bring some of your older videos back hopefully uh to life there's another thing which we've talked a little bit about a couple times we're just gonna dive right into it is the unsubscribe reality check which is most of your views will come from people who don't know you yet so stop making inside jokes for your subscribers stop making those and start making those broad appeal hook for strangers um so by the way I would say inside jokes aren't necessarily a bad thing especially if you do them in a way that makes people want to understand the joke like that's totally fine. We talked about this with Robin from Nomad Push where he calls his um everyone um uh you know nomad songs and then he talks about Coxan and stuff and you start thinking well okay what does that mean? What is that about and you can kind of tell that there's something to it that's different but making the like remember what I said last video where I did this thing and it's like no bro I just I I just need to know how to tie my tie. I have no idea I came here because you said you could help me tie my tie I don't know about your auntie and what happened last video. That's different.

SPEAKER_01:

The the thing that I was talking about was like no man's video I really want to watch actually Travis where can I find this video about uh somebody tying their tie and they had an incident with Aram it's somewhere on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm all in guaranteed it's somewhere on YouTube. Um but like I said uh there's there's a there's a way to do it where it's more branding where you can talk about things that like your your viewership knows and that they'll engage with in the comment section to make other people want to be a part of it. But what we're talking about here mostly is just know that the vast majority people watching any of the videos you have don't know who you are have never seen any of your videos before and as hard as that might be to believe it's absolutely true and you can look at your own analytics to see that being the case. Now some people go well uh my analytics show that most of my people are subscribed well that's bad it should not be that way because if you want to grow you need to have more people who don't know who you are than do that's how you grow because then they can subscribe and become part of your community. So how do you do that? More wide ranging content and things that are interesting to more than just your small group of people us four and no more no we don't want that we want everyone in the tent what's a good way of thinking about that um in different niches Rob how do you think of it I'm sorry I wasn't thinking about the question that you were going to ask me that Travis because I kind of wanted to not push back but add a yeah but about all the inside joke stuff and and and that is that in one sense I I think it's integral to building up a relationship with a viewer to have those shared values those shared moments jokes etc but I think it needs to be strategically done in a video and so what I mean by that is the hook the intro the first you know 25% of a video does need to be accessible as possible.

SPEAKER_01:

People don't want to feel as if it'd be left out or as you say being thrown inside jokes that they feel excluded from but I think you know gradually as you build the story in the video and the the viewer becomes more invested in that singular piece of content and they get to know you, then I think that allows for more insider knowledge inside baseball inside jokes. So that's where I kind of just wanted to push back a little bit on like no the correct the viewer doesn't know you the moment they click play but you hope they uh are intrigued by you curious about you by saying minute two and then that's when you can can allow that kind of more um casual relationship to breathe and build. So in answering that Travis what was the question I do apologize.

SPEAKER_00:

Well let me let me talk a little about that. So what's interesting about that is it is important in the first minute or so to kind of set the stage and I saw something just yesterday um that made me excited because uh again I was watching Nomad push again he's been on the channel you definitely watched that interview he's really good is watching his newest video he did something that I suggested he do which made me excited to see some of my kind of like advice take to a channel that I watch anyway um and it makes it more accessible. And then I told him I go so when I found you I found you in this one subject and he does a vlog that's like constant it just continues to run. There's no like beginning and end so to speak right I said the thing that that caught me off guard in a couple of videos because I'm not running them in watching them in order I'm watching them as the algorithm pushes them to me is I don't know how you got to where you are right there. It would be cool if you could recap like some TV shows do a little bit of the last episode to tell me why you are where you are and as a new viewer it's easier to then get into the content you're currently watching because if you're in the middle of a series you're like okay what what's going on here it it is entertaining but I don't know what that means. And he literally did it in his last video like the first couple of seconds are like from the last video and it showed how he got to where he is right then. I was so excited I left a comment like oh my god you did it I love it. So that book was previously on yeah yeah it's because the things that were happening in this video needed a little extra context and it also gets it gives people a reason to go back and watch the other video which you absolutely want. You want people to watch other videos so ultimately I guess um what we're saying here Rob the question is it's the unsubscribe reality check of these people don't know who you are don't make too many and again the inside joke thing I think is one thing we we also talked about there is a way to brand it so that people are interested but most of you come from people don't know who you are so how do you make your content more accessible to people who don't know who you are I so the immediate answer that came into my head but I I feel as if we need to massage this is treat your viewer like a five year old in the sense that like they are brand new to you they are learning something from you for the first time and they may be a little anxious a little trepidatious that a little you know they don't have that investment so you want to almost handle them with you know kid gloves really really be welcoming yeah treat them as if it's a first date in a kind of weird like a first viewer date.

SPEAKER_01:

So you're on it's it's hard to tell like your best behavior but like the the best of you with the assumption that you really want to make a good first impression on that viewer. I don't know if I've explained that correctly because it's not really treating the view like a five year old but can you see where I'm trying to come from here treating that make it easy for people that's there make it easy for them yeah that I think that's the right word.

SPEAKER_00:

So here's an example here's an example um when we first started doing this podcast we uh uh we we were talking about one of ten and it's it's just something that we commonly know what it is we got an email and they were like I don't understand what one of ten means it's like oh yeah there are new people watching this content who don't know every single little thing just because it's normal to me doesn't mean it's normal to them. And that's kind of what we're talking about. So when I say something like one of 10 I go oh yeah so when you go into YouTube Studio it show it ranks your videos based off of the last 10 videos you've had and it says one if it's the best video and 10 if it's the least view video, right? So once I explain that people understand and then they can get connected. If you go too deep into an explanation of something without explaining what the thing is in the first place, you will lose people period. They'll be like I don't know what he's talking about. He's talking about it for 10 minutes I gotta go because I don't know what's happening. Um so just assume that people don't necessarily know what you're talking about and give it a little bit of extra background whenever possible.

SPEAKER_01:

I yeah I guess get really good at explaining things really quickly and simply almost like same as same as a thumbnail. You know you talk about make it easy, make it accessible make your uh introductions, your explanations Your jargon, your inside jokes, make it all simple and easy to understand in seconds.

SPEAKER_00:

And that is a that is a rare talent to be able to do that. Um, and we've given you a bunch of tips so far that can help you if your channel is dying or doing not so good. And these are actionable things we've just told you. This last thing we're going to talk about isn't necessarily thing you can do anything about, which might be frustrating, but it should be talked about because you just need to know. And and to be educated about what's going on on YouTube and the platform at any particular time is super important. And sometimes the answer is there's nothing you can do. So sometimes YouTube will change a policy, and then certain things that were okay before are not okay now. Some things that were monetized before are not monetized now. Also, YouTube's constantly doing things algorithmically to make it better for viewers. And sometimes views go down and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes it's seasonality. There's nothing, well, there's some things you can do about seasonality, but we're talking about things you can't control. So even this past year, um, and we talked about it here on this podcast, views kind of saw a dip uh across a lot of channels. And by the way, that's still happening. People are still seeing views go down. Even channels like Mr. Beast are seeing actual impact to their subscribers' number. Now, his problem might be different, but he's seeing the same thing. We see channels go through this all the time. We feel the same pain. And sometimes you can't do anything about that, but you should be educated. So when platform when the platform changes and things that you used to be able to do are no longer something you can get away with, a lot of that is surrounding AI and such, you should absolutely know about those things. And and tuning into VidIQ is one of the best ways to do that as we keep you updated about all that stuff. Um, Rob, what do you think is something that maybe even this past year that happened on the platform that affected creators that they maybe can't do anything specifically about, but they should at least know about?

SPEAKER_01:

So let's start with the concept that YouTube democratized creativity and almost rem almost, let's do the keyword, almost removed the barrier to entry for distribution. Like you can start a channel on your phone, create content within 10 minutes, and you've got a potential audience of billions. As long as you follow YouTube's rules, and I think when it comes to politics, uh use of things in certain countries that are legal where it's not in others. I'm thinking of like uh cannabis, for example, it's legal in Canada, but it isn't in the UK, so like there's kind of these gray areas of of laws and whatever. We have to understand that this idea of free speech and whatever, yeah, it's it's kind of it kind of bends and it doesn't it doesn't break, but it bends in different ways. So, to go to the question of like what's changed recently, we think about the influx of AI content that started in 2022. Uh, creators have been having a field day with this. Unfortunately, bad actors have also been having a field day with this, and then in I think the July period, YouTube said that they were just again tweaking their rules around reused and repetitious content. And I still to this day don't think creators truly understand the rules around that. And to be fair to YouTube, it's really difficult to explain such a big, all-encompassing idea in two words, re-use and repetitious. What a lot of YouTube automation channels seem to be reporting, especially in the last month, is that all of a sudden channels that they were having success with are now being terminated or demonetized. And so that's a YouTube policy that's changed right there. If we rewind about three or four years, that same topic of reuse and repetitious content caused issues whereby for several years channels could upload compilations, montages, and pretty much have a free reign on the channel. And the the example I always use is News Be Funny. And what they did is they collated uh funny uh things that happened in the news from like interviews and reporters and whatnot. And every clip would be like 20 or 30 seconds long, and there would be no what's called transformation. They would just jump from clip to clip to clip, and it was fine. And then all of a sudden, YouTube introduced this idea of the, I think it was called like the the spirit of the content creator, whereby we don't want you just taking content from other sources and then uploading it onto YouTube. We want you to transform it in some way, and so what NewsBe Funny had to do all of a sudden was add a little bit of a voiceover or a narration between every single clip, and that really slowed down the pace of the content and it changed the way NewsBunny was as a channel, but they had to do that to fit within YouTube's guidelines, so like they they saw the issue, they adapted. Did they succeed afterwards? I I don't what I gotta confess, Travis, I don't watch them as much. But that was a challenge that that uh creator faced. And we see these uh we see one or two of these things happen every single year, and it yeah, it's a challenge. Like some creators are thinking, wow, like I I thought I thought this was it, I thought I was gonna build my empire, and all of a sudden YouTube's flipped a switch and it's changed. And that's just reminded me of the other thing, and this is I think uh from political influence a lot of channels that were terminated or removed over the Biden administration, and now being kind of what quote unquote being invited back onto a platform, not on the same channel they had before, but by starting a new channel because of that, you know, I'll just say uh there's a new president who has a different attitude to free speech, right? And YouTube has to, I guess, comply with that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's interesting, and again, that's nothing you really have any control over, but you should be aware of it. And one of the best ways to be aware of it is to be subscribed here or on the main vid IQ channel, which you can do here. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, of course, you can you've probably already subscribed if you're listening to us, so we appreciate that. Um, we do try to care uh get you caught up on all the news, uh the things that you don't have time for, like you're at work. This is our work. So we try to stay uh you know on top of those situations and kind of hopefully uh help you understand what's going on. So hopefully that helps you at least point your channel in another direction. If you're listening to this and you're on the YouTube channel, why don't you leave us a comment and let us know what are some of your strategies uh when views are going down for you? And if you're listening on the audio podcast or if you just want to ask a question, you can do that. You can send us an email at theboost at vidik.com. Or if you're listening to the audio podcast in the show notes, there's a link there to send us a text message and we will answer those in the future upcoming episodes. Until the next time, we thank you so much for joining us. Hit that subscribe button, leave us a five star audio review, and we'll see y'all in the next one.