How to Get More Subscribers on YouTube — FREE LIVE CHANNEL REVIEWS

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Since we talk about thumbnails so much here’s some extra material for you:
🛠️ Thumbnail Workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX1c0vOM16o
🖼️ BIG thumbnail playlist on our channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTYbelo0OEJ5IabgyGJiKOP-dVCBfXLsH
🎓 vidIQ Thumbnail Academy Course: https://academy.vidiq.com/courses/master-custom-youtube-thumbnails

🎮 We audit a lot of gaming channels, so here’s some in-depth info to help you grow your gaming channel:
https:// youtu.be/BbeNf4Irzlo
https:// youtu.be/Ve8ukl13oGc
https:// youtu.be/a-udJ-KNIKk
https:// youtu.be/FZ68Bi9IL7Q
https:// youtu.be/jxR2x_Kn6Y0
https:// youtu.be/9dPVyp-DNrc

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=================== text video ====================

[Music]

so

[Music]

[Music]

so

[Music]

[Music]

the rocket is launching into the sky

which can only mean one thing once again

welcome back everybody to the tuesday

channel audit live streams

with rob here welcoming you into our

classroom our lecture theater our

learning hall

where we are going to share our

knowledge our wisdom

our experience on what you have to offer

from your channel to hopefully take it

to the next step

as you spread your message and your

influence and your income on youtube

there’s a very specific reason why i’ve

used that little catchphrase

hello welcome i hope you’re having a

great day it is episode i believe 16

of tuesday channel audits in 2022

and episode 4972nd

of our live streaming here as a whole at

vidiq and as always i could not do this

live stream without a plentiful supply

of guests including first of all

i’m not sure what he’s doing here he’s

testing his new curly

oh headphone

cable do you you can just keep pulling

it yeah

wow is that visually satisfying dan yes

yes

how are you

i’m good

you seem very distracted i hope you’re

gonna be doing that throughout the

entirety of a live stream introducing

second

he is the coolest man in the world he

has some high pitched noise effects

which he may be or may not be using

and uh if you think about the thinking

emoji

this would be v3 of such a thing

oh and he’s animated as well this time

jeff how’s it going

oh man first technical error

first one out of the gate

i was trying to do the high-pitched

voice and it just muted me yeah oh well

oh well uh right okay bring it in uh

last but certainly not least he is

the

leader

of think media a

now

double gold play button recipient kind

of if you got a gold play button for

every million subscribers you received

on your channel

sean cannell back in the house how’s it

going

fired up grateful

and uh

i think my my favorite title now though

is

dad of one boy with a second on the way

oh congratulations yeah wednesday when

when is it

september 3rd and um yeah we’re we’re so

excited another boy on the way john

stephen cannell

oh you’ve already picked the name see

what i was actually going to do was ask

the audience if they could help with it

like a youtube

style name for your child maybe the he

would be called watch time or or return

viewers or something but if that’s

already decided

[Music]

or bitcoin and to the highest bidder to

name him actually

you’ve heard it here first folks on the

vidiq channel live stream let’s say

hello to some people i’m going to say

hello to john creative minds i am also

going to say hello to people who are

congratulating sean as well uh call his

kids watch time by iyy three dates uh

congratulations there as well from

gaming for lunch who she is saying hi

and hello to

dutch 3t playzz

many

many syllables there for that channel

name dan who are you saying hello to as

you quizzically look at your screen i

was i think it’s duet plays i think that

yeah

if you put in the numbers i’m gonna

pronounce the numbers now now i want to

find people with numbers in their names

there’s there’s actually not a lot today

which is really encouraging i’ll say

hello to claw look at that four letter

name on youtube congrats to you uh

triple tastic hello to you

ok fishing uh rob look does look like

he’s standing up and also i am in the

middle of an earthquake uh which is

interesting

um

and then uh

dannymon hello to you nice

go on jeff it’s over to you have you got

chat pod you want me to put some on

screen no we’re good man uh so i’m gonna

say what’s up to uh rpm nexus in the

house what’s up man and we’ve also got

the blender evolution in the building

how you doing mr cinegard good to see

you here one of our uh discord members

what’s up man how’s it going how’s it

going and last but not least gaming for

lunch so you never go hungry

yeah travis will be all over that uh

sean i’ll put some channels on screen to

help you uh with who you’re going to say

hello to and they include the following

monique great to see you i also can see

it over here i see lennon beck and i’m

saying what’s up i see uh dude it’s jake

jake grateful you’re here

fact and more mo mo fortnite is in the

house

we got bolt lp average joe arcades

calvin hello good to see you

and uh t-boss gaming man x y five uh

good to see you

and uh noora’s channel hi as well

awesome to see you here short video

animals mr egg games

clinton pippernet

pippert disc golf good to see you the

little fishy motion king joe’s

phenomenal i agree joe you are

phenomenal yikes good to see you here um

and uh danny it yourself

all right then yeah hello to all of you

and there were 350 plus people who are

watching uh if you are brand new here do

let us know in the chat but if you are a

regular member of the vidiq channel

audits welcome those new members in

maybe show me around i just don’t take

them to the washroom we haven’t yet

fixed that so

for two hours uh you really shouldn’t be

using that that’s just one piece of

advice but the most important thing is

how does this live stream work and we

explain it in 60 seconds

welcome to the vid iq channel audit live

stream where we review your youtube

channels to submit your channel for

review make sure to fill out the right

form linked in the video description

note that we clear these forms after

every live stream so make sure to

resubmit the following week channel

audits are free so please don’t send us

a super chat or spammers in a chat

expecting a review if there are

alternative ways to get picked for an

audit we will let you know during the

live stream if we don’t get around to

reviewing your channel today vid iq has

a channel audit tool working 24 7 with

you make sure to download our tools and

use the 30 day free trial using the link

in the video description if you submit

your channel for review expect the

following we are sharing nothing more

than our knowledge experience and

passion as fellow youtube creators i

want to give a huge shout out to all of

our moderators who do a phenomenal job

every single week thank you thank you

thank you as for all of you well thumbs

up if you enjoyed this live stream

subscribe if you love it and if you know

of a fellow creator who may find all of

this stuff useful please do share it

with them and with all of that being

said let’s start auditing your channels

well played koi fish gaming well played

can does anybody know where that

reference comes from

um uh taken

what

uh star wars

no i don’t think sean has a clue uh do

you know where it’s from that’s

terminator yeah terminator 2

oh no is it

it’s in both of them isn’t it

it’s not like

john connor

yeah

sarah connor that’s that’s that yeah

so yes all full of koi fish if you want

to survive this live stream

sorry dinner up just look at it

[Music]

other bits and pieces are that um we

continue support creators for peace so

if you do uh donate during this

livestream it goes directly to that

cause thank you very much in advance and

as always

we get hundreds of channel submissions

every single week unfortunately we can’t

audit every single channel which is why

we suggest to you

that you have your channel up on a

second screen so when we’re talking

about many of the fundamentals that

often come up during these audits

whether it be thumbnails titles channel

focus consistency you can see how the

advice we are giving to that channel can

apply to your channel because there’s a

lot of

crossover information be

you’re a gaming channel a tech channel a

makeup channel it all often relates to

you especially as you’re starting out

your youtube journey with all of that

being said we will audit the first

channel that was submitted this week as

always in our forms which you can still

complete and we may randomly pick you

out later on in the live stream uh jeff

i want you to start with

the following channel that is k

vinson

if i pronounce that correctly i do

apologize if i have mispronounced it

they have just over a thousand

subscribers and on first impressions

what type of channel are you seeing here

interesting so cave is ons k-pop

instrumentals

so

i’m not sure if if they’re playing

instruments like because the same

instrumental so i don’t know if these

are instrument covers or exactly what’s

going on if they’re singing i’m not 100

sure exactly what’s going on so i’m a

little confused i definitely would have

to watch a video to try to get a vibe

for exactly what’s going on i’m sort of

intrigued though because

i think it’s sort of your music

it might be yeah and i wonder if it’s if

it’s somehow royalty-free or if they’re

just uploading actual instrumentals

of the songs you know a lot of hip-hop

like people want instrumentals of

popular hip-hop songs without the lyrics

and in some cases it’s the actual

instrumental and then sometimes it’s

remade and if it’s like remade enough it

can make its way over to spotify or

other places yeah because it’s not

really getting flagged because they’ve

they’ve tweaked it enough yeah these are

the actual songs from what it looks like

in the description which is wild

did you hear that as i was playing it no

all right okay

interesting yeah i mean i kind of see

what they’re going for and i’m assuming

they’re using you know the the name of

the artist their face to kind of get the

clicks there and the thumbnails um but

yeah quite interesting to go with this

route because

it sort of makes you wonder what the end

game is like i know it’s playing a

service but you know

i think you’d really open yourself up to

a lot of um you know copyright issues

going this route so

that is the challenge isn’t it when

you’re where you’re effectively using

somebody else’s intellectual property

content film music

what is the end game here is it just to

share your

fandom of this content with a fellow

audience or do you want to try and build

that business out of it and that’s

that’s going to be a stumbling block at

the very beginning here but if the

creator understands that then

we we accept that

as auditors

absolutely

see

interesting

big bang okay

not bad

lots of content here this is from just

the last couple of months so posting on

a very consistent basis

yeah they’re going pretty quick i mean

it seems like they’re staying really

consistent with their stuff as well they

have a theme for all their thumbnails so

you see that they kind of have a style i

don’t know how i feel about it though

it’s

kind of really really busy

and i don’t know if that’s something

that could be cleaned up just a little

bit just to kind of streamline it a bit

um

[Music]

interesting

there’s more text in the thumbnails than

the title in most cases yeah that’s what

i mean yeah it’s sort of a little bit

backwards in that sense but

i’m just going to do a bit of research

on the k-pop instrumental scene here and

see

what other channels are doing in terms

of thumbnails

quite all over the shop really yeah

very colorful i’m guessing some of these

might be

actual album artwork from the artists

themselves

i’m curious your opinion on

i there is the copyright issues but some

people just go for it and maybe you can

experience growth and just deal with it

and not earn the adsense necessarily or

maybe you’re in some

but because you’re tapping into opc

essentially other people’s content it’s

growing a lot bigger than what you could

do maybe on your own because you’re not

going to make all these instrumentals

yourself or whatever

they’re even they’re even sharing this

in the community tab that they are uh

starting to see some growth on their

channel um which is awesome from from

that perspective and yeah i’m with you

in a sense sean that if you

if you understand

the

i don’t know if consequences is the

right word but if you appreciate that

your

business and the model is not

necessarily going to be adsense making

content from

making making money from the content

themselves and you just want to build a

community and audience that wants to

share in this

somewhat transformational content in

terms of it being an instrument

instrumental rather than just having

that be the the original tracks

then i’m not opposed to the idea if a

creator accepts the circumstances

so

there was a nintendo channel not long

ago that was cataloging good point done

music from nintendo games and nintendo

is notoriously uh against you know a lot

of stuff

so it took a while a long while but

eventually they got caught and nintendo

you know copyright striked all their

videos they basically quit youtube after

this like nintendo did enough to where

they were like i’m done

and they were on twitter lamenting about

this and a lot of people were their

audience was supporting them but at the

end of the day

it it is the risk they took on and it

was like crushing because they’d grown

the channel to this like really massive

scale by this point by the time they

finally got taken down and

that that’s what i would caution any

creator kind of going into this for like

you’re coming to us asking to grow and i

think the growth is happening already

and it’s going to be a matter of

building up this catalog but with that

comes like this risk and and eventually

these artists could be like uh no

we want to do that ourselves we don’t

need you doing that for us and i think

the risk gets multiplied once you’re

successful because actually i think that

the channels that can kind of get away

with it they get away with it because

it’s if it’s small enough it’s not a big

deal but to the point you’re when you’re

also most successful you’re the most

vulnerable because now you got 50 000

subs 100 000 subs now you have this

momentum you have all this stuff

happening and yet you’ve kind of built

on a shaky foundation of other people’s

content and potentially heavy

copyrighted content and it might just be

the one you might get away with 80 of it

but there’s a 20 of content too later

that a particular artist that has a

particular label really cracks down

shines enough

shade

on your channel that the whole thing

comes tumbling down

yeah we’ve seen it happen too many times

to big reaction channels you know they

they

grow their audiences doing these music

reactions and they get into like the 100

000 200 300 000 subscribers start

getting big views and then all of a

sudden you start seeing them the videos

are getting blocked they’re starting to

get multiple strikes they have to take a

break because their channel’s got two

strikes and they can’t afford another

one so it’s something where you know

sean put it best you built on a shaky

foundation it could have repercussions

down the line

so if we just put the uh copyright

issues to it aside for one second what

we’re talking about generally was that

the thumbnails might want to have a

little bit of cleanup perhaps jeff i

think the the branding and the format is

fine

maybe just a little bit too busy in some

of these

i’m seeing some spiky views as well i i

feel as if maybe the creator might want

to take a look at a particular artist

and perhaps do a series of videos in

succession as a test this jackson wang

one for example got a thousand views but

then the next few

the views have been actually lowering as

progressively 200 160. what would happen

if you did five jackson wong

uh videos in a row and then on top of

this what if you did um

not a playlist but a compilation of

those instrumentals in a 40 to 50 minute

video that might be something to think

about as well

but i think uh we’ll leave it there for

the uh k

vin vizons channel and uh we’ll move on

to our first gaming channel uh of the

week and they are alexi giovanni they

have just cracked 1 000 subscribers as

well congratulations

on that landmark hopefully you’re

working towards 4 000 hours as well

it’s a gaming channel it’s animal

crossing i think the best person to

tackle this one would be dan

first impressions done

uh well i like the focus so let’s see

congrats on a thousand subscribers uh

what is that band and banner so can we

scroll up actually

uh tips amiibo cards guides tours

villager hunts okay all animal crossing

related it’s a lot of stuff we always

talk about like having comma and like a

whole bunch a whole list of things but

all of that stuff i would say is within

that space of that community um so

looking at some of the latest videos

here they’re unboxing amiibos which is

uh

you know

their amiibos are getting more and more

rare especially as games like nintendo

likes to take them off the shelves so

that that could be interesting if you

continue to like go on ebay and things

like that and collect those

um let’s see i’m noticing this all

flower breeding tips one huge video

crazy spring fishy tourney stream so

they’re streaming as well okay

just uh just on that point this is an

interesting one for us all to talk about

would you

spend the title advertising

that it’s a huge video

because they can see the time code the

video

is much

huger

because right

also too speaks for itself huge doesn’t

sound like 15 minutes when one hour and

25 is next to it

yeah i get what they were going for but

i think ultimate watering guide should

have been in the title instead and it’s

you know if people feel like a 15 minute

video is huge that’s their own

determination i think they were trying

to be cute you know in the title yeah

but i would have used that real estate

and it’s not too late you can still go

back and do this i would use the real

estate to be you know the ultimate

flower breeding guide for animal

crossing uh and then here’s the other

thing with this game it’s just a bit

older now and i like as someone who

enjoys the game i you like i can i can

feel this too my interests have shifted

because i i play it now and again but

it’s it’s less about oh how do you breed

flowers because all of those guides have

been done to death now and more about

how can i keep enjoying this game so

that’s what a lot of the creators in the

space are doing they do

like inspirational things so like i’ve

noticed the videos that still surface to

me are the ones that are always about

like a very creative endeavor

so

uh just something to keep in mind if

you’re if you’re going to go you usually

tell you hey make guides that are very

searchable but because of the age of

this game it’s

it’s just a bit harder to compete in

that space because flower breeding

guides were done when the game first

came out and that was a couple years ago

now so

as a tip i would say start to kind of

figure out what what this niche is like

doing today and figure out what parts of

that you enjoy and and bring your

take to it um but like covering

never-ending bells exploit like that

like covering exploits and things like

that that’s cool like that’s i think

stuff like that is always relevant

especially because new ones could crop

up but yeah doing doing guides about

breeding flowers i just think that one’s

you know it’s a bit old now it’s it’s

dated

i was also looking at

this video down here dan which seems

like a much more effective way of

visually

enticing a viewer to click on something

in terms of

i like to call this organize chaos where

there’s a lot of small things on a

thumbnail and it’s difficult to pick

them all up but if you repeat it then it

can become quite visually attractive and

this feels like another

big guide but a big guide in terms of

making money and they’ve used imagery

from the

video from the game as opposed to just

plastering it with a big watch of text

and then blurring out the flowers in the

background seems to be a more effective

way of doing it and and the view seems

to reflect that as well and it’s

performed pretty well over

three weeks of its life yeah and and to

be fair like to to the point i just made

like there’s there’s a lot of ways to

make money in this game in most games so

you know maybe even today money making

guides that’s why it got so many more

views than this other content right it’s

still relevant um so yeah these are just

things like you that’s why you notice

the spiky views though certain things

are working

uh while others not as well uh if you

keep watching this happens what’s that

arrow that arrows drawing my eye

uh oh okay so in the middle there yeah

so yeah there it’s kind of a perspective

thing if you stand in front of this

character this other one’s going to do

okay that’s interesting so i would yeah

i’d be playing with ideas like that for

sure

little interesting details that people

maybe didn’t pick up on

um

overall yeah it’s i wonder when they got

started

okay well we can find out

that’s good less than a year so that’s

really good progress actually over a

hundred nearly two hundred thousand

views

uh they’ve hit at least one requirement

i was just going to look at the most

popular see if there’s anything

jumping out there dan um

most of our successful videos are six

five six months old at this point

i i like that one at the top everyone is

related in animal crossing so that those

two characters as i understood it were

related but it’s funny i’ve never seen

anyone like point that out in a video so

that’s that was a really good idea do

you know more facts about the game like

that that you can kind of double down on

um and then there’s a flower breeding

video right there fastest way to get

purple pansies so

that worked it was ten months ago yeah

let’s see look at that thumbnail right

here flat flowers that seems much more

impactful to me yes you can see the

flowers uh the the value in the

thumbnails are is a bit more clear it

looks like they did a lot of flower

breeding videos

and the video length tends to be longer

eight minutes plus is what the most

successful videos are on the channel as

well so a bit of

viewer intent it seems as if they’re

happy to settle down into a longer video

generally speaking on the channel

yeah

uh overall i’m encouraged by this

considering how long they’ve been doing

this and they picked up an older game

and it’s it’s going well for them yeah

it’s it’s just kind of tweaking your

content strategy from here uh

identifying what what the community of

this game is is wanting going forward

your stream you’re streaming too so be

sure you’re considering maybe i’ve been

suggesting this to anyone who streams

take clips during your stream use like

the replay buffer and obs grab clips

while you’re live

and then save those and you can make

those into shorts and now your shorts

could potentially be growing the rest of

your channel because people see these

shorts and like oh that that looks

really funny they might subscribe and

then when you’re live sure enough your

live stream is popping up in their feed

and all that cool stuff that you were

doing doing in the short

they can get it right from the source

your live streams

that is alexi

giovanni moving on to the next channel

they call themselves geography and

history explain

and sean i believe you pre-picked this

one tell us a little bit more about it

yeah so i i picked this out i think it’s

a great niche um and i think that

there’s a lot of opportunity here but i

think you know right off the top

thumbnails could use a lot of help too

many words words layered on top of words

different font sizes

different font colors words laid on top

of images

it’s

very

uh you know

distracting hard to read i think that

success leaves clues and so maybe if you

were to

even just um

search something if you were to type in

like american civil war

uh we could we could look at what’s

ranking and what’s being suggested

uh for that and and i would imagine i

guess this is the test here’s the

here’s the if i can spell american right

now let’s get that salts first of all

okay there we go

simple that’s and and let’s delete map

just because these if these are actually

the or i guess he’s doing maps but i’m

just curious if maybe

yeah

simpler easy to read those are really

clean

blue with the sort of faded backgrounds

and they put the promise right in the

center of course full size image of

maybe an individual do me a favor that

would finally happening one’s good but

something different

i’m just curious what comes up for

american civil war itself

and uh

okay interesting that top ones the

america that one’s really clean

obviously using the second one using the

artwork um

that other one’s pretty cool too with

the the arrows so i the punch line being

success leaves clues

even the under three minutes i like that

one

that we saw uh

there

that was just super simple still might

be cartoon might be drawn because you

kind of have this it doesn’t seem to be

promised like an excessive level

production value but um but clarity i

think is what’s lost by stacking up all

those words and never forget adding

value to everybody watching that your

title

doesn’t necessarily need to be echoed in

the thumbnail like the title

is in combination with the thumbnail so

if the thumbnail can get attention

create interest and have one or two

words on it if not no words then the

title could be becomes what they read

next the next thing i want to click on

is just the newest video if we click on

history chance

um and what i noticed in in researching

this

was if you kind of skip through

essentially we have a voice over um

this what i listen to

you know kind of explaining this with

one image

nothing really changed changing

um and

uh the takeaway would just be that

if your ambition i first of all the

encouragement that

i think you’re on a great track i think

you’re passionate about this

you have a lot of knowledge yeah and

you’re consistent in this and and so i

actually think this has the potential to

be very successful um this one’s even

much better by actually having a little

bit of an animation a little bit of

something to watch but this is going to

be the key is going to be

um

doubling down on changing the scene

leveraging multimedia stock footage

photography um

and uh and then keeping it lean and mean

and then the final thing i would say you

know there’s a big kind of just

principle that i’ve learned about online

business it’s true for youtube it’s like

it’s true for writing a book that’s best

selling it’s true for

anything that goes mass market which

might not be your goal but anybody that

wants a million subscribers is trying to

go mass market anyone who even wants a

hundred thousand is trying to go more

mass-market

and it’s this idea of um

uh

simplifying your content down to make it

more accessible so as i was listening to

your newest video

i’m not the biggest history buff but i

could

tell your expertise was at a super high

level and a lot of us watching this we

might have an expertise at a high level

it sometimes can create a gap

also called the curse of knowledge

from from potentially taking our

expertise but if you will dumbing it

down and sometimes that might feel like

why no more or i i have so much

knowledge but but someone that’s maybe

engaging in history is looking for you

to make complex things simple in fact

the highest level of wisdom is making

complex things simple not making complex

things more complex

it’s actually the the juxtaposition

between best-selling authors and ivory

tower history professors

the ivory tower history professors write

papers for each other to impress their

peers and best-selling authors write

books for the public that actually get

dishonored in the halls of higher

learning but actually get

millions of book sales why because

they’re actually readable because they

actually can be understood so so i’ve

learned that one of the most powerful

things is to make complex things simple

and to think about the great greatest

illustration for this is the book series

for dummies facebook

for dummies

wordpress for dummies history for

dummies because the way that the

majority of the population actually

relates it’s not an insulting term they

just consider themselves like hey talk

to me like i don’t know anything and so

i think there’ll be a lot of opportunity

for you and growth there to to make the

videos engaging with b-roll and uh and

different things and then to make uh and

to potentially

not maybe tackle as complex subjects but

really make things simpler that becomes

mass-market your videos can be played in

classrooms uh shared people that are

interested and yeah just a few thoughts

you’re so right about that concept of

keeping things simple uh sean um

because often you come up with a a

really simple idea but once it goes

through the creative process

you add these little layers here and

there and then it just turns into

something really complicated and in this

recent example there was this channel

which did nothing literally nothing but

count down from a hundred

in the middle of december down to april

the first and then rick rolled everybody

on april 1st and every single video was

just six seconds

a digit changing from one to the other

and i was saying how many creators are

probably gonna find this really

frustrating because

it feels like very low effort but what i

was saying was that the creators managed

to keep something so simple that people

could understand it and it built its own

culture and phenomenon around it like

you got all of these comments talking

about how

how epic each video was and like how 93

did such a good acting performance as

they transitioned from 92 and whatever

it’s you know built up to this moment

and this final video got 1.3 million

views and it was simply

the number zero transitioning into a

rick astley rick roll and i’ve got 100

000 subscribers from it

and then when we go back to

you know our hero creator here

maps are inherently visually interesting

and

it’s the lay of it’s been put on top of

this is

text and complication and then it makes

it impenetrable almost at the very start

of the the viewing experience so the

idea of just keeping it simple maybe one

arrow pointing to

the coastline or an interesting landmark

or whatever

really this creator needs to think about

making it fall almost dummies i think

that’s a really important point that we

should all try and embrace more with our

content

explain to me like i’m five yeah and the

alternative is to go the other way i

think that it’s just always gonna be a

smaller group i think it was at a

conference in las vegas that i learned

that and they just said they said that

the biggest group

in any niche will always be beginners

yeah always and because it’s by a factor

of 10 to 100x

and it’s just more there’s gonna be more

people at a white belt level going into

martial arts than at the highest samurai

black belt level

and and so if you also know you’re going

to go to a much more advanced or speak

to a particular person this is why we

say the creator who understands the

viewer best wins you want to know who

you’re talking to

and if a lot of us want a silver play

button we need to know that our channel

could even grow to a silver play button

size if we also wanted to create some

really niche advanced community that’s

cool too just know that that’s what

we’re doing and we’re kind of like

speaking to maybe peers or similar

people that like hey there’s a lot of

beginners it’s it’s a way to be a blue

ocean strategy a lot of people covering

the beginner stuff or the four dummy

stuff i’m covering the

four advanced stuff i’m gonna go that

direction and it actually could be a

unique angle as well

so folks i know we’ve spent a lot of

time on this channel but what we’ve

actually spent a lot of time on is a

fundamental concept of youtube which is

the art of keeping something

simple and digestible and watchable by a

target audience so really try to keep

that in mind as we move on to our next

channel i think jeff picked this one and

it may just be the best channel name

i’ve come across in a long time indie

annie

jones really good i love the name of the

channel wasn’t mine i picked it sorry

dan i apologize it’s good though good

pick dan good pick yeah i i loved the

names immediately i stopped when we were

looking at the form pre-selecting

channels and like i got to see what this

channel is about and it’s about arts and

crafts so

i i think well played at like finding a

way to use your name on youtube in a

creative way i think it’s memorable uh

so

what i saw immediately was a

conversation about thumbnails

uh

other than that probably not much more

in terms of like what i could suggest

because the channel’s already doing

phenomenal in terms of subscribers in

terms of views every video is getting

over a thousand some videos do really

well there’s one there with fourteen

thousand i think they they have leaned

into this cottage core aesthetic which

you’ve been seeing pop up on youtube in

different areas more and more

and uh

the the execution to me

this comes down to thumbnails i i think

the the biggest thing with thumbnails

and this last channel can

learn from this too we just talked about

it is we really can’t let the audience

think too hard about what this video is

going to be and if they look at these

thumbnails

they’re overwhelmed immediately by a lot

of images kind of clipped on there

they’re overwhelmed by text that is

really thin and kind of hard to read

and like so the video i was looking at

the five point eight thousand one

upcycling trash into cottage core shabby

chic uh whatever whatever the rest of it

says like that is an example of one of

their better thumbnails in my opinion i

i can see

a picture and it’s bigger than in a lot

of cases these other pictures there’s a

lot of little things right the only

thing is the the foreground in the

background are there’s not enough

contrast there so even that image

could be better i think the thing that

they made isn’t standing out so this all

comes down to like getting your

thumbnails way more simplified having

high contrast images against high

contrast backgrounds or creating

contrast between the foreground in the

background

and if you can master that i feel like

you’re going to see

a lot more views it seems like you know

your audience really well i think you

have all that down i think for this

channel it is all thumbnails if i was to

look at say this thumbnail i would ask i

would ask the creator

what do you want me to look at first in

this thumbnail because i don’t know

and so i’m i guess i’m already visually

frustrated

we we talk about this a lot in terms of

top lists just show the best thing from

that list and let the viewer click on

that best thing so that they can see

everything else

and then the the font is quite tricky to

read as well now i guess what we we

should caveat here dan is that there may

be a particular style

that this creator is following within

the

shabby

cheeks

um scene so let’s just have a look at

that and see shabby shoot cottage course

shabby chic

if i can spell it right

okay

i’m i’m guessing that the film is gonna

be a little similar you know these

multiple montage style thumbnails

um

it’s kind of a busy decorating style but

that one right there i like where they

kind of fade out the background a little

bit of

almost like a mist over it or they use

that home tour one too a little

minimalist area but the busyness

around it i think that’s a cool design

like split the thumbnail into three show

two items and the creator in the middle

yeah

that seems effective to me

thumbnails i mean

similarly we we um

i think media have

you know have a camera and it has a

shotgun mic

and it has a little joby gorillapod or

some kind of a tripod

and then we so this is what we think

about we think about what is the color

of shirt we’re wearing uh we have

different skin tones on the team

and then we think about what’s the color

of the wall or the background behind it

so a lot of times you might have a dark

dark like all of your offices right now

pretty dark behind you and most cameras

are black and most accessories are black

and so you take a photo of

something in the wrong environment and

it disappears and and the key word is

contrast so you need you want a

contrasting color

sometimes before i’m going out to shoot

and i know that i’m going to get some

b-roll holding a camera against my shirt

i’m like i can’t wear a dark shirt i

want a contrasting color on my shirt

because then this vlog setup we can get

some photography

of it against and so similarly in

thinking about um

uh just making the point that thumbnails

are such an art form and and thinking

through that in some cases

i think at the highest levels of youtube

because i think we do this we stage

thumbnail shots so sometimes

to you’d almost take the lamp and move

the lamp to a place where it’s minimally

on the wall and take the photo and it

might sound quote unquote contrived but

it’s it’s because you’re trying to tell

a particular story

and the best way to tell it might not be

the actual environment we sometimes

wonder how do we show a whole home

office it’s too busy it’s too zoomed out

so do we just show one aspect of it and

then what do we need to actually do do

we actually move

the monitor and the camera to another

room and put a piece of colored paper

behind it so as to

simplify down

the image as much as

as much as possible

yeah just taking a few um examples from

your channel they’re short which will

come back today’s with omar is a great

example blue sky black camera

camera shows up youtube logo inside of

the flip screen

um but

that there’s also the color theory the

blue is kind of inviting a little bit of

green but a good point would be a lot of

times if you’re out taking photos

depending on where the skyline or the

horizon is i believe that’s a replaced

background so it’s actually a cut out

replace background so the problem is the

trees would actually make that camera

disappear green behind the camera would

not be good busy trees behind the camera

would not be good and so

that’s definitely a lot of thought in

literally staging and crafting the

thumbnail that and that that image never

happens in the video itself as well

right so it’s actually purposefully

created yeah

um

so yeah just going back to

indie annie jones

ma so my advice always at this point is

the next one that that you make

i’m trying to find a better way to

phrase this but make it half as

complicated as what your thumbnails

currently are so that might mean

removing the text or removing

at least one image from

your thumbnail or

using less

dominant colors

some of those elements to try and make

it more palatable just as somebody’s

scrolling through because if you imagine

somebody scrolling through these

thumbnails my eye is not dropping onto

any of these because they ask there’s so

much going on

um

take this as a canvas of your channel

are my eyes being diverted to any

particular thumbnail because they stand

out

and my answer is generally not really

um but that and what we will say here is

that

this is kind of like a potential

bottleneck considering that your channel

is reaching 10 000 subscribers you’re

getting thousands of views per video you

have an awesome community that is clear

to see but maybe just that casual

new viewer who youtube is saying ah this

person watches video a from another uh

shabby cheek channel we’re going to show

you one of the thumbnails now from indie

annie jones you know that’s a crucial

moment for capturing a new viewer and

the thumbnails may be doing you a

disservice at this point in our general

opinion i know sometimes in these niches

the creator will say yeah but that’s

what every other creator uses and it

really works for them and we can

understand that point of view

and i like i really like the uh fairy

core one i think actually having like

the one frame and then simplify it down

with the pink the one in the lower right

hand corner and then i you know i i

would love to uh hear your thought on

on the lower left hand logo idea it’s a

philosophy it’s of course i don’t know i

don’t know if you guys do it of course

it’s the evan carmichael kind of

philosophy at times my friend anthony

o’neil one of our speakers at our event

uh he’s got the ao but in this case it’s

a little too busy and too small i can’t

even see the indiana

you know and so you can maybe stack

those three words as a side note uh i

read in the chat though

uh indiana annie jones actually got

pulled over and wasn’t able to watch

this live because the brake light was

out

i think she got a ticket but here’s our

encouragement for you so she’s gonna

watch the replay

and i hope i’m sorry that happened uh

but i hope that with some small tweaks

to your channel it’s going to lead to

giant peaks and

may

untold hundreds of adsense roll in

because of these uh

advice

so that you can pay that take it off no

stress i know it’s super stressful when

uh you get a ticket but i like to turn

that negative energy towards positive

energy well

i’m gonna go earn more money to pay off

this ticket and

pay the increase in insurance and if you

need any help with the brake lights uh

there’s a bit of advice for you as well

i’m fascinated

to tell us that she’s been pulled over

that’s that’s fascinating sorry dad go

ahead

it’s it’s not don’t don’t be looking at

brake light videos it’s now is your

opportunity to make a cottage core brake

light for your car yeah yeah there you

go without getting pulled over as long

as it’s legal

don’t keep yeah don’t drive with it

okay um

wow well we’ve only gone through a few

channels here but we’ve gone through

some really valuable stuff i think

movies on it so far

and what i want to just mention as well

as we are not just a channel audit

service two hours a week every single

tuesday we have a whole suite of tools

that will help you every single day on

youtube and i just want to give you an

example of one of our newer tools which

we found really fascinating in the past

couple of days um mr beast obviously one

of the largest creators on youtube about

to hit a million 100 million subscribers

we’ve noticed he’s going through his all

the videos and doing something that’s

resulting in thousands of views right

now for example this video that came up

two years ago

right now is getting eight and a half

thousand views per hour which is

incredible

if we go into the video and look at the

historical data again another one of the

vidiq tools

very consistently getting hundreds of

views per hour for the last year and all

of a sudden in the last few months

or last a couple of days bang is up to

ten thousand views

an hour

why is this happened it’s because he’s

tweaked his thumbnails on his all the

videos to reflect the style that he has

now so he’s gone back through his

catalogue of his videos and is getting

tons of views and we were able to find

that out through this views per hour

tool which is really useful to seeing

what’s trending

right now

on somebody’s channel for example if we

wanted to do a bit of spying on sean and

think media we could use the trending

button here and it will tell us not what

the most viewed videos are but one of

the most viewed videos right

now

sean you seem to do a lot of stuff with

um free and funny sounds on your channel

it’s actually nolan and he’s ruining our

channel but yes

now people only come to our channel for

funny sound effects

um but uh and not all views are the same

and not all subscribers are the same uh

but yes uh i’m grateful but you could

clearly see that those videos uh success

leaves clues do you want to double down

on them you know i don’t know but we

have we’ve done all three of those and

they all crush some of the sound effects

we borrowed for our live stream though

the one i like to use is this one where

i think um nolan did a video about how

to create a youtube channel for

beginners it’s over a year old million

views but it still gets 100 views every

hour so that’s two and a half thousand

views per day

quick maths about seven and a half

thousand views per week which is

phenomenal like i could probably look at

this and think maybe vid iq needs to do

a

add our own voice to that particular

topic and this is all for the views per

hour tool that we have here at vidiq so

do make sure to check it out and since

we’re on the think media channel sean

just in case uh people who are not aware

of who you are and what you do on

youtube tell us about your growing uh

empire and your goal

uh

this very noble goal that you’re trying

to succeed in with

creators out there in the

youtube universe

yeah i appreciate it if we’re just

meeting my name is sean cannell rhymes

with youtube channel and i started this

uh started shooting videos in my bedroom

i actually started shooting videos from

my local church

back in 2003 the first youtube channel i

managed was 2007. uh in my first video

yeah you know i went back on some of

these you can see the ones i went back

on like if you go to the very top where

uh it says or the the the video editing

tips and tricks

was a small frame of me but that one

ended up doing better it’s me and my car

sharing video editing pc build tips uh

but whatever uh so yeah um just when i

started off with a mission to help

people find the best tips and tools

uh for uh building their influence with

online video today we’re a team of

creators um and um we’re helping with

the camera review side of things and

then similar to vid iq also the strategy

on youtube side of things video editing

software all of the above so if you

haven’t heard about us think media

definitely check it out we also have a

weekly podcast now that’s pretty

exciting the think media podcast we’re

becoming very excited about video

podcasting um as it’s its own channel um

and not only that we are actually days

away a couple weeks away from an event

in las vegas and online called growth

video live

gary vaynerchuk

jasmine starr chalene johnson alex

hermosie

um vanessa lau emily baker

uh

benji travis anthony

o’neal i think we’re having guys like

eric i think is coming out andre

jake is coming out um a lot of

interesting characters like that

across platforms too because we’re very

excited about youtube youtube shorts uh

but vertical video is interesting and

the ability to do

youtube shorts tick tock reels grow a

video live it is happening in las vegas

may 23rd and the 24th thanks for not

including me in that list sean i i feel

really uh valued well actually i think

we had you and then we did it and then

we had you and uh it’s gonna be you’re

gonna be missed

virtually i believe i’m going to be

there virtually there you are so you are

in the list so so we are we are there

i’m doing my best to even keep up with

who’s coming to be honest like i am not

sure fully i am sure

the people being advertised are coming

patreon david and valuetainment and gary

and uh yes gonna be cool uh but um

yeah there’s even new speakers being

added still so it’s could you just add

my creepy head appearing like just over

heather’s shoulder or something or maybe

we could have all those speakers they

could be like inside of your mouth and

you can just have a big open mouth

please or yeah that’s a that’s a great

idea you could be like the father of all

those creators and they could be i i

love i love it one final um bone to pick

with you uh and i don’t want to start an

argument live on uh on the street but i

was actually looking at these thumbnails

yeah i think these look pretty good yeah

all right obviously yeah screen shot but

we did

i know yeah it’s not a bone to pick

success leaves clues yes

looking at ranked videos let’s let’s

take a look

now to be fair we have someone helping

us with thumbnails now so i sent

ian

uh some examples and um yeah so let you

know all right two months ago all right

yeah yeah we actually committed the

crime

um

so yeah what i’m gonna do right now sean

disconnected that in a court of law you

can’t even trace it back to me fully uh

but i’m enough

people removed

that i hear what you’re saying i hear

what you’re saying um but i i think i

think we need to we need to do something

nerf header i’ve got a quick quiz

question do you actually know who said

that scruffy looking nerf headed

yep

go on then tell us jeff leah

there you go okay good answer who was

saying that about oh yeah wasn’t a star

wars reference earlier i just thought it

was

didn’t somebody didn’t didn’t han

say something to like leia like you

better come with me princess or

something like that’s kind of where my

head was something like that right

i think you’re right yeah

yeah and she called um chewbacca a

walking carpet as well in the first

episode anyway what about this channel

what do you think it’s about

why should we watch it etc etc

i i was waiting to see who picked it i

didn’t know if uh

it was me actually okay yes yeah i

i picked this one but i wanted to pass

it on to others first before i chime in

yeah it’s star wars for sure based on

the

based on the profile picture based on

the banner

if you’ve watched star wars and scruffy

looking nerf herder is gonna make sense

to you

um it’s an interesting choice for the

channel name but that’s what i’m getting

just from those clues that’s what i’m

getting and then we get into the

thumbnails and you know i see luke and

vader you know on the in the duel

revenge of the intro respectful droid um

so we started getting that vibe

it looks like there’s action figures

there’s actual cyber crystals it looks

like there’s a physical aspect and

they’re like making statements about

these things like you can

you you click on it click on and then

you just see inside yeah okay

unboxing showing off my star wars toys

nice

showing off so maybe people want to see

those toys

as this as a side note that is relevant

but

and i guess it would this would be

understanding who your audience is

now that i have a son my whole world has

changed i want to start 48 kids channels

and the specific kids channels i want to

start though

are

the action figures in trucks and cars

in like the sand because i’m like and

i don’t want to dishonor the content of

how creative or not creative it is but i

don’t know if there’s a story line all i

know is like they they dig through the

wet snow and pull out or or wet sand and

pull out like a truck and then there’s

like another one and then it like

there’s some sound effects and some

minimal editing it’s pretty cool and i’m

like okay but it’s just the perspective

and it’s understanding so i i would

imagine you’re probably

at more of like a looking for the pure

interaction of maybe love of star wars

action figures but then i would question

how big is that audience and i would say

that like there’s not there’s no audible

language in this that it there’d

probably be an interesting action figure

level of understanding the content

format with it like

and i think it’s the idea of surprise

like the egg surprise idea sean bradley

is captivated by wondering what is

coming out of the sand next and what’s

fascinating is it can never end like

he’s just always like what else is there

there’s princess leia what else is there

and so anyways kind of a just like it

may be a weird concept to throw at you

but i think there could be uh it might

be

undone or maybe it is done and it could

potentially scale up to a massive

audience if you wanted to start creating

kids content

i i think jumping onto that point uh

because what what you’re talking about

like i’m imagining the thumbnails for

that and i feel like you can make a very

clear thumbnail right like you could

have the character coming out you know

of the sand

you know what i mean and the thumbnails

on this channel are i’m struggling with

i’m just yeah well and also it seems

like it’s kind of like it’s show intel

but for whom

right and and to the point of as we even

look at this like you’re showing off a

rare crystal and there’s there’s you

involved these i would argue these are

faceless channels too kind of like this

but there’s there’s there’s a level of a

story line to it but there it’s it’s

incoherent it is like

and it’s like leia’s going from here to

here and then you know but it would be

this this same kind of idea i mean i got

49 views that same kind of idea i think

actually has some merit to it of like

scaling that up and and i think it when

i think about it i go this would be so

fun to create especially as sean

bradley’s a little bit older you bring

in some camera angles to it play in the

backyard you’re setting up different

scenarios and my mind’s already like

spinning off i’m like we could monetize

his toys his toys could be a write-off

now because the toys are actually tools

for our youtube business i’m i’m

breaking down the whole business model i

got i’m get i wasn’t even thinking that

i’m excited i want to write his toys off

all right here we go

i need tax deductions all right

what i was noticing there as well is

that it looks as if there was this video

that was telling a story but then there

was also unboxings and i feel as if

that’s potentially quite a different

audience in terms of his dioramas versus

just a love for the star wars universe

like i wouldn’t necessarily want to

watch a

an attempt to remake a star wars story

but i would be very interested in you

unboxing the latest star wars lego lego

so i can be interested in the same thing

but not necessarily the delivery of that

topic depending on who i am as a viewer

go ahead

what i’m so i’m

i’m on board with that for sure like the

story driven like stop animation stuff

is way different than the unboxings but

in both cases it’s not clear in the in

the titles and the thumbnails what i’m

going to be getting so looking at the

kyber crystal video which i think is a

really good start i can see you put the

picture from disney park

in there kind of grayed out right but

and then you have the crystals on the

side just kind of shoved over to the

edge

this right here make a better thumbnail

just that image you had on yeah yeah i

agree i agree like it’s just not cl like

i have to think really hard about what

what it is this video is about and the

way you’ve laid on the table makes it

clear you were organized in the

production of the video but in the

thumbnail it kind of feels like your

thumbnails right now or like this

afterthought process where it’s like i

have to communicate this somehow and

you’re putting in four or five different

pieces of imagery where all you really

needed was like

a picture of the lightsaber and then

maybe the disney park background is

still there but it’s a little more clear

that you’re in the disney park holding

the lightsaber or something like that

like

simplify the thumbnails is what i’m

trying to get at uh

and and i think that would have been a

lot more clear because we came here i

did not know it was a toy review channel

or an unboxing channel right i never i

never see anyone opening a box in a

thumbnail

it’s a lot’s kind of missing i feel like

your thumbnails need a lot of work

jeff did you want to add something are

we all we good no no i mean i totally

agree i think if anything if um he

watches this replay if he’s in the live

chat i’m not sure um what he could

really take away from this is look 16

subscribers and he doesn’t have a ton of

videos so obviously new to the game and

we don’t know what we don’t know right

yeah so definitely take away a lot of

what we’re saying here simplify the

message but also

i think more than anything else is

identifying who you’re making this for

and what would make sense to that viewer

beyond anything else and that’s really

going to help you because i know i wish

that i would have had that knowledge

when i was at 16 subscribers the

knowledge of focus on your viewer focus

on your target audience it would have

changed trajectory of my channel had i

known that so

um definitely definitely start

identifying that viewer and moving

towards that direction

moving on to sir scaries

13 subscribers short of a thousand

subscribers i don’t want to encourage

anybody to get them over that landmark

but if you are really interested in

aliens mysteries and ghosts this may be

a channel to subscribe to jeff this was

your pre-selected one right yes it was

yes okay

so sir scared so um at first i got a

little i was like i was worried i’m like

i don’t know i clicked this video

checked out a couple videos and there’s

an actual creator doing you know doing

voiceover with like b-roll going on and

telling these different stories so i

really liked what i was seeing here um

it seems like they’ve got their stuff

dialed in the b-roll looks good like

they’re you know i’m not sure where the

footage is coming from

but it seems pretty good so far views

are surprisingly good for a channel this

size i like the thumbnail style

um one of the things that kind of throws

me just a little bit

is um like the sur scares and the banner

and that stuff um it sort of feels like

i don’t know it kind of doesn’t match

because when i think of sur scares i’m

thinking just straight up ghost videos

or you know that sort of stuff when

we’re talking about ufos we’re talking

about bigfoot footage we’re talking

about stuff like that i don’t know does

that

i don’t get the ghost vibe from this i’m

getting more of a mystery vibe from it

conspiracy theories

yeah yeah so it seems i was a little

confused when i saw that but aside from

that i mean

i like sort of the way it looks i like

the way that the thumbnails look some of

the titles can be a little on the long

side but overall i mean

i think they’ve got something going for

them here and it doesn’t feel

this doesn’t to me when i first saw this

other videos of thumbnails the way it’s

laid out it doesn’t feel like a first

timer channel

now

just for the sake of using this sound

effect usually when we see red text on

thumbnails

we start to panic

why does the red text on these

thumbnails work and i just want i’m

asking this question because you know we

often have these general tips but

there’s always exceptions to the rule

and i think this is a classic case of

this why do why is red text working on

these thumbnails

it could be the topic but also the dark

backgrounds yes

perfect answer you get a ding for that

nice

i was also thinking as well because

red kind of signifies danger or mystery

and i i think that fits the flavor

of the content

creating that sense of

what would be the right term here the

sense of

um

scary wonderment that’s a really bad

explanation it’s almost like a

triggering color in a sense yeah yeah

yeah yeah which is odd because if you

look at the ones with blue the phoenix

lights and the hopkins invasion

um less kind of lower on the views

versus the ones that are doing the red

uh the red car theme so a little bit odd

i don’t know if there’s a correlation

there but

it’s definitely different and i get why

they did it because it’s like a it’s a

color thing to kind of make it look

cohesive but yeah

it’s funny how like in a very

illustrations of this channel they went

through a bit of thumbnail iteration

they were just trying these black and

white colors with red circles and arrows

didn’t seem to be working

and now they’ve almost abandoned you

know again we say that using circles to

highlight something in arrows can be

really effective but for this particular

channel

they’re very much

settled on this big striking text one

dominant image that’s what my thumbnail

is going to be with some sort of like

subtle colors and variation in the

background and it’s also not the same

text

in the thumbnail and the title they play

off of each other they complement each

other which is what sean was talking

about earlier that you know you want

them to work together but not to be the

exact same thing

any other observations that we can see

here

well they’re up to 9.91

[Music]

yeah they’re definitely climbing up so

yeah um but overall now i’m hoping

they’re using their community tab

because it seems like they’re getting

some pretty decent views and the people

that are into this content are going to

be into it so yeah

not yet that’s not much mention of it a

little bit yeah and that’s something you

have to cultivate just like anything

else on youtube you want to cultivate

community tab polls obviously gifts if

you can do gifts oh my lord um but yeah

you definitely want to be doing these a

couple times a week if you can for sure

i’m sure there’s several

polls around ufos that you could

test with

to to begin with um yeah really

encouraging stuff here and we’ll do one

final check there now on 900. hey

congratulations congratulations

i don’t know if you’ve got four thousand

hours yet but let’s just assume you have

it’s time to get your channel monetized

all right folks um that is the end of

the first hour and we’re just gonna have

a quick word from our unofficial slash

official

sponsor is your gateway to get out of

the thing that you complain about but

people would rather complain about how

it is than put in the work we need to

start understanding how big this

opportunity is because for everybody in

this room he will sit back in 20 30

years and regret if you didn’t execute

in this era it has never been a better

time in the human race ever to actually

just go all in on you

regardless of what you’re trying to

accomplish you’ve got to tell the world

about it this is now the world if you’re

not betting on this you’re finished

[Music]

this is your golden era right now

there’s never been a better time to beat

you

this golden era of not only business but

life

i desperately want you to win

but this is on you

yeah and there we are grow with video

coming soon uh there sean i just wanted

to say phenomenal editing work i think

nolan put that together i was asking

heather who made that and i thought it

was fantastic really yeah he’s a legend

video editor and uh so excited really

captures uh the energy i think people

are gonna experience it it’s a hybrid

event as well so our online experience

which is where the majority of our

attendees are going to be um it’s going

to be highly interactive and we’re just

so excited for the event coming up soon

and so if people want to know more about

this where can they go

grow with video live.com

and um super super fired up the number

one conference for growing your personal

brand with video there you go and now

forward to it for a little bit of

editing of our own

[Music]

oh i need to get it there we go

i almost got all of my editing right

there i’ve just made one mistake there

on my graphics and now i need to get

involved back okay folks

so in the second hour of this live

stream what we do is because you’ve been

filling out those audit forms uh we are

now going to start auditing channels

from those lists and we have

let’s see just shy of 300 submissions on

both forms and so jeff will you take it

away please

nicely done he especially expensed the

soundboard just so he could do that

and so we will take that number

and we will take the channel

url and on all of these channels we are

encountering them

for the first time right these are

completely first impressions we’ve not

seen them before and so we take a look

at traveling who man and dan if you want

to lead with this one um what are you

seeing just as you look at this channel

for the first time

uh so looks like a travel channel thanks

like thankfully the name and uh the

content all line up that’s good

let’s see so i guess

is i’m trying to i always try to figure

out where exactly yeah kind of like

based i don’t know it kind of becomes a

fun game it looks like they actually

do get to a lot of places we’ve seen a

lot of travel channels where they

they’re based in an interesting location

and so a lot of their videos

are you know from there but it looks

like they actually get around quite a

bit

um yeah i’m getting a a

middle-aged like tibet

himalayas kind of vibe i might be wrong

there just that sort of area with the

monasteries and such

okay so

the thumbnails leave a little bit to be

desired uh

some cases they seem

more you know intentional than others

a lot of times it just kind of looks

like still frame like that yeah a lot of

kind of it just kind of looks like a

still frame from a video it might take

looking at some different travel

channels to kind of see how they could

maybe improve

and then the

amount of videos it’s

we’re seeing

well no the okay i was just gonna well

no so six months ago and they took a

break and then came back three weeks ago

and it looks like they have been

uploading

yeah a lot more

uh as of three weeks ago that’s good

okay that’s good to see then uh yeah

maybe we look at some thumbnails of some

different

travel channels as i was looking at

these thumbnails and titles the question

i was starting to ask is how should

these thumbnails make me feel

like what’s the curiosity here a

thousand-year-old monastery in india

okay

should i feel

um

nostalgic should i feel uh intrigued

that we’re gonna find some very rare

item in this monastery

i think there’s a there’s very much of

what you’re about to watch here but not

necessarily a why um so what are you

thinking of doing a search for here then

maybe we can just do

uh

old monastery in india or something you

know what i mean like something

trying to see if anyone else has done a

similar video

it’s much wider shots

yep

a little more emotion in some of these

i think you know one of the things that

i think

could benefit us all and any kind of

youtube creator is is to look ahead on

your calendar

find

some time

potentially up on one hour at a time

even 30 minutes at a time

and

devote

some uh energy into into studying

photography and you can take a skill

share course or you can just watch for

youtube videos but just say that this is

my

photography creation time and even

smartphone photography but

i think one of the edge uh the edge of a

lot of channels is is uh thinking about

what is that iconic photo and as you

were looking at some of those history

channels by the way obviously they have

an advantage there some of those are

drone shots of a mine there’s no way

you’re going to be able to get the like

temple shot

on the ground like you may need so so

that’s the drone shot is a tool and then

i’m going to say something that will

may or may not be something you want to

do but i think it’s fine to do is

there’s the opportunity to use stock

footage or rather stock photography

if it’s the same place you’re simply

putting on the other side like you were

there but you couldn’t have gotten quite

as good of a photo and so uh of course

you want to make sure copyright is solid

on that but whether it’s unsplash.com

where you can get free

photography

uh

you know like again if you’re doing a

new york city vlog

like it doesn’t even have to be the part

of new york city you were in it could

actually be the statue of liberty that

that actually tells the story that

you’re in new york and then you’re there

so it’s kind of thinking outside of the

box and it almost seems like the camel

one you did that like i don’t know if

you took that camel photo you probably

certainly could have but you could

probably get an even much more

silhouetted

like that would be a common stock photo

that

could tell the same story potentially um

and then even the cops helped me find

money it is it looks like it’s a frame

from the vlog itself which typically are

never going to be anywhere as good as a

staged photo and that and for leveling

up the thumbnails that definitely could

help

yeah i was looking at these thumbnails

from a year or two ago and these feel a

lot more um staged and appealing i feel

as if the vibrancy of all of these could

be ratcheted up a little bit but i felt

these first thumbnails were going in the

right direction

and now perhaps they they haven’t had

the opportunity of a chance to

make

uh more concerted thumbnail images it

seems to be very much freeze frame with

perhaps a bit of text jeff are you gonna

chime in there yeah i was gonna say the

last two or even some of these look like

kind of the auto generated thumbnail

from youtube sort of kind of but on

another note just to kind of switch

gears i had a question for sean about

this

title wise what do you feel about the

triple titling going on here

i mean

they don’t read very well i think it’s a

pursuit of

right ranking which is not

which might have some weight to it

because i don’t know if you village has

much content so you’re gonna get the

most authority by putting you village

like i’m looking at the mummy so the

only mummy in india is pretty

interesting that’s interesting you could

almost leave it at that but then you

village is

maybe you know you put the kind of

dividing line

and you village at least gives that

authority and maybe somebody looks that

up later and then what if you click on

it what’s it say after that then i think

the repeat of mummy

lama temple

is

you know another way to even more cl the

only mummy in india exclamation point

village or mummy lama temple

uh in gyu village makes it actually kind

of two sentences and actually that’s how

like a book would read the only mummy in

india

you know mommy llama tempo in you

village is like it’s a statement and

it’s the location so that’d be kind of

like readability and writeability

writing titles is such an art form um

and so yeah i prefer it more that way

but for i could see some merit to it

just because sometimes it it

i don’t know if it’s gonna be successful

but what you’re trying to do is organize

your travels and it’s sort of like a

descending order there’s like what is

happening you village is the place the

other location and it’s all a part of a

series for organizational purpose i’m

curious your thoughts you know like

there there could be some merit to it

and if you developed like a really

die-hard fan base that was looking for

like certain places certain things

that um

maybe could could help you

i think this speaks to the point this is

how i used to title my vlogs though like

when i look at even

spit

spitty valley

i took the most difficult way like that

six months ago

you know uh title with the airplane wing

it said in all love is like the worst

title in all it’s just terrible like

it’s doesn’t make sense really you’re

starting with the hashtag

i a lot of times unless you’re a famous

vlogger and you hit to that point it’s

more about like what would they be

interested in like what’s the point it

gets cut off we don’t even finish so i

took the most way to re so

so really we reworking titles in general

which if if we’re on the point of

doubling down on titles personal

preference if we go down to the lower

right hand corner

i prefer if you’re even going to put

episode numbers at all put them at the

end

if you’re going to put any organization

thing put it in the end if at all

because it may have no merit like you

also could just organize in playlists i

don’t know if playlist lets you label

episodes anymore but i think they do if

you make it a series and then you could

kind of organize that way

but each video has a chance of growing

your channel on its own merits so you’re

wasting title space by front loading it

with ep-4 i don’t even know what p-2 is

then it’s chandler trek and then it’s

walking on frozen river

it it’s hard to read it doesn’t flow

super well and so you can move some of

those things

you know a little bit deeper in so

thinking through your title strategy

would be uh those are some tweaks that i

think you i mean you level up titles and

thumbnails

that’s that’s half the battle

uh in a lot of ways so

what i find a little funny about this

one is

so

flying on a plane is the hardest way to

get somewhere

sure the most difficult way it doesn’t

seem very difficult to me

maybe kayaking down a raft when you’ve

been chased by the local uh wildlife

might be a more interesting way of

pitching that and i was just thinking of

this one as well um if we were just to

take out the seo out of this completely

and the title was something along the

lines of you won’t see any you won’t see

this anywhere else in india

um i feel as if that creates a curiosity

of

like it’s almost like you’re trying to

reveal a secret of something

um whereas perhaps

this thumbnail and title reveals a

little too much

that you have the the image in the

thumbnail and then you’re basically

telling the viewer what you’re going to

get

literally listing what’s in the video

yeah but to your point

then the next challenge is is the

content format itself because it’s 19

minutes and and 19 seconds and if it’s

the most interesting thing you’re going

to see in india

the the weakness of a vlog is that

you start your day hey good morning i’m

back and uh and and the actual

interesting thing doesn’t even happen

until minute 14.

yeah people tell you to tease that it’s

happening but then still the payoff is

already

which actually and the the use of

chapters it’s cool that the use of

chapters is there and so now now we’re

getting to that but i was six minutes

and i think if you guys want to go on

this time and actually probably a chance

of getting

millions of views in a short would be

just the mummy

like outside the temple frame one

inside the temple very quickly or

wherever yeah

and then the mummy is there and then you

get to the payoff almost immediately if

you think about from the promise to the

payoff how how quickly people want it

they do want to see the most interesting

thing they might let you could tease me

for three seconds six seconds maybe even

20 if you kind of really hype it up

maybe even longer but definitely not 19

minutes to get to the payoff

in terms of if you go that curiosity

angle and if you go to just document

your

travels angle then in this case that’s

kind of what’s happening but it also

could be a cap on the results

again a lot of interesting detail that

we’ve gone into here for the traveling

human which you can apply to your

channel as well let’s uh get a gaming

channel in there

it’s going to be channel 29. sorry jeff

i didn’t give you a chance to um

take care of

i just i just assume

when i hear the claw that it’s coming

from jeff’s mouth oh so i wasn’t i just

just jumped in that was an unsanctioned

claw

voiceover

the ripe pepper uh dan and i am seeing

high pixel live streams at least

but also other games as well on this

channel

yeah okay so

they are streaming as a four months ago

they were streaming high pixels it’s

been a while yeah and i did

let’s see will smith smacks a png tuber

uh so

i i want to say that they’ve kind of

pivoted to doing meme content in the

last few uploads but it has been the

upload schedule here leaves a lot to be

desired very inconsistent yeah

makes me feel like given the the sheer

amount of different games we’ve seen and

then types of videos that they’re still

trying to kind of figure out what it is

they want to do with their channel

um yeah i think we have to judge this

channel really on these last four videos

that is their channel right now which

looks to be a

we call this a dank meme channel where

they’re creating funny memes um using

different meme styles or popular

trending things and

i think with something like this this

certainly needs to be a regular

output of this content be it twice

two three times several times a week

yeah the volume needs to be much higher

if you’re going to pivot to this kind of

meme format and i think the the one that

i’m most encouraged by is the will smith

video because

it is a it was a trending topic

especially 12 days ago so you you got in

there on trending topic and you covered

something that everyone was talking

about and you put your own spin on it

and i think you need to be doing that as

often as possible

um let’s see music made can we click on

it is it a short or is it actually just

a nine second it makes me nervous when i

click on stuff like this but here we go

i uh

i actually think that that

in the shorts feed might actually perf

like have the chance especially during

that moment to actually really pop off

and blow up yeah

that’s the other thing too so you’re

making nine second videos you could have

made that vertical very easily and it

could have

done really well in shorts and uh i know

that kind of comes down to goals i know

the the goal for this channel is

probably to get monetized and then

they’d like to see that video

make money but you can do both you can

if you’re going to upload more

frequently you can make a short and a

wide screen video and a short and wide

screen you know bounce between the two

but give you know right now this channel

isn’t stacking the deck in its favor

they’re not quite uploading long enough

uh it’s we seemed to lack a channel

focus uh they were live streaming some

minecraft at one point now they’re not

so

sit down and kind of consider what it is

you enjoy doing the most a lot of

creators i’m just gonna go on a soapbox

real quick a lot of creators come to us

and say hey what’s going to get the most

views right now

and we’re like

it doesn’t really matter it doesn’t

matter what we tell you what we think is

going to get the most views i used this

example recently but if i told you that

baking channels are hey baking channels

are really trending right now and if you

start a baking channel you’re going to

get a million subscribers and if even if

that’s true which it’s not um

does that matter to you

only if you like baking

i mean if you’re if your pursuit of

youtube is just for subscribers and

views and you don’t really you’re not

tackling your passions

you’re you’re not going to get anywhere

so

that’s i’m going on the soapbox to say

find what you are most passionate about

and then pursue that and go all in on it

i want to see you uploading much more

frequently and i want to see videos

coming out

not only several times a week but about

i want to see them based around a

similar audience

dan you kept your composer fantastically

well then as you were on your soapbox um

musical tired uh well done sir

next channel um technically that was a

non-gaming channel and like they were

previously a gaming channel and there

weren’t so we haven’t really touched on

a gaming channel yet but hopefully we

will do

the next time we go to the claw this

channel i think is a diy channel

uh going by the way

name of mr fred’s diy garage school

okay so the question always at this

point is

what sort of diy because on youtube diy

covers a

many multitudes of stuff

and it looks like

it’s just what fixing

odd things around the house

power cords

machinery

it seems non-specific

okay thank you jeff thank you oh whoops

all right so there you go sorry my bad i

was ready for the claw and i forgot to

turn it off

[Laughter]

sorry about that

that wasn’t intentional then just now

no i turned off for the club but you

went through it so fast i didn’t have a

chance to do it

so so tell god then just put you on the

spot then non-specific or

how in what way

well it doesn’t seem like it’s um diy

for any particular thing it sort of

seems like it’s just sort of general

around the house around your garage and

kind of whatever needs fixing in this

person’s you know the creator’s general

life um but it doesn’t seem you know

specific to a specific thing

so not that there’s anything wrong with

that but it’s it just seems kind of

general in a sense i mean there’s a good

question that i’ve got your opinions on

and that is also that

you know you can debate at length around

almost what you could call like search

based channels or rather almost like

problem based channels and a lot of ways

think media can sometimes fall into this

where

especially as we don’t build around one

personality we burn we build our own

specific problems that are in a clear

niche

um but those channels will quote unquote

not do as

well on any on any individual upload

compared to

an individual youtube creator that

becomes very known and their core of

their audience just wants to hang on an

experience with that individual it’s

almost like two different strategies so

my question is

who most people go through particular

pain points for a limited amount of time

they don’t have to like every week fix

something in their house

and whatever you’re going to fix next

may or may not be relevant to that

individual so you can build up a group

of subscribers

all of that to say is not to actually

make the channel

less relevant just to say that a lot

sometimes the strategy becomes cover a

lot of topics build up a big library of

videos

out of that you may develop some core

audience um but

even if you were more specific i’m

saying if you’re the creator who

understands that viewer best win what

kind of viewer

is like i guess i’m gonna hang track

shelfing this week oh i did need to fix

a power cord this week oh i did as

opposed to like blanketing the earth and

just like you know benefiting from the

right pain point like when the student

is ready the teacher appears when the

pain point shows up on youtube they find

the individual and and and i’m maybe i’m

asking you for your personal experience

if any of you follow a creator

that does content like that that you

like watch all their videos or if you

subscribe just to kind of keep an ear on

them to be like oh yeah that’s one thing

i need help with or like that’s one

thing i need help with as well you know

you follow a wordpress creator do you

always need every single tip they share

about wordpress or do you just keep your

toes dipped in their pool in case you

know something comes up does that make

sense i mean it’s an interesting

conversation around channel strategy

yeah for me i think linus tech tips

there are maybe

one in five videos that i find

interesting from his channel but the one

in five are really interesting i really

enjoy watching his content because he’s

the best at doing what he does but a lot

of the stuff goes too much into depth

about you know really specific graphic

cards and whatnot and i think this is

the same on this channel in that

i

me as a target audience yes i might be

able to understand how to replace a

toilet seat

changing a vacuum cleaner belt that

sounds like it’s getting a bit more

complicated

and then an air compressor regulator

rebuild that sounds like something

that’s very advanced and i don’t even

know what it does

sure

and if you’re me

i would love for the help on the replace

the toilet seat i’m just going to buy a

new air compressor and i’m going to buy

a new vacuum yeah exactly but i mean

fair enough because

i think it still accomplishes the same

thing i think there’s a lot of youtube

channels where 100 of the videos

actually being for the subscriber i mean

that’s a tough challenge

again unless you build up a such a

strong personal brand where you watch

pewdiepie not even because it doesn’t

matter what game he’s playing you’re

watching pewdiepie it doesn’t matter

what dr phil episode he’s reacting to

you’re watching pewdiepie it doesn’t

matter if he’s reacting to reddit you’re

watching pewdiepie he in a way is the

value proposition which is honestly i

think a more challenging value

proposition more power to people who

understand their unicorn level of skill

and personality magnetism

but in utility-based channels i think it

kind of goes the other direction where

you’re you’re meeting at a lot of pain

point intersections

look at the theme here on

their best performing content it seems

to be a little more specialized into

outdoor

um

boats

and inflatables there seems to be a bit

of a theme going on there

um

again that all of these content is

spread out between sometimes years ago

sometimes months ago but every time that

the creator goes back to this area

they’re having i’d say stronger success

than just a day-to-day

and for 200 years or less for strategy’s

sake though that might indicate that

it’s the size of the problem and and vid

iq could help like

we could look at the keyword search

volume or even trending views around

certain topics and maybe it’s just a lot

there’s a lot of inflatables problems or

a lot of people are like shoot my boat

mattress popped and i need help and

therefore the scale of it because my

other thought is that that theme

probably wouldn’t actually indicate one

individual that happened to have five

different inflatables that had an issue

it probably all related to like a one

one pinpoint one solution but maybe

indicates how big of a problem it is i

don’t know if i would over index to make

you know what this sign tells me that i

should make fix inflatables channel not

that you’re saying that but you know

what i mean like ultimately kind of just

interesting that you’re playing you have

a it’s very related to think media as i

think through some of these thoughts

that just kind of understanding what

your channel is who it’s for its

strengths and its weaknesses and being

aware of those and choosing to embrace

them when somebody we have like very

successful final cut series but it’s

also in a way of vulnerability because

someone that clicks subscribe for final

cut stuff might be raising their hand

that a lot of our other stuff is

irrelevant for them we’ve come to terms

with that but we have a lot of different

hooks in the ocean around

themes

and uh yeah again you know because you

meet the person because you had an

inflatable pop and then eventually and

this might lead to the unsubscribe later

and i think it’s been okay with the

unsubscribe because you’re like you know

what i don’t need the air compressor my

toilet’s fine

i don’t need to fix the power record you

know what actually i don’t know why i’m

subscribed to this channel anymore but

they’re also so happy about it but

thanks for helping me fix my

inflatables i’d love to have a longer

conversation about this sean did you

ever think about siloing off your um

channels like into a video editor

channel in a studio build channel

because that’s something that we try to

shy away from a little bit into a vid iq

like we try and focus purely on youtube

education and like we tested once we’re

doing

we tested once doing a lighting video

collabing with ben johnson

and it just wasn’t something our

audience was expecting and you know

didn’t get the views so i was wondering

if you ever thought about

yeah i’m having like 10 different

channels i think that um

this would be a fun podcast to your

point and really just kind of thinking

through this i have i have thought about

that

i think it’s hard to to manage multiple

channels and i i think that it’s

worth thinking about at length

i think it’s possible to be over niched

right i think or just over niche to the

point where the lifespan of the channel

doesn’t have a bright enough future in a

way studio builds sure but even to that

i think the lifespan of the audience

who becomes fascinated maybe are you

fascinated for suit with studio builds

for years and years and years and years

so there’s just vulnerabilities on both

sides i’m so close to of course the

co-author of youtube secrets benji

travis

and they have a vlog channel and what’s

been interesting is to watch their their

audience grows with them as they grow in

life and sure some people jump drop off

so even that anyways well i’m getting

into the conversation right now i’d love

to have the conversation and i don’t

even know if it’s a good answer i think

what’s best is have good questions that

help you make decisions

dan racer gaming yt 687 subscribers it’s

one of those channels where

unfortunately because youtube still

hasn’t provided us with a short shelf

tab so to speak we’re getting

almost all shots here with thumbnails

that we we can’t criticize because you

don’t need thumbnails in there so we’re

we’re all looking at the titles perhaps

seeing how how clickable they are and in

some cases they are in some cases not so

much

yeah and that’s some of their shorts are

doing really well over a thousand views

on on a handful of these which is

awesome to see i’m not exactly sure what

gaming this is but it does look to be

the same one consistently which is also

good

uh

i i think just

looking at the long form video that they

did eight days ago five minutes

uh it looks as though they did not put a

lot of effort into the title and the

thumbnail and if this is it given that

they’ve made a couple of these videos

that are over a minute that are 16x9

my guess is that if they were here with

us right now they’d be saying yeah my

goal is to eventually pivot into doing a

longer form kind of video how do i do

that and and satisfy my audience and so

it would seem that their strategy has

been to just take

like the moment from their short and and

find like more context to it to fill out

like a five minute video uh the the

trick though was in the title and the

thumbnail the latest one three cute

noobs

fun overloaded there’s some laughing

emojis the title’s truncated because

there’s a lot there

and i don’t know what game it is i don’t

really know why i would click it i don’t

know the value of it like it’s kind of

missing all the marks in terms of

you know what is this it looks like

you’re having fun

but i don’t know

why i should watch you know if it’s if

it’s three cute noobs then maybe focus

on

noob implies something was failed at

right you know you’re new at the game so

you’re not good at it so focus on the

thing that happened that went wrong

in the game in the title and the

thumbnail right so

because you’re a noob

what was the consequence of that

and then make sure you tack on like the

game name and stuff so it becomes a

little more searchable uh and and then

if you were asking me how can you pivot

these short form viewers to this

long-form content i would also be

telling you to just upload both

consistently now because you’ve been

doing shorts for so long and you’re just

starting to get into the widescreen

videos

okay so we’re doing square shorts which

is totally fine

is it always square shots i was trying

to watch one where they’ve added some

stuff watch until the end of the

beginning

and then subscribe friends which is kind

of blocked out by the the title of the

video guaranteed that laugh at the end

do not you’re gonna get a payoff

i’m i kind of want to i mean it’s kind

of obnoxious but like

um i i i hate to hijack this for

personal coaching but i want to hire the

vidiq vidiq team for for coaching and um

i

would ask what are your three to five

tips for the three of you of how you

think about titling shorts i this

question is we’re gonna start doing

seven a week now we upload five normal

videos we’re gonna upload two shorts on

the weekends mainly because we created

some native content and we’ve also

proven them out as we’ve created content

that go on reels and tick tock

um that

if we have a winner why wouldn’t we also

use it and if it’s relevant and

non-brand but i’m like okay what are we

are we missing out on good titles how

important is the title

and so what’s the crash course on

titling shorts you know obviously

metadata tags maybe not a ton but like

maybe

some degree so what’s your shorts

optimization title tips and optimization

crash course thank you i’m here to learn

and take notes

i will go first because um i’m worried

about if anyone else steals this because

i have a little else to say about this

um

the one thing you have control of in

terms of a pitch to the audience is the

title you don’t know what the thumbnail

is going to look like

and

you don’t know where it’s going to

appear on youtube i think most people

see

shorts as like the second or the third

or the fourth video in the list

and so sometimes somebody might be

reading a title

as they’re watching the show they’re

kind of

taking in everything all at once

and so my thought would be keep it

simple and keep it emotional

don’t care about any of the seos parts

of this

make it

instinctively understandable even if

they’re cr if they’re watching the video

at the same time

so

oh sorry i logged into short’s desktop

and the top one it’s even hard which is

nice it’s actually a nice experience

right shorts desktop tab

the top one but the title is overlaid

over the video yeah and even kind of

hard to read in that experience i mean

it’s readable and you could clearly see

it but it’s over video content that’s

moving so it’s a good point in a way

that’s why i like you coaching me

through

the experience and the first one i saw

had the actual title or headline

embedded in the actual short itself at

the top of the screen

yeah

which is more like a pitch to realizing

that was the bigger pitch than the

actual title sorry go ahead dan it’s all

right um so i i do agree with what rob

saying with the title like that’s the

only thing of control over but rob can

actually go back to youtube real quick

um and go to the home home page

yes i can sir here’s the biggest problem

click on the shorts button on the left

you didn’t get to decide this yep it

just gets served right to you and and

now you’re in the short shelf and when

you swipe you don’t get to decide that

either

so my whatever comes next

but there and there’s also a baked in

title here though maybe i do want to

stay on this meme because it is baked in

that’s interesting that idea is

fascinating yes yeah putting text in the

video making the video itself like the

star is like shorts is almost the

opposite of what we’ve been saying all

day about titles and thumbnails because

now your editing is everything in your

video like you you have the title and

thumbnail to kind of hook them and then

if they like the pitch enough if your

editing is off they might still stick

around right but in a short it has to be

like the first point one second i’ve

seen this one too i love it that’s a

cool show isn’t it the first like point

one second needs to get your attention

and and that’s the issue

this guy’s so good i watched so many

after i found his channel i watched so

many shorts

um

love that but i instantly got the

concept of that short like how different

games like cause he put the text how

different the concept is at the top yes

yeah yes and that’s the thing with

shorts i think titles are very

inconsequential i’ve been playing with

shorts on my my own personal channel and

i’ve been making the titles as

useless as possible just to see and i

had one where it was like a couple words

and

barely relevant to the thing i was doing

in it and it did great it did i think it

did great because it was really short

and in the interest i designed it so the

interest would be there the second you

looked at it and

i think we married

rob and dan’s advice because i think

and then put it into think media world

we have a lot of desktop viewers that’s

also one of our hesitancy with going all

and a lot of shorts viewers so we do

want it to be a pitched clear value to

the fact that a subscriber will watch it

on desktop and they will see the title

to your point dan

that is not the scale growth though

that’s not where it really would in fact

you can look at these so you can see

these two shorts that are right there

and and the one i liked the least

was if you neglect this in life you

guarantee failure is that’s also that’s

not even on brand for the channel

actually it’s i mean it kind of it’s

it is it’s kind of but

and i and i do wonder yeah anyways i

appreciate you can you could judge these

as hard as you possibly can please

i think i think because you have so many

people who are going to get this in

their home feed and stuff it does make

sense to have like the best title you

can think of but really like when people

are scrolling through the shelf it’s of

little consequence to them and

if you consider who the short shelf is

for it’s kind of for a different

audience it’s for somebody who’s in a

different mindset at that time they’re

looking for a different type of video so

you can do both i think you can really

do both with shorts i when i first

started i thought the title

mattered a lot so i was very careful

with my titles and the channel did great

and i noticed after a while that it was

doing really well in browse

not

just the short shelf but browse and i

attribute part of that success to titles

as well so

but i also think that if i were to

choose like i wouldn’t stress it i

wouldn’t i wouldn’t stress the title of

my short so much because i know i’m

making this for somebody else

i think the other challenge you have

sean with think media is that um i

assume a lot of your shots are going to

depend on audio communication and so

then you have to have the battle of

because a lot of

shorts have captions baked in and so can

you afford to have a gun can you afford

to have a title at the top of the screen

and then you can capture things as well

either then it gets a little complicated

and such and i i don’t know how to solve

that i’ve just realized when i was

watching your um short there that i was

reading the captions so i wouldn’t

necessarily read a title which would be

a progression as opposed to and we’re

going to be changing it to

i

i shot a batch of videos

and my first sentence

is actually the goal is to make it the

title and basically the headline and not

have it reveal as a caption but be fully

on the screen for that first part so you

get the pitch you get the promise you

get

i’m saying it but you’re seeing it all

and then it starts being revealed

and this coaching is kind of helping me

think through that you know

yeah

anyways folks i’m sorry if we’ve gone

off topic here but i love it when

youtubers just start talking shop uh and

that was all really interesting and uh

we managed to we were tying it into a

channel that we were looking at shorts

channel the next channel i pulled out

was transit fan productions jeff you’ve

had a little bit of a verbal rest so uh

i want you to chime in with what you

think this channel is about

so it you know i’m

okay so transit fans one thing i’m kind

of interested to see here it looks like

they’re not

niched into one particular thing outside

of transit so let’s say we’ve got trains

and metro

buses

so i guess any form of mass

transportation although

some of this also looks like video games

like there’s mta roblox hd

um so somebody

it’s very it seems like it’s a

second row third one from the left

this one oh

right i see

yeah so it seems like a mix like i’m

kind of i’m sort of wondering what’s

happening here because if you look at

the top the videos from two days and

three days ago the latest videos even

the you know the third one a lot of that

stuff looks real so i’m not i’m kind of

wondering what what is happening here

like what is it are we just looking at

buses are we explaining what’s going on

um

i’m just i’m struggling to see the value

proposition is what i’m saying

yeah

yeah just very occasionally they’re just

dropping one of these um

game simulation videos right which is

fine but it seems like that would be a

different channel because we’ve seen

train simulator channels like we’ve seen

that stuff so you know there’s

definitely a niche for that stuff but

also with uh with actual trains uh i’ve

watched a ton of videos where people

where they’ll ride a certain train or a

certain line or i’m overnighting in the

most expensive uh you know

a bedroom uh car sleeper car or whatever

it might be

so there’s kind of a story behind that

but that’s what they do they travel on

rail um

so i’m just kind of wondering what

what the value proposition is here like

what are we getting out of this channel

you know as i continue to look at the

titles and the thumbnails i’m trying to

decide

am i going on a journey in these videos

or are you showing me a particular thing

like the style of the

the transportation

because the titles all seem to be very

long they’ve been cut off a little bit

yeah and even if they were going from

like because there was a channel that i

saw a lot a long while back i came

across it where this guy was riding

every bus like almost like he was

wearing a gopro and he was showing the

experience of waiting where you wait at

the bus stop going from place to place

and what that was like like what route

to take you where you could get off and

then he narrated it um after the fact so

it’s like hey yeah it’s the very next

stop you can get off here and you can go

to the mall and then at the very you

know the next stop this is where you can

get off and you can transfer over to the

subway if you need to go somewhere else

so he was taking you on this journey of

this whole bus line

and that is very useful content for

people who want to know hey if i ride

this bus is it going to take me to to

this place

very valuable in that sense very niche

but very valuable but that’s that was a

proposition that was a different value

proposition and i don’t know if that’s

what is happening here

what i found a little interesting with

the most popular one is uh

we’ve added some a little bit of context

a simple context like this particular

carriage has a weird door perhaps and

i’m wondering if you could maybe do like

montages of like all of the different

styles of doors

on on the carriages in new york and

there was another one here like door

chime i’m wondering if you can gather

all of the different door chimes from

from many different mass transit cities

and put them together in like

interesting uh montages hey we’re we’re

cutting into sean’s content here at this

point you know we can’t be doing this

weird door chime stuff like this

we’re gonna be cutting into the funny

sounds at some point sorry sorry yeah

that’s a good point

yeah i just i just feel as when i look

at

most of these videos i’m not sure what

the focus or the story of the video is

whereas these shots to kind of give me a

little more focus because it’s very

simple

any other thoughts gentlemen or should

we pull out the next channel

yeah but i think the value prop

is

train transit enthusiasts

and

it’s a

yep

what is rail funding

this is just fan enthusiasts yeah people

who fans

okay fanboy fangirl rail fan like it’s

fan you know

railroad and in the nyc area you’re

interested in the trains you’re

interested in the chimes you’re

interested

you talk about the niches or in the

niches

you know that’s uh but it makes sense

like a lot of

passion

for trains

or subways

okie dokie let’s try a

gaming channel and see what comes up

next two nine two

uh yes we do have a 292 channel and then

we are going to look at

what looks to be quite a sizable channel

here

call themselves kit gaming

and they have almost 300 000 subscribers

so just to show that we audit channels

of any size

uh

dan

i am really scared of auditing a large

channel like this so over to you

i

when the videos from not even a week ago

are getting more views than their

subscribers my my question becomes

did they leave anything on the forum for

us like is there any reason they asked

for an audit right

their favorite youtuber in the forum

instead of themselves

let’s just say let’s play channel yeah

um

i think if someone is a roblox channel

they could be learning a lot from you i

don’t that’s an interesting thing

because actually i look at this and

think uh the thumbnails

they’re not fantastic i feel as if

they could be of a little higher quality

and it’s a let’s play channel and we’ve

talked about many let’s play channels

that have zero subscribers and they

never reach

a level of audience

you know this kind of reflects a channel

that’s succeeded and then whenever

channels try and replicate that they’re

unable to do so because they’re just a

very different passive youtube journey

yeah so in the chat they said i really

want to get to a million

gotcha they’re gonna get to a million i

would say in the next

24 months given the audience size here

which is

very very strong so

what i would say is that like so block

let’s say blocks fruits ship raid for 24

hours something like that sounds very

challenging it sounds like there’s a lot

of stakes involved being like 24 hours

you’re doing this raid for 24 hours

uh

this is not just for this channel but

for anyone like if you can do these

types of videos where you’re adding

stakes to it where you’re adding this

element of danger or you know challenge

to it that that always wins and i mean i

i think they got that down uh because

especially that video it did really well

let’s see that was 824 000 views blocks

fruits level one noob finally found a

legendary so you found like a really

rare item or entity from the game in

that video

uh so obviously that that did well

grinding for 24 hours

you’re doing a lot of stuff for 24 hours

and getting a million views

block fruits was something that’s

performed very well in the past and is

still bringing in

thousands of views per hour uh have you

revisited that topic recently yeah you

still okay you still do a lot of block

fruit stuff as well

so that’s fine

yeah community channel uh community tab

they’re using that and

it kind of a little frustrates me when

people do these zany

votes and they get loads of stuff on it

right but it works for the channel and

their audience so you can’t knock it

yep don’t hate the player hate the game

what about you know if this person is

strictly saying that they want to reach

a million subscribers

one way that they could potentially um

fast track this is to experiment with

shots i don’t think there’s any shots on

this channel and if

the videos are like 10 minutes long

surely down there are maybe

three or four

self-contained

funny clips or interesting clips that

they could take

and experiment with

there is a risk inherent with that in

that then you’re starting to introduce

short form content onto your channel and

they have a shorts channel separate okay

okay well so that’s nothing also have

they considered hiring an editor uh when

you’re when you’re at that level on

youtube you can get a lot more content

out there if you get somebody to help on

your team editing your videos

uh because then it’s it’s it’s just

about volume like leaving yourself time

to come up with really interesting ideas

concepts for videos uh so getting an

editor can help with that

the it might just be i don’t know how

quickly yeah this is what i was gonna

say like how how quickly is the channel

moving along

uh how what’s the frequency here so

they’re doing 50 000 subscribers a month

so they’ll do half a million this year

if they stay at this

level and

momentum is still growing so

it’s all positive

positive news here

yeah the only thing we can say is to

keep going and yeah the videos take the

videos that have done the best see if

you can make more of those

i i like seeing

stakes that are involved in gaming

videos like mr beast gaming is a great

example that i think you could probably

pull a lot of

inspiration from just because he’s

always doing these challenges and

putting huge stakes on them usually in

the form of a cash prize

and that works really well a lot of the

gaming audience responds to that

i just want to throw this over to you

sean in in a sense of

large channel already has success they

want to now reach

the next big step

any general thoughts and advice

yeah i think uh

are we on most popular right now are we

just looking at all the velocities this

is just this is just the most recent

stuff

so we could go to let’s go most popular

and then did you know they’re going to

take oldest away yeah i just saw that as

well you can still get there but you

have to go the long way

frustrating um okay so again youtube

yeah

and so um

and and so i think you know success

leaves clues make part twos

um

and

by looking at some of your top videos

and thinking about are you ready for a

part two are you ready for a follow-up

are you ready for a tie-in but even

better if we go vidiq trending tab

because just because sometimes old

videos have accumulated a lot of views

but what are we seeing with a lot of

velocity that we’re maybe ready to

double down on and

and uh four months five months

you know five months ago blocks fruits

i mean that’s just one thought generally

they’re experiencing a lot of growth

here another thing i would say to you

which is um

you know and answer that question of

like they’ve experienced a lot of growth

and ready to go to the next level this

is kind of counterintuitive to just

youtube advice about growth hacking but

i also there’s a little maybe a little

philosophy philosophical

why growth hack guess what you’re going

to get to a million subscribers if you

just don’t stop

yeah and we live in a world that is is

like how do i get there tomorrow though

like how do i adjust

you know and and so sometimes literally

just go into your analytics and do the

math that if you just keep doing what

you’re doing

multiply it out over between where you

are in a million subscribers and then

you might go yeah but that’s seven years

away and you go and that’s amazing like

there’s so many people in the chat right

now that would just

kill for a quarter million let alone a

million and and sometimes great things

can be slow and steady you know on the

path

yeah so that’s another thought so i

think the pulling tension of just

you know slow and steady wins and you

will get there eventually and then i

mean the other biggest thing you’re

definitely doing shorts but i think for

them a lot of the hyper growth i’ve seen

lately

that seems to be a common theme amongst

channels is shorts

um one of our shorts led to 27 000 new

subscribers

and this went to i think a question dan

answered

asked earlier like what are the views

even for like what’s the point because

sometimes just getting a lot of 27 000

subscribers from shorts may or may not

be the right subscribers but if you were

to say i’m trying to solve for x and

that’s what we should all do here at vid

iq channel reviews today

is what’s x for you

is it literally a numerical subscriber

number that’s fine if it is i am trying

to get to a thousand subscribers that’s

what it looks like for me it doesn’t

matter about money does it matter even

about impact does it matter about who

the subscribers are it’s just the number

that is what’s most important is it a

monetary goal so you have money for the

mission then what then that’s what

you’re you’re mapping towards is it a

particular type of subscribers is it

just subscribers for subscribers sake or

i’m trying to gather a particular

community and actually

here’s even better is it a particular

number of patrons

patreon and patrons

is it a particular number of channel

memberships because i actually

you know you compare apples to oranges

vidiq does incredible surveys on on the

community tab that sometimes ask these

questions that get us to think

is it would you rather have

a thousand patrons

or

ten thousand or a hundred thousand

subscribers that watch at a shallow

level

and and those want to watch your deeper

q and a’s so what are you solving for so

nick gaming those would be some thoughts

that i think about i would actually ask

you where do you want to go from here in

your career where do you want to go from

here in life where do you do you want to

actually start a merch line do you want

to make your own game and launch an nft

sometimes there’s some drama around that

but like

maybe that’s literally a dream i don’t

think you have to worry about the drama

if the dream is like i actually have

some resource now i can make my own game

do you want to actually build a lot of

your own world

worlds and roblox and have more time are

you are you comfortable with your

work-life balance now you’re already

experiencing success so you are in a

very privileged place of having options

to navigate to where you want to go next

probably the best advice we could give

you is get really clear on actually

where you want to go because the worst

thing you could do is climb to the top

of the mountain only to realize you

climbed the wrong mountain and now you

have a million subscribers but in a way

what for

was that actually the thing you wanted

could be but for a lot of times it may

not even be the thing and so us thinking

deeply about what solving for x means uh

can then help us make a game plan to get

there yeah i agree with i agree with

sean because he brings up a point about

getting clarity about your end goal

and that’s something where

subscribers can definitely be a good end

goal but i’ll tell you right now what

changed kind of my life as a creator

was realizing that subs were not my end

goal that my end goal and just to be

very clear and honest with everybody

here and with the audience was to

provide a better life for my family and

how can i get to that point

that is where it’s at like it’s cool

like i’m working my way to 100 000 subs

on my channel it’s going to be awesome

i’m going to celebrate with my audience

that is not the goal

the goal was to get to how can i get my

channel to earn me ten thousand dollars

a month yeah and when i achieve that

when how can i get my channel to to give

me twenty thousand dollars a month like

how can those are the goals that i was

looking at because i want to improve my

family’s life so that’s the thing that i

would want kid gaming to sort of get

honest with yourself about that think

bigger picture right think how can i

take my channel not saying has to be

monetary it can be subs that’s totally

fine but really narrow that goal down

and then start moving that direction if

that requires you to be in a position to

start building a team around you then

you move in that direction if it means

you know hiring an editor move in that

direction you know but really spend a

good amount of time thinking about where

you want to take this

and you know really move towards that

direction

and my own roblox game if it’s if

they’re good they can be hard to build

is that i mean because there’s a lot of

probably like incomplete games or games

that have been rushed or games

and so

what i like about what jeff’s saying is

also is

doing an audit of your time when your

family comes into play

and this also can be hard because i know

that you’re probably like me you’re

probably also type a driven while at the

same time also valuing your family so

there can be a point that’s again i

don’t this could be misinterpreted but

like kind of when is enough enough

like of course you always want to be

pursuing growth in the next level i

think that’s healthy i believe god wove

that into our dna but on the flip side

i also think i mean we just had two

million subscribers incredibly grateful

to get there but then it’s like we gotta

rush to the next mountaintop or how do

we wanna be spending our time so so

probably advice you would almost never

hear is uh i’m not saying settle like uh

settle down and become complacent but

maybe sometimes the best thing you could

do is like actually pull back from

youtube and invest in building your

roblox game

because you you realize you could

sustain the youtube side of things and

and that is such a passion plus you want

to spend a certain amount of time and

that would be a time audit what’s your

ideal work look uh week look like fair

enough for those who can’t

they don’t have the privilege of doing a

time audit well i have to go to my

20-hour week job and then i have to go

to my other 12-hour week job and i have

only use whatever energy i have left

over that i’m trying to hustle to get my

youtube channel to earn enough money but

if you’re in a place where you actually

have what is the dream partly of youtube

is freedom you actually now have the

freedom to decide to like structure your

schedule spend more time in roblox start

another channel you know it’s kind of a

cool story and i don’t even know the

full picture but you know peter mckinnon

who probably most people here know

literally as an established creator is

now launching another channel

that seems to be mapping towards his

vision for now and the product drops

he’s doing and the creative and the art

stuff he wants to do which is really i

think a cool reason of why going

practical growth on youtube to a point

but then actually when you get to that

point potentially to pull back from

growth of that thing because the thing

could take your life over in a way i

just gotta go to the next level you know

think media and like okay i’m just

asking where should we go from here next

and it may just not be numerical growth

jeff when you asked like um what is my

goal for the channel it spurred me to

look at the description and when i look

at the description

perhaps it could be argued that maybe

the business side of their channel is

undercooked or they haven’t established

that yet i was looking through the

channel and they’ve

this growth has come in the last 12

months like from

pretty much zero to 300 000 subscribers

and 25 million views in a year and

perhaps have been so focused on building

an audience that they haven’t had time

to think well yeah i can earn money from

adsense but are there any uh commercial

opportunities which i can include in the

description and elsewhere in my videos

that they’ve not perhaps investigated

yet

um absolutely it just seems to be that

case just looking at the description

that there is

follow me join my discord server build

my audience

but is there any

yeah commercial opportunities i think is

the best way of describing what i’m

trying to get i mean and it’s huge it’s

huge because it was it was sean’s

content it was roberto’s content that

opened my eyes to the fact that i didn’t

have to wait on adsense

to

to monetize my content and on top of

that now adsense is the smallest

percentage of my revenue streams so

that’s that’s the thing where and i get

where you’re coming from too because

he’s building up the audience and that

counts without the audience it’s kind of

like okay cool well what am i gonna do

right so he’s building that but it might

be time to start

start applying some of that focus into

other ways assuming that that’s the goal

well by the way he says

uh this has become his main income but

he’s also a web developer

and then so then a question kit gaming

is okay would you like to stop the web

developing

and if the answer is yes then then you

go okay cool this is your main income

how do you scale it up and that that is

the next freedom step because what you

just in a way just bought for yourself

is more time so then you say okay there

is channel memberships there’s the join

button right there let’s click on that

and so we

we could say okay there’s 299. do you

double down and get more people

interested here do you improve this and

then that might be the goal if there’s

72 people signed up you’re like okay

let’s try to get that to 300 and at that

point i can actually not do the web

developing at all

anymore which gives me an opportunity to

spend that 10 to 20 hours a week

on building my roblox game or my next

roblox game and it’s yeah it’s a lot

it’s a journey in kind of self-awareness

but i like that business development

side of hitting those financial

milestones which unlock the next level

of freedom or hits a financial milestone

which unlocks an editor that you can

hire which gives you even more freedom

which allows you to not just build the

game but also start the second channel

or focus more on the channel memberships

and brick by brick kind of combine the

lifestyle freedom piece with

also your ambitions for uh the channel

my final point for this channel would be

just looking at the thumbnails

have you collaborated with any uh

similarly sized channels in your space

because that could be an opportunity to

reach a brand new audience you know

shared audiences and i’m sure many

creators in your space would be more

than happy to collaborate with you just

giving your the audience that you’re

bringing in with every single video so

if you haven’t explored that yet that’s

another opportunity for you as well we

have managed to give this channel some

advice i was a little worried to begin

with but we’ve got there and what a

channel to end on about talking

to creators about the next step of their

youtube journey once they’ve um overcome

the struggles of getting that first

hundred subscribers monetizing their

channel and so on and so forth so i

think we’ll we’ll call it there at a

really perfect

time thanks for everybody’s time here

sean as always it is an absolute

pleasure to have you on board i’m going

to let you

say the first goodbyes to our audience

uh if anybody is saying goodbye so

whether you want to do it in a chat or i

bring up on screen flying cat gaming

i appreciate you rain man gaming

appreciate you we gotta say goodbye it’s

closing time

turn all of the lights down and finish

your whiskey or beer

all right middle of the day closing time

depends what time zone you’re in because

maybe it’s five o’clock somewhere

all right uh that’s i don’t know where

that came from but yeah remember youtube

has a clip button if you want to clip

that and get um some sean cannell beats

these right there uh

i appreciate you rock davis and raymond

gaming and artist haven um thank you

illusion thank you for being here lucas

skywalker friends

uh this next decade is going to be the

best decade on youtube what’s happening

in the crater economy is amazing forbes

predicted that just in the next nine

months there’s going to be 5x growth in

terms of biz development revenue inc

like and i know competition’s stiff but

consumption’s on a rise as well so i

want to encourage you relaxing sounds

for sleep and selma bayat and jake keep

going man keep posting keep learning

keep leveling up keep doing smart

research keep studying your analytics uh

hushy uh mr smorsley appreciate you

thanks for being here um keep hustling

man really really appreciate you

and you can find uh sean cannell and his

team on the think media channel uh there

is a link in the description and also do

make sure to check out the grow with

video conference that is coming up in

all let’s say what about six weeks time

dan say hello say goodbye to some people

not hello

i i will say goodbye to the indiana

jones indiana jones excuse me uh goodbye

to you good luck with your channel

illusion we’ll see you later

uh

dory and mon gaming maybe i don’t know i

tried uh and let’s see uh reagan

scarlett goodbye to you

and jeff could you say goodbye in a

squeaky voice please uh hold on let’s

let’s see hopefully this will actually

work there we go there it is all right

perfect so let’s say goodbye to it’s

golden dexter and uh let’s see tilly

anderson goodbye to you

and the satisfying experiment goodbye to

you as well

saying the satisfying experiment in a

squeaky voice exactly where else do we

go with a livestream uh dan

tell us very quickly

what we’re doing tomorrow

yes we’re talking about getting started

on youtube the right way that stream

will be going up uh for you to set

notifications for in just a bit a lot of

overcoming fear uh going to have jade

dharmawanza joining us it’s going to be

a lot of fun nice

we will see you all tomorrow

keep creating folks

[Music]

you