September 8, 2025 • 46 mins
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We explore the psychological aspects of content creation on YouTube, focusing on finding enjoyment in the process rather than obsessing over metrics, and discuss practical approaches to channel growth beyond subscriber counts.
• Subscriber counts don't necessarily correlate with viewership or channel success
• Finding content you genuinely enjoy creating is crucial for long-term sustainability
• Brand deals are accessible for smaller creators who develop authentic connections with their audience
• YouTube's discovery system has evolved beyond traditional metadata like categories and tags
• A/B testing titles and thumbnails can help optimization but won't compensate for weak content ideas
• Small adjustments to metadata can sometimes dramatically increase impressions and visibility
• Creating connections with viewers is more valuable than accumulating vanity metrics
• Even small creators with under 10k subscribers can secure sponsorship opportunities
If you're enjoying the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. Your support helps us reach more creators with this valuable information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Really important.
If you can subscribe, it reallydoes help the channel.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
No, it doesn't.
Finding something you justreally enjoy doing is always
going to be better for you inthe long term, because, a you're
just going to have fun and B ifit turns out to be successful,
you're in a great spot.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
That is worth more than you know.
A thousand views in an hour.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We are creators, but we're also directors, writers,
actors, editors, so we actuallyhave a lot to offer.
Hey, welcome to the onlypodcast that will record on the
holiday, because I forget thatI'm supposed to take holidays
off.
I'm travis and I'm here withthe guy who's not taking a
holiday because not a holiday inhis country, rob correct travis
.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It was the public holiday this time last week and
I had, I've got to confess, abit of a shock over the last
week.
I was looking on my phone and Isaw a headline it said taylor
swift is engaged to travis.
But it was all in one lineanyway.
Like it cut off the surname andI thought for a second oh for
(00:55):
the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But alas, it wasn't you, my life would have changed
forever.
I mean, I'm not a swifty oranything, but, um, I would be.
Listen, she has a lot of money.
That'd been cool.
This podcast is not aboutswifties.
It's about, uh, growing youryoutube channel.
It can be.
If it's going to get a biggeraudience, it's going to give us
more views.
We might, we might switch tothe shifty or shift to the
(01:17):
swifty, which is that fast saythat a couple times, I can't
even say it once uh, where wehelp you grow your youtube
channels, and of course, we'rehere to do that.
But before we do that, we'regoing to talk a little bit about
some fun stuff.
We have like a group of peoplethat watch us.
They just love the environmentthat we create and you'll see
that in the emails that we'll dohere in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm up for that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, that's the hope we're going to go over are chat
gbt a little bit helping peoplewith their channel.
We're also going to answer aquestion about um shorts
channels and, you know, notgetting as many views as, as
your quote, competitors.
Uh, we're going to talk aboutthumbnails.
(01:58):
We got.
We got a couple of things we'regoing to answer here on today's
podcast.
But before all that, um rightas right as before we were
coming on, I was asking uh robwhat he um, right as right as
before we were coming on, I wasasking uh rob what he did this
weekend.
You said that you were playingum, your switch 2, which you're
enjoying.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yes, I think it's been a good purchase.
It's been a combination ofplaying games that I had before
on the switch, one which ishollow knight and mario od
Odyssey both amazing games, andnow I've got to experience what
I think is the triple A killergame you must buy a Switch to
(02:32):
because of this game.
It's not Mario Kart, it isDonkey Kong Bonanza.
Anybody who has played thisgame will agree with me, really,
and I will say to them banana,banana, because that's all I've
been doing for the last threeweeks collecting bananas, and it
is incredible.
Outrageous cost of games.
(02:52):
Nintendo, I'm still hate themfor that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
yeah, when they make a good game, they just suck you
in travis uh, saturday, speakingof video games, I went to pax
west, which is here in seattleactually, as we're recording,
the last day is today uh, whichis a bunch of video games.
It's a convention in seattlewhere a bunch of video game
companies come in and I and Igot to see a whole bunch of cool
things, a big thing for switchto there with a bunch of games
and stuff, um, so you know, I'vebeen surrounded by video games
(03:16):
all weekend.
The funny thing is is like, Ihave this, this video game
backlog, which I think mostpeople do, and I decided to buy
a game I've already beaten manyyears ago and I'm obsessed with
it again borderlands 3.
I can't stop playing it.
So, my backlog of games I'venever played sitting there, game
I I beat eight years ago, had Ibought it and I'm playing the
heck out of it, having a greatold time I remember with
(03:37):
borderlands 3 that around abouteight hours into the game,
because you get everything'sfully customizable right like
every weapon you get.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You either sell it or like that's the one that
replaces I think I got anoverpowered weapon very early on
and I think it lasted me theentire game pretty much like
tens of hours of it and I thinkit's cool, but I don't know if
it's spoiling experience.
We were talking about this onthe live stream as well and this
is maybe a question to all ofyou how many games have you got
(04:05):
in your catalog that you haven'tplayed yet?
Because I asked this questionto dan and it appears to be that
anybody who has a steam accounthas hundreds of games have
bought when they've been heavilydiscounted and never actually
played them, and he was in thehundreds yeah, it's funny you
say that because I have a videothat it's already scripted out
(04:25):
that I want to shoot aboutgaming backlogs.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So I talk about the psychology behind it.
I think it's much like peoplewith movies and stuff they buy
movies, they don't necessarilyget around to watching all of
them.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I can give you my gaming backlog right now,
because I've gone away fromhaving the PSN network and Xbox
Game Pass, so I'm limited to mychoices about a few physical
games.
So what I've got to do isfinish off donkey and bonanza,
obviously, good luck.
Then I've got uh, 3d marioworld, okay.
Uh, legend of zelda, echo ofwisdoms, which is like a puzzle
(05:00):
game.
Interesting game, interestingstray okay, you know, even
though I have like a dislike forcats, I'm gonna give it a try.
Cyberpunk, cyberpunk, which isgreat.
Not get on with witcher 3, butI've decided anyway cyberpunk's
great, and there's one more gameon the switch, but I can't
(05:20):
remember what it is right now.
Oh, mario rpg.
Oh well, there's like six gamesthere.
Travis, I would assume thatwould take me through to
Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Easy, yeah, easy, because you're not just sitting
there only playing games andthat's it.
Yes, I am Even during thispodcast, okay, sorry.
So let's get back into Banana.
Banana we need a sound effectthat says banana.
We need a sound effect thatsays banana.
We need that.
Let's get into some of yourquestions.
Of course, if you want to, youcan write us at
theboostatvidiqcom.
(05:51):
Also, if you're listening tothe audio podcast, there's a
link there for text, but todaywe're doing emails and one kind
of special message which we'llget to a little bit later on.
First question is from StevenTo my favorite podcast.
I have a simple question thathopefully has a simple answer.
I would love to know yourthoughts.
When posting a long-form video,what is the best category to
select?
I know the answer I figuredyou'd Hold on.
(06:15):
Let me finish reading this Forsome context.
I have a gaming channel calledSingle Player Lounge First of
all, I like that name when I dogame pickups, unboxings and
reviews Recently lounge first ofall, I like that name where I
do game pickups, unboxes andreviews.
Recently, my wife god I gotmarried and plays video games.
How does this?
How is this a world?
I want this world.
Oh, I went out game hunting onour anniversary.
Wait, and she didn't divorceyou.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
What's going on?
So most of the played, well,played this guy's.
This guy's beat the final bossand everything.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
No kidding, do not let her go.
Uh, most of the video is aroundwhat we find and pick up, but
there's a little bit of whatalso we do as well, which makes
it feel like a vlog.
Yeah, would it be better toleave it as the gaming category
of people vlog, and how wouldchanging affect the right
audience?
Thanks for all you do.
Keep us motivated.
Okay, I think this goes intothat.
Youtube frequently will labelthings and either they used to
(07:05):
mean something or they're justtrying to make it clear and
they've actually made it moremuddy.
They seem to do this a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
So if you load up the YouTube homepage or you tap on
YouTube app, you'll see theselittle chips at the top of the
feed that are more granular thanYouTube categories of the feed
that are more granular thanYouTube categories, and so I
think that proves that YouTubeis being more selective with how
they define content other thanthose categories.
(07:31):
There's also a new tool that'scome out called the Hype feature
, and how it works is that youhype videos and then they're
ranked on different leaderboards, and these leaderboards are
divided by categories.
None of those categories inthose leaderboards relate to the
categories that you set on yourvideo.
I think at this point it's safeto say that the categories
(07:55):
dropdown in the YouTube studiois about as useful as video tags
, in that maybe they dosomething, maybe they don't, but
it probably has a 0.1 percentimpact on the video in my
opinion, there used to be andI'm looking for it um, there
(08:17):
used to be a help page aboutthis and they were very clear
that it didn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Um, they actually said that it was more helpful
for like ads and stuff.
Yeah, that's the legacy,understanding of it I have but
the question now is like, doesit even do that now?
Because a lot of these thingschange over time, like they'll
make these changes to the wayyoutube works and then the old
stuff doesn't work the way andhere, as a software company vid
(08:44):
iq, like that happens all thetime.
It was supposed to at thebeginning.
And I do remember specificallyreading that help page a long
time ago where it was like thisis just for that, it doesn't
have anything to do with whereyour video will show up.
Um, there's a ton of videos outthere that are just set to the.
What is the generic thing whenyou first put out this
entertainment or something?
(09:04):
Um, when you very first set upa youtube, channel.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Isn't that the top of the categories?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
but you have to pick one to begin with yeah, I can't
even remember, but it's likeit's something non-specific.
It's not going to keep you fromgetting views, let's just say
that just say the thing youreally want to know, not going
to help keep you from gettingviews.
It's not going to help you findthe right audience.
Youtube is set up in a way thatit will try to find the right
audience in spite of anythingyou do to mess it up, like it's
trying to find the audienceregardless.
(09:30):
So in a lot of ways, I couldsay you can't mess it up.
I don't want to say thatbecause I feel like I could be
proven wrong, but it'd be verydifficult to mess up a video to
make it not work because, um, Itold this story a while back.
Uh, I might have even told itto you, rob, but um years ago,
when ksi had a boxing match, um,and he was streaming it.
(09:52):
They were streaming it onyoutube and they kept getting
taken down in real time yeahwhat I thought was interesting
is, at one point it was a catand mouse game.
The uploaders and restreamers ofthis live stream were naming it
things that had nothing to dowith ks5.
As a human, you kind of wink,wink, nudge, nudge right, and
thumbnails that had nothing todo with the fight, but they
(10:12):
would continue to get served andpeople kept finding them, and
that's that's even more of ainteresting thing than what this
category thing is, becauseyou're putting videos out there
that say they're not anything todo with it, but youtube's
algorithm knows what it is andstill serves it.
So, even in spite of all ofthose things, it still found the
right audience.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So yeah, if I was to give like a final answer on this
.
If your category is usuallygaming, if you leave it there, I
think you're perfectly fine.
If you decide to put it onpeople and vlogs or whatever you
think they've changed it to,you're not wrong, you should be
fine.
And what I think is cool isthat they're this creator is
(10:52):
exploring um more things andkind of expanding the I guess,
the law of their channel in thatthey're doing something with
their wife.
Do they usually do that on achannel?
If not, that's cool tointroduce someone else to your
community.
And the fact that you're havingthese kind of storytelling
(11:12):
moments in the video, which Ithink is cool, because it sounds
like you're not going topackage the video in a way of
you're not packaging it as avlog, but it's going to have
vlog elements in it.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So you're testing new storytelling techniques within
your videos and I commend youfor doing that and I hope it
performs well I would also saythat if your wife is is up for
it, I would actually make hermore part of the channel, if
that's something that you'd beokay with, because it makes it
more interesting.
It's not just the normal gamerthing you see everywhere.
A husband wife gaming channelis a lot more rare.
You'll have a lot lesscompetition and it might be more
(11:46):
interesting.
Furthermore, like what Rob said, I like that you're trying to
do other things, and it's smartfrom a longevity standpoint,
because, rather than gettingpeople to come in and be
interested in just the gameyou're playing, they're getting
interested in you, which is theonly way you're going to be able
to jump from game to game andstill have any type of audience.
People come for you and not thegame.
Hopefully that helps.
(12:07):
All right.
So that's first one down.
Ken theboost at vidIQcom.
If you want to send us an email, you can do that there and we
will try to answer it.
And this next one comes fromBrendan.
Hey guys, hope all is well withall of you.
I'm relatively a new subscriber,but I've been watching your
videos like crazy.
I've already picked up a coupleof really solid tips.
(12:27):
I repurposed an old YouTubechannel that I was using to
watch daily content into ashorts channel.
First of all, I think most ofus have done that.
I repurposed my channel fromjust a watching channel.
My first upload was August 7thand it performed well, hitting
the shorts feed and getting over1,000 views.
We can always talk about whatthat actually means, because, of
course, views now versus viewsa year ago two different things.
But okay, it has goodimpression rate and good
retention as well, but it justkind of died.
(12:48):
No more impressions and no moreviews.
The next seven uploads havegarnered under 25 views and
minimal impressions.
No shorts feed.
Looking at other channels in myniche, I believe that my content
is much more appealing andstands out.
Some people have posted fourtimes and had two 800 videos and
two duds where it feels likeI've hatched seven duds now.
Also, I know my videos aregradually getting better in
terms of editing stickers,titles and descriptions.
(13:08):
I went through chat gpt metachecklist and there's no issues.
Chat gpt said after 10 uploadsI should get more impressions.
My needs stay consistent.
Is this permanent?
Why do some questions break outof the face sooner?
Do you have any tips?
So this and while this isspecific to shorts, really to be
honest, this could be talkedabout for long form, because
it's all about getting anaudience and then being like we
don't know anything about yourspecific channel.
Um, we don't know whether ornot, of course, everyone feels
(13:32):
like they're getting better asthey do more content.
We'll take your word for it.
We don't know that to be true,but we'll take your word for it.
But also, we don't know, um,what your content is.
Because what if we watch it andwe're like I don't understand
that, but it makes sense to you,like you made it.
So everything in the videomakes sense to you, but when
someone else on the other sideof the screen looks at it, I
(13:52):
don't understand.
I don't get the point.
It's not as entertaining.
That's where the rubber meetsthe road, rob.
Let's talk a little bit aboutShorts Views and since this's a
newer creator, they may not knowthis that the shorts view
numbers changed, uh, in the lastyear or so.
Right, when was it like lastyear?
When was that?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
or this year, six months ago uh, it was like march
time they went from you havingto watch a shot for a certain
period of time, depending on howlong the shot was.
For example, let's say the shotwas 30 seconds, you might have
to watch that shot for actuallyfive or six seconds for it to
count as a view.
Now, that's not relevant, likeyou can.
(14:31):
Just it's not very good for anaudio podcast, is it?
There you go, just swipingthrough shots as fast as you can
.
They count as a view, so doesthat actually mean it's a view?
These days, it could be arguedthe value of an engaged view
(14:51):
versus a view.
Look in your analytics for thatto see how many views you're
actually getting.
And, just to be honest, athousand views on a single shot
is still a teeny tiny samplesize of data for YouTube to work
with.
It is curious that you had oneshot that did well and then the
(15:14):
rest have been duds.
It goes back to your questionTravis of like what's the topic
and what's the nature of thecontent?
Because what I have seen andI'm not saying this is
necessarily what you've done,but what I have seen is when
people are repurposing contentfrom elsewhere, downloading
clips, football highlights, thattype of stuff.
(15:35):
One video may really take off,but then it's kind of it may be
suppressed, and again I'm kindof speculating here it may be
suppressed by YouTube'sdiscovery because it's seen and
treated as repurposed,repetitious content.
If that is not the case likeyou're fully making it 100%,
it's authentically you then wehave to go into the typical
(15:56):
questions of are the topicsrelated?
You think your video is awesome, but you know, the other
channels that you're comparingyourself to might have a bit of
background and history and a bitof a community.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
uh, it's incomplete information, as always,
unfortunately yeah, I mean shortform versus long form, kind of
same thing.
Um, and yeah, you will see somevideos pop off while others
don't and, quite frankly, um,the fact that you got a thousand
views very early on is actuallythe opposite.
What you should see is whatyou're seeing now, especially as
a new channel very fewimpressions, very few views, and
then over time you get like apop off, and that's kind of the
(16:30):
thing with shorts is, uh, itsometimes sets an unrealistic
expectation of what you shouldexpect to see.
Um, the reality is 99 of thepeople that upload, you know,
their first couple of videos orshorts are going to see almost
nothing for quite a while.
Even this podcast channelitself I remember we talked
about very early on that for thefirst, like almost week, even
(16:50):
though we uploaded two or threevideos right off the bat, it had
two impressions period twoimpressions, not views
impressions for a long time andit just takes a while for it to
find the right audience.
Now, if it doesn't find theright audience, there might be a
reason for that, and it is hardto take yourself out of your
own shoes and go.
Is that video really better thanmine?
You might be right.
(17:11):
Your email, might you know.
You said you're very confidentthat your content is better.
You might actually be right.
You might actually be right,but they also probably have a
larger audience, in which caseit's easy for them to find.
It's easier for youtube to findan audience to watch their
content, versus you, who arebrand new and just coming out.
And it's not to say that thesevideos won't get views later.
We actually have shorts to giveviews to this very day.
They were put out.
How long ago?
Year, two years, whatever.
(17:32):
Um, you said a large portion, Ithink.
Uh, rob of our shorts getsearch views, which means
they're not.
They didn't get them right offthe bat.
They're getting them over.
Yeah, so just because youdidn't get the views now doesn't
mean you won't get them later,and so just keep pressing on and
can keep continuing to bebetter every time out.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We often encourage creators with long form content
to you know, make 25 videos overa six month period without
looking at the analytics toomuch.
Don't download the YouTubestudio at this point, because if
you're refreshing your videothree hours after it's gone live
and it's got seven views, thatcan be a bit demoralizing.
(18:13):
And I always want to find outfirst from the creator do you
love YouTube?
Do you love waking up in themorning with a new idea and
making a video, regardless ofhow many people watch it?
I feel as if, like, get throughthat stage of you know that rite
of passage and if after sixmonths, you're still saying to
(18:36):
yourselves I guess in your case,maybe after you've made a
hundred shots, I still lovemaking shots.
I know they're not performingthat well, but I'm getting
better with every single onethat I make and I'm learning new
techniques and skills and Ifeel as if I'm becoming a better
storyteller.
Just enjoy that period ofinnocence before you then have
the pressure of all these peoplehoping and expecting that your
(18:58):
next video is as good as theprevious one Because it doesn't
last for long if you stick it onyoutube either that the
pressure of not being discoveredis soon changed by expectation,
and that is.
That's a scary thing as well.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, I've talked about this before and it's a
massive thing that, um,especially newer creators don't
recognize is the story I alwaystell is when I very first
started, I considered a videosuccessful when I had 100 views.
Like I'm like, holy crap, 100views, that's a lot of people,
and if a video ever made it to athousand, I would never think
about it again because it sosurpassed my expectation.
Yet later in my career, if Ididn't get a thousand views in
(19:35):
30 minutes, I was really upset.
So you know, finding somethingyou just really enjoy doing is
always going to be better foryou in the long term, because
they just have fun and B if itturns out to be successful,
you're in a great spot.
You're doing something youalready love.
You're not doing things youdon't like.
The worst thing you can do andI've talked to many creators
have done this is make a videojust because it's a popular
thing to do and they don'treally care for it.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And it pops off and now that's your channel.
Congratulations, you playedyourself.
Uh, not exactly great a decadeago.
I go to bed at night and think,if I, if this video that just
went live gets 300 viewstomorrow, I'll be happy.
Fast forward 10 years.
We get around about 10 000views an hour on the channel,
which means that you try andfigure it out.
There's probably four or fivepeople in the world watching me
right now, 24 7.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I'm still not satisfied all right I want 100
people watching me all of thetime it just never ends it's,
it's the human nature of ofyoutube that no one ever really
tells you when you're trying togrow your channel, that, like
this, is a thing you need tokeep in check as best you can.
Uh, because it's a, it's athing that doesn't go away and
it's not even anything thatyoutube specifically the thing
(20:47):
is.
I feel like youtube contributesto this in a way accidentally,
because we just see numbersgoing up.
We know a bigger number quoteequals good, right, but we don't
actually attach humans to thosenumbers, even though we should
imagine if 50 of those peoplewere in the room with you saying
I love your videos, youprobably would never.
You probably think I'm the mostamazing person in the world,
like you wouldn't even think Ionly got 50 views.
(21:08):
You'd be like holy crap, I got50, 50 people in here and they
love me and it just itanonymizes the connections.
That's why I talked about acouple episodes back where some
of the comments people have leftme were so impactful, because
you start to put the connectionwith the fact you're connecting
with people.
Uh, it's not just a number.
If it's a number, you can go.
Ah, I want that number to bebigger.
If it's like people, it's it'sharder to to downplay that.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I think that's really important in the in the first
hour I used to check like clickthrough rate and view count and
the of 10 of a video.
What I'm trying to do morethese days, travis, is go into
the comments and see what ourregular viewers are first
commenting on.
And so now I'm trying to bemore grounded in, as you said,
(21:53):
the transformation, the impactswe hopefully have in a positive
and a motivational sense for ouraudience.
And when I see a comment suchas like I needed this video
today, right now, or like thisvideo is speaking to me, like
yeah, that that is worth morethan you know.
A thousand views in an hour.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
All right.
Next one hi vidi crew.
I've been taking advantage ofvidiq's uh free thumbnail and
title rating tool.
My scores have been 82 fortitle and 87 for thumbnail.
Can you help me interpret howgood our average scores these
are?
I've only posted two videos onmy channel and both have got
practically identical scores.
I'm curious to know how I'mdoing it with rates and how
other people are doing.
Thank you for doing a great job.
So every once in a while I wantto talk a little bit about the
(22:33):
vidIQ software.
You can get access to it forfree, vidiqcom dot com.
That is something that we dohere and we love to help people
out.
And the score thing is veryinteresting because I think you
have to understand what the toolis trying to do.
The tool is trying to point youin a direction.
It's not necessarily trying tosay good, bad and different.
It's pointing you in adirection.
(22:54):
And we do spend our engineersspend a lot of time tweaking
that thing to make it evenbetter and better and kind of,
look at what your thumbnail isdoing, your title is doing, but
ultimately the real arbiter ofall that is the viewer.
So these tools are great forpeople who just have no idea,
like I don't know what my titleshould be at all, and it will
(23:15):
definitely point you in theright direction.
Same thing with the thumbnailLike we're going to help you
move in the proper direction.
There is no like quote good,average number, um, because you
remember in a vacuum, thesethings, these numbers, don't
exist at all on youtube.
It's something that vidIQ cameup with to kind of help put you
in the right direction.
So I think when you're in the80s and 90s, you're in the right
direction.
You just need to look at doesthat thumbnail now make sense in
(23:36):
the niche that you're in?
Um, what would you say?
This is always difficult for usbecause we don't directly work
with the software.
We have to, like explain thesoftware after the fact, like
what are the things that youthink of when you, when you come
across stuff like this?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I mirror what you say , travis, in that, whether it's
our tools, somebody else's toolsor youtube itself, judging the
success of a video by a, anindividual or isolated score is
just going to drive you crazy,in the same sense that you could
look at your YouTube analyticsand say, well, this video got
(24:10):
20% click through rate.
Why is it not doing better thanit should be?
And then I go back to againwhat you said, travis If you're
getting higher scores on ourtools, then what it's pointing
towards is hey, you're not doingsomething completely stupid
here.
You've used a custom thumbnail.
(24:30):
First of all, thumbs up.
It probably isn't clutteredwith too many elements.
That's probably a good thing aswell.
It's using colors that combinewith each other nicely.
You're probably doing somethingthere as well.
It's using colors that combinewith each other nicely.
You're probably doing somethingthere as well.
But it it can't read mind.
Read your viewers and yourtarget audience and exactly what
(24:51):
they're looking for and whatthey need.
Uh, hopefully, as our toolsbecome more sophisticated and we
have more data, we'll be ableto continue to improve on them.
But yeah, as you say, travis,these are tools.
These are not on and offbuttons like right and wrong.
This definitely meanssomething's going to work.
But we appreciate you using ourtools and like hey, if you have
(25:12):
feedback, if you think thisscore seems arbitrary and it's
not really helping me, we wantto hear that feedback so we can
improve it even further.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, tell us, let us know
.
We're always improving.
And, uh, the the devs are likewe get to look at slack all the
time and they're constantlyadjusting everything.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's really, really awesome to see it's funny
actually that we we created aslack channel, like about six
months ago, and the developerssaid hey, um, creators, if you
have any ideas, send, send themaway.
And I replied and said you dorealise you're opening up the
floodgates here.
And then, within like 24 hours,whoosh, they got a ton of
(25:49):
suggestions and that's whyyou've seen, particularly in the
Chrome extension, some bigupdates and improvements to
existing tools.
The scorecard, the real timestats thing, which is still my
personal favourite of vid iq,that's had a big upgrade.
The thumbnail preview tool,which we kind of neglected for a
few years.
You click on it now it's likeholy smokes.
I can customize this completelyand see what my phone is going
(26:12):
to look like in all differentshapes and sizes.
So, yeah, if you haven't triedour chrome extension for a while
, browser extension, give that atry, because it's looking
pretty damn fine these days.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
There's a link in the description and in the show
notes.
If you've never done that, it'sright there.
Go ahead and click it, installit.
It's really great.
One of our last emails is fromAngie, new listener.
I love the podcast but I'm sadto say I've binged all of them
and now have to wait for weeklyuploads.
That seems, but I'm sad to sayI've binged all of them and now
(26:46):
I have to wait for weeklyuploads.
That seems impossible.
I don't know.
That seems all the way back toum the jeremy vesters.
Do we still have them?
Like?
Yeah, they should all be in theaudio podcast, I think.
I think angie's talking aboutthe youtube channel.
I can't imagine she's talkingabout the audio.
Okay, fair, no way you'velistened to all the audio
podcasts.
But youtube, okay, maybe as faras cadbury cream, eggs, candy
Corn, you're both missing themark.
Sour Patch, watermelon, all theway.
Have you ever had that?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, I can feel that .
Yeah, Sour Patch Treats.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Sour Patch.
Is that something you can getin the UK?
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The Sour Patch variant of candy?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So Sour Patch is worldwide.
Okay, did you have sour patchcards?
The, the did you have those no,they're not familiar.
Okay, uh, I have to shout out.
I have a shout out and aquestion.
First, I'm gonna give a hugeshout out to my former vid iq
coach, antonio.
Antonio was amazing, by the way, antonio, incredible guy who I
worked with for the first partof 2025.
He convinced me to separate mychannel to two and niche down on
both.
Because of this painful butneed to change, I was recently
(27:37):
approached by two differentcompanies.
Each asked me to produce somecustom videos for them.
I'm an educator that's amazingone for each of my niches,
totally out of the blue.
Thank you, antonio.
This would have never happenedwithout his advice and
encouragement.
We need to get that messageover to antonio, I just
screenshotted it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I'm sending it into the select one right now, that's
amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Now for my question how do I negotiate, make sure
I'm getting paid what I deserved?
What are the important thingsto keep in mind when I'm
entering into contracts likethis?
Chatgbt has been incrediblyhelpful, reviewing contracts and
giving me talking points.
This is all new to me.
I'm a small but growing creatorwith 6,400 subs on one channel
and 1,000 of my newest Wouldlove any advice.
Angie, if you've watched allthe episodes, I have to imagine
you watched the one with JustinMoore, which is going to be your
(28:18):
North star for thisconversation.
I will also talk about myexperience and, rob, you can
give me your advice too.
But for sure, when it comes tothis, this type of thing, 100%
watch the, the, the Justin Mooreepisode.
It will.
It will be a great place.
He's also got a book and someother things.
He's an incredible guy thatwants people to make more money.
He wants the creators to makemore money and tells you how to
(28:40):
kind of do that.
Having said that, first of all,congratulations, and it really
just proves something that Iwant to.
I want to actually um, I wantto do in a future episode about
smaller creators doing bigthings, and this is a channel.
This is a person with a channelunder 10 000 subscribers is
being approached by companies todo things like sponsorship
stuff.
That's incredible.
That also just goes to show thepower of what we do.
(29:02):
We are creators, but we're alsodirectors, writers, actors,
editors all these things thatthese companies have to pay
individual people for, but we'rein one package, so we actually
have a lot to offer.
I would also say that once youfigure out where it is, you want
to be, uh, on like the moneyside of things, which could be
(29:22):
an affiliate deal.
It could be something simplelike that like you know, I'll
get you this many sales and yougive me this back, or whatever
it is.
Um, the.
The rule of thumb is this andI've told this story before.
You probably heard it if youtell them a number and they say
yes right away, you justundershot yourself.
I've done this many times.
I gave one time I shot up anumber and I'm like there's no
(29:43):
way they're going to pay it andthey immediately said yes and
I'm like don't, because thatmeans I probably could have got
double.
So that's number one.
Like if you put out a numberand they immediately accepted it
, you, you shot too low.
Secondarily, I think you kind oflook at like what's realistic
if you want them to be anongoing thing or if you just
want it to be one off.
If it's ongoing, I always tryto snag them and I think Justin
(30:05):
talked about this for more thanone engagement.
So more than one video.
Because there's two reasons forthis.
Number one you should be ableto get more money out of it If
you like.
Instead of doing one for like500, I'm not saying that's how
much you charge, let's say onefor 500, you could do three for
like a thousand, and whilethat's not 500 each, they were
probably never going to give youa thousand, but if you give
them a value, then they mightactually give you a thousand
(30:28):
dollars.
You just do three videos ratherthan one for 500.
So look to make a deal for themso that they want to come back
to you.
And also gives you a chance tosucceed, because ultimately they
will come back to you if theysee value in what they paid for.
If you do a one-off and itdoesn't go well, you may never
hear from them again.
You want to hear from them ifthey're a good company and you
enjoy dealing with them.
You want to give them a deal sothat they want to come back and
(30:49):
you have a constant flow ofmoney.
I've done this with multiplesponsors that I've worked with
for years.
Could I have gotten a lot moremoney up front?
The first time, probably, but Imay never have worked with them
again, but over the aggregateover the years, I've definitely
made more money by not being toogreedy up front.
Uh, justin might tell you adifferent way to do it, but that
was been.
That's been my experience.
Rob, what do you think aboutwhen you see questions like this
(31:11):
?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
so this might be complete frontier gibberish,
because I have never really hadto go through this sponsorship
brand deal process in my life asa content creator.
I know that might be hard tobelieve, but essentially the
story is I made a video about avidIQ tool.
Rob Sandy, the CEO, contactedme and he said do you want to
(31:35):
work for vidIQ?
And I thought, well, I'm nevergoing to have to worry about any
brand deals or sponsorshipsever again.
So the answer is yes.
The funny thing is talking abouthow you undervalued yourself,
travis.
I think this is where theloyalty and the trust came in.
I don't know if I've told youthis story before, but when we
were first negotiating an hourlyrate here at vidIQ, rob said
(31:57):
how much are you going to charge?
And I had no idea.
I've never charged an hourlyrate.
I don't know what I'm doinghere on youtube.
I never thought I'd be able todo anything freelance creative.
So let's say 25 an hour.
And he said no, I'm going topay you 45 an hour.
Wow, so I'd undervalue myself.
And he said no, I think you'reworth more than that, and that's
.
From that moment on, I've hadthat trust and that relationship
(32:19):
with Rob at the IQ.
So, like you know, thank you,thank you, thank you.
Now, going back to the topic inhand, as I say, this may be
completely rubbish, but mythought would be that, just to
get some experience ofnegotiating a deal, might you
offer a bit of a like not abargain, but like a good deal
(32:41):
for them, but like only asingular video so that you gain
some experience but you don'tpermanently undervalue yourself?
Is that something to consider?
I don't know.
Another thing to think about islike we have no idea how to
price this, because,irrespective of how many views
you get, there's a bigdifference between promoting an
energy drink and luxury cruisers.
(33:03):
Like selling luxury cruisers,you should be charging a huge
amount from those a thousandviews, because you only need
like 20 people to buy the luxurycruise for it to be very
valuable to them.
And then there's the otherthing, like do you just charge
by the video or do you chargethrough an affiliate deal, like
a recurring income in perpetuity?
(33:25):
There's all these littleparticular things to consider.
So those are just my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I don't know if they're useful or not I think,
between what we've said and whatjustin says, she should have a
good idea of where to go.
I would love to hear afollow-up on this, so yeah after
this is all said and done with,and you've done the, the promos
and you kind of have a story totell, we'd love to hear you
send another email to us.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
We would love to hear from you it's just awesome to
hear that somebody's now turningtheir skills into a business
rather than just a passive,passive income from ad revenue.
I mean that's all well and cool, but now you're being
approached yeah giving youoffers.
Yeah, I was gonna say also myum.
My other thought was askantonio, sure he can, surely he
(34:08):
can give you the best that hewasn't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Right, like so, he, he doesn't.
He's not a good iq anymore, buthe's no, no, no, he's not
around anymore.
Uh, he's doing, he's off to big, big things, man he's.
I see him in ads all the time,like I'm on facebook, and he's
on ads every other, every otherday.
It's weird, it's crazy.
He's a great guy, though I, Ireally, really enjoy Antonio
Last one.
So a couple of months back, Ihad encouraged I forgot about
(34:33):
this until this email came in Iencouraged people to send us
video questions and we did anepisode with that and it was
cool, and I forgot about it andsomeone sent in a video question
.
Now, this video question islike three minutes long.
We, we're gonna watch the wholething because why not?
Right, it's only three minutes.
We'll give him the watch time,right, we'll give him the watch
time.
It's, uh, it's cool because hegoes over a couple of things
(34:55):
that I think we can talk aboutafter the fact.
Um, but this one is from chris.
Let me go ahead and share thisand let's give him a watch and
see what he has to say.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Hello tren or trob or tran or theresisa, whoever
you've got co-hosting.
I just wanted to.
I just wanted to, um, basicallysay I've jumped on youtube
coaching.
It's taken me three years tomake the plunge and I just
wanted to sort of talk aboutwhat your viewers probably
(35:27):
experienced over the years.
That you start off like I did.
It was like Minecraft contentand you know the title was
Minecraft, my World, part 1.
Description me playingMinecraft.
That was it.
Post.
See what happens.
Expect world domination.
(35:48):
It doesn't go like that, andover time I realized that the
every little thing you put onthe youtube upload sheet is
crucial.
The other day I had a shotabout a tt rpg role-playing game
that isn't out yet, so it hadno name recognition, and it sat
(36:12):
for 15 hours with 12 impressions.
And then I put D&D in bracketsDungeons, dragons, because
that's kind of roughly what itis and suddenly I had 1,000
impressions.
It kicked it off.
It's like every little bit ofdata that you choose to put on
your video matters.
(36:34):
Like you say, the click.
You try to get someone to puttheir finger on the phone to
click and it's all psychologyand it's, in one way, terribly,
terribly hard.
There are loads of people youcan hear about on other podcasts
with.
You know, 50 titles for onevideo, 50 thumbnails for one
(36:55):
video, and it really can makethe difference.
It does make the difference andyet there's a midpoint, isn't
there?
And I think that's where I amTrying with multiple thumbnails,
three thumbnails, trying withmaybe one or two titles and
having enough success where I'mhappy.
I know a dozen of the names whocomment regular.
(37:18):
I'm making some money everymonth and, yeah, it's like
subscribers don't matter.
It doesn't matter that I've gotnearly 3,000 subscribers if I'm
only getting 200 views.
You should be counting byeither views or by likes.
You know, and I just it's notreally.
(37:41):
This isn't really a question.
This is just all those thingsthat we listen to your podcasts,
we listen to other podcasts andit just doesn't get acted upon.
It's crucial and you have tokeep testing and finding and you
have to enjoy it.
You know subscribers used tomatter.
(38:03):
Now they don't Just like.
How would you make a questionout of this for your podcast?
What would the headline be ofyour podcast if you had to title
this as a video?
It's me rambling about YouTubeand then if this was my video
and I had to go to YouTube.
I'd have to then come up withsome cunning title and cunning
thumbnail trying to get peopleto click.
(38:24):
It's a game, isn't it?
You've got to gamify it.
Anyway, I see what you do withthat.
So, yeah, all the advice in theworld only goes so far.
It's what you listen to and acton and learn.
So yeah, hey, good luck with itall.
Thank you and I'll see youlater.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
All right, so I think the title should be Rob Wilson,
from vidIQ's doppelganger,rambles on about metadata and,
if it's important, on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
How many people are going to click that.
Thank you for that, chris.
He said a lot of things which Ithink were really critical.
First of all, subs don't matter.
I love how he said that it iscorrect about that.
Can't disagree with that.
We actually didn't.
We did.
We do a video about that.
I know we've talked about it alot you.
You say that a lot, and I thinkit's so important for people to
understand that, especiallywhen you're new, because I
remember when I before I startedwatching, before I started
(39:19):
doing youtube, I rememberwatching a channel at 10 000
subscribers.
Remember at the time thinking,wow, that's a lot of subscribers
.
When I saw they had videos thathad like 200 views, I was
floored.
I'm like, wait a minute, Ithought you don't have like 10
000 views every video.
Like I had no idea.
Yeah, no, that's not a thing,uh, that that one does not equal
the other.
So it is very um.
(39:40):
I love hearing that a creatorthat's uh listening to the
podcast gets that because it'sso critical.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And then also what you said earlier about having
fun you said the same thing,yeah um, it still grinds my
gears when some people saymidway through the video uh,
I've just noticed that only um20 of my viewers are subscribers
, so it'd be really important ifyou can subscribe, it really
does help the channel.
(40:07):
Every time I hear somebody saythat, I shout no, it doesn't.
It's like you know, it'sprobably that's probably not 100
accurate, but yeah, yeah, justget them to watch another video,
don't get them to subscribe, Ithink I think they do that to
make people feel like they needto subscribe.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
It's like reminds them, like oh, I guess it helps
you, okay, let me subscribe.
I think it's more for that'sguilting them into doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I think this does sound like a person who's kind
of getting paralyzed with choicein the thought of having to
come up with like many differenttitles for videos.
And yeah, maybe a slightadjustment to the title for that
short did bring in a thousandimpressions, but again, we're
still talking about relativelysmall data sample size there.
(40:51):
I think for Chris, what I wouldperhaps suggest is that the
need to roll back to evenearlier in a process, and that
might be coming up with betteror testing new video ideas,
because if you're constantlytweaking the thumbnails and the
(41:15):
titles, trying to eke out somemore you know what you might
call marginal gains it feelslike the idea in the first place
just didn't really match up tothe audience's expectations.
That might get you out of thefunk, chris, of constantly
playing around with titles andthumbnails.
Now we've been Jen, dan andmyself have been wrestling with
(41:38):
this question about how usefulis the A-B title testing,
because we're doing all of thesechanges and tests and we get
these results whereby one titleis 4% better than the other one,
but it doesn't necessarilyinform us to make sweeping
changes on the channel.
(41:59):
I'm not feeling, after two yearsof thumbnail testing and title
testing, that I definitivelyknow what thumbnails work better
than others.
I tend to find that if the ideais really good, then yeah, like
a slight change of a thumbnailon the title might get you a bit
more traction.
But it ultimately starts at thevery beginning and if the idea
(42:21):
is not good enough, then that'sjust going to be an anchor or a
handicap for the video,regardless of if you're trying
to make a really good title,thumbnail or hook.
I rambled a bit there.
As long as, chris, I doapologize.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
No, it was good and I think that, um, I think what
you said.
First of all, it was verycritical, and also the fun part
I just want to harp back on thathe said to having fun and it's
doing it.
Otherwise, all of this is fornot, um, but yeah, I think I
think, uh, it's.
First of all, thank you forsending us the the video, chris.
It's always good to see peopleand, um, yeah, we now we're
(42:58):
curious about those, uh, thosebooks in the background.
Uh, I think that will do fortoday.
Uh, definitely enjoyed havingyou, rob, actually.
So when I get off of here, I'mgonna go into the kitchen
because I got something.
So I, daryl eves, was on thelast episode and if you haven't
watched that episode, please gowatch.
It's amazing.
He leaves so many great nuggetsof information.
But the reason I bring that upis because yes, sorry for the
(43:20):
downgrade everyone the um.
the one of the first things wetalked about is because he lives
in utah and I just justrecently visited friends in Utah
and while I was there my friendmade homemade fruit roll-ups
and I never had a homemade fruitroll-up before.
Have you had fruit roll-upsbefore?
I don't even know what one is.
You don't even know what afruit roll-up is.
They call it leather now Maybeyou've heard that phrase.
(43:43):
Very tasty little treat.
I'm sure they have them in theuk, but they're I don't want to
say they're a kid's treat,because I think that makes it
sound weird, but, um, they'redefinitely very tasty anyway.
Oh, like really savory andsweet.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yes, yeah, yeah, one of the two.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, okay, yeah, it just kind of looks like
halloween candy I might havekind of, but I feel like, um,
when you make them naturally outof like fruits and stuff, it's
it more kind of natural.
Anyway, I was talking to himjust the other day because I saw
him the other day.
He was visiting Seattle and wewere talking about that.
I'm like man, they were so good, he goes well.
You just need a food dehydrator.
So I ordered one $45 orwhatever from Amazon.
(44:21):
I wanted to make my own, soit's super simple to do.
I took some applesauce, I tooksome applesauce, I put it on
parchment paper and I put itinto the food dehydrator
overnight, and right before Icame on the podcast, I tried it.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
So good.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
So good.
So I'm going to go make somemore with apple butter this time
, and then also you can makebeef jerky with it.
So I'm going to be the fooddehydrator channel, I think,
coming up here in the nextcouple of days because I'm
finding the interesting thingsabout dehydrating your food,
which was never on my radar ofinteresting things before.
Uh, this this last weekend sois this.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Is this in any way, shape or form, a healthy way of
making treats or food?
Speaker 2 (45:01):
it can be.
So the reason why it can be isbecause you are now in control
of what's in there, buyingsomething from the store that
you know has all types ofshenanigans in it.
Like, for example, I've beenlosing weight over the last six,
seven months and I don't wantto have too much sugar.
So what I would do is, insteadof the applesauce, which does
have cinnamon sugar in it, inthe future, when I make other
(45:21):
stuff I can put in sugarsubstitute, so there's not any
calories or anything.
So, yeah, absolutely,absolutely can be.
So that's your, your Nate, yourtreat tip for the week, but
that'll do it for us today.
Thank you so much, rob, forjoining me.
I greatly appreciate it.
If you want to leave us amessage, you can do that.
If you want to install the thesoftware, there's a link in the
(45:44):
description below.
And, of course, you want tosubscribe to us on YouTube.
We would not hate you for that.
We would love to see you Well.
I would Well you might well,because, for whatever reason,
Just don't subscribe.
Watch another podcast, oh yeah,you know what Good point?
Don't subscribe, just go watchthe Dare Leaves.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
And then, if you watch that, watch the Justin
Moore one the one that wementioned earlier.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Just watch, just watch.
All don't even subscribe, justwatch a bunch and watch how
often we show up on your homepage, in fact we want you to
comment on all of the extrapodcasts you watch and just type
in cat all caps.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I did not subscribe, oh wow there we go.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Wow, I will approve all of those comments.
I'm sure they'll get caught inthe filter because they're all
caps.
You know what I just realizedtoo.
This is a thing there's a videocoming out that Rob and I shot
together where at the end I gohashtag this, hashtag that, and
I realized they're all going toget caught in the filter, so I
might have to when that videogoes live.
I have to go through, andanyway, I just made myself do
(46:40):
more work.
Anyway, we'll see y'all in thenext one.
Really important.
If you can subscribe, it reallydoes help the channel.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
No, it doesn't.
Finding something you justreally enjoy doing is always
going to be better for you inthe long term, because, a you're
just going to have fun and B ifit turns out to be successful,
you're in a great spot.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
That is worth more than you know.
A thousand views in an hour.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We are creators, but we're also directors, writers,
actors, editors, so we actuallyhave a lot to offer.
Hey, welcome to the onlypodcast that will record on the
holiday, because I forget thatI'm supposed to take holidays
off.
I'm travis and I'm here withthe guy who's not taking a
holiday because not a holiday inhis country, rob correct travis
.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It was the public holiday this time last week and
I had, I've got to confess, abit of a shock over the last
week.
I was looking on my phone and Isaw a headline it said taylor
swift is engaged to travis.
But it was all in one lineanyway.
Like it cut off the surname andI thought for a second oh for
(00:55):
the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But alas, it wasn't you, my life would have changed
forever.
I mean, I'm not a swifty oranything, but, um, I would be.
Listen, she has a lot of money.
That'd been cool.
This podcast is not aboutswifties.
It's about, uh, growing youryoutube channel.
It can be.
If it's going to get a biggeraudience, it's going to give us
more views.
We might, we might switch tothe shifty or shift to the
(01:17):
swifty, which is that fast saythat a couple times, I can't
even say it once uh, where wehelp you grow your youtube
channels, and of course, we'rehere to do that.
But before we do that, we'regoing to talk a little bit about
some fun stuff.
We have like a group of peoplethat watch us.
They just love the environmentthat we create and you'll see
that in the emails that we'll dohere in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm up for that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, that's the hope we're going to go over are chat
gbt a little bit helping peoplewith their channel.
We're also going to answer aquestion about um shorts
channels and, you know, notgetting as many views as, as
your quote, competitors.
Uh, we're going to talk aboutthumbnails.
(01:58):
We got.
We got a couple of things we'regoing to answer here on today's
podcast.
But before all that, um rightas right as before we were
coming on, I was asking uh robwhat he um, right as right as
before we were coming on, I wasasking uh rob what he did this
weekend.
You said that you were playingum, your switch 2, which you're
enjoying.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yes, I think it's been a good purchase.
It's been a combination ofplaying games that I had before
on the switch, one which ishollow knight and mario od
Odyssey both amazing games, andnow I've got to experience what
I think is the triple A killergame you must buy a Switch to
(02:32):
because of this game.
It's not Mario Kart, it isDonkey Kong Bonanza.
Anybody who has played thisgame will agree with me, really,
and I will say to them banana,banana, because that's all I've
been doing for the last threeweeks collecting bananas, and it
is incredible.
Outrageous cost of games.
(02:52):
Nintendo, I'm still hate themfor that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
yeah, when they make a good game, they just suck you
in travis uh, saturday, speakingof video games, I went to pax
west, which is here in seattleactually, as we're recording,
the last day is today uh, whichis a bunch of video games.
It's a convention in seattlewhere a bunch of video game
companies come in and I and Igot to see a whole bunch of cool
things, a big thing for switchto there with a bunch of games
and stuff, um, so you know, I'vebeen surrounded by video games
(03:16):
all weekend.
The funny thing is is like, Ihave this, this video game
backlog, which I think mostpeople do, and I decided to buy
a game I've already beaten manyyears ago and I'm obsessed with
it again borderlands 3.
I can't stop playing it.
So, my backlog of games I'venever played sitting there, game
I I beat eight years ago, had Ibought it and I'm playing the
heck out of it, having a greatold time I remember with
(03:37):
borderlands 3 that around abouteight hours into the game,
because you get everything'sfully customizable right like
every weapon you get.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You either sell it or like that's the one that
replaces I think I got anoverpowered weapon very early on
and I think it lasted me theentire game pretty much like
tens of hours of it and I thinkit's cool, but I don't know if
it's spoiling experience.
We were talking about this onthe live stream as well and this
is maybe a question to all ofyou how many games have you got
(04:05):
in your catalog that you haven'tplayed yet?
Because I asked this questionto dan and it appears to be that
anybody who has a steam accounthas hundreds of games have
bought when they've been heavilydiscounted and never actually
played them, and he was in thehundreds yeah, it's funny you
say that because I have a videothat it's already scripted out
(04:25):
that I want to shoot aboutgaming backlogs.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So I talk about the psychology behind it.
I think it's much like peoplewith movies and stuff they buy
movies, they don't necessarilyget around to watching all of
them.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I can give you my gaming backlog right now,
because I've gone away fromhaving the PSN network and Xbox
Game Pass, so I'm limited to mychoices about a few physical
games.
So what I've got to do isfinish off donkey and bonanza,
obviously, good luck.
Then I've got uh, 3d marioworld, okay.
Uh, legend of zelda, echo ofwisdoms, which is like a puzzle
(05:00):
game.
Interesting game, interestingstray okay, you know, even
though I have like a dislike forcats, I'm gonna give it a try.
Cyberpunk, cyberpunk, which isgreat.
Not get on with witcher 3, butI've decided anyway cyberpunk's
great, and there's one more gameon the switch, but I can't
(05:20):
remember what it is right now.
Oh, mario rpg.
Oh well, there's like six gamesthere.
Travis, I would assume thatwould take me through to
Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Easy, yeah, easy, because you're not just sitting
there only playing games andthat's it.
Yes, I am Even during thispodcast, okay, sorry.
So let's get back into Banana.
Banana we need a sound effectthat says banana.
We need a sound effect thatsays banana.
We need that.
Let's get into some of yourquestions.
Of course, if you want to, youcan write us at
theboostatvidiqcom.
(05:51):
Also, if you're listening tothe audio podcast, there's a
link there for text, but todaywe're doing emails and one kind
of special message which we'llget to a little bit later on.
First question is from StevenTo my favorite podcast.
I have a simple question thathopefully has a simple answer.
I would love to know yourthoughts.
When posting a long-form video,what is the best category to
select?
I know the answer I figuredyou'd Hold on.
(06:15):
Let me finish reading this Forsome context.
I have a gaming channel calledSingle Player Lounge First of
all, I like that name when I dogame pickups, unboxings and
reviews Recently lounge first ofall, I like that name where I
do game pickups, unboxes andreviews.
Recently, my wife god I gotmarried and plays video games.
How does this?
How is this a world?
I want this world.
Oh, I went out game hunting onour anniversary.
Wait, and she didn't divorceyou.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
What's going on?
So most of the played, well,played this guy's.
This guy's beat the final bossand everything.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
No kidding, do not let her go.
Uh, most of the video is aroundwhat we find and pick up, but
there's a little bit of whatalso we do as well, which makes
it feel like a vlog.
Yeah, would it be better toleave it as the gaming category
of people vlog, and how wouldchanging affect the right
audience?
Thanks for all you do.
Keep us motivated.
Okay, I think this goes intothat.
Youtube frequently will labelthings and either they used to
(07:05):
mean something or they're justtrying to make it clear and
they've actually made it moremuddy.
They seem to do this a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
So if you load up the YouTube homepage or you tap on
YouTube app, you'll see theselittle chips at the top of the
feed that are more granular thanYouTube categories of the feed
that are more granular thanYouTube categories, and so I
think that proves that YouTubeis being more selective with how
they define content other thanthose categories.
(07:31):
There's also a new tool that'scome out called the Hype feature
, and how it works is that youhype videos and then they're
ranked on different leaderboards, and these leaderboards are
divided by categories.
None of those categories inthose leaderboards relate to the
categories that you set on yourvideo.
I think at this point it's safeto say that the categories
(07:55):
dropdown in the YouTube studiois about as useful as video tags
, in that maybe they dosomething, maybe they don't, but
it probably has a 0.1 percentimpact on the video in my
opinion, there used to be andI'm looking for it um, there
(08:17):
used to be a help page aboutthis and they were very clear
that it didn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Um, they actually said that it was more helpful
for like ads and stuff.
Yeah, that's the legacy,understanding of it I have but
the question now is like, doesit even do that now?
Because a lot of these thingschange over time, like they'll
make these changes to the wayyoutube works and then the old
stuff doesn't work the way andhere, as a software company vid
(08:44):
iq, like that happens all thetime.
It was supposed to at thebeginning.
And I do remember specificallyreading that help page a long
time ago where it was like thisis just for that, it doesn't
have anything to do with whereyour video will show up.
Um, there's a ton of videos outthere that are just set to the.
What is the generic thing whenyou first put out this
entertainment or something?
(09:04):
Um, when you very first set upa youtube, channel.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Isn't that the top of the categories?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
but you have to pick one to begin with yeah, I can't
even remember, but it's likeit's something non-specific.
It's not going to keep you fromgetting views, let's just say
that just say the thing youreally want to know, not going
to help keep you from gettingviews.
It's not going to help you findthe right audience.
Youtube is set up in a way thatit will try to find the right
audience in spite of anythingyou do to mess it up, like it's
trying to find the audienceregardless.
(09:30):
So in a lot of ways, I couldsay you can't mess it up.
I don't want to say thatbecause I feel like I could be
proven wrong, but it'd be verydifficult to mess up a video to
make it not work because, um, Itold this story a while back.
Uh, I might have even told itto you, rob, but um years ago,
when ksi had a boxing match, um,and he was streaming it.
(09:52):
They were streaming it onyoutube and they kept getting
taken down in real time yeahwhat I thought was interesting
is, at one point it was a catand mouse game.
The uploaders and restreamers ofthis live stream were naming it
things that had nothing to dowith ks5.
As a human, you kind of wink,wink, nudge, nudge right, and
thumbnails that had nothing todo with the fight, but they
(10:12):
would continue to get served andpeople kept finding them, and
that's that's even more of ainteresting thing than what this
category thing is, becauseyou're putting videos out there
that say they're not anything todo with it, but youtube's
algorithm knows what it is andstill serves it.
So, even in spite of all ofthose things, it still found the
right audience.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So yeah, if I was to give like a final answer on this
.
If your category is usuallygaming, if you leave it there, I
think you're perfectly fine.
If you decide to put it onpeople and vlogs or whatever you
think they've changed it to,you're not wrong, you should be
fine.
And what I think is cool isthat they're this creator is
(10:52):
exploring um more things andkind of expanding the I guess,
the law of their channel in thatthey're doing something with
their wife.
Do they usually do that on achannel?
If not, that's cool tointroduce someone else to your
community.
And the fact that you're havingthese kind of storytelling
(11:12):
moments in the video, which Ithink is cool, because it sounds
like you're not going topackage the video in a way of
you're not packaging it as avlog, but it's going to have
vlog elements in it.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So you're testing new storytelling techniques within
your videos and I commend youfor doing that and I hope it
performs well I would also saythat if your wife is is up for
it, I would actually make hermore part of the channel, if
that's something that you'd beokay with, because it makes it
more interesting.
It's not just the normal gamerthing you see everywhere.
A husband wife gaming channelis a lot more rare.
You'll have a lot lesscompetition and it might be more
(11:46):
interesting.
Furthermore, like what Rob said, I like that you're trying to
do other things, and it's smartfrom a longevity standpoint,
because, rather than gettingpeople to come in and be
interested in just the gameyou're playing, they're getting
interested in you, which is theonly way you're going to be able
to jump from game to game andstill have any type of audience.
People come for you and not thegame.
Hopefully that helps.
(12:07):
All right.
So that's first one down.
Ken theboost at vidIQcom.
If you want to send us an email, you can do that there and we
will try to answer it.
And this next one comes fromBrendan.
Hey guys, hope all is well withall of you.
I'm relatively a new subscriber,but I've been watching your
videos like crazy.
I've already picked up a coupleof really solid tips.
(12:27):
I repurposed an old YouTubechannel that I was using to
watch daily content into ashorts channel.
First of all, I think most ofus have done that.
I repurposed my channel fromjust a watching channel.
My first upload was August 7thand it performed well, hitting
the shorts feed and getting over1,000 views.
We can always talk about whatthat actually means, because, of
course, views now versus viewsa year ago two different things.
But okay, it has goodimpression rate and good
retention as well, but it justkind of died.
(12:48):
No more impressions and no moreviews.
The next seven uploads havegarnered under 25 views and
minimal impressions.
No shorts feed.
Looking at other channels in myniche, I believe that my content
is much more appealing andstands out.
Some people have posted fourtimes and had two 800 videos and
two duds where it feels likeI've hatched seven duds now.
Also, I know my videos aregradually getting better in
terms of editing stickers,titles and descriptions.
(13:08):
I went through chat gpt metachecklist and there's no issues.
Chat gpt said after 10 uploadsI should get more impressions.
My needs stay consistent.
Is this permanent?
Why do some questions break outof the face sooner?
Do you have any tips?
So this and while this isspecific to shorts, really to be
honest, this could be talkedabout for long form, because
it's all about getting anaudience and then being like we
don't know anything about yourspecific channel.
Um, we don't know whether ornot, of course, everyone feels
(13:32):
like they're getting better asthey do more content.
We'll take your word for it.
We don't know that to be true,but we'll take your word for it.
But also, we don't know, um,what your content is.
Because what if we watch it andwe're like I don't understand
that, but it makes sense to you,like you made it.
So everything in the videomakes sense to you, but when
someone else on the other sideof the screen looks at it, I
(13:52):
don't understand.
I don't get the point.
It's not as entertaining.
That's where the rubber meetsthe road, rob.
Let's talk a little bit aboutShorts Views and since this's a
newer creator, they may not knowthis that the shorts view
numbers changed, uh, in the lastyear or so.
Right, when was it like lastyear?
When was that?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
or this year, six months ago uh, it was like march
time they went from you havingto watch a shot for a certain
period of time, depending on howlong the shot was.
For example, let's say the shotwas 30 seconds, you might have
to watch that shot for actuallyfive or six seconds for it to
count as a view.
Now, that's not relevant, likeyou can.
(14:31):
Just it's not very good for anaudio podcast, is it?
There you go, just swipingthrough shots as fast as you can
.
They count as a view, so doesthat actually mean it's a view?
These days, it could be arguedthe value of an engaged view
(14:51):
versus a view.
Look in your analytics for thatto see how many views you're
actually getting.
And, just to be honest, athousand views on a single shot
is still a teeny tiny samplesize of data for YouTube to work
with.
It is curious that you had oneshot that did well and then the
(15:14):
rest have been duds.
It goes back to your questionTravis of like what's the topic
and what's the nature of thecontent?
Because what I have seen andI'm not saying this is
necessarily what you've done,but what I have seen is when
people are repurposing contentfrom elsewhere, downloading
clips, football highlights, thattype of stuff.
(15:35):
One video may really take off,but then it's kind of it may be
suppressed, and again I'm kindof speculating here it may be
suppressed by YouTube'sdiscovery because it's seen and
treated as repurposed,repetitious content.
If that is not the case likeyou're fully making it 100%,
it's authentically you then wehave to go into the typical
(15:56):
questions of are the topicsrelated?
You think your video is awesome, but you know, the other
channels that you're comparingyourself to might have a bit of
background and history and a bitof a community.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
uh, it's incomplete information, as always,
unfortunately yeah, I mean shortform versus long form, kind of
same thing.
Um, and yeah, you will see somevideos pop off while others
don't and, quite frankly, um,the fact that you got a thousand
views very early on is actuallythe opposite.
What you should see is whatyou're seeing now, especially as
a new channel very fewimpressions, very few views, and
then over time you get like apop off, and that's kind of the
(16:30):
thing with shorts is, uh, itsometimes sets an unrealistic
expectation of what you shouldexpect to see.
Um, the reality is 99 of thepeople that upload, you know,
their first couple of videos orshorts are going to see almost
nothing for quite a while.
Even this podcast channelitself I remember we talked
about very early on that for thefirst, like almost week, even
(16:50):
though we uploaded two or threevideos right off the bat, it had
two impressions period twoimpressions, not views
impressions for a long time andit just takes a while for it to
find the right audience.
Now, if it doesn't find theright audience, there might be a
reason for that, and it is hardto take yourself out of your
own shoes and go.
Is that video really better thanmine?
You might be right.
(17:11):
Your email, might you know.
You said you're very confidentthat your content is better.
You might actually be right.
You might actually be right,but they also probably have a
larger audience, in which caseit's easy for them to find.
It's easier for youtube to findan audience to watch their
content, versus you, who arebrand new and just coming out.
And it's not to say that thesevideos won't get views later.
We actually have shorts to giveviews to this very day.
They were put out.
How long ago?
Year, two years, whatever.
(17:32):
Um, you said a large portion, Ithink.
Uh, rob of our shorts getsearch views, which means
they're not.
They didn't get them right offthe bat.
They're getting them over.
Yeah, so just because youdidn't get the views now doesn't
mean you won't get them later,and so just keep pressing on and
can keep continuing to bebetter every time out.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We often encourage creators with long form content
to you know, make 25 videos overa six month period without
looking at the analytics toomuch.
Don't download the YouTubestudio at this point, because if
you're refreshing your videothree hours after it's gone live
and it's got seven views, thatcan be a bit demoralizing.
(18:13):
And I always want to find outfirst from the creator do you
love YouTube?
Do you love waking up in themorning with a new idea and
making a video, regardless ofhow many people watch it?
I feel as if, like, get throughthat stage of you know that rite
of passage and if after sixmonths, you're still saying to
(18:36):
yourselves I guess in your case,maybe after you've made a
hundred shots, I still lovemaking shots.
I know they're not performingthat well, but I'm getting
better with every single onethat I make and I'm learning new
techniques and skills and Ifeel as if I'm becoming a better
storyteller.
Just enjoy that period ofinnocence before you then have
the pressure of all these peoplehoping and expecting that your
(18:58):
next video is as good as theprevious one Because it doesn't
last for long if you stick it onyoutube either that the
pressure of not being discoveredis soon changed by expectation,
and that is.
That's a scary thing as well.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, I've talked about this before and it's a
massive thing that, um,especially newer creators don't
recognize is the story I alwaystell is when I very first
started, I considered a videosuccessful when I had 100 views.
Like I'm like, holy crap, 100views, that's a lot of people,
and if a video ever made it to athousand, I would never think
about it again because it sosurpassed my expectation.
Yet later in my career, if Ididn't get a thousand views in
(19:35):
30 minutes, I was really upset.
So you know, finding somethingyou just really enjoy doing is
always going to be better foryou in the long term, because
they just have fun and B if itturns out to be successful,
you're in a great spot.
You're doing something youalready love.
You're not doing things youdon't like.
The worst thing you can do andI've talked to many creators
have done this is make a videojust because it's a popular
thing to do and they don'treally care for it.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And it pops off and now that's your channel.
Congratulations, you playedyourself.
Uh, not exactly great a decadeago.
I go to bed at night and think,if I, if this video that just
went live gets 300 viewstomorrow, I'll be happy.
Fast forward 10 years.
We get around about 10 000views an hour on the channel,
which means that you try andfigure it out.
There's probably four or fivepeople in the world watching me
right now, 24 7.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I'm still not satisfied all right I want 100
people watching me all of thetime it just never ends it's,
it's the human nature of ofyoutube that no one ever really
tells you when you're trying togrow your channel, that, like
this, is a thing you need tokeep in check as best you can.
Uh, because it's a, it's athing that doesn't go away and
it's not even anything thatyoutube specifically the thing
(20:47):
is.
I feel like youtube contributesto this in a way accidentally,
because we just see numbersgoing up.
We know a bigger number quoteequals good, right, but we don't
actually attach humans to thosenumbers, even though we should
imagine if 50 of those peoplewere in the room with you saying
I love your videos, youprobably would never.
You probably think I'm the mostamazing person in the world,
like you wouldn't even think Ionly got 50 views.
(21:08):
You'd be like holy crap, I got50, 50 people in here and they
love me and it just itanonymizes the connections.
That's why I talked about acouple episodes back where some
of the comments people have leftme were so impactful, because
you start to put the connectionwith the fact you're connecting
with people.
Uh, it's not just a number.
If it's a number, you can go.
Ah, I want that number to bebigger.
If it's like people, it's it'sharder to to downplay that.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I think that's really important in the in the first
hour I used to check like clickthrough rate and view count and
the of 10 of a video.
What I'm trying to do morethese days, travis, is go into
the comments and see what ourregular viewers are first
commenting on.
And so now I'm trying to bemore grounded in, as you said,
(21:53):
the transformation, the impactswe hopefully have in a positive
and a motivational sense for ouraudience.
And when I see a comment suchas like I needed this video
today, right now, or like thisvideo is speaking to me, like
yeah, that that is worth morethan you know.
A thousand views in an hour.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
All right.
Next one hi vidi crew.
I've been taking advantage ofvidiq's uh free thumbnail and
title rating tool.
My scores have been 82 fortitle and 87 for thumbnail.
Can you help me interpret howgood our average scores these
are?
I've only posted two videos onmy channel and both have got
practically identical scores.
I'm curious to know how I'mdoing it with rates and how
other people are doing.
Thank you for doing a great job.
So every once in a while I wantto talk a little bit about the
(22:33):
vidIQ software.
You can get access to it forfree, vidiqcom dot com.
That is something that we dohere and we love to help people
out.
And the score thing is veryinteresting because I think you
have to understand what the toolis trying to do.
The tool is trying to point youin a direction.
It's not necessarily trying tosay good, bad and different.
It's pointing you in adirection.
(22:54):
And we do spend our engineersspend a lot of time tweaking
that thing to make it evenbetter and better and kind of,
look at what your thumbnail isdoing, your title is doing, but
ultimately the real arbiter ofall that is the viewer.
So these tools are great forpeople who just have no idea,
like I don't know what my titleshould be at all, and it will
(23:15):
definitely point you in theright direction.
Same thing with the thumbnailLike we're going to help you
move in the proper direction.
There is no like quote good,average number, um, because you
remember in a vacuum, thesethings, these numbers, don't
exist at all on youtube.
It's something that vidIQ cameup with to kind of help put you
in the right direction.
So I think when you're in the80s and 90s, you're in the right
direction.
You just need to look at doesthat thumbnail now make sense in
(23:36):
the niche that you're in?
Um, what would you say?
This is always difficult for usbecause we don't directly work
with the software.
We have to, like explain thesoftware after the fact, like
what are the things that youthink of when you, when you come
across stuff like this?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I mirror what you say , travis, in that, whether it's
our tools, somebody else's toolsor youtube itself, judging the
success of a video by a, anindividual or isolated score is
just going to drive you crazy,in the same sense that you could
look at your YouTube analyticsand say, well, this video got
(24:10):
20% click through rate.
Why is it not doing better thanit should be?
And then I go back to againwhat you said, travis If you're
getting higher scores on ourtools, then what it's pointing
towards is hey, you're not doingsomething completely stupid
here.
You've used a custom thumbnail.
(24:30):
First of all, thumbs up.
It probably isn't clutteredwith too many elements.
That's probably a good thing aswell.
It's using colors that combinewith each other nicely.
You're probably doing somethingthere as well.
It's using colors that combinewith each other nicely.
You're probably doing somethingthere as well.
But it it can't read mind.
Read your viewers and yourtarget audience and exactly what
(24:51):
they're looking for and whatthey need.
Uh, hopefully, as our toolsbecome more sophisticated and we
have more data, we'll be ableto continue to improve on them.
But yeah, as you say, travis,these are tools.
These are not on and offbuttons like right and wrong.
This definitely meanssomething's going to work.
But we appreciate you using ourtools and like hey, if you have
(25:12):
feedback, if you think thisscore seems arbitrary and it's
not really helping me, we wantto hear that feedback so we can
improve it even further.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, tell us, let us know
.
We're always improving.
And, uh, the the devs are likewe get to look at slack all the
time and they're constantlyadjusting everything.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's really, really awesome to see it's funny
actually that we we created aslack channel, like about six
months ago, and the developerssaid hey, um, creators, if you
have any ideas, send, send themaway.
And I replied and said you dorealise you're opening up the
floodgates here.
And then, within like 24 hours,whoosh, they got a ton of
(25:49):
suggestions and that's whyyou've seen, particularly in the
Chrome extension, some bigupdates and improvements to
existing tools.
The scorecard, the real timestats thing, which is still my
personal favourite of vid iq,that's had a big upgrade.
The thumbnail preview tool,which we kind of neglected for a
few years.
You click on it now it's likeholy smokes.
I can customize this completelyand see what my phone is going
(26:12):
to look like in all differentshapes and sizes.
So, yeah, if you haven't triedour chrome extension for a while
, browser extension, give that atry, because it's looking
pretty damn fine these days.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
There's a link in the description and in the show
notes.
If you've never done that, it'sright there.
Go ahead and click it, installit.
It's really great.
One of our last emails is fromAngie, new listener.
I love the podcast but I'm sadto say I've binged all of them
and now have to wait for weeklyuploads.
That seems, but I'm sad to sayI've binged all of them and now
(26:46):
I have to wait for weeklyuploads.
That seems impossible.
I don't know.
That seems all the way back toum the jeremy vesters.
Do we still have them?
Like?
Yeah, they should all be in theaudio podcast, I think.
I think angie's talking aboutthe youtube channel.
I can't imagine she's talkingabout the audio.
Okay, fair, no way you'velistened to all the audio
podcasts.
But youtube, okay, maybe as faras cadbury cream, eggs, candy
Corn, you're both missing themark.
Sour Patch, watermelon, all theway.
Have you ever had that?
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, I can feel that .
Yeah, Sour Patch Treats.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Sour Patch.
Is that something you can getin the UK?
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The Sour Patch variant of candy?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So Sour Patch is worldwide.
Okay, did you have sour patchcards?
The, the did you have those no,they're not familiar.
Okay, uh, I have to shout out.
I have a shout out and aquestion.
First, I'm gonna give a hugeshout out to my former vid iq
coach, antonio.
Antonio was amazing, by the way, antonio, incredible guy who I
worked with for the first partof 2025.
He convinced me to separate mychannel to two and niche down on
both.
Because of this painful butneed to change, I was recently
(27:37):
approached by two differentcompanies.
Each asked me to produce somecustom videos for them.
I'm an educator that's amazingone for each of my niches,
totally out of the blue.
Thank you, antonio.
This would have never happenedwithout his advice and
encouragement.
We need to get that messageover to antonio, I just
screenshotted it.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I'm sending it into the select one right now, that's
amazing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Now for my question how do I negotiate, make sure
I'm getting paid what I deserved?
What are the important thingsto keep in mind when I'm
entering into contracts likethis?
Chatgbt has been incrediblyhelpful, reviewing contracts and
giving me talking points.
This is all new to me.
I'm a small but growing creatorwith 6,400 subs on one channel
and 1,000 of my newest Wouldlove any advice.
Angie, if you've watched allthe episodes, I have to imagine
you watched the one with JustinMoore, which is going to be your
(28:18):
North star for thisconversation.
I will also talk about myexperience and, rob, you can
give me your advice too.
But for sure, when it comes tothis, this type of thing, 100%
watch the, the, the Justin Mooreepisode.
It will.
It will be a great place.
He's also got a book and someother things.
He's an incredible guy thatwants people to make more money.
He wants the creators to makemore money and tells you how to
(28:40):
kind of do that.
Having said that, first of all,congratulations, and it really
just proves something that Iwant to.
I want to actually um, I wantto do in a future episode about
smaller creators doing bigthings, and this is a channel.
This is a person with a channelunder 10 000 subscribers is
being approached by companies todo things like sponsorship
stuff.
That's incredible.
That also just goes to show thepower of what we do.
(29:02):
We are creators, but we're alsodirectors, writers, actors,
editors all these things thatthese companies have to pay
individual people for, but we'rein one package, so we actually
have a lot to offer.
I would also say that once youfigure out where it is, you want
to be, uh, on like the moneyside of things, which could be
(29:22):
an affiliate deal.
It could be something simplelike that like you know, I'll
get you this many sales and yougive me this back, or whatever
it is.
Um, the.
The rule of thumb is this andI've told this story before.
You probably heard it if youtell them a number and they say
yes right away, you justundershot yourself.
I've done this many times.
I gave one time I shot up anumber and I'm like there's no
(29:43):
way they're going to pay it andthey immediately said yes and
I'm like don't, because thatmeans I probably could have got
double.
So that's number one.
Like if you put out a numberand they immediately accepted it
, you, you shot too low.
Secondarily, I think you kind oflook at like what's realistic
if you want them to be anongoing thing or if you just
want it to be one off.
If it's ongoing, I always tryto snag them and I think Justin
(30:05):
talked about this for more thanone engagement.
So more than one video.
Because there's two reasons forthis.
Number one you should be ableto get more money out of it If
you like.
Instead of doing one for like500, I'm not saying that's how
much you charge, let's say onefor 500, you could do three for
like a thousand, and whilethat's not 500 each, they were
probably never going to give youa thousand, but if you give
them a value, then they mightactually give you a thousand
(30:28):
dollars.
You just do three videos ratherthan one for 500.
So look to make a deal for themso that they want to come back
to you.
And also gives you a chance tosucceed, because ultimately they
will come back to you if theysee value in what they paid for.
If you do a one-off and itdoesn't go well, you may never
hear from them again.
You want to hear from them ifthey're a good company and you
enjoy dealing with them.
You want to give them a deal sothat they want to come back and
(30:49):
you have a constant flow ofmoney.
I've done this with multiplesponsors that I've worked with
for years.
Could I have gotten a lot moremoney up front?
The first time, probably, but Imay never have worked with them
again, but over the aggregateover the years, I've definitely
made more money by not being toogreedy up front.
Uh, justin might tell you adifferent way to do it, but that
was been.
That's been my experience.
Rob, what do you think aboutwhen you see questions like this
(31:11):
?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
so this might be complete frontier gibberish,
because I have never really hadto go through this sponsorship
brand deal process in my life asa content creator.
I know that might be hard tobelieve, but essentially the
story is I made a video about avidIQ tool.
Rob Sandy, the CEO, contactedme and he said do you want to
(31:35):
work for vidIQ?
And I thought, well, I'm nevergoing to have to worry about any
brand deals or sponsorshipsever again.
So the answer is yes.
The funny thing is talking abouthow you undervalued yourself,
travis.
I think this is where theloyalty and the trust came in.
I don't know if I've told youthis story before, but when we
were first negotiating an hourlyrate here at vidIQ, rob said
(31:57):
how much are you going to charge?
And I had no idea.
I've never charged an hourlyrate.
I don't know what I'm doinghere on youtube.
I never thought I'd be able todo anything freelance creative.
So let's say 25 an hour.
And he said no, I'm going topay you 45 an hour.
Wow, so I'd undervalue myself.
And he said no, I think you'reworth more than that, and that's
.
From that moment on, I've hadthat trust and that relationship
(32:19):
with Rob at the IQ.
So, like you know, thank you,thank you, thank you.
Now, going back to the topic inhand, as I say, this may be
completely rubbish, but mythought would be that, just to
get some experience ofnegotiating a deal, might you
offer a bit of a like not abargain, but like a good deal
(32:41):
for them, but like only asingular video so that you gain
some experience but you don'tpermanently undervalue yourself?
Is that something to consider?
I don't know.
Another thing to think about islike we have no idea how to
price this, because,irrespective of how many views
you get, there's a bigdifference between promoting an
energy drink and luxury cruisers.
(33:03):
Like selling luxury cruisers,you should be charging a huge
amount from those a thousandviews, because you only need
like 20 people to buy the luxurycruise for it to be very
valuable to them.
And then there's the otherthing, like do you just charge
by the video or do you chargethrough an affiliate deal, like
a recurring income in perpetuity?
(33:25):
There's all these littleparticular things to consider.
So those are just my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I don't know if they're useful or not I think,
between what we've said and whatjustin says, she should have a
good idea of where to go.
I would love to hear afollow-up on this, so yeah after
this is all said and done with,and you've done the, the promos
and you kind of have a story totell, we'd love to hear you
send another email to us.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
We would love to hear from you it's just awesome to
hear that somebody's now turningtheir skills into a business
rather than just a passive,passive income from ad revenue.
I mean that's all well and cool, but now you're being
approached yeah giving youoffers.
Yeah, I was gonna say also myum.
My other thought was askantonio, sure he can, surely he
(34:08):
can give you the best that hewasn't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Right, like so, he, he doesn't.
He's not a good iq anymore, buthe's no, no, no, he's not
around anymore.
Uh, he's doing, he's off to big, big things, man he's.
I see him in ads all the time,like I'm on facebook, and he's
on ads every other, every otherday.
It's weird, it's crazy.
He's a great guy, though I, Ireally, really enjoy Antonio
Last one.
So a couple of months back, Ihad encouraged I forgot about
(34:33):
this until this email came in Iencouraged people to send us
video questions and we did anepisode with that and it was
cool, and I forgot about it andsomeone sent in a video question
.
Now, this video question islike three minutes long.
We, we're gonna watch the wholething because why not?
Right, it's only three minutes.
We'll give him the watch time,right, we'll give him the watch
time.
It's, uh, it's cool because hegoes over a couple of things
(34:55):
that I think we can talk aboutafter the fact.
Um, but this one is from chris.
Let me go ahead and share thisand let's give him a watch and
see what he has to say.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Hello tren or trob or tran or theresisa, whoever
you've got co-hosting.
I just wanted to.
I just wanted to, um, basicallysay I've jumped on youtube
coaching.
It's taken me three years tomake the plunge and I just
wanted to sort of talk aboutwhat your viewers probably
(35:27):
experienced over the years.
That you start off like I did.
It was like Minecraft contentand you know the title was
Minecraft, my World, part 1.
Description me playingMinecraft.
That was it.
Post.
See what happens.
Expect world domination.
(35:48):
It doesn't go like that, andover time I realized that the
every little thing you put onthe youtube upload sheet is
crucial.
The other day I had a shotabout a tt rpg role-playing game
that isn't out yet, so it hadno name recognition, and it sat
(36:12):
for 15 hours with 12 impressions.
And then I put D&D in bracketsDungeons, dragons, because
that's kind of roughly what itis and suddenly I had 1,000
impressions.
It kicked it off.
It's like every little bit ofdata that you choose to put on
your video matters.
(36:34):
Like you say, the click.
You try to get someone to puttheir finger on the phone to
click and it's all psychologyand it's, in one way, terribly,
terribly hard.
There are loads of people youcan hear about on other podcasts
with.
You know, 50 titles for onevideo, 50 thumbnails for one
(36:55):
video, and it really can makethe difference.
It does make the difference andyet there's a midpoint, isn't
there?
And I think that's where I amTrying with multiple thumbnails,
three thumbnails, trying withmaybe one or two titles and
having enough success where I'mhappy.
I know a dozen of the names whocomment regular.
(37:18):
I'm making some money everymonth and, yeah, it's like
subscribers don't matter.
It doesn't matter that I've gotnearly 3,000 subscribers if I'm
only getting 200 views.
You should be counting byeither views or by likes.
You know, and I just it's notreally.
(37:41):
This isn't really a question.
This is just all those thingsthat we listen to your podcasts,
we listen to other podcasts andit just doesn't get acted upon.
It's crucial and you have tokeep testing and finding and you
have to enjoy it.
You know subscribers used tomatter.
(38:03):
Now they don't Just like.
How would you make a questionout of this for your podcast?
What would the headline be ofyour podcast if you had to title
this as a video?
It's me rambling about YouTubeand then if this was my video
and I had to go to YouTube.
I'd have to then come up withsome cunning title and cunning
thumbnail trying to get peopleto click.
(38:24):
It's a game, isn't it?
You've got to gamify it.
Anyway, I see what you do withthat.
So, yeah, all the advice in theworld only goes so far.
It's what you listen to and acton and learn.
So yeah, hey, good luck with itall.
Thank you and I'll see youlater.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
All right, so I think the title should be Rob Wilson,
from vidIQ's doppelganger,rambles on about metadata and,
if it's important, on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
How many people are going to click that.
Thank you for that, chris.
He said a lot of things which Ithink were really critical.
First of all, subs don't matter.
I love how he said that it iscorrect about that.
Can't disagree with that.
We actually didn't.
We did.
We do a video about that.
I know we've talked about it alot you.
You say that a lot, and I thinkit's so important for people to
understand that, especiallywhen you're new, because I
remember when I before I startedwatching, before I started
(39:19):
doing youtube, I rememberwatching a channel at 10 000
subscribers.
Remember at the time thinking,wow, that's a lot of subscribers
.
When I saw they had videos thathad like 200 views, I was
floored.
I'm like, wait a minute, Ithought you don't have like 10
000 views every video.
Like I had no idea.
Yeah, no, that's not a thing,uh, that that one does not equal
the other.
So it is very um.
(39:40):
I love hearing that a creatorthat's uh listening to the
podcast gets that because it'sso critical.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And then also what you said earlier about having
fun you said the same thing,yeah um, it still grinds my
gears when some people saymidway through the video uh,
I've just noticed that only um20 of my viewers are subscribers
, so it'd be really important ifyou can subscribe, it really
does help the channel.
(40:07):
Every time I hear somebody saythat, I shout no, it doesn't.
It's like you know, it'sprobably that's probably not 100
accurate, but yeah, yeah, justget them to watch another video,
don't get them to subscribe, Ithink I think they do that to
make people feel like they needto subscribe.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
It's like reminds them, like oh, I guess it helps
you, okay, let me subscribe.
I think it's more for that'sguilting them into doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I think this does sound like a person who's kind
of getting paralyzed with choicein the thought of having to
come up with like many differenttitles for videos.
And yeah, maybe a slightadjustment to the title for that
short did bring in a thousandimpressions, but again, we're
still talking about relativelysmall data sample size there.
(40:51):
I think for Chris, what I wouldperhaps suggest is that the
need to roll back to evenearlier in a process, and that
might be coming up with betteror testing new video ideas,
because if you're constantlytweaking the thumbnails and the
(41:15):
titles, trying to eke out somemore you know what you might
call marginal gains it feelslike the idea in the first place
just didn't really match up tothe audience's expectations.
That might get you out of thefunk, chris, of constantly
playing around with titles andthumbnails.
Now we've been Jen, dan andmyself have been wrestling with
(41:38):
this question about how usefulis the A-B title testing,
because we're doing all of thesechanges and tests and we get
these results whereby one titleis 4% better than the other one,
but it doesn't necessarilyinform us to make sweeping
changes on the channel.
(41:59):
I'm not feeling, after two yearsof thumbnail testing and title
testing, that I definitivelyknow what thumbnails work better
than others.
I tend to find that if the ideais really good, then yeah, like
a slight change of a thumbnailon the title might get you a bit
more traction.
But it ultimately starts at thevery beginning and if the idea
(42:21):
is not good enough, then that'sjust going to be an anchor or a
handicap for the video,regardless of if you're trying
to make a really good title,thumbnail or hook.
I rambled a bit there.
As long as, chris, I doapologize.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
No, it was good and I think that, um, I think what
you said.
First of all, it was verycritical, and also the fun part
I just want to harp back on thathe said to having fun and it's
doing it.
Otherwise, all of this is fornot, um, but yeah, I think I
think, uh, it's.
First of all, thank you forsending us the the video, chris.
It's always good to see peopleand, um, yeah, we now we're
(42:58):
curious about those, uh, thosebooks in the background.
Uh, I think that will do fortoday.
Uh, definitely enjoyed havingyou, rob, actually.
So when I get off of here, I'mgonna go into the kitchen
because I got something.
So I, daryl eves, was on thelast episode and if you haven't
watched that episode, please gowatch.
It's amazing.
He leaves so many great nuggetsof information.
But the reason I bring that upis because yes, sorry for the
(43:20):
downgrade everyone the um.
the one of the first things wetalked about is because he lives
in utah and I just justrecently visited friends in Utah
and while I was there my friendmade homemade fruit roll-ups
and I never had a homemade fruitroll-up before.
Have you had fruit roll-upsbefore?
I don't even know what one is.
You don't even know what afruit roll-up is.
They call it leather now Maybeyou've heard that phrase.
(43:43):
Very tasty little treat.
I'm sure they have them in theuk, but they're I don't want to
say they're a kid's treat,because I think that makes it
sound weird, but, um, they'redefinitely very tasty anyway.
Oh, like really savory andsweet.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yes, yeah, yeah, one of the two.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, okay, yeah, it just kind of looks like
halloween candy I might havekind of, but I feel like, um,
when you make them naturally outof like fruits and stuff, it's
it more kind of natural.
Anyway, I was talking to himjust the other day because I saw
him the other day.
He was visiting Seattle and wewere talking about that.
I'm like man, they were so good, he goes well.
You just need a food dehydrator.
So I ordered one $45 orwhatever from Amazon.
(44:21):
I wanted to make my own, soit's super simple to do.
I took some applesauce, I tooksome applesauce, I put it on
parchment paper and I put itinto the food dehydrator
overnight, and right before Icame on the podcast, I tried it.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
So good.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
So good.
So I'm going to go make somemore with apple butter this time
, and then also you can makebeef jerky with it.
So I'm going to be the fooddehydrator channel, I think,
coming up here in the nextcouple of days because I'm
finding the interesting thingsabout dehydrating your food,
which was never on my radar ofinteresting things before.
Uh, this this last weekend sois this.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Is this in any way, shape or form, a healthy way of
making treats or food?
Speaker 2 (45:01):
it can be.
So the reason why it can be isbecause you are now in control
of what's in there, buyingsomething from the store that
you know has all types ofshenanigans in it.
Like, for example, I've beenlosing weight over the last six,
seven months and I don't wantto have too much sugar.
So what I would do is, insteadof the applesauce, which does
have cinnamon sugar in it, inthe future, when I make other
(45:21):
stuff I can put in sugarsubstitute, so there's not any
calories or anything.
So, yeah, absolutely,absolutely can be.
So that's your, your Nate, yourtreat tip for the week, but
that'll do it for us today.
Thank you so much, rob, forjoining me.
I greatly appreciate it.
If you want to leave us amessage, you can do that.
If you want to install the thesoftware, there's a link in the
(45:44):
description below.
And, of course, you want tosubscribe to us on YouTube.
We would not hate you for that.
We would love to see you Well.
I would Well you might well,because, for whatever reason,
Just don't subscribe.
Watch another podcast, oh yeah,you know what Good point?
Don't subscribe, just go watchthe Dare Leaves.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
And then, if you watch that, watch the Justin
Moore one the one that wementioned earlier.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Just watch, just watch.
All don't even subscribe, justwatch a bunch and watch how
often we show up on your homepage, in fact we want you to
comment on all of the extrapodcasts you watch and just type
in cat all caps.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I did not subscribe, oh wow there we go.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Wow, I will approve all of those comments.
I'm sure they'll get caught inthe filter because they're all
caps.
You know what I just realizedtoo.
This is a thing there's a videocoming out that Rob and I shot
together where at the end I gohashtag this, hashtag that, and
I realized they're all going toget caught in the filter, so I
might have to when that videogoes live.
I have to go through, andanyway, I just made myself do
(46:40):
more work.
Anyway, we'll see y'all in thenext one.
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