YouTube Channel Reviews and Advice for Small YouTubers in 2026

And we are live. Hey, everybody. This is Roberto Blake. If you create something awesome today, we've got another set of YouTube channel reviews coming at you. We've got about maybe three of them lined up already. So we've already got our channels that have submitted their Super Chats for review here. So we've got three lined up. We have questions in the chat. And of course, we try to do these on Fridays. I've been missing a couple of Fridays. For those of you who don't know, they're after VidSummit. I actually got a really bad case of food poisoning. Never, ever eat from the concession stands. Cannot stress that enough. It was not a good time. But I then went on to have several other stomach issues after that. I am fully recovered now and I am back. We're also going to talk a little bit about some YouTube updates that you guys need to know about. I might even walk you through a little bit of some things around YouTube strategy and also what's been working for some of my clients. A lot of you know that I've been working with a lot of clients, not only around YouTube shorts, but YouTube live streams, but I'm a long form guy. I'm a long form specialist. I used to be a daily content creator for like three years. In my peak and prime back then, I was crushing it. I was getting 12,000 new subscribers a month, growing by 100,000 new subscribers a year. Then we had the blessed pandemic, and you all remember what that was like. So anyway, we try to do these on Fridays if we can. Shout out, by the way, to tonight's sponsor, our good friends at... Oneoften.com, helping make these live streams possible. If you didn't know, One of Ten is the best YouTube tool for strategy for coming up with your topics and ideas, as well as your titles and thumbnails, and they can really help you out with that. We're actually next Wednesday going to be doing a full workshop on that on Wednesday for Workshop Wednesdays. That's going to be completely free for you guys because it's being sponsored by friends over at One of Ten. So they are helping us out with that. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk you through how to find ideas for your videos with that and how to never run out of ideas. I'm gonna walk you through some of the things I work on with a lot of my clients. So again, shout out to our friends at 1of10.com for helping out with that. You can get a discount on the 1of10 tool using code Roberto at checkout. So we wanna make sure we say thank you to our wonderful sponsor. Also, you guys should know that tomorrow we will be doing a stream with our friends from Opus Clip. We do those on Saturdays. I've been co-hosting those with my good friend Andrew Kan. And so a lot of you have been really excited about that. We've been talking about how to do YouTube Shorts. You guys may not know, there have been a huge amount of updates to YouTube Shorts from YouTube over the last couple of weeks. And something... that definitely bears mentioning there is YouTube shorts revenue has been increasing. And again, I've been advocating for what I call the shorts blitz strategy, which usually revolves around people uploading, depending on what genre, what niche of content you're doing, three to five shorts a day, if not five to eight. A lot of you always have questions of how much should I upload? How often should I upload? And we've been prescribing for a lot of creators three to five, five to eight. I've been showing you over on x.com a lot of my case. studies around this. We showed Jake's case study. We also showed LaMove Play's case study. He is going with a new channel, basically almost from zero to 100,000 in less than 100 days. It's about 90 days, and he's about 82,000 subscribers now. Got monetized recently, so he's killing it. But he's also got another channel that he's doing, plus he's doing university. So we're hoping he gets to 100,000 in 100 days. But if he's doing finals and he falls off a little bit, that's normal. With Jake, he's been able to go full-time since VidSummit. We're working together again, and Short Splits has been working for him. It's done really well for his channel. The big kind of takeaway from that was he was able to massively grow the channel and was able to do over 100. million views in a month of us working together on this strategy. And another result from that was about $14,000 in ad revenue from shorts specifically. So again, don't let people tell you there's no way to make money on shorts. It's just like, okay, do you want to do it or not? Because it is an aggressive strategy. It is very challenging and there are specific ways to do it. And if people can make that work in gaming, the most saturated competitive niche in YouTube, then you can make it work in a lot of other niches. This has worked, this is just who's let me share the case studies, but this has worked in vlogging, commentary, some body cam footage channels, reaction channels. So this has been working. It's not the only strategy out there, but short splits is something we've proven has worked. For long form, we've proven that brute force can work. We've dispelled a lot of myths. A lot of you are hung up on, well, what about YouTube notifications? Will I miss out on YouTube notifications if I do that many uploads? I only get three notifications to go out in a 24-hour period. YouTube notifications. If you go into your own analytics, you're gonna find that YouTube notifications for everybody counts for less than 1% of all your views and all of your traffic on YouTube. So we went through multiple of my clients. I showed you guys this over on x.com with the case studies. And when it came to that, what we found was that I showed you four different channels that I've worked with. I showed you where their traffic sources came from and not a single one of those four. And I checked more than that. I checked 40 channels. And four that I showed you, not even one of them broke 1% of their views on their YouTube channel being because of notifications. Notifications are not a significant traffic source for YouTubers. You guys need to stop worrying about that. If you wanted to, like a lot of the news, commentary, reaction, gossip channels, and body cam footage channels, they can upload five long form YouTube videos a day and not... have their views tank. I'm not telling you you have to do that. I'm making a point that there's not this threshold of I can't upload videos or notifications won't go out that's actually gonna hurt your channel in a meaningful way. And there's so many channels out there that prove that this thing has just been a myth that's been haunting YouTubers ever since the notification bell went out. So that's just kind of an OG YouTuber thing that's been haunting us. It's time to get rid of that myth. Same thing with YouTube shorts. We have creators posting five to eight shorts a day. We have some lifestyle creators kind of in vlogging style, doing something very similar to what they would do with their Instagram stories, but spreading them out, uploading them every 20 to 35 minutes. And they've been able to post eight to 12 in a day for doing vlog-like content and lifestyle content, and they've been fine. So it's not a thing. so just wanted to give you guys kind of a heads up on that before we jump into the super chats and the uh channel reviews here so wanted to definitely make sure that you guys just kind of up to date on these latest things also we're not doing this right now but youtube is going to be um allowing you to do a merger of your vertical and horizontal layouts in youtube So that's going to be definitely something you want to be on the lookout for. And I think it's going to be something a lot more of you will want to take advantage of going forward. And so what that means is you'll have a combined chat. You will have a combined set of views and statistics for that. You will have... more reach as a result of that. So I think this is gonna be a fantastic thing for YouTubers going forward to be able to take advantage of the vertical and horizontal live streams merging on YouTube. So definitely looking forward to sharing more details with you on that when we get a chance. Let's see, oh, I see another super chat here. Doug, when you get a chance, if you're still there, um can you update the form for me with the new super chats and channel reviews coming in um when you can again if you can update the form that would be great yeah we are also um keeping track of these for you guys in a spreadsheet here with regard to the channel reviews so we're gonna be doing that And it looks like we've got two more that came in. So thank you very much to both of you for that. So judging judges, long form review, overall impression, what can you do to improve? Yeah, we'll definitely make sure we get you there. Let's see. Hey, I really need a review of my channel, Gilded Sages. Okay, so we'll take a look at that. So that makes five. We'll definitely do the five. that we have, and then we'll see if we have room for more of those later in the evening here. Yeah, no, I know for a lot of you it's been a long time, like I said, just varying health issues, but I'm feeling a lot better, but also my current workout and diet has been kicking my butt a little. I also need to fix this third camera angle. This third camera angle is not bad, but I need to fix it to where the color is more in line with the color on these other two cameras, because these other two cameras are getting my tones and complexion right. This one, this one's way off. I'll fix it later. I'll probably have to get to that after the stream. But I do like that we have a wider angle here that's more consistent. I did swap out the camera on that. I put, what lens did I put on there? Put a 24 millimeter lens on there. Pretty solid, but... probably need to um swap out the lens also it probably can turn down this other light just a little bit so maybe that's throwing it off a little bit too yeah it's probably just over exposure but it still is a little off whereas this is a lot better when it's in bloody focus this is better this is better so yeah But yeah, just been pushing myself a little hard. And sometimes, you know, your health is the thing that you got to keep up with. Will there be a way to make a shorts playlist so they play one after another? Or is it just putting them together in a long form? I mean, you can do playlists. So that shouldn't be an issue for you. But in the meantime, let's go ahead and start our reviews. And we're going to start with Josiah here. So let's go ahead and start with Josiah Eats, 38,000 subscribers, 653 views. I love this profile pic, but I don't know why you don't have a YouTube channel art banner, but it could be interesting to see what that looks like when it comes to mobile and television screens. Do not underestimate the value of television screens because you have sharing food stories and the people behind them. So this feels like very much reality TV vlog style content in the food niche. I love this. Feels like you're watching a part of a TV show just scrolling through this. So I would look at how your channel, Josiah, is appearing on television screens as well. And so I want you to take a look at that because that's becoming a significant traffic source for YouTubers. In terms of your YouTube homepage here, don't be afraid to add playlists. You have 600 plus videos here. If enough of them are long form, build out some playlists and showcase them. And that could be good not only for just regular YouTube, but also for YouTube on television screens. Again, one of the highest growing sources of traffic for creators. Okay, it looks like most of your content is shorts and that you have a couple of long forms here, but I like that you're doing long form even though you haven't been doing a lot of it. I like that this month you're finally breaking into long form. Do not be discouraged because you have a bunch of subscribers that you got from your shorts and that that's not translating to long form. You have to build up a long form audience. There is a way to have shorts help your long form, but it can be a little bit more challenging if you aren't being thoughtful or intentional about it, but mostly I will look a little bit here at your short form because most of what you have is long form. I am gonna comment on the long form though. So with regard to your long form, I like that the thumbnails are realistic and I think that The big issue here is just that you don't have a long form audience yet and you haven't been consistent enough, but these also look like they're very high quality, a little bit more challenging to make, but if you could make a video at least two to three times a month or once a week at this quality. I think it'd be a good start, but to get momentum, you're gonna have to really put out maybe 25 or 30 long form before YouTube understands how to find an audience for this content and what you need to be doing. So I would pay a lot of attention to that. Let's see here. A-B testing thumbnails on this is good. Consider for the thumbnail testing going to an extreme. Do a version where you're in the thumbnail with this gorgeous storytelling, but then try a version of it that is literally only just the food and looking just at the food here. And let me take the chat off screen while I'm doing the actual channel reviews. Excuse me there. So what I would do is I would be looking at specifically. Doing extreme A-B testing of you in the thumbnail versus only the food in the thumbnail. And I think that that could be a way to kind of figure out what the audience will respond to in most cases. I know that they're story-driven and they're about the person and the restaurant in the food. But I want to just see what the audience will respond to. I think it's good for you to have that data because then you're not going to question it. So there is that answer. Another thing you could do is look at A-B testing close-ups versus medium shots versus wide shots. If you want A-B-C test that, that's another direction you could go and just see what people respond to more, what people respond to most. Now that might be a story to story A-B test versus saying, okay, I'll do this for all of my thumbnails. This might be a case for each individual story. of seeing which thumbnail performs best for that particular story or what style of thumbnail performs best for that particular story. Now, since most of your success also came from shorts, we might be able to reverse engineer your most popular shorts to understand what people do care about more and most and what is making people attracted to your content. So, interestingly enough, even if you wanna do storytelling videos, I think you could expand your channel and your content pillars based on some of these things with shorts, because if a lot of your stuff worked and went viral for trying different food for the first time, it's great that you wanna do the restaurant series, but these take a long time to make. In between these restaurant series videos, you could still do storytelling videos around trying different food for the first time. because people really love that content, and it also can be a way for you to showcase and promote some of these restaurants in a way while you're editing the larger overall story. So it's something to think about, because this Mexican food, every foodie should try Italian food, every foodie should, this is great. This would be good, low effort content by comparison that can still be done really well in long form that your audience would still love, And this could also build you a bridge between your short form audience and your long form audience if you direct people to those long form videos by pointing the shorts to those videos of you trying the food. So if you make, in addition to having your bigger, heavier produced series. around the storytelling in these restaurants, you should make a lower effort series that you could do very regularly of trying food for the first time and being a foodie, and then you can point these foodie shorts videos that have massive views, massive attention, and a beloved audience, you'd have a bridge from short form to long form. And a lot of you just aren't doing things like building a bridge. from your short form to your long form, and then you're upset sometimes, and this is not directed necessarily at you, Josiah, but a lot of people get upset when their short form viewers don't go and watch their long form, but there's this huge gap between the short form videos and the long form videos, and also most people don't point enough of their short form videos. at a single long form video. My tactic that has worked for my clients the most has been when we point 50 to 200 shorts. Yes, I'm not joking. 50 shorts to 200 shorts at just one long form video. One long form video. And by the way, a lot of you are taking the concept of the related videos link far too literally. It should be a video that you want to do well and that a viewer, a first time viewer, responds very well to, not just a video that you want to do well just for view's sake or a video that's directly a clip from the short form to the long form exactly. What it should be is you should be pointing 50 to 200 videos that are short form at just one long form video that you want to perform well. I recommend either a video that has been proven to do well with first time viewers on that long form video when they watch it that turns them into subscribers and fans or you point them to a video that is a sponsored video so you get more views on that so sponsors keep working with you and paying you more money. So that would be how I would bridge short form to long form using that short form to promote a longer form video. um right now again you don't have a series that matches the energy of these videos um and what people want from them so again i understand what you're trying to do with your long form and this storytelling and it's great but it's high quality high effort and it takes a long time to make it also is slow to get views to build up views faster and to also have a bridge from the short form audience where most of your subscribers came from I'm gonna recommend you make some foodie videos that are easier to make and very accessible to consume, and I don't think it takes away from these other videos. I think it's just how you start to build a long form audience. So. Josiah, that's gonna be it for my review for you, my friend. I hope that that advice really helps you out. I think everybody might have learned something from looking at your channel. Again, I think the long form is great production. I think this content plays very well on television screens for your YouTube channel. I think it's gonna do well. But I also think that you straight up have built a shorts audience for the most part. It's gonna take at least somewhere between 25 and 50 videos, if not 30 videos, for you to start getting traction on long form. And I also think it wouldn't hurt to build a bridge in terms of the content that the short form audience likes and make longer versions of those. And those would be you trying food for the first time and videos that foodies are gonna like. And so I think there are two solid series that you could do there that would really help you um and i see in the chat that you're asking for any advice on the style of the storytelling uh driven food videos honestly when it comes to those i actually don't hate this as it is but i do think you should be a b testing these titles and i think you should make it very clear what the most interesting thing is. And I think you're kind of doing that. How a kid from Mexico created Miami's most popular tacos. There's nothing wrong with that title. It's just a matter of people would have to care more about that than other videos in their feed. And again, YouTube hasn't necessarily found that audience yet, but it doesn't mean it never will. Inside Miami's most popular barbecue joint selling out every weekend. Again, this is your most viewed long form video. It's a month old. And again, since you have no long form audience, you shouldn't be taking these videos as failures, because you don't have a long form audience, you have a short form audience. Most of you are getting so hung up on your subscriber counts, and you're not considering that you may not have an audience for the video ideas that you're putting out there, at least not yet. And you're going to have to keep going with them to build up that audience. And again, the beginnings of it. So again, you should be thinking for your long form. You should be thinking of these views as if you had zero long form subscribers because you kind of do have close to zero long form subscribers. So you should be thinking about it from that perspective. But there are some things you could do to these titles. I think that the how this rare dumpling was made only for royalty until now. I don't know that that title. I think it'd be more interesting if you led with this expensive dumpling was only made for the rich until now. And I think that's more relatable. Rare dumpling doesn't mean anything to people. Expensive and only for the rich means something to people and now it's available. That would be a more interesting title, I think. You could A, B test and workshop these titles a little bit more, but again, I don't hate any of these titles. I just think, I don't even hate any of these thumbnails. I think these videos are performing well for considering you have a zero long form subscribership. So think about it. You have 38,000 subscribers, but they're all short form subscribers from your 600 plus shorts videos. You don't have a long form audience yet. You've been trying to build one the past month and good for you and that's great. But you should think of it as this is good because you have zero long form subscribers and yet you still got hundreds of people to care about these long form videos. So that's something I would think about. And it's something that I think you should be exploring. But yeah. So those are my thoughts for Josiah, but I'd love to know what the rest of you think. Do you agree with my assessment? I think his videos are great. I think they're great for YouTube television screens in particular, but I do think he should bridge the gap with a little bit more quantity and some of that should be these foodie videos because he's built a foodie audience. He's built a short form audience and I think he needs to build a bridge to that for long form. And I think then you can build investment in some of these videos and get people to give these videos a chance if you build up a long form audience from the foodie content and build a bridge between shorts and long form. But that's what I'm thinking. What do you think if you're watching the replay of this? Let me know in the comments. If you're still watching live, let me know in the chat. And there we go. That is our review for Josiah's channel. So yeah, I'd love to know what you guys think around and whether you guys agree. Because again, I do think that there's a ton of value in the channel. And yeah, if I had an Aiden already, he'd be making me hungry too. But I also at the same time do believe that there has to be something that converts some of that existing short form audience at some point, or you're just going to keep getting in your head about the long form, not translating. And I think the foodie content could help there. But let's see what everyone else thinks. So let's see here. Yeah, a couple of people saying it's making them hungry. Yep, Doug, we have six reviews in the queue. Yes, I know none of those subscribers are going to watch my long form. I'm basically starting from scratch. Yeah, I do think that that is, you know, something. And again, I think the key for a lot of you is a lot of you are thinking way too much about SEO from the old days when it comes to YouTube. Most of you should be really thinking, unless you are a tutorials channel or a how-to channel, most of you should be just thinking about the YouTube homepage as a traffic source, and you should be thinking about the YouTube Shorts feed as a traffic source. For most of you, search is not gonna be significant. um the subscriber feed is not going to be significant notifications is not going to be significant uh most of you again you would have very little influence or control over the suggested feed even um so most of you should really just be prioritizing the youtube home page and the youtube shorts feed when it comes to where your traffic is going to come from unless you are making search content as a um how-to or tutorial style channel So something to think about there. Yeah. But again, you're also getting a lot of kudos on your channel in the chat, Josiah. All right. So let's see. For right now, by the way, mods, I don't think I want to do more than eight channel reviews tonight. And it looks like we've got seven queued up. So maybe potentially one more if we get another $20 super chat. But stamina wise I think eight's gonna be my upper limit unless I get a second wind got one down and we've got Six to go. So I'm just loading up the rest of them from the sheet So that we have them in the browser. I saw that we got Vosco toys and there we've got seventh Haven. All right, so let's get to our next review. We've got our good friend david from omaha back from the living in omaha channel so he's come back for another review for us 6 000 subscribers 404 videos this is the perfect framework by the way for those of you doing a business channel so if you have a business that's trying to make real money like this is a really good framework i mean he's got a qr code right there he's got his phone number right there make the phone ring get in those sales um got a you know calendly link for you to go ahead and book an appointment with him so for business not just real estate for business this is actually solid and this is what you want to be doing um so definitely would recommend you pay attention here to what david's got going on so let's see um what else is happening since we last checked in with you david so it looks like um The layout for the channel is great overall still, which has always been something I've complimented you on. Thumbnails, my friend, are excellent. David has four out of five, five out of five thumbnails. Let's go ahead and see what's going on with the actual content here. And also, let's see if David had any request in the chat for what he wanted us to pay attention to. Yep, okay. Just kind of wanting a check-in here. We can do that. So, again, I think the Halloween update was a fun thumbnail, so I don't hate it. Really interested, though, in these recent videos and how well they've been doing. Again, 1,000, 2,000 views. Big outlier here on this where the ultra-wealthy choose to live at Omaha. So this was a more curiosity video. that could get people in the door here and to care about what you're doing so i think that was fantastic this thumbnail i think um was genius this one here in the top right this i'd move here and uh quartering that part of the map that's a brilliant thumbnail design if i'm being honest so this was extremely well done i could see why this did well uh if i were moving to omaha in 2015 i'd move here Really solid title for that as well. So this makes perfect sense. The housing market updates, I think you should always do them. I just don't have high hopes for them in terms of view count, but they're great for your business. So I wouldn't worry about the views on that too much. The goal for your channel is so much around driving business. that i'm not always worried about high views but it's nice that you are getting some this one from three months ago with 49k views omaha's next big thing i'm noticing a pattern here a lot of your outlier performers if we look at what's popular on your channel a lot of your outlier performers aside from this one for a year from a year ago and this one over here your more recent outlier videos have a lot to do with attracting a higher end clientele ironically you know as much as everyone's talking about affordability right now the buying market of people for you are going to be people with considerable means and wealth and probably right now if i'm being honest there is a such thing i'm not trying to be political but let's face it people are fleeing from new york and california they just are right now and so for you you should be taking advantage of that and there should be videos that um have that appeal in terms of where are these people going to go um and so in terms of what would do very well for your business is these higher end affluent buyers and so for the higher end affluent buyers i'd be making videos that attract them because i don't think that um people as concerned about affordability are going to be your best customers ever. So I do think that if you're making more videos that are attracting these affluent home buyers, and I don't think it always has to be that, I don't think you have to go all in on that, but I think if a good chunk of your videos start appealing to people who have considerable means, let's just say people who might be well-to-do or even wealthy, I think that the views will do much better. And I think that that is a trend because going back even to a year ago, again, I think your videos back then were just about as good as they are now. The thumbnails are still excellent. But I think that I'm recognizing that right in this micro moment in time, there's just something interesting happening going on. And I think that Omaha has, this opportunity and this potential boom going on especially as people with money are looking at where they want to live and where is going to make sense for them so um you said yourself in the chat that you just closed some clients who moved from new york so maybe there's a video about that and about why people are fleeing new york and moving to omaha Maybe that's a title for a video for you that you would explore. Maybe you do a couple of themes like that. Maybe you also could do a video on why people are moving to Omaha instead of Florida, why people are moving to Omaha instead of Texas, why people are moving to Omaha instead of Nevada. And so I think that those are things that could help you in terms of some concepts and ideas. Your thumbnails are excellent. They're some of the best we've ever seen on a channel review, if I'm being honest. So great job. Again, I also am a really big fan of this format here, which is calling out an area on the map and saying, I'd move here. I think that was extraordinarily well executed, well done. And I, again, always think these views are very good for the type of channel you are, considering that this is specifically and exclusively to drive people to your business. I want to check in real quick and see what you've been doing with the live streams. Oh, I love that the live streams have strong thumbnails. Very good. Again, we don't usually see that. And you do have people tuning in for the live stream, so you have a dedicated audience for that. So very well done. I like how clever that is. If we look at your YouTube shorts, your YouTube shorts are performing well, especially lately. But I think they could do better. I think you could do more shorts. I think some of the real estate, I wouldn't say the market updates because again, with shorts, shorts can be kind of evergreen, but for tips, facts about Omaha. I think facts about Omaha, facts about real estate, facts about buying, buying versus renting, things about the recession, looming prices, cut rates. I think those things would be good YouTube shorts. So again, consider exploring that. David. But again, well done with your channel. So, you know, with a real estate channel like this, I don't think you need to be as extreme as doing five to eight shorts a day. But I do think one to three shorts a day could do very well for a real estate channel if it just lets you talk about some things that you'd like potential customers to know about Omaha, informing them. I think it lets you do some really quick and nice videos. showcasing the state a little bit or even showing what people can buy, some quick facts, some quick updates. So I think that that's actually really helpful. And I think one to three a day of those is nothing over the top. And I don't think they have to be edited in a crazy fashion in terms of overall quality. So I think that that's something on the table that you should explore and that you should look at. But I'd love to know what you all think if you are still watching in the chat, if you're watching the replay of this in the comment section. What do you think about David Matney's channel for his real estate business? Again, I think he's doing some really smart things with this. I think that it's designed perfectly to drive new customers. I just think there's some topics he could explore that I think would do really well. Anyway, let me know what you think in the chat if you're live. Let me know what you think in the comment section if you're watching the replay. All right. And so that's it for channel number two of eight, numero dos of Ocho. So yeah, great job again, David. I think you're doing well. David, if you ever want to do another one-on-one, I think you know how to book that with me. If you want to book another one-on-one before the end of the year, make a plan going into 2026, or if you want to talk about making a plan to take advantage of the current real estate exodus from New York and how to plan for that on the channel, how to expand the short strategy, feel free to book another one-on-one call with me. We can definitely do that before we get into the holidays here. I'd be happy to help. So, yep, that's something we could do. Let's see. But yeah, great job so far. And let's check in with the chats. Absolutely. How much editing should a short have? For people, if you're editing your shorts yourself instead of having anyone edit it, what I would recommend for a lot of you is to not spend more than 15 minutes on a short. per minute of footage that exists. In general, if you're a solo YouTube content creator, for every one minute of footage, I wouldn't recommend spending more than 15 to 25 minutes of editing per minute of footage. For short form, 10 to 15 minutes for every one minute of footage is a good cadence for editing your shorts. A lot of you don't realize that the main thing with shorts is they have to be well delivered, they have to be interesting, and the audio has to be great. This is true for video in general, but for shorts, it's about getting to the point and people are not looking for a masterpiece here. In general, a lot of you are overestimating the editing you need to do on YouTube. If people wanted the best editing in the world, they'd be watching Netflix instead of YouTube. So what people are looking for is authenticity. They're looking for value. So give that to them. I'm not saying you can't do storytelling content, cinematic content. I'm not saying you can't edit things. But I think a lot of you are embracing editing kind of as an identity or you think that your editing style being unique is what's gonna make people watch you or come back. But I'm telling you that your personality, your performance on camera, your authenticity, the vibe, so to speak, is going to play a much, much bigger role. in how people feel about your content than your editing style, as long as the editing serves a purpose. So it's something that I think we've just conditioned ourselves to believe as YouTubers is that our editing style makes us unique. No, your personality makes you unique. Your point of view makes you unique. Your insights make you unique. The way that you emote, perform, communicate, that makes you unique. Editing. should not be carrying you there are niches where there's going to be exceptions to that but for most of you if you're an on-camera presence editing shouldn't be carrying you if you're a faceless channel i could see it but um yeah a lot of you should just really take a more minimal and utility approach to your editing a lot of you are spending so many hours editing when it may not even matter that much and a lot of you should probably focus a lot more on the packaging of your titles and thumbnails than you are on the editing of your videos. If views are what you care about, you should probably just be focusing on your packaging of your titles and your thumbnails and coming up with very good ideas. You should be focused on that for views, for retention, as much as people think, okay, edit for retention. No, deliver for retention, script for retention, structure for retention. The editing is not there to save you. Garbage in, garbage out. So I think a lot of you are giving editing way too much credit. I mean, if you have a much, much younger audience, I kind of get it. But yeah. So we had Maddie J. It looks like you went ahead and donated twice, I think, to make up the $20 for a channel review. Actually, yeah. Wait, you donated three times to make it up. So yeah. So we've got you in there. And we've got just my opinion reviews. Mods, we're going to go ahead and do that one. Even though I only wanted to do eight tonight, we'll go ahead and do nine since we have it. But no moss. Unless I get a second wind, no moss. So we're closing up reviews. We'll do nine of them. So we'll do just my opinion reviews. Just make sure we get to that one tonight. But a little more tired tonight. So we're going to still do that one. We'll do nine of them, not 10, unless I get a second wind. Yeah. Let's see. If I have to, I'll like hit up some ginseng or something. But I'm pinning the comment from Doug so that people know that the channel reviews or sorry. Yeah, I did it from Larry. So people know channel reviews are closed and that we have our. nine that we're gonna do so we've got seven more well actually six more after this next one because we've got be unafraid with fortune manzabe next so we're gonna be doing that and I think I got the questions I think I got the main questions that people had so back to reviews here let me just get some water so we have our friend be unafraid so we've got fortune here And we're going to be doing his channel. So Fortune has a self-help personal development style channel. New here, start with these playlists. This is excellent. A lot more of you should be doing this. I love that he has new episodes every week in the channel banner. Really consistent thumbnails here. Also YouTube shorts and posts. So again, channels filled out pretty nicely. Let's go ahead and see what's going on with the videos. uh 600 subscribers congratulations uh you probably might have reached the first tier of monetization with 500 subs and the 3 000 hours if not you probably get the 3 000 hours soon at this rate um let's see what the most popular videos are looking like right now um so personal development self-help yeah these views are not bad let's go ahead and look at the latest everyone's tired of being their own worst critic That title doesn't feel strong enough. You don't have to be on all the time. You're allowed to be human. Drop the act. Okay, again, I don't think that title's strong enough. You don't care too much. You're just scared to disappoint people. I would make that video about being a people pleaser. So I think the thumbnails here are actually perfect. I think the struggle here is literally the titles. Chat, I'd love your thoughts on this. I'd love your thoughts on this chat because I think that the real issue here could be the titles rather than thumbnails. I definitely don't think it's the production value. The production value is right where it would need to be for a self-help talking head podcast style channel. So I don't think that's an issue. The thumbnails overall, I think are fairly strong. I think that they're very good, especially for a new channel. Let's see. and most of the videos by the way are shorts in terms that 300 uploads there's a hefty amount over the year of um individual youtube videos here but um but i think the issue is much more especially for these current videos i really believe the issue is the titles and what do i mean by that um these titles are not terrible but they're not specific enough titles to hit a preference, a priority, or an identity when it comes to the viewer, okay? So I'll give you an example. This video about disappointing people, again, for the channel size and for how much of those subscribers came from shorts, this is not a god-awful title. But if the thumbnail is Stop Performing for Others, then I think the thing that people identify with is people-pleasing. And I think that that needs to be in the title. So I think that maybe the title for this video, if it were me, would have been STOP, in all capital letters. It would have been STOP people-pleasing and being scared to disappoint people. Because I think that would have specifically called people out. And I think that that would have made people identify with it more. So if a video tells me to stop people pleasing, personally, I can make that video a priority because I identify with that. I could say, okay, stop people pleasing and you're more, and stop people pleasing. You're more scared to disappoint people than yourself or stop people pleasing and start living for yourself. That's a good one. So I think that the titles here could be stronger. And I think the titles need to speak to an identity. I'm not as worried about them being shorter. I'm worried about them being clearer and also speaking to the individual and being something they can make a priority and a preference, something that speaks to their specific needs and problems. And again, I think they have to. address a pain point that the person has and that they can easily identify with. The you don't care too much is not nearly as powerful as stop people pleasing. So if I change nothing else and I change this to stop people pleasing, you're just scared to disappoint others. That is a more compelling video title. For the everyone who's tired of being their own worst critic, I would probably make this one Stop abusing yourself with toxic self-talk. Or I would say maybe stop abusing yourself with negative self-talk. Don't be your own worst critic. Because if you start with something as powerful or compelling as stop abusing yourself, like that's something that people can't ignore as far as a title. For everyone who's tired of being their own worst critic. You know, we could take it or leave it. If you start with something as compelling as stop abusing yourself and being your own worst critic, I think that's much stronger, much more compelling, and it's a bigger declarative statement. And so I think that for a self-help channel like this, you have to be bold in your declarative statements. Consider the audience avatar. The audience avatar is probably someone like where I was... 10, 15 years ago, probably 15 years ago. So 15 years ago would have put me at 26 years old, overworked, underpaid, anxious, frustrated, still in mask on corporate mode and a yes man and a people pleaser. You know, still hadn't plotted to leave corporate America just yet, right? So that's me 15 years ago. you would have to tell me and identify and call me out on my bad habits and my toxic traits to get me to pay attention to something. So by telling me to stop doing this thing and then when I look at it, I go, oh, I know I'm doing that. It's harder for me to ignore that and to go to an entertaining video when I see a video that's calling out my most toxic traits, calling me out, making me vulnerable, and identifying exactly what I know. deep down in my heart of hearts and even in my own head, what I'm doing wrong and what is making me miserable and making my life harder than it needs to be, and the thing that I'm afraid to confront in myself. So when I look at these titles, I need these titles to specifically call out an internal, like, toxic... behavior that i know that i'm doing or a bad habit that i have and then redirect that and tell me what i should be doing instead and i know from you the content is doing that but the titles are not saying that so that's what i need you to focus on here as for this you don't have to be on all the time this one's gonna be better if it's um why you're overworking and still unsatisfied or why or stop overworking and being unsatisfied with your life. That's a big one. Oh, you're allowed to be human. It's like, okay, yeah, that's a nice platitude. But again, call out the actual toxic behavior. The being on all the time, that's an overworker. That's an over performer. That is somebody who's in some ways insecure about being human and being vulnerable and is worried about what happens if they turn themselves off. So that's classic workaholism. So I would lead with either stop overworking or why workaholics are miserable and unsatisfied and how to change it. That's a... much more compelling title and call out then you don't have to be on all the time I know that you're making titles that might say something you would prefer to hear on the positive side so that's what it feels like to me at least is that you're making the titles the positive reinforcement you would like to hear or have and I get where you're coming from that can be in the video itself that could work inside the video itself but as for a title I think that people especially uh with this primarily mostly reaching men um then i think that has to be a stronger call out that says you're doing this thing and it's bad for you i would study mark manson from the subtle art of not giving an f he uh does really strong aggressive titles that i think you could learn from in this I like this one of you don't need motivation you need to stop lying to yourself that's a good one that was stronger much more aggressive much less ambiguous and it performed better so again that's what my thought is on this one but I'd love to know what you guys think in the chat if you're still watching live and I'd love to know what you think in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Again, I think the production value is there. Good podcast, Mike. I think that the set design and lighting is good. I think all of those things. So I think that this is solid and has potential. I think the biggest weakness besides, again, that there's a bigger short form audience than a long form audience. Because again, if we look at this, there is for this amount of uploads. There's a short form audience here. And I think that's great. Some of these, even getting a thousand views, more views there than there are subscribers. So again, more consistent on the shorts views. Keep up the shorts, but again, for building the long form audience, just so that we realize what's going on here is there's a really strong short form audience here and it's working and there's a ton of shorts here. Bridging the gap for that on long form is the key. And again, I think the long form videos could just have the stronger, more aggressive titles, and they'll do well. But those are my thoughts for Be Unafraid with Fortune. So again, I'd love to know what you guys think in the comment section. If you're watching the replay, I'd love to know what you think in the live chat. So there we go. I probably shouldn't respond to this comment, but this comment is actually not remotely accurate, even with this other angle. uh none of this is me this is literally just two layers of clothing because we finally hit winter here in atlanta uh so there's that uh but now um i'm fine i'm you know working out and doing everything i need to do but i'm actually not overweight by any stretch of the imagination uh for one thing i'm um about 152 right now and i'm uh 16.2 body fat so uh for 41 I'm perfectly fine. I can still actually pass military PT because I can do eight discipline pull-ups with my knees in. I can do the required amount of squats, push-ups, and sit-ups in the required time. So I still, for someone in their 40s, if not in their late 30s, can actually pass military PT right now. So I'm not overweight. 152 at my height, at my age, is not even remotely overweight. 16% body fat, yeah, I'd love it to be 15% or lower. Working on it, not even close to being overweight, my friend. And anybody who saw me on stage at VidSummit knows that I'm nowhere near overweight. Don't let the winter clothing, winter padding fool you. It's just a nice, chill evening here. in good old atlanta i know they like to call it hotlanta but winter is coming so again i normally shouldn't respond to this and you know i don't know if this is a troll or not i'm taking it in good faith but i also couldn't resist the opportunity to brag about uh my uh fitness goals and my training um so any of you who've been following me on x have actually been keeping up with me and my fitness stuff and my workout regimen so like i said if i can pass military pt that i'm not overweight um i still just am not my target weight that i want to be which is about 145 so i've still got a ways to go from 152 to 145 and i'll get there 145 will put me around 15 ish body fat then i can just keep working on there from That and muscle protein intake with my creatine and my Quest protein shakes. So I've been doing good there. And you guys also know I like to cook. So again, I cook high protein lean meat. Lots of veggies. I'm a big fan of Brussels sprouts, asparagus. So, you know, I'm doing all the things. trying to stay here and healthy for you guys as long as possible. Unfortunately, sometimes I'll eat at a place that doesn't cook as well as me and then I'll have a problem. So yeah. But anyway, yeah, no, I get it. Sometimes you get, you know, it is the clothing thing. Like if you guys have, for example, if you go and you look at on my X profile, if you look at any of the photos or the videos from vid summit you know um i was wearing just a regular t-shirt jeans and jacket there and you can see that was in pretty good shape and that was just um last month so i'm fine yeah it's just the clothes again like i said i don't want to ban somebody because again it might just be someone trying to look out um and i totally get it but yeah no it's just the clothing because again i am wearing like really thick like layered clothing right now and i am sitting in the uh chair because again it's winter you know um earlier i had on my beanie i don't think i have it here now but earlier i had on my beanie you know um i was out doing some stuff in the yard um earlier when it was still daylight um it's like winter slash fall out here and now with daylight savings it gets dark a lot quicker you guys know how it is so again i appreciate the thought but It's literally just that this is like crazy fleece type cold weather clothing. Let's see. What do we got next? We've got, so that's three down and we've still got a couple more here. So we've got, I don't know if I can pronounce this. TWTPB. I don't know what this really is, but there are only nine videos here. we're going to do this review to honor it but i actually kind of don't get what's going on with this channel because it only has nine videos and they're mostly shorts and it feels like they're random shorts in new york so i actually don't get what's going on with this channel and again a lot of times i won't play the videos because of either copyright plus have to be um worried about it oh wait you said it's judging judges oh okay so we have your handle but we have the wrong channel for you okay okay i see this is your other handle all right so we'll try and find the we'll try and find the other channel so i think this is the one is this the one with the 7 000 subscribers is this the right channel yeah no sorry uh doug thanks for catch um for that uh doug if you can update that in the form But yeah, do we have the right channel there? TWT, that's the right channel? Okay, so it's Judging Judges. Okay, cool. So we got Judging Judges. I don't hate this logo, honestly. I just wish that the profile pic one was as clear as the channel banner because this is actually pretty slick. So yeah, so new videos every week. Courtroom wisdom for court watchers, okay? You might want to fill out more playlists on the homepage there. 153 videos with 7,000 subscribers is pretty impressive. Wild swings in the views, but I can totally get that. Nate the Lawyer has wild swings in his views as well. Let's see what the most popular videos are on the channel and see if we can spot a trend here. Okay. So yeah, there's wild swings in the viewership here. but the bigger outliers are um really interesting and a lot of it has to do with shocked expressions in terms of the thumbnails that work here i think the thumbnails could be a little bit better again i think study what um nate the lawyer is doing with his thumbnails um i also like the concept of this channel in terms of a reaction channel specifically to these verdicts and these court cases. Let's see. With your latest videos, let's see if I hover on your latest videos and get a sense of some of the production here. On the reaction side of your stuff, I think that for that, on the reaction side, I think that the camera quality can be improved, but I do love. your suit and bow tie. So I love the suit and bow tie. I would improve the overall camera quality there. And then for the thumbnails, the thumbnails are the things that need the biggest improvement because your videos are basically, in my opinion, carried by the title and the topic and the idea. It's straight zoom court clips. Okay, interesting. Oh, if it's straight zoom court clips, there's only so much you can do about it. Oh, it just seems that you, okay, I see. i mistake those for being reactions in the sense that you just happen to really get a lot out of judge fletcher okay so i mistook that for being reaction videos um but i think that this is like reminding me of the body cam footage genre and i really think that that's really good so smart there i think that for the thumbnails again, take some inspiration from Nate the Lawyer in terms of his thumbnail style. In fact, I'm actually gonna see if I can pull Nate the Lawyer's channel for you just to give you an idea of what I think works for him. Nate the Lawyer. There we go. So in terms of the thumbnail style, because you guys are very similar, but again, you're doing some things that are very different. If you look at how strong nate the lawyer's uh thumbnail style is for similar content to yours i would uh try to do things that go a little bit more in those direction uh because even with your uh wild swings and outlier views i think um you could do something similar here and get similar views even with less subscribers because kind of in some ways you already do um so i would uh pay attention to that I don't have an issue with you using the same font and using the blue, yellow, and white as your font style and as what you're known for and recognized there. So that doesn't bother me. Again, when your thumbnails are better, you just get more views. I mean, it's not even close. If we look at even just these three here on the screen, if you just look at the difference in views, I would tie it heavily to the quality of the thumbnails in addition to the titles. But the titles do most of the decision-making for your videos. But this is one of those channels that a lot of us watch as a guilty pleasure when we're bored. We got some of the mods in the chat saying this is the kind of thing that they watch when they're bored and that they may have even seen some of these videos from you. So I actually really like the approach for this channel. And I also think this kind of genre is a very good... A good example of really true fair use. You said the latest ones are AI, are they better? Some of them are. This before and after one kind of is, and clearly it is based on the views. And let's see here. It's not that I think you should go all in on the AI thumbnails, but I think you should use some of them to enhance some of these things or sharpen some of these things or help, but also just in terms of approach and style. Cause what I'd like to see is I'd like to see you normalize more of these and more of this type of style and more of these views. So I think that in general, what's gonna work for you as a format though is judge and defendant in the thumbnail. Cause clearly that's a pattern of some of your best performers. So I would go there and also sometimes before and after. can work, although I think the title is really what did this one. And I think that if the titles are about the sentencing, when they can be, one, for the videos themselves, the sentencing is what people are really, really into. And also sentencing, plea deals, and looks like, let's go with your most popular and we can pull, sentencing, um things where um the judge does something very particular that's not expected i think that's a good one um so it's about how interesting the titles are that are really driving this one home this is a really really smart approach to a channel though if i'm being honest i think you just need to improve the quality of the thumbnails prioritize when you can, as much as you can, sentencing, convictions, overall outcomes, plea deals, plea bargains, like things that are really intriguing. So I like this. I think this is good. Also, if the victims have some interesting identity or angle, I think that that's important. But yeah, I think this is a very unique channel. This is one of the more interesting channels we've actually ever reviewed. And I like the direction here, especially as a small channel. And again, I like the fact that we can see this is a smaller channel. It has 153 videos. But look at some of the views that a small channel can get and look at how quickly it can get it if a video is interesting enough for people to watch. So I think there's a big lesson for a lot of the people watching the channel review here if they don't think that YouTube will... push a small channel or that small sub count matters in any way. I think that this kind of helps put that myth to bed. Also, yeah, use a roundup of whoever your most popular judges are, because I think that could be interesting. Also, in terms of sourcing some of this stuff, source Florida, because Florida is always interesting. Florida man's always up to something, right? So I think that could be interesting. Consider judgments for family court. People can't get enough of that. That could be interesting. But overall, those would be some of my thoughts here for judging judges. Again, I think there's a lot that you're doing very well here. I think the biggest area for improvements are the thumbnails, but also just in terms of topic selection and sourcing. Also, if you could literally... get videos out every single day, this channel could have potential. If you could figure out a way to source the videos, edit them down, get the thumbnails out, so on and so forth, and you could do that on a daily basis. If you could do that on a daily basis, let alone if you could ever get to a point where you could get out three of these a day, the channel could explode. I think that for what you've done here with 153 videos, I want you to imagine if you literally were just doing this every day and you were doing one video a day or three videos a day, if you were able to pull that off, then this channel could be a 100,000 subscribed channel pretty quickly. Yeah, I don't blame you for being apprehensive about family court drama. If you want to avoid that, you can. I do know it's popular. I do know people eat it up, but I also understand the sensitivity to that and maybe not wanting to do it. But yeah, overall, again, I think this channel is excellent, so well done. And which sound effect was that? Oh, yeah, that one's fine. But yeah, I think that you've done an excellent job here with the Judging Judges channel. I think it has potential. I think shorts could grow it as well. If you could do daily shorts, this would have a lot of traction as well. But the monetization-wise on the long form, this is actually really good. This could be a money printer. So again. Kudos to you on this. But what do you all think? Do you agree with me about this channel and that I really think that this should go daily and multiple times a day? If he can sustain that, I think he's got a gold mine here. And I think it'd also be easier to find the high performers for this type of thing. But do you guys agree with me in the chat? If you're watching the replay, do you want to do something different? Would you give different advice? Let me know in the comment section. Really good job there. Yeah, for this kind of thing, um three a day if you can do it but if not one a day to get traction to start but if you could do three a day on this this channel three a day on this channel makes it in one to two years a 100 000 subscriber channel pretty much guaranteed because think about if you got 153 videos some of that was shorts and you already got to 7 000 subscribers and you have some of these wild outlier videos then if you were doing three a day you get to your outliers much faster but you would have you'd be you know Three a day gives you 10x what you have now. That puts you at like 70,000 subscribers plus momentum. So three long form a day. Three long form a day, if you could do it, would explode this channel. And in one to two years, you'd have 100,000 subscribers. Basically guaranteed. Basically guaranteed. Plus with improvements to thumbnails, improvements to titling. Yeah. This becomes a 100K channel in a year or two. Easily. One to three videos a day. You know, if you become wildly efficient, it becomes a two to three hour workday to get three of these out a day. The money more than makes up for it on the long form for this. It's a monetized channel. So I would just be doing that. And then this takes off. If you're gonna add short form to the mix there, boom. Solid, solid. Again, it's one of the more unique channels I think we've seen. Let's see. We have another channel here, Gilded Quan, but... I wonder if this is a situation, again, where that's not the exact channel you want us to review and you have a different channel. Here, I really need a review of my channel, Gilded Sages. Okay, so again, Doug, Gilded Quan's channel is Gilded Sages. So again, sometimes people are using aliases in the chat. So I think I found the channel. uh gilded kwan uh i think this is the channel because i think your avatars are matching so what i would say here is um the profile pick will be harder to read on mobile and so i don't necessarily think that the logo is doing it any favors there so maybe i'd go to the avatar the the face pick for uh the profile pick there and then as for the um Channel banner here. Again, harder to read, especially on mobile, and probably not as attractive as it could be on television sets. So I'd revisit this in terms of making the text and the fonts more visible. We have recommendations if we could post that on what the best fonts for YouTube thumbnails and banners and graphics in general look like. So there's fonts that are stronger. And again, you'd want to make it bigger. Gilded Sages probably just needs to be on one line. You don't need the social media icons because, again, you don't need to be taking people away from YouTube for this unless it's to your own business. So I wouldn't be pushing people from one social media to another social media. You want to take people from social media to your own business. Let's see. Oh, and Doug in the chat. you forgot uh that world according to briggs did a super chat um so we will do um him today because he's been a big huge supporter so i guess i am doing 10 of these tonight so uh put um world of briggs um as number 10 and we'll just do uh 10 tonight and i'll just power through them um so please do that but yeah let's go ahead and let's review our building stages so like i said uh graphics can be improved here for the profile pic and the channel banner we don't need to drive people to social media from social media we want to drive them to our own uh platform or whatever makes us money uh this is a channel that looks like it's the commentary entertainment pop culture politics space um home page layout um I think that you need to put more of these created playlists actually on the homepage itself. Let's look at the actual videos. 184 videos. Are most of those long form or are those shorts? Looks like it's a balance here. So there may be some shorts. Looks like there's some older videos here that might have been something different from an earlier time. So... We'll focus on most of the recent stuff and whatever is the most popular stuff on the channel. Let's see. So some of these are dating discourse and then other ones seem to be black issues. I think you need to make the topic selection a little clearer, but the big thing here, the big thing here is the thumbnails are one out of five the thumbnails are one out of five thumbnails um so these thumbnails need to be much stronger from a commentary channel standpoint you might want to look at some of the channels that you might be more likely to criticize um in terms of how they approached their thumbnails so whether you agree with them as content creators or not you probably want to look at someone for thumbnails in a commentary space that's successful at it like an anton daniels um he is in your space but he's you know again he's on a different side of the opinion space from you but he's one of the most successful people in commentary that does it daily So thumbnail-wise, you might as well take some of that and appropriate some of that thumbnail style and what works for it. One, some of these thumbnails are almost exactly the same, which means people could think that they saw something already at a glance and skip over it. That's number one. Number two, if someone's successful in your space, a trick that a lot of people don't realize they could do is just... take the opposite opinion on the same story and source a popular story from your competitor on the other side of an issue. So if Candace Owens, Stephen A, or God, who is it? Anton Daniels or anyone like that is making a video and it's popping, make a video with the opposite point of view if you disagree with them then. but also make a thumbnail that is competitive with those top performing people that are in your space but then take the opposite point of view just because you disagree with their opinions doesn't mean you have to disagree with their business model or their marketing uh if it's working the other thing i would say is do consider, I don't know how familiar you are with OBS as a software, but consider using either OBS or StreamYard and consider doing live reactions for the commentary to three to five stories in a single sitting for an hour and break those up into like 15 minute or 10 minute segments. Or maybe you do 90 minutes or two hours, do the whole thing as a live stream. Then you cut up the live stream. from doing the reaction to the stories that are happening and the news clips, react to the news clips in real time, then you cut those up and make those your videos. Again, this is something Anton Daniels does. You just do the live stream. You can get the watch hours you need for YouTube monetization from the live streams, believe it or not. Just leave the live streams up publicly. Don't unlist them. Don't private them. Leave them up. then cut them up into the individual stories, make a thumbnail for each of the individual stories, and then you can post three to five of those videos a day with very minimal editing required because you did all your production as a live stream. Then that gives you a higher quality and quantity. It gives you massive consistency. It lets you be a daily habit. And again, you just get the source, whatever you consider your opposition to be. You source your opposition, you counter signal, but you duplicate their workflow and you get your thumbnails competitive on the same level as that. And then I think you have something strong here. Your most popular videos have cleared a thousand views, more views than you have subscribers. It does utilize other known people in some cases. So again, I don't think there's an issue with that. Again, I think you just have to look at what is succeeding for people in commentary. And the thing you may not have known is the workflow. The workflow is using OBS or StreamYard, doing it as a live stream, and then cutting up the segments. You do that, and then you really have something strong there. And then you just need much, much, much better thumbnails. If you're struggling on the thumbnails, you can use AI to help you. And so I would use something like Google Nano Banana rather than using ChatGPT or even Mid Journey. I would just probably use Google Nano Banana to make realistic thumbnails. Then throw some text on them in Canva and you're pretty much done. Or Photoshop, I prefer Photoshop. And then you're pretty much done. So again, I think you can cover popular controversies and figures. and political discourse and social commentary daily news all that but again i would take the reaction channel method the reaction channel method as done by um other successful commentary channels even the ones you disagree with is working so steal the workflow um compete with the thumbnail strategy on the same level as them and then ultimately um use that to your advantage then you have the ability to have a more attractive thumbnail that gets more views you'll be sourcing a um topic or a news story that has attention already and there'll be people for every big creator people watch somebody disagrees with them in fact up to 20 of their own audience disagrees with them so instead of wondering whether something will get views you just go ahead and you make the uh counter argument video of a story you don't have to even mention the other person's name just saying oh they covered this story okay i disagree with them i'm just gonna cover the story and give my opinion i'm not even gonna watch their video i just need to know that they made one okay cool you make that you make a better thumbnail or an equal thumbnail to that and now you have something with a competitive thumbnail and something for anyone who wants a second opinion or a different uh point of view and so yeah that's what would That's what would work. But anyway, those are my thoughts. That's my opinion on this channel for Gilded Sages. Again, do you guys agree, disagree? Let me know in the chat. Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. So, yeah. So, you know, so that's the thing. Again, most people don't know the workflow that the daily news and commentary people are using. The workflow is you go live or you record it. You cover three to five news stories. You go on a rant and a tear for each news story. for 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever you want to do. You do three to five news stories. You cut them up at the end. You don't have to really hardly edit at all. You make a thumbnail with Google Nano Banana, and you generate that thumbnail. You add your text in either Photoshop or Canva. You have your thumbnail now. You should make a thumbnail that's equal or better than the competition that gets the most views in your category. So you do that. And then boom, you have a news reaction daily commentary channel that can just churn out content over and over and over again if that's what you're doing. So Gilded Sages, hopefully you take the advice. Hopefully that works for you. Let's see. So next we got World According to Briggs. Then we'll do Vasco Toys, Seventh Haven, Matty J. And then we'll end with Just My Opinion Reviews. Let's see. So let's just get these other channels in the queue. And let's also get me some water. And again, for any of you thinking of doing commentary channels, again, that's the workflow that'll work. Same thing for reaction channels. So let's see. All right. So we've got our good friend, World According to Briggs. Definitely, you know, big fan of the channel. World According to Briggs has been one of the most prolific super chatters on the entire channel. hyper supportive of everything we've been doing. So again, big shout out. So guides are the best and worst places to travel and to live. Retire or just avoid altogether. Great tagline there. So overall, I would push the post down. They don't need to be a priority. Popular videos and 100 places is fine. I'd probably throw another playlist in here, just round out the channel. Part of the reason is you have to know that a lot of the traffic is actually gonna be coming from television. So for most of you, I wouldn't put post, your text post, high up in your channel's playlist. And most of you should be checking on how your channel looks on television screens. So I would pay attention to that. But let's go ahead and look at the video. You said that views have been declining. I can see some of that happening here. Let's take a look at what's been happening here. In general, I think the thumbnails themselves can be better. And thumbnails are becoming more competitive than ever. I would say that... For you, Briggs, if you started making your thumbnails with a little bit of even inspiration from our friend David over here, if you look at David's thumbnails, you guys are not in the same niche, but think about it. Look at how sharp and premium David's thumbnails look. If your thumbnails were on that level, I think it would make a significant difference. I think it's a difference in a leap between a two out of five and a five out of five. and that difference can be exponential when it comes to your views. So just keep that in mind. Again, also, it's about making those thumbnails more competitive on the screen that everybody cares about, which is their television screen. So again, something to think about. Now, the titles can be a little better. This warning, 15 cities, locals never recommend. I think... This needs to be a little bit more interesting. And the warning, 15 worst cities in America, stay away. That's something that people would pay attention to because really, okay, it's that bad. Let's see, the 15 cities with huge homeless populations. That title's not. bad in terms of just saying what it is, but it might be almost even a little too on the nose. Let's see. With that one though, I would argue it's more the thumbnail is not that compelling. I see what you were going for with that, but that one's just not like really doing it. The title itself is really direct. It says what it is. Let's see, 15 cities that aren't worth the price in 2026. I would actually have changed that to 15 least affordable US cities in 2026, or I would have went with, if you're going to go with, they aren't worth the price, 15 most overpriced and unaffordable cities in America in 2026, or in the US in 2026, or 15... um least affordable and overpriced cities you know that like 15 uh 15 u.s cities that are overpriced and unaffordable that might have went much better and again using something like affordability in the title is a trigger keyword in today's times so i would have went with that so again i think the issue briggs is that you have this great legacy channel and you have an established fan base, but the titles and thumbnails just aren't punching at their weight class to be competitive in modern YouTube. So again, I think that these could just be stronger. The titles aren't the worst. The titles just need a little bit of punch. The titles are a three out of five, but we could make them a four out of five or a five out of five. The thumbnails though, they're a one out of five or a two out of five at best lately. and they need to be a four out of five five out of five for a channel your size uh people expect a much stronger more premium thumbnail in modern youtube um let's see uh oh by the way for anyone looking right now while we're live at channel reviews channel reviews are closed for the night we'll do them again next week um so let's see but yeah in terms of like where the channel is um having some struggle i would say that also uh Again, there could be some things that could be done here with shorts. Your shorts are not primarily your thing. And it doesn't look like your shorts have been getting the most views lately. So again, we could just prioritize the long form. No problem with just prioritizing the long form. But yeah, I just think that these could be much more compelling and much more competitive. And not all the time are the views God awful. And some of these are slow burners. but they will do better if the thumbnails are just better for one and again there are instances where some of the titles can be more compelling not every one of these titles is uh wrong by the way but again stronger title and thumbnail combinations together produce higher views of videos um The other thing you could think about is in the current era, right now, people are looking at two extremes. You have a large group of young Americans that care about affordability. Then you have a lot of older Americans that don't necessarily care about affordability. They care about quality of life or they care about signaling that they can afford something expensive or they want to avoid certain things. There's places they don't want to be. So I would, look at targeting those things a lot more. So I would make videos about affordability because there's a subsection on the market that cares about affordability. Then there's a subsection that couldn't care less about affordability and they care about getting the best they can, the most expensive they can, highest quality of life, best retirement, avoid the most crime, do this, best for families. uh you know best for this best for that whatever their lifestyle is so again um i would start to appeal to those things on emotional level in terms of being your topic selection and therefore your titles uh would follow so yeah those are some thoughts i have for you again i think if you wanted to uh again if you ever want to reach out and do a one-on-one call we could go into more depth on this and we can talk about what's going on with the channel here i also think that if you can go even beyond with the channel, a one-a-day cadence, if you can step it up. Again, you don't have to, but if you wanted to, you could step it up. And if you could get out more quantity, even with this while improving it, you can shore up the numbers and make sure that this is cash flowing right. uh so again it's an option it's on the table but again i think the biggest thing here is the thumbnails could drastically improve and we could go through and go over that together and there are issues where some of the titles could be much stronger and some of the topic selection could be much more in line with just the current sentiment around uh what people want out of their living and the just the different groups of people who want that so again it's just something to think about But those are my thoughts on World According to Briggs. Again, great channel, great supporter, strong legacy channel there. Again, I think there's a lot this channel does right. But again, packaging could just be more competitive in modern YouTube landscape. A lot of times with a lot of us, people have been doing YouTube for a long time. We get comfortable with the way we've been doing things, but there's just, you have to pay attention to what the landscape is. You have to pay attention to changing trends and sentiment like how many people are watching on TV. And you have to consider do my thumbnails compete on TV? Something YouTube is changing is we're about to get the ability, we've been struggle bussing with like two megabyte files or something for thumbnails. YouTube's about to let's have 50 megabyte files and make 4K resolution thumbnails because of their big aggressive push for TV and cinematic content. So you gotta think of it from that perspective. Think about the fact that your stuff is going to be more and more watched for a TV audience. YouTube's even gonna be upscaling a lot of our content to HD if it's not HD already. And it's gonna be upscaling it to 4K if it's already HD. YouTube is not playing around when it comes to the TV viewing audience. It's prioritizing that. Shorts makes us feel like everything is mobile first. But there are viewing experiences and there are viewing demographics that are TV-first viewers. And the older people get, the more they're watching TV on YouTube. It's not just a young people's game there. So you have to be thinking about things like that. But those are my thoughts for World According to Briggs. I'd love to know what you think in the chat if you're watching live. And there we go. Six down, four to go. Yeah, but Briggs, again, you know I love your content. Again, I just think that in the modern landscape, the packaging has to be strong. The positioning for your channel and for the audience to signal to them that, hey, this is important to me also has to be there. And I do think that there are improvements that can be made. Again, also timeliness for you. Lean into the exodus and lean into people that might be fleeing New York and California right now. What is it they say? I'm trying to remember. What's that phrase? I remember now. so there's a phrase they say um this thing they say um and i'm bringing the props back by the way as you can see um they say this thing never let a crisis go to waste if a bunch of people are like okay that's it i'm out i'm leaving california i'm leaving new york i'm leaving la if that's happening and you are in either a real estate channel or a travel channel or a destination thing take advantage of that if that's how it is right now never let a crisis go to waste go ahead and implement Content on your channel that could speak to that phenomenon and absorb that viewership. You know nothing wrong with it up We got a super chat just for support from our friend Ryan. So thank you so much Ryan DePaul Appreciate you got another one from our friend chips appreciates you Yep, and so we've got four more channels to review here. I'm gonna power through ah So much content so much content, but we're gonna get through it and then i'm gonna get some rest for tomorrow's uh stream with our friends over at opus clip we're gonna be talking about short form strategy so that's gonna be something you want to keep an eye on and again we will be doing this again next week i'll probably uh schedule friday's channel review live stream for um next week um so i'll probably do that There's a chance that because I've missed so many weeks of channel reviews when I haven't been feeling well, I've been too tired to do them, that I might double up a couple of weeks here, especially as we go closer to where I'm going to have to take some days off for the holidays. I might double up on some of these, and so we might do channel reviews on Friday and Saturday nights just to get through more of them. um saturday at 1 p.m eastern we're gonna do on the opus clip channel we're gonna be doing a stream with them as well um so that's gonna be something that we're looking at um so make sure you guys uh stay tuned for that after nimmin live tomorrow so after nick nimmin uh does his live stream we're going to at 1 p.m eastern be doing Opus Clip. Me and Andrew Kan will be over there. We'll be fielding a bunch of your questions on YouTube Shorts. We'll also be talking about YouTube Shorts Strategy. A lot of you who follow me over on X have been embracing the YouTube Shorts Blitz Strategy that I talked about. We'll be making a video soon outlining the details of how to win with YouTube Shorts because my clients have been killing it with YouTube Shorts and it's been great. A lot of you in the community have been taking on the Shorts Blitz and your numbers have been growing up. We're really happy about that. But yeah, so those are some things to look forward to in the pipeline. But let's go ahead and go to our next channel review, which is Vasco Toys. I love this channel banner. I love this logo. This really speaks to the 80s kid in me. So almost 200 videos, 22,000 subscribers. Let's see. Wow, this is actually really solid. Like that. Great thumbnails here. Creating this with action figures. Yeah, no, this is a really good presentation style of everything the channel offers, the dioramas. You got shorts going on, then you got the post, you got collaborations here. Really good stuff. Excellent overall channel layout and presentation. So very well done. around these action figures let's go and look at uh what's going on with the videos and the thumbnails so i love that you incorporate things from the actual um franchise into there this one for dragon ball daima is really good um and you incorporated the like okay this is brilliant and then here for building your dream gundam after 20 years a big fan of mobile fighter g gundam myself um you know We try to do as much as we can with these channel reviews with the help of KOJ. Some of you will know that reference from mobile file G Gundam. It's a meme in the community. These are really good. The then and now as a before and after style thumbnail for Teen Gohan was really clever, very well done. The contrast there is good. The one thing I would have done differently on this then and now is I would have moved the text on this to the top. rather than the bottom and avoided the YouTube timestamp altogether. So minor criticism there, but almost 40,000 views on that is really good. For this, I recreated the Spider-Man battle with action figures. I would have done more of a closeup. I understand what you were going for here with showing your hand and showing this here. And again, I love this intro with you pulling the comic off the shelf and doing the references and going into it. But again, this, is going to be on someone's phone and on their television set and in general just going in on a close-up of spider-man holding the green goblin would have been infinitely better here and would have um done this justice the same thing goes for this diorama with the arena diorama for uh the gladiator um again just Punching in more on this and knowing and understanding how small it is on someone's phone screen makes all the difference in the world here. I understand what you were going for with trying to show that you did this diorama and showing the craftsmanship part of this and that was handcrafted. But again, that intention as an artist is conflicting with what is valuable or necessary for a viewer. Let's see, same thing with the Star Wars here. For the two Vegeta action figures, again, I think you should have done it the same way you did the Gohan one here. Again, my contention is taking the then and now and putting it at the top similar to a before and after. Also, again, too far zoomed out. I understand the craftsmanship and what you were going here for, but again, too far zoomed out, losing too much detail, especially on a mobile device. So again, that seems to be the biggest issue and criticism I have for most of your thumbnails. This one for the Mongo Vegeta, this one was smart. This is a good example of the good execution of what I'm talking about with going zoomed in more. The then and now on the Vegeta, again, zoomed in more. Again, my only contention is the texting, the timestamp here at the bottom would put it at the top instead. Spider-Man. Thumbnail, again, very strong. The then and now thumbnails do very well for you. This Rambo one, figures have come a long way since 1985. Again, I get where you were going for here. Probably still just needed to zoom in more on the figure and be a little bit more pronounced there. So I think that that was the issue. Same for the Goku one. Again, these views are not bad on this one. It's just that it could have been more. if it was zoomed in. I understand you were going for representing scale here, but again, it just loses detail when it's on somebody's phone and they're trying to see what this is about and make a decision to click on something. People have to be able to make a quick decision at a glance to make one video a priority instead of another. And if they can't understand the video quickly enough or see enough detail to be enticing, it's just not gonna do it for them. So again, going through this, again, size and scale and attention and visual detail and just zooming in more is your biggest flaw with regard to the thumbnails. So again, even with this Gundam one, I would zoom in more because again, we can't even see or tell if this is burning Gundam or shining Gundam. I cannot tell because again, it's zoomed out so much. I get that you wanted to show off the stage and the arena for this, but again, the detail and the zoom in would have been better that's also why the dragon ball diamond one is doing well same thing with the trunks one it's that we get to just see more of the action figures see more of what it is and what we care about and so that is working for it so that's kind of the difference in views for a lot of these but overall i think this is really great um again this channel speaks to the 80s kid in me um let's look at your shorts um again some really good stuff here some outliers on that so keep posting shorts whenever you can um these again these are hit or miss for you but i think it just depends on what it is and um what the franchise is in some cases but again um i'm fine with you doing shorts on this for the same channel and again they've done well i think you could do more with them i think you could do more of them and you could definitely get away with that if you want to post shorts more often not gonna hate it at all. In fact, if you could post shorts more often, probably grows the channel and you do have a good shorts following here. So I'd consider if there's a way to do daily shorts, especially with how long it takes to do your regular videos. Your regular videos take a lot of time, take a lot of effort. You could supplement some of that with shorts and do really well, even behind the scenes shorts. Again, if you can post daily on those. I think it doesn't hurt you. I think it actually only helps you. So again, this is a well executed channel. There's so much here that's being done right. I just think that there are some minor tweaks and changes that could make this much better. But what do you guys think? Do you agree with me in the chat? If you're watching live, do you agree with me in the comment section on the replay? I love the branding of this so much. I love what you're doing with this. I love the theme of it. I love the execution. I just think the packaging sometimes could be a little bit better. I really think you have to pay attention to that mobile audience and what the size and scale of those figures is gonna look like on a phone and that someone can't identify them quickly enough. And as for shorts, yeah, just post more of them. So those are my thoughts. Would love to know what you all think. All right, seven channel reviews done, three to go. And then we'll have our 10 for tonight. We ended up doing 10. So, you know, is what it is. I found that second wind. And we're getting through these. Yeah, we'll be doing these channel reviews again next week, most likely. I'll probably schedule next week's set of channel reviews. Tomorrow, I'll schedule next week's. If I'm not feeling too tired tomorrow, we might even do a second round of channel reviews for Saturday night just to make up for the weeks that I've missed. But we'll see. I'm not promising that one. So you'll want to stay tuned. You'll want to check in. You'll want to make sure you're following me on X because I'll let people know what's going on there. So there's a chance. If we don't do another round of channel reviews tomorrow, around 7 or so, then we'll definitely be doing another round of them next Friday. We'll be doing them every Friday for the rest of the year, aside from holidays themselves. We'll avoid that. But, you know. We've also got a workshop happening on Wednesday where we'll be covering ideation, finding topics, finding ideas, and finding titles. That's going to be sponsored by friends over at 1of10.com. We've got a great link for them below. You can get 20% off for life if you use code Roberto at checkout. So you definitely want to do that. And like I said, tomorrow is a Saturday. On Saturdays, I'm co-hosting with Andrew Kan on the Opus Clip channel. So that's something we've started doing. And so I'll be another co-host for the next couple of months over there. We'll be talking about YouTube shorts, strategies, and repurposing content and everything you need to know about that. So stay tuned. Meantime, let's go to our next channel review. So we've got channel review number eight here. We've got Seventh Haven. So they cover anime games and random stuff. They might be a little too random though. this logo is interesting but the channel banner is a little too much and all over the place it should probably be cleaner and should probably let you know um how often it's going to upload and again i think that a lot of you your channel banners do not need your social media stuff a lot of you need to stop trying to use your youtube channel to take people to your other social media and grow your other social media if you're going to take people from social media you take them to your own website where you sell them something so Again, I don't think you need to be taking people to your other social media profiles. Let those grow organically on their own. They're also a different type of audience a lot of the time. So, you know, I'd approach it that way. But again, banner could be a lot cleaner here. And we're gonna see if the channel is too random. There's not a lot of thumbnails here. There's 208 videos. There's not a lot of thumbnails in terms of... playlist to let us know what's going on. So we're gonna have to click into the videos to see what's going on with this channel. So using an interesting format, using levels and tier list. Let's see, RuneScape, cozy games, platformers. So if you wanna mostly do, I think you need to define more clearly what this channel is if it's going to grow. If the channel is going to grow, I don't think randomness is the answer. I think there is a limit to variety. I think we need to narrow in what's working and what's not. Let's see. The thumbnails, I'm gonna be frank in most cases, even with your most popular videos and your latest videos, these thumbnails are mostly one out of five, if not two out of five, at best thumbnails. So you need to lock in and understand how to execute thumbnails well and what good thumbnails can look like. And I think you need to figure out what you're committing to because, again, I think for a viewer, their ability to commit to this channel and to understand what reasonable expectations for the channel are, are non-existent right now because it's just too over the place and it code switches way, way too much. I think you need to pick something to do here and lock in. Now, I think what that can be and what is getting decent views for a channel of your size and what it can be is I think you need to lock in on ranking videos, level videos, tier list. I think you need to go best to worst tier list. ratings rankings so i think you need to be something of a review channel but i think you need to review things in and about video games themselves um because i think that the rest of it just isn't really hitting with the audience it looks like once upon a time if you were going to focus on individual games you know that that could have worked but Or you could have been doing games commentary. I think there could be room for games commentary if you focus on gaming news. So here's what my suggestion is. My suggestion is you build out five specific content pillars. One of them should be explaining. levels of things in games of where the five levels of building a house in minecraft the five levels of doing this in roblox the five levels of doing it i think you should do these level breakdowns of things for games then i think you should do rankings of games as a second pillar i think you should do best to worst for games as a third pillar and then i think you should do gaming news as a fourth pillar of gaming news and industry news is a fourth pillar and gaming news i think can or should be daily daily i think you should do it um i think it will help i think it will grow and i think you could do daily uh news and reactions to things in gaming news gaming space there's no shortage of it you could be talking about the layoffs at square enix you could be talking about um asian companies pulling their funding out of western games There's a lot of opportunity there. And then I think also you can be making listicles about individual games and the things in them or say every blank in this game. So like, okay, every weapon in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild or whatever it is, you know? So, or every hero and villain in dispatch, for example. Right now dispatch is really popping off. You could be doing a tier list of every hero in, every hero, every villain, best girl. You could do any number of things with that with dispatch. So that's a thing. So, yeah, those would kind of be like the five pillars that I would have for this channel to make it much less random. And I would nix the anime component and focus on games. And that's what I would do to clean this up. Again, variety channels are almost impossible for people to pull off. Even the big YouTubers who say, well, this person doesn't, they didn't start that way. PewDiePie didn't start that way. Most of your big YouTubers didn't start out with variety. They started out in a genre of gaming. They started out with one game. PewDiePie made like 200 amnesia videos before he moved on to another game. So again, I think that those are things. that you should really look at here uh seventh haven and i think that you should uh do daily gaming news commentary uh to build up momentum build up an audience people are very passionate about those things they can look for opinions if they like your opinions on gaming news and commentary then they can like your opinions on tier list ranking videos level videos um and uh learning from you every item or everything or character in a game best and worst, they'll care about your opinions. So you can have a variety, personality-driven channel if you position for it, but the way to position for it is to position as an opinions-driven channel around things that are current and that people care about. So that would be my advice for you, but what do the rest of you think? Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Let me know in the chat if you're watching live. Boom. So I think that was a... you know good one to cover um again i just think that there's too much going on there there were a lot of things that were hit or miss consistency was also an issue but i think that that can be corrected with some of the things i brought up um so again um i just think that There's a lot there can be addressed. By the way, for those of you who do anything related to geek culture, anime, and gaming, I'm literally one of the only YouTube strategist that actually knows about any of those things. That's why I was able to comment on the stuff with, you know, Vasco Toys. I knew exactly what was going on because I know about the collectibles, I know about Dragon Ball, Gundam, anime, because I know the nerd stuff. I was able to bring up Square Enix and Dispatch in... the reviewing a gaming channel because I understand the culture and I know what's going on and I keep up with it and I have clients in that space. But again, I don't just do the strategy on that without knowing the subject matter. So I do understand that and I'm one of the only YouTube strategists that actually understand some of those more esoteric type niches. So yeah, so again, something to think about. All right, let's move on to our second to last, our penultimate. Matty J. So we got Matty J here. Looks like another gaming channel. So right up my alley. Kingdom Hearts profile pic. Nice touch with Sora there. But no channel banner. Interesting. Channel banners can be great. Channel banners can tell people your schedule and what your uploads are going to look like. Not a lot of playlist here. So again, you can flesh that out. Almost a thousand videos. So yeah, there's stuff that we fleshed out here. I'm assuming both of those are shorts. Let's see. You did a video about Charlie made millions from streaming. You say gaming, live streams, commentary, and more. Again, this channel might end up being a little too all over the place. We'll see. So I can't do this anymore. What's the most popular videos on this channel? It's probably gonna be shorts. Thumbnails aren't bad, hit or miss, not bad. Let's see, is more of this shorts or is it gonna be more live streams? Ah, the shorts are hitting, got it. Okay, so here's my answer for you. I'm gonna suggest that for a lot of the stuff that you're doing and for the variety of stuff you wanna do, do five to eight shorts a day. Do five to eight shorts a day. You could even get away with doing eight to 12 shorts a day. and do eight to 12 shorts, instead of doing exactly what you're doing here, do facts and nostalgia and things around our favorite games of all time. So do things around our favorite games and anime moments of all time. I mentioned why I slowed down on shorts. Maddie, why did you slow down on shorts? You say you mentioned that there was a reason you slowed down on shorts. Tell me why. Because here's the thing. Shorts are the thing that work the most for you. I wouldn't slow down on them. And in fact, if your channel is monetized, I absolutely wouldn't slow down on them. In donation comment. Okay, so I'm going to look at, I'm going to pull the comment here. Main audience is shorts first, live second, third videos, average this. Thoughts on titles, overall channel, donated five earlier. Okay, so here's the thing. I know you probably want, and I'm gonna give you some advice on the long form. I'm already giving you advice on long form. Here's the reason I am telling you to do more shorts. Here's the reason I'm telling you to do more shorts. And your live streams, and you can do your live streams. But here's the reason I'm telling you to do more shorts. And I'm telling you to do shorts about... anime's greatest moments and greatest moments in games, facts you don't know about games, those things get easy views, easy shares, and again, if you started getting individual shorts that are getting like these kind of views and get 15K, 20K views, 30K views, and you were doing eight or 12 shorts a day, you'd be getting hundreds of thousands of views per day. And it may not feel like shorts pay a lot, but when you're doing eight or 12 shorts a day and you're getting hundreds of thousands of views per day on those shorts, then the money is actually really, really good. Because if you were getting like 300 to 500,000 views on shorts per day, you'd be getting millions of views on shorts per month so i'm not saying don't do the live streams i'm saying i would focus on streaming and shorts a lot more than i would care about long form videos i'd be focusing on streaming and shorts because if you're making good donations and money from your live streams mainly and you're growing your overall audience because of shorts then you could be getting millions of views a month from shorts growing your subscribers more, and then you'd be making good money from just the sheer volume of your shorts, shorts that you could do like that eight to 12 a day on anime facts, most disrespectful moments, greatest moments, epic moments in anime, gaming, so on and so forth. Facts about gaming, facts about Dragon Ball, facts about Kingdom Hearts, facts about Organization 13, facts about, you know, Persona, whatever. Facts about Dragon Ball Budokai, thoughts about Shonen Jump, whatever. If you were doing all of these anime and gaming fact-based videos and you were pumping them out eight to 12 a day and making it really crazy simple, you don't have to over edit them, five to 15 minutes per edit. You could be making money hand over fist. You could get to a point to where you'd make $100 a day because of shorts. 50 to $100 a day because of shorts every day on the table, that's possible. And then as for your live streams, I'm not telling you to not do live streams. I am going to tell you though, the thumbnails for the live streams are really, really bad. These are one out of five live stream thumbnails at best. But also, I don't think you need to always be live streaming gameplay. of dragon ball kingdom hearts again you're maxing um certain amount of views on this i think you need to be playing current games i think you have to be playing current games so right now i'd be playing current games that people are really adamant about in the community right now i'd be playing dispatch because it is a game and it has anime like aesthetics i'd be playing dispatch i'd be playing um Expedition 33. I would be playing things like that. I'd be clipping things like that. I'd be clipping the cinema scenes from those games. I'd be playing games. I'd be playing these indie games. I'd be playing Silksong right now. I'd be doing that. There's an upper limit to what you're gonna get out of these nostalgic old games. You need to be playing relevant current games. Bottom line. And so I would be doing that. For regular videos, again, the video about Charlie, this is a throwaway video. Your audience isn't really into that and they can watch so many other videos or people's responses about that. Again, for the long form stuff you are doing, there's so much you could be doing. Like who wins between Hokage versus Ichiya? No. Do most disrespectful moments in Naruto. Just do a reaction style commentary video with footage and learn from CJ the champ and literally do a most disrespectful moments in Naruto, episode one. Most disrespectful moments in Baki, episode one. Like again, most savage moments in Naruto, episode one. Most savage moments in Baki, episode one, if you're gonna do it. Again, if you're going to cover things like Sparking Zero and DAMA, you need to do something like 47 facts about Sparking Zero, you don't know, stuff like that. Learn and reference from skip the tutorial, right? So again, it's things like that. with channels like these it can be very difficult because you're passionate about the subject and stuff like that but some of it's way too all over the place it doesn't focus in on what people would value and matter more and matter most and as somebody who's been in the anime and gaming community for a long time i'm telling you um what works versus what doesn't um So there's a lot more that you could have going for you a thousand videos in right now if you just get your stuff a lot more focused But also for the love of God, you've got to get the thumbnails straight You've got to get from being a 1 out of 5 in thumbnails to being at least a 3 out of 5 if not 4 out of 5 or a 5 out of 5 in the thumbnails The packaging has to be better or it's skip the video People have too many good options to put up with a bad thumbnail in modern YouTube right now So that's something that's got to happen But those are my thoughts for you, Maddie J. Again, I'd love to know what you all think in the chat if you're watching live or in the comment section if you're watching the replay. Again, I think there's potential for the subject matter. I just think it's a matter of focusing on the execution and tuning things up a lot. And again, the thumbnails can definitely be better, but we could be going here to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views a month. if the subject matter is tightened up. And if, and again, yeah, 10 to 20 clips a day on the shorts. Yeah, you gotta post more shorts. It doesn't matter. The idea of being known as a shorts channel, being worried about being known as a shorts channel, that's YouTubers getting in their own head. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what people, the point is just people choosing to watch something. It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with being a shorts channel. Do you guys know that the OG YouTube was nothing but shorts? We just didn't call it YouTube shorts. In the olden days of YouTube, in 2005 through 2011, Almost no one could make what you call long form today. Everyone could only make three minute videos because everybody was poor and everyone had laptops that were $600 laptops that needed a $30 Targus chill mat to render videos and no one could make anything longer than three to five minutes tops because their laptop would melt rendering the video because like smartphones weren't good yet. Camera gear was expensive and everyone was a broke kid in college and none of us could afford good equipment. So everybody that wasn't literally editing on a computer from their work was editing on a cheap $500, $600 laptop with a Targus chill mat. Every video in YouTube in the earliest days of YouTube was a short skit, music video, commentary thing. Everyone made videos under three minutes long because no one could edit and no one could render videos because everyone was poor. So all of you are worried about being a shorts creator. All there was in the peak OG of YouTube was shorts creators except for the people who were rich or got funding because everyone was poor. No one could make long videos and YouTube wouldn't let most people upload like long videos back in the day. You know, so there is. Thing and yeah, I hear you on you want a video you want a loyal audience like Corey X kitchen and penguin zero you have to work your way up to those things you can't just want those things again your thumbnails like Charlie can make lazy thumbnails because he's been an OG youtuber for like over a decade and he has the deadpan thing going for him and he can do that But your thumbnails you can't do that as an unknown youtuber a big youtuber can do that a small youtuber can't And again, shorts, you gotta get an audience. You have to get an audience somehow. It's the fastest way to accomplish that. And more importantly, to me at least, shorts would make you some money that lets you get some resources so that you can get help editing or if your thumbnails, if you can't improve them, you can hire somebody. So it's about having resources. A lot of people, a lot of the things, a lot of the YouTubers you admire. admire they had a different come up in YouTube and it was a different era it was a different era and They could do certain things and that's just kind of how it was Today you have to be much more competitive because no one wants to watch a discount version of a big youtuber So you have to forge your own path and again There's nothing wrong with starting or getting an audience from shorts you can make money on shorts I've proven you can make money on shorts with my clients are doing especially the gaming channels It's there for them. They can make some really, really good money if they can get the views. With live streams, again, you cannot make throwaway live stream thumbnails on YouTube. This is not Twitch. You have to come hard on the thumbnails as well. Queso, Queso is an anomaly. Queso is an anomaly because he's a jolly cool, fat dude who can make fun of himself. Like, a lot of you need to stop worrying about what big YouTubers are doing, their personalities that are famous, because you're not. You're a small YouTuber. You have to play the game differently. You cannot sit there and do, like, doing what Queso does. Doing what Penguin Zero does would be me like me worrying about what Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos does. They're billionaires. I can't build my business off of what a billionaire is doing when I'm a small business owner making six figures. It makes no sense. So small YouTubers cannot build off of what multi-millionaire YouTubers. Multi-millionaire YouTubers, they have teams. Number one, they have teams. They have someone to do their editing for them. They have people to do clipping for them. They have managers to go out and get brand deals for them. They've got all these resources. They also have unlimited time. They're full-time. They're rich. They're rich. We cannot sit there and look at their stuff and then try to always apply it to yourself. Even a mid-ladder creator can't always do that. Okay, a mid-tier creator can't always do that. A small YouTuber cannot sit there and look at what OG YouTubers that didn't have competition and got to blow up and be early to something in the early days of YouTube can't go off of that. But then on top of that, you know, yeah, you can look at and you can look at Asmongold, you can look at Kaso, you can look at, you can admire these people, but like, again, It's nice that they can post wherever they want, but a regular person can't do that. I can't shoot my mouth off the way Elon Musk does. Elon Musk can shoot his mouth off because he's a billionaire, about to be a trillionaire. I can't do that. But there are ways to approach the content game. You can live stream, set up your OBS or your StreamYard, and clip farm, and that's a thing that you can do like they can do. So that's something you can do. But there are other things you might want to look at doing to make yourself competitive and give yourself a shot. You have to look at your situation and what was for your situation. You also have to remember these people are full-time. They don't have to work a nine-to-five job and do content. They don't have to run another business and do content in many cases. They just get to be a content creator. That's wildly different than most people's situation. The other thing you have to look at is they also... They are doing what works for them and what works for them won't always work for you. So you have to apply it to your own situation. You have to. And again, my thought for you is right now, an easy thing for you to do. There are things for you to do that you can do differently and stand out that people will value and you have potential there. I'm not saying you don't have potential, but you gotta tighten things up and you can't be all over the place and you have to do things that are relevant to people right now to be able to harness attention that already exists. So there is a value to that. You also have to look at where, okay, if something's not working, don't do it as much. If something is working, do it more. A lot of times as YouTubers, we get caught up in what we wish was working or what we wish was getting views versus doing what actually is. So again, that's just some advice. Again, I know it can be hard to deal with and I understand that I'm very harsh about this stuff, but so many YouTubers have potential and it goes to waste because they're focusing on what they wish was working instead of what actually is working for them already. And it's in your own analytics. It's right there. sometimes staring you right in the face. But we don't like the videos that like us back sometimes. And that's the problem. A lot of times we wish this type of content would do well instead of just learning to enjoy the content that's actually performing for us. So there is that. I think the giant pencil is just a prop that I like from my thumbnails a lot. And again, I think it's just something to do with my hands that is interesting and it's different. Again, I like props. I'm a prop guy. And, yeah, for a lot of you, the shorts are performing. So, yeah. All right. Last review of the night is Just My Opinion. So we're going to do that. And then we're going to call it a night. It's past Roberta's bedtime as it is. So Just My Opinion reviews. 56,000 subscribers going strong. And 3,000 videos here. So, okay, we've done this one before. Let's see what's going on. So we've got movie reviews here. These thumbnails look spiffy. Spoiler movie reviews. Series reviews. IT, Welcome to Derry. Tyler Perry, Black Movie Marathon. So Alien Earth. So great list of playlists here. Love it. Let's dive into the thumbnails. Also, very, very good branding here in terms of this channel banner. Just have to say that again. Good here with the profile pic. So, let's see. Tyler Perry's Finding Joy. Spoiler movie review. Okay. Five hours ago. You know, sometimes, truth be told, spoiler movie reviews are just going to get less views out the gate because, again, a lot of people just... You know, they just don't want to have the movie spoiled. So don't get discouraged with that. Predator Badlands, future of the franchise. This is a good amount of views for that. Thumbnail here is actually exceptional. Well done. You know, a lot of your thumbnails are four out of five or five out of five. This Predator thumbnail is a five out of five. Now with some of these, again, I know exactly why you've said in the past you're covering a lot of the Tyler Perry stuff. It just might not be getting the juice that it used to, especially some of these that are nostalgic, older Tyler Perry stuff. Again, you're doing them and I know why you want to do them. You got to just accept that on the views for these that there's just less interest in them. Maybe they'll get more views over time because people are always kind of into the current thing. But again, also with the current thing, if it's a spoiler, it also can make people go, oh, I don't want that spoiled for me. Or, oh, I want to make my own opinion of it. I don't want to hear what the critics are saying. So that could be a thing. One second here. The Perfect Neighbor Netflix documentary review. This one is good because I do think that you'd be surprised how many people are actually searching for this. Anything that Netflix is pushing has a pipeline built in. Again, the older stuff from Tyler Perry. I get exactly why you're doing it, so I'm not gonna harp on it too much. My thing with that is just you're gonna have to accept lower views on that and a slow burn on that. It could do well long term as an evergreen series. But again, people's big interest will be on newer things, especially Netflix. Netflix shows and series and movies are doing really well for you. This Alien Earth one... might have done better if you'd shown one of the aliens in it. Let's see. Some of these outliers, you need to identify what made those outliers specifically pop. I think that specifically because you were very critical even in the title and said, get back Satan trash. I think that that made people more interested in seeing what you had to say about that. You might consider how strong opinions might get more people to click on these videos. Let's see here. Your thumbnail quality, as I said earlier, is excellent. I especially love when you do these high contrast thumbnails that are really artistic that remind me of like, you know, doing poster art. So my thing is here. I think you know what works on this channel and I think you know why. I think that the conflict or the contrast is that right now for artistic reasons that you want to cover some additional things like the Tyler Perry series that you're doing and there's nothing wrong with that. You just have to understand that the audience may not be there for it. Again, the Michael trailer reaction, 9,000 views in one day, blowing everything else out of the water here. And same thing for Predator Badlands, because they are the current thing. When you go and you do these other things that are retro, retroactive, retrospective, let's say, when you do these retro videos, there's obviously just less. of a pull for that because it was so long ago and people are just not looking for it right now. Or again, if it's in their feed, it's not a priority for them because it's super old school. There's some audience for it, but it's clearly a smaller audience. You know what's gonna work for your channel. I deep down believe you know what's gonna work for your channel. And I think that you know why things are working for your channel. But I think that there's just things you want to do right now, even if they underperform because you like them. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just think that you have to know that that's how it's going to be for those particular videos versus what the audience wants more and most. And again, the other thing I would say is some of that can be circumvented with strong opinions. Look at this one. And again, also people really care about the Netflix stuff, but look at that. You said this was a mess, and look at your facial expression here. Strong opinions are things that people really, really want from you. Because then it's not a generic review. This one at the time, Ballerina John Wick movie, I think you really should have came out with a strong opinion on this. I think you should have really said whether this was good or bad. I think remake rumors are also a good potential source for you. Ironheart trailer reaction. Your facial expression here tells me everything, but you didn't go and lean into that opinion in the title. And I think if you had, this would have got 10,000 views at the time. I think at the time, if your facial expression had said it all there, I also think, I don't know if you did a review or a reaction to Ironheart. Oh, you did. You did an Ironheart review. One through six, no spoilers, and everything like that. Okay, cool. I think doing a video beyond that, I think actually beyond the reviews, if you even do individual videos that are just straight up about your opinion on some of these things, especially things like Alien Earth, for example. If you straight up give your opinion in the title and you made that clear and you do one of your facial expressions, I think that these get much more views. I really do because I think people really care about that. I think people want those strong opinions. They want people to be unapologetic and authentic. They wanna hear what you wanna say. And again, it keeps it from being a generic review because everybody can do a review. Everybody can do a review, but somebody's gonna have a strong opinion come out swinging. That's not the typical thing that we get from a lot of movie reviewers a lot of people play it way too safe i wonder if you have a ryan coogler collection of uh reviews uh that could be a good playlist for you here um for the good american family stuff i think the thumbnails on this have been particularly weak compared to your other ones maybe you just weren't feeling it um but yeah But again, I've always felt that you had a great channel with great potential. I've always loved your visuals. I've always loved your facial expressions for this stuff. I've loved the thoughtfulness that you put into your content. Again, I just think there are some areas of execution that can be tuned up a little bit. I think you should lean into your strong opinions more. And I think you need to balance and know. okay, I'm doing some of these videos and knowing what the current thing is and how well that current thing can do. And then also, I think that you have to, with the nostalgia stuff, it's well made, it's well packaged, it's well executed, but you have to accept that it's gonna be a slow burn and it's gonna take a while to gain traction. And then... The Tyler Perry stuff, if it's on Netflix, you need to say that it's on Netflix because people care about that if they have a Netflix subscription. If it's on another syndication or streaming thing, you got to call that out as well. And I think you may underestimate the value of positioning things based on what streaming platform they are. There are people who straight up will be like, oh, that's on Hulu. I've got a Hulu subscription. Oh, that's on Netflix. I've got that. Oh, I've got Disney Plus. So I think, oh, I've got Apple TV. So I think that people really care more about that than you might think. So do keep that in mind. But again, overall, well executed as always, my friend, great packaging. There's just some things that you can do a little differently here. For your short form, I think that you might want to consider how you're approaching short form. And one thing I would tell you is beyond these reactions and stuff like that, I think you should really give us movie facts and movie trivia. That stuff just does extremely well. And you could do a lot of it and you can get a lot of views, subs, get some money out of that. And it's always something that people do end up watching is movie trivia, celebrity facts, and things of that nature. So I would definitely explore that. So yeah, again, once again. Solid work overall. Again, I love your thumbnails. I love the overall branding and what you bring to the table here. And I do think it's something different for your movie reviews. After I watch Predator Badlands this weekend, I'll probably watch your review of it, to be honest with you, because I want to see this movie. I'm a huge fan of the Predator movies. This one, I'm hearing so many mixed reviews from it. i don't know what to make of it given your facial expression here it could be hit or miss um so i'm going to give it a chance this weekend and hopefully i'm not too upset so um you know something to think about um but yeah That's it for just my opinions reviews, review from me, given my opinions. So what do you guys think? What are your opinions of this channel? Let me know in the comment section, let me know in the chat. Again, I think it's a great channel. I think there's some strong things here. I think that when you do this stuff though, and then when you wanna go and do retroactive or nostalgia things, you gotta accept that sometimes the moment has passed. And then also there's the current thing, but also like I've always told you guys. strong opinions win on YouTube and social media in general. Whether we think that that should be the case or not, strong opinions win. So that's just something I want to put out there. But again, great job. Thank you for the super chat from Stacey Brooks. Appreciate you. Thank you, my good friend Red Marina for the super sticker. Yeah, I see you guys have been super lively in the chat. Yep, absolutely, I agree. Yep, so that's gonna be it for tonight's channel reviews. Again, thank you to our good friends over at oneoften.com for sponsoring the channel reviews tonight. Make sure you come to our workshop on Wednesday here on the channel. We'll be covering channel ideation. finding topics for your videos, not running out of ideas, and how to formulate your titles. So we'll be definitely doing that. Thanks to our friends over at 1 of 10. Make sure you check them out. Link's in the description. Use discount code Roberto to get 20% off for life from our friends at 1 of 10. Thank you for them for sponsoring. Tomorrow, we will be over on the StreamYard channel at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday. We're going to be doing that more often in the weeks to come. So hopefully, you'll join us over there. We're going to be going over short strategy. You guys do not want to miss that. Again, shorts are killing it right now. People are actually making money with them. Shorts revenue is going up. There's a lot of opportunity. But for long form, do not forget that YouTube television sets are the key right now. That is a big deal, highly underrated. Also, YouTube merging vertical and horizontal live streams is giving more reach, more exposure than ever. And there's more stuff coming from YouTube. We've got 30 updates. There's so much happening. 2016 is going to be lit. Even I'm going to be making more long form content and doing more workshops with you to make you prepared for 2016. And again, I'm trying to just work my way up back to being super healthy and making more content for you. More videos are coming. So stay tuned. But it's been great hanging out with you all tonight. I'm going to try and see if I can tune up Nightbot. It's been going a little rogue here. So yeah, appreciate you all. Thank you to all of our amazing mods. Really appreciate it. And as always, stay awesome, and we'll catch you next time. If you want to work with me, there are links in the description down below. We're going to have some discounts on some of my products coming out, going into Cyber Month here. So throughout the end of the year, we're going to actually have some discounts on some things. So you definitely want to make sure you check that out. Like I said, we're going to do channel reviews again next week. We might even double up on channel reviews to try and make up for the weeks that I missed. Again, stay awesome. We'll catch you next time. Again, if you wanna work with me or join Awesome Creator Academy, you're gonna learn a little bit more about that here as we close out. 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. 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 it would have made all the difference in the world in helping me be an even more successful content creator. If you have questions, you can always reach out via support. We're happy to help you figure out if the pro group is right for you. Also, we do have the opportunity to become a VIP member if you also would like quarterly one-on-one coaching with me directly. Now go out there and create something awesome today and hopefully we'll see you in the pro group. Take care.

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