YouTube Channel Reviews and REAL Advice for Small YouTubers

And we are live. Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake. Hope you create something awesome today. Welcome back to another Friday live stream. We are doing YouTube channel reviews once again tonight. We have 10 channel review slots open. If you're watching the replay, you'll definitely want to stay tuned where we do our live breakdowns of YouTube channels. We give one actionable piece of advice, tell a creator one thing that they're doing well, that we want to encourage them to keep doing. And one thing that they could immediately change that would help their channel and continue to see them keep growing. So we've been doing these weekly for a while now. We've been doing them all year. We've done them in the past. I believe we have publicly done about 5,000 channels live over the years. We leave the replays up so you guys can watch them and you can learn from them. We've covered almost every single niche you can think of in YouTube. while we're at it something that i was showing off a little bit before in a previous stream was um this thing that we do with the awesome creator academy pro group where we give them access to this audience avatar matrix we figured out personality types for 25 different type of youtube viewers or content viewers for your audience and we broke down i believe 30 different um things within that person's personality that would be a psychological trigger that would help them decide what kind of content they watch and what their expectations are so this is something that our awesome creator academy pro group members get right now we haven't figured out what other products we're going to include this in but i just wanted to show this off real quick because i think this is actually pretty dope uh we also came up with something similar for um which niches are the most profitable we have a niche profitability matrix and so we have all kinds of interesting things like that that we've been working on we've also been doing wednesday workshops for those of you who've been tuning into the wednesday live streams and you've been seeing us go over some of the more important things you would need to know if you're a youtube channel under 20 000 subscribers so we definitely encourage you to check those out we keep those in the live tab on youtube and we leave them up permanently you to go ahead and watch the replays of those so that's what we've been doing shout out to our friends over at one of ten by the way we had them on screen briefly here before but shout out to our friends at one of ten for sponsoring our channel review streams if you want to check out one of the best modern youtube tools ever you want to check out one of 10.com and they also now have a new feature with a title generator and a thumbnail generator so this is actually pretty dope the thing that i typically use them for with my audience is um the stuff around actually finding your niche neighbors and exploring that as well as looking for the outlier videos that are already performing within a niche so if you want to check them out we have a free trial for you if you use code awesome at checkout, and we also have a 50% off discount code, and I believe that's a permanent discount if you use code Roberto at checkout. So you wanna check them out over at oneoften.com, one of the most powerful modern YouTube tools, probably the best tool if you're trying to build out your content strategy and you're looking for growth opportunities, so would highly recommend them. We've got our mods in the chat. with resources and links for everything for you guys. While we're waiting for the channel review request to come in, since some people in the chat have indicated that they would like to do that, we have our mods making sure that we cover any of your questions so we can circle back to those. But while we're waiting, there is something I kind of wanted to show off here. So I am actually working on something. I am working on the Highlights channel, which is originally it started off as an experiment that I wanted to use to prove how YouTube will treat brand new accounts. So I did an experiment a while back. Some of you may remember when I did this experiment. So I did an experiment where I just started uploading videos to YouTube for, I think, 50 days. and I made a brand new channel from scratch, and I uploaded for like 50 days, and I didn't make a title, or, no, I made a title, but I didn't make thumbnails for the videos. So what I did was, I did a channel a while back where I uploaded for 50 days in a row. and what i did was i wanted to see how would youtube treat a brand new account if i just uploaded i started this um about two years ago two and a half years ago i was like what if i just upload videos and i do nothing but use the a clip in the video as a thumbnail what if i don't make a thumbnail so that we don't really benefit from oh i'm just going to click on this roberta blake video it's like what if i just posted youtube videos with really interesting titles to the best of my ability on a completely brand new account, never promote it on my YouTube channel, never promote it in my YouTube community tab, what would happen if I did that? And how would the YouTube algorithm treat that? And so we did that and the videos, there were videos that got hundreds or even thousands of views on a new account. So I was able to prove, oh, YouTube does not hate new YouTubers, and it does not hate new accounts, and that even videos where I don't make a thumbnail, if I make the title interesting enough, can get hundreds or even thousands of views just off of the title alone. So we did that, and interestingly, the channel was able to get hundreds or thousands of views and more views in many cases than subscribers. The other thing we found is if I look up and I show you guys the lifetime data on this channel and I show you where the traffic came from in the lifetime of this channel, the interesting thing is the channel's traffic was all algorithm based and it was not search, it was almost entirely the home page, suggested videos, channel pages, which was not me sharing it in my YouTube community tab at all. So this was almost all of the traffic was algorithm based. There was a little bit of search traffic. There was a little bit of referral traffic from other people that decided, I guess, to share it for some reason because they found it interesting. We did that, and the overall average percentage viewed of most of those videos was also pretty spot on. If you look here, the average view duration for almost every video was above 50%, and these were all unedited videos. These were all unedited videos. We did not do any fancy editing. We did not do any editing for the hook. We didn't do anything. except post clips from my speaking engagement, in-person interviews. This one was a YouTube short. We did nothing except for post clips from interviews and in-person events with no editing. It's just clips. So these all had an over 50% average view duration pretty much on every video. Every video's average view duration was basically above 50%, except like this one's 49, but you can see it with your own eyes. Basically everything for 50 videos was above a 50% average view duration. And I'll make this a little bigger just so you guys can see it clearly. Let's see, look at that. And we posted videos mostly under four minutes. And so that was what we did. Like you see most of the videos here were only two to three minutes long. They weren't YouTube shorts for the most part. Long form videos. And we posted 50 of these just to prove a point. So we knew that this was all algorithm based traffic. We go to traffic source here. And we do bar charts for traffic source. Browse features, YouTube homepage, overwhelmingly. was the traffic here, channel pages. So other YouTube channel pages or topic channel pages. So that was still the algorithm. And then it was suggested very little of it was search. So it wasn't search. It wasn't people looking for Roberto Blake. So that's what we did. Some of you are asking about channel reviews. We have the rules pinned and we have them posted in the description. If you want a channel review, we're doing them for $20 super chats. So if you're somebody who's interested in channel reviews, we have the rules down there. And so until we have a couple of those queued up, I'm just gonna run through some analytics and some advice for small channels here. But the mods have you covered. And so yeah, we're happy to do channel reviews. Let's see. Durante Lamar said, took your advice from last week. Fingers crossed. Yeah, good to hear it. So yeah, so when we go to the data, I mean, this is a small channel with like less than 500 subscribers that I grew from scratch on a whim during the pandemic by just posting unedited clips of longer form content that I had. So that was wild. And yeah. Let's see. Overwhelming majority audience was United States. So it's not like these were mostly foreign viewers. This was US, Canada, India. So what you'd expect. The demographics for this were what you'd expect. Heavily skewed male, more than my regular videos actually normally would be. And very skewed toward... Very skewed toward mobile devices. Somebody's asking me how many views and videos they take to get monetized. I was already in the YouTube Partner Program a long time ago. So aside from my podcast channel and my music channel, I didn't have to worry about that. But podcast and music channels are not a good example for you, Marcus in the UK. So my case study for that isn't a good example. There are other case studies for that. I'm not a good one because when it comes to getting channels monetized, I literally just cheat because we just figure out long form and podcast and multi-hour videos. So it's not really a good representation of whatever you guys will try to do. And I say cheat in quotation marks. When I say that when it comes to getting channels monetized, it's like I cheat. It means that we pick things we know can get monetized very easily. So we pick things that we know are ultra long form and that we know can think. And they will not be niches you guys would pick. So it's not a good case study. It's things you guys would not do. It's podcast. It's hyper long form style content. I do not do... I do not do things on the back end with the channels for, oh, I'm super, super, super passionate about this. It's like the things I'm passionate about, I do them offline for the most part. I do things I'm good at and things I like and things that make money and things that I see a demand for because I'm a little bit more ruthless. So I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not chasing butterflies. So I'm not a good example of, oh, this is how many to get monetized. We have a formula and a system for monetization. So the way we do monetization is if you watch the video that I made on 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, you'll see exactly how we do a formulaic system based on the concept of optimizing around 100,000 views and a four-minute average view duration by making at least 9 to 12-minute videos, usually 12 to 16-minute videos. 12 to 16 minute videos as a minimum optimized in a certain category. And then we optimize around the idea of getting 100,000 views as quickly as possible on those long form videos. And so that's the kind of the cheat code that we use. Yep. So we just go really hard in the utility. But yeah, so this channel, like I said, for example, we did that. Now something recently. that we just did is I started using the highlights from Opus clip. And so I decided to do an experiment with shorts to where we're going to try to do shorts for the next 30 days. I have all the way up until May 9th scheduled so far. But interestingly, we've been trying shorts, which we have not done a lot of on the channel in a long time. And so recently in doing shorts, We did one today, this morning, that's done 600 views, which is more views than we have subscribers on the channel. And that's from this morning. Yesterday, we did 171 views, and this is on a less than 500 subscriber channel. We did 116 views the day before that. Again, this is less than 500 subscriber channel. And then we have shorts that have done higher even than that. So we've figured out... that for a small YouTube channel and for a completely fresh account and even an account now, the new experiment is this account has been inactive for over a year now and we were able to start uploading it to again and start performing. So even taking a year off from this channel has not stopped it from growing. So that's yet another piece of YouTube myth and YouTube. um superstition if you will that we've been able to debunk so we were able to debunk that youtube doesn't hate small channels and will not refuse to grow small channels we figured out that youtube will give impressions to small channels so we uh determined that that was true that small channels can get reach so we were able to determine that Let's see here. And with posting new content, we were able to drive impressions again, even after all this time. So whenever we post, there are obviously more impressions whenever we've posted, but just starting to post again, impressions are coming back. It'll need more time to collect the data because this has data only up until May 1st. It hasn't counted for today, tomorrow, etc. There's a delay there. But we're seeing the revival of impressions come back after not uploading. And even without uploading, without uploading, the channel was still getting impressions. Was it getting a lot of them? No. But the nature of the content was so evergreen. that it was getting them and it was getting spikes. That didn't necessarily lead to views, but it was something. And that's for us having an active channel during that time. So I'm not upset with that at all, but it just proves that even if, like, you take time off... the opportunity and growth may not drop to absolute zero. Now, the longer you take off, this channel was inactive for a year, and before that, it was largely inactive for another year. So this channel's been in hibernation for two years. This channel's been in hibernation for two years. And even with that, it can still be revived and it can still gain opportunities and get views. This channel, again, is a fresh account that did not have subscribers. And people weren't even 100% sure it was my actual account. And we were able to do views on this without even editing videos. The videos were unedited. And without even making thumbnails, we just used a clip from the video as the thumbnail. So under the worst possible circumstances we could think of for the content, it still performed. And again, the average view duration on all the videos, even unedited just with clips, with an abrupt beginning and an abrupt ending, were all average view iterations of over 50%. The reason I'm showing you guys this and I'm breaking this down is I'm not doing it to brag. I'm doing this to eliminate the last of any of your excuses for why your channel cannot grow, eliminate the excuses that everything is the algorithm's fault, and eliminate the excuses of everything you think you can't do and all the reasons that the system is against you because we did a fresh account. We let the account die for two years. We uploaded videos consistently. All we did was upload 50 videos in a row and got it to 400 subscribers off of that. If we had done 100 videos, it would have been 1,000 subscribers and it would have reached the monetization threshold. I'm basically sure of that even with the content not being that long because I believe we were pretty good. Where is it? Show me that. Like if we had kept going, We probably would have hit the watch hours and we definitely would have hit the 1000 subscriber threshold with about 100 to 150 videos. We would have absolutely been able to do that if we kept up the daily uploads. There was no way that if we did it all year round that we wouldn't have hit all the numbers for the thresholds. So that kind of like proves the point right there that we would have done all the numbers we needed to. So, I mean, lifetime data. You know, that's what we got there. And if we just kept going, it would have absolutely did those numbers. And then you're like, if you're like, oh, well, that's because you're Roberto Blake for the Faceless Music Channel. We go to the Lifetime Analytics for the Faceless Music Channel. Lifetime analytics for the Faceless Music channel, and we posted quite a bit of content to this. I think it's much more than 100 videos. It might be close to 200 videos that we posted here. I think we posted 200 or so videos here. Can't remember. Yeah, we could do numbers on this. Even when this channel went dormant, we were able to revive this channel. So we almost hit the 100,000 view threshold that I talked about. 11,000 watch hours, and the traffic on this is the algorithm. The traffic source on this is the algorithm overwhelmingly. So let's see. Suggested videos, channel pages, browse features, playlist, search. So it's pretty evenly spread there. The most views and the most watch hours came from one particular song. Another song did similar. Sorry, that's not a song. That one was a live stream. Well, it was a 24-7 live stream type thing. But the next number of views was this song, and it did pretty good watch hours. We did a 10-hour mixtape. The mixtapes were the secret to the watch time on this one. um that was the answer this one has been dormant this one has been dormant and yet it still uh gets views even without uploads this is still getting views and still accumulating watch hours so that's like 90 days and we definitely haven't posted um anything i don't think in the last 90 days so again this channel not branded as a roberto blake channel this is a faceless channel and it's able to accomplish that um there are um things where we've done live streams um that we've looped song tracks to for this so it's a music style channel that does that but again you can see that it would accumulate again what it lacks in views it makes up for in watch time that's the hack to this is that even um a couple uh dozen views can be these binge sessions that are hours and hours which could rack up watch time. So again, it's kind of a hack to do that. And so that's how this one works. But even actual videos, if we sort videos by views, it did not do too badly. And this is a less than 2,000 subscriber channel. So again, these views are actually pretty good for the channel size. and for it being its own brand and for it being a faceless music channel that does original music and didn't really benefit with the exception of the squid game thing didn't benefit from using other people's intellectual property at all it was all original music so again a very solid uh performance on channel again more proof that most of the algorithm talk for people is excuses excuses excuses and that new channels can succeed, they can thrive, they can perform, and they can do it with original content and nobody else's intellectual property. We proved that they can do it without even, like thumbnails are important, but we proved we can get without it that when we do get clicks, we get over a 50% average view duration on another channel, the highlights channel, without editing and without anything fancy and without even thumbnails. So that was kind of a big deal. So like I said, the goal of showing you all of that before we get into the reviews here, because we have two of them queued up so far out of the 10, the goal here was just to prove to you guys that it is possible even in the current system to continue to grow and to thrive even if you are a small YouTuber. and there's no reason for you to believe whatsoever that youtube hates your small youtube account um it just is not a real thing and it's people uh taking things personally and being superstitious so there's that all right so uh for our first channel review up we're going to have our very own uh katie ukulele and then we're going to have um our good friend doug hewson and so we're going ahead with those for our reviews So let's start with Katie. Tutorials, covers, originals, and more. Almost to a thousand subscribers. Congratulations. You probably have the watch time, so probably all you need is the subscribers. You might be pretty close on the watch time. I don't think that the channel banner is bad. I just am curious as to whether everything you want fits on the mobile size, because I think you're like brushing right up against the margins there. but it's probably fine it's probably okay um if you're gonna have your photo in the banner which you could go either way on i would do a different one in the profile pic or you could ditch it all together and just have the text and center it so you go either way on that uh smart to have your buy me a coffee link in there for monetization uh you say you're 50 of the way to okay you have a featured uh video here on how to play the ukulele um this is one of your more popular videos so smart how to tune and play a ukulele um i think this auto plays so i'm not seeing what the thumbnail would be for it because i think this just auto plays uh so i can't judge the thumbnail for that one um off of that then you have your most popular videos and then you have your videos i would beef this up a little bit with one or two more playlists as far as a homepage, but no other major criticisms for the homepage. Let's go ahead and go to your videos and look at the potential for thumbnails. I thought you had more recent videos, but I could be wrong, but this is a pretty strong showing from you even on these recent videos for this year. So, I mean, that's actually really well done. And by just doing beginner-friendly tutorials for people trying to learn the ukulele, you've seen that it works. If you could get out a video a week, I have no doubt that you'd continue growing because these are pretty good views for a channel with under 1,000 subscribers. So I think the main criticism here would be if you could get to... Two videos a month, if not two or three videos a month, if you could get the weekly, maybe you batch them and you make three videos or four videos at a time on your day off. If you could do that, that would help. You say the thumbnails have been what's won in the A-B testing. Okay, good for you with the A-B testing. I think that... The poses in these are fine. I think this one was actually really good with the close-up for you doing chord changes. It's a contextual thumbnail, so I think that's smart. With the rest of these, I think they're good enough. I think they're basic. I do think if you're gonna show the chords, that maybe you could make those bigger in the thumbnail if you're gonna have them in the thumbnail. And they don't need to be as close to your head there. I think you still need some work on layouts and text. This one with start playing the ukulele today isn't bad. Again, could be a bit of an improvement there. I know you're probably just using Canva. These old thumbnails don't really need to critique them. You already know what the deal is with them. That's why you're improving now. So with what you've been doing the last couple of months, this is heading in the right direction. You're seeing a response to these things. You're seeing a response to these things with the views. The Roundup by Blues Traveler, the covers are not going to do nearly as well as the tutorials. You can do them if you want, but I feel like when you do them and they don't perform the way you'd like that you might get discouraged. So I would just say if you could do a couple of more tutorials and get consistent at that, it would warm up the audience a little bit more. For covers though, since covers can be... since shorts can be up to three minutes, since YouTube shorts can be up to three minutes, you could always consider just doing covers as shorts for three minutes if you can find songs you want to do covers for that are up to three minutes. So you could always do that. But yeah, the big deal here would be consistency. Yes, the thumbnails can be improved, but they don't need to be drastically improved. But obviously... There's still some room for growth here as far as the text and the positioning, but this latest thumbnail is really strong. So if you can just make sure that you're continuing to improve at thumbnails and you can improve your consistency, that will do most of the work for you, if I'm being honest. So that would go a long way. For watch time, if you want for watch time, Take advantage of vertical live streams and maybe consider doing a live lesson as a vertical live stream, teaching people live how to play the ukulele. And that could improve the watch time since you're 50% of the way there. As far as watch time, since you're right around the corner from subscribers. To just push Katie over the top, fellow mods, if you want, hit the subscribe button. uh to just uh push katie over to 100 sorry to 1000 um just to encourage her a little bit but um yeah that's um a strong showing in terms of two months and i think it's definitely improved i think you were at around 800 subscribers before so this is a strong improvement and more importantly these views are very good views for a channel your size, in some cases more views than subscribers, and much stronger than what your previous views were by far. If we go back, with the exception of easy happy birthday ukulele tutorial, that one, you know you could do another one and you could probably do more than three chords for that one. That's the kind of cover, the things that people want to hear are probably um things like that if you look up guitar tutorials where they teach specific songs you can just find the ones that have a hundred thousand to a million views and do them for the ukulele so um there'll be holiday ones there's the birthday ones there's holiday ones um and how to play those on ukulele will probably do extremely well but if we just look at all of your overall channel and its views You have the strongest and most consistent views you've ever had on your channel right now over the last two months. So very well done. And keep up the good work, Katie. So that is my review of Katie Ukulele and what she's been doing with her channel. And I think she's made a lot of progress. Again, like I said, I think it's the strongest back-to-back concentration of views she's ever done. she's really close to getting the thousand subscriber mark she's halfway on the watch time according to what she's saying here in the chat so i think that this does a lot right i think that the thumbnails can be improved upon by studying what's working on guitar channels and then applying that to a ukulele channel i think that just with the advice we generally give on font and design and layout that that would go a long way but i do think that using the close-up on the cords was the right move for the latest thumbnail but what do you guys think do you agree or disagree with me on this review would you guys do anything different let me know in the live in the chat if you're watching live and let me know in the why do i space out there let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay so yeah that was uh my thoughts there we have a super chat question here from happiness hacks Do you think reaction videos could be good for my channel reacting to videos of older folks talking about their biggest regrets and lessons learned? It depends on what the goals are for your viewers. So with the goals for your viewers, and I believe your viewers are in career development, I don't know that hearing from old folks about their regrets would necessarily be the answer because I'm trying to remember Happiness Hacks. Wasn't your thing career development for professionals? Because if so, then I don't think reacting to older folks and their regrets is synonymous with the value proposition for that audience avatar. So that's my thoughts around that one. Let's see here. And then we have Doug Hewson's channel. Doug, I don't think we've ever reviewed your channel before, but we'll do it right now. All right, so we have Doug Hewson's YouTube channel. Doug Hewson, creator advice for YouTubers, tools, tips, tutorials, and news weekly. This overall banner is actually pretty strong, Doug, so well done on that. I wonder if it should say for small YouTubers. Eh, I think for YouTubers is fine. The blue and the way you're doing the shades there is very strong. I would do a secondary pose for this profile pic though, just to differentiate it because it gets repetitive there otherwise. So other than that, I think this is pretty good. I help YouTubers better understand YouTube so they can make better videos. I would probably focus this value proposition here on I help small YouTubers learn best practices as beginners so they can grow. I think by focusing on small YouTubers in this, you'll attract the audience you're most suited to. And that's looking for the advice that you want to give the majority of the market, as you well know. You already know this, Doug, less than 3% or about roughly 3% of channels have 10,000 subscribers. So you already have... more subscribers than about 97% of creators on YouTube. So if you already have over 10,000 subscribers and 97% of people on the platform don't, I would just target small YouTubers and it's the biggest audience you could possibly have by focusing on those folks that are under 10,000. So people under 10,000 would be like what you would focus on, and I would call that out more. So people under 1,000, people under 100, people starting from zero, people under 10,000, people trying to get their first 500. I would really focus very explicitly, Doug, on that. In fact, I would also say... I love that you have a recent YouTube feature additions and then YouTube channel moderation and teaching people that. I think that you should even make sure you do an update to these so you could show people that you also have a subspecialty in the monetization side. You got such a good response on the live streaming stuff. that I would also do a subspecialty in that, Doug. So I think subspecialties that your audience responded to is live streaming and live streaming tools. I think you already know that there's so many live streaming tools that people get confused. They need tutorials and want tutorials for all of them. I think that that could actually really help you. So I would start covering tutorials on OBS. i would cover tutorials on meld now that meld is a new thing stream labs stream yard restream like basically all of them and i would also make a tutorial series doug around vertical streaming specifically there's a lot of new people looking for that and every feature involved with that um so i would say it's another specialty for you um YouTube Shorts was another good subspecialty to you. So yeah, I think there's these subspecialties for you. I think that for the monetization side, you need to be focusing on monetization updates around that and that you need to make sure that those are always up to date. Because with this playlist having everything two years, two years, two years, it feels like it's a little out of date. Creative Breakfast, that's your show with Chantel. So like very strong there. Community clips. Nothing wrong with having that there. Channels you recommend. All good there. Yep. And let's go into the videos tab here. Thumbnails like this one on the shorts are very good, very strong. This autodubbing one I think was actually pretty clever. I don't think this is actually doing bad. I think you need to be consistent on weekly uploads, though, if you can. But I also think with the content buckets I gave you to focus on, that that makes the most sense. Your branding and themes and thumbnails overall are actually pretty strong, Doug, so I don't have a lot to complain about here. And a lot of them are actually pretty unique. So yeah, my thoughts are, if you look at the things that people respond to the most on your channel, it's these very very helpful beginner friendly tips and even some of the old stuff i think you should do new versions of for 2025 and you should refresh some of these ideas people have a recency bias even if you've done something before but it's been years make an updated version every year or two because people have a recency bias and they want to hear something that they believe is current now and if it worked in the past there's no reason it shouldn't work again so I would say that. And then helpful things on individual fixes and glitches and bugs that people complain about in the community. People are talking about it, complaining about it on X or Reddit. You know that there's an audience for it. So I think that you should kind of look at why your best hits were your best hits. And I think you have these subspecialties that you're ignoring focus on. And I don't think you need to be doing generalized YouTube advice. I think that your subspecialties are actually the strongest. By the way, there's not that many legitimate, credible people around shorts and vertical streaming advice, nor around a lot of the live streaming advice besides Harris Heller. And he focuses a lot more on hardware these days. even than software and tools and not a variety of them, and not tutorials that are straight up tutorials. So I think that between shorts, streaming, vertical streaming, community management and moderation, these are very focused subspecialties, and I also think settings. So I think that you have six really strong content pillars. I just don't think you focus them on them enough. And I think you need to focus on doing one video a week and filling out more of these content pillars and making some of them more recent. So that would be a lot of my advice here for you, Doug. Your fundamentals are strong. Your fundamentals are actually really strong. You have the capacity to get views. You just have to focus on making the content. that gets views because there is an arbitrage opportunity for you in the fact that there's undervalued attention in focusing on YouTubers. Believe it or not, most advice that people are putting out isn't that useful or helpful to people with zero to 10,000 subscribers. It's not, even though they're the largest market of viewers. A lot of people are not specifically focused on that. If you always and forever make your focus the creator under 10,000 subscribers, you will not struggle to get views because that's 97% of the market and it probably always will be 90 to 97% of the market. So I would focus there and then I would look at these specialties that you have and I would play to all of your strengths. I don't think you need to make, and I'm not suggesting you are, but I'm saying you don't need to make the videos that me or Nick or Daniel are making. You have a market all of your own that you can capitalize on in a way that a lot of us can't. Even making videos about the most basic beginner YouTube features, do you realize how many new creators there are every day that don't know how to do something as simple as a pinned comment or even how to auto-generate subtitles or delete a video. There's gonna be people who don't know how to turn on the auto-dubbing feature. I don't think I've seen a good tutorial about how to clip YouTube videos, about the clipping feature and how to use it. They're not really good tutorials around the new community tab feature. They're not... So like... They're not credible tutorials, and those of us with 100K or more subscribers are not making tutorials around basic YouTube features. There's been a long time since anyone's done a updated tutorial on the YouTube video editor. I don't know that anyone's recently really shown anyone how to use the YouTube audio library. So the other thing is, because you are a smaller channel, but you have made it, and have accomplished what 97 percent of channels haven't you have enough credibility to a small youtuber a small youtuber isn't going to turn up their nose in my mind at someone who has almost 12 000 subscribers when they don't even have 1200 subscribers and think that they can't learn from you and we've seen the evidence of that because of all the videos that you have that have um large view counts here and so you know this is uh pretty strong and pretty impressive overall doug but i think you can grow if you focus on these strengths and you build out these content pillars more robustly and if you spin the block and redo some of your best hits and do them for the new age and realize that if people are looking for this back then they're certainly looking for it now and that there's ways to capitalize on that So that was my review of Doug Hewson's YouTube channel that focuses on advice for beginning YouTube channels. What do you guys think of Doug's channel? What do you think of my critique and this idea of playing to your strengths and also focusing on things that have been proven to get an audience response? I think that there are videos that Doug has that have tens of thousands of views on them, 30, 40, 50,000 views on them. that could use a refresh could use a makeover for 2025 and they're still relevant i think there are literally ideas that there's a way to get a five video series out of i think that there's software here that collectively could drive a couple hundred thousand views to the channel if he focuses on some of these softwares to help people with live streaming help people with shorts shorts tools is a completely undervalued market in my opinion vertical live streaming undervalued market of attention not a lot of details to help people with vertical live streaming and vertical live streaming is huge on youtube right now and i think that if doug makes multiple tutorials and tools and toolboxes around new youtube features that he'll always be able to get evergreen views off of those especially with new creators learning the system so those would be my thoughts what do you all think let me know in the chat if you're watching live and let me know in the comments If you're watching the replay. Boom. Hope that helps you out, Doug. I think that that makes sense for what your channel is. And I think that, again, you're strong on fundamentals. I think you're good on titles, thumbnails. I think it's the topics and timing that need some tuning. But I think we just figured out how to solve for a lot of that. So let's see. We have another channel here. Looks like we have a total of five channels queued up. So we got half of the channels that we're going to review queued up here. Nice. We've got Dominic DeTanya next. Then we've got Chantel Hills. Then we've got Yu-Gi-Oh Boy. And those are the five right now. We have five more slots open for channel reviews tonight. Let's catch up a little bit with the chat. Yeah, small YouTubers are constantly rotating too. There are things that some people yeah, some people just want a different personality sometimes if they think things are getting repetitive for them So yep, there's definitely always an opportunity all right, so we've got a couple of these queued up All right, so let's do Dominic the Tanya, and then we'll do Chantal hills so Dominic the Tanya Let's see subscribe for high five Dominic I would change this about section subscribe to five high subscribe for high five doesn't mean anything to anyone it's an opportunity to tell people what you're about and what you're doing and you don't have uh what you're about and what you're doing in your banner you don't have your upload schedule so someone comes to your channel they have no clue what to expect or what you're about or what you're doing so i feel like it's no offense to you but like subscribe for high five completely meaningless throwaway line there um i do think that this picture is really cool but if it doesn't play into what the videos are about it's a missed opportunity but it looks like you mostly do um man on the street style video content so that's great and if you're uploading very consistently i would just like to know that schedule man i'd like to come here have somebody recommend your channel and know what it's all about so i mean i think that's a missed opportunity uh let's see You got regular videos you got shorts. I'm assuming most of your views and subscribers come from shorts Let's see what your most popular videos are though So okay, oh gee youtuber and then you came back to it. All right So your most popular videos not relevant to the channel. They're there for nostalgia totally get that No big deal there. So what we'll do is we'll go to your shorts Because that seems to be the bread and butter. There's nothing wrong with that. So It looks like you're posting shorts pretty consistently. I'd assume that you're posting shorts one to three times a day, which would be the right amount. And with your shorts content, I'm assuming that some of your videos went viral. Yep, some of your videos literally went viral. So I think that you definitely, if you haven't already, should focus on turning all of your most viral things. into series if you haven't already. The Would You Rathers can also link together with the related videos feature. So with the related videos link feature, I would actually daisy chain a bunch of Would You Rathers together and link them together so that people can binge watch those. Take them out of the regular Shorts Feed and into your Shorts Feed. So that would be a hack you can use. When it comes to a lot of these shorts, it looks like you're doing a good job of using the most interesting frame of the shorts. Having a specific type of or interesting facial expression is also really good. But these overall have been doing pretty well for you and they look pretty strong. I would try, if possible, to go to three shorts a day. Because with three shorts a day, you could... Increase your odds of an outlier viral video by 30% just by virtue of doing that. Because you have videos that have gone big before. So why not? So I think that for you, it directly just increases your odds by 33%. I don't see a downside as long as you can sustain that. I think that locations... looking interesting at a glance could be very good but like it seems like you have a very local place that you're doing its work for you so I wouldn't deviate from that too much people love these man-on-the-street real-world style things if there is a way to incorporate a challenge or contest element into those A lot of people respond to those and a lot of people share those. With shorts, you want to not only take advantage of the shorts feed, but you want to create things that people will share. You have a copy after me. I would definitely do some Simon Says stuff, obviously. But the thing is you want something that people will share in WhatsApp and in DM groups and in text messages. And so I think that's a big key to expanding. um the uh growth capabilities of the shorts because these aren't necessarily going to be searched or searchable so what you want is shareability more than anything but overall here i think you have a great system and i think you if you can go to um 3x per day and then i think that for long forms uh for long form videos actually let's see if you're doing vertical live streams oh Do vertical live streams. Don't bother doing gaming streams. Just do vertical live streams, IRL. Do some IRL vertical live streams. People will tune in for that and they will throw money at you. So you have the boardwalk. Come join me on the boardwalk. That's great. So that's much better. Yes, thank you. Come join me on the New Jersey boardwalk this summer. Perfect. Thank you. So what I would do is I'd be doing IRL streams vertical. These titles are what are dooming your long form. So what you need for this is asking strangers blank. You need things like asking strangers or talking to strangers. um you need things that are more interesting you need gen z reacts or asking gen z kids this or asking gen alpha this or asking boomers this you need things that people can immediately identify the um the audience member and you need things that are reaction worthy and that are um to some degree bingeable So I would say that that's what you should do for the long forms. And I think that that would improve things. But overall, solid channel that takes advantage of your environment. Congratulations on growing to 28,000 subscribers and also proving that it's never too late to become successful at YouTube. I mean, you started this 18 years ago. You didn't necessarily have a lot of growth back then. You were still figuring things out. And now you have a channel that's actually growing and getting views and has had a couple of viral videos. So well done. But yeah, that's my review of Dominic de Tanya. What did you guys think? I think the content itself is interesting. There's nothing wrong with growing primarily off of shorts. The long form isn't being hurt by the shorts. The long form in this case, in my opinion, is being. hurt by the fact that the titles cannot be easily understood people can't identify with them can't identify the value of the video and why it'll be interesting or funny so i think that if people can understand the title then they can click on the video in this case i don't have an issue with the thumbnails for the long form i thought that they were fine i just feel like it's really a titling issue of i don't understand this video i'm not going to waste my time um meanwhile scrolling and finding those shorts really funny stuff if someone shares that with you in a text message you're going to watch it so i think that that is where you can go i also think that incorporating the vertical live streams for irl content on the boardwalk would be very unique here and be interesting i think people would watch that in real time and see what's happening So those are my thoughts. Let me know what you all think if you're watching live. Let me know if you agree with me or if you have a different approach that you would use. If you want, you can also watch the replay and let me know in the comment section. Boom. Granny Gems says that was great. Yeah, clarity is often better than being clever. Yeah, no problem, Dominic. It's better to be clear than clever. Even with your titles, you might think, oh, I'm driving curiosity, mystery box, mystery box. Most people... I hate to break it to y'all. Most people in America, third to fifth grade reading level, they aren't clever enough to figure out your titles. It goes over their head. Whoosh. I'm sorry. People are not that bright. It's just, it is what it is. I'm sorry. And I hope that. No, I'm not going to apologize. If that offends people, then it's like, then if that offends anybody, hit dogs will holler. Most people in America, third to fifth grade reading level, everything goes over their head. They barely understand sarcasm. So yeah, if that offends people, I don't apologize. I apologize for nothing. Sorry, not sorry. If that's you, hit dogs will holler. So no, but the thing is knowing that you can't be coming out here with these clever. titles and creating some J.J. Abrams mystery box for people to figure out. You have to spell things out in plain English for them and that's that. Plain speaking titles. Primary example is I'm doing a case study right now where I'm studying, you know, a hundred viral videos at a time and their titles and I'm reviewing it and the titles that get millions of views have a third to fifth grade reading level or lower. Almost unanimously, over 80% of the viral titles that I've been studying, and eventually this case study will be 1,000 titles, I've been studying these titles, right? I've been studying titles to find the predictable patterns of what makes these things viral. The overall majority of them are under 60 to 70 character titles. They usually... don't use multi-syllabic words it's down to one to two syllables per word on average which is wild uh the reading level is about roughly third to fifth grade reading level or lower on average for over 80 percent of them um they're under like 60 characters like i said most of them most of them under 60 characters more than 50 of them are under 60 characters 80 of them third to fifth grade reading levels or lower and um Average one to two syllable words, very rarely three syllable words at all. So it's crazy how much dumbed down titles produce viral video views. It's absurd how much that is the case. So like I said, I'm studying title word counts, syllable counts. on average per word number of words in title on top of number of characters in title reading level um fletch readability score overall i'm scoring um about i think right now we're only scoring eight criteria on each title and it's just become bloody ridiculous at this point so um eventually i will publish this case study somewhere the majority of the case study will be paywalled we'll probably release a 100 titles case study publicly we'll paywall the 1000 titles case study and um that'll probably be for my uh pro group members we might include it in the nine dollar a month creator vault when we release the creator vault we're just gonna have like a bunch of my pdfs and uh some curated ad free videos um things like that But I think that when you really analyze what makes a video clickable, accessibility to understand the idea is one of the most undervalued things by content creators. Most content creators do not focus on how easy it is for the viewer to understand and comprehend the idea that they want to communicate. fully appreciate or are still neglecting so that's kind of my point of view on that so we have a question from thanks kia question roberto i'm focusing my business on digital marketing for commercial cleaning businesses my current youtube channel has focused on my previous travel business should i delete it and start over if you want to do a digital marketing business for a commercial cleaning business i wouldn't delete the old youtube channel i would just start a fresh youtube account i wouldn't bother worrying about deleting the other one i would just start a fresh account Clean database, peace of mind, no baggage from the previous endeavor, and just start fresh, and that's all you need to do. Monica Bellamy, I met you at the Anaheim Conference. Hey, what's up? What's the currently most disliked or downloaded, downvoted video? It's probably either YouTube Rewind, something political. It might be the video PewDiePie wanted people to dislike, or it might be right now. The Disney Snow White trailer. So I think I'm almost positive that might be the Disney Snow White trailer. But I could be wrong. It might be something else. But I think that it ranks. I think that it ranks up there. It could still be YouTube Rewind 2018 or whatever. I mean, I could probably, if I really wanted to attract exactly the wrong people, I could probably get people on X. to make it a viral meme to make the Disney Snow White trailer the most downvoted video on YouTube. I could probably get that going, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to abuse my power that way. I'm not going to waste a viral moment on that, but I probably could. Probably could. I think we answered Happiness Hacks' question. Savvy Tech Tips wanted to know... Question, Roberto, does anyone know how to get an AI bot for streaming? It has a GUI and everything. You probably just use Nightbot. I think you can use Nightbot and there's Streambot. Kaya asked, should my new YouTube channel niche down to commercial cleaning business owners or focus on service-based business owners? Good question. I would focus it on service. based business owners and then you just use the cleaning businesses you help as case studies so i would focus on service-based small business owners but then you use your um the cleaning businesses you guys work with as your case studies so from a marketing standpoint that makes sense yep shocking cost tv thank you for the 15 or 15 euro or 15 pound not sure what that is uh super chat appreciate you And if I'm not mistaken, that's a super chat, just a super chat, right? Let's see. So next up we have Chantel's channel next up. All right, so we have Chantel Hills, live streaming community and education. This is actually a solid banner. Just check and make sure that you're okay with the cropping on the mobile devices. connected televisions and on desktop, but I think it should be fine. Really solid photo and overall background here. Very well done. And then a really good profile pic and background as well for this. Hi, I'm Chantelle Hills, a live streaming community specialist. My goal is to... I would actually cut out the Hi, I'm Chantelle Hills part. It's your name and it's your channel right there. So... um i would just go with uh i'm a live streaming and community specialist here to um help you take the stress out of streaming you can even lead with i'm here to help you take the stress out of streaming i'm a live streaming and community uh specialist and then all your other stuff there so i'd probably order it that way um let's see managing moderation tools well done with featuring this as the featured video on the channel very smart congrats on 30 000 views on this over time i mean look at this guys i mean again your subscribers have nothing to do with the views you get i keep telling you guys this um chantelle has 30 000 views on her featured video she has less than a thousand subscribers um so yeah for everybody who thinks oh small youtubers don't get a chance to be seen it's just not true it's that a lot of you are not doing things that will get a response um so oh yeah on the home page i would flesh out um nope you've already done it actually um you have the appropriate amount of um content pillars here fleshed out as far as the playlist. What I might do though is I might top some of these off and make updated videos to top these off so that the first few videos we see aren't as old. Let's see here. Yep. And if you've done anything with special guests or if you're planning to do that again, again, I would re-up that by the most recent ones. I think that'd be helpful. Most popular content on this channel, smart. Chantel Hill's current videos. Right on. This is smart in terms of this community tab video. I think it's just that you need to update more often, and I think there are new features that you could tackle. But I think you were doing fine with these, and I think these thumbnails are pretty solid. I would just increase the variety of your poses to use. But, yeah, I think these were fine. Um, yeah, I don't think there was anything wrong with the, um, recorded videos that you were doing. Um, and I think the views on these were fine. I think you could just come back to doing this content and this style of content. Um, as long as you can put out two of these a month, even, um, I think it'd be fine. Weekly would be ideal, but two a month is fine. For shorts, I think that doing things that are basically questions being answered and doing like an appendix of just answering a question in as short a time as possible, meaning questions that you know a thousand people would have, I think is probably a good idea. And then I think the titles for the live streams need the most work. And I think the thumbnails could have more variety in them. You could take a lesson even from my thumbnail since you're doing creator education. But I think the key to the live streams is the titles need to answer for a specific problem. Remember what we said about preferences, problems, and priorities? Think about what those are for people. And you have evidence of that with your previous videos that were successful. So then I would reverse engineer that and I would start planning your streams accordingly. Even consider doing a theme for streams in a month kind of like I do sometimes. But yeah, I think that that would probably have the most impact and most value for you. So yeah, I think we covered the main formats here. So yeah, those are my thoughts, Chantel. I think that very similar to Doug, it's a matter of topping off. your content pillars with some recent content. I think there are areas of focus that you've been proven to be able to get a response in. So I would double down on those things. Yeah. So I mean, that's what my thought would look like around this. Also, obviously, when you can, the consistency is ideal. So yeah, overall, a very good foundation here. And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the fact that you've done 117 videos and you've gotten 579 subscribers. I think the big thing holding you back is just the lack of overall video uploads. There probably might be some unlisted or private videos in the background here, but it's really just the lack of the consistency on regular traditional YouTube videos. But I think if consistency can... improve there and then thumbnail variety and poses can improve there then I think that that's key I also think again super friendly beginner things that seem simple will obviously get views and grow you go and look at even doing a new version of Like Tim Schmoyer doesn't make content on video creators anymore. There's a lot of things he made that are evergreen that could use an update in the new version of YouTube. That'd be a good source of foundation for you of just remaking a bunch of those videos. And then that would do well. So those are my thoughts on Chantel Hill's YouTube channel. What do you think? Do you guys agree with me? Do you guys think there's anything that could be done differently? than what I suggested? Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Let me know in the chat if you're watching live. You hate having your photo taken? Yeah. I mean, you'd be shocked at how much I consider it to be a necessary evil to do it, but it is. So I just do it. I don't hate it, but I'm not in love with getting my photo taken, believe it or not, surprisingly enough to people. I mean, I'm a photographer. I prefer to be behind the camera. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing to be nervous about and everything like that. I haven't, um, I don't think I've ever like done a review in recent memory where I read someone, the riot act, not that I can remember. Uh, plumber payday has a question. Plumber payday says, um, should I, should you wait for sponsors and brands to reach out or should you pursue them plumbing channel in general? My belief is that you should, um, Farm and hunt, meaning that you should do outbound and inbound marketing in any system. I do not believe in waiting for things to come to you. I think that when you're serious about something, you shouldn't be passive and you should aggressively pursue and go after things you want. You want opportunities, shoot shots, go out there, be a hunter, go get it, eat what you kill. So I believe in that philosophically. It's no different with sponsors. That's why I have an outreach protocol. I even made it in the... uh brand deal starter kit if the mods want to post a link to the brand deal starter kit and our 20 off coupon for that uh that'd be great for some people but yeah the brand deal starter kit one we list 100 brands that we know work with creators we have reviews of PR and talent agencies I've worked with on a non-exclusive basis. So you know what to expect if you work with them or ones you could reach out to that will find you deals. I have made direct relationships for 90% of all of my brand deals of all time. I've done hundreds of thousands of dollars in brand deals over the years. Brand deals is my largest source of YouTube income, contrary to popular belief. It's not... courses even though there's nothing wrong with that people who say that oh if you make most of your money from courses then you don't actually do the thing and everything like that no idiot it's that if you build something that has scale because you can sell units products outpace services unless you have a government contract products scale and make more money for someone than services unless you have a government contract that's why mr beast can make more money shipping feastables around the world than he can from youtube ad revenue or sponsors call him a fake youtuber like he makes money off of a product it's just not a course um but products always scale to outpace services because services are beholden to labor in linear time and products are not. They're deliverables. If a product is infinite, which is what a digital product is, then it also has no units, no refrigeration, no shipping, and no physical limitation in the real world. It's why musicians do more units because of digital downloads and streaming than they could if they sold tangible records, or if they did concerts, unless their name is Taylor Swift or Rihanna or Beyonce. So it is what it is. I digress. My point is, with that digression, is that Brand deals are the way most content creators make their real money, myself included. And the thing about it is that you should pursue brand deals as well as attracting them. If people come to you, great. When people come to you, there is a certain amount of leverage. But when you choose brands to reach out to, it's not a forfeit of leverage either. In fact, you also have a better chance of getting what you want when you actively pursue. i would use that strategy and one of the things we did with the brand deal starter kit is we put together resources for outreach emails because a lot of you even if you knew okay i found a contact and reach out to the brand love you you're not copywriters you're not great at emails we tell you we give you um email swipe files so we write the basic email for you the goal is always at least what i teach in coaching is get them on a Zoom call, close them and do the negotiation on a Zoom call. You will always make more money closing on a call than you will closing on an email. So the goal is always to get people on a call. If you could literally go to an event and get a handshake deal in person, face-to-face, that's even better. Handshake deals are the best deals. You can go to an event on a weekend, have a contract in your hand by Monday. So face-to-face is the best way to negotiate. You get paid the most face-to-face. Next best thing is a Zoom call. Next best thing after that, phone call, worst thing, email or DM to close the deal. You set up the call in the email or DM. You're doing cold outreach that way. If you're smart, you warm outreach that by sharing stuff for free in social media and tagging brands and promoting them for free. first to give them a sample and so the social media teams know you so that when someone says hey has anyone ever heard of so and so before they just reached out they go the social people on comms can go oh yeah they share our stuff all the time they've been a big supporter and everything like that oh yeah um they do all kinds of great stuff for us and everything yeah send them a a review unit send them a free reunion send them a gift package oh yeah um whitelist them at least talk to them for the campaign next uh quarter absolutely so you want the social teams to vouch for you so a lot of people are afraid to do free work for brands if you literally um promote them in social, a repost or retweet cost you nothing. If you mention them in a roundup where you have to make like review five or compare five products anyway, mentioning a brand and then tagging them in social and saying, hey, I mentioned you, you're one of my favorites or you made my list. That's helpful. Let the social p... teams vouch for you have people in the organization vouching for you saying nice things about you knowing who you are that way when you do an outreach it's not that cold it's kind of warm to lukewarm then if that first outreach is just asking for their time and not asking for something more than their time that's a really good impression to make then once you get them on a call you can get them to like you a lot easier than you would be able to build any rapport via email so that's the whole that's the whole thing so um that's what i teach in my workshops that's what i teach in my coaching calls um most of the people who've done one when coaching with me it's usually monetization stuff it's not just oh growth or strategy even though that's been helpful but a lot of it is people come to me for coaching consulting around their brand deals um scaling their youtube operation and building standards and building out the SOPs and the org chart for hiring their freelancers. They now have experience with that. And they've helped people do that, setting up channel management protocols, setting up the employee handbook, the payroll with gusto, and just helping them really become a business. So it'd be things like that. Yeah, some people definitely come for strategy. Others, their workflow is atrocious. And there are people that have been able to save eight hours a week. by fixing their workflow. They had no idea how to use their tools properly and they were wasting time and no wonder they couldn't barely get a video out a week. We got people going from one video a week to three videos a week because we took their editing from eight hours of video down to two hours per video because they just didn't even know how to use their tools properly. We took somebody from spending five hours on thumbnails to one hour on thumbnails just because. he didn't realize that he should be using a drawing tablet instead of drawing it with his mouse and his workflow went from five hours to eight hours to make a custom thumbnail to being one hour to the point where now he also um is going to take up some extra work doing thumbnails for people in his niche and now he's going to make extra money on top of saving the time so like these are the problems that i help solve is i solve problems largely around uh time money and operations i absolutely can help people with strategy but most people think that that's all there is to youtube you could be getting views and you could have a solid strategy and you can have all these other things wrong and the thing is if if you get 8 to 12 hours a week back then for some of you that's going to be why you don't get divorced over your youtube channel you know i'm joking but not joking uh retired life um mexico says where did you say you learned about how to do vertical live streams i mean i already knew how to do vertical live streams because i've been doing them on periscope meerkat and uh facebook live before um it became a thing on youtube and tick tock and so on so i already knew how to do it and ira have tools but doug hewson if you go to his youtube channel has some really good information on that so we reviewed his channel you can go to doug hewson he's in the chat he's one of the mods he can direct you to um his tutorials around that yeah uh you'd be surprised how many creators don't have their operations in order um and it kind of wrecks a lot of their life that that's why they don't have any uh boundaries they don't have work-life boundaries um they're overwhelmed they're overworked they're emotionally exhausted all the time and it's because their systems are a mess and they don't have their operations in place uh they don't know how to get help they don't know how to hire um there's just so many um things wrong in their systems and operations that um it's a lot and i'm not surprised i'm surprised i'm surprised that some of them manage for as long as they do to be honest with you in a lot of those cases because um it really messes with them um when people get that stuff fixed though a lot of them get healthy they get into like some of the best shape of their lives they get time back um their family is much happier uh that they're not so overburdened it's um you know when you can get a lot of these things fixed you'd be shocked at how important it can be. So, yeah. All right, so next review up is... We got Dekka, a.k.a. Yu-Gi-Oh Boy. Spoiler, I actually used to play Yu-Gi-Oh in the beginning back in the 2000s. OG, Legend of Blue Eyes, so I actually know the niche. I'm also Platinum Tier 2 in... Master Duel when I actually make time to play I don't play a lot I don't have a lot of time for it, but when I can't sleep I get in some master duel plays and I Molly what people and get myself up the Platinum tier Haven't got myself up to mythic tier, but I probably can if I actually try so I actually know the niche So for videos here here's the good news your thumbnails are actually pretty good They're actually very good But you should watch a couple of channels. Like you should watch, if you haven't, you probably are watching Super Unlucky. You're probably watching Team APS-C. And you're probably, yeah, it's Team APS. Sorry, Team APS. You're probably watching Team APS. You're probably watching Team Samurai. And you're probably watching CMO. So I would say... if you're watching those then you're probably in good shape um i'm seeing here though that i don't see a lot of content here around you did like one video well no that's not true you did a couple of videos on um blue eyes but i don't see like a um um a deck build here for pure blue eyes and i don't see a deck build here around um the isn't it the um the blue eyes ultimate spirit dragon and that's like very popular in the meta right now as well as the it's not the um silver eyes but there's a um blue eyes synchro uh monster right now and i'm spacing on its name but um i would definitely do that you were smart to do a video on the exodia engine um because that's really popular in the meta right now. The Primites was a good one to go in and like, okay, best engine to play Blue Eyes White Dragon with the focus on Spirit Dragon. That's why that video did well. So here's the thing. I think that there are videos that... can pop i think almost every video on your channel is evergreen your thumbnails i believe it or not you're going to be one of the few people who get a five out of five and a four out of five from me on almost every one of your thumbnails so that's not a problem your uh titles are fine because i understand the niche your biggest thing is topics and timing and i think that you need to um really be able to pump content around um new seasons in the meta And I think that also, I think that your real good series that you could make is easily summoning certain high-level monsters. So I think that for you, I think for you that it's going to be like easily summon Dragoon was smart. Easily summon Dragoon and Magia together, that was a really smart one. Easily summon Dragoon, Magia, and Buster Blader together, that was a smart one. But I think... easily summon for these individually um would be really smart um i think that people would um care about that so yeah your channel's off to a really strong start for how it's growing right now with 41 videos and also What you should be doing if you're not a Ray is you should be asking people to subscribe in the videos, but do it like two or three minutes into the video and say, hey, if you're enjoying this video, you're getting value out of what I'm doing, make sure you hit the subscribe button. I really appreciate it. Or hey, make sure you hit the subscribe video to not miss another video from me. If you're an OG, you get ahead. You gotta hit subscribe. Then people realize there's a reason to subscribe. And there's also maybe identity validation in the, oh yeah, that's me. I'm gonna subscribe because that's me. So you have to verbally do a call out for subscribe. It's not enough to expect people to do it. I know big YouTubers like to say, oh, you don't have to ask people to subscribe. They get it. No, they don't. People do what they're told. So tell them to subscribe. So I would do that here. I think the trial is strong. I think you have one of the strongest foundations for a channel that I've seen in a long time. This channel has very strong bones, and I think that it'll do well over time. I think the key to this one is really pumping out the content. I really do. I think that at 100 videos deep, there's no way this channel doesn't basically hit monetization requirements once you do 100 long form videos, for sure. And again, I think the easily summon is the key to a lot of this. And I think focusing on things that are... um definitely um popular in the game meta are going to be key i also think though if you evaluate um the the what do they call them the packs and the gifts that they're doing in game right now um if you evaluate those and go oh what's worth it and if you um do some of that people could end up watching those i could see that being something that happens I think the deck profiles are really strong I think doing a ranking video of the best decks ranking doing a ranking video of the best decks per season is probably a good thing that you could do so yeah so those would be my suggestions for this one so Deka, Yu-Gi-Oh boy, that's what I've got for you. What do you guys think in the chat? I know this one is very, very niche, and if you are not a Yu-Gi-Oh player or a fan of the anime, you can't follow along as easily, especially if you're not a Master Duel player. But, you know, this one is... I mean, I'm the only YouTube coach that actually would know this, to be honest with you. I'm the only YouTube coach that would know this particular game, both in the TCG card game... and the online uh massive multiplayer card game with uh master duel and i'm the only one who deeply watched the original anime both subbed and dubbed i'm the only youtube coach who could have properly reviewed this channel to be honest um but anyway what do you guys think you agree with me do you disagree with me about my suggestions here let me know in the comments if you're watching the replay let me know in the live stream let me know if you're watching the live stream let me know in the chat No, why would you get ripped apart, man? Your strategy is solid. The views are solid. Your views overperform for your channel size by far. The thumbnails are strong, even among the biggest channels in your niche. These are four out of five thumbnails and five out of five thumbnails for sure. You understand what players in the game value. You understand the meta of the game clearly, so you're able to create value for your viewers. So that's obvious. These are clickable thumbnails. There's nothing wrong with the titles. You had views well exceeding your subscriber count. So I don't know why you would think I'd rip you apart. And you got 47,000 views off of 41 videos without most of that even being shorts. It was all long form. And you're not doing lazy content. Your videos are averaging 20 minutes. you do hella photoshop work you pose in your thumbnails you make unique ones you use tropes in your thumbnails from the show with holding the card right in front of your eye like you do all the things that would appeal to a genuine yugioh fan um so again i don't know why you would think i was gonna rip your channel apart there's nothing you're doing that terrible or wrong you could just be uploading more consistently and there could be some things that you have performed well with that you could do more of and then that would be good but there's nothing really to criticize harshly when it comes to um this channel like there isn't so that's all i mean you're one of the strongest beginner channels that i've probably seen yeah I think people are used to like the channel roast format because like big creators and people like Mr. Beast and Ludwig and and Eric, they do these things and sometimes they do them at events and everything called super roast. And there's a whole roast me thing in Reddit. There's a whole roast me thing in discord. So I think it's I think there's a culture of ripping channels apart when it comes to harsh advice. My harsh advice is realistic. And my harsh advice is still meant to make you do better, but not to like almost bully you or punish you into doing better or abusing you into doing better. So I think that's probably what the culture is. And that's no offense to those creators and their style is their style. And maybe they've attracted the kind of audience because I could see in a gamer culture audience that some slight bullying is like a thing, but it's like. people are supposed to know to have a thick skin about it in gaming culture i totally get that i grew up in halo lobbies back when it was a thing you know um so that's probably just the culture so that's probably why people expect that yeah but i'm probably the only youtube coach that would actually know like what this channel was really about and have any meta context on it because i believe i'm the only um to my knowledge i'm the deep um specific anime knowledge and very specific subsets of geek culture knowledge um so i think that's you know again none of that has any offense to anybody it's just that like if you guys have literally you've seen the props on my desk and on my wall and on my uh bookcase you you know that i'm like a really like uber nerd so like i have deep geek culture roots going back to like when i was growing up there was a hobby shop in my community and it was literally called the hobbit after the um book by jr tolkien the hobbit um you know which is prequel to lord of the rings i literally might be the only youtube coach and educator that knows warhammer lore and warhammer 40k lore and you know understands if you said the imperium of man i know what that is if you say the chaos gods i know what that is i'm probably the only one who was uh a warcraft 40k um tabletop player and model painter i'm probably the only one like that yugioh magic the gathering and pokemon probably the only one um some dnd so like when i say i have like um deep deep culture lore i mean and then i like i literally know absurd levels of um anime and manga lore I'm probably the only YouTube educator that knows what a mangaka is and knows beyond Akira Toriyama, who you could say, like, well, who's a big creator in, like, you know, anime and one of the OGs. Ken Akamatsu. I'm probably the only one who knows who Ken Akamatsu is. You know, famous mangaka from the, like, 80s and 90s, who eventually became a politician in Japan, if I'm not mistaken, which is really interesting. I know who Oda is. I know who Kishimoto is. want Tanabe so I would know those things yeah and I'm probably the only one probably the only one you could pick that would know that all right so we have shocking cost TV and then we have storybook song I think we have but three more slots left oh and yep yeah I think we got three more slots left So we have shopping sorry shocking cost TV anime gaming pop culture unreal tech meets real money we calculate what it cost you To make your fantasy reality interesting premise. I like this logo. I like this logo Says what it is in the banner. Okay again. This is another channel right up my alley so So let's see, you have Shocking Cause series, do the channel binge here, very smart, popular videos. And then you have Dragon Ball videos because it looks like you originally were possibly a Dragon Ball creator or that that's your main anime that you like. So this is actually a really interesting concept for a channel. I would also study, there's a channel that's called Overanalyzing Anime. You said you recently rebranded unlisted older videos that didn't fit the vision. So any gaps are from that. And you've been refinding and condensed your videos into two pillars so far with the core being your shocking cost. Excellent. Like from a pillar standpoint though, the pillars could be the types of thing that you're analyzing in terms of cost. So one of those could be, you could focus on, for example, on Mecca. so you can think of your pillars as playlist one of them could be mecca and then another one could be weapons and then another one um could be super weapons and then another one could be um you know rare items so i love this how much would a real uh dual disc actually cost this was brilliant So very good there. How much would a real Gundam actually cost? So here's the thing. I think you could do this for, you know, comparing even multiple Gundam series. So here's another pillar for you. You can do how much things actually cost. Here's another one. You could do ranking videos on explaining to people what's the most expensive. You could also do versus videos. on which thing cost more so you could think of it as a death battle you could think of it as death battle from screw attack but instead of analyzing their weapons armor and skills to find out who would win a death battle you could analyze their um materials labor and genuine cost to find out what's the most expensive so um so i would say in addition to how much would it cost which is what's more expensive is another one what's more expensive like or what cost more if you want to simplify it what cost more so let's find out what cost more so i would be curious as to um what cost more to build a gundam or big o um because what were the what were the meccas called in big o i'm trying to remember But you could do the different you could actually even do what would cost more a Gundam or a veritech fighter if you want to OG and go to Robotech slash Macross so that one is You know crazy The thing is What would cost more a band blade or a dual disc that's a thing like here's another one With the Yu-Gi-Oh stuff, you could actually do a thing on, like, the most expensive. Like, you could do the most expensive, and you could, like, it's like, who had the most expensive deck in Yu-Gi-Oh? Who had the most expensive deck in Yu-Gi-Oh? Was it Seto Kaiba? Was it Maximilian Pegasus? Was it somebody else? Was it, yeah, was it, uh, Yu-Gi-Moto? Was it, um, yeah, this one? Was it that one? um was it merrick ishtar who had the most expensive uh like who had the most expensive deck in yugioh in real life like that would be something okay so there um you have it um you could do which spaceships are more expensive or how much uh in addition to that how much it cost which spaceships would be more expensive here's one that um people would like how much would it cost how much would the ft-s1 in macros actually crop cost how much would um the outlaw star actually cost to build um that one would be um huge um let's see i mean what else um could you um do um in terms of shocking cost how you can do the property damage from different anime you could do the property damage from different anime Think about this. Imagine racking up the amount of property damage in Akira and showing us the property damage in Akira. Imagine showing us how much property damage was done in different Dragon Ball movies. Oh, here's another one for you. Show us how rich different anime characters are and show us, break down how wealthy the richest person in each anime universe is. So the richest person in Dragon Ball is obviously Bulma Brief. right so how rich is she like is bulma brief richer than elon musk like we want to know um so who's the um who's the richest in each universe is something that people would care about that fits kind of with your theme of shocking costs so giving us the net worth of the richest individual and identifying the its richest individual in each universe in anime would be uh pretty dope Also, here's one. The most expensive item in every universe. So, yeah. So, in general, my thing is some of your thumbnails like this are really good. I give them a three out of five, four out of five. Your big thing is obviously consistency. You're doing a rebrand, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. My big thing is I gave you ideas for how to build out more pillars around this concept. And I think if you could just start banging out these that you will do very well. So the big thing for this one was we focused on video ideas for this because this is a niche that I'd actually be good at. This is a concept that I could work with. So basically this one just became a idea strategy session. But I think that that's appropriate for this channel because I don't think it'll struggle if it. at all if it just has these ideas and these content pillars to build out because it won't run out of any content if it has these pillars i think i came up with basically five key pillars here um beyond the existing um how much would it cost series i came up with a um versus series for which one's more expensive or what cost more um i came up with the uh richest person in that universe a most expensive item in that universe um and i think those were good i also think tallying up possibly the cost of the property damage could be like really interesting so those were like those five pillars that i came up with um for this content pillars and will always help you understand what what am i making or what can i be making and so you you'll have this unlimited idea engine if you have these pillars in place and then you go okay cool and so you just keep making uh content but what'd you guys think of the concept behind this channel i think is actually really good shocking cost tv i think the branding is good i think the logo is good i think the idea is smart i just think you needed more ideas potentially um and more content pillars and so i feel like um The ones I gave you could be really helpful. You could also get your audience really engaged and invested in this and they could give suggestions and do a lot of your research for you. You could get like teams of people in your discord activated around this stuff because nerds are just nerds. We will find this stuff. So I think that that's actually pretty cool. And I think that this could grow. I think this has some. real potential but what do you all think do you agree with me do you disagree with me let me know in the live chat if you're watching live let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay boom so there you go were there any immediate flaws in my thumbnails three out of five um it's um to some degree a lack of layout um consistency you're starting to get there though in the recent one so i don't want to harangue you there too much um it's mostly a concept thing but the capsule corp one was a five out of five uh so that was actually really good um with the dual disc one you have a bunch of the text on the right hand side um for no real reason and it hits the uh time stamp so i don't love that so it's the it's little things like that man no big uh jesse says yeah well i've just subscribed to shocking cost that sounds like something i'd watch yeah no me too buddy all right so we've got a storybook song this is an interesting type of channel so we're gonna check that out next so sing dance learn new videos every Saturday this is actually almost a perfect banner I love the logo for this the design is excellent storybooks song nursery rhymes and kids so I think that initially my first impression at a glance of this is this is actually very well branded very well put together 88 videos almost 7,000 subscribers this thing has traction already so I know that is probably really solid let's see okay good we've got everything muted here previews auto playing animation quality very good I'm actually surprised this doesn't have more subscribers. But the possibility why this doesn't have more subscribers, all things considered, because given the views on this, yeah, 2 million views, I think that the only reason this doesn't have more subscribers is because children are watching it and can't hit the subscribe button. And I think parents are putting this on for their kids. And I think that everything here is evergreen. So there's... And these thumbnails for what they are and what they're supposed to be are literally five out of fives for what the audience is for them. They're bright, they're colorful, they have the right amount of contrast, they have the pastel colors. In this case, it being branded is really good and important for the parents to go, oh, yep, that's the thing, and being able to do that. So I think that that's actually really smart. every Saturday so there's a good uploading cadence it looks like you guys missed a week but don't beat yourself up about that the views will stack over time let's reverse engineer the most popular here so those popular were obviously traditional nursery rhymes that would be in public domain don't be afraid to do more versions of these public domain um songs since they're the most popular and being able to take advantage of that also even if they are from a year or two ago don't be afraid to do an updated version or remixed version or just do another one um also for nursery rhymes like this here's a hack for you do loops of these things that are one hour long or two hours long so that parents can put them on for their kids um for a trip in the car instead of having to watch them one video at a time you'd be surprised by creating that as like a watch time hack of creating a um you know like one hour two hour loop of these and even mix tapes of multiple nursery rhymes and parents being able to put these on for 30 minutes an hour two hours four hours bedtime create a bedtime um version these and a bedtime and again I know you're thinking oh can't I just do those as playlist no make them as mixtapes so the parents can see yep that's a two-hour session oh that's gonna get them through the night that's eight hours they'll like be the whole time they're asleep or whatever do those you'd be surprised that will definitely help grow this and YouTube rewards watch time so I would definitely say that that would be to your advantage here You're doing almost everything else right. But when it comes to song-based channels with replay value, you want binge sessions. Like when I was showing my Faceless Music channel, it's the binge sessions that do it and make things stronger. And it's the fact that people can watch those, or rather listen to those 8-hour, 10-hour, 12-hour mixtapes. So... Having remember as the oldest of four kids what it's like to have to put on the nursery rhymes, and even I remember my own childhood as a kid with my parents, and what they would do is, again, they would put on these long binge sessions. We had cassette tapes back then, so they would literally have mix tapes with my favorite stuff, and they'd have Big Bird and Teddy Ruxpin and all these things, and I'd listen to them until I'd fall asleep. or I'd definitely listen to them in the car on the road trip. I had my own Walkman so that I didn't have to annoy my parents. So they gave me my own Walkman headphones and made me feel like a big boy. So again, just reverse engineering, the situation of parents would improve the situation here in terms of being able to have more growth. But that also allow you to increase the cadence. Also, it'll allow you to have people just put this on the television and have it stay on your channel for a very long time because parents will put this on a smart TV. So that's the key here. So I think that that is what will make all this stronger. I think this is off to a very strong and healthy overall launch for the channel. and that you've been able to get it consistent. I know you started the channel a long time ago, but now is when it's consistent. And that's what's paying off here. And you've got some great outlier views. You need to just tap into some of these things a little bit more. And again, the strategy that I'm proposing lets you get out and repurpose the content you already have beyond your new Saturday uploads. So this will allow you to take advantage of your existing inventory. And the good news for you is I actually have a music channel, so I know how this works. Other thing is with the mixtape slash albums, if you're doing this as a music channel, you can release those on music platforms as well and get a little bit more mileage out of your distribution. Yep, so those would be my thoughts for you. That's what I have for Storybook Song. Great channel name, great brand. Great logo. Great character design. Great thumbnails. Doing a lot of things smart. Again, almost to 7,000 subscribers off 88 videos. Very smart approach to this overall. Weekly Saturday releases. Solid animation and production behind this. I think this is a winner. I think this is a winner. I think it has growth potential. My thing is, create the bingeability. Build in the bingeability. Reverse engineer the needs and problems and preferences of parents. And if you reverse engineer the needs, problems, preferences, and priorities of parents, that's a win for you here. So that would be what I have to say about that one. But what do you guys think? If you're watching the replay, do you agree with me? Let me know in the comment section. Would you do anything differently? If you have any thoughts and you're watching live, let me know in the chat. Boom. There you go. Yeah, I'd say that's worth the price of admission for sure. Appreciate you, Jeremiah. 2.8 million views. Yeah, very strong. so we did seven channel reviews uh we have three more slots here um you know we might call it an early night though that we're uh we're two hours in so if we don't have another one come through uh soon in terms of a channel review we might call it an early night this stream not brought to you by saratoga sparkling water yeah no problem appreciate y'all no it was deliberate yeah for kids channels i typically expect lower sub counts because The kids don't know any better. They don't know how to subscribe. Sometimes the parents don't even know how to say, hey, I need to subscribe to this. So for kids' channels, not surprising that the disproportionate ratio of views versus subscribers there. So not surprised, really. So KatoTV says, question, Roberto. I host a podcast on my channel. That starts with a five minute countdown as an intro. When my podcast is done, should I cut out the five minute intro? Yes. Yes. It's not doing you any favors. It does not have any additional value for you. Excuse me. Yeah. Now, I actually am pretty tired. So I think even though we did, we did seven channel reviews. If there are no more, we're doing last call, last round. If there are no more. um i'll take questions from the chat until i'm done hydrating with this water when i'm out of saratoga sparkling water um then it's over so it's closing time so it's closing time so here is the last of my saratoga sparkling water you have until the ducktales glass is empty to get in any final questions or channel review request Yeah, I'm just reviewing the DuckTales. Woo-hoo. Yep. I'm just reviewing the chat here to make sure there's nothing important that we've missed. Chat on the road says, thanks for another good show tonight. This birthday boy is off to bed. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate you, chat. Happy birthday. Okay, why are we drinking Saratoga sparkling water? That's what we got here. It's actually surprisingly good. I literally got it for the meme, but it's actually pretty good. It's been helping me make sure like just finishing and polishing off one of these during a stream has made me to where, you know, I'm making sure I'm not straining my voice too much. I'm getting hydrated properly. So it's actually really helpful to just have this big old giant bottle here in front of me and knowing that I'm going to empty that out. And that as a result of doing that, I'm going to be hydrating through the stream and I'm going to get through that. So it's like, so it's really good. For just being hydrated, especially for these late night streams to just have that and just make sure I'm getting enough water. Which water is in here? How much does it tell me? Does it say how many ounces? 28 ounces. So yeah, so I'm getting like 28 ounces of water whenever I have this. So I think that's pretty good. Surprised you don't see a Star Wars cup sometimes. Most of my Star Wars stuff is in the basement. I have a decanter that has my scotch in it. And it's a Stormtrooper decanter that my sister bought me. And that has my scotch. So that's in the library. So that's in my library study. You guys have seen the photos of my library in the basement over on X. And so I have the Star Wars decanter there. I actually think I have Star Wars glasses. I think I used to have a Revenge of the Sith glass somewhere. Fernando says, Questioner Roberto, do you believe certain children know more than parents who work might have axed earlier if they answered right? Great show. They might. Depends. If they're smart and precocious, then probably. Yep. My best friend's birthday is coming up right around the corner here. So I ordered her a theatrical movie-sized poster, 24 by 36 Revenge of the Sith theatrical release poster. And I know she's going to end up literally framing that and putting that up in her house somewhere because she's a big old nerd. I also got her... an r2d2 tamagotchi um and then the other thing i got her was a game of thrones um tumblr that says i drink and known that i drink and know things so uh those were my uh three uh gifts for for uh this particular birthday um what she got me for christmas was a vintage lincoln park uh t-shirt and there were some other things, but the big one, the big standout gift for me was the Linkin Park t-shirt. And then Andy, Andy got me, for my birthday last year, Andy got me a Linkin Park album. She got me the Hybrid Theory album. Yeah, I have the, I bought myself the 20th anniversary edition. of um the hybrid theory album with all the bonuses and um the cassette tracks the vinyls i have a record player in my library as well so i have a record player and sometimes i'll break that out or my brother will break that out i have a 20th anniversary edition of evanescence's al uh premiere album as well um so i have that yeah rest in peace to chester absolutely um so i have i have that i don't know if there's a deluxe edition or do i own the deluxe edition anniversary edition for meteora um i may or may not i don't remember now and then i don't know if there is a um anniversary edition for reanimation uh because that's the uh anniversary edition like yeah if there's one for reanimation i definitely need to have that one Okay, so actually, I think the anniversary edition one I have is Meteora. Yeah, no, wait. I have the anniversary edition for Meteora and Hybrid Theory. Yeah, because in April 2024, I purchased the anniversary edition $174 for Meteora. So I did get it for Meteora. and i believe i also got the 20th edition for hybrid theory absolutely i got that and i think that one was a couple years earlier so i have those so i don't have the anniversary edition for reanimation but i don't think they did one i don't think they did one for reanimation but if they did i would own it Yeah, I'm not a materialistic person, but there are things that I like that I'm willing to buy or collect. And all things Linkin Park are definitely one of them. ADHD Life Now says, question, I did an ADHD packing video about two years ago. It was mainly talking heads. Should I do one demonstrating the packing as an update to that video in 2025? Yes, absolutely. You absolutely 100% should. 100%. yep yeah one of these days in the near future here I will probably for members only and maybe I'll post it to X maybe I won't but I'll do some kind of and I'm gonna do these on my Instagram stories I'm gonna do Instagram stories where I show you guys more of the library I might even do some Instagram stories I'm trying to do daily instagram content again mostly reels right now but that's easy from repurposing but uh i'll show you guys an office tour at some point that'll probably be members only content and also instagram stories content and then also i'm going to do one of the art studio in the basement i just have to clean up a little bit more and definitely the library which doesn't really require any cleanup right now and so i think that'd be dope Stepify says, Hey Roberto, been uploading to YouTube for some time now, have over 200 videos, but not seeing much progress. Any suggestions? Focusing on repackaging the titles and thumbnails, not only for existing videos, but prioritize it for new videos. Packaging decides views and make sure you're asking for the subscribe two to three minutes into the video after creating value. Also, 200 videos is not... as that much we have seen people grow off of 100 videos but 200 videos is not as much as you think it is especially if you spent those 200 videos trying to figure things out versus like creating the best content possible so keep that in mind all right glass empty we have the salon guy coming in under the wire with a question here and then we're gonna wrap up so the salon guy hey roberto Don't need a review, but I used to make 8 to 10K in AdSense monthly a few years in a row. Now it's a table to 4K a month. What's going on with AdSense? Partly, I think it might be the overall decline in monthly channel views to some degree on your end, but also it is changes and fluctuations in the advertiser markets. So YouTube... there's not a such unless you're doing brand deal sponsorships there's no such thing as a steady youtube paycheck because youtube is built on advertising advertising is a live auction marketplace and since it's a live auction marketplace it's also beholden to market conditions seasonality so there's no predictable trend of revenue for youtubers aside from sponsorship and brand deals memberships where they keep their membership numbers high and churn low Other than that, all income is variable. Therefore, all income is unpredictable. So the thing is, there is no such thing as a steady YouTube paycheck. Creators will have that for limited points of time where they feel they have a reliable paycheck. But in general, advertiser rates are beholden to market conditions that exist outside of your control. So the only reliable steady income is long-term brand deals, long-term contracts. and membership websites with uh recurring revenue and low churn and uh things like that even affiliate commissions can get um slashed sometimes um for example i mean i used to make um three thousand no i used to make six thousand then five thousand then three thousand a month from tubebuddy and now basically zero um they decided with the affiliate program that all of us creators who helped build the brand again this is corporate this isn't phil phil sold the company this is corporate orders from above and such but they decide we made enough money over the years off of the value that we created for the company and for the people who are still paying to use the tool after all this time even after they did things that did hurt the brand a little bit and all the loyalty that we built up and everything we did for that but they uh decided that yeah you know what y'all made enough money already you know and they were like so they completely changed the rules of the affiliate program and so we didn't see um consistent revenue anymore from that and there were people making even more money from me than me and their money went like there were people who were making upwards of ten thousand dollars a month in passive income from the people they brought on to tubebuddy over the years in terms of affiliate link revenue um and people who still paid for the software their revenue went from 10 000 to zero like overnight mine went uh you know trickled down until um and then it went from 3 000 immediately to zero like overnight with like 30 days of morning youtube ad revenue is not that bad or ruthless a lot of times unless your views just tank but what happens with youtube ad revenues is a variable auction marketplace there's a writer's strike there's not movies and tv shows being made if you're an entertainment creator there's less ads if uh developers are having a hard time and you're a gaming channel maybe there's less ads if there are things uh and most of your ads are because of direct consumer and then all of a sudden direct consumer are having supply chain issues like a global pandemic oh all of a sudden there's less ads for you so um ad rates are dependent on things like that that are out of your control that's why there's no such thing as a steady youtube paycheck if you are making revenue from adsense that's why i believe in using uh youtube and all social media platforms as marketing funnels for off-platform revenue i think that um making ad revenue in my mind it's a young man's game it's a young woman's game it's a young person's game ad revenue is a young person's game as far as i'm concerned For the rest of us that are older, I believe that to some degree ad revenues are nice to have and that the real goal is sponsorships, your own business, your own email list, your own products, your own services, brand relationships, consulting. I believe that social media, if you're over 30, marketing funnel. If you're over 30, social media is a marketing funnel. If you're under 30. ad revenue and brand deals and things like that cool donations streaming cool um but for the rest of us i think we have to treat it like a marketing channel in a business So I think for the rest of us, we treat like a marketing channel in a business. Even if you're an older content creator and you're doing entertainment content, I think at some point you have to figure out a pivot to a buying audience or build a second brand or launch a podcast or something that can reach an adult audience that you could sell to and that you can get higher end long term brand deals with that aren't just purely direct consumer products. Because direct-to-consumer products have low margin. They rely on scale. And those things of scale rely on supply chains. Supply chains rely on trade. Out of your control. So those are things I think about. But yeah, so that's going to be it for tonight, you guys. Make sure that you come back next Wednesday for another Wednesday workshop. We're going to be doing week 10, I believe, out of 12. And you want to watch the replays of those. Stay tuned. Also, if you haven't seen my newest video, my newest video is what I would do if I was starting on YouTube today in 2025. The feedback on that has been great. I really appreciate it. The comments have been really good. um the video is one of those slow burns it's off to a slow start but the click-through rate on it has been solid the average view duration on it is solid every comment on it has been lovely and i think it's one of the better videos in terms of strategy that i've made so i feel like um it's a strong video would love for you guys to support and watch that it's the latest video on the channel also if you guys want to check it out make sure you get the book Create something awesome, how creators are profiting from their passion in the creator economy. Get that everywhere books are sold. The mods have the link in the chat for you. It's also in the description. Also, again, shout out to our good friends over at oneoften.com with the best YouTube strategy tool in the land right now. It's a modern tool. They've got strong modern AI tools for this. Again, try it before you buy it. Use code awesome get a 30-day free trial see if it even helps you see if you like it see if you can use it No pressure if you do like it or you just want to go ahead and go into it now use code Roberto And they give you a 50% off discount, and I believe that's a lifetime discount So make sure you check it out our friends at one of ten calm Thanks again for them for their support and how they sponsor content on the channel and these YouTube review live streams So shout out to them make sure you guys are also checking out our free creator foundations course they've got that one in the chat for you and we also have our free creator foundations discord if you're not ready for the awesome creator academy pro group if you're not ready for uh one-on-one coaching or anything like that check out the discord server and check out our free creator foundations course if you're someone that's under 10 000 subscribers so that's it for this one uh stay awesome we'll catch you the next time and as we exit tonight In the outro, you're going to learn more about the Awesome Creator Academy Pro Group if that's something you're interested in joining. All right, guys, stay awesome. We'll catch you next time. 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 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 a hundred like-minded creators who are taking this seriously just like you are you 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 who are 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 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.

YouTube Channel Reviews via Super Chat (rules in description)

We will do up to 10 Channel Reviews for Super Chats of $20+ 
Review will address titles, thumbnails, one criticism and one compliment, and one piece of ACTIONABLE ADVICE.

Any Super Chats after the 10 Channel Limit will be placed in a queue for next session (usually weekends.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - YouTube Channel Reviews and REAL Advice for Small YouTubers
04:11 - Experimental Channel
26:35 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Kati Ukulele
36:24 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Doug Hewson YT
51:21 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Dominic DiTanna
01:05:10 - QUESTIONS: Starting Over, Most Dis-liked Video, AI Bot for Streaming, Focus on Business
01:09:37 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Chantelle Hills
01:18:18 - QUESTION: Should Your Wait for Brands to Reach Out?
01:28:04 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Dekka29
01:41:09 - CHANNEL REVIEWS: Shocking Costs TV
01:52:40 - CHANNEL REVIEW: Storybooksong
02:04:04 - QUESTION: Cut out my 5 minute countdown after the fact?
02:14:10 - QUESTION: Remaking An Older Video
02:16:08 - QUESTION: Not Seeing Much Progress After 200 Videos
02:17:05 - QUESTION: A Sizeable Drop in AdSense Revenue