October 13, 2025 • 47 mins
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We grapple with AI’s blurry line between prompting and creating, then dig into practical, grounded tactics for pivots, thumbnails, and growth that hold up under pressure. Along the way, we unpack niche strategy, device behavior, and how to build repeatable “luck” on YouTube.
• creator vs prompter with AI ethics and friction
• pivoting a monetized reaction channel into parenting
• leveraging a unique life story as a moat
• why inconclusive A/B tests default and what to do instead
• when to stop testing and enforce visual consistency
• YouTube variance vs luck and how skill compounds
• packaging tiny niches for broader curiosity
• translations and auto-dubbing realities
• TV vs mobile: lean-back design and length experiments
• experiment scope: three to five videos before judging
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
It's a YouTube variance.
If you can repeatedly do thatover and over again, you'll get
more and more quote unquotelucky.
SPEAKER_00 (00:07):
Like YouTube is not the easiest platform to grow on,
although it has the mostopportunity.
But don't confuse that with itbeing easy.
This is the only podcast thatcomes to you live and living
color, recorded with no AIincluded.
My name's Travis, and I'm herewith Rob.
Welcome back, Rob.
It's been a minute.
SPEAKER_02 (00:23):
Hey everybody, my name is Rob Wilson, and I
represent VidIQ.
I am not an AI avatar.
SPEAKER_00 (00:32):
I love this.
And you know, we did an episode,Dan and I, just the other day,
well, actually would have beenlast week when you're listening
to this, about AI, and I nevergot your feelings on it.
Although, if you're on the mainvidIQ channel, you've seen some
of Rob's thoughts.
But let's talk about here on thepodcast before we get into some
of these questions that havebeen sent in.
All right.
And of course, if you're newhere, this is a podcast to help
you grow a YouTube channel.
(00:52):
We talk about a lot of differentthings.
The news of YouTube, and ofcourse, we answer your questions
as you send them in.
Uh last episode, we talked AIand Sora 2, and you've gotten uh
you've done a lot with it.
What are your thoughts now?
SPEAKER_02 (01:06):
Yeah, I guess you might describe me as reluctantly
embracing it at the moment, justbecause uh I am part of a team
that is all about YouTubeeducation, and we can't ignore
the fact that AI is here, hereto stay, and this time next year
(01:29):
it's gonna be unrecognizablefrom what it is today, and I
think we need to be aware ofthat regardless of or not of
whether we use it.
I have found myself maybe notsubconscious as not the right
word, but I have found myselftrying to dab my feet into it
(01:52):
for little bits here and there,and it's not usually for like
B-roll where you might expect itcould be useful.
For me, Travis, right now I justseem to be using it for nothing
but comedy.
Like when I want to do somethingfun and entertaining that isn't
serious, like it's almostintentionally bad AI, and you
(02:14):
know it is, but it's used toemphasize a joke in the video.
I think that's the extent ofwhere I am using it comfortably
right now.
And I think I'm I'm more thanhappy to use myself in a
self-deprecating manner with AI,and and and you as well, if
you've seen the video that wentout today, and some some
(02:36):
wonderful vocals you've got onyour yourself.
Very impressive.
But yeah, for the for thebroader creative domain, I kind
of am bowing down to thethoughts of people like Casey
(02:57):
Neistat, who seem to have a muchmore rounded and thoughtful uh
opinion on it, in the sense he'stalking about the funnel is
getting bigger and bigger at thetop, in the sense that pretty
much anybody now can makecontent using a it's not even
(03:19):
like a camera anymore.
You can make a video with asentence and access to the
internet.
Now you that that's that's wherewe've got to.
Uh, but that funnel is enormous,and how much good content is
coming out of it at the momentis a question that I uh can't
fathom or answer.
SPEAKER_00 (03:39):
If I'm on the Yeah, and uh Dan and I dove in this
for about an hour in the lastpodcast.
So if you're interested in thesubject, make sure you go back
and listen.
And one of the things we didtalk about, I be I want to take
get your take on this one thingthat Dan came up with that I
started to agree with thecomments on that video or both
ways, and that is that youaren't necessarily creating your
prompting, so you're a promptingengineer.
(04:00):
I saw a comment in the videosaying that no, I'm still a
creator because somehow theycreated it with the sentence.
And I I still feel like you'veprompted something else to
create for you.
I can see where see here's mythought on it.
I think I'm I'm still on theside of it being prompted.
I could always be, I'm prettyopen-minded about things.
(04:20):
Someone can change my mind.
But you're prompting an engineto do all the creative work for
you.
No matter what you've described,it is not as descriptive of as
what ends up happening in thevideo.
Um, sometimes it's pretty closeto it.
Sometimes it does something youdidn't even think to do, and
you're like, oh, that's evenbetter.
But so did you create that?
I feel like you promptedsomeone.
It's almost like me going to anartist and saying, paint this
(04:44):
picture of a lovely beach, andthen coming back, and this
amazing pick painting has beendone, and you go, Yeah, I
created that.
Um you prompted the painter topaint it.
But I don't know, what do youfeel about it?
SPEAKER_02 (04:56):
I was ready to disagree with you up to the
point of where you said yeah, Igot someone else to do it, but
I'm claiming it as my work.
It's like, yeah, yeah, I kind ofsee what you're where you're
coming from there because thereis this bit in the video that I
did today where I prompted SamAltman to say something along
(05:19):
the lines of we're embarking onthe greatest project in global
history of I have a asking forforgiveness, not permission, in
the sense that they haveseemingly downloaded the
internet and are now offeringthat back up to us in this huge
(05:43):
cement mixer of uh results.
Right, wow.
It kind of makes it feel a biticky.
When uh when you consider thatthere are going to be people out
there who see the the financialbenefits and opportunities from
that.
But I'm I'm trying I was uh Iwas I was uh gonna respond
(06:03):
initially with the idea of butyeah, but think about a script
maker who wants to turn theirprose into something visual, but
they don't have the they don'thave a cast, they don't have the
equipment, they don't have uhthe budget to go on s on on
location and do all of thesethings.
(06:24):
And uh Kisten Isle was talkingabout this in terms of f
friction.
You know, you can remove all ofthis crit friction to make
creativity accessible to all,but yeah, I guess rem the
removal of the friction isactually what's like a it's like
a placeholder if it's been putthere, or like a boilerplate.
(06:45):
You know, OpenAI has has hasgiven you all of these
boilerplates, but they've mayberequired them acquired them
through nefarious actions.
I don't know, is that is thatliable?
Do we need to edit that out of abook?
No, I think you can say that.
I mean it's been controversial.
SPEAKER_00 (07:01):
I mean, people have shouted up because you know they
they scour the internet andYouTube videos and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 (07:05):
I mean, if you if you prompt into a video
generator from wherever, open AIor whatever, give me SpongeBob
SquarePants doing a funny dance,and it generates that, there is
only one way they were able toget that source material by
accessing it from somewhere.
And as far as we know, was thatpermission granted to the
(07:32):
generative program where it wasmade?
SPEAKER_00 (07:35):
And that's another subject that Dan and I talked
about in the last podcast.
So make sure you check that out.
If you have not already and youlike the subject, it's very
deep.
It's not just, oh, is AI good orbad?
Like we really dove into it.
So this podcast is where weanswer your questions, and you
can send us messages.
How do you do that, you ask?
As you always ask.
I'll tell you.
If you're listening to theaudio-only podcast, there's an
(07:56):
option in the show notes thatsays text us.
And if you click that, it'llsend us a text message, much
like the one we have today.
Um, sometimes it doesn't peopledon't leave their names, so I
don't necessarily know who theperson is, but here's what they
sent us.
I'm a 50-old, 50-year-old newYouTuber.
I have a reaction channel thatwas just monetized.
(08:17):
Congratulations.
I want to pivot into parentingcontent as I'm a mom of six
across three decades.
Whoa.
I have four adult children andtwo under seven.
I'm sorry, what?
You have two kids under sevenand you're 50?
Well, let me take my hat off toyou because I'm gonna tell you
something right now.
I'm not trying to be around nokids under seven right now.
Too old for that.
(08:38):
I want to pivot into contentaround the world I grew up in
and raise my first four childrenin, no longer existing and
navigating the parenting intoday's world.
I think what they're basicallyasking is, how do they do that?
That's a great question becauseit depends on what your reaction
channel was of.
Like, I don't know, that's theone thing you don't tell us.
Yep.
So I feel like what they'resaying is that you know they
(09:00):
want to pivot a content aroundthe world I grew up in and
raised their first four childrenin that no longer exist, I
guess.
Especially considering thattoday is so different.
Like, so if you are reacting tothe news, then being able to
pivot to a channel about howthings are different now versus
(09:20):
you know back then, that therecould be like some Venn diagram
overlap there, right?
But if you're reacting to funnyTikToks and now you want to do
something serious, that soundslike a new channel to me.
I don't know.
What do you think there, Rob?
SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
It sounds like a new channel just on the limited
information that we have, but II think the encouraging thing to
say is that if this creator hasalready been able to monetize a
reaction channel, I see noreason why they can't monetize a
parenting channel, but do itfaster because you've already
(09:57):
learned a lot of the things thatyou need to learn and you've
already done a lot of themistakes that many creators uh
make.
And it sounds like you got apretty unique perspective on
this given uh the the experienceyou have in parenting, and uh so
their their parenting nowcovers, I guess, a time frame of
(10:22):
uh grown adults who may alreadyuh be married and having their
own children and continuing toraise uh uh uh younger children
themselves.
So I think that felt seems likea really interesting dynamic
that we always talk about thisuh skill or superpower of being
uh irreplaceable, you know,whether it's the DIY aficionado
(10:49):
who has this big um shed thatthey can work in or this big
space.
This creator, I think, has thisunique super superpower that's
hard to really hard to replicateby anyone else.
SPEAKER_00 (11:02):
Yes, I a hundred percent agree.
Their story is interesting.
And over the course of manyvideos, they could tell their
story and then give tips.
Like as you're older, I don'tknow, I'm gonna speak for
myself.
I'm not gonna speak for thisperson, I don't know them.
Uh at my age, I have lesspatience.
A seven-year-old around me wouldnot live very long because I do
(11:23):
not have the patience for it.
I just don't have the patiencefor things right now.
If I was 30, maybe I'd have morepatience.
So I feel like that's aninteresting subject.
Like, as an older parent,there's you know plenty of older
parents out there.
How do you deal with that?
How do you deal with the I meanit's it's one thing when you're
just a regular parent of quotenormal age, whatever that even
is, say in your mid-30s, andyour kid comes home and says a
(11:47):
bunch of words that you don'tunderstand.
I feel more disconnected fromthat age group than ever.
Like, I I just got a got on towhat Cap was just a couple years
ago, and they keep coming upwith Skippity Doo toilets and
all this other stuff.
I don't know what any of thisstuff means.
I don't need to know it.
Um, but imagine that's like yougot to deal with your kids every
day coming home saying some newstuff and trying to understand
(12:09):
what it is or and plus nowthey're growing up with things
like AI.
AI was in the movies when I grewup, that wasn't a real thing.
It was like cool, oh, that looksreally cool.
No, this is on your phone now.
And by the way, you have a phonethat you can walk around with.
That wasn't something I had whenI was growing up either.
So I feel like that's such aninteresting story that you could
(12:31):
tell that um, and it soundssimilar to what you're talking
about.
Um, that just I would just makea new channel with that.
I wouldn't even pivot the otherchannel.
SPEAKER_02 (12:39):
I would just keep it.
Let's not pollute your uhcurrent reaction channel if it's
continue to do well and continueto support that channel and uh
the audience there, that isgonna bring in some revenue,
which may help you with this newchannel.
Hey, maybe this could be theopportunity where you think
about the let's say you earn ahundred dollars a month from the
(13:02):
main channel, you take thathundred dollars and you give it
to an editor, or whatever youhate doing, you can outsource
that for the second channel, uh,and that allows you to scale it
a little bit quicker.
SPEAKER_00 (13:14):
I love that.
That's so smart, and it'ssomething that um we have
encouraged people to do, like asthey get monetized or whatever,
find that thing that you need tooff, you know, put off with it's
thumbnails or whatever.
Of course, we have you knowthumbnail generation stuff here
at vidIQ, but whatever it is,and invest back into the
channel, you'd be surprised howmuch how much faster that helps
you grow.
This next one is an email.
Of course, you can send us anemail, theboost at vidIQ.com.
(13:37):
Very short message, but thepicture tells a thousand words.
And I know you're gonna havethoughts about this.
Why did second place win?
And for the audio podcastlisteners, Chris sent in an
email with a picture of thethumbnail uh A-B test thing.
And um it shows threethumbnails, all different, which
by the way, in my opinion, well,two of them are different, two
(13:58):
of them are the same, and one'skind of way different.
I like the fact that they wentwith completely
different-looking thumbnails forthe most part.
For audio, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_02 (14:05):
I've had to put on my over glasses so I can see so
he can zoom in and look.
SPEAKER_00 (14:09):
And um it says the test finished without a
conclusive result, which ispretty common for smaller
channels and stuff.
That's actually very common.
And what he's showing here is umthat thumbnail one, which is
41%, is now being shown versusthumbnail two, which has 42%.
So technically it's the winner,yeah, and then thumbnail three
had 16%.
(14:30):
So he's asking, why did secondplace win?
Um and the real answer is thathere at the top, but I want to
go deeper into like why this isa thing, but the test finished
without a conclusive resultmeans it's pretty much going to
put whatever your defaultthumbnail is as the winner.
Yeah, so that's why that quotewon.
And because it's a 0.6%difference between first and
(14:52):
second place, it's just likeit's not really conclusive.
Now, we had a meeting recentlywhere you were kind of talking a
little bit about this tool andthe title tool and such.
And Dan has given his thoughtson it too.
And I've I'm kind of somewherein the middle.
Can you share your thoughtsafter having used this tool and
the title tool for a while now?
Kind of your overarching thoughton the use of it.
(15:16):
You know, we waited for yearsfor this tool.
Was it worth the wait?
That sort of thing.
Give us everything.
SPEAKER_02 (15:24):
I want us to give some feedback on the results
there first.
Do you mind?
SPEAKER_00 (15:27):
Oh, all right, let me I'll pull it back up.
SPEAKER_02 (15:28):
Yeah, so because what I find interesting here is
that there's three thumbnails,but again, for audio listeners,
thumbnail one and thumbnailthree to me look pretty similar.
The the colours are a littledifferent, like one's brighter
than the other, but it lookslike it's using the same two
(15:49):
pieces of box art, maybe, andthe same text.
But thumbnail one has 41% watchtime share, and thumbnail three
has 16.1% share.
My guess is that the sample sizehere probably wasn't that big
because the test also took anentire week as well.
(16:11):
Whereas we will probably getresults in about two or three
hours, which means that you'reprobably looking at maybe tens
of thousands of impressions, acouple of thousand views.
That's what it usually needs toget a result.
So I'm not sure if the test hasbeen big enough for sample size.
Because the thing that's alwaysmissing from this, and I think
this is where I move on to thebroader question of how useful I
(16:34):
find it, it gives you the watchtime share, but it doesn't give
you the actual share of uh orimpressions.
Right.
We would assume that this wouldbe 33.3% for all of these.
It would equally share out thisthumbnail to everybody.
But just looking at some of theresults over the last two years
that we've had it, I'm I'm notconvinced that is a case.
SPEAKER_00 (16:59):
I don't think it is.
SPEAKER_02 (17:00):
I almost feel as if it might be 40% for one of them,
33% for another one, and then27% share, you know, like
impression share.
Maybe that's a conspiracytheory.
Um and and maybe over time, eventhough it's doing a test, it
starts to weight itself more tothe one that's performing
better.
SPEAKER_00 (17:20):
That's what I think.
That's actually what I think,yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:23):
But I'm sure people, anyone at YouTube listening to
that is just gonna say, this isjust somebody who doesn't know
how to use a tool, and uhthey're trying to think of
reasons why their thumbnailsaren't performing that well.
I'm getting more and more to thepoint where I feel as if
thumbnail testing has screwedwith my head.
(17:44):
Because now I don't think we canuh put out a video without
either title testing orthumbnail testing.
Even though we have never cometo a conclusive result about
what thumbnails perform best onour channel, like either with a
(18:05):
person in the face or using acertain background or a certain
emotive text.
That may be blame that can beput on us, maybe we're not
disciplined and scientificenough to do these tests
properly.
That we kind of just say, oh,we're just gonna throw these
thumbnails at it and see whathappens.
(18:26):
It may be blame needs to be puton us, and if we're not doing it
right, then imagine theresources and people and uh
patience you you do have to putup against these tools for them
to give you really good resultsand feedback.
Like I'm I'm thinking aboutchannels with tens of millions
(18:46):
of subscribers, the Mr.
Beast of the World, who can havea full-time thumbnail maker and
a full-time title writer whodoes nothing but test these.
Like for us, it's what five-10%of our effort and time.
And the last point I wanted tomake is because the tool's
(19:11):
there, you feel as if you haveto use it.
And I really want to go througha period of time on our content
where we actually don't use atool just to see if we can
determine whether or not our gutfeeling with the the title and
the thumbnail that we feelstrongest about, we use rather
than testing against three.
Because again, another thing tothink about is in the first 24
(19:34):
to 48 hours, that's when you'regetting a high degree of your
initial impressions, and itfeels like you're almost wasting
those impressions on testingsomething that you think's
probably not gonna work, but youwant to test it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:48):
No, no, that's right.
And the other thing is that'sactually important because the
viewership is different.
So, quite frankly, you shouldalready kind of know what's
gonna work for that initialgroup because it's the people
who watch you the most.
The A-B thumbnail testing andtitle testing actually would be
more uh interesting and morehelpful after it goes out of
that group and goes into peoplewho don't know you.
(20:11):
Unfortunately, by that point,there's so few impressions that
the test takes so darn long thatsometimes it's inconclusive.
But that's actually when youneed it.
Because if you've grown any typeof audience, or if you have an
audience that watches you, youkind of know what they're gonna
click on already.
So you don't need it as much.
But most people don't even thinkabout it like that.
They think, well, the onlyexception really to this is if
(20:33):
you have a uh a topic that popsoff and it gets shown to a whole
bunch of people that are new toyour channel right off the bat,
and then it might be somewhathelpful.
But by and large, 99% of thetime, you really actually need
it towards the end, not thebeginning, uh, for the exact
reasons that you explained.
So it puts us in a pickle.
Like, do we use it or don't we?
I know you're almost leaningtowards not using it anymore,
(20:55):
period, or just in certaincircumstances?
Like, do are there just certaincircumstances where you're like,
I feel so strong about this thatI just don't need it, or well,
I'm like, what are you what'syour conclusion?
SPEAKER_02 (21:04):
I feel like I just need a clean slate, Travis, from
from this.
I just I've been using it fortwo years and I I can't tell you
conclusively how it's benefitedthe channel at all.
Because you look at our channelright now, and every thumbnail
is I'm not gonna saysignificantly different to each
one, but there are differenceswhich I think means that our
(21:30):
branding and our consistency isa little lost in them.
And I I would just I would I'dlike the idea of just forcing
our channel to look in a in aconsistent and similar way for
like 20 videos.
So, like, you know, when you goto the channel and you see the
canvas of thumbnails, they alllook similar to a certain degree
(21:53):
uh rather than now where there'sthat association through our
faces, but sometimes we're usinga white background with really
harsh black text, and thenanother one we'll have a graph
in a background, and so it justfeels as if it loses its
consistency, even though we havea thumbnail editor, like Mena
does an amazing job on ourthumbnails, but we're getting
(22:14):
multiple concepts, and I just Idon't think I'm I'm fixed on any
of them right now.
SPEAKER_00 (22:20):
It's very difficult to know what to take away from
it.
And I think it's different fordifferent people.
I think depending on what you'retrying to accomplish and kind of
what what kind of uh my my Zorajust went off.
Uh what kind of um what kind ofthings you're trying to
accomplish, whether it begrowing your existing audience
(22:41):
or deepening that connection orgrowing a new audience, which I
think most people want.
And YouTube doesn't do a goodenough job explaining like what
should this be used for, becauseI don't know if they actually
know.
In other words, they gave us atool after testing it that came
back with some results, but whatare the best results for a
(23:01):
creator?
The best results are for thefirst 24-48 hours appealing to
people that know the channel orknow the subject, and then well
after that, bringing in newpeople, but they don't really
explain that to you, they don'tgive you a a way and a tool to
A-B test in two different timeperiods, like one first 24
(23:23):
hours, one week later.
They just kind of give you thistool and say, make it work.
There you go, you've asked forit for years, here it is, and
it's not even I don't know thatit's measuring the right thing,
and they've admitted this too.
Because they even tell us thatnot all watch time is equal.
So why is it that they'remeasuring it against watch time?
That's weird.
I don't know, it's it's strange.
(23:44):
So, anywho, that's that.
SPEAKER_02 (23:46):
I think to play a devil's advocate a little bit, I
think we're we're um conversingas power users, where we kind of
have a strong knowledge of whata thumbnail should be and the
analytics behind it.
But you have to accept that like99% of creators just see a tool
(24:06):
and oh upload three upload threethumbnails and the highest
percentage wins, and that's allyou need to know.
And I I understand thesimplicity that I do go back to
that idea of it just works interms of how easy it is to
implement.
Uh and I was just looking at ouranalytics here because I wanted
to see if our channel-wideclick-through rate had moved at
(24:28):
all since we got it.
So in 2023, this time in 2023,which I think was just before we
got OB thumbnail testing, ithovered around I would say at
the very top, 5%, at the verybottom, 3-3.5%.
And now if I go to now it'smaybe increased by half a
(24:54):
percent.
So I don't know, does that meanthat Airbnb testing is working?
But our impressions are weardown compared to where they were
two years ago.
SPEAKER_00 (25:04):
And that's the thing, impressions are
important.
SPEAKER_02 (25:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:08):
So maybe the thumbnails are working more for
our concentrated audience, butnot for a new audience.
Perhaps.
And that's that's where you haveto dive into statistics even
more.
And by the way, if you needsomeone to dive into your
statistics, we have a link uhdown in the description in the
show notes for our one-on-onecoaching where an actual human
coach will go into youranalytics and help you figure
out what you need to do to moveforward on your YouTube channel.
(25:30):
All right, next email.
The boost at vidik.com.
If you want to send us amessage, it's the boost at
vidik.com comes from frequentemailer Frank the Dang.
I was listening to the podcasttoday and had a sudden starting
important realization.
There was no talk of candy,which is true.
There's been a couple episodeswhere there weren't.
As an OG listener, it left mysweet tooth aching rather than
craving.
So here's a real importantquestion of the day for me.
(25:52):
Where do y'all stand on circuspeanuts?
You know, the orange foammarshmallow peanuts.
I think I know exactly what he'stalking about.
I have no clue.
Google it.
Google it.
Circus peanut peanuts.
Uh hot take here, but I lovethem, especially the soft ones.
Or if I leave them in the bagcar for a couple hours in the
summer, just don't microwavethem, trust me on this one.
Uh, much like a lot of thosetypes of candies, trash.
(26:14):
Not worth your time.
Don't do that to yourself.
You can use it for uh shippingthings, like packing peanuts.
A B testing, this is ironic.
A B testing still feels like acop-out to me, titles or
thumbnails.
Spend that extra time puttingthe love and passion of your
existing formula.
I think it'll go further in thelong run.
One good genuine effort is bestthan better than three
half-hearted tickets in thealgorithmic lottery.
(26:36):
That's a cool little sentencethere at the end.
SPEAKER_02 (26:38):
It's an interesting way of thinking about it in the
sense that now we have thistool, maybe our focus is being
diluted by the fact that we'reimmediately thinking I've got to
come up with at least two orthree thumbnails, or I've got to
come up with at least two orthree titles, rather than just
(27:01):
saying, right, what's the besttitle I can come up with here?
But there's also the otherargument that strategists will
say that you should always becoming up with like 10 or 50
titles and then narrowing itdown to the to the best one.
But yeah, it's an idea I canunderstand and appreciate and
kind of embrace in a moment.
SPEAKER_00 (27:21):
99% of the time when I'm creating content, I know the
title before I ever shoot thevideo, which I still think is a
good best practice.
And even better if you have thetitle and thumbnail already in
mind.
The podcast is the big exceptionbecause a lot of times I don't
know exactly where the meat ofthis video is going to go, and
it's a long video, right?
SPEAKER_01 (27:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:39):
So I don't know until after the fact.
Um, I don't recommend that forregular content.
I feel like if you do that,you're trying to stuff the most
important part of a video intothe last second.
And sometimes you're failing thevideo.
Like maybe you made thisincredible video, uh, you don't
know how to title it, and thenno one clicks on it because no
one knows that it's anincredible video because your
title and thumbnails suck.
(28:00):
And that comes back to a quicksubject I want to jump into,
which is a lot of times we'llsee um I'll see comments because
I see tons of comments everyweek.
Doing this for a job is like yousee comment YouTube comments and
everything all day.
And a lot of times you'll seepeople complain about what's
happening to them on YouTube.
(28:20):
And I just got to tell you thatlike YouTube is not the easiest
platform to grow on.
It's just plain not.
And in some instances, it mightbe one of the hardest, although
it has the most opportunity.
Um, but don't confuse that withit being easy.
I think some people think thatif you do A plus B, C happens.
If you put in some good work,some titles and thumbnails you
(28:41):
think are good, you get views.
No, that's not the way it works.
Um, I've talked to a bunch oflike successful creators who
will even say there's a littlebit of luck in there.
Because sometimes there is.
It just depends on like whatyou're doing.
Of course, you got to do all theright things, but sometimes
there's a little luck.
Like a viral hit is rarely aviral hit on purpose.
Rarely.
(29:01):
Sometimes it is, but it'srarely.
Most of the time, it's likecrap, I just had five extra
minutes and I wanted to shootthis thing, and then 300,
700,000, 800,000 views later,two million views later, things
are different.
Um, but what I notice isfrequently, and I'm not gonna
say all the time, I don't liketo carpet answer anything, but I
(29:22):
blanket statement anything.
But I will say that this isroutinely true in our comment
section, here on the podcast oron the main channel.
Someone complains aboutsomething not working, or maybe
that our advice isn't good, orsomething like that.
What it's never anything likethat.
I go to their channel andthey've never done any of the
things that are the obviousthings that you should do.
There was one I saw the otherday, and they were like, you
(29:46):
know, YouTube's like holding meback, they're not giving me
views, I do all these things.
I go to their channel, Icouldn't tell you what their
channel was about at all.
Like, I wouldn't be like if agun to my head, I wouldn't know.
And I'm not saying that to to belike downplaying anything.
I Literally was trying to figureit out.
And the reason why this isimportant is because, as a
viewer, if I go to your channel,what am I watching?
(30:08):
If I if I, as someone who doesthis for a living, couldn't tell
you, a viewer would not only notbe able to tell you, they
wouldn't care long enough to tryto figure it out.
They're not trying here to tryto figure out puzzles, they're
here to be entertained oreducated.
So you get I think some peoplejust think that when they watch
um, you know, YouTube advicevideos and stuff, oh, I'm
already doing that.
(30:28):
Nine times out of ten, you'renot.
I'm just gonna be honest, you'renot doing these things.
Because if you were, youprobably wouldn't be watching
those videos because you'dalready be doing the things.
I don't know.
Am I just am I an old curmudgeonnow, Rob?
Am I just becoming grumpy, likegrumpy Dan but Travis?
SPEAKER_02 (30:42):
I think I think we probably are to a certain
extent.
And I think from the uh viewers'point of view, they're probably
watching like the sixth orseventh video from us or any
other uh YouTube educator, andwe're kind of saying the same
things.
And so because we're all sayingthe same things, uh by osmosis,
(31:03):
they think they're doing thosethings, but they're just hearing
the same thing over and overagain, never applying it and
think, Oh, yeah, I'm doing thatbecause I've heard it so many
times.
The thing I wanted to just umcome back to there was the idea
of luck.
Have you ever played poker?
SPEAKER_00 (31:18):
Uh I mean uh blackjack more than poker, but
I've played games like poker,yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (31:23):
Well, poker is a game that's based on a certain
amount of luck.
But there is something in pokercalled variance, and what that
means is that while there isluck, over time that luck will
balance itself out.
So if you're a really goodplayer, then yeah, you'll have
(31:44):
these tournaments where you goout on a second hand because you
just got really unlucky, right?
And there'll be othertournaments where you get really
lucky and win it.
But overall, if you're a goodplayer and you understand the
fundamentals and you you knowhow to read other players and so
on and so forth, over the longterm, you'll make a profit from
(32:06):
poker.
And I feel as if there is acertain element of that in
YouTube as well, not as much,but like there is perhaps a an
intangible look where you justtime that video to come out at
exactly the right time with theperfect packaging and all of
these stars aligned so that theviewers who watched it first
(32:28):
gave really positive feedback toYouTube, and then that increased
the discovery, and so on and soon.
And so, yeah, maybe there was acertain element of luck there,
but you still had to make thatvideo of a certain standard to
get lucky, if that makes sense.
So, yeah, I I I might make avideo about this at some point
in the future where I can figureout how to visualize this or
(32:50):
explain it in a more concisemanner.
But it's it's a YouTubevariance.
Yeah, there may be that arebrilliant and that don't work in
enough ones where you spend 10minutes on it and it gets tons
of views.
But if you if you can repeatedlydo that over and over again,
you'll get more and more quoteunquote lucky.
SPEAKER_00 (33:09):
I love the title, like this is why YouTube Advice
Doesn't Work For You with acapitalized YOU.
Yeah.
I I like that as a title.
Um, if we had spoken more aboutthis on this podcast, I'd
probably make that the title ofthis channel, of this video.
But uh, we have other things wegotta get to.
Another email from a creator,the boost at videoq.com.
(33:30):
I don't know if we're gonna getan exact answer for this one's a
little complicated.
This one's from Dustin.
I am 90 days new to postingcontent on YouTube and find a
lot of the advice you and otherchannels similar give to be
non-benficial to my specificniche floreography.
Before I go further into this,uh Rob, whenever I see someone
say something like this, I thinkyou're not really listening to
the advice then.
Because the number one advice isobsess over your viewer.
That applies to everybody.
(33:52):
Second advice is make contentpeople want to see.
That applies to everybody.
And the third advice is researchyour niche.
Deep.
That applies to everybody.
Uh, but let's continue on.
A major inconvenience with myniche is the number of words
that do not translate over forcaptions and that simplified for
the amplified for my audiencethat speaks to Arabic and Hindi.
I've been creating a separatevideo file, an SRT file for each
(34:15):
language and uploading in anEnglish-speaking video with a
subtitle file that ispre-translated.
Right or wrong, I have no ideaif most of my views from my
support channel and mysubscribers I invited over from
social media.
More of the information youpresent will be useful when my
channel gets enough data tostart up uh for more analytics
until then I have enoughinformation uh to know what is
going on.
I just curse a lot of this growon YouTube content as I try my
(34:37):
best in confusion.
So this is an interesting emailbecause there is like a question
here, even though it's notreally a question.
And then the actual questionthey have, I think I don't know
that I have the answer to as faras like getting their
translation stuff.
First of all, YouTube is doingthe new translation thing,
auto-dubbing thing, whichwhether or not it's great,
definitely up for argument,should do most of this for you
anyway, should auto-translateinto other languages anyway, so
(34:59):
you shouldn't have to worryabout this.
Um, having said that, this is alittle bit deeper than what I
would be able to help you with.
I think uh team YouTube is theprobably the best place to get
an answer for for that.
Uh, but you know, the first partwhich we already talked about,
which is like it's notbeneficial to your niche.
Uh again, the stuff we're reallyteaching is beneficial to every
niche.
(35:20):
But the this last part, it'sactually really important.
Most of the information youpresent will be useful when my
channel gets enough data tostart opening up more analytics.
This is true.
We actually have this as aproblem for some of the aspects
of the um vidIQ plugin.
We're trying to be better aboutit using AI to give you more
kind of uh results that aren'tnecessarily specific to the data
(35:42):
you don't have because you don'thave it.
But when you have more data, youcan make some better decisions.
So I understand the the thingthere.
Now that's one thing we don'treally talk enough about, maybe
on the channel, even Rob, iswhen you don't have a lot of the
data that we talk about, how doyou how do you make some of
these decisions, even?
SPEAKER_02 (36:00):
So uh I was having a look just in the background to
find out what floreography is.
Yeah, what is that even?
And so its definition is apractice of communicating
messages through the use offlowers and their symbolic
meanings.
That sounds like a pretty uhtight niche.
(36:20):
So when I did when I did asearch on YouTube, here are the
videos at the top of the searchrankings, okay 10,000
subscribers, 46,000 views,70,000, 21,000 views, this is
the third result, 98subscribers, two and a half
thousand views, and all of thosevideos are over a year old.
(36:42):
So the thing we have to acceptand appreciate the moment is
that there is a pretty lowceiling when it comes to
audience on YouTube.
There there is an audiencethere, there's an audience for
everything on the platform, butit is pretty low.
So you I guess in one sense youalready have this big handicap
(37:04):
of trying to uh reach anaudience that isn't particularly
that big big.
Now, it could mean that in yourfavour you don't have much
competition, so you could becomethe dominant floreography
creator on YouTube, which is uhwhich are good.
(37:24):
But yeah, I think going back tothe question then of what if you
don't have the data uh on yourchannel, well I've just done
some external research on datathere to show like the potential
audience that it's not that big.
So like how how then do youmaybe um think about broadening
(37:45):
the what's called the TAM, thetotal addressable market?
It could be something along thelines of uh this form of
communication is this is asecret form of communication
that nobody knows.
Well, I'm really struggling witha title to come up with a few,
but you can kind of see whereI'm going here.
Like there's this form ofcommunication that probably
(38:07):
nobody's ever heard of beforemight actually be fascinating.
But if you start with your nicheas a packaging, floreography,
then I'm afraid it's only goingto reach that audience.
Where we uh think about topicsthat have a certain internal
audience.
(38:28):
But if you just make itinteresting and appealing to a
broader audience, then you canreally tap into the idea of
almost like learning somethingby accident, just by the
strength and the quality of thecontent.
I learned something brand new,even though I wasn't interested
in it this time yesterday.
And there's many occasions onYouTube where I've gone into
(38:49):
those rabbit holes just thanksto really good uh content on the
subject.
SPEAKER_00 (38:52):
What was that creator that used to come
through chat that had a drywallchannel?
SPEAKER_02 (38:56):
Pete Peck Drywall.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (38:58):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (38:59):
Over 100,000 subscribers talking about
drywall.
I seem to remember every livestream.
I said, I don't know how you doit, Paul.
100,000 subscribers.
You are the most boring channelon YouTube.
But you can put a silver playbutton on that wall now.
SPEAKER_00 (39:12):
Exactly.
And that really says everythingyou need to know.
Final email.
This one, uh so the subject wasuh you won't believe these
numbers.
And that's important because ofwhat is said first on this
email, which is this.
Now that you've bitten on thetitle, it's time to confirm the
click by bunkers.
(39:33):
I love this because the titlewas you won't believe these
numbers.
Really great.
After some recent discussions onprevious podcasts about TV
becoming the preferred devicefor viewers, I did some digging
in my own analytics, and here'swhat I found.
I already knew that 48% of mywatch time hours comes from TV
because that is a helpfulanalytic that you can see in the
YouTube Studio Phone app.
What I didn't know until I tooka little deep dive into the end
(39:53):
of the end of the swimming poolis that only 25% of my viewers
consume my long-form content viaTV.
47% of viewers are still onmobile, which is now concerning
me because I've been makinglonger videos targeted at that
audience.
Mobile has my worst average viewduration out of any device,
about three minutes, while TV isalmost 10 minutes, which by the
way should not be surprising.
Yeah.
(40:14):
This question is like a Cadburytop deck.
It has two elements that need tobe consumed together.
Do you think I should mix up thelength of my videos and try to
focus on my mobile users?
Or shall I focus on how to getmore clicks on TV?
As it shows, once they click,they enjoy the video more.
The AI coach from VidIQ has beengreat, but I figured this was a
question for the experts.
Yeah, the experts.
unknown (40:33):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
I'm trying to get my head around all of those numbers
without seeing the graph inYouTube.
SPEAKER_00 (40:38):
Yeah, so like they say that 48% of the watch time
comes from TV, but then theyimmediately say that only 25% of
their viewers watch long formvia TV, which is a weird number.
47% are still viewers.
So how does it how does 48% comefrom TV, but only 25 watch via
TV?
SPEAKER_02 (40:54):
Because I think they said that the long form.
So I guess a lot of their shortsmaybe are via TV.
I thought it was because thewatch time is 10 minutes on TV
when it's when it three minuteson mobile.
SPEAKER_00 (41:06):
You're right.
The watch time.
Right.
Exactly.
And there's a couple reasons forthat I've explained in previous
episodes.
But yes.
Um, so he's basically saying, soshould I focus more on mobile or
TV?
What do you think when you justhear this?
Like I I have my own thoughts,but I'm interested what you
think.
SPEAKER_02 (41:21):
I think what YouTube would love you to do is focus on
TV just because they love tobrag about being the biggest
streaming platform on TV now,above Netflix and uh Disney uh
and all the rest.
So I think there's probably uh apush there for TV content.
How do you focus on that?
It's I think there's twoelements to this.
(41:43):
It's obviously increasing theproduction quality if you can,
because if people are probablywatching a 4K television, are
you able to create content inthat format?
But also this idea of the what'scalled the lean back experience,
where somebody is watching TV,but they're also multitasking.
So they might be watching yourYouTube channel, but they're
(42:03):
also scrolling through their umReddit on their phone.
Um that means that you can kindof create uh more casual content
where the viewer doesn't have tobe um really attentively
watching the the uh thetelevision.
They kind of they might just belistening to you rather than
(42:24):
watching you, which means thenthat the the narrative uh and
your uh presenting and voiceover becomes quite important as
well.
Those are the two things thatimmediately come to mind,
Travis.
I'd love to know what you think.
SPEAKER_00 (42:36):
Yeah, I I think you're right.
Um TV is growing, and it'ssomething you should be aware of
depending on your niche.
It's not growing in every niche,by the way.
It's not like universal.
I think that there's just a lotmore content that's easier to
watch on TV, but plus, it's mucheasier to watch YouTube on TV
than it ever has been.
So that actually doesn't hurteither.
I think you just make goodcontent.
I think ultimately YouTube'sgonna find yeah, right.
(42:58):
YouTube's gonna find the placeto put it.
They spend hundreds of millionsof dollars every year getting
their AI to understand whatpeople like.
So leverage that.
Just make some good content.
And you know, if you're a muchbigger channel, I might give you
slightly different advice.
I'm gonna tell you not to worryabout it.
SPEAKER_02 (43:15):
My suggestion might be uh make even longer content.
Yeah, you can do that as well.
This might be an experiment,like so.
Let's say your average video is10 minutes.
Why not try a 25-minute video?
Yeah, and for your own sanity,you don't spend twice as long on
it on it.
(43:36):
So like you maybe make the editsimpler, or you just leave in
more of a conversational stuffof things that you would usually
trim out purely as anexperiment.
It might not work, but if you'refinding uh better, more valuable
results coming from TV, thenthat usually does give you
(43:57):
permission to try longer, evenlonger form content.
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
The longer you become a content creator, the
better your instincts are.
So I just want to remind youthat if you if you feel like,
oh, I think this new directionmight work on my channel, an
experiment is not one video.
You gotta do several.
Because one is probably going todraw, it's probably not going to
do well initially.
It doesn't mean it won't ever dowell, but you can't just do it
(44:20):
on one video and say, okay,well, that's it didn't work, so
I'm not gonna do it anymore.
Because it's probably not gonnawork, at least initially.
You need to have several videos,anywhere between three to five,
and if you're really brave, ten,especially if you're gonna do a
pivot.
But three to five, if you're ifyou really want to know if a new
format's gonna work, and thenyou kind of wait a little while
and see what happens.
That will give you thedefinition of whether or not
(44:41):
it's going to work for you.
Uh, you're not gonna break yourchannel, generally speaking, as
long as you've thought about theyou thought about it, it makes
sense for partially at leastyour existing audience, and then
to also take your your hopefullynew audience and bring them in
as well.
So consider all those things.
With that, another successful uhepisode has been complete with
(45:02):
Mr.
Wilson, which is great.
SPEAKER_02 (45:04):
Nice.
SPEAKER_00 (45:04):
Uh we can get on to the rest of our days and
weekends ahead.
What kind of cool, amazingthings are you looking forward
to in the next couple of daysthere, uh Rob?
SPEAKER_02 (45:13):
So uh from a gaming perspective, I have been
enjoying Silksong, as many gameshave been.
Incredibly hard game.
I got to the final, final boss.
Have you ever played it, Travis,by the way?
Like no, no.
SPEAKER_00 (45:27):
I just found out last night that both games are
on Game Pass, so I could playthem.
SPEAKER_02 (45:30):
Yeah, oh absolutely.
Uh certainly uh I'd I'd startwith Hollow Knight.
Uh yeah, I got to the finalboss, tried it maybe 30 times
because that's the type of gameit is, like you just die over
and over again, learning thetactics of a boss.
And I just said, okay, this iscool.
I'm not gonna get frustrated,I'm not gonna let this ruin my
(45:52):
experience of this amazing game.
I'm gonna peace out, I'm notgonna complete it now, I'm gonna
start playing else, and I moveon to Mario Galaxy.
So, like blast from the past 15years since I played it, and
it's like a nice refreshing apalette cleanser of a video
game.
So that's my gaming uh stuff.
Um I'm actually getting a bit ofOOO soon, Travis.
(46:16):
Out of office to Crete, uh,which is uh an island off Greece
now because we went to Cyprusearlier on in the year, really
enjoyed that.
So yeah, Crete.
Let me know what restaurant Ishould try in Crete.
SPEAKER_00 (46:35):
There might be a Crete listener.
Yeah, maybe there is.
Shout out to that'd be cool.
Shout out to the people inCrete.
Uh, I've been playing um I'mfinishing up my season NBA 2K25.
Uh, I went back into Borderlands3 a couple of weeks back, and
I'm really enjoying that.
Was getting ready forBorderlands 4.
I'm gonna wait until that'spatched and on sale.
Battlefield 56 comes out thisweekend.
(46:56):
I'm really tempted to get it,but I want to get it when other
friends have it because superfun game, but it's fun with
friends.
And I still have on my backlogFinal Fantasy Rebirth, which I'm
a couple hours in but haven'tplayed in a couple weeks.
Um, Spider-Man 2, which I reallywant to get through.
I haven't tasted it all yet.
Yeah.
I know.
They're both installed, ready togo.
I have my backlog's ridiculous.
(47:17):
So I'll definitely be doingthose things.
And uh I'm watching some um somefighting tournaments this
weekend.
So just uh a fun little relaxingweekend.
You know, of course, peoplelisten to this on a Monday like
my weekend's over.
Well, ours is about to begin.
That's what happens when thetime speaks.
SPEAKER_02 (47:31):
Mine started an hour ago.
I just love talking to Travis somuch.
I'd make Travis part of myweekend.
SPEAKER_00 (47:38):
I appreciate that so much.
Anyway, thank y'all for joiningus.
Of course, if you're here on theYouTube channel, hit that
subscribe button if you feellike it.
If you're listening to the audiopodcast, listen, uh, leave us a
little five uh star uh review.
Why not?
Just cuz because we love youthat much.
And we'll see y'all in the nextone.
It's a YouTube variance.
If you can repeatedly do thatover and over again, you'll get
more and more quote unquotelucky.
SPEAKER_00 (00:07):
Like YouTube is not the easiest platform to grow on,
although it has the mostopportunity.
But don't confuse that with itbeing easy.
This is the only podcast thatcomes to you live and living
color, recorded with no AIincluded.
My name's Travis, and I'm herewith Rob.
Welcome back, Rob.
It's been a minute.
SPEAKER_02 (00:23):
Hey everybody, my name is Rob Wilson, and I
represent VidIQ.
I am not an AI avatar.
SPEAKER_00 (00:32):
I love this.
And you know, we did an episode,Dan and I, just the other day,
well, actually would have beenlast week when you're listening
to this, about AI, and I nevergot your feelings on it.
Although, if you're on the mainvidIQ channel, you've seen some
of Rob's thoughts.
But let's talk about here on thepodcast before we get into some
of these questions that havebeen sent in.
All right.
And of course, if you're newhere, this is a podcast to help
you grow a YouTube channel.
(00:52):
We talk about a lot of differentthings.
The news of YouTube, and ofcourse, we answer your questions
as you send them in.
Uh last episode, we talked AIand Sora 2, and you've gotten uh
you've done a lot with it.
What are your thoughts now?
SPEAKER_02 (01:06):
Yeah, I guess you might describe me as reluctantly
embracing it at the moment, justbecause uh I am part of a team
that is all about YouTubeeducation, and we can't ignore
the fact that AI is here, hereto stay, and this time next year
(01:29):
it's gonna be unrecognizablefrom what it is today, and I
think we need to be aware ofthat regardless of or not of
whether we use it.
I have found myself maybe notsubconscious as not the right
word, but I have found myselftrying to dab my feet into it
(01:52):
for little bits here and there,and it's not usually for like
B-roll where you might expect itcould be useful.
For me, Travis, right now I justseem to be using it for nothing
but comedy.
Like when I want to do somethingfun and entertaining that isn't
serious, like it's almostintentionally bad AI, and you
(02:14):
know it is, but it's used toemphasize a joke in the video.
I think that's the extent ofwhere I am using it comfortably
right now.
And I think I'm I'm more thanhappy to use myself in a
self-deprecating manner with AI,and and and you as well, if
you've seen the video that wentout today, and some some
(02:36):
wonderful vocals you've got onyour yourself.
Very impressive.
But yeah, for the for thebroader creative domain, I kind
of am bowing down to thethoughts of people like Casey
(02:57):
Neistat, who seem to have a muchmore rounded and thoughtful uh
opinion on it, in the sense he'stalking about the funnel is
getting bigger and bigger at thetop, in the sense that pretty
much anybody now can makecontent using a it's not even
(03:19):
like a camera anymore.
You can make a video with asentence and access to the
internet.
Now you that that's that's wherewe've got to.
Uh, but that funnel is enormous,and how much good content is
coming out of it at the momentis a question that I uh can't
fathom or answer.
SPEAKER_00 (03:39):
If I'm on the Yeah, and uh Dan and I dove in this
for about an hour in the lastpodcast.
So if you're interested in thesubject, make sure you go back
and listen.
And one of the things we didtalk about, I be I want to take
get your take on this one thingthat Dan came up with that I
started to agree with thecomments on that video or both
ways, and that is that youaren't necessarily creating your
prompting, so you're a promptingengineer.
(04:00):
I saw a comment in the videosaying that no, I'm still a
creator because somehow theycreated it with the sentence.
And I I still feel like you'veprompted something else to
create for you.
I can see where see here's mythought on it.
I think I'm I'm still on theside of it being prompted.
I could always be, I'm prettyopen-minded about things.
(04:20):
Someone can change my mind.
But you're prompting an engineto do all the creative work for
you.
No matter what you've described,it is not as descriptive of as
what ends up happening in thevideo.
Um, sometimes it's pretty closeto it.
Sometimes it does something youdidn't even think to do, and
you're like, oh, that's evenbetter.
But so did you create that?
I feel like you promptedsomeone.
It's almost like me going to anartist and saying, paint this
(04:44):
picture of a lovely beach, andthen coming back, and this
amazing pick painting has beendone, and you go, Yeah, I
created that.
Um you prompted the painter topaint it.
But I don't know, what do youfeel about it?
SPEAKER_02 (04:56):
I was ready to disagree with you up to the
point of where you said yeah, Igot someone else to do it, but
I'm claiming it as my work.
It's like, yeah, yeah, I kind ofsee what you're where you're
coming from there because thereis this bit in the video that I
did today where I prompted SamAltman to say something along
(05:19):
the lines of we're embarking onthe greatest project in global
history of I have a asking forforgiveness, not permission, in
the sense that they haveseemingly downloaded the
internet and are now offeringthat back up to us in this huge
(05:43):
cement mixer of uh results.
Right, wow.
It kind of makes it feel a biticky.
When uh when you consider thatthere are going to be people out
there who see the the financialbenefits and opportunities from
that.
But I'm I'm trying I was uh Iwas I was uh gonna respond
(06:03):
initially with the idea of butyeah, but think about a script
maker who wants to turn theirprose into something visual, but
they don't have the they don'thave a cast, they don't have the
equipment, they don't have uhthe budget to go on s on on
location and do all of thesethings.
(06:24):
And uh Kisten Isle was talkingabout this in terms of f
friction.
You know, you can remove all ofthis crit friction to make
creativity accessible to all,but yeah, I guess rem the
removal of the friction isactually what's like a it's like
a placeholder if it's been putthere, or like a boilerplate.
(06:45):
You know, OpenAI has has hasgiven you all of these
boilerplates, but they've mayberequired them acquired them
through nefarious actions.
I don't know, is that is thatliable?
Do we need to edit that out of abook?
No, I think you can say that.
I mean it's been controversial.
SPEAKER_00 (07:01):
I mean, people have shouted up because you know they
they scour the internet andYouTube videos and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 (07:05):
I mean, if you if you prompt into a video
generator from wherever, open AIor whatever, give me SpongeBob
SquarePants doing a funny dance,and it generates that, there is
only one way they were able toget that source material by
accessing it from somewhere.
And as far as we know, was thatpermission granted to the
(07:32):
generative program where it wasmade?
SPEAKER_00 (07:35):
And that's another subject that Dan and I talked
about in the last podcast.
So make sure you check that out.
If you have not already and youlike the subject, it's very
deep.
It's not just, oh, is AI good orbad?
Like we really dove into it.
So this podcast is where weanswer your questions, and you
can send us messages.
How do you do that, you ask?
As you always ask.
I'll tell you.
If you're listening to theaudio-only podcast, there's an
(07:56):
option in the show notes thatsays text us.
And if you click that, it'llsend us a text message, much
like the one we have today.
Um, sometimes it doesn't peopledon't leave their names, so I
don't necessarily know who theperson is, but here's what they
sent us.
I'm a 50-old, 50-year-old newYouTuber.
I have a reaction channel thatwas just monetized.
(08:17):
Congratulations.
I want to pivot into parentingcontent as I'm a mom of six
across three decades.
Whoa.
I have four adult children andtwo under seven.
I'm sorry, what?
You have two kids under sevenand you're 50?
Well, let me take my hat off toyou because I'm gonna tell you
something right now.
I'm not trying to be around nokids under seven right now.
Too old for that.
(08:38):
I want to pivot into contentaround the world I grew up in
and raise my first four childrenin, no longer existing and
navigating the parenting intoday's world.
I think what they're basicallyasking is, how do they do that?
That's a great question becauseit depends on what your reaction
channel was of.
Like, I don't know, that's theone thing you don't tell us.
Yep.
So I feel like what they'resaying is that you know they
(09:00):
want to pivot a content aroundthe world I grew up in and
raised their first four childrenin that no longer exist, I
guess.
Especially considering thattoday is so different.
Like, so if you are reacting tothe news, then being able to
pivot to a channel about howthings are different now versus
(09:20):
you know back then, that therecould be like some Venn diagram
overlap there, right?
But if you're reacting to funnyTikToks and now you want to do
something serious, that soundslike a new channel to me.
I don't know.
What do you think there, Rob?
SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
It sounds like a new channel just on the limited
information that we have, but II think the encouraging thing to
say is that if this creator hasalready been able to monetize a
reaction channel, I see noreason why they can't monetize a
parenting channel, but do itfaster because you've already
(09:57):
learned a lot of the things thatyou need to learn and you've
already done a lot of themistakes that many creators uh
make.
And it sounds like you got apretty unique perspective on
this given uh the the experienceyou have in parenting, and uh so
their their parenting nowcovers, I guess, a time frame of
(10:22):
uh grown adults who may alreadyuh be married and having their
own children and continuing toraise uh uh uh younger children
themselves.
So I think that felt seems likea really interesting dynamic
that we always talk about thisuh skill or superpower of being
uh irreplaceable, you know,whether it's the DIY aficionado
(10:49):
who has this big um shed thatthey can work in or this big
space.
This creator, I think, has thisunique super superpower that's
hard to really hard to replicateby anyone else.
SPEAKER_00 (11:02):
Yes, I a hundred percent agree.
Their story is interesting.
And over the course of manyvideos, they could tell their
story and then give tips.
Like as you're older, I don'tknow, I'm gonna speak for
myself.
I'm not gonna speak for thisperson, I don't know them.
Uh at my age, I have lesspatience.
A seven-year-old around me wouldnot live very long because I do
(11:23):
not have the patience for it.
I just don't have the patiencefor things right now.
If I was 30, maybe I'd have morepatience.
So I feel like that's aninteresting subject.
Like, as an older parent,there's you know plenty of older
parents out there.
How do you deal with that?
How do you deal with the I meanit's it's one thing when you're
just a regular parent of quotenormal age, whatever that even
is, say in your mid-30s, andyour kid comes home and says a
(11:47):
bunch of words that you don'tunderstand.
I feel more disconnected fromthat age group than ever.
Like, I I just got a got on towhat Cap was just a couple years
ago, and they keep coming upwith Skippity Doo toilets and
all this other stuff.
I don't know what any of thisstuff means.
I don't need to know it.
Um, but imagine that's like yougot to deal with your kids every
day coming home saying some newstuff and trying to understand
(12:09):
what it is or and plus nowthey're growing up with things
like AI.
AI was in the movies when I grewup, that wasn't a real thing.
It was like cool, oh, that looksreally cool.
No, this is on your phone now.
And by the way, you have a phonethat you can walk around with.
That wasn't something I had whenI was growing up either.
So I feel like that's such aninteresting story that you could
(12:31):
tell that um, and it soundssimilar to what you're talking
about.
Um, that just I would just makea new channel with that.
I wouldn't even pivot the otherchannel.
SPEAKER_02 (12:39):
I would just keep it.
Let's not pollute your uhcurrent reaction channel if it's
continue to do well and continueto support that channel and uh
the audience there, that isgonna bring in some revenue,
which may help you with this newchannel.
Hey, maybe this could be theopportunity where you think
about the let's say you earn ahundred dollars a month from the
(13:02):
main channel, you take thathundred dollars and you give it
to an editor, or whatever youhate doing, you can outsource
that for the second channel, uh,and that allows you to scale it
a little bit quicker.
SPEAKER_00 (13:14):
I love that.
That's so smart, and it'ssomething that um we have
encouraged people to do, like asthey get monetized or whatever,
find that thing that you need tooff, you know, put off with it's
thumbnails or whatever.
Of course, we have you knowthumbnail generation stuff here
at vidIQ, but whatever it is,and invest back into the
channel, you'd be surprised howmuch how much faster that helps
you grow.
This next one is an email.
Of course, you can send us anemail, theboost at vidIQ.com.
(13:37):
Very short message, but thepicture tells a thousand words.
And I know you're gonna havethoughts about this.
Why did second place win?
And for the audio podcastlisteners, Chris sent in an
email with a picture of thethumbnail uh A-B test thing.
And um it shows threethumbnails, all different, which
by the way, in my opinion, well,two of them are different, two
(13:58):
of them are the same, and one'skind of way different.
I like the fact that they wentwith completely
different-looking thumbnails forthe most part.
For audio, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_02 (14:05):
I've had to put on my over glasses so I can see so
he can zoom in and look.
SPEAKER_00 (14:09):
And um it says the test finished without a
conclusive result, which ispretty common for smaller
channels and stuff.
That's actually very common.
And what he's showing here is umthat thumbnail one, which is
41%, is now being shown versusthumbnail two, which has 42%.
So technically it's the winner,yeah, and then thumbnail three
had 16%.
(14:30):
So he's asking, why did secondplace win?
Um and the real answer is thathere at the top, but I want to
go deeper into like why this isa thing, but the test finished
without a conclusive resultmeans it's pretty much going to
put whatever your defaultthumbnail is as the winner.
Yeah, so that's why that quotewon.
And because it's a 0.6%difference between first and
(14:52):
second place, it's just likeit's not really conclusive.
Now, we had a meeting recentlywhere you were kind of talking a
little bit about this tool andthe title tool and such.
And Dan has given his thoughtson it too.
And I've I'm kind of somewherein the middle.
Can you share your thoughtsafter having used this tool and
the title tool for a while now?
Kind of your overarching thoughton the use of it.
(15:16):
You know, we waited for yearsfor this tool.
Was it worth the wait?
That sort of thing.
Give us everything.
SPEAKER_02 (15:24):
I want us to give some feedback on the results
there first.
Do you mind?
SPEAKER_00 (15:27):
Oh, all right, let me I'll pull it back up.
SPEAKER_02 (15:28):
Yeah, so because what I find interesting here is
that there's three thumbnails,but again, for audio listeners,
thumbnail one and thumbnailthree to me look pretty similar.
The the colours are a littledifferent, like one's brighter
than the other, but it lookslike it's using the same two
(15:49):
pieces of box art, maybe, andthe same text.
But thumbnail one has 41% watchtime share, and thumbnail three
has 16.1% share.
My guess is that the sample sizehere probably wasn't that big
because the test also took anentire week as well.
(16:11):
Whereas we will probably getresults in about two or three
hours, which means that you'reprobably looking at maybe tens
of thousands of impressions, acouple of thousand views.
That's what it usually needs toget a result.
So I'm not sure if the test hasbeen big enough for sample size.
Because the thing that's alwaysmissing from this, and I think
this is where I move on to thebroader question of how useful I
(16:34):
find it, it gives you the watchtime share, but it doesn't give
you the actual share of uh orimpressions.
Right.
We would assume that this wouldbe 33.3% for all of these.
It would equally share out thisthumbnail to everybody.
But just looking at some of theresults over the last two years
that we've had it, I'm I'm notconvinced that is a case.
SPEAKER_00 (16:59):
I don't think it is.
SPEAKER_02 (17:00):
I almost feel as if it might be 40% for one of them,
33% for another one, and then27% share, you know, like
impression share.
Maybe that's a conspiracytheory.
Um and and maybe over time, eventhough it's doing a test, it
starts to weight itself more tothe one that's performing
better.
SPEAKER_00 (17:20):
That's what I think.
That's actually what I think,yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:23):
But I'm sure people, anyone at YouTube listening to
that is just gonna say, this isjust somebody who doesn't know
how to use a tool, and uhthey're trying to think of
reasons why their thumbnailsaren't performing that well.
I'm getting more and more to thepoint where I feel as if
thumbnail testing has screwedwith my head.
(17:44):
Because now I don't think we canuh put out a video without
either title testing orthumbnail testing.
Even though we have never cometo a conclusive result about
what thumbnails perform best onour channel, like either with a
(18:05):
person in the face or using acertain background or a certain
emotive text.
That may be blame that can beput on us, maybe we're not
disciplined and scientificenough to do these tests
properly.
That we kind of just say, oh,we're just gonna throw these
thumbnails at it and see whathappens.
(18:26):
It may be blame needs to be puton us, and if we're not doing it
right, then imagine theresources and people and uh
patience you you do have to putup against these tools for them
to give you really good resultsand feedback.
Like I'm I'm thinking aboutchannels with tens of millions
(18:46):
of subscribers, the Mr.
Beast of the World, who can havea full-time thumbnail maker and
a full-time title writer whodoes nothing but test these.
Like for us, it's what five-10%of our effort and time.
And the last point I wanted tomake is because the tool's
(19:11):
there, you feel as if you haveto use it.
And I really want to go througha period of time on our content
where we actually don't use atool just to see if we can
determine whether or not our gutfeeling with the the title and
the thumbnail that we feelstrongest about, we use rather
than testing against three.
Because again, another thing tothink about is in the first 24
(19:34):
to 48 hours, that's when you'regetting a high degree of your
initial impressions, and itfeels like you're almost wasting
those impressions on testingsomething that you think's
probably not gonna work, but youwant to test it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:48):
No, no, that's right.
And the other thing is that'sactually important because the
viewership is different.
So, quite frankly, you shouldalready kind of know what's
gonna work for that initialgroup because it's the people
who watch you the most.
The A-B thumbnail testing andtitle testing actually would be
more uh interesting and morehelpful after it goes out of
that group and goes into peoplewho don't know you.
(20:11):
Unfortunately, by that point,there's so few impressions that
the test takes so darn long thatsometimes it's inconclusive.
But that's actually when youneed it.
Because if you've grown any typeof audience, or if you have an
audience that watches you, youkind of know what they're gonna
click on already.
So you don't need it as much.
But most people don't even thinkabout it like that.
They think, well, the onlyexception really to this is if
(20:33):
you have a uh a topic that popsoff and it gets shown to a whole
bunch of people that are new toyour channel right off the bat,
and then it might be somewhathelpful.
But by and large, 99% of thetime, you really actually need
it towards the end, not thebeginning, uh, for the exact
reasons that you explained.
So it puts us in a pickle.
Like, do we use it or don't we?
I know you're almost leaningtowards not using it anymore,
(20:55):
period, or just in certaincircumstances?
Like, do are there just certaincircumstances where you're like,
I feel so strong about this thatI just don't need it, or well,
I'm like, what are you what'syour conclusion?
SPEAKER_02 (21:04):
I feel like I just need a clean slate, Travis, from
from this.
I just I've been using it fortwo years and I I can't tell you
conclusively how it's benefitedthe channel at all.
Because you look at our channelright now, and every thumbnail
is I'm not gonna saysignificantly different to each
one, but there are differenceswhich I think means that our
(21:30):
branding and our consistency isa little lost in them.
And I I would just I would I'dlike the idea of just forcing
our channel to look in a in aconsistent and similar way for
like 20 videos.
So, like, you know, when you goto the channel and you see the
canvas of thumbnails, they alllook similar to a certain degree
(21:53):
uh rather than now where there'sthat association through our
faces, but sometimes we're usinga white background with really
harsh black text, and thenanother one we'll have a graph
in a background, and so it justfeels as if it loses its
consistency, even though we havea thumbnail editor, like Mena
does an amazing job on ourthumbnails, but we're getting
(22:14):
multiple concepts, and I just Idon't think I'm I'm fixed on any
of them right now.
SPEAKER_00 (22:20):
It's very difficult to know what to take away from
it.
And I think it's different fordifferent people.
I think depending on what you'retrying to accomplish and kind of
what what kind of uh my my Zorajust went off.
Uh what kind of um what kind ofthings you're trying to
accomplish, whether it begrowing your existing audience
(22:41):
or deepening that connection orgrowing a new audience, which I
think most people want.
And YouTube doesn't do a goodenough job explaining like what
should this be used for, becauseI don't know if they actually
know.
In other words, they gave us atool after testing it that came
back with some results, but whatare the best results for a
(23:01):
creator?
The best results are for thefirst 24-48 hours appealing to
people that know the channel orknow the subject, and then well
after that, bringing in newpeople, but they don't really
explain that to you, they don'tgive you a a way and a tool to
A-B test in two different timeperiods, like one first 24
(23:23):
hours, one week later.
They just kind of give you thistool and say, make it work.
There you go, you've asked forit for years, here it is, and
it's not even I don't know thatit's measuring the right thing,
and they've admitted this too.
Because they even tell us thatnot all watch time is equal.
So why is it that they'remeasuring it against watch time?
That's weird.
I don't know, it's it's strange.
(23:44):
So, anywho, that's that.
SPEAKER_02 (23:46):
I think to play a devil's advocate a little bit, I
think we're we're um conversingas power users, where we kind of
have a strong knowledge of whata thumbnail should be and the
analytics behind it.
But you have to accept that like99% of creators just see a tool
(24:06):
and oh upload three upload threethumbnails and the highest
percentage wins, and that's allyou need to know.
And I I understand thesimplicity that I do go back to
that idea of it just works interms of how easy it is to
implement.
Uh and I was just looking at ouranalytics here because I wanted
to see if our channel-wideclick-through rate had moved at
(24:28):
all since we got it.
So in 2023, this time in 2023,which I think was just before we
got OB thumbnail testing, ithovered around I would say at
the very top, 5%, at the verybottom, 3-3.5%.
And now if I go to now it'smaybe increased by half a
(24:54):
percent.
So I don't know, does that meanthat Airbnb testing is working?
But our impressions are weardown compared to where they were
two years ago.
SPEAKER_00 (25:04):
And that's the thing, impressions are
important.
SPEAKER_02 (25:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:08):
So maybe the thumbnails are working more for
our concentrated audience, butnot for a new audience.
Perhaps.
And that's that's where you haveto dive into statistics even
more.
And by the way, if you needsomeone to dive into your
statistics, we have a link uhdown in the description in the
show notes for our one-on-onecoaching where an actual human
coach will go into youranalytics and help you figure
out what you need to do to moveforward on your YouTube channel.
(25:30):
All right, next email.
The boost at vidik.com.
If you want to send us amessage, it's the boost at
vidik.com comes from frequentemailer Frank the Dang.
I was listening to the podcasttoday and had a sudden starting
important realization.
There was no talk of candy,which is true.
There's been a couple episodeswhere there weren't.
As an OG listener, it left mysweet tooth aching rather than
craving.
So here's a real importantquestion of the day for me.
(25:52):
Where do y'all stand on circuspeanuts?
You know, the orange foammarshmallow peanuts.
I think I know exactly what he'stalking about.
I have no clue.
Google it.
Google it.
Circus peanut peanuts.
Uh hot take here, but I lovethem, especially the soft ones.
Or if I leave them in the bagcar for a couple hours in the
summer, just don't microwavethem, trust me on this one.
Uh, much like a lot of thosetypes of candies, trash.
(26:14):
Not worth your time.
Don't do that to yourself.
You can use it for uh shippingthings, like packing peanuts.
A B testing, this is ironic.
A B testing still feels like acop-out to me, titles or
thumbnails.
Spend that extra time puttingthe love and passion of your
existing formula.
I think it'll go further in thelong run.
One good genuine effort is bestthan better than three
half-hearted tickets in thealgorithmic lottery.
(26:36):
That's a cool little sentencethere at the end.
SPEAKER_02 (26:38):
It's an interesting way of thinking about it in the
sense that now we have thistool, maybe our focus is being
diluted by the fact that we'reimmediately thinking I've got to
come up with at least two orthree thumbnails, or I've got to
come up with at least two orthree titles, rather than just
(27:01):
saying, right, what's the besttitle I can come up with here?
But there's also the otherargument that strategists will
say that you should always becoming up with like 10 or 50
titles and then narrowing itdown to the to the best one.
But yeah, it's an idea I canunderstand and appreciate and
kind of embrace in a moment.
SPEAKER_00 (27:21):
99% of the time when I'm creating content, I know the
title before I ever shoot thevideo, which I still think is a
good best practice.
And even better if you have thetitle and thumbnail already in
mind.
The podcast is the big exceptionbecause a lot of times I don't
know exactly where the meat ofthis video is going to go, and
it's a long video, right?
SPEAKER_01 (27:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:39):
So I don't know until after the fact.
Um, I don't recommend that forregular content.
I feel like if you do that,you're trying to stuff the most
important part of a video intothe last second.
And sometimes you're failing thevideo.
Like maybe you made thisincredible video, uh, you don't
know how to title it, and thenno one clicks on it because no
one knows that it's anincredible video because your
title and thumbnails suck.
(28:00):
And that comes back to a quicksubject I want to jump into,
which is a lot of times we'llsee um I'll see comments because
I see tons of comments everyweek.
Doing this for a job is like yousee comment YouTube comments and
everything all day.
And a lot of times you'll seepeople complain about what's
happening to them on YouTube.
(28:20):
And I just got to tell you thatlike YouTube is not the easiest
platform to grow on.
It's just plain not.
And in some instances, it mightbe one of the hardest, although
it has the most opportunity.
Um, but don't confuse that withit being easy.
I think some people think thatif you do A plus B, C happens.
If you put in some good work,some titles and thumbnails you
(28:41):
think are good, you get views.
No, that's not the way it works.
Um, I've talked to a bunch oflike successful creators who
will even say there's a littlebit of luck in there.
Because sometimes there is.
It just depends on like whatyou're doing.
Of course, you got to do all theright things, but sometimes
there's a little luck.
Like a viral hit is rarely aviral hit on purpose.
Rarely.
(29:01):
Sometimes it is, but it'srarely.
Most of the time, it's likecrap, I just had five extra
minutes and I wanted to shootthis thing, and then 300,
700,000, 800,000 views later,two million views later, things
are different.
Um, but what I notice isfrequently, and I'm not gonna
say all the time, I don't liketo carpet answer anything, but I
(29:22):
blanket statement anything.
But I will say that this isroutinely true in our comment
section, here on the podcast oron the main channel.
Someone complains aboutsomething not working, or maybe
that our advice isn't good, orsomething like that.
What it's never anything likethat.
I go to their channel andthey've never done any of the
things that are the obviousthings that you should do.
There was one I saw the otherday, and they were like, you
(29:46):
know, YouTube's like holding meback, they're not giving me
views, I do all these things.
I go to their channel, Icouldn't tell you what their
channel was about at all.
Like, I wouldn't be like if agun to my head, I wouldn't know.
And I'm not saying that to to belike downplaying anything.
I Literally was trying to figureit out.
And the reason why this isimportant is because, as a
viewer, if I go to your channel,what am I watching?
(30:08):
If I if I, as someone who doesthis for a living, couldn't tell
you, a viewer would not only notbe able to tell you, they
wouldn't care long enough to tryto figure it out.
They're not trying here to tryto figure out puzzles, they're
here to be entertained oreducated.
So you get I think some peoplejust think that when they watch
um, you know, YouTube advicevideos and stuff, oh, I'm
already doing that.
(30:28):
Nine times out of ten, you'renot.
I'm just gonna be honest, you'renot doing these things.
Because if you were, youprobably wouldn't be watching
those videos because you'dalready be doing the things.
I don't know.
Am I just am I an old curmudgeonnow, Rob?
Am I just becoming grumpy, likegrumpy Dan but Travis?
SPEAKER_02 (30:42):
I think I think we probably are to a certain
extent.
And I think from the uh viewers'point of view, they're probably
watching like the sixth orseventh video from us or any
other uh YouTube educator, andwe're kind of saying the same
things.
And so because we're all sayingthe same things, uh by osmosis,
(31:03):
they think they're doing thosethings, but they're just hearing
the same thing over and overagain, never applying it and
think, Oh, yeah, I'm doing thatbecause I've heard it so many
times.
The thing I wanted to just umcome back to there was the idea
of luck.
Have you ever played poker?
SPEAKER_00 (31:18):
Uh I mean uh blackjack more than poker, but
I've played games like poker,yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (31:23):
Well, poker is a game that's based on a certain
amount of luck.
But there is something in pokercalled variance, and what that
means is that while there isluck, over time that luck will
balance itself out.
So if you're a really goodplayer, then yeah, you'll have
(31:44):
these tournaments where you goout on a second hand because you
just got really unlucky, right?
And there'll be othertournaments where you get really
lucky and win it.
But overall, if you're a goodplayer and you understand the
fundamentals and you you knowhow to read other players and so
on and so forth, over the longterm, you'll make a profit from
(32:06):
poker.
And I feel as if there is acertain element of that in
YouTube as well, not as much,but like there is perhaps a an
intangible look where you justtime that video to come out at
exactly the right time with theperfect packaging and all of
these stars aligned so that theviewers who watched it first
(32:28):
gave really positive feedback toYouTube, and then that increased
the discovery, and so on and soon.
And so, yeah, maybe there was acertain element of luck there,
but you still had to make thatvideo of a certain standard to
get lucky, if that makes sense.
So, yeah, I I I might make avideo about this at some point
in the future where I can figureout how to visualize this or
(32:50):
explain it in a more concisemanner.
But it's it's a YouTubevariance.
Yeah, there may be that arebrilliant and that don't work in
enough ones where you spend 10minutes on it and it gets tons
of views.
But if you if you can repeatedlydo that over and over again,
you'll get more and more quoteunquote lucky.
SPEAKER_00 (33:09):
I love the title, like this is why YouTube Advice
Doesn't Work For You with acapitalized YOU.
Yeah.
I I like that as a title.
Um, if we had spoken more aboutthis on this podcast, I'd
probably make that the title ofthis channel, of this video.
But uh, we have other things wegotta get to.
Another email from a creator,the boost at videoq.com.
(33:30):
I don't know if we're gonna getan exact answer for this one's a
little complicated.
This one's from Dustin.
I am 90 days new to postingcontent on YouTube and find a
lot of the advice you and otherchannels similar give to be
non-benficial to my specificniche floreography.
Before I go further into this,uh Rob, whenever I see someone
say something like this, I thinkyou're not really listening to
the advice then.
Because the number one advice isobsess over your viewer.
That applies to everybody.
(33:52):
Second advice is make contentpeople want to see.
That applies to everybody.
And the third advice is researchyour niche.
Deep.
That applies to everybody.
Uh, but let's continue on.
A major inconvenience with myniche is the number of words
that do not translate over forcaptions and that simplified for
the amplified for my audiencethat speaks to Arabic and Hindi.
I've been creating a separatevideo file, an SRT file for each
(34:15):
language and uploading in anEnglish-speaking video with a
subtitle file that ispre-translated.
Right or wrong, I have no ideaif most of my views from my
support channel and mysubscribers I invited over from
social media.
More of the information youpresent will be useful when my
channel gets enough data tostart up uh for more analytics
until then I have enoughinformation uh to know what is
going on.
I just curse a lot of this growon YouTube content as I try my
(34:37):
best in confusion.
So this is an interesting emailbecause there is like a question
here, even though it's notreally a question.
And then the actual questionthey have, I think I don't know
that I have the answer to as faras like getting their
translation stuff.
First of all, YouTube is doingthe new translation thing,
auto-dubbing thing, whichwhether or not it's great,
definitely up for argument,should do most of this for you
anyway, should auto-translateinto other languages anyway, so
(34:59):
you shouldn't have to worryabout this.
Um, having said that, this is alittle bit deeper than what I
would be able to help you with.
I think uh team YouTube is theprobably the best place to get
an answer for for that.
Uh, but you know, the first partwhich we already talked about,
which is like it's notbeneficial to your niche.
Uh again, the stuff we're reallyteaching is beneficial to every
niche.
(35:20):
But the this last part, it'sactually really important.
Most of the information youpresent will be useful when my
channel gets enough data tostart opening up more analytics.
This is true.
We actually have this as aproblem for some of the aspects
of the um vidIQ plugin.
We're trying to be better aboutit using AI to give you more
kind of uh results that aren'tnecessarily specific to the data
(35:42):
you don't have because you don'thave it.
But when you have more data, youcan make some better decisions.
So I understand the the thingthere.
Now that's one thing we don'treally talk enough about, maybe
on the channel, even Rob, iswhen you don't have a lot of the
data that we talk about, how doyou how do you make some of
these decisions, even?
SPEAKER_02 (36:00):
So uh I was having a look just in the background to
find out what floreography is.
Yeah, what is that even?
And so its definition is apractice of communicating
messages through the use offlowers and their symbolic
meanings.
That sounds like a pretty uhtight niche.
(36:20):
So when I did when I did asearch on YouTube, here are the
videos at the top of the searchrankings, okay 10,000
subscribers, 46,000 views,70,000, 21,000 views, this is
the third result, 98subscribers, two and a half
thousand views, and all of thosevideos are over a year old.
(36:42):
So the thing we have to acceptand appreciate the moment is
that there is a pretty lowceiling when it comes to
audience on YouTube.
There there is an audiencethere, there's an audience for
everything on the platform, butit is pretty low.
So you I guess in one sense youalready have this big handicap
(37:04):
of trying to uh reach anaudience that isn't particularly
that big big.
Now, it could mean that in yourfavour you don't have much
competition, so you could becomethe dominant floreography
creator on YouTube, which is uhwhich are good.
(37:24):
But yeah, I think going back tothe question then of what if you
don't have the data uh on yourchannel, well I've just done
some external research on datathere to show like the potential
audience that it's not that big.
So like how how then do youmaybe um think about broadening
(37:45):
the what's called the TAM, thetotal addressable market?
It could be something along thelines of uh this form of
communication is this is asecret form of communication
that nobody knows.
Well, I'm really struggling witha title to come up with a few,
but you can kind of see whereI'm going here.
Like there's this form ofcommunication that probably
(38:07):
nobody's ever heard of beforemight actually be fascinating.
But if you start with your nicheas a packaging, floreography,
then I'm afraid it's only goingto reach that audience.
Where we uh think about topicsthat have a certain internal
audience.
(38:28):
But if you just make itinteresting and appealing to a
broader audience, then you canreally tap into the idea of
almost like learning somethingby accident, just by the
strength and the quality of thecontent.
I learned something brand new,even though I wasn't interested
in it this time yesterday.
And there's many occasions onYouTube where I've gone into
(38:49):
those rabbit holes just thanksto really good uh content on the
subject.
SPEAKER_00 (38:52):
What was that creator that used to come
through chat that had a drywallchannel?
SPEAKER_02 (38:56):
Pete Peck Drywall.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (38:58):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (38:59):
Over 100,000 subscribers talking about
drywall.
I seem to remember every livestream.
I said, I don't know how you doit, Paul.
100,000 subscribers.
You are the most boring channelon YouTube.
But you can put a silver playbutton on that wall now.
SPEAKER_00 (39:12):
Exactly.
And that really says everythingyou need to know.
Final email.
This one, uh so the subject wasuh you won't believe these
numbers.
And that's important because ofwhat is said first on this
email, which is this.
Now that you've bitten on thetitle, it's time to confirm the
click by bunkers.
(39:33):
I love this because the titlewas you won't believe these
numbers.
Really great.
After some recent discussions onprevious podcasts about TV
becoming the preferred devicefor viewers, I did some digging
in my own analytics, and here'swhat I found.
I already knew that 48% of mywatch time hours comes from TV
because that is a helpfulanalytic that you can see in the
YouTube Studio Phone app.
What I didn't know until I tooka little deep dive into the end
(39:53):
of the end of the swimming poolis that only 25% of my viewers
consume my long-form content viaTV.
47% of viewers are still onmobile, which is now concerning
me because I've been makinglonger videos targeted at that
audience.
Mobile has my worst average viewduration out of any device,
about three minutes, while TV isalmost 10 minutes, which by the
way should not be surprising.
Yeah.
(40:14):
This question is like a Cadburytop deck.
It has two elements that need tobe consumed together.
Do you think I should mix up thelength of my videos and try to
focus on my mobile users?
Or shall I focus on how to getmore clicks on TV?
As it shows, once they click,they enjoy the video more.
The AI coach from VidIQ has beengreat, but I figured this was a
question for the experts.
Yeah, the experts.
unknown (40:33):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
I'm trying to get my head around all of those numbers
without seeing the graph inYouTube.
SPEAKER_00 (40:38):
Yeah, so like they say that 48% of the watch time
comes from TV, but then theyimmediately say that only 25% of
their viewers watch long formvia TV, which is a weird number.
47% are still viewers.
So how does it how does 48% comefrom TV, but only 25 watch via
TV?
SPEAKER_02 (40:54):
Because I think they said that the long form.
So I guess a lot of their shortsmaybe are via TV.
I thought it was because thewatch time is 10 minutes on TV
when it's when it three minuteson mobile.
SPEAKER_00 (41:06):
You're right.
The watch time.
Right.
Exactly.
And there's a couple reasons forthat I've explained in previous
episodes.
But yes.
Um, so he's basically saying, soshould I focus more on mobile or
TV?
What do you think when you justhear this?
Like I I have my own thoughts,but I'm interested what you
think.
SPEAKER_02 (41:21):
I think what YouTube would love you to do is focus on
TV just because they love tobrag about being the biggest
streaming platform on TV now,above Netflix and uh Disney uh
and all the rest.
So I think there's probably uh apush there for TV content.
How do you focus on that?
It's I think there's twoelements to this.
(41:43):
It's obviously increasing theproduction quality if you can,
because if people are probablywatching a 4K television, are
you able to create content inthat format?
But also this idea of the what'scalled the lean back experience,
where somebody is watching TV,but they're also multitasking.
So they might be watching yourYouTube channel, but they're
(42:03):
also scrolling through their umReddit on their phone.
Um that means that you can kindof create uh more casual content
where the viewer doesn't have tobe um really attentively
watching the the uh thetelevision.
They kind of they might just belistening to you rather than
(42:24):
watching you, which means thenthat the the narrative uh and
your uh presenting and voiceover becomes quite important as
well.
Those are the two things thatimmediately come to mind,
Travis.
I'd love to know what you think.
SPEAKER_00 (42:36):
Yeah, I I think you're right.
Um TV is growing, and it'ssomething you should be aware of
depending on your niche.
It's not growing in every niche,by the way.
It's not like universal.
I think that there's just a lotmore content that's easier to
watch on TV, but plus, it's mucheasier to watch YouTube on TV
than it ever has been.
So that actually doesn't hurteither.
I think you just make goodcontent.
I think ultimately YouTube'sgonna find yeah, right.
(42:58):
YouTube's gonna find the placeto put it.
They spend hundreds of millionsof dollars every year getting
their AI to understand whatpeople like.
So leverage that.
Just make some good content.
And you know, if you're a muchbigger channel, I might give you
slightly different advice.
I'm gonna tell you not to worryabout it.
SPEAKER_02 (43:15):
My suggestion might be uh make even longer content.
Yeah, you can do that as well.
This might be an experiment,like so.
Let's say your average video is10 minutes.
Why not try a 25-minute video?
Yeah, and for your own sanity,you don't spend twice as long on
it on it.
(43:36):
So like you maybe make the editsimpler, or you just leave in
more of a conversational stuffof things that you would usually
trim out purely as anexperiment.
It might not work, but if you'refinding uh better, more valuable
results coming from TV, thenthat usually does give you
(43:57):
permission to try longer, evenlonger form content.
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
The longer you become a content creator, the
better your instincts are.
So I just want to remind youthat if you if you feel like,
oh, I think this new directionmight work on my channel, an
experiment is not one video.
You gotta do several.
Because one is probably going todraw, it's probably not going to
do well initially.
It doesn't mean it won't ever dowell, but you can't just do it
(44:20):
on one video and say, okay,well, that's it didn't work, so
I'm not gonna do it anymore.
Because it's probably not gonnawork, at least initially.
You need to have several videos,anywhere between three to five,
and if you're really brave, ten,especially if you're gonna do a
pivot.
But three to five, if you're ifyou really want to know if a new
format's gonna work, and thenyou kind of wait a little while
and see what happens.
That will give you thedefinition of whether or not
(44:41):
it's going to work for you.
Uh, you're not gonna break yourchannel, generally speaking, as
long as you've thought about theyou thought about it, it makes
sense for partially at leastyour existing audience, and then
to also take your your hopefullynew audience and bring them in
as well.
So consider all those things.
With that, another successful uhepisode has been complete with
(45:02):
Mr.
Wilson, which is great.
SPEAKER_02 (45:04):
Nice.
SPEAKER_00 (45:04):
Uh we can get on to the rest of our days and
weekends ahead.
What kind of cool, amazingthings are you looking forward
to in the next couple of daysthere, uh Rob?
SPEAKER_02 (45:13):
So uh from a gaming perspective, I have been
enjoying Silksong, as many gameshave been.
Incredibly hard game.
I got to the final, final boss.
Have you ever played it, Travis,by the way?
Like no, no.
SPEAKER_00 (45:27):
I just found out last night that both games are
on Game Pass, so I could playthem.
SPEAKER_02 (45:30):
Yeah, oh absolutely.
Uh certainly uh I'd I'd startwith Hollow Knight.
Uh yeah, I got to the finalboss, tried it maybe 30 times
because that's the type of gameit is, like you just die over
and over again, learning thetactics of a boss.
And I just said, okay, this iscool.
I'm not gonna get frustrated,I'm not gonna let this ruin my
(45:52):
experience of this amazing game.
I'm gonna peace out, I'm notgonna complete it now, I'm gonna
start playing else, and I moveon to Mario Galaxy.
So, like blast from the past 15years since I played it, and
it's like a nice refreshing apalette cleanser of a video
game.
So that's my gaming uh stuff.
Um I'm actually getting a bit ofOOO soon, Travis.
(46:16):
Out of office to Crete, uh,which is uh an island off Greece
now because we went to Cyprusearlier on in the year, really
enjoyed that.
So yeah, Crete.
Let me know what restaurant Ishould try in Crete.
SPEAKER_00 (46:35):
There might be a Crete listener.
Yeah, maybe there is.
Shout out to that'd be cool.
Shout out to the people inCrete.
Uh, I've been playing um I'mfinishing up my season NBA 2K25.
Uh, I went back into Borderlands3 a couple of weeks back, and
I'm really enjoying that.
Was getting ready forBorderlands 4.
I'm gonna wait until that'spatched and on sale.
Battlefield 56 comes out thisweekend.
(46:56):
I'm really tempted to get it,but I want to get it when other
friends have it because superfun game, but it's fun with
friends.
And I still have on my backlogFinal Fantasy Rebirth, which I'm
a couple hours in but haven'tplayed in a couple weeks.
Um, Spider-Man 2, which I reallywant to get through.
I haven't tasted it all yet.
Yeah.
I know.
They're both installed, ready togo.
I have my backlog's ridiculous.
(47:17):
So I'll definitely be doingthose things.
And uh I'm watching some um somefighting tournaments this
weekend.
So just uh a fun little relaxingweekend.
You know, of course, peoplelisten to this on a Monday like
my weekend's over.
Well, ours is about to begin.
That's what happens when thetime speaks.
SPEAKER_02 (47:31):
Mine started an hour ago.
I just love talking to Travis somuch.
I'd make Travis part of myweekend.
SPEAKER_00 (47:38):
I appreciate that so much.
Anyway, thank y'all for joiningus.
Of course, if you're here on theYouTube channel, hit that
subscribe button if you feellike it.
If you're listening to the audiopodcast, listen, uh, leave us a
little five uh star uh review.
Why not?
Just cuz because we love youthat much.
And we'll see y'all in the nextone.
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