You Can Have Millions Of Subs And Still Feel Broke

Get vidIQ Boost for an exclusive price! https://vidiq.com/podcast

Want a 1 on 1 coach? https://vidiq.ink/theboost1on1

Join our Discord! https://www.vidiq.com/discord

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/_kUOrWhNynw

We sit down with Joey Salads to unpack why a massive subscriber count can still mean weak YouTube revenue and why Shorts success often fails to lift long-form views. We also get into niches, AI tools, prank culture, and the practical moves creators use to keep growing when the algorithm and the audience keep shifting. 
• early YouTube as a Wild West with limited analytics and constant algorithm swings 
• Shorts and long-form behaving like separate platforms with different viewer intent 
• internet monoculture fading and niche algorithms shaping what people ever see 
• barrier to entry dropping as phones and editing tools make production easier 
• AI as an enhancement tool versus “AI slop” that kills watch time 
• Joey’s Vine to YouTube transition tactics and why cross-platform funnels are harder now 
• prank escalation, platform enforcement, and the long-term cost of pushing the envelope 
• reinventing your content over time as your life changes and your audience matures 
• diversification beyond AdSense, including platform distribution and investing income 
• evergreen content, reposting strategy, and protecting performance over sponsorship labels 
• decisions around showing kids online and setting boundaries as they grow 
Feel free to hit that subscribe button. 

Transcript

YouTube Fame With Empty Pockets

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When it comes to my YouTube channel, I would be homeless on the street. I think I would probably afford maybe like three days worth of food a month off of the revenue that's coming in from it. I make 10 times more money on Facebook, 10 to 20 times more money on Facebook monthly than YouTube and any other platform. I get messages, you've fallen off, you're dead. I'm getting more food than ever before.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

And I'm I'm I've fallen off. Hey, welcome back to the only podcast. It's here, not to punk you, but to give you the information you need to grow your YouTube channel. As always, I'm Travis, and I'm here with a very special guest, Joey Stilids, is in the house. How are you doing, Joey? How's it going? Going real good. Hey, and if you're new here, we do this every week. I got so many people I'm talking to. If you want to know how to grow a YouTube channel, I do it here on this podcast. Feel free to hit that subscribe button. But Joey is here to tell us about himself. Almost 10 million subscribers, over 1 billion views with a B. That's a lot of views. And I can't wait to hear about your journey and the things that make you you. But for those who don't know, who are you? And uh what kind of content do you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, so I'm uh I I would say I'm probably up there in the OG YouTube realm at this point, been doing it for so long. Actually, been doing YouTube videos since YouTube first came out. But amazing. I love that. Didn't really get many views until years later. But I mostly do prank videos, social experiments. Uh now I'm doing more skits and parenting content because now that I have an eight-month-old, so you know, navigating through that is a plethora of content.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that because that makes it because, you know, like you said, you've been on YouTube for over a decade, and over time you have to kind of constantly evolve. You can't do the same stuff that was working eight years ago today and expect it to work exactly the same way. I mean, there's completely different things. When you first started, there were no YouTube shorts, there were no like live streams, it was just kind of this wild west of just upload stuff. Um, there was no, you didn't know what your CTR was or your click-through rate was, you didn't know what a lot of analytics were. You were just kind of like putting stuff out. Talk to us about um what it was like when you very first started uploading on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, back in the day,

From Early YouTube To Pranks

SPEAKER_00 2:00

it was like shooting in the dark. You didn't know what was gonna happen, when it was gonna happen, you had barely any resources to see. And it was more of the Wild West because uh YouTube definitely didn't lock in on a specific algorithm, and it was changing incredibly rapidly. You can have one week where your videos are getting millions of views, and the next week, nothing. And it would just be like a roller coaster that would be trying to figure it out, and then throw the adpocalypse in there, and it just wasn't a good time. But from what I've noticed back in the day, the social media landscape definitely changed dramatically as soon as short form content became the norm. I've noticed long form content, at least my content, used to sit in the algorithm for years, generating views and generating money. As soon as short form came out, everything took a nosedive. Every single new YouTube long form video was almost tanking. Uh, and I think that also had to do with just probably my subscriber account just from doing it for so many years. If you're not constantly outgaining what is becoming inactive, that becomes a problem as well. Uh, and another big problem is I did see success in shorts. I think I have multiple videos with tens of millions, if not a hundred million plus views that have generated hundreds of thousands of subscribers on a single video, a single video generating a quarter plus million subscribers, but that does not translate into long form, and that becomes a struggle. I get asked all the time by people who come up to me who are more short YouTube creators with millions of subscribers. How do I get people to watch my long form? And I really don't have much of an answer for them. It seems like two completely different algorithms. I'm like, I have that problem too, and many others. I uh I just saw a post on X. There was um some they were making fun of this influencer on YouTube. He had 9 million subscribers, and his newest upload in seven hours only had 500 views. And they're like, how is this possible? They were making fun of him, and I'm like, well, just click that shorts tab and you'll have your answer. Click the shorts tab, he's got a video at 700 million views and dozens with over 100 million. He's a shorts creator, but a lot of times the audience, people who are consumers, don't understand that YouTube has is basically two platforms in one. It's whatever's going on in shorts and whatever's going on in long form. And that long form, like my content used to do great in the long form aspect. Uh it was it was not short, short, but today's standards of short, three minutes to five minutes long, and it used to just dominate. It was very shareable, very clickable, engagement, clickbaity. Now that content fits perfectly snug within a short. If I'm doing a prank video with multiple reactions, that's five short videos that are all gonna get a million views versus one long from that gets gonna get like 50 to 100,000 views.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yeah, and it's interesting because you you you really put a lot of interesting things there. Very uh astute, because when shorts came out, of course, we know that shorts basically came out because TikTok was doing so well and YouTube wanted to be in that kind of field of things. And when shorts first came out, there was a lot of um a lot of overpowered things about it. At first, and for those who don't know, because this actually happened, people's videos who uh uh because at first you have to put like the hashtag on it for it to get picked up and everything, there was a whole thing. But what was happening for a while, and YouTube admitted this and later corrected it, is a bunch of regular videos that were like a minute or less, the regular videos started getting picked up as well. Like the algorithm just knew that hey, everyone's kind of it wasn't even that it was the shorts and the short shelf, it was like any short video on YouTube. So people were seeing videos from like eight years ago that were like a minute uh long, suddenly got all these views. And what has happened is the viewership for a short is different than the viewership for a long. If you think about just when you're viewing a short form content, uh what you're doing, a lot of times people are in stores, they're just kind of waiting for something to happen, sometimes waiting for the bus, whatever it is. They're just kind of sipping through, skipping through, skipping through. Long form content. One of the things we're seeing more recently is the sit back uh version of that, which is on television. Television's starting to blow up. Uh, so longer form version of that is doing well. However, that person who's watching on television isn't necessarily the same person who's flapping through as fast as they possibly can on their phone. So it is, it is um, I love that you're explaining to people, especially new content creators are listening to going, well, I have shorts that do, you know, a couple of thousand or maybe 20,000 views, but my videos get nothing. That's absolutely what people are are experiencing. And I've only I've talked to a ton of creators on this podcast. I think I've talked to one that has good success on shorts and longs at the same time. It is very, very difficult. What do you think? Do you consider yourself now more of a shorts content creator? Do you want to still be more long form? Because you still do have success on some long form stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

So there's actually a lot to dive in there. One, culturally, things have changed on social media. Back in my heyday, back when long form was at its, I would say at its peak, because that's all there was out there. I think there was more of a monoculture on the internet. People were less shoved into algorithms. So it was a lot easier. I mean, if a viral video with five million views back then, everybody saw it. Everybody's seen it. Like, I don't know how that was possible, but five million views, everybody's seen it. And people would just scream at me in the middle of the street, uh, you did this, you did that, whatever it was. Now, 100 million views, not a peep, not a whisper. I get messages, you've fallen off, you're dead, more views than ever before. And I'm I'm I've fallen off. It's because people are shoved now into their designated algorithm for whatever their interest was. Ten years ago, there was no Pokemon algorithm. There was no trading card algorithm. It was a completely different landscape. So now you need to focus and cater towards what's your algorithm going to be. And it should be what your algorithm is already in. Unless you're uh a gooner,

Shorts Versus Long Form Reality

SPEAKER_00 7:50

you don't want to be, you know, you don't want to make that content. Not necessarily. Yeah, but if you enjoy TCG, if you enjoy Pokemon, if you enjoy technology, if you enjoy even stuff that's incredibly niche, that's what you know. Dive into that, dominate that algorithm. You know the creators in that space. There are more creators now than ever before. Back then, it was a couple hundred and everyone knew them by name. Now there's probably a few thousand in any particular hyper-specific niche, and they'll probably have hundreds of thousands of followers. So it's a very competitive game out there. Definitely know your algorithm, know your niche, and home in and lock in on that.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Do you feel um because you have been doing it for so long, regardless of your actual age, do you feel like you're in your in your uh your unk arc? Like, do you feel like an old man?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

I'm a grumpy old man. Back in my day. I've not fallen off. You've fallen off.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Get off my lawn.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah. And another thing, too, is the the barrier to entry is so incredibly easy now versus back in my day. Uh back in my day, I had you had to get a camera, you had to get a crew, you had to get separate microphones to go out there. The film actual productions. And this is a constant throughout all of film, all of film history. If you go all the way back to the first camera and how it evolved, got smaller, got compact, got more accessible, special effects were no longer you needed big machines to do things. Everything became more accessible and easier and easier and easier until now we're at a point where anybody can just take their phone out, record a thing, and they can put grade A special effects, 4K quality, 120 FPS from their simple little device and they slap it up out there. Five, ten years, well say 10 years ago, eight years ago, you couldn't even do that. So now the barrier to entry is so easy. It's like making a tweet. It the barrier to entry, you just gotta type your fingers on a keyboard. Now you just need literally just need a phone and you just start talking to the camera. So that also increased a lot of competition. And I think that's why a lot of niches have evolved to having big impact uh because so many people got into the space.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Well, and then over the last year, AI has really taken over and made it even easier for some people. Some people don't even have to show up on screen. What are your thoughts on kind of AI in the in the content creation space? Just in general. I don't mean just like fake videos, I mean like all aspects of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah, I think AI is a great tool for enhancing or formulating your ideas. If you don't actually have any good ideas, you can't lean on AI entirely. It's definitely a great enhancing tool. Um, and I don't I don't think AI is gonna replace the creator because I think social media companies are gonna put a lot of restrictions in that place, and I can instantly tell when I'm watching a long-form YouTube video that's made by AI and I turn it off immediately. It just I it grosses me out. I just can't I can't bear to watch it. It's just the way the cadence of the talk, and I could just tell whoever created this had no inspiration. They just said, AI, make me a 10-minute video about this. I know there was no inspiration in there to give me anything, it repeats itself. It will get better AI at those things, but uh I think it could take a little while and it does need some direction. And I would say one great example, I was talking to this guy on Twitter who makes incredible AI meme content, incredible stuff. Uh, you he actually made some of the Elliott Page memes that have been going around about the Odyssey lately, uh, viral, massive, massively viral. And uh I was talking to him because we were talking about AI slop, and he gets called out from people saying, all you do is make AI slop, you make AI slop. I'm like, dude, whatever you're doing is not AI slop. There's AI slop out there, but I mean, you're sitting down, you're using the more advanced tools, and you have an idea, and you're just a director with this is this is your team of people. You're a director creating a piece of content that you couldn't have done otherwise without the technology. So you can see AI slop videos on TikTok where you see headlines. This is the first fully AI-generated movie. It's the most crap, garbage thing you'll ever see in your life. But if I was a kid right now, if I was younger, I was the type of kid to go home after school every day and sit down and edit and make videos with a couple of my friends on the block. That's all we did all day, every day. I probably wouldn't have friends if I was born in today's world because I would just go home. I would sit down with whatever AI tools I have and take whatever's in my brain, shot for shot. I would be recreating it and being a director in real time with AI models. And that goes beyond just saying AI, do this for me, do that for me. It would be like punch in on this character. This is what the character looks like, this is the description, this is how he talks, and I need a shot that punches in and then punches out and pans over. Like you need to get very, very specific, you got to direct it. And that's just using AI as a tool. That doesn't necessarily mean it's AI slot.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Right, exactly. Helping the creative process move faster uh and removing obstacles from people to get to the creative end uh that they want to get to, which uh, you know, once upon a time, uh sometimes you're just settling for something less than your vision. And frequently now, um, it enhances your vision because now you can do things that you couldn't have done before. Uh like those shots you were talking about were things that um from a technical aspect some people couldn't do, but they understood in their mind what it looked like. And now if you can just say what it looks like, you can get some of those things. And I and I get that there's definitely pushback on it too. And I feel I feel somewhere in the middle on AI as far as like its functionality versus you know taking away uh creativity. I think also it only goes as far as you let it, if you let it be everything for you, then of course you're gonna get called out for and it's not gonna work well for um your viewers. But if you know how to um leverage it just right, I've had a couple of creators on recently, Hafu Go was talking about his workflow and how he does it for um parts of scripting, but more about like getting his his actual format for the script done, which would take uh over a day for a human to do, and it just immediately puts everything where it needs to be. So I think that there's those instances where it's really, really good. Do you use it for any idea of uh ideation or for videos or anything?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I usually use it, uh I use it a lot in in business and emails, uh, and and I do do it when I do need a little help with a script or an idea. I'll usually punch it in. Yeah, I'll either voice talk to it, tell it everything about my idea, and be like, hey, help maybe help formulate this a little bit better for me, help help me get my point across, give me some ideas on maybe alternative punchlines or alternative ways to make the build-up. Uh, I'll usually use it for that. More more on an inspiration aspect, an organization aspect, and you just get the ideas across a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Uh when did you when did you start doing pranks? Was that at the beginning of your content creation, Harry? Or did something happen you're like, I'm just gonna start filming pranks?

Monoculture Died, Niches Took Over

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Oh, I'll go, I'll I'll I'll go back. Um so I used to do Vine videos. I have a Vine tattoo on this arm.

unknown 14:48

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

That's old school right there.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Back in the day. So I back then I used to do a lot of special effects stuff. And before you could upload videos from your camera roll, I would record a video, put it, put it into my computer, do some special effect stuff, or make an actual edit, and then I would have to plug my phone into the computer, change a bunch of file names around, and it would basically trick my phone into uploading a video from my computer. And this was unheard of at the time. So I used to actually do this side by side with Zach King. It was actually a very brief moment in time where me and him were having special effect videos going viral on Vine, and we actually had like a really, really brief, like friendly feud that lasted maybe like a like a month, like, you know, who's making a better special effect video? And uh, you know, where he's at now. So he he he continued that. I saw where it started with him. And uh, I used to do a lot of those special effect videos, and they they did very well. I mean, Vine even came out of special effect category, but it became more and more accessible. People started figuring out more and more how to do it, so there's more stuff going up, and then eventually they allowed you to upload from the camera. So the novelty was gone because people would watch the videos and be like, How did you do that? What was it the camera trick? Are you a magician? It it would just it was a lot of it started a lot of conversation. That's why they it did so well. So it'd be simple things. One video in particular that I did, and this is where I think the the starting point of where things really did start to get big. I did a video where I was looking in the mirror and um like I turned around and and my mirror reflection started to do something different than what I was doing. And to be like, Do you have a twin? How'd you do this? The can't they the cameras angled differently, like people coming up with their theories? And the video did really well, so well that another creator did the same exact video, and his went 10 times, maybe a hundred times, more viral. It won Vine of the Year. Wow. And it was it was just a knockoff of my video, and I was like, oh sh, this guy's irrelevant now. So that was his the only thing he's ever accomplished. Now that was over 10 years ago. Uh so I got mad. I was like, I was like, sorry for cursing it. Sorry, speak that out. Uh I was like, damn. Uh I was like, well, what do I do? And this guy just stole my heat and my thunder, whatever. So I'm I was like, screw it. I'm like, I made a video doing the same effect, and I turn around, I go, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow me. I will show you exactly how I did this. And so now everyone's like, oh, and my YouTube channels at the time I think was getting like maybe over 10,000 subscribers. People flooded to my YouTube channel to subscribe, and I think that was one of my first YouTube videos on my Joey Salads branded account, uh, was me doing uh the mirror trick tutorial, and it was just a screen recording. So I leveraged that to get people over to YouTube, and I got a lot of followers in that case. That point I also learned if I can give the audience a reason to follow me because they want to see something or a reason to go somewhere that piqued their interest, that's when I learned uh more I guess more in a marketing sense, because then I launched a series of videos called It's Bashing Time. And in that series of videos, I would hype it up for days at a time. I'll have an axe in front of my and people still come up to me on the streets today talking about this, and this was over ten years ago. I'll have an axe in front of my sister's TV or my dad's TV or any or my dad's computer, anything that you or her phone, you anything you can destroy on say this gets 5,000 likes, I will destroy my dad's TV right now. It'll blow up with likes, everyone who's liking it wants to see the video, they'll follow, and this was Vine six seconds long, and there was a lot less competition. There was a hundred Viners that hadn't made anything of quality, so blew past a million subscribers back in the day, followers back in the day, and I would hype it up, hype up the video, I would gain all of my followers in the lead up to the video, not from the video itself. And then I would do then I would follow up post video with more videos, directing people to go to the YouTube channel for the full video, go to the YouTube channel to see the aftermath. Sometimes I would hype up the video and drop it on YouTube exclusively first. I would make a video, this is a good 50,000 likes, I'll bash my dad's TV, go to my YouTube channel to see it first. And I would figure out all different ways to get people to transition to a different platform. And I was the first Viner to ever transition on YouTube. The first. I had Jake Paul calling me up. Hey, help me set up a YouTube channel. I'm no, you're the only Viner who was able to ditch this platform. And I helped him set up his YouTube channel one day. So um I think I helped pioneer that. And by the time Vine shut down, I wasn't posting on that app for over a year.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, it's funny because I talk a lot. A lot of people ask about uh getting uh viewership from one platform to the other. It's very difficult. It's a very interesting strategy. It sounds like you could still use that today for things, things like uh TikTok or Instagram reels, you could maybe still do the same thing, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

I wouldn't it's definitely not as effective, but you can definitely do it to an extent. I did notice in the early days of reels and shorts that if I had a video that did really well on those reels or shorts, I noticed search traffic would increase for whatever that prank or that video was about on YouTube, and it would result in more longer form views. Even the related um button on YouTube early on was way more effective than it is now. And I would notice direct correlation to increased viewership in short form to the long form. I don't see that anymore now. I think it's just too saturated.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yeah, there's a lot out there. So let's talk a little about pranks in general. I mean, we see a lot of pranks go wrong uh nowadays. We see people getting arrested overseas and stuff for doing prank. We're just people are just doing wild stuff. Um characterize your brand of pranks. Tell us for people who haven't seen any of your pranks, like what are they what are they, how dangerous are they? Because sometimes pranks can get dangerous. What what are the things you think about when you're about to do a prank?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

So a lot of times, uh especially nowadays, is people have it, you know, it even happened back in the day. Everyone wanted to push the envelope further and further. So I was early days of making videos, it stayed very focused on destroying my family's belongings. That did that did well. Then other pranks, it was kind of like uh, I don't even know, Jack Vale, the pooter, where it's just like pretending to fart on people. Very like friendly, like corny, impractical jokers type of pranks. Then Vitality and OcTV and some

AI Tools Versus AI Slop

SPEAKER_00 21:40

others, they were just going out and just okay, I'm gonna get these people to just beat the crap out of me. And that was going. I I never pushed the envelope that far because I don't want to get knocked in the face. Uh it it would go pretty far, but I would always draw the line. And they would just push the envelope further and further and further to the point where YouTube actually. Actually, they started to ban pages, delete videos, and they actually suppressed almost all pranks in the algorithm at one point completely. Because it was it was controversial. It was being talked about. It was getting on the news, it was getting on all the drama channels. It was a big deal. And so YouTube took some enforcement action because if left unchecked, you would get what we have in today's world because there's a lot of things that are unchecked, and then I think things are more free. Uh, where you get people like whatever, whatever I don't, I don't follow it as much, whatever Chud the Builder did, whatever Vitality did, whatever that other guy did, the that got arrested in, I don't know, the Japan. Uh you get you get stuff like that where it's like you can push the envelope further and further and further to get attention, and you will get attention, but it comes at a cost. And I always refer to it as selling your soul for views. So if you want to build a brand where you need to constantly push the envelope further and further and further, that will always come crashing down and it would always come nip you in the butt. It's it's inevitable. So you never want to be that type of creator. It is it is the easy way to success, and that's why I call it selling your soul. I mean, hey, hey, like what is that girl? Bonnie Blue does the most disgusting things. I can go do those disgusting things right now, and you'll all be talking about me. But do I is that something I want to do? Do I want to go and replace me, replace Bonnie Blue with me? And you tell me that wouldn't be talked about all over. It's easy. It's easy. You just gotta have no soul in order to do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

You know, the funny thing is, is despite the fact you've been around for so long, your most popular video slash short was only a little bit over a year ago. It's uh the Mentos Coke bottom bathroom thing. Um, and that seems like not uh danger training. What would you say the most dangerous prank over the course of this decade that you've had uh was? And were when it was going on, did you realize it in the time or was it an after-the-fact thing or what?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Um that's a good question. I've done so much stuff, I don't I don't really even think about it. It was so long ago, too. I'm such like a I don't even think about it.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

What do you think of well let's take it from this table? Because you say you've done a lot.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Oh, go ahead. It was more of just the situation. It wasn't even my video. It was uh I was doing helping Twins TV with a video, and they do the these killer clown pranks they used to do every Halloween. And we went all the way to Compton, and they uh I don't know what they were thinking. They went to Compton and they would pretend there was a dead body on the floor, and they would come up on the dead body and just like smack like when a car would pull up and they could, you know, the car would stop, they'll come up and destroy, you know, the body's head on the floor. And I don't know, you do that in Compton, you're gonna get shot. The cops ended up pulling up and they're like, get out of here right now, because it's not gonna end well for you guys. There's some crazy stuff going on here. Uh I guess it was a bad part of Compton. Like the worst of the worst area you can possibly be. Just this just seeing white boys on the street, it would be dangerous. So in that moment, were you second guessing why you were a part of this? Yeah, I was like, why I I mean, I was like, I kind of knew how dangerous it was. That's what intrigued me to go. But then I was like, oh shit, this is getting too real now. I'm like, I'm like, where where do I go that I would be safe? I'm like, there's just a gas station here. There's no street lights on because it the the area is so disheveled, disheveled. Uh, and I'm like, I can't even go to the gas station and just like sit here and be safe because someone can come in and rob the place, or just I've seen the videos online of bad, terrible things happening. There's nowhere to be safe.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

You um were talking earlier about that you have a young child now. Thinking about now being a father and having done you know crazy stuff on the internet, how has that changed or has it changed the way you look at content creation moving from that point forward to now and beyond?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Um I definitely the being risk averse has changed. Don't want to take any more risks. I think I'm thinking more in terms of stuff, anything that I create now, it's stuff I would want her to watch, definitely. Um, I think it just comes generally with maturing. And I do like to constantly evolve and make content in different niches as I grow and I grow with the content, and I think a lot of my audience does grow with me where I discover into different audiences. I had one guy very specifically say to me once a few years ago, uh, and he he's got a lot of followers himself, very successful businessman. He's like, dude, he's like, I follow you all the time. He's like, you're probably the most one of the most impressive influencers I've ever seen. Because he's like, you're able to adapt and crush it in any niche that you dive into. Like you go from the viral pranks, you go into parenting, and at the time I was just getting into politics and I was headline news talked about on interviews on TV. It's just whatever I hit, I was able to accomplish and crush because it was more representative of me and what I was what I'm doing. So um I was just evolving with myself, discovering new audiences along the way, as well as aging up with an aging audience. I think at the time when I first got involved heavily into politics and I was really, really into it, uh all my DMs were flooded with I used to grow up watching your prank videos. Now I'm listening to your political podcasts when I did a political podcast. So uh, you know, they they they matured with me. Still younger than me, but still matured up.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yeah, that's that's it's good to be able to know that you have long-term fans because over the course of time, I mean, you're just naturally going to lose. I mean, I can think of content creators I watched even only five years ago that I maybe don't watch anymore, not because I don't like them, but because you just kind of grow over the things that they kind they do. And it's just it's it's a rarity to have someone continue to do that. And so many times when I'm looking for content creators to bring on the podcast, I will see large creators who've been around for a long time, but their audiences have very much dwindled over the years and they either haven't adapted or or whatever the case may be. Um, and it is a very difficult skill to have. A lot of content creators will believe that once you hit a certain uh sub uh milestone, it's over, you're done, you made it. You don't ever have to worry about anything again. But I'm pretty sure you would tell me differently.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah, no, you you always got to reinvent yourself. Uh things change so fast. It it's very it's very hard to be a creator that stays doing the same thing. I mean, I'll just use the Fortnite example. We're the Fortnite creators now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, is that even a thing anymore? I don't know. Not in that algorithm, so I wouldn't know. But I know it's not a top 10 trending thing consistently every day, but it was for quite some time, and people made a lot of money. But I mean, look at look at, and I think Ninja had some other semi-success at certain points post-peak career, but generally, um studying his fall was very, very interesting to study. So, someone like Ninja, he was a poster child for Fortnite. When Fortnite went mainstream, he rose with Fortnite. He didn't rise, he didn't bring Fortnite up. He rose with Fortnite. This is his big trending thing who's a family saved creator, influencer, someone that's good on TV, someone that we can put as like basically a spokesperson for this new game that's a viral sensation. It was Ninja. He was a good representative for the, I guess, the gaming community in that game. So he rose with it, rose too freaking high, got a big deal from Mixer, which basically torpedoed everything because nobody wanted to use Mixer. They weren't watching for him. They were on a platform they were all embedded with, comfortable

Vine Hacks And Platform Jumping

SPEAKER_00 29:40

with, people the way Twitch worked, people bouncing from stream to stream. Now you're going on Mixer, this off-site where there's only one guy streaming. It was a different ecosystem. It destroyed his career. He he he ended probably with under a thousand live viewers before that ended. He secured the bag, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

So that's the kind of important part. I mean, I always try to uh let creators know, especially when they're starting to blow up, if there are ones that are blowing up, to immediately try to diversify and uh, as you were just saying, just trying to get the bag because none of this is is guaranteed at all. Um, a channel at your size, most people from the outside looking in are probably thinking, oh, you're probably a multimillionaire. You got it made in the shade, you don't ever have to upload ever again. What's the reality of that? Like, could you retire now or do you really have to keep going? Do you just want to keep going? Like, what is the reality for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

When it comes to my YouTube channel, I would be homeless on the street. I I don't, I think I would probably afford maybe like three days worth of food a month off of the revenue that's coming in from there. Um, but diversification is is goes in multiple ways. One, in in in your in when things were peaking in the heyday, I did put a lot of money away, invested it. Um, two, learned a lot of skills along the way, and I probably made most of my money outside of being an influencer. Three, diversification is you can diversify yourself also as an influencer too. Make sure you distribute it on all platforms, make sure you're exploring all options, all promotional options. For instance, I think I made exponentially more money off of Facebook, my content on Facebook than on any other platform combined. And that's because one Facebook serviced my content very well, especially when in the more shorter form. So I think I probably make 10 times more money on Facebook, more 10 to 20 times more money on Facebook monthly than YouTube and any other platform combined. Uh, I also don't do brand deals too. So because I make money elsewhere, you know, I'm not gonna make I'm I don't just don't do brand deals, don't need to. I don't I don't need that, I get offers all the time for a few thousand bucks here and there, but I don't need to. Um I did get a bunch of offers for like grain bet and gambling sites that were gonna pay incredibly well. Didn't want to do that. Uh if I if I needed to do that, if I didn't have other streams of income, I would be like, okay, well, that that's the type of influencer I am. I because no one else is gonna give me an exceptional brand deal with the type of edgy content, uh, or even just my edgy past. You know, no one, I guess a brand, you know, I'm not a good representative for a big brand. Um, and I mean that's another benefit side note that I have too is that I've kind of been a staple on the internet for over a decade. So whether you like it or not, some everyone has seen my face, whether they know it or not. Because I have combined 10, 20, 30 billion views, I don't know, countless amount of billions of views I have as a whole. So uh people have seen me one way without realizing it or not. But people who do recognize me, that does help roll it things into another sphere. Like, oh, I haven't I get up comments all the time, I haven't seen this guy in ages. Glad I discovered him again, glad I'm seeing him again, or F this guy, I hate him, you know. But either way, they're talking, um which is another big thing.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

If you had to start now rather than when you did a decade ago, what would be your not just advice for people trying to do it now, but like you specifically, what type of content would you do right now, knowing that you have like zero followers, zero money to do a whole bunch of stuff. You have your phone and you have your creativity, what kind of channel would you make? What would be the strategy behind it? You you have a lot of knowledge and experience on social media. So I'm really curious to hear what you would do if you had to start over now.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Me specifically, I'd do exactly what I'm doing right now because at the end of the day, follower count doesn't even matter. If you I rebuilt my social all my social medias almost from scratch multiple times. I had a TikTok account that had three million followers when things converted from musically to TikTok, something happened. They had stuff with ages and whatever. All those followers became dead followers. I started a new page, and that's gonna probably hit a million followers by the end of the year on a brand new account, brand new page. Same thing on Instagram. I had one page, it had 30,000 followers over many, many years, and that page was just nothing was happening with it. Let me start making a new page. Made a new page, it's at 1.1 now. Uh YouTube, I have another account that I did so many experimental things with that ended up getting, I think, 2 million subscribers. So uh and Facebook, I have a few pages, I think, with over a million followers. So I have started over multiple times, and every single time I'm successful because I just know what I'm doing, I know what's going to get used, I know the formula, I know how to exploit the algorithm. But if I was a different person, if I was someone watching this, I would do what I said earlier. Find a niche, find an algorithm, find something you enjoy, find something you're knowledgeable about, and that's what you make content, no matter how niche it is. And

Pranks, Risk, And Selling Your Soul

SPEAKER_00 34:50

if you're in that algorithm, you see what other people are doing, you see the editing styles, you see the pacing, you see the cadence, you see the hooks, you see what they're doing, you take inspiration, you constantly evolve and adapt. Um, I would even recommend to getting involved in some professional niches as well. I use my wife as, for an example, she does real estate content and 50,000 views, she's making a ton of money because she's able to convert, I mean 50,000 followers, she's able to convert those few followers into an incredibly large amount of money because all you take all it takes is one of them and you make 10, 20 grand off of the real estate lead. So if even if your career is in some type of service, whatever your business is, that's the beauty about social media is that I think it does empower more people than ever before to be their own bosses. And if there's something new, anything that anyone wants to do, you can monetize it through social media, and that's your marketing engine.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

I there's lots of ways to grow channels and stuff. And I mean, uh we've talked about it here on this podcast many times, but I'm interested in in hearing what your secret sauce of your specific secret sauce of like growing on uh in in social media now. Like, are you doing anything uniquely you that you think is is leading to success, or are you just able to take what most people already know and then just execute it on it very well?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Um, I think it comes into two different things. I just know some of the old content I've made is funny or shocking enough where it's just always gonna do good. Like my newest video that I posted that did incredibly well, I reposted a video from eight years ago. Uh like a uh stealing cars prank. I just knew it was gonna hit. Um, I think it's almost got two million on Instagram. It'll probably hit a million on TikTok. Uh that's just an old video I knew that did good. And a lot of other videos that I make are relatable. So I'll use the parenting stuff, for example. It is very relatable for new parents to obviously deal with breast milk and their babies drinking breast milk and all those problems that occur in dealing with raising a baby, especially one that's breastfeeding. And there's a lot of relatability in that sense. And one of the things that I've realized is like, oh, you know, it's kind of tempting to drink this bottle of my wife's breast milk. And I'm sure there are millions of other people out there who thought the same exact thing. So I did a video where I took my wife's breast milk and I put it in my protein shake. My wife's like, What do you what are you doing? Like, we're all out of milk. I had to use a breast milk. And she's like, that's the baby's milk. And she's like, holding the baby, and I'm I'm putting a protein shake in it, and I drink the shake, and then the baby, the baby, I got lucky with this one. The baby like did like a double take, like shocked look at me. Like, can you believe like and people attributed like meaning to her her like look? And um people also had a field day in the comments. They were putting a bunch of Homelander memes because Homelander drinks Presno. They were screenshotting my wife and my baby that had the same like jaw-dropped face. They're like, Yeah, that's definitely her kid. Um, and so it hit the parenting community, hit the broad comedy community, and it also hit the the fitness community because I was making a protein shake. So it hit all these demographics at over 100 million views on Instagram alone, and I think it got let me see, on YouTube. It might have got like 50 or something million on YouTube, and probably another tens of millions on the other platforms. I don't know. The video ended up getting 300, 400 million views in its entirety, and I reposted it multiple times with different captions, uh, because I'm always recycling my type of content. Yeah, it's my fourth most viewed video on YouTube, 78 million and counting. Uh, and that one's still getting over 100,000 views every other day, uh, with certain with others, you know, some days having larger spikes than others. Um, so but that that was stemmed from some relatability, some within my niche. It checked all these boxes, and so from that I actually did get hit up from a few breast milk manufacturing companies that do like the bags or whatever, like for pumping, whatever the hell it is. Some of them messaged me and they wanted to work out some type of sponsorship with it. Um, I think one of the companies, I did another video where I pretended to spill my wife's breast milk, and and then she was like freaking out. And um, the company that made the bag that I pretended to spill it from, I guess they recognized whatever, because it did good. They commented on it, they're like, Oh, you scared us, and they DM'd me, and I think they were trying to work out uh a deal there because it was almost like a paid product sponsorship. Um but I'm not trying, I I I care more about preserving my content than putting, you know, hashtag ed brand partnership,

Diversify Income Beyond YouTube

SPEAKER_00 39:50

but I don't want to put I I want to see my content perform well. I don't need to make money off of it, so I focus more on the quality of the content and also the um the rerunnability or the repurposing and the reposting ability of the content. I like creating uh a bunch of content that's evergreen because I'm reposting stuff that I made 10, 15 years ago, and it's still getting views nowadays. I think they're reach you know it's reaching different audiences or just people forget. Um but that's I'm a special case. I think most content that people are gonna make are gonna be within their niche and probably more along the lines of time sensitive and less recyclable. Uh I'm I mean I'm just using uh the TCG market, for example, because that that's one of the most one of the biggest, fastest growing niches out there. A lot of people are getting involved in it. Um, you know, I'm sure there's some content that you could repurpose, uh, especially if it's a viral piece of content. But a lot of that stuff I do think is somewhat time sensitive because if you're open up in a new pack of cards, it's relevant more today than it's gonna be in two years from now. Uh, but there probably still is some OG type of stuff that could be repurposed, but probably cost you a lot of money, like buying the original base set packs and opening those. Uh, if you are gonna make that investment into buying something so expensive and you do get a good video out of that, that's something you could definitely constantly recycle to generate more income from. Uh, but it is pretty hard to make money on short-form content through the monetization structures currently. YouTube pays crap, Instagram doesn't pay you at all. TikTok, if you can perfectly craft a video that's over a minute long, you could probably make some significant income. But I've noticed with TikTok, sometimes if it's one minute and one second, it totally flops, but if it's 59 seconds of the same exact video, it goes viral. So you never know what you're dealing with. Uh so it's very inconsistent. Uh, you people need to do brand deals now or have things funnel into a larger business.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Last question. Um, because now again, you're a family man, you uh you have a kid, and a question as you as a parent, uh, that comes from any parent on YouTube, whether or not to show their kids online. Because that's a big thing, right? It's a it's a thing where you're you're you know, it's a personal thing. It's your child, right? This is not a kid who's 18 and making the decision to be online, you're making it for them. And some people don't want their kids online, they want to be shown or anything. And obviously, you've taken the decision that, like, hey, I want to show my kid. Um, did you and your wife have to go back and forth on that? Was that something that you guys were just always for because you thought it'd be fun? It's a good way to look back in time when you know they're older. You can go look at what you were doing as a baby. Like, what was the thought process?

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Yeah, I started doing it, and at first my wife wanted to be one of those people that doesn't put their baby online. I'm like, be real. I'm like, we we post so

Recycling Evergreen Clips And Kids Online

SPEAKER_00 42:50

much stuff. I'm like, be realistic. There's no hiding our baby for 18 years. Like, we're not Justin Bieber and and Haley Bieber. It's not gonna happen. We we constantly make content. We like to incorporate our lives into the content that we do. And also, when you bring back the the point about making content to look back at, if you go to my Instagram and go to my my um my retweets on Instagram, you'll see it. I almost have like a playlist of all the podcasts, the short form podcasts I did with my baby. I did one a week since she was born. So you could like literally scroll through it and watch her grow up, literally from the day she was born, and a pot like me and her doing a podcast back and forth. And that I'm something like that I'm really excited for because I want to see in 18 years, 18 once a week, you see her grow. Like I'm thinking ahead with the content. Like, in 18 years, it's gonna be viral, I swear.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Yeah, it'll be trust me, it'll be yeah, that's so cool. What a cool idea.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah, that but I mean a lot of people have reached out like, oh, I'm gonna put your kid on the internet. I was like, first off, it's it's a baby. Even if if it if it if there's a day where she's like five or six and's like, I don't want to be on, I don't want to do this, it's like, okay, yeah, whatever. No one's gonna recognize her from a baby. year from now. No one's gonna recognize my baby on the streets. It's a baby. They'll mostly look the same. So I I don't I I understand there's people probably creepy people out there and whatever, but I I don't I don't I don't think her face being out there is going to have any effect on her future in that regard. But I know a lot of it's personal preference and it's definitely a lot easier for people who don't have their lives revolve around content.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Yeah that makes sense. Well Jolie Salads again almost 10 million subscribers thousands of videos which to me is more impressive because it's one thing to have a lot of subscribers. I've talked to a lot of people who had a lot of subscribers but not everyone has a lot of videos. You have a lot of videos especially short form. If you're listening to the audio podcast there will be uh information in the show notes where you can click over and check out more of the Jolie salads and if you're here on YouTube of course you've already seen there's links you you've seen some b roll and everything but I'll leave a link in the description for Joey Salads. You can go check him out tell him you don't saw him on the podcast. We thank you so much for your time. Actually Joey said some really interesting things about uh a content creator that I just talked to and I'll leave that link right here. I'll see y'all in the next one