LIVE CHANNEL REVIEWS And Advice for Small YouTubers

And we are live. Hey everybody, this is Robert O'Blake. Hope you create something awesome today. Welcome back to the channel. Today we have another series of YouTube channel reviews. We tried to do these on Friday. Actually missed last Friday. I was not feeling well, was not feeling up to channel reviews. Not necessarily 100% tonight, but we're going to do them anyway to kind of make it up to you guys. Also, thank you to everybody who reached out for private recorded channel reviews. We are through the queue of 14 of those well we're almost through the queue of those we have um i think four of them left to do i think we have four of them that we haven't uh finished yet with the either the recordings we still have some that we have to send the email delivery for the recordings are done on those so thank you to everybody who reached out for those thank you to everybody who reached out for one-on-one private um reviews that are not recorded that we did live in person we did a couple of those over the last two weeks um and so thank you to everybody who reached out for those i think those went really well i think some of those creators are already seeing some improvement so that's definitely promising shout out to all of our mods here on the channel review streams so tonight we actually already have one person in the queue to get a review tonight i believe that that is uh thrifting diva thank you for the 25 super chat for the channel reviews that we do here live on the channel the rules for that are in the description and the mods are making sure we also have that in the chat um i think we're gonna try to figure out how to uh pin that um so that everyone knows what the rules are for that but we will be uh doing a live review for the thrifting diva We have recorded channel reviews that I offer over on awesomecreatoracademy.com. We also do a live in-person private channel review for you if you want to hop on the call with me instead of just getting my notes on your channel. Again, there are some people who are in the queue. We just finished mostly clearing the queue for the recorded reviews. So some people from last week are still getting theirs out. yeah really happy with how those have been um turned out no worries and we also are going to potentially do some um some more sneak peeks of uh my upcoming book it's going to be the second book in my uh creator economy insider series um let's see here Trying to find a way to share my screen for that with you guys. Bear with me. I don't know why this is giving me a problem. Give me a second here. Okay, there we go. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and share my second monitor with you guys so that you can see. The design that I have for the book cover and my plans for the trilogy here. There we go. So if you guys look at the screen here for Photoshop, book one here is the book that I've already published, Create Something Awesome, How Creators Are Profiting from Their Passion in the Creator Economy. That's been out and published since October of 2022. And so it's a great book. You guys should definitely buy it. This year in the fall, I'm releasing my second book, The Creator Economy, How to Become a Full-Time Content Creator and Turn Your Passion into Profit. So this book is going to be all about the money-making side of the creator economy and being a content creator. It's going to cover, one, the 15 different ways. that you can make money as a content creator there are 15 main ways to make real money as a content creator and i go and give a dedicated chapter in excruciating painful detail for each one in the book there are also multiple chapters in the book around the business side of being a content creator everything from setting up your llc and incorporating to doing well hiring people and then doing payroll for the people you hire working with freelancers why you need a bookkeeper and why you need a certified public accountant to do all your accounting stuff So the book gets into granular details around that. It talks about the difference between being a hobby content creator and trying to become a full-time content creator and the things that have to change for you when you do that. It talks about the realities of being a full-time content creator and trying to work out the dynamics of how that plays out in your everyday real life, how you need structure, how that's going to create stability for you. and why it's so important. So it's a pretty elaborate book. I'm about, oh, 40,000 words into the book, which is basically how long my first book was. And this book's not even fully done. I think that it's going to end up being 65,000 words out of the 40,000 that I'm already into. So that is going to be great. Terry has a question. Will you be narrating the audio version for the next book? The first one was awesome, but would have been better in your voice. I'm going to have the, what they call it on Amazon and Audible. So Amazon and Audible does voice narration for you. automatically. Now, when you publish a book, you do have the option, of course, to record your own book or hire somebody to record a book for you. I'm going to do mine in my voice. So the thing is, when I feel that I'm not straining my voice, there will be a, what's the phrase I'm looking for? They will be a revised edition or second edition of my book, my first book, Create Something Awesome, coming out that also includes an updated audio version in my voice. When my voice is done being strained, that will be forthcoming. So recording an audiobook, which I've been trying to finish for quite a while now, is actually a little more taxing. than you would think it is. And it's also for this reason that I'm experimenting with cloning my voice in 11 labs for projects like this. Not so much for my YouTube videos, but for various projects where I might need voice or audio or even the beginning of doing some additional supplementary. standalone books that won't be, you know, mega books that are 40, 60 or 80,000 words. There's something that, you know, I think, excuse me, I feel like there are things that would be very good to do in my own voice, but it's actually more taxing on your vocal cords than you could possibly imagine. especially when you do coaching all the time, you do podcasting, you do weekly interviews, it's quite a lot. So whenever you get sick or you have a sore throat, it's much worse because if you keep working through that, you make it worse. So I'm figuring all those things out and that's where I feel like AI voice can be very helpful in cloning your voice. So that's something that I've been looking into. For the next book, the plan is... to inevitably, if not by launch, then sometime after do the audio version with my own voice because I know people would be looking forward to that. So we're going to try to do that. If nothing else, the thing I do know is that we will be doing, I will be publishing my own book summaries of my books and doing a condensed version. of my books as summaries, where I summarize the different chapters of my books and do a condensed version. And I know that I will be doing a voice recording for all of those as well. So a lot to look forward there. A lot to look forward to, rather, with regard to all that. So I think that's going to be pretty cool. But with all that said, I think we can go ahead and go to the first two channel reviews. And we can queue those up and get those here up on the screen for you. Let's see here. So we've got the Thrifting Diva as our first review. And then we have Tiff's Take also requested a channel review. So we'll be getting to hers. I may, since there's people interested in the book, I'll tell you what. Even if we don't get... to 10 channel reviews in the first hour for perks of more sneak peeks of my book. I will literally show you guys the current outline of chapters in the book and some of the things in the appendix of the book. If even a few of you pre-order the book tonight, and I will see that through my tracking link, we have the link for the book. that we posted earlier in the chat. Mods, if you could grab that link and promote the pre-orders of the book. If we can get at least a handful of people to pre-order the book tonight, and I'll see it probably through my tracking link here, then we'll go ahead and we'll show you guys some sneak peek chapters of the book. And you can see the chapter... outline structure and uh i might even read some of a chapter for you or at least some stuff from the appendix of the book because maybe that will be interesting or helpful so uh we'll definitely make sure uh we check that out thank you to the mods all right so yeah we'll do uh tiff's take here and then we can do um sorry not tips take uh we won't do we uh well first we have to do uh before we do tiff's take we have to do the thrifting diva and then we'll do tips take and then we'll do the next uh set of channel reviews as they come in so let's go ahead and do that here so we have the thrifting diva and uh what i'll say is i do like this channel banner um i just want you to verify that everything is still visible in this channel banner on mobile And on a smart TV, I think it should be fine for smart TV and desktop, but I feel like there are some things that might get cut off on the mobile side. So you might want to just double check that. So let's see. Almost 3000 subscribers, 178 videos, including some shorts here. All right. Interesting thumbnail style here. I'm going to see if it is working or if I have any comments on it. Solid, I think, with regard to... And let me just zoom out here a little bit. I think that this is a good set of playlists to have in the channel. You did some vertical streams, I think, potentially. Looks like these can be vertical streams or some of these might just be vertical videos. Thumbnails from back in the old days. I don't know that these older videos need to be featured on the homepage in a playlist because they don't match the vibe or aesthetic of the newer videos. Let's see. These affordable home finds are shorts, or maybe they were trying to be shorts, but they didn't come out as shorts. And then here are actual YouTube shorts. I think it's worth possibly reorganizing the different playlist on the homepage to prioritize the current vibe of the channel. But the fact that you do have any kind of content in playlist on the homepage is actually pretty solid. Let's see. Do you believe luxury should be accessible to everyone no matter your budget? Ayana, also known as thrifting diva. I'm here to inspire you to create stylish, sophisticated, without overspending. I might lead with the I'm here to inspire you to create a stylish, sophisticated life without overspending as the first line in your description because I think it's a complete sentence that explains why you're here. And then all of this afterward is fine if you lead with that. Profile. pick is fine. Again, the one thing I would say is I actually don't mind this banner at all. The one thing I would say is maybe it's possible that this light color text is hard to read on a completely white background. Maybe giving this a darker pastel overwash would like a deeper maroon. against this same color aesthetic might work better. So that's a potential change. Let's see about the latest videos here. For what they are, the thumbnail designs here are not terrible, but there isn't consistency in your approach to thumbnails. So there are some of these that work really well. Some of these are being carried more by the topic and the title, like these thrifting haul videos are carried by the title. There's a lot of gaps in consistency. It looks like you just came back to YouTube a couple of months ago and you're trying to be consistent now. I would say that if you could, first of all, with these last two months of thumbnails, kind of lock in a more consistent thumbnail style. I think that that would help you quite a bit so that your thumbnails are more recognizable for people who do like your content. And also just locking in some thumbnail templates, like locking in a thumbnail system with maybe five different layouts, but always using your same fonts that are working for you. Like whatever this font is in the 90% off video, this the way that you handle it is pretty good. um and this thrift store um win or fail um you know text is actually pretty decent the rest of these thumbnails not in love with all of them this how to find thrift stores wasn't bad as far as a photo driven thumbnail but using that with um the text from the text style of the 90 that font and that style um that could be good The home goods one, this one, and the don't buy this, this is actually very cluttered and the text hitting the timestamp in the bottom right-hand corner isn't necessarily doing you any favors. So I would say you want to improve that. This title of why you don't look expensive yet is not explaining the video properly. I would revisit that title. It could get more views. The video is clearly well made. The thumbnail isn't terrible, the why you look basic, but the title is not making the video clear enough to the viewer to understand why they need to click on it. So I would adjust that with the title. On this HomeGoods one, the title is strong, but the thumbnail is weaker. So if that could be improved, I think that would obviously help. If we were to look at if we were to look on YouTube right now at thrifting haul videos that do well. Again, you can use your own thumb font style, but this is a thumbnail conceptually. This thumbnail is actually very good. because it shows a lot of items. The same thing for this Thrift With Me thumbnail. Your videos are just as good as these, I feel, from the hover over preview. But these thumbnails sell the idea. Oh, this $7 each is a good concept. You could do a concept like that as far as the thumbnail itself. Because again, it just kind of makes it very obvious. This one for a haul video, holding a lot of items while seeing items on the rack is good composition. Doesn't even need text to sell the idea. So again, this is just showing you this stuff and this gets views. So looking at this, I would make my thumbnails more in line and more competitive with these thumbnails that are getting hundreds of thousands to millions of views. So I would just really consider that. There is a good concept in this one of the worth it and the 90% off. There was something there. I do feel like it's possible it could have been stronger if we saw more of the clothing. So it's possible that the font overwhelmed it. So that's a huge possibility in terms of what could have improved this. You were roughly on the right path with this thrift store winner fail. But you blurred out the close, I think, too much. I think the text might be overwhelming the concept. So in general, for a lot of you, in some of the niches, less is more. And you don't have to go for a design look that's overwhelmed with text. Some of you could win purely on good... photography and posing or just the proper use of Canva or Photoshop of cutting out things and layering them. Text isn't always necessary to sell a thumbnail, to be honest. So that's just something I would keep in mind. But overall, I don't think this is too bad for a small YouTuber that is making a comeback to YouTube after years away from the platform. You were gone for quite a long time here. and then to come back and to be getting views at all is actually pretty impressive. From an upload cadence standpoint, if you can upload more than once every two months, let's say if you could upload, even if you can't manage a week, because some people, you just don't have the bandwidth to upload every week. If you could upload at least two to three times a month, I think that that would be good. to at least begin traction and growth. If you could improve the speed of your turnaround on editing and also on thumbnails, then you might be able to find yourself with the capacity to get a video out at least once a week. Also, don't be tempted to over edit. Editing, especially in the beginning for the first 90 seconds of a video, is ideal. I'm not saying you don't have to do any editing at all after that, but I'm saying... um don't feel like you have to um edit to perfection throughout the entirety of the video if it's going to take you 20 hours to edit if you do that um try to get the editing to a reasonable place that fits in your life um but the best way to reduce the editing overload is literally to just learn to edit faster and that's just a practice practice practice get used to the software learn the proper uh techniques for the software instead of just fumbling through it per se. So just kind of keep some of those things in mind. I think that'd be helpful. There are things you're doing well, but there are things that can be done better. So that's my review of the thrifting diva. What did you guys think? Do you guys agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Again, I feel like there are some strong elements to this channel. I think the production is actually really good for a small YouTuber, if I'm being honest. The editing, even from the previews, seems like it's on par with what bigger creators in that niche are doing. So I don't really see an issue there. I think the biggest issues are titling. and thumbnails i think that there needs to be a more established thumbnail style that is in line with the rest of the niche i think that can be accomplished mostly through photography rather than purely relying on graphic design i think photography in some niches is stronger especially something with fashion or beauty i think that if you look to inspiration from even magazines for example that with fashion and beauty your youtube thumbnails would do better with posing and aesthetic and vibes than they would with graphic design specifically and text. But if you're going to use text, more minimal and elegant and easy to read and less words and less clutter is better. So just keeping it very simple, very slick, very minimal. I think that that is probably the right answer for that particular niche. If I was gonna make a playbook for beauty and fashion, minimalism would take up a lot of that playbook. An emphasis on minimalism, if you're dealing in beauty, fashion, makeup, clothing, that sort of thing, I think that aesthetics are important, but I think that you need to have softness and minimalism at the forefront of those aesthetics. So that's what I would probably look at. I think that with regard to titles, the other thing is there has to be something very clear to the viewer in terms of intent and identity and why they're watching. So they need to either be able to identify with the video very strongly of saying, oh, that's me. That's what I'm dealing with, or that's my budget. That's how much money. So for things, if you're going to say budget, I would give a specific price that people can identify with and say, yep, that's my budget or lower. So I think you need those kind of... things in place when it comes to titles it's not the only adjustment that can be made on titles the other thing could be obviously leveraging large name brands leveraging seasons for timeliness so those are just some of my thoughts but what do you think do you have any more suggestions for the thrifting diva do you agree with the things i came up with in my review do you disagree with them let me know in the chat if you're watching live let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay so Boom. There we go. Yep. Consistency also would help thrifting Atlanta. Definitely agree. Consistency is probably the best YouTube hack. We do have our list from our mods with my most helpful YouTube fonts. These six fonts basically make your thumbnails look good no matter what. so we use the bold versions of bevis new poppins oswald compacta open sans and futura and basically any youtube thumbnail can look good if you use these fonts if you just pick these fonts and use these fonts your youtube thumbnails look better bottom line swear to you this works so We make sure that you guys have those YouTube fonts kind of, you know, on deck. Because we, again, we find them to be helpful for most creators to just say, hey, just do this and it'll all be okay. You know, and a lot of people have told us that they found that extremely helpful. Let's see. Something else. And we'll just use the stoicism templates here to illustrate a point. Hang on. So we're going to zoom in on this because I want to make a point. For a lot of you, layout design is something a lot of you struggle with, but it can be made really simple in terms of layout design. Center-based text. Two words, one line, very simple. Two lines, one word, again, aligned left to right there. Center-based text again, left to right, two words per line, three lines max. And again, while this is for men's development channel, one of those faceless personal development channels, this is just a good kind of lesson. in layout design in terms of text and positioning and how simple it can be and yet how powerful it can be. Example here is using emphasis on a word with regard to color blocking. Look at text stacking here. Usually, unless it's something like this with an exception, we try to just stick to three lines of text so stuff can be read at a glance. You can also see the power of just using color blocking with two colors here and text blocking in terms of how we stack the text and how that works with both left and uh i think we have a version of this with right side text but i think we mostly focus on left side for a lot of this to avoid the time stamps in youtube but if you look at this this just gives you a sense of how um just using very straightforward layout design can easily make thumbnails work and conceptually these are just impactful yet they are very simple thumbnails these are very simple thumbnails and yet because of layout and font and I believe the font for most of this is this is Poppins that's Poppins yeah so Poppins again very good font to be using for a lot of this yep this is Poppins bold So this just gives you an example of just how simple it is to do strong layouts and how just good font choices, good font placement, good font design. Like a lot of you, the reason your thumbnails look bad is you struggle with what fonts to choose. So we gave you six fonts. And then also... You guys just don't know how to stack text. Text should not have massive gaping space between lines. If you look at it, we keep the line spacing when we have these words. We keep the line spacing tight instead of having a big massive amount of space between lines. And you notice that the thumbnails look better. because of the fact that there's not a bunch of space in between each individual line of text. We also don't add too much text. We usually keep it to two words on one line, and we try to not have more than two to three lines of text. So that also allows us to make the text bigger and easier to read at a glance, even at smaller sizes. So again, this makes stuff easier to read. This makes stuff easy to click on. it makes it very visible it makes the text scannable very quickly so you can read it in less than two seconds so you want to use like the two second rule you want to be able to read the text of a thumbnail in two seconds so that's um kind of what you want to go for and this kind of um shows you a direct example of it instead of me just telling you this is showing you how um straightforward good thumbnail that can be very simple you guys do not have to do anything wild to have a good thumbnail so again i think if you guys you guys can let me know in the chat or in the comments if you find those thumbnails to be you know strong and effective and if you like how that works for what that niche is and it just shows you guys what's possible and that you don't have to be crazy to make a good thumbnail and make something that works so there you go it can be very minimal it can be very simplistic and yet still be effective um so that's the deal there so for the next uh review we have uh tiff's take all right so we have tips take um after 25 years in corporate work i'm working on one year challenge transform a passion for youtube into a platform for teaching learning So what I would lead with is I would leave with tips, take, focuses on honest product reviews, practical tips, and documenting my journey to monetization. I would lead with that, and then all this other stuff can come after. Here's the other thing, though. I think that this might have, just from the way you're describing it, it might have too much variety content. And what I would probably try to do is focus on the honest product reviews. You know, because to be blunt, that's probably what will have the most value to regular viewers. Most people, I will tell you this as someone who has done YouTube help content. It is not, YouTube help content is not an easy niche, nor is it as glamorous as people think it is, nor does it generate the revenue that people think it does. I honestly think that product reviews are a stronger niche, and I don't think it's even close. and i say that because i got to 100 000 subscribers without youtube help content i did that with tech reviews and software tutorials and reviews and so the thing is i actually think if we look at what your most popular videos are we're going to see that your most popular videos aside from this one chip challenge which i could see why that'd be the case um let's see youtube it's easy to get monetized um let's see Purge it all, home clutter. You got keep posting, small YouTuber struggle. What's interesting here is I'm not seeing, and maybe I need to go to your oldest videos. What I'm not seeing is, I'm not seeing product reviews. So this is stuff from five years ago. So I mean, a lot of your content, especially a lot of your recent content, is just talking about YouTube beginner tips. I think you need to decide if that's what you want to talk about or if you want to... I think you need to make a choice and you need to either talk about that or about product reviews. And you literally just do the thing that your thing says is honest product reviews because I'm not seeing hardly any videos with the honest product reviews. I'm seeing some vlogs. and I'm seeing YouTube help content, and I'm seeing some reaction videos, and I'm not seeing product reviews. So I think you have to make a decision, and then you have to pick one type of content and only one type of content. I don't think you can do variety content. No one really gets away with variety content these days. So here's what I would tell you. There's a bigger audience. By the way, I do love your banner though. I love your banner and what it says, what tips take. I like your banner. Here's what I would think. I think that there's a much, much bigger market for product reviews. And I think product reviews solves a much bigger problem and has a much broader audience. I also think that product reviews will make more money and I'm gonna tell you why. Product reviews will make more money and have a bigger audience because if you do and are you're known for honest product reviews and if you don't just do reviews of the products but you do like day in the life vlog like content about a day in the life with this product or you do a okay here is this product two weeks later after using it for two weeks. and you do those videos. And so every time you get a product, you can do that. You can also do comparisons between products and showcases of products. And if you do them and you don't just do pure sit down videos, but you actually do vlogs using the products, a vlog-like style. When I say vlog, I don't mean call it a vlog. I mean make. lifestyle, combine lifestyle content with the aesthetics and vibe of vlogging in the way that it's shot and edited and produced, but deliver on the most authentic product reviews because they are day in the life videos using products. And I would argue that you should probably use some of the most popular budget products on Amazon. products that have gone viral on TikTok. And I think there's a bigger audience and many, many more views than that than there is YouTube help content. I also think that because if you do the Amazon product reviews, you can go into Amazon influencer program, you will make money if you're reviewing sponsored. All right, so if you find the sponsored products in Amazon, that means that the seller is putting ad money behind those products. If you make videos reviewing products that have ad money behind them, you are guaranteeing that there are people searching for and looking up for authentic, honest reviews on those products. Also, you can make videos like reviewing. You can do honest reviews of one-star products from Amazon and other places. Oh, you're saying you also are in... the Amazon Vine voice and so you get free products. Okay, perfect. Perfect. That's brilliant because now you have a free way to make that content. So you also should review like, all right, reviewing the best and worst three-star products on Amazon. People will click that out of curiosity. Reviewing one-star Amazon products, it's worse than you think. These are things that will let you make content that regular people, regular people will click on and will want to watch. There's a limit, I can tell you straight up, there's a limit to how many people care about YouTube and care about being a YouTuber and will watch YouTube help content. There just is an upper limit to that. There's no limit really to how big your audience can be when it comes to product reviews. Part of the reason we know this is because the biggest tech YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, has 20 million subscribers. So we know that for regular everyday products that the market is like 20 million people on YouTube minimum, right? Because if tech... Marques Brownlee with tech products, reviewing phones, phone accessories, everyday items and tech, some of the most expensive and least expensive stuff. We know that he has 20 million subscribers. The biggest person in YouTube help only has about 2 million subscribers, I think. So that could definitely help. Should you do a different... since this one is so confused and scattered. To be honest, there is no real downside to you just doing another YouTube channel that's focused on tech and product reviews, to be honest with you. And then what I would say is, since you labeled this one Tiff's take, I have another opinion for you. So I think you should do a product review channel. I think you should do a product review channel that focuses on honest product reviews. and I would turn this channel since there were some popular reaction videos here and it looks like you like to do vlogs, I would say do reaction content. Do reaction content on this channel and sometimes you can upload vlogs here. Not a lot, just sometimes for your real fans. but I would do reaction videos on this channel and turn this into a reaction channel because reaction channels can get more views and I would react to popular internet stuff wherever you can. There's someone who we've reviewed before that reacts to popular things on the internet. It's John from MTR, Mediocre Tutorials and Reviews. He reacts to pop the balloon episodes and similar content. So you can do reaction videos to popular viral videos and to things like pop, you could react to episodes of pop the balloon. You can react to episodes of the button. You can react to episodes of grilling. You can react to episodes of chicken shop date. Those would be good to turn this into a reaction channel. where you sometimes upload vlogs. So between, and that would still work for Tiffany's take if you're doing reactions and also if you're doing vlogs. And in the vlogs, the vlogs can be interesting in such a way that what you do is you do something interesting and you maybe kind of talk about or review all the things that your trip or your adventure or the thing involved. And then those things are not quite a review, but they're a vlog that speaks to an experience. So that's what I would redo with this channel. And then I would do your other channel as a channel with. product reviews, mostly Amazon product reviews, possibly reviews of products sold in TikTok shop so that you can do honest reviews of the most viral products on the internet and the most requested products on the internet, that kind of thing. Kind of a as seen on TV vibe, if you get my meaning. As seen on the internet. And again, I think both of those things have more money potential and more view potential because then the audience, the niche, and the customer is the broad market of regular people. Regular people. The biggest market is regular people versus purely internet people, internet type people, terminally online people. What you really want is you want normal people that happen to be on the internet. if you want to make content that regular people can scroll on their phone or on their TV set and click on, that's the direction I would go in. I think that that'll work much better. So that is my take on Tiff's take. So what did you guys think? Do you guys agree with my idea of one, refocusing this channel to be a reaction channel? to lean into things in popular internet culture that we know are safe to react to online, like pop the balloon, chicken shop date, and the button. So I think that that will work. I think reacting to that, reacting maybe to stuff on Jubilee. So I think just becoming one of the online reactors is a good idea for this channel with occasionally throwing in a vlog here or there just to do it. And then I think a focused, ruthlessly focused second channel. on doing honest product reviews of some of the most popular or sponsored products on Amazon, stuff that is popular on TikTok or is being heavily promoted in TikTok shop and giving an honest review of those things, but also showing day in the life content of using those things and whether they are worth it or not, or whether they are as advertised. I think is good because then people get more than a review, they get an experience. I also think that those can be sponsored without it being a conflict. So I just think there's more opportunity to make money on that because you get sponsorships, you get people to send you free stuff and free experiences. You can do brand deals, those type of things. Amazon Influencer Program, obviously. If some of the content is short form, you also get to do TikTok for short form and monetize there as well. So I just feel like there's more opportunity in being a product reviewer than there is on the YouTube help side, especially for a smaller channel trying to give YouTube advice. I feel like people will listen to a normal person talk about everyday household items and products much more easily with much less skepticism. I also think it's easier to get people to buy things off Amazon speaking from experience than to get people to buy a course. I would feel that from a monetization standpoint, it's more advantageous. I feel like the ad revenue could be just as good or better. And I do feel that it will get more views from that normal audience of regular people. But what do you guys think? Do you guys agree? Do you disagree? Let me know in the chat if you're watching live. Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. So boom, that's my take on tip steak. Yeah. One of the things that I think also helps people when you want to do content and there's things you want to do for self-expression, I think knowing which platforms work for variety and self-expression, I'll give you a primary example. I think streaming on Twitch and TikTok lets people vent, express themselves, build community. much better than doing variety content on YouTube. And I think that vlogging to vlog doesn't work on YouTube anymore. I think lifestyle content done in vlog-like fashion works on YouTube more. I think that a lot of people also, in general, that almost any content format can be made more relatable by making it feel like a vlog. even if it's not packaged as a vlog. So I would just not package things as vlogs. I would package things as whatever genre of content or even do lifestyle content. Then I would be cinematically making them shot like a vlog, shot as IRL content, shot as reality TV content. So vlogs are just reality TV done on your own. Okay. Without a big team or one person helps you and can shoot for you. And that can be a vlog. Vlogs are just the regular people doing reality TV, if we're being honest. So that's what it is. So I would rather do reality TV style content in any niche that you want to do it in. So I think that any niche can do vlog-like content. Fashion and beauty channels can be shot in a vlog-like manner. while still being a full thing. A beauty tutorial can still be shot with vlog-like aesthetics and moments in them and then still have the sit-down shot on front of the camera, but it could also have over-the-shoulder shots against the mirror, which would actually make it much more cinematic and more interesting. So I do feel like you can do... vlog-like aesthetics in almost any genre and niche. Peter McKinnon did camera tutorials in a cinematic vlog-like fashion, and that's what stood out and made him one of YouTube's favorite storytellers and made him blow up the camera and tutorials niche and filmmaker niche, which had never been done before. No one had ever cracked a million subscribers doing it. He's at almost 6 million subscribers now, and it was because he brought the aesthetics and personality of vlogs to teaching and education content. Chris Doe in the future, they don't do vlogs, but they do IRL content in the sense that they did in-person workshops with a live studio audience. and use those to do education videos that would normally just be sit down talking head videos he decided that instead of doing sit down talking head videos for the most part they would do a live workshop bring in students and do a whiteboard session with a live audience and take questions from the audience and do it that way and make you feel like you got to sneak into a paid event that was very smart so bringing more dynamic elements into genres that make them feel more either relatable or more exclusive and high-end is actually powerful and compelling. You can also mix genres as well by mixing genres, not by doing variety content, but combining two things in an individual video that you're making. You can actually... um elevate that content make it much more unique make it more high effort make it feel more impactful and also you create an experience that's harder to duplicate and more unique which then increases returning viewers so those things um can help uh you know there there are all kinds of ways to approach this even what i did is i moved what i call um cinematic streaming with cinematic streaming the only element that i do not have going anything is if I do with just the tiniest bit of extra work as annoying as it would be I could the one thing that I don't have going that would make the stream more cinematic given that I have literally multiple camera angles for example is if I added motion and I have a slider right here I have another one on tripod over here if I literally added a camera and decided to route a camera with motion, I would have motion during these live streams now. So if I had a motion camera during the live streams, that would be the one element. Well, the other thing I could do is technically I could use the motion tracking gimbal here. And if I had that mounted while streaming, it would like follow my face around and then we'd have the motion tracking camera that way. So if I did either of those things while streaming, which would be taking this to an extreme that I may not want to. We'll see how I feel in the future. We'll see what that looks like. But if I took this to that extreme in any situation. then I would have full-on cinematic live streams. And that would be a unique experience because almost no one has cinematic live streams. It's already rare enough just to have someone with multiple good camera angles with actually good cameras versus cheapo cameras. Like, these are all, like, reasonably good cameras. So... there is that cinematic. The fact that my live streams have the depth of field, the blurry background, the aesthetics, the lighting, the so on and so forth, it's a cinematic streaming experience. So I do high-end streaming. Now, not everything has to be high-end to be cinematic, though. There are elements that do it between the production value, depth of field with the blurry background stuff, but also motion can do some of these things as far as having camera movement. And that's where the blogging comes in. People like that's not a static locked off shot on a tripod. So if you literally have more of those elements also doing that, you don't have to do nearly as much editing if there's more action in a video. If there's more action in a video, then it requires less editing beyond just cuts of scenes and transitions. So that is, yeah, that's something to think about. So I think we have a question here. So we have a question from I'm a tall boy. Question. I have a live show but not seeing traction. Do you think it's worth it to keep doing that or pivot in direction? My niche is news style tech content. So the thing is, it depends. on what your packaging is really my friend john prosser does a new show called front page tech they don't do it live they do a recorded show and then they post it uh whenever they're getting those out uh with front page tech but he's been doing a youtube tech show for i think eight years now and it's been successful so i know that a tech news show can be successful but it could be your approach and it really mostly could be your packaging, to be honest with you. So if you're not getting traction, it's probably the packaging. And you also might consider multi-streaming to try to grow an audience beyond YouTube if your goal is to do a tech show because you might get initially an audience somewhere else. And then if they know you're also on YouTube, they'll decide which app has the better viewing experience. So do consider that. And again, multi-streaming, I think, is you now see I think because they stopped getting money for exclusivity deals, big streamers are now promoting multi-streaming before it was all, oh no, go all in on one platform, go all in on one platform. Now even big streamers are saying, yeah, multi-stream, get the bag, get money from all these different platforms. See, I think it's because they stopped getting exclusivity contracts. Funny how that works. But yeah, so I'm a tall boy. Short answer is packaging, packaging, packaging, packaging. Also, it could be the news you're covering. And again, it's the framing, it's the angle. Interject. I'll be honest with you guys. I'm going to tell you guys, I'm going to tell you guys a secret hack in general to getting more views, especially if you do news content. There is a secret to getting more views. Well, Roberta, if that's the secret, why aren't you getting massive viral views? It's like, I'm going to tell you and then you're going to understand because I can tell you the secret to getting more views. The problem is that it will require you to invoke the dark side of YouTube analytics. It will force you to use the dark arts of YouTube to exploit the audience's attention and desire for conflict. Yeah, so that's the voice of the emperor from Star Wars there. But no, you will literally have to use the dark arts. So the dark arts, when it comes to YouTube, is... You can get 10 times the views if you're willing to make a title as polarizing as possible. If you make a title as polarizing as possible and it appeals to the most base negative emotions because we have an implicit negativity bias psychologically as human beings, you will get 10 times as many views as if you make a neutral title or a positive title. This has been tested by even some of the biggest YouTubers over and over and over again. And we all know it. We all just are reluctant about it because we don't necessarily think it's ethical. So the thing is, I know what will get more views. The problem is negotiating my own ethical boundaries to do it. And I've just never... desired it enough. And you know this because there are a lot of big YouTubers that they literally get their name out there every month with a new controversy so that everyone's looking them up and paying attention to them. You know this. There are people who insert themselves into drama all the time. And I'm telling you. I don't think it's always because they can't help themselves. I literally think it's a business tactic for a lot of them to always stay relevant and to always have a marketable funnel for attention that just working hard or merit will not provide. So I think sometimes exploiting dark psychology, exploiting dark psychology, it works so effectively. And there are times when it's justified, but... That's an ethical boundary that people have to negotiate. I am not telling you you should do that. I'm making you aware that it is done over and over and over, and we all click on it eventually. We cannot help ourselves, and it is what it is. But it works. It works. I know channels right now making life-changing money. Because they decided to give up whatever content they were doing and dive into politics and politics reaction videos. And they're making life-changing money. They're making their year's salary every single month. But it was an ethical boundary they were willing to negotiate with themselves. And the money won. And the money won. And I have no hate for it. I just do not. personally find it tasteful to do in many situations there are situations where it can be justified and there are a lot of them where it's nothing but a cash grab and so i i worry about that i would like to not have that be the norm on youtube i would like sensationalism to not always dominate the platform And I can't blame the algorithm. It's the audience responding to it. But that's just human beings. It's why tabloids sell. National Enquirer has been in the business since I've been alive and they haven't gone under yet. Tabloids have been real my entire life and they haven't gone out of business yet. There have been paparazzi my entire life. They still have a job. So I do feel like it is something. that every creator has to negotiate with themselves. But I will tell you, if there's a legitimate way to make your title more enticing, more conflict-oriented, then it will get you more views. Speaking of more views, we have a friend, the Salon Guy here. Hey, Roberto, I'm suffering from imposter syndrome. Having over 1 million subscribers doesn't mean much to me. My views, new subs. earnings are at all-time lows is there any way to come back and recover so salon guy feel free with this because what happened was you blew up um years ago i remember this um when you did a collaboration with jared poland uh you were you're popping off on youtube you had something unique and then a lot of people caught on and started making very similar content to you and stealing your formula and what works and A lot of them have been more younger, more relevant, they're more into trends. And so it's been hard for you to navigate that because just having an OG channel, this happens to OG channels all the time. Even Jared Polin, great YouTuber, you've met him, like you know, I don't have to tell you, like FroKnowsPhoto, great YouTuber. One of the people that I looked up to when I was starting in this industry. And the thing is, just with legacy channels... It's hard on legacy channels. And the longer you have subscribers, you churn people because people will be interested in something. And you know this. Your channel has been around for over a decade, Salon Guy. In a decade, a lot of the people who subscribe to you, it's not about you. They have no interest in hair. They gave up on being a hairstylist. They don't care about the thing anymore. Most people do not hang on to their interest. for years and years and years. Attention spans are lower and lower and lower. So there are those things. And then legacy channels on YouTube, again, have always had this problem. Some of the biggest content creators with millions by millions of subscribers, they don't get views like they used to. And you have these moments and these spurts. Here's what I would say. Salon guy, are you uploading your content to Facebook right now? Because your content may not be popping right now on YouTube, but I wonder if your content and even all of your back catalog of content might not pop or potentially even go viral on Facebook with a completely new audience. And Facebook monetization pays just as well as YouTube monetization, sometimes better. And it has an older, more affluent demographic. So I wonder if your channel and its content wouldn't potentially thrive on Facebook if it doesn't feel like YouTube is giving you what you got before out of it and what you wanted out of it. Because in general, I do feel like, let's see, your highest views are on Instagram Reels and you hit the creator bonus on Facebook at 3,500 a month. Okay, so Reels on Instagram is good. At some point, I would like to know what you're doing on Facebook, Salon Guy. There's someone that I think you should talk to. I think you should talk to Big Mike. He's not in the chat tonight, but Big Mike from Route 66 Relics is killing it on Facebook like you would not believe. He has multiple Facebook groups that are killing it, multiple Facebook... Facebook groups there killing it, multiple Facebook pages there killing it. He's like mastered Facebook as a content creator and monetizing on Facebook. So Big Mike at Route 66 Relics, you should reach out to Big Mike, salon guy, and he could help you basically probably get Facebook to do what YouTube used to do for you. As for YouTube... I just think for a legacy channel like yours that was early to helping build a niche, that it gets really rough and that it's very difficult to maintain momentum when everyone can steal your content format that got you there. Because I think that that's largely what happened to you. So I can't say for sure. like what would turn this around for you. The truth is, if you had two or three videos go viral again, because that's kind of what popped you up and blew you up. In fact, I believe back in the day, I believe back in the day, so your most popular videos from 10 years ago and even a video from four years ago, the big thing is you had videos go viral and I think that your road to recovery is that you're going to need another hmm five or ten viral videos in a short period of time Now, I can't say what would result in those viral videos, but it's possible that the TikTok thing, since that worked even four years ago, when you might have felt like a slump, you might have felt like you were still in a slump four years ago. You had a couple of videos, I think, from four years ago that did it, and it looks like they were TikTok hairstyles. I think the TikTok hairstyle thing, if you can pop off maybe five or six viral videos, from that, then maybe, maybe that turns things back around for the channel. But I also don't know that if you get to a million subscribers and then it feels like the channel is falling off, that it's, you know, oh, well, you said you went viral on TikTok. Yeah. So like Salon Guy, I think that if YouTube has stagnated, Here's my honest truth. Here's what I would do. In your situation, since you have a niche that appeals more to a regular people audience, let's say, than a purely internet people audience, what I would say is I would be pursuing Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And whatever you get out of YouTube is whatever you get out of YouTube. And I wouldn't have imposter syndrome about it because here's the thing. You have real world success salon guy. You are a successful... person who ran a brick and mortar business. The internet should always just be an icing on the cake extra for you. You have a million subscribers. Almost nobody's ever done a million subscribers in the history of YouTube. You did it. You're one of the only and first people in your niche around this to ever get a million subscribers. You're a legacy channel. You should be proud. So the thing is, it's okay to not be on top. every single year for the rest of your life in one thing that you did really well at a couple of years ago. You know? So it's okay. Like, take me. I was a track and cross country champion. I almost broke a five minute mile in high school. I regret that I never broke five minutes. I would do a 1818 5K. That's 3.2 miles at about a six minute pace. for three miles straight i did a um 10 16 two mile time at peak okay i'm 40 turning 41 this year i would be lucky to run an eight minute mile without killing myself i can't maintain the status that i held 20 years ago in terms of my athletic prowess and running ability. I have to still, in a place of honor, remember that I used to be a champion and be proud and leave that in the time that it lived in and then be good at other things. So now I'm not this amazing runner, but I am someone who's in amazing shape for the age that I am. and maintain a really healthy lifestyle. And I'm stronger and have bigger shoulders and arms than I've ever had in my life. And so I've moved from speed to power. So what I would say is that as a legacy YouTuber from 10 years ago that was popping off going viral, built the niche. You built that. You built that niche. You grew that niche. And then other people did copy you and move in. And I say that it's okay. that that thing lived in its time and you shouldn't feel imposter syndrome because a lot of these people that are successful on YouTube would never be able to build the business that you built and they probably wouldn't be successful doing this content if you hadn't proved it was possible. They wouldn't even try to do it. You were doing it before it was cool. So since you were doing it before it was cool, you have no reason to feel like an imposter when you're the original. You're the original item. You're the real McCoy as they used to say. So if you're the original OG Real McCoy for your niche and it feels like you've been left behind, the thing is you built that. And it's okay that other people now are able to grow in the niche that you built, popularized, and made successful and made possible. And so that's okay. Now, in terms of still reaping value, you're crushing it on TikTok. You're crushing it on Instagram and you're making money in those places, which is something you weren't doing 10 years ago. You weren't making money in those things 10 years ago. Those opportunities didn't exist for you 10 years ago. So what I would do is I would be killing it on TikTok and say, my new journey is I'm going to get X amount or get this goal over on TikTok. My new journey. is I'm going to get this over on Instagram. And my new journey is that I'm going to grow this massive Facebook page and this massive Facebook group community and that I'm going to also grow my business outside of YouTube and what the YouTube Partner Program provides if it's not providing for me anymore. The other thing I would look at doing, if you haven't, is I would actually look at building out some kind of Shopify store that does something probably for physical and digital products and not really just merchandise. And I'd also find something that as a digital download or something that you could give away for free on Shopify. I'm going to tell you why. Shopify can directly integrate into YouTube shopping right under your YouTube channel. Shopify can integrate into TikTok. Shopify can integrate into Instagram shopping. and an instagram store and so now you'll have ability to take the audiences on all these platforms and then have them directly go to your online store and now your online store with shopify you can sell physical products with shopify and you can sell print on demand products and digital downloads you can sell everything here's the other thing though i do know that a lot of us like uh trophies and status and awards and other things And the thing that I would also do is I would be using that for, there's three things. The sales, yes, to make the money. Two, you get an email list that you control with Shopify. When people buy from you, you capture their emails. So you can integrate this into your master email list as well. Very important for somebody to own their own audience. So now you own these transactions, you own the access to the audience with the Shopify thing. Here's the other angle for you. The other angle for you is because we like physical awards and trophies. Something you guys didn't know is that when you have 10,000 orders on Shopify, They give you a physical trophy and award just like YouTube does for subscribers. Shopify gives that to you for orders, including $0 free offers like digital downloads. So they give you a physical award. I'm one third of the way there. I'm about to do something pretty big because I only have one freebie that's on Shopify. I'm about to unleash 10 freebies on Shopify so that I can just grow those numbers faster because they give you a trophy at 10,000 orders. regardless of how much money it brings in, just 10,000 orders, even on $0 products, get 10,000 orders. They give you a trophy. They give you another trophy at 100,000 orders, and they give you a trophy at a million orders with Shopify. So that's the thing. Imagine getting trophies not for people who subscribe to your content, but from people who order stuff from you. So that's kind of a big deal. So in terms of another self-esteem booster, knowing that you can get turn, audience members into people who will download or buy something you get rewarded for that but also the thing i like about this is you literally are getting a trophy for building an email list so i feel like that's something that you should pursue for all of those reasons boom what was my 60 yard time i don't remember You say you also have your own hair care line. So all that has been set up. Excellent. Excellent. So my new goal, if I was you and I have a hair care line and I have my store on Shopify, my new goal, 10,000 orders and getting a trophy for selling. And also I don't think 10,000 orders hurts your revenue either. So yeah, so I would be doing stuff like that. So those would be my thoughts. But yeah, we got some more channel reviews here. I'm just gonna check to see if we just have any. Also, shout out to Smart Successful Children TM for becoming a channel member. Appreciate you. And then, of course, we have more reviews to go. So I just want you guys to know we will be doing these and we'll be getting to them in order here. So I appreciate all of you. Oh, yeah. So you hit over 16K orders. Yeah, then reach out to Shopify about that because Shopify has awards. Like the Shopify milestone awards are real. So just so you guys see this. So they have them here. And so they explain it here. There's a 10K. So you turned opportunity to orders, 10,000 lifetime orders, 100 lifetime orders. 1 million lifetime orders. So they give you a physical award for that and you just have to check eligibility and claim your award. There are some terms and conditions and then await delivery and these are what they look like. So yeah. So again, YouTube are not the only people who give out physical awards. I'm actually trying to get every platform. I'm lobbying every platform to give physical awards. I'm even talking to the folks over at Kit.com who formerly ConvertKit to do awards. I've been talking to some of the people over at X. about trying to do physical awards, at least on X when I've been tweeting at them. I don't have a direct contact anymore because the direct contacts I had were all fired. But online, I lobby them online and say physical awards, physical awards, design it this way, design it this way. So that Rumble gives physical awards, but they're terrible design. They're poorly designed. They're really stupidly designed. But I'm trying to get every single platform to give out physical awards. Kajabi gives out an award for $1 million in sales. I still have about a quarter million dollars to go to get my million dollar award for million dollar lifetime sales. That's going to be great when I finally hit that. I'd probably hit that sooner if I just started selling courses sooner. Right now, the course we have is a free course. It's our free creator foundations course. So that obviously doesn't help the um the uh what do you call it that obviously doesn't help the sales numbers but i do it anyway um who else gives out awards um i want to convince kajabi to give out a 100 000 award that's a trophy because they give out badges right now. They give out these really cool pins and badges, but I want them to give out a physical trophy for the 100,000 milestone and they can give out the pins for the smaller stuff. So I think it's cool they do anything at all. So there's that. But yeah, I wanted to get every single platform. Twitch started giving out physical awards. I might try and qualify for that with the multi-streaming because I think it's based on stream hours. that they give out awards now is one of the awards they give out. They give out trophies based on stream hours. So my thing is I want to get every platform to give out physical awards because it'll be what incentivizes creators. I think that YouTube is as successful as it is because of the access to monetization and the physical awards. I genuinely believe that. And again, even with me. I'm hustling harder at my Shopify stuff that I rarely paid attention to. Literally only because I found out they give out physical awards. I'm not joking. So I do believe that that's a thing. I'm also looking at like, can we get like awards for podcasters for podcasts and stuff like that? So I'm trying y'all. I'm trying. to use whatever cache of influence I have in the creator economy to get us things that would matter to us that would be meaningful. Speaking of meaningful, let's go ahead and get Antonia's, I think I'm pronouncing that, Antonia's Blissful Corner. Antonia's Blissful Corner. So, all right, let's go ahead and bring that up. Okay, so for this one, I do feel like the channel banner could be stronger, but it's not terrible, but I don't know that it'll play out well on mobile. Probably fine on television, but not on mobile. I'm okay with this profile picture. Welcome to Antonio's Blissful Corner. All right, so you don't need the welcome to line. I think you should lead with here. You'll find heart flex reflections, personal growth strategies. um and a deep dive into introverted life i would lead with this as your description instead of the welcome because it's just kind of um unnecessary um let's see you've filled out the home page with a decent amount of playlist you probably get away with adding one or two more playlists uh here i would add descriptions to these playlists so that people have an understanding of what they are getting into since it may not be readily apparent. Let's see. The thumbnail designs are clean, but there's too much text. It doesn't pass the two-second rule of reading the text and scanning it. Let's see. If you're doing a podcast, I would brand the podcast at the end of the titles. Also make sure that you're distributing that podcast in audio format in other places, for sure. Also, I would make the podcast, if you're going to do these podcasts, I would probably try making the thumbnails more like the thumbnails of the professional podcasters and not also make it as repetitive. In general, I think that the titles, If you're gonna focus on introversion, here's my thoughts. There's a YouTube channel called How to ADHD. And so what I would do is I would do everything that How to ADHD is doing, but then for introverts. So I would take the most popular videos and titles from How to ADHD and then address those. with introverts, for example, how to know if you're an introvert, and then I'd do probably another video, how to know if you're an introvert or just shy. How to know if you're an introvert or just anxious. So I would do those three videos based on this one video idea. I would do tell me you're an introvert without telling me you're an introvert. the signs everyone missed growing up. So I would literally just take this title and swap out ADHD for introvert or introversion. Introversion in girls and women, how to recognize the symptoms. Being an introvert and staying motivated. Introversion and relationships, let's be real. How to deal with anxiety as an introvert. Actually, I need to rewatch this video on how to deal with rejection sensitivity. I definitely need that for my ADHD. Let's see. So my take is I would use the title framing from how to ADHD, and I would apply that to being an introvert. I also think that your thumbnails... are already fairly close to what works for how to adhd the difference is how to adhd's thumbnails pass most of my rules for text being in thumbnails it's able to stand out be visible but it's also readable and scannable in two seconds or less so that's um that's what i would um look at and that's what i would um take away and i would apply it here i don't i wouldn't change your color scheme though i think your color scheme is actually really good in the branding if i'm being honest again um in many cases your text is big enough i think it's just too much text and it doesn't pass the two second readability rule um the two second reader uh the two second readability rule by the way is a roberto blake original i think this is one of the strongest thumbnails you've done but i think that it just had um some flaws. So I would have probably just made the thumbnail why introverts quit corporate because that's then three lines and I can read it in two seconds. So just remember everybody, the rule for text and thumbnails is can I read this in two seconds? And two seconds is longer than you think. Two seconds is one Mississippi, two Mississippi. So thinking, oh my God, Roberto, I have to read something in two seconds. That's not long at all. It's longer than you think. Two seconds is literally one Mississippi, two Mississippi. So yeah. So I think if you can do those things, then, and use those title strategies, that your videos will do better. Because I think the big barrier is, I think that... You can't read the thumbnails in two seconds. And then the titles, in my opinion, are you thinking out loud, which I get, to be honest. But it's not a title that would be catchy enough to... a, I help a viewer identify their problem. See, you're, I would say, here's my thing. I think I know what you're doing. Your problem here with your titles, if I'm being honest, is your titles require someone to actually be self-aware. And the majority of people scrolling content on the internet are not self-aware. So they can't identify with your titles. Because your titles would require somebody to actually be self-aware. Because you're self-aware. You know what's up with you. You are trying to make what would have helped you before because you understand it now and you're reflecting. Which is fine in the delivery of content, not in the packaging of content. Because people don't know how to search for, identify with, or relate. to your titles because they are not where you are now to understand yourself better so you have to consider that that's not their mindset so that's not that they relate to so what i would say is i would do things more like title the way that how to hhd titles videos and so The other thing I would say is keep the color scheme and branding going. Bring that into your banner, by the way. Bring that into your banner. And I might rebrand Antonia's Blissful Corner to Antonia's Introvert Corner or Introverted Corner or to Antonia's Quiet Corner. And that would also make this a lot easier to understand. So that's how I would approach things. So those would be my thoughts on Antonia's Blissful Corner and what can be improved there. So what did you all think? Did you guys agree with my review? I like her color scheme, to be honest with you, and the branding. I don't even hate the font choice, if I'm being honest. i do think the biggest problem is it's too much text the two second readability rule is roberto blake original but it is a good rule for a reason um because if you can read it in two seconds and two seconds is one mississippi two mississippi that's scanning and that's why we try to also keep things to two or three lines of text and no more than two words usually one to two words per line per line and so we want to scan and read that and that's the key when it's too many words and too many syllables we can't understand it quickly enough to make a decision and then we get fatigued and move on to the other videos the other thing is your titles have to communicate clearly and concisely and you can't make titles that are for i hate to say it this way you can't make titles for smart people you have to make titles for everybody That's how you get views. That's even my problem to some degree. To some degree, my titles may not be accessible enough. You have to make titles that have a readability level of roughly a fifth grade reading level, max, probably eighth grade reading level. The average American has a third to fifth grade reading level. If it's above an eighth grade reading level to get through your title, then it's very hard for anyone to identify with it and be able to click on it, to be honest. So that's a key here. With these out of the five C's of clickbait, the big one here is probably curiosity and confusion. Address things from a place of people who are confused and how would that confused person frame things or what questions would they be asking themselves? And that's why I brought up things like, how do I even know I'm an introvert? Like how do I, like multiple videos on identifying the signs of introversion, identifying the confusion between introversion, being an anxious person, Am I an introvert or am I just neurotic? Am I an introvert or am I just anxious? Am I an introvert or am I just shy? Am I an introvert or am I just scared of people? Because not everyone knows what neurotic means, so maybe you simplify it down to that. Am I an introvert or is something else happening? Those are videos that would definitely get more people to click on. Introverts versus extroverts, 10 things we do differently. That would appeal much more to someone who lacks self-awareness and is confused, internally conflicted, or is curious and wants to understand themselves better. You have to make videos for the perspective of people who don't understand themselves versus videos that reflect on your self-awareness that you've earned. So hopefully that makes some more sense. And hopefully that helps a lot of you with understanding the concept of titles and how you have to package and frame things to be appealing to a broader audience. But what do you guys think? Do you agree with me and disagree with me on this? Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Let me know in the chat if you're watching live. Boom. There we go. Fabi and the family says, I'm learning a lot tonight. Appreciate that. You say it makes a lot of sense. Yep. Glad to hear it. T's Hot Mess History. Good to see you. I've actually coached with T. She's a successful silver button creator. And she says, great feedback. Roberto's rule is an alignment with the Netflix study that says that they have 1.8 seconds to capture attention after the viewer chooses the thumbnail in less than a second. Yep. That's what it is. It, we literally have the attention spans of a goldfish. Actually, a goldfish might be better. We might be the new goldfish. It's sad to say that, but that's how it is. But I would say that that's also not our fault. I think that there is a such thing as decision fatigue and overwhelm. And I think that we are the victims and of abundance of options. I think we've become the victims of abundance. It's so ironic in a world where people have scarcity mindsets that what we really are is victims of abundance. And, um, We just have way too many choices to make good ones. Like that's the key to this. And so I think that that just creates a lot of decision fatigue. I think that the right amount of options for most people are three to five options at a time. Guess what? We're getting bombarded with so many options for choosing content, choosing any number of things that it just makes people exhausted and it makes it very difficult and they are more sensitive to feeling like their time is being wasted. So... um we need to have frameworks and rules that help us get around this so that we can help viewers get uh value and avoid decision fatigue that's also a good thing for a lot of you guys with branding once you do get people to like your content if they can immediately recognize that content because of branding and familiarity bias you are more likely to get them to filter out other content they're unfamiliar with and choose you because that's comfortable and because they know what to expect. That's also why having good delivery, good cadence, personality, storytelling, being engaging with your audience, connecting with them emotionally, you want to do all of those things. You want to do them consistently and as frequently as possible and as fast as possible because once you can set expectations and tone and get all those things, then once people feel safe with you, as far as, oh, that's going to be good content, there's not going to be bad audio, there's not going to be all this nonsense, blah, blah, blah, they're more likely to just pick your video because they're comfortable with you than to pick something else that they feel might waste their time. So that's why it's good to establish these things and to maintain the energy and be consistent. This is also the downside variety content is then people don't know what to expect. so they can't develop that comfort as quickly. So you want to use all these psychological hacks at your disposal. Thankfully, this is the light side of psychology instead of the dark side of psychology. The dark psychology is more of the light side on how we serve viewers from a place of thoughtfulness. and how it serves us at the same time. I'm not as altruistic as much as I believe in enlightened self-interest equivalent exchange. I don't think transactional relationships have to be bad. If the transactions always yield a positive outcome for both parties, then there's nothing wrong with transactional relationships. One of the best relationships you can have, for example, that's transactional is your barber or whoever's doing your hair. If you like. what they're doing, you're happy to give up that money because the result was you had a good experience. They took care of you. They listened to you. They do the things that you wanted them to do. They make you feel better. And then at the end of it, you look good and you feel confident. It's a transaction you're always happy about. And they're always happy because you pay them well, you tip them, you're a reliable income source. You come in every month, blah, blah, blah. So the thing is that's a purely transactional relationship, right? But it's a good purely transactional relationship where everyone's happy. because they got the exchange that they wanted. They got the thing that they wanted. So we don't have to frame all these things as negative. They can be positive. And we need to have a good transactional relationship with our viewers where we're getting the support we're looking for and they're getting the enjoyment they desire or the value that they desire. So that's an exchange between people. with nobody feeling like they're on the worst end of that exchange. So I believe in equivalent exchange. And so that means creating value for your viewers in order to get the things that you would like to have support, attention, monetization, whatever it is. So value for value, value for value. So we should always look at what is in the interest of our viewers and then say, if I can deliver on that, I will also be able to extract the things that I want and no one will feel bad about it. So that's kind of just what my thought process is when it comes to thinking about how you align with your audience. So you want to think these things out. You want to be thoughtful. It's another way of saying be strategic, but if strategic sounds too cold, be mindful. The Untouchable Wolf says, is it best to ask for subscribers at the beginning of the video or the end of your YouTube videos? The best time to ask for subscribers is, I believe, roughly two minutes to three minutes into the video after you've delivered on some upfront value and at least some of the promises you made in the title and thumbnail because that's what I mean about equivalent exchange. So you click on a video. You haven't even gotten to the video and given me what the title promised. Why would I subscribe to you? So you don't do it at the very beginning of the video. The first eight seconds of the video, you might lose them. So don't. Have a strong hook. Reinforce and validate the video and enter and open a new curiosity loop in less than 15 to 30 seconds. 90 minutes to 100, sorry, 90 seconds to 120 seconds into the video, meaning roughly 90 minutes to two minutes in, we should have delivered some value that satisfies the conditions that made them click on the video in the first place. Only after we've done that, two to three minutes in and while we still have not closed that last curiosity loop that we opened is it appropriate in my opinion to ask for the subscribe two to three minutes in we've created some value and the way you ask for the subscribe is you don't ask for the subscribe the comment and the like you don't do all that it overwhelms too many decisions means i can't make any you say the following or something very close you say this Hey you guys, if you're enjoying this video and you've gotten some kind of value out of it, you like me and what I'm doing, then make sure you hit the subscribe button and try not to miss any, any, ah. Hey you guys, if you're enjoying this video, you're getting some value out of it, you like what I'm doing here, make sure you hit the subscribe button, you don't wanna miss an update from me. Boom, that's it. Three seconds, no more, no less, and it's a qualifier. If you're enjoying the video, I am enjoying the video. You like what I'm doing here. I do like what he's doing here. Oh, yeah, I can do that. More updates. Yeah, more videos like this. So again, here's another version of that delivery. I'll give you another version of that delivery. Hey, everybody. If you're enjoying this video and you want to see more from me, there's plenty more for you to enjoy. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and check out the other videos on the channel just like this one. That's another form of the delivery. Let's try it again. Let's actually, actually, I know how we're going to do this. Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this video, make sure you hit the subscribe button. We've got dozens of videos here on the channel that will give you a ton of value and we have a lot of fun here. So if you hit the subscribe, you don't want to miss any other updates. It's so simple and so easy to just do that. And then there's a intrinsic value to subscribing of I do like this. if if you don't then you're not going to subscribe but if you do why not they already know it cost them zero dollars they already know that this is a way to support you if they enjoyed the video then they'll just do it now that doesn't mean they're going to see every video from you in the future because that's not how subscribers work on youtube that's not how the algorithm works on youtube It is going to boost your credibility and social proof and is a public vouch for you. It's no different than when restaurants used to have that ticker that said 2,000 customers served today. So that's how you would do that. So it's a matter of them, one, being already emotionally invested in the video, having stuck around for two minutes. If you can get them to watch for two to three minutes, they're someone who will support you. Because getting anybody past the 30-second threshold is already an accomplishment, believe it or not. YouTubers lose 30% to 60% of their audience in the first 30 seconds of a video. If you can get them to two to three minutes of a video, then you can likely get them to subscribe. So that's the key to all of this. The reason you won't do it at the end of a video is because... they're already thinking of the next thing they want to watch. So that's the thing. The other thing I would say is the best use of the end of your YouTube videos is to hand them off to another video and a specific video if you can, or a specific type of video. Playlists are harder to get people to commit to, so I've learned to just hand them off to an individual video. So what I would do is, so what I would do is at the end of the video, I'd go, hey, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you don't miss my video on YouTube monetization and the most profitable niches in YouTube. Click that in the description and I'll catch you guys on the next one. So that's how I would end a video. So I specifically am handing them off to my video on YouTube monetization. In my case, why am I handing them off to the video on YouTube monetization? One, one of the biggest hot topics on YouTube. Two, one of my highest paying videos in terms of ad revenue. So every view that I get to that makes me more money than the views on other videos. So that's why Roberto hands them off to that particular video. So if it's that, if they're watching a video that I think is specific to something else, for example. We had a video about how to use copyright music legally. So how do you use copyright music legally? So what I did was I did something like this. At the end of that video, I was like, hey, if you enjoyed this video on copyright music, don't miss this video on 10 royalty-free music sites, both free and paid, that you can use. And so I went with that. It's a handoff. copyright free music sites throws them to hey if you enjoyed this video on 10 royalty free music sites you can use you don't want to miss this tutorial on how to add background music to your youtube videos perfectly and then it hands them off to that video so i'm creating this reciprocal loop in terms of the handoffs at the end of videos and i'm using the i tell them always in the description even though i'm using the youtube end screen i always say link is in the description because it means that if I were to repurpose this video somewhere other than YouTube, I'm using universal language. When I even tell people to subscribe, I actually tell them instead of saying, hit the subscribe button, I say, hey, if you're enjoying this video, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. You don't want to miss any updates from me. That way, if I'm posting this somewhere other than YouTube, it is easier to repurpose and I don't have to edit something in. So I use... I use very universal language whenever I can in the videos so that I can make them easier to repurpose across platforms. So hopefully that helps you guys out. Again, I know that question was not that long, but I think it was important to just give you guys the gusto, the whole enchilada on that. So let's see. There was another question here. I can't pop it up on the screen, but I will read it. Ghost Squad, is it true that YouTube Shorts make the most views? I almost think I should stop doing videos. They're completely different audiences. You will see more views, but they pay much less in revenue. Here's what I think is, I think you should make videos, shorts, and potentially live streams. And I think you shouldn't worry that shorts get more views than videos because I don't think that that matters when the shorts pay 10 times or a hundred times less than videos. So like shorts might get 10 or a hundred times more views, but they pay 10 or a hundred times less. So, and that's why I also think we should emotionally divest from views in general. I... If you're not making money, I think that views feel more important to you when you don't make money off of them, right? Because it's at least validating that people paid attention to you. But I also think that that in some ways can be wrong or misleading. I feel like in general, we need to rein in our emotional investment on views, subscribers. I don't think money is everything. I think we also need to emotionally divest to some degree. even from how we let money validate us. Now, I do like using these things as measuring tools to some degree of a job well done or did we get people to respond to things or what have you. But I think especially when you're doing entertainment content versus education content, that the temptation to let these things affect you emotionally is too strong. And so I try to advise people to emotionally divest from the outcomes of the entertainment content that they make. emotionally be invested in the process of making something really cool, of learning your craft, of improving new skills. And I think you should put all your emotion into making the content and be divorced from how it performs. And that's my belief when it's entertainment in particular. If you're not doing entertainment and you're doing education or business content, I think that the emotional investment should be split between what you make and how it impacts the people that give it a chance and how it improves their lives. So my belief is that our emotional investment should exist in our craft and our process of making the best things that we can, creating something awesome that we are proud of and want to share with the world. And then the only outcome we should be emotionally invested in is the impact we had on the people who gave us a chance to share with them. So we only care about the people who said yes to us. We don't care about the people who said no and didn't give us a chance, rejected us, didn't try to let us in. We don't emotionally invest in that rejection. We only invest in how people are impacted and affected that gave us a chance. and let us in and consumed our content and let us share with them. And we only emotionally invest in the making of the thing and the impact that has and nothing else from an emotional standpoint. From an analytical standpoint, we execute and listen to what the numbers and the data and those things say, but we don't internalize it emotionally. We have to figure out how to emotionally partition or emotionally divest. and then and that doesn't mean turning off your emotions that means compartmentalizing so to speak so like i said we get emotional about making and we get emotional about how people who did watch our content are impacted and affected by it and nothing else and if you can do that you'll have a healthier relationship with your content, and you'll make decisions from a healthier place. And also the numbers and the analytics won't bother you as much. And then when it comes to money, you want to think of money as a tool rather than a goal. You want to think of it as a servant rather than a master. So that's... There will be a short book on creator mental health coming in the future. I have to finish writing my second big book. And when I'm done writing my second big book, I will take a small break before finishing the trilogy to write a shorter book on creator mental health. Let's see. And yeah, I did want to acknowledge we did have a great super chat from our friend Tease Hot Mess History. Hey, everybody, I saw your message. I'm going to email you again. Hopefully we can get connect this time. Looking forward to meeting with you. Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate you. All right. So let's see. We've got a couple more channel reviews here. Let's see. We've got Soft Pastels Life. Thank you for hanging in there, by the way, for anybody who we haven't done your review yet. We're getting through them. We're working our way through. But also, remember, I always say in these streams that we're doing channel reviews and real advice for small YouTubers. So it is a asterisk there of we are doing more than one thing. So always keep that in mind. All right. So Soft Pastels Life, vlogs, haircare, cooking, and much more. Okay, I think I see the first issue is that variety channels are harder. So again, if you're thinking of doing variety, we might need to rebrand it to a lifestyle channel and we might need to package things differently. Because I see here you've done 2,600 videos. That's really impressive. That's more videos than I have on my main channel by a whole almost 900 videos. However, that is only translated to 3 000 subscribers so the problem is probably um too much code switching on the audience and so what do i mean by too much code switching on the audience you have people coming for some videos and not other videos and then it's making it hard or confusing for them to know what to expect let's see what your audience is rocking with and see if we can give you some advice So your most popular videos. We have ASMR real-time hand-washing. I used Carefree Curls Golden Instant Activator on my dry type 4 hair. Extreme cleaning motivation, hand-washing, and dishes. I tried world-class curls. I tried Carefree... Okay, so let's see. The only videos to get 10,000 subscribers or more... two of them were cleaning videos and three of them were hair care videos and one of them was a cooking video and of the ones to get over more more views than you have subscribers there's more cleaning videos and it was more hair care videos so that means that of videos here that got a satisfactory amount of views for the effort, the overwhelming majority of them were hair care videos. I'm going to be honest with you. If that's the case, and then looking at the latest content and how it's been performing, here is what I believe. I think you have to be intentional about the videos from now on. And I think that this needs to all be um hair care because almost nothing else is cracking 1000 views at all and not in the last uh month so i think it needs to um be even out of the last two months the thing that got the most views in the last two months is alopecia and scalp care so here's my belief vlogs i think should be content you make on tick tock and Instagram, and you can do vlog content on TikTok and Instagram. And I think that this channel should turn into a channel that becomes about your hair care and your alopecia. And I think I would do that, but maybe also do it because you seem to like the vlog type thing. Do those videos in the vlog style, but package them as hair journey and hair tutorial videos and hair care videos. Film them like vlogs. For those of you who like doing variety content and vlogging, just film things with vlogging and storytelling elements. in them, film them as reality TV content. Here's what you guys need to do. All of y'all need to do is for those of you who like vlogging and talking about yourself and everything like that, just make reality TV style content, but make a reality TV show that has one theme to it. And so in your case, I would say make the theme here. I would say make it hair. And if you can expand from hair into also some elements of natural beauty or things that work for your skin tone, then you will find that there is a broader audience for that content and how it overlaps. And that then you can get that audience to care about watching vlogs and personal life stuff from you on your Instagram or TikTok and then grow those as separate platforms. So I think that that would work for you. The other thing is, again, the packaging on a lot of these videos can be hard to read. So I would address that with regard to the thumbnails based on what we said about the two second rule. When you do things like this one with the alopecia hair and scalp care, the text should usually go on the top because as you can see. um it gets um overridden by the time stamp in youtube in the right hand corner uh mini twist takedown so yeah so those those things um would matter and yes um katie in the live chat is right um i would add a drop shadow to these um this there are places where you're adding a drop shadow so that's smart to make those things easier to read especially when it's white on white text um so yeah but the um yeah the hair care videos are beating everything else for the most part and i would focus on that if you are want to film videos doing cleaning stuff while you're cleaning again i would say that a lot of that stuff could probably do well on in on instagram and on tick tock but if you want to do it in almost youtube like way i would consider possibly doing a dedicated youtube channel that is focused on cleaning videos and organization videos and declutter videos. And then I would also simultaneously make a Facebook page and a Facebook group community around that. And I would attract a lot of women to that community. I think you could get monetized on Facebook that way. And I would even upload the old YouTube videos that are cleaning videos to that Facebook channel. So those would be my suggestions for this, for Soft Pastels Live. Also, again, if you're going to make those changes, you'll obviously have to change this banner, but always check your banner and see how it looks on mobile, desktop, and television, and then see how that works. So those are my thoughts on Soft Pastel's life. What did you guys think? Did you agree with me, disagree with me? I know that I'm very hard on variety content and variety channels, but it's because it's confusing to the viewer. It's hard to set expectations. It's hard to build familiarity and reliability and get people to keep coming back. I have done variety content in an era of YouTube where it wasn't as harsh, but that was in the old days when YouTube itself was a novelty. And now, the culture is very different so even i have struggled in the past from making variety content and that's why i know it doesn't work as well as we would hope so i speak from experience variety content does struggle a lot on youtube when you try to do more than one things um so focus serves most people better and focus serves small creators better. The thing that I also can say is you've had enough videos at 2000 plus videos to get anything and everything out of your system in terms of expressing yourself by this point. And then, so for the rest of expressing yourself, I think TikTok and Instagram serve that so much better and people relate to it so much better there. I think with YouTube, it's got to be a lot more focused than that. YouTube is the new television. So if you're looking for social media, they'd be social. If you want social media to be social and you want more of that investment personally, that's why I say I'm not a YouTube help channel. I help content creators. And I'm telling you that Instagram and TikTok are stronger. For that, if you're looking for that personal connection with an audience in that way, for who you are, TikTok and Instagram are stronger for that. For communities, Facebook is stronger for that, especially for people over 30. So that's why I would go with that direction. With YouTube, I think content has to have strong themes. And I think sometimes it's easy to convince ourselves that all these things are related when people will not see it that way themselves. So that's what I would think there. But do you guys agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Let me know in the chat if you're watching live. So we got homebody Trish next. Then we have Tomb Princess. Then we have Elevate Me To You. So we have those on deck. Let me just cue those up to make things easy. I'll just open some new tabs for those. And then we'll check in in the chat real quick. And we'll try to wrap this one up. We're going to try to keep this much less than two hours. I think we can, sorry, much less than three hours. I think we can finish this. in much less than an hour here. Pretty sure we can do that. Let's check in with the chat. Yeah, I used to think that I used to, so I used to make daily content. And I had a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday schedule, thinking that that would, and even a Saturday and Sunday schedule where I would make non-educational content and I would make entertainment content. I've since privated all the entertainment content videos. on the channel uh we had uh quite a few of those we had i think hundreds of those right i thought that having a schedule for variety content would somehow magically defeat the curse of variety content and audience fragmentation it didn't work it didn't work so audience fragmentation um a schedule of oh we do this on monday we do this on tuesday do we do this on wednesday we do this on thursday we do this does not save you it does not work um so i i tried that i was a daily content creator for years and years and years and there is a time when you could kind of fudge it but even as far back as a few years ago stopped working it really just stopped working for channels because of viewer behavior and the abundance of choice. It was the abundance of choice that did a lot of it and viewing patterns and behavior, shorter attention spans. So over time, variety content just stopped working for people who were not famous already. The reason people keep trying variety content is their favorite famous YouTuber still gets away with doing it, but that works for people who are rich and famous. It does not work for us regular peasants. We do not get to abide by those rules. um so i've tried it i've coached so many channels that at this point uh we have a sense of what does and doesn't work and again almost all of us um almost all of us deep down that have gotten to any certain point in youtube a lot of us work against the things that we know will make us successful or more successful or grow us And we just are too stubborn or we have a personality where we want so much to do something or it's the only thing that motivates us to make content. So it's the only way we can do it. But what happens is we are relying on that to motivate us because we're not being motivated by the results because the results are not coming. So the thing is, we are fighting against the current of what would give us what we want because since we already don't have it. we are trying to satisfy ourselves coping in some other way. So like, I'm not saying that's necessarily what happens with you, but I'm saying that happens with a lot of us as content creators. And as an OG creator, I understand the appeal of variety and trying to put all of your personality out there. But what I would say is you need to focus on a theme. So you need to have a single clear value proposition for why to come to watch your channel. My value proposition now is you come here to learn how to be a full-time content creator. You don't come here because you want to go viral on YouTube. I don't do that. You don't come here because you want to get rich quick. I don't do that. You come to this channel to learn how to be a full-time content creator. So that is the overarching theme. There are things that are all interrelated within that theme. So you can pick a theme that is very tight and that there can be multiple things you can do so you don't get bored. Because let's face it, the real reason we want to do variety content is we don't want to get bored. But the way to handle it is to have a theme that is coherent, that lets you have theoretical variety within a theme. So for example, for soft pastels content, what I would probably do is I'd probably do hair care videos and then I'd probably do hair product reviews and I'd probably do hair. I'd probably do. So I'd probably do hair care tutorials. where you do like a how to take care of your hair, how to do this, how to do that, how to undo twist, all those things. But then I'd probably do individual reviews of different hair care products. I'd probably do hair care product breakdowns and comparisons of what works for different types of hair or texture. then I'd probably do explainer videos that talk about my particular type of hair. You said you had something called type four hair. I would explain what type four hair is. I would talk about the best products for that exclusively. So I would sit there within like, you know, a video and do that because I don't believe that a niche is a prison and I don't think a niche is a topic. So a niche isn't a prison that strips you of your creativity. A niche is a community of people that you're able to serve and create value for in a specific way. That's how I define a niche. I define a niche as a community of people who share your interest and share your values that you feel excited to share with and that those people look to you for a specific thing that you do for them that gives them value. That's what I believe. I believe that if you're saying gurus are telling you that you shouldn't have the niche down. So you hear from many gurus that lately tell you, you should not have the niche down. I believe, and I'm not gonna name my names. I believe that a lot of people, not any of my friends mind you, but I think a lot of people tell you what you wanna hear. Because if I tell you that you don't have to niche down, you can be a free spirit, you can ride passion all you want, and that people will find it and follow you and like all this and follow your dreams, follow your heart. It's like, I don't have to take any responsibility if I give you that advice. If I tell you that you shouldn't have to niche down and to follow your passion, I don't have to take any responsibility. See, that's the funny thing about it, right? It also validates you. And then I'm giving you a positive dopamine reaction if I validate you. The reason I do channel reviews is so that I can give people honest advice and feedback and tell them things that their friends may not know how to tell them or won't tell them or be honest with them. And I always tell you that I'm going to give you an actionable piece of advice in my channel reviews. I'm going to tell you one thing that I think you're doing well. I'm going to tell you one thing that I would immediately change. And I'm going to tell you the most helpful thing that I think you can action on that will improve your channel and get you results. And that's what I do in my reviews. And I do that because it's the only way that I can hold you accountable. I provide accountability because I think that's what a coach should do. I think gurus motivate people and keep them from quitting and giving up. But I don't think that's always helpful because they also don't necessarily tell anyone to change. I think that gurus that don't tell you to change are telling you not to transform. And if what you're doing hasn't worked, then they should be telling you what would trigger a transformation. and what would help you get the results that you are looking for. And it's probably not what you've been doing, but letting you do what you've been doing would be validating and make you feel positive. And then the positive feeling transfers to the guru. That's my belief. Yeah, that's what I believe. So for me, I think that advice has to be actionable. accurate, and I do believe that it needs to instill accountability. So I think that action, I think that actionable advice would dictate that if the advice is taken, a transformation would need to occur, would need to occur. So that means that you would have to change a behavior, right? So I think that a coach tells you change your behavior and use techniques, systems, habits to begin a transformation usually that will be painful because now a transformed person can produce a different outcome than the person that wasn't transformed if that makes sense so if somebody were struggling with productivity and finishing things they start I would tell them that they need to do deep work and that they need to commit to doing something for 90 minutes from beginning to end and finish what they start and that they're not allowed to be distracted or have other things because that's a habit they don't have already. If someone was struggling to be consistent making videos, I would tell them to put weekly videos, videos every week in their banner so there's now public accountability. for not delivering those videos. And I'd also tell them eliminate the friction that keeps you from making videos. So you struggle if you can't make videos consistently because you don't have video ideas, you have to dedicate an hour a week on a specific day to writing down ideas for videos. And you have to pick a video every week and write an outline. by the next like all right you did that here's the day that you have to have the outline done for the video so that you have a plan for that video and when you write your outline your next task is to make a thumbnail in advance for that video and now you can have all this friction that's eliminated from making a video i would tell them find a corner in your room to set up your lights and camera and leave it up so that all you have to do is hit record so that now there's not an excuse for not making a video quickly And then, so I would tell them, do these things that reduce the friction of taking action and finishing what you start. This would now be a new habit that creates a transformation. So I believe that people who are real coaches and give advice and people who aren't fake gurus are giving advice that moves you in the direction of transformation through habits and systems and meaningful change. so that you're not the person that you were before the advice was given. And that's what I think has to happen. I think when people tell you not to change or that you don't have to do anything differently, that they're validating you and now there's a transference of dopamine and positive experiences from that thing of being validated and now you're associating the guru with validation. So that's the thing. And again, if it's not, in SoftPastel's case, if it's not doing the hair videos or style videos or anything like that, then again, another channel that literally specifically is cleaning and decluttering would be successful with Focus. Like, I think that a channel that only does cleaning and decluttering videos... and you did 300 videos on that channel, it would have more subscribers, I think, with 300 cleaning and decluttering videos on a new, fresh channel. It would probably grow faster than this channel did with 2,300 videos. So I definitely believe in that, for one thing. And then I do feel that variety content works as a Twitch streamer, and I believe it works as a TikToker, and I believe it works when you build a lifestyle brand on Instagram. With YouTube, YouTube is TV. And therefore, with YouTube, you have to build a destination channel that as I come to this channel for this specific experience and it's delivered consistently. So those would be some of the thoughts I have. So again, I know it's like it's a little controversial and I'm not trying to name and shame anybody, but I do feel like a lot of so-called gurus. This is I think one of the differences between a guru and a coach. you know, is just really how can I help someone change and transform and do something different? And I believe that the biggest thing that is transformational for a lot of people is here is an immediate quick win that you can do. So like for a lot of you, it's when I show you the thumbnail stuff and I say, okay, guys, quick win here. Make your thumbnails cleaner. by using these rules of the two-second rule, use this, use these fonts. Those are quick wins. So that's a change that you can immediately action on immediately and see a change happen, physically happen. So I believe the first thing is like physical changes, right? Just literally something you can see with your own eyes, something tangible. So a quick, tangible change is the first part of transformation. Then I believe... different habits changing your habits is very important i believe changing your beliefs is important and then i believe creating systems is one of the ultimate ways to transform so habits over time systems in general and then also changing beliefs long term so those are the things that i believe are necessary to transform and then someone who's transformed will get different results clearly than the person who wasn't. And I think that that's what a coach should do. And I think of myself as a coach. I don't think of myself as an advice guru. I think of myself as a coach because, again, I think the difference is transformation. instilling the catalyst for transformation. I think that gurus instill motivation. I think that they give tips. I think that it's cheap dopamine a lot of time. I think that a lot of times it's not actionable. I don't think it has any meat on the bone. And one of the reasons I love doing the channel reviews is we also have people who come back. and you see the transformation, you see the change, you see the updates to their channel, you see them getting views, you see them growing in subscribers, you see the branding, oh my God, that's night and day. Their thumbnails are so much better. This is that much better. Oh, they got consistent and they got traction. So I believe that we have to see those things. They say that seeing is believing. Sometimes believing is seeing. Zolo Q. Hey, Roberto. I want to thank you for the advice and understanding you provide the value of evergreen content, understanding and patience. It really pays off. Appreciate you. Yep. Doug Houston says, there's an irony that to be successful, some gurus will tell you what you want to hear, lest they get less views if they give you realistic, but sometimes harsh advice. It benefits them and not you. Yeah. I think that there is a art. to giving blunt, harsh advice without being alienating. And I don't think I've always done it perfectly, if I'm being honest. I don't think I've always given the tough love perfectly. I think that I've improved my delivery. I think I have lapses of angry Roberto sometimes and being too critical or too harsh. But I think that there is a real value to someone being candid and direct and telling you something. that benefits you, even if it wouldn't benefit them. And I think that there is a lot of value to someone who is willing to risk offending you in order to tell you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear. If I want to tell you the truth, I have to risk offending you. And I think that that requires not only integrity, but courage. I think that a lot of things come down to less of lapses of integrity and more to lapses of courage. I think that a lot of people, if I were to be blunt, I think a lot of people are cowards. I think a lot of people will never risk offending you, even if they were going to help you by doing so. I just think that's where we are. You know, that's a thing. The difficulty. The difficulty is not in balancing cruelty or kindness, but the difficulty is in finding a way to tell a truth in a way that it might actually be received and taken to heart and that it will genuinely benefit the person to hear this. Because I think in the past, sometimes in the past, I believe that I might have told the truth, but failed to deliver it in a way where it will be received and accepted, which means that even in that regard, it's still only self-serving. If I tell you something and I'm too blunt or too crass about it, I get to pat myself on the back for telling the truth. And then... because I told the truth, I get to feel good about myself, but then you don't do it because I offended you too much. And then it only benefited me because I feel good because I, oh, I told the truth, I'm in integrity. But what you have to do is you have to find a way to tell the truth in such a way that it will actually benefit the other person to hear it. And you have to figure out navigating what is the way I could communicate this thing in such a way that will be received. And it will be acted upon and therefore truly benefit the person and begin the change that needs to happen. So that's what I feel is lacking in some spaces. I feel that some people, instead of doing that, because that's very difficult to do, by the way, the easiest thing to do is the cowardly and not brave thing. which is just tell people what they want to hear and go along to get along and do all of that jazz, do that song and dance. And you can make a lot of money that way. You can be very successful if you just tell people what they want to hear, gas them up, keep them motivated. You can do a lot with that. Now, I'm not saying there's no room for motivational advice and motivational content because I think it's actually very hard to be supported in doing content creation. I feel it's very hard to get support from your family, your friends. I think sometimes you can find anxiety in trying to find support among other creators to some degree. I think we have a great community in the chat that comes to these live streams. I think we have a great community in Discord. I think we do well in our X spaces when we do them. So I feel there are many places where people are being a great community. But I think it can be hard for new people and small people to get comfortable and to find that. We try. We try to create those spaces where we can. So I'm not against motivational content. I think that people are literally starving and thirsty and in need of an encouraging word and probably don't get enough of it in a lot of places and a lot of circumstances in life. I think a lot of people live very difficult lives and that they are looking for anybody to acknowledge them. And I think that it's important to have that. I think it's important for it to come from sincere places and from good people and not people who only do it to try to benefit themselves. And I think that that can be hard to figure out sometimes. I'm going to be honest. I think that it's hard to figure out why people are doing things or what their motivation is, if not money. And I think that profit motives can be okay when they're appropriate. And I think that there are some things where it makes sense. I don't like that for a motivation, though. I think for genuine coaching, transformation, mentorship, access to communities where you have an expectation of professionalism, I think those things make sense. But purely the motivation angle, I think that there are some issues that could happen there. And I think it's just hard to understand who's genuine to some degree. So yeah, we'll catch up on chat in a little bit. We'll catch up on some more chats here, but we still have three more in the queue. So we want to make sure we get those before it's getting too late on in the evening. We have those lined up. So let's go ahead and knock those out real quick. So we have homebody Trish. Homebody Trish. So this is an interesting banner. Here's the thing about this banner, though. I actually don't hate this banner, even though I don't fully understand the photo there if it's about lifestyle and decor. I don't understand the photo in the banner. However, I will say that I don't hate this font. The problem I have with the banner is I don't think that the full banner shows up the way it needs to on mobile. I think it does on desktop and television, but probably not mobile. So it needs to probably focus more on the center for that to work. So that's a thing. I feel like this profile pic could probably be a better overall profile pic because it's not well lit. and i think it could probably just be better looking at the thumbnails yeah the profile photo there could be better um 220 videos a thousand subscribers not bad not bad so your description says hey homies i like to create in every aspect home decor lifestyle food and all the things um i think that lifestyle and decor goes well together um i I think that those things go well together, maybe not that and food. And again, labeling things as vlogs, I think has, you know, is not as much the modern meta of YouTube. I do feel like this could have been stronger in terms of photo. I think that the views here are good though, but I think that this had 6,000 views with an imperfect thumbnail. I think the title carried it, if I'm being honest. But I feel like the thumbnail doesn't do justice to the video, because look at even just the cooking part of this. This is a very good, high-quality, top-down shot. I would have no idea that the quality would be this good if I judge it off of the thumbnail. The fonts here are a mismatch in terms of fonts. Not as readable in terms of fonts for the size and the coloring. especially on mobile, and the font placement feels like an awkward choice. So again, it sounds like I'm going in on you here, but it's like, I'm just saying that I feel like this thing could have gotten more views. It could have gotten 10,000 or more views with stronger packaging. So that's just something to think about there. Easy DIY bathroom makeover on a budget. Very good video, but again, you have a before and an after here, and they're not balanced. We barely see the after, and the word after is covered by the YouTube timestamp. So this could have been a much stronger video than it is by balancing that out. So I think that that's important. The home birth blog. This could have been stronger. by not having as many images because all these images that are in here get smaller and smaller on mobile and therefore impossible to decipher. This would have been better just with the top corner image with you holding the baby. If that had just been the whole thumbnail, that would have been better. Life with a newborn, again. This would have been better as a single image to communicate the idea. Less is more sometimes. So what I probably would do with this is I would probably do a lifestyle content angle. And the lifestyle content angle, I would shoot these things as vlogs because you like making vlogs, but I would just make this a reality TV kind of channel. And I wouldn't call these things vlogs in the thumbnails. because people don't really care about the word vlog anymore. People don't care about the word vlog anymore. So what I would do is the aesthetics of a vlog in the way that you shoot it, and in general, you guys, you don't have to call things vlogs anymore. People get it now. Vlogging is now a style of how content looks. It's not a genre of content in the conventional sense anymore. It is when it comes to OG big YouTubers and people who are famous. But for the rest of us, we don't have to call it a vlog anymore. You can just make content. You can call yourself a vlogger, but you can just make lifestyle content. And lifestyle content resonates with people. And so I think that you should focus on these make... these makeover videos and home decor and you can make content that is lifestyle content in the sense of you're doing this as a mom, you're doing this as a new mom, you're doing this, you know, so on and so forth, you know, and you can do some storytime content as well. That's what a lifestyle channel lets you do. And that wouldn't be the same thing as doing, like, it's a way, the workaround on so-called variety content is to become a lifestyle influencer. But if you become a lifestyle influencer, you have to, to some degree, label the lifestyle. Or you have to label yourself, so to speak. So when I say that, it's like, well, who are you making content for? And so that means what is the identity of the audience? Who are you relating to? That's why someone could make a lifestyle channel and call lifestyle child something like, The Curvy Girl Diaries is someone like, I don't know that that is an influencer or a channel, but I'm just using the name and brand of like, you can make a lifestyle channel. If you call yourself, if someone called themselves the Curvy Girl Diaries, they can make a lifestyle channel about that because now there's an identity to the audience and what they would be attracted to because that name just evokes a certain reaction and says, oh, okay, yeah, I'm watching that. Okay. So, um, That's a lifestyle channel. Confessions of a Busy Body. That would be a lifestyle channel. That'd be a lifestyle brand. So if you're saying your things is working moms who are into home decor, then the titles and thumbnails need to reflect that. So again, thumbnails that reflect working moms that love home decor are thumbnails where it's you holding something, an item, an accessory that might be very posh, and then also having your newborn on your hip, because that tells us the idea without us thinking a lot, you know? That would tell us the idea without thinking a lot, right? So working a busy mom, then there's that like home decor, something like that. is having a table spread of all of the things from a haul video while you also have your baby in your arms at the exact same time because it communicates the point. And it's also the reality of the fact that the woman watching that that cares is probably watching you while literally. holding her baby or while her baby's in the playpen or something. So then again, if you can literally communicate again, seeing is believing and believing is seeing, right? So if you can illustrate the idea at a glance, then they can understand and relate to the video and say, oh, she's just like me. So that's what you want the thumbnails to convey. You want the thumbnails to convey, oh, she's just like me. And you want the titles to convey, oh, I want to do that too. So hopefully that makes sense. And hopefully that gives you some guidance on what can be changed here. And then in general, just some of the things we said visually about making the text readable, scannable, and making it consistent and creating a visual aesthetic. And again, the other thing is, if you're going to talk about decor, for example, and make lifestyle content, then all of your thumbnails need to be visually beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. So I would say that your thumbnails should take the approach of a catalog. This was a really good one, to be honest with you. This bedroom makeover one, that's a good one. So I would find some consistent theming, and I think that a lot of it can be very photography driven. To be honest, this frame of the video with some text would be a better thumbnail in some ways than the thumbnail you have. And again, this got carried on the title, I think, more than the thumbnail. This could have been a 10,000 view video. And like I said, with the home birth thing, I feel that the photo in the top with you holding the baby would have been by itself a better thumbnail. So I think that you have to consider those things. I also think that out of your most popular videos, almost none of them were cooking videos. But if you were going to include them in this, the way I would do cooking videos is I would address the time constraint of the recipes being fast, like how to do this with either A, make this with only one ingredient or B, make this in under a certain amount of minutes because the value of showing people how to do easy, and I would use easy recipes. If I'm gonna do the cooking thing, I would do easy recipe for this or easy recipe and I would make it either about a time constraint or only three ingredients only two ingredients only one ingredient i would do those things because they address the constraints and challenges of the busy working mom so hopefully that makes sense so all those things make the value to the viewer much more obvious than what it currently is so those are my thoughts for home body trish I think there's potential. I think 200 videos and 1,000 subscribers is just fine. And I think that for 1,000 subscribers, the views are actually pretty decent. I just think that it struggles from some lack of clarity. The thumbnail presentation value can be stronger. I think that it can communicate more and identify with the audience more through some of the visual things that I suggested. And that also, again, in general, for a lot of channels... that we've reviewed in the past. Again, I would reiterate that vlogging is now just reality TV content and you don't have to call it a vlog for people to fit in with people on YouTube. That is an old holdover. A lot of us watched YouTube for 20 years now. Some of you may have even grew up with YouTube because you're younger than me. I was an adult when YouTube came out. I understand the nostalgia for saying you're a vlogger and calling it a vlog. You can call yourself a vlogger without calling the videos a vlog. Calling something a vlog doesn't add any extra viewership to your channel. In fact, the biggest vloggers have moved away from using the word vlog in the titles of the videos themselves. So what I would say is you can just make... lifestyle content, especially in a niche like this, you make aesthetic lifestyle content and you make content that the viewer identifies themselves with and sees themselves in and also sees the things that they value and care about in. And that's the most important thing so that people can relate to it. And I think that vlogging is now an aesthetic and stylistic choice. So make it a vlog. in appearance you don't have to title it that so you can make something a vlog without calling it a vlog it should tell a story that is relatable to the audience and that they identify with for example i would never call a video that i want to make for y'all a vlog But I can make a vlog that you would enjoy that makes sense for my channel because it would just be a reality TV episode. I would just do a series, Day in the Life of a Full-Time Creator, and I would just title the video. It's like, watch this. I would make a video called Day in the Life of a Full-Time Creator, how YouTubers really make their money. And then the episode. would be a vlog showing like the things that I actually do and me talking about the things I actually do that make money and why. And so that would be the day in the life of a full-time content creator and you get to see the behind the scenes. And what I would do is I'd probably just have either my brother or sister follow me around with a camera all day. And we would film my meetings. We would film stuff from my coaching calls. We'd do some voiceover. We would show me working on the designs for my new merch. We would show me working. on my book cover. We'd show me going into the back end of my stuff and looking up how many sales I got for the week. And it'd be a voiceover. I'd be talking about the business and how I actually make my money and showing some stuff. And it'd be done cinematic as a vlog. We'd do it like a reality TV show. We'd do it like a behind the scenes reality TV show. So if you want to do vlogs and you say, I don't want to give up being a vlogger. What you have to do is say, Vlogging is just storytelling. Vlogging is just reality TV. It's not making YouTube vlogs. It's making reality TV. So you would just do that. So vlogs are just making a reality TV show now. That's what a vlog is. A vlog is a not famous person making a reality TV show about an aspect of their life that fits with the audience that they have. So those are my thoughts. Do you guys agree? Do you disagree with me? on what I have to say for home by Trisha's channel. Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Let me know in the chat if you're watching the live stream. Yeah. So again, primary example is if I want to do vlogs, I would I'm probably just going to do a series and I might do this like once a month to just do it at least for like a year or something to put it out there. Maybe once, maybe twice a month. We'll just do something like day in the life of a full time creator. And it'll be like we'll do episodes. We'll probably do like a six episode season or something like that. And we'll just do a six episode season day in the life of a full time content creator. And it's like a day in a day in life full time content creator. How YouTubers really make their money. Day in the life of a full time content creator. The. struggles nobody shares and that'll be a mental health episode about the struggles no one shares um you know day in the life of a um full-time uh day in the life of full-time content creator um what's another good episode for that another good episode for day in the life full-time content creator is the end of life of a full-time uh content creator um day in the life of a full-time content creator Revealing my $50,000 YouTube studio. And then that one just becomes like a MTV Cribs style episode of going through everything and breaking it down. So that would be like an episode, right? Day in the life of a full-time content creator. How to stay motivated and consistent. Yeah. So like, you know, that's why that's, that's how I think of, I think of vlogs now as just reality TV because vlogs are no longer a selfie style recording. Vlogs are now also the husband or wife holding the camera. Vlogs were originally kind of supposed to just be home movies that people share on the internet, you know, but now home movies people share are just called reality TV. If you think about it. It's just reality TV. So I think that people struggle with making the vlogs that they grew up watching versus making the vlogs that work today on YouTube. So that's my thought about vlogging. My thought on vlogging is we have to let go of what worked on YouTube 10 years ago if you grew up with it and realize that the new YouTube, YouTube is now television. See, like YouTube is now television and TikTok is now YouTube. YouTube is now television. Short form on TikTok and YouTube shorts and Instagram reels is now what internet videos used to be. Internet videos are now TikToks and shorts and reels. YouTube is now TV. All right. So let's go to our next channel, which is TubePrincessAmeraTV. So TubePrincessAmeraTV. Nice banner. I would just extend the background because I think that having the background do whatever this is is a little weird. I don't think that this photo works for the profile picture because it's too repetitive of the banner. And it also doesn't work because we are trying to read this and then we can't. It says, welcome to the family, fun, culture, collide, join us on environment journey, full of laughter, from heartwarming vlog videos to... It's probably fine, as long as we really mostly keep it to this first part, in terms of value proposition. Almost a thousand videos, almost to 10,000 subscribers, not bad. Probably could be tighter. Hmm. If this is supposed to be a fun channel, and... This was this was like what's what's going on is the channel change at some point or so the channel starts out a couple of years ago and it looks like these were like vlogs and heartwarming stories and because the thing is it presents as if it's going to be a kid's channel. So that's confusing from a brand standpoint. Seven grandchildren. Okay, so the thing is you put your grandkids in the banner and this looks like this is like almost like just sharing personal stories and just posting for that. And then all of a sudden, and then what's the most popular content on this channel? Because I'm not fully understanding what's happening. Jamaican mom claps back at crime myths, tells her daughter the real truth. Insane Sesame Street Parade. So some of these things are just weird stories. I don't fully understand what is going on here. The subscribers are probably from shorts, if anything. So I'll be honest, I don't fully understand what this channel is trying to accomplish because the videos that I'm seeing for a lot of this feel very disconnected from what the pitch is and what the channel banner is. And so I think that leads to a lot of people being very confused. And there isn't seem to be any cohesion between the shorts, the live streams, and then the videos. And that looks like for your latest videos, because it starts out and feels like it's supposed to be very wholesome. And the description talks about being very wholesome and it's about vlogs and cooking delicious food. But... Then this latest video is about you talking about the P. Diddy trial and so I don't understand what's happening. So I feel like this was supposed to be a channel about, you know, Jamaican culture and food and cooking and I think if it sticks to that it can be really good, but I think it's just in general all over the place and there's Also all these weird pet videos and it feels like there's a lot of chasing trends here So I think this channel is trying to see if it can make anything go viral But I think that what it could stick to and what it should stick to is I think that if you could just talk about Jamaican culture and explain Jamaican culture and explain Jamaican food Hairstyles dress and all of these things then it could be um successful um but it just feels like this is confusing and that's just throwing anything it can at the wall if i'm being perfectly honest so my advice would be to like you know ditch all the other gimmicks ditch all the gimmicks and prune this channel down to being a celebration and explanation of jamaican uh culture and stories about your family and things that explain Jamaica culture, food, and history. And I think that that's a successful potential channel. But outside of that, I think it's just confusing and hard for people to follow along with and understand. So that would be what I think about this one. And the thing is, there's not... as much advice to give for this because the reality is that it's just confusing. It's confusing as a reviewer, it's confusing as a viewer of the channel, and it feels like the channel is somewhat even misleading in terms of what it purports to be versus what it actually ends up doing. And I think that that's the big disconnect. And so my advice, the only advice that I feel is real advice here is that there needs to be a big change that happens here. And you need to make a decision to eliminate everything going forward and maybe even scrub the past of the channel and focus it down on vlogs about your Jamaican family. things that celebrate Jamaican culture and talk about Jamaican culture, traditional Jamaican food and showing people how to cook it, prepare it and explain it, explain what it means to be Jamaican and to understand these things for people who don't know about the culture and talk about the history and make it a, make this channel should be a celebration of the Jamaican culture and being proud of your family. That's what this channel in my point of view should be. And what it should not do is trace trends and pop culture and try to capitalize on reacting to viral stuff. Because I just think that that's a big disconnect. And I think it doesn't serve a purpose. And I think that it will be easier to understand if you go the direction I'm suggesting. But what do you guys think? Do you agree or disagree with me about Two Princesses channel? Again, I think there is a possibility of making a very strong. culturally aligned channel for people who want to understand Jamaican culture. But I mean, there's a great content creator out there called Auntie Donna. I think be more like Auntie Donna, right? But I think as the channel stands, it's just too all over the place. And that I think it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But do you guys agree with me? Or do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. And let me know in the live stream if you're watching live. Yeah. So again, I don't want to be overly negative there, but again, I am very, very confused looking at that channel as a viewer. And this is why I advocate for themes to channels and for there to be a purpose for a channel and for there to be cohesion and consistency in the content that we make and it's being very intentional about it and saying, who's the audience for this? So that's. that's things that i think are important so let's see we have another channel here we have me two times at elevate me too so we're gonna see what this channel is about hopefully this one isn't uh as confusing so we have uh elevate me to eight videos so new content creator says we want to help content creators and beginners and faceless brands learn how to automate create and grow using powerful ai tools so The thumbnail, sorry, not thumbnail, the profile picture for this is actually really hard to read on mobile. Like the font there gets really small. So I don't know if that's a logo for the company or something, or if this is a company, but I would have the logo redesigned and look more professional. Probably the same thing for the banner here. And then for these, there's not a lot of videos. So the homepage, filling that out, not great. I'll be very honest. These thumbnails do not inspire the confidence of saying that you guys know what you are talking about doing here if this is your stated goal. And I'm not trying to be mean about that. I'm not trying to be mean about it. But the basics of this are just not there. These thumbnails, for example, are not attractive. They're not easy to read. They're not aesthetically appealing. So if you don't make good thumbnails, it's hard to win people over to suggest that you can even make good YouTube instruction videos. Making good YouTube instruction videos, even if you're a small YouTuber, looks like this. If you're a small YouTuber making YouTube help content, it looks like this. Yeah, this is Doug Hewson. This is one of our mods. This is one of the... best moderators in the YouTube education community. This is what good YouTube help thumbnails look like from a small channel. So if you ever dine to ever think to make YouTube help content, it should at least be as good as what Doug Hewson makes even in thumbnails and be clean and easy to read and easy to understand. Because what Doug does here and does well, and he's a small YouTuber, he has videos that were able to get even 100,000 views. So again, I'm not against small YouTube help channels because they might be quote unquote competitors. I'm saying that if you're gonna make YouTube help videos, you should actually even at a glance in the thumbnail, demonstrate that you know what you're doing. And making a good YouTube thumbnail is a prerequisite to being able to even suggest you can help anybody do youtube and so when i look at someone who's a small creator who does youtube thumbnails well and then i look at this there's just a big gap and i can't be confident i cannot be confident in the ability of it to um teach you something if the thumbnails are not done well so um we judge books by their cover so to speak so That's one of the things that would have to improve. The other thing is even if you're going to teach faceless YouTube channels, you would need to build this channel as a successful faceless YouTube channel. And currently it's just not there. So that's just kind of the reality of this particular channel. You also need more content and frankly you need to cover more basics and maybe make tutorials about how to do the basics of YouTube. Like really basic things like how to delete a YouTube video, how to upload a YouTube video, how to create a YouTube channel banner, how to do basic things. So those would be my thoughts on this. There's not a lot of content here, so it doesn't have as much meat to address here. So we're going to leave it at that. But we have a couple of, we have some, I think we have two more channel review requests, but I also think we have a question here from our friend Lori Hill. So Lori, question Roberta. Regarding pivoting, I'm pivoting to the beauty niche, currently in the middle of it. Would it help YouTube's algorithm define my audience if I do shorts? It will, but it won't help you with a long-form audience because the shorts audience will be the shorts audience. It will not help you with the long-form. So I think with moving to beauty... And away from, if I remember correctly, you were doing the dissections of the plastic surgeries of celebrities and things like that. So I think that, interestingly enough, you can start the beginning of that pivot by also comparing natural beauty to, what would you call it, to cosmetic surgery. And also I think debunking, debunking whether people got surgeries or whether it's natural starts the beginning of the pivot as you start to put out content so that the audience kind of stays aligned. But I actually don't think it's as hard a pivot as it might imply that is for you to talk about beauty and the beauty niche having coming from the cosmetic surgery niche because. I think that the audience has the interest and values aligned. And I don't think there's a big interest and value gap between cosmetic surgery and beauty in general. So I actually believe that for pivoting, that you don't have as big of an audience gap because I think the overlap in market fit is very similar. So think about it like this. Women who care about cosmetic surgeries also will care about how to look like a celebrity without doing the surgery. Speaking of pivots, to Princess Amara TV, do I private all the videos? Private all the ones that are not on the theme of Jamaica, Jamaican culture, and your Jamaican family. I would private all the non-related videos. Like the Diddy video, I would private that. The dog videos. It doesn't matter if things have views. If they're not relevant to the direction of the channel, in your case, Tube Princess, I'd private those. For Lori, I don't know if you're requesting a channel review or not. Let us know if you're requesting a review because we can go ahead and get that in. But yeah, so just let us know in the chat. But yeah, with you, Lori, I think that you just have to consider the psychology of the audience. And okay, if they care about this, what else do they care about? If they care about this, what does it say about their personality? How can I utilize that in my next videos? So I think that for a lot of you, the key is to understand the personality of your viewer. So we got Dan Peters. Good evening, Roberto. Long time no chat. Making a return to YouTube after years away to use it as a tool in my business tool belt. Open to a little feedback on honing it in for more lead gen and discovery in my niche. Okay. Yeah, we can do that. So Mr. Dan Peters. Realtor. Let's do it. All right. So we got Mr. Dan Peters real estate company here. So I really do. feel like this is a strong banner. The one thing I would say, Dan, is I would use a different photo in the banner than in your profile pic just to not be redundant and repetitive there. So I would say that's a key. Using a YouTube channel for business. and Lori's saying she doesn't need a review okay cool using a YouTube channel for business and for lead generation which was your request here as you wanted to know how to use this for lead generation the good news is I've actually coached multiple channels in the real estate niche so let's see here you have 86 videos let's see the oh you actually didn't do a home page layout it literally just goes to all of your videos interesting choice I would actually use the customization feature and I would feature different playlist on the home page production values are strong the thumbnails themselves are not all bad um but they're also very specific so what i'm going to do is we've talked a lot about thumbnails tonight and i think some of your thumbnails are actually pretty good some of them could be better um i think that for you you're a demonstration of what should the strategy be for this channel to help grow a real estate business so what i'll do is i'll focus on what i feel your content strategy should be and what videos you should be making to grow a real estate business with this channel so um to grow a real estate business with this channel um for one thing i think you have a specific location um and it's danville kentucky So here's my answer to real estate channels that have specific locations. You have Danville, Kentucky. So the thing is, oh, excuse me. I think that you need to have videos that talk about the average cost of homes in Kentucky. And you need to compare the price of living in Kentucky. to other states and to make that clear in a video's title and thumbnail. Because if somebody is looking and Kentucky is one of their choices and they're choosing between Kentucky, they're choosing between that and they're looking at, oh, what about Kentucky? What about Tennessee? What about Alabama? What about Louisiana? Whatever. They need to know. that Kentucky is cheaper or gets them more bang for their buck or has more value. So they need that. You also need a 15 reasons to move to Kentucky video. And you need a 15 things to know before you move to Kentucky. And you also need to do videos specifically about why to move to Danville, Kentucky. and things to know before you move to Danville, Kentucky. And you need to make videos about the cost of homes in Danville, Kentucky. You need to make this, thinking of buying land, watch this first, it was pretty good. But you should make a video on 15 reasons to buy land in Danville, Kentucky right now. You should make a video that is... 15 reasons to buy a home in Kentucky for couples. 15 reasons to buy a home in Kentucky for families. So you should do those in my opinion because they're specific and they're niche videos for that person that might even be considering that. and that will hit search and algorithm for those people. You should also, in my opinion, make some targeted videos around tiny homes in Kentucky and make that appealing to people because tiny homes is a big deal for people right now. And you should also make a video about new construction in Kentucky. You should also... do neighborhood tours of Danville, Kentucky and showcase that. You should also do 15 reasons to move to Kentucky for young couples. 15 reasons to move to Kentucky for retired couples. And then you should do content that showcases the best experiences and reasons for those people. to move to Kentucky specifically. And so I think that content strategy would be overall much, much stronger for you guys when it comes to generating leads for real estate like that. Because I feel like this is close. What it's really like... to live in Daniel, Kentucky, but it's like, I think you, you know, I think you also need to make it more substantive, like, and again, using numbers is a good way to do that sometimes. Now, again, some of these thumbnails could be stronger, but again, I think the overall content strategy, and again, you don't have a lot of video videos here. Some of these are live, like, or rather some of these. or interviews and then there's not a lot of long form. It's mostly short form. So again, that's why I wanted to focus on the content strategy for the long form. And I think that specifically that type of thing will get you more leads. The other thing is for leads, you need to promote a lead generator and the lead generator that you can promote is, you know, are, I think you need something like, you know, the Kentucky home buyer's guide, you know, and you need to have something like that. I also think possibly that you could do a new, the newsletter, you could do a newsletter that is kind of like a Kentucky real estate digest type deal. And I think that that would help you considerably because now there's a lead magnet and then you should obviously promote that lead magnet. in every video. So those would be my thoughts, Mr. Dan Peters, about your channel when it comes to lead generation for real estate and why the content strategy matters and why it matters to make something of literally making the ultimate guide to promoting your community. I even think specifically for Danville, Kentucky, get... a like um interview or a little tour of the town from the mayor if you can if you can get like a video with the mayor of danville get a video with the um sheriff or commissioner of danville um get you know to get a video with like the people that are the pillars of the community and the town. And I think that that is a fantastic thing. Like if someone's looking, you should really be the, if someone was ever thinking of moving to this town, you should be a destination channel where if someone was thinking of moving to this town, your videos are the thing that would make them fall in love with that town. And they are the only thing they need to watch to understand what moving to that town is for real. So that would be my thought. But what do you guys think? Do you like the advice that I have for Dan here on his real estate channel? And when you focus on hyper local real estate, how you would go about it in order to attract exclusively the people who are thinking of moving to your state and moving to that town? Let me know what you guys think in the chat. If you're watching live, let me know in the comments. If you're watching the replay, boom, boom, boom. So I think we did that. I think that that should do it for you, Mr. Dan. Hopefully you found that helpful. Yeah, I think we can do the last ones that came in. I think we can do Dark Brandon. And I think we can squeeze in the last two. We have... Faith Marie Unscripted, and we have ZoloQ. I think we can squeeze those in. But that's going to be it for tonight, y'all. And then my voice is gone anyway. So yeah, we've got Dark Brandon. Roberto, I always find your advice insightful and would love your feedback and constructive criticism. All right, let's do it. So we've got, why is it when I hear your channel name, Dark Brandon, that all I have in the back of my head is the Ghostbusters theme? All right. So we've got three more in the queue. So let's do it. Before I head out, what's the criteria for getting channel reviewed? So, Lenita Johnson, you'll want to do it next week, next Friday. And we do these. The rules are in the description with regard to super chats. The basic idea is $20 super chats puts you in the queue for a channel review. And so you would probably, we're closed now because it's like midnight. Oh, it's after midnight now. Oh, my God. So late. So since it's way too late and my voice is almost gone, you'll want to come back next Friday. Because, yeah. We usually try to finish before midnight. That just didn't happen this time. Okay. So let me also queue up the other channels while I'm at it just to finish that off. New tab. I wish they had a thing that said mute all tabs because I have to mute all tabs to make sure I don't mess up the audio. No ghost. So we got a dark brand in here. I'm guessing that this is like a animate an original like animation channel and that's um, so it's champion critical thinking empathy and freedom 100 funded by cat ladies. Okay, so that's clever and The art style is interesting. This is like a meme art style that I think is kind of like South Park inspired I think or I'm just old and I just relate everything to things from the 90s um which is entirely possible um so let's see so there's this is some kind of satire channel um i think that for a satire channel that using a satire about headline is okay um in theory though i would put something in here about a posting schedule Oh, you take inspiration for all cartoons and not South Park. Okay. No, good to know. Again, I'm just old, so I'm going to probably just see the South Park inspiration. Okay, cool. So what I would say here is I think if you have a posting schedule or you're trying to have a posting schedule, it looks like you guys, are you guys daily? Wait, are you guys doing daily animated content? Daily animated content is incredibly difficult. I don't know how you're managing it, but that's cool that it's working for you. Maybe you get enough views to manage the daily upload schedule. So if you upload twice a day, if you are saying you upload twice a day, then the thing is you should use that as a value profit. All right, so... let me ask this why is not the fact that you new videos every day in the banner or in the about description because that's an incredibly good value proposition and no animation channel to my knowledge can post twice a day so i don't know why you wouldn't put that and lead with that um in a um in the banner or the about section because I would lead with that because that's a destination channel quality is um you know if you have new animated videos twice a day or every day that's like something that's incredibly unique for animation channels and it's largely considered unsustainable for anyone else So if you have that unique of a value proposition and the videos aren't short either, these are all like two to five minute or even 10 minute videos. So yeah, I would lead with that as a value proposition. I'd also consider how you might, the thumbnails are fine because I mean, it tells you what it is. But in general, if you use thumbnails that might include reaction videos, because some of these, I might try to find some way to put some kind of more interesting wrapper around the reaction part of the videos visually, or even use the, what do they call it? The distort tool to alter the angle. to make it a slight angle to make it i think you know i'm talking about the visual perspective angle where you can put it at a slightly a skewed a skewed view that way it feels more like it could be watching on the big screen on the wall interacting with the animation if that makes sense so i would actually try to incorporate the video the reaction of the video and use the skewed view to make it as if it's being watched on the screen in the videos themselves like on a screen or in a newsroom or something like that so i would probably um try to do something like that it also is a hedge in making sure that the video feels transformative enough and that it's not as easily scannable for copyright reasons to be struck down so that is another thing you could um utilize So that's something to consider. It also just more visually dynamic and it's harder for your competitors to do something similar to you because they wouldn't think of that. And because it's a slightly extra effort, even slightly extra effort disqualifies competition from copying you, to be honest, because it just becomes a technical barrier for them of, oh, I don't know how to do that in the software. And then they don't try. Like you'd be shocked how many people just don't try things. or try to learn how to do certain things. So again, I think you could enhance the video quality in doing that in some ways. For vertical videos, sometimes doing a cutaway to the vertical video from the position as if it's being held in the smartphone of the character, it might be a little extra effort to animate that, but if you make that a repeatable asset, maybe that would work. So it's just a thought. of one more thing. But other than that, with your volume of videos, the frequency of your posting, I think that that's strong. You need to do more to turn the viewers into subscribers, though. You have 31 million views. Almost 200,000 subscribers from that is a... decent-ish conversion rate, but it should actually be closer to about roughly 300,000 subscribers. You may not be asking for the subscribers at the end of the video, but you probably, if you're not, you should. And I say at the end, because with animation, you don't want to interrupt the video at all. But you may be doing that, which might also be where your conversion ratio is just under the 1% threshold. So there is that. But if you're not asking for the subscribe, asking for it at the very, very, very end of the video is probably going to be helpful. It usually is more helpful than not to ask for it somewhere, but you can't do a pattern interrupt to do a call to action in an animation video. It doesn't work and it alienates people. So with animation, it's a format where it has to go at the end of the video. I think if there's anything else here what about the live streams you have a call-in show I think the call-in show needs individual unique thumbnails for the call-in show I know that that's extra work but I would definitely probably do that um although having that it's every Sunday in the thumbnail hmm I can't decide whether or not the strategy for those could be you might do there might be a thumbnail switch that happens for replay value versus and the replay value may be for the thumbnails like all right so there might be a thumbnail that encourages people to come on to the live streams and then there might be a thumbnail that is afterward for the replay value and you might consider that as a strategy You're saying I've been building the live viewing audience, but they are different than my regular audience. Should I create a second channel? Not necessarily because I don't think the normal people bleed over to the live streams, but I think the live stream loyal viewers bleed over possibly to the regular channel. So it's hard to say you lose subs every live stream, but you build a strong community. It's not hurting your channel now. You're asking if it's going to hurt your channel. You've been doing it for a while. And here's the thing. It's not hurting you now, per se. You say you're losing a few subs. But again, I feel like the community aspect is stronger. And I think given time, given time, I think that there is some longevity to be derived from that. So I would leave it. I would go with leaving it on this channel, if I'm being honest. So yeah, but those would be my thoughts. Those would be my thoughts here. This is something, again, I just don't think I've ever seen an animation channel with the capacity to do this. So that's actually in and of itself impressive. So again, I think there are just some strategic tweaks here that make it a little bit stronger. I think that what you're doing with the live stream calling show is actually good and it's unique and it's brilliant. And I think that builds a stronger sense of community. I think that's more important than a lot of things, believe it or not. I think your subscriber count is good. And that if you bleed a few subscribers off every time you do it, it's worth it to have loyal people that you cultivate long-term. So the trade-off is worth it. Trade-off is worth it. I go through the same thing. I think it's fine. And like I said, I had the visual thing with using... the skewed distortion perspective of the slant and then incorporating it into the wall of the thing. So I think that that from just a video animation and creation perspective is a small tweak. It takes minimal effort, but people won't do it, but it'll also make it more dynamic and it'll address some other issues. So I would do those things. So, but those are my thoughts on the dark branding channel. I think that it's obscene to do twice. animation videos daily. Like that's amazing consistency. That's great output. I don't know how someone even does something like that. So again, those are my thoughts, but do you guys agree or disagree with me in the chat? Or if you're watching the replay in the comments, let me know what you think about this and if you agree with my assessment here. But again, I think this channel has 1 million subscriber potential. I think the biggest challenge in general with animation channels is just call to actions that don't interrupt the story and the animation and the storytelling. I think the good offset to that is other things that can build a community. I think shorts could help with that as well. So those are things that, I would apply to thinking about this in this way. But overall, I think a channel like this has a million subscriber potential, especially with the outputs. I also think that animation is in itself evergreen entertainment and it's everlasting. And I think that that still means that outside of even the potential for virality, if you're getting to the world of politics, animation in itself, even when something is past the time of relevancy, is in itself. Just as an entertainment medium. It's more long tail. It's more evergreen. It has longevity. So kudos to you. But that's my thoughts. My voice is almost done here. It's a good thing we only have. What do we have next? We only have two more next. I think I can survive them. Let's see. So we have Faith Marie Unscripted. Faith Marie, Lifestyles and Vlogs. Hmm. A thousand subscribers with 67 videos is actually really impressive. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I do not hate this banner. Just make sure that it's not bleeding off to the edges of the frame when in mobile, for sure. Leading with the popular videos is not a bad thing. Then you have shorts. Then you have videos past live streams and then create a playlist. I would add one or two more playlists to this when you get a chance, but you might not have that many videos to justify that. You say, welcome to my channel, subscribe for lifestyle vlogs, real life moments. From everyday adventures to unfiltered experiences, it's about living life to the fullest and enjoying the journey. I would actually take it's about living life to the fullest and enjoying the journey. And I would make that the first thing you lead with here in the description, to be honest with you. And then I'd put the rest of stuff. Solid views on this one. I don't think you need to put vlog at the beginning of the video title or in the thumbnail text in terms of weekly vlog. Again, I get that this is... figured i was going to say that from uh watching the other reviews about vlogs again you can be a vlogger you can identify as a vlogger that you do not need especially with lifestyle vlogs to put it in the title or thumbnail uh people will get it i think the titles you have are more interesting by themselves anyway because i think um for example 90 seconds um like I think that with this, you need to explain or this needs to be something more clear because like in general, like with these things, I think you need to explain what the viewer gets out of it. Like your most, your most, um, your most viewed videos. Watch this. I, um, finally deep cleaned my entire apartment. We know we're going to get a cleaning video and we get to see some aesthetic things in the thumbnail and we get to in the preview see, okay, this is well shot. This is like time lapse. This is okay. This is why I came for. So that immediately is something interesting. Surviving one week in my new workout program and new year struggles. Relatable title. Introvert life and target let me down. Crumble cookie review. Okay, we know what to expect. So again, I think if you're non-toxic hygiene products and perfumes, this versus that. So again, I just think that the titles need to be more clear. But again, they're not doing terrible on views considering your current size of audience or whatever. I think your channel... Would you say you're, I want, I'm asking an honest question while I have you in the chat. Do you feel like your content is lifestyle content or is it the genre? Cause they like, there's a new genre of content that I've seen and I think people are just calling it. And so I'm not saying this pejoratively, but is it lifestyle or is it more yapping content? Cause I feel like there's a new genre of content called just yapping is what I'm understanding, which I don't fully get it, but I'm trying to, uh figure out if you are making um reality tv lifestyle day in the life content or is it content that's much more about um yapping and by the way if you uh if you feel it's working then you can leave vlog in the title and then i just don't think you need it in the thumbnail you show a lot of what you do but you also do yap okay cool um I might try some titles that in themselves, some titles. I would test some titles with yapping versus vlogging and see how they do. And again, I would go for cleaner thumbnails that also are more aesthetic thumbnails. But again, this is not doing terrible even with those flaws as an early YouTuber. Again, it's very rare, especially like your 60 something videos aren't even all long form. So since they're not even all long form, it's actually more impressive, I would think. And it's not like the shorts are viral or anything. So that's fine. So yeah, I think that you are building an audience and that they are interested in what you're doing. So again, I don't want to recommend that you change too much because you're also early. And this early in the process, there are things that are working for you. So the main thing that I would change is I would try to change your thumbnails. I might not even change the titles, but I might try some of the yapping video titles versus vlog video titles and see if you are really just getting people off of saying, oh, I want to watch a vlog or, oh, I want to watch people, I want to watch yapping. Because there is an audience for it. Don't get me wrong. But... for the thumbnails i would go cleaner because by the way the way you're currently doing the thumbnails you're having the text overlap into the timestamp anyway so the thing is they're you're you're obscuring half of the word vlog anyway so i don't think the word vlog in the thumbnail is that meaningful when like half of the it's and then aside from that the curse of text is illegible in many cases anyway because if you're looking at this on a phone it's not readable So I just don't think it adds much there. The overall quality of the videos seems like it's about where it needs to be, especially for a smaller beginner content creator. And it seems like the aesthetic and editing is probably pretty good for a beginner. So no big commentary there. I would say that you also have a good consistency cadence of like one to two videos a week. So no need to change anything there. The main thing I think is just, I would want to encourage you to keep trying with this, but also keep trying to improve here because again, there's not enough or a lot of content to comment on right now. So the main thing I think you're looking for is what are some glaring obvious mistakes? And I think it's the clutter in the thumbnails. um that's that so we can tell you that changing that would probably be very meaningful and the encouragement of what you're doing right is you have good overall editing and production you have um you've clearly been able to attract an audience and titles are a very important part of that probably the most important part of that so don't feel you have to change your titles just because of my normal recommendations for that if you feel that this is giving you a little bit of a boost as a new creator that you wouldn't have had otherwise. I can live with that because it isn't hurting you. And it has to be that your titles are working because the thumbnails are not strong enough yet for that to be the answer. So obviously the thumbnails need to improve and we've been very specific about how they can improve. And I think that your upload cadence is fine. I think that for now you stick to what is working with your titles and your content direction. I feel like for you, a lot of this is also, you just want to have a community where you express yourself. I don't think the goal, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the goal here is for you to be a full-time content creator, which is more of what I focus on. But I think if you just want to have a community and you want to maybe get to 10,000 subscribers. I think that just more consistency at the direction you're heading in will accomplish that if that is what you're looking for. And there's nothing wrong with doing content creation as a hobby. It's just not necessarily the advice I give just because my stuff is more career oriented. Should the thumbnails be less photos? Full-time content creator is a goal. Well, a full-time content creator is a goal. then the first thing is to get to 10 000 subscribers i think you're capable of that but after that you might have to figure out um what would get you from 10 000 to 100 000 and can you accept the changes that that might require and that that might become less about expressing yourself so again people say they want to be a full-time content creator i'm like Do you want to be a full-time content creator if it means you get to express yourself less? Because it's very hard in many cases to become a full-time content creator purely on you get to do whatever you want. Full-time content creator is a career. And careers inherently come with some level of compromise to achieve. And so it's very rare for expression. to be compatible with that. So just a grain of salt. But should thumbnails be less photos? Less photos in the thumbnails because I think that it's just too cluttered. I think the thumbnails should be intentional. And if it's lifestyle content, again, think Instagram, think magazine spreads. Think Instagram and think... um magazine spreads definitely want to cater to my audience because i understand it's not about me okay cool so then you have the ability or potential as long as the execution is there um as long as there's a market fit it is possible but you've already hit a thousand subscribers so the first thing to consider is now um the move to uh 10 000 subscribers but yeah but the main thing i want to do is encourage you to be consistent and to make small changes in the aesthetic of the thumbnails and to move more in that direction. I would argue here the value proposition is just showing an older audience that they're represented and that they can see themselves reflected in content. and that they can find interest and shared interest in these experiences and these things that they would like to do and have in their own life. I could see someone like my mom watching this content. So I think that what this represents is cozy content, and cozy content isn't just for young women in their 20s and 30s. There are older women that are looking for cozy content to watch. on the internet. And so that's the value proposition to someone like my mother. To some degree, it's the same reason she watches Auntie Donna. So there's a value proposition for a female-centric audience that wants cozy content, aesthetic content, and yapping. I literally believe someone could market themselves to a female-centric audience saying, come here for cozy content, aesthetics, and yapping. I genuinely believe that. I wouldn't be shocked if someone got to a million subscribers just saying that that's what they're about, to be honest with you. That would probably be a younger content creator, but I could see it. I literally could see it. But yeah, those are my thoughts for Faith Marie Unscripted. And so I think it's a strong start, especially with less than 100 videos. I think that that's actually pretty good. So what do you guys think? Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? I think that the titles here, there's something working for them. So maybe don't deviate from the direction and strategy there. But I think that the thumbnails could be stronger because the titles are carrying them. So the potential could be increased by better thumbnails that are cleaner, more posh, more aesthetic. And I think that taking inspiration from magazines and Instagram. is probably ideal there for a female centric audience but what do you guys think do you disagree or agree with me would you do anything different let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay let me know in the chat if you're watching live all right so we got one more channel and i think my voice can handle one more uh so we have zoloq which i think is a returning channel review so let's go ahead and bring up the zoloq so um Guide, build, slay. Very cool. Yeah, I do believe we've reviewed your channel before. I mostly play survival games, management sims, rhythm, and base building games. So let's see. Very strong views on some of these recent videos. Good overall layout of playlist on the channel to see what content is about. Very good. Good banner and profile pick here. Nice work on the latest thumbnail, honestly. Very intriguing thumbnail. Good depth. Good typography. V-Rising's horse rework is genius. All right. So that tells very clearly what it is. Would have probably used a stronger drop shadow on the V-Rising logo just to make it stand out for the background a little bit there. but maybe i'm nitpicking on that one um the gameplay for um let's play nightingale that didn't the the that series as a series is not doing as good as uploaded videos maybe for a long tail let's play series you stick with them as live streams And maybe you make the Let's Play series live streams instead of doing them as regular videos. Because this performance, when compared to your V Rising videos, your V Rising videos are just absolutely crushing it in views. And your Nightingale Let's Plays... are barely cracking 100 views or not cracking 100 views, despite how long you've done the series. And I get that you probably enjoy playing it, but I feel like there's a lesson in general. And if we look at your Let's Plays, your Let's Plays are severely underperforming. I would do your Let's Plays in live streams and leave the replays of the live streams up. Since you like doing variety gaming, do them as live streams, do the commentary and do them all as live streams and leave the replays up and available for people to watch and leave it for discovery. But other than that, do these other videos that are performing. You have made videos that overperform and do so well for your channel. Stick to doing what is working. These Let's Plays, you do them because they're fun. I'm not entirely against that, but they're not working as uploads, and the editing of them may not be worth it. I would do them completely as live streams, exclusively as live streams. In general, Let's Play content isn't really hitting on YouTube. You probably grew up with it and watched Corey X Kenshin and Markiplier and Jacksepticeye. and pewdiepie and all the greats but like aside like even they aren't hitting for views like they used to with that um people would rather play games than watch people play games some people still get views on it like the rad brad but um we know what to expect and that we're gonna get a great um gameplay and let's play from the rat lad brad and again people grew up with him so they'll watch him they'll watch um zach scott they'll like so um You win on these things like build ideas for the rising and you win on these. You get so many more views than you have subscribers when you make this stuff. I would just make this stuff. And if you want to do Let's Plays, I would stream them on YouTube and Twitch and leave the replays up. That is probably the strongest advice that I can give you here because you have so much potential if you just focus on what's working. I feel like for young creators and gaming creators that the push to make what you want interferes with making what works because you have stuff here that is killing it. And you could just do that. And you could just do that. But the, oh, I really want a community and I want to do Let's Plays and I grew up watching Let's Plays. It makes you do things that work against your success. You would just have more success focusing on these type of videos because you are getting more views than you have subscribers. I don't feel like it's worth it to edit videos that get 100 views when you can edit videos that get 3,000 views. I think you can still make content out of the games you are playing by just doing them as live streams and then having those for your community. and having the playthroughs and finishing them and doing it live and then you don't have to edit and so you can kind of have your cake and eat it too that way and it would just make more sense in my opinion i think your updates and guides have so much view potential and i don't even have to think about i can see it the numbers don't lie the numbers don't lie these are good numbers these are numbers any small youtuber would kill for so your big thing is you're holding yourself back by forcing what's fun on your audience instead of giving them what they want so as harsh as that is um these numbers don't lie and you are you have so much potential if you lean into what your audience wants um versus the you know stubbornly pursuing let's play content you are beloved for making guides and helping other people play the game instead of them watching you play the game so i and i don't think that's the worst thing that could ever happen to a small creator to be honest with you so i think that that really is the answer for your channel and therefore i don't have as much to criticize here to be i don't have a lot to criticize because there's something you're doing that is not only working it's over performing over performing by quite a bit okay and then you have something that's drastically underperforming and i think the contrast is that the videos you like making most perform the least and that the videos you like okay you don't hate it perform better than everything else and the thing is um there is a lesson in liking the thing that likes you back. So I would learn to fall in love with what is rewarding me instead of wishing that I was rewarded for the thing I'm in love with. You say you think it's the pacing of the tutorials and that it's extremely thorough. Well, yeah, a lot of people make terrible gaming tutorials because they're let's players that. are not really good at let's play but they make terrible tutorials and people don't have good tutorials so they watch them and get views but they complain in the comments whereas i think you have the opposite issue i think you have the opposite issue where you make really good thorough tutorials and people aren't as interested in your gameplay so i think that's the uh the key here yep exactly so the thing is you actually make good tutorials so my thing is i think you should lean into the fact that you make such good thorough tutorials and guides that save somebody from going out and buying a guidebook and i agree with gabe in the chat that you could probably take what you're doing and make bigger swings with outlier ideas and i think a good example of this is you should look at a channel called skip the tutorial And you should look at some of the way they've done titles. Skip the tutorial is really good. You should look at the way they've done titles and see if there's a way to make similar video titles for videos and use those as ideas for different games, for different games, right? And by that, I mean the games that your audience likes, the survival games. So Skip the tutorial mostly makes videos right now about Minecraft. take viral Minecraft titles and then try to steal the ideas of viral Minecraft titles for survival games and reconfigure them to work in the context of your survival games. Yeah. I don't think worrying about popular Let's Plays, because the truth is popular Let's Plays are popular because of the creator usually being an established creator. It's very rare for popular Let's Plays. to break out from a small channel unless it's a brand new game. So I wouldn't worry about that. I would say with your tutorials, create outliers around that. I think it'll have more legs. I also think tutorials are more evergreen than anything. So I would think you can milk those. So those would be my thoughts. But do you guys agree with me or disagree with me? Let me know in the chat. Or if you're watching the replay, let me know in the comment section. Yep, so that's it for tutorials. We are closed. We have a question here I didn't get to answer. I don't know. So let's see. The question is from a channel, I guess, called Born 100 Years Too Late. They say, I got 9,000 views on my last live. Wondering how I should follow up with that. Baseline is usually over 20,000. I only do one video a week. Should I go twice a week even if the views are lower? If you go twice a week, you can make up for any deficit in views and the potential of the video to perform better later could be there. So I don't think it's the worst idea. Yeah, I think Zolo's channel has a potential. I think that it's just sometimes hard to let go of underperforming content if you enjoy the underperforming content. Trust me, I've lived with that one myself. The good news for my underperforming content is it's outweighed by how much revenue it generates. So there is that. Yes, I also agree with Gabe here. Also worth considering that tutorial idea can be too niche versus casting a wider net with a concept that appeals to more viewers. No, I agree with that. I also believe that not all gaming guides are tutorials, but some of them are videos that explain concepts or mechanics of the game or explore facts of the game. For example, videos that are about glitches and patches do really well. 15 glitches in so and so you can exploit. 15 secrets that most people don't know about. Things like that. Secrets in the game that people don't know about. Weird facts that people don't know about for the game. Exploits in the game. glitches in the game those things do perform and get views in almost any game you make them about also explaining game mechanics or lore to new or returning players also works in gaming content yeah um i've watched the zelda videos too where they find ways to break the game i agree so yeah so i i i would genuinely agree with basically all of that. And by the way, if you guys are looking for outlier videos and everything like that, don't forget, you can check out our friends oneof10.com. If you use code Roberto at checkout, they get you 50% off on your account. And this is the best way to research outlier videos, both in titles, thumbnails. You can curate an inspiration gallery. of videos that you um that you want to research you can find videos in any niche it's actually one of the best research and strategy tools you could possibly buy as a content creator and so i swear by it and the reason i swear by it is because i've actually used it with my clients and we've actually used it in channel review demos to show how it works before so make sure you're checking out oneof10.com Link is in the description. Use discount code Roberto and they will get you 50% off. Thank you to our friends at 1of10. They actually sponsor a lot of our channel review live streams. We're going to be working with them all this year. So that's actually really cool. So happy to show them a little love here on the stream as we close out the evening. But yeah, that's it pretty much for tonight, you guys. This was a good stream. We got in more than 10 channel reviews. I think that it was very interesting to see. such a variety of channels and uh we've done something we haven't seen in a while which was a couple of different vlogging and lifestyle channels um i think there was some really interesting guidance there um i think that vlogging and gaming channels are some of the most challenging types of content to navigate and do and i think that there are a lot of struggles that conflict with just how much you enjoy making something versus what is working there um i think that can be difficult to navigate and sometimes it could be um very challenging to figure out what if anything to do differently or to let go of but hopefully we were able to help a lot of the uh creators when it comes to that But that's it for this one. Thank you guys for watching. We're going to close out and you're going to learn a little bit more about Awesome Creator Academy and the work I do with people in one-on-one coaching as well as the Academy Pro Group where we meet every Tuesday and Thursday. So you're going to learn a lot about that. Stay awesome. We have a workshop coming up this Wednesday that you want to stay tuned for. It is part 12 of our YouTube beginner. workshop series for creators under 20 000 subscribers uh the wednesday workshop we're doing this time will be the complete strategy for everybody under 20 000 subscribers and how to grow those of you who remember when i got 20 000 subscribers 14 months later i was able to grow to a hundred thousand subscribers after that so i believe that getting to 20 000 subscribers is particularly meaningful most people cannot do it so uh we want to make sure we cover that And then we're going to try to do these channel reviews again next Friday. As long as my voice is holding and my stamina is intact, then we'll do another round of channel reviews. Other than that, you guys, stay awesome, and we'll catch you on the next one. Becoming a content creator can be a very lonely process and adventure, but it doesn't have to be. When I first got started going from zero to 100,000 subscribers, I had to do it all by myself. I didn't have a community of like-minded and like-hearted creators to talk to or to ask for advice, and I certainly didn't have a mentor to guide me along the way. I built the Awesome Creator Academy Pro Group because when I was getting started, what would have meant the world to me is not to have to struggle alone when it comes to being a full-time content creator. If I had a community of creators that I could talk to and share information with, I would have avoided a lot of mistakes in my early career. And there would have been opportunities with brand deals where I would have gotten a better understanding of how to negotiate. And I wouldn't have undersold myself. I wouldn't have been taken advantage of in those early situations. So in the Awesome Creator Academy Pro Group, myself and our co-instructor Andy Rivera, we meet twice a week for office hours with our creators and we share information. We talk about how we're building our creator businesses and we offer constructive criticism and critique on the things that we're working on for our projects. You'll be part of a community of usually around 100 like-minded creators who are taking this seriously just like you are. You'll also have all access. as a pro group member to all of our past, present, and future courses, training, templates, digital downloads, and swipe files. You have full access to our creator blueprints where you'll see our systems and the frameworks that we use to execute. You know, you always fall or rise to the standard of your systems. A lot of people really underestimate how important that is. We have digital download templates that can help you so you don't have to start with a blank canvas. These done for you files are actually incredibly helpful, especially for things like your thumbnails, your media kits, and anything you need for your branding as a content creator to look professional. We have email swipe files that help you with reaching out to brands. We have great information in helping you price yourself and build your packages appropriately. And remember, as part of the pro group, you have the opportunity to ask questions from myself and all the other creators participating. And so this means that if you need to. Ask questions about negotiation or a brand deal. There's something you're not sure about. You're trying to find a better monetization opportunity with merch or affiliates. You have people who have done it before or already making money that you can reach out to for advice. As I said, when I was starting out and I was flying solo, this is the thing that I wish I'd had the opportunity to be a part of and it would have made all the difference in the world in helping me be an even more successful content creator. If you have questions, you can always reach out via support. We're happy to help you figure out if the pro group is right for you. Also, we do have the opportunity to become a VIP member if you also would like quarterly one-on-one coaching with me directly. Now go out there and create something awesome today and hopefully we'll see you in the pro group. Take care.

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