Should You Quit Your YouTube Channel When THIS Happens?  ## Metadata - Author: [[TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide]] - Full Title: Should You Quit Your YouTube Channel When THIS Happens? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/74268b61-2b9b-4834-8926-69b41e597a21 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **YouTube Monetization Policy Update** - YouTube updates its monetization policy to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content on July 15, 2025. - Avoid inauthentic, AI-voice or repetitive content to maintain monetization eligibility. Transcript: Travis That we can get into. YouTube announced, and this is what's interesting, it's kind of a policy. I want to say it's a policy update. So let me share the screen so you can see what it says. So they say, and we're in July now. Can you believe that? My gosh, what happened? No, we're like at the peak of summer and i'm like wait what how i haven't left the house to be able to even understand what's going on outside okay no i literally didn't had no idea uh updates To the youtube partner program monetization policies now this is upcoming in the next couple of weeks in order to monetize as part of the youtube partner program youtube has always Required creators to upload original and authentic content, which Jen and I always promote. We always say you should do original and authentic content. On July 15th, 2025, YouTube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update reflects better what inauthentic content looks like today. Now, what does that mean? Well, they don't tell us. Right now, that's all we know. Jenn But it sounds good. Travis It sounds good, potentially. It depends on who you are. If you're doing inauthentic repetition content, it's a terrible day for you. You're breaking the rules. It's a terrible day for you. Your wheels have fallen off. Your wheels have fallen off. You rode it till the wheels fell off. Exactly oh gosh this is going to come into play too many times today it's the july 15th those wheels are falling off no so what we think it means a is that on the 15th they'll probably actually Have the guidelines you actually know specifically what's happening but just as important to that we i i believe that it has to do with so on you on twitter they actually said this is the Same rules as before, but they're just detailing them more clearly. So you'll see a lot of channels with like AI voices over content that they've just taken from somewhere else. I think those are the type of channels that are probably going to run afoul of this. And it doesn't mean they're going to take your content away. They're just not going to monetize it. So I think that's what they're ([Time 0:01:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c2e58bf-00bb-48e1-9566-fdb32b74e2cc)) - **New Viewer Analytics Breakdown** - New YouTube analytics break down viewers into new, casual, and regular with detailed watch metrics. - Understanding these viewer segments can help tailor content strategies for better engagement. Transcript: Travis People who many audience members who come to watch your content They split it up into new users, new viewers, casual, and regular viewers. Before the very beginning, back in my day. Jenn Back in Travis's day when YouTube didn't exist yet. Travis We had subscribers and non-subscribers. And then we got the new viewers, I think, metric or whatever. This one breaks it down even more. We're going to take a look real quick. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, I apologize. Come to the YouTube channel. Links in the show notes. We're going to show you what vidIQ's channel looks like in this particular thing. So this is the main channel. So what this shows is new viewers and the way they define that are watched your channel for the very first time, which is what we love for people to come watch for the first time because That means that's how we grow our channels, right? Casual viewers say they watched in up to five months over the past year. Now, I got to be honest, this text is really badly written. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. My assumption is... Jenn It's a little wonky, but like... Travis Let me say the words again. Watched in up to five months over the past year. Huh? What? So here's what I think. Jenn You know, a little typo interpretation. Travis I assume that means that they've watched at least once or maybe multiple times within the last five months. And then it says regular viewers watched in six or more months over the past year. So they've been watching more regularly. Again, not super definitive. I've actually reached out to YouTube to ask more detail as to what the wording here is trying to get across. But as you can see here, some interesting information. You can see watch time per these types of viewers, the average view per viewer, which to me is the most interesting metric here, average view duration and the average percentage viewed. Now, the average view duration and average percentage viewed, we talked about in all the different terms you need to know, which people love, by the way, Jen. People love that episode. Oh, my gosh. They're like, this is so helpful. They love it. Jenn That's just so amazing. Oh, my gosh. We didn't even finish it. We could do part two. Travis I think this was Jen's idea, too. So shout out to Jen for coming up with a banger idea. Guys. Jenn Relax. Travis She just flexed. She just flexed on me. But anyway, one of the things I want to show here that I think is really interesting is when you look at, like, regular viewers, you can see that they've watched three and a half times. And our time zone here is 28 days. So a regular viewer is watching three and a half videos in a 28-day period, which is great. That means to come and watch content regularly. Casual viewer is looking like they're looking at two or so, and then a new viewer looks like they're watching 1.2, 1.7 here on the vidIQ main channel. So that means they've watched one, and they might come back again, which is good. You can see the view iterations here for the main channel stuff. Now, the podcast channel's content or information is better, I would say, because people come and love us. Our new viewers watch for six minutes and our return viewers are almost like 17 minutes. Y'all love us. Thank you. Thank you for that. Jenn I think this is the coolest update to analytics that has happened in so long because one this is how we refer to our audiences anyways yes so now the way that we talk about our audience is Actually matching up with the analytics themselves the way that it was before was so confusing and also like we didn't have this information this information is just going to get better And better. And it is just, I think this is the most fun metric to have. And when it all makes sense, it'll be even better. And yeah. Travis And that's the thing is once I understand kind of the details of what they're saying here, we'll be able to dive deeper into what that means for you and how you can use that information To make better content. Right now, it's brand new. We just kind of got access to this just a day or so ago. Yesterday. Yeah. So like barely had time to even take it in and go, okay, what do we do with this information? All I can tell you is I can tell it's powerful ([Time 0:05:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3221a822-5392-46c4-8633-c9d16c1f277a)) - **David's Weight Loss Channel Success** - David started his weight loss channel during his own journey and gained 1,858 subs and 48,000 views in 28 days. - His channel became a supportive community that transformed his life in a dark place. Transcript: Travis Okay, so let's get to the first message, which is from David. And this one was an incredible message. Jen and Travis, I sent an email in November of last year and asked you whether or not I should start a weight loss channel. And at the starting point of my journey, or wait until I had reached my weight loss goal, then start. You said start now. Well, I didn't start straight away. But once the pain got too much of being overweight, I started a weight loss program and my channel at the same time. The channel has changed my life. I was in a very dark place and the response has been stunning. Here are my results from the first 28 days. 1,858 subs, 48,000 views, 2,700 watch hours. Wow. 380 comments, 1,743 likes, 12 dislikes. But the thing has been utterly mind blowing is how many people have reached out to comment with full paragraphs telling me what they are going through and wanting to share and support Me on my journey. I've been fortunate to have a pretty to have been pretty successful, but this is different. Thank you for giving me the nudge I need from David. David, I can't tell you how amazing that was to read. Jenn It's like speechless because this kind of thing is something like you have to experience yourself to understand that this does exist. And like ([Time 0:10:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0108c1d2-df43-4ccb-b856-a6491a3292f0)) - **Summer Viewership Decline Advice** - Summer season typically causes significant dips in YouTube channel views and engagement. - Use this low period as an opportunity to experiment or create new content without stress about immediate growth. Transcript: Travis Algorithm? P.S. Can't we just agree that both candy corn and Cadbury eggs are the pinnacles of their own perspective holiday seasons? Is it him or the algorithm? And that's what brings us to kind of the whole thing that we're going to talk about today, which is should you quit your YouTube channel or should you pivot or what's going on? But let's kind of answer his question first, Jen. So he had success by following us, unsurprisingly, right? We give good advice. And then things kind of stopped. Jenn Yeah. Travis This is not uncommon. Jenn Nope. Travis Also, we're in a time of year where I would absolutely expect things to kind of slow down and stop. Yep. You can go outside and touch grass right now because it's actually kind of nice. We're in the middle of summer. It's beautiful. And believe it or not, for a lot of content styles it actually kills a lot of those channels and when i say kills i mean like your videos kind of just stop because everyone's outside doing Things whereas other channels like barbecue channels kind of do well because what are you doing outside barbecuing and you know fourth of july videos do well because i don't know it's Fourth of july um what do you what do you tell people Jen when you see things like this happen to a creator like what were you telling people when you were coaching them yeah it's actually Jenn Really funny I have a main channel video going out that is exactly on this topic focused around summer views the dip and like really should you quit should you pivot what should you be Doing when your views suck and honestly like there's no way around it like summer is inevitably like the hardest season and even us like we have conversation like last week and we're Like the views like blah blah blah we're like oh yeah it's summer and we're like oh wait hold on we tell everybody this and like we don't even like think about it ourselves. But it's true. It's very easy to forget that there's just seasonal dips where your channel is not going to do well. And it's not you. It's not your fault because there's just things past your control. But it can make for a really good opportunity to do new things. That's my favorite advice for when things are just kind of sucking real bad on YouTube. And I mean, what do you have to lose? Right? Travis Because the thing is, like, everyone goes through dips during the course of their YouTube journey. And everyone goes through dips during the course of a year, not even just through your journey, but pretty every year. So, yeah, the question then comes to when do you need to look at this as, ([Time 0:18:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/23464ca0-b28d-49c8-acfa-d2ec69d7ee7e)) - **Pivot vs New Channel Decision** - Pivot your existing channel if you have a similar audience and enough momentum. - Start a new channel when your new content targets a completely different audience to avoid fighting old data. Transcript: Travis And i just want you to know i want to put that up front before we get to the good stuff yeah it sucks all right having said that jen how do you tell if you should pivot versus start a new channel Jenn Slash quit your old one well i think no matter what we have to go back to the original which is like new audience new channel to see it also it does get very complicated though because i think It depends how large or how small your channel is if your channel is so small that it doesn't matter then either like direction like there's not enough data like it's you could pivot or You could start a new channel at that point you really don't have anything to lose i would say if you just hit monetization i would probably not start a new channel like that's a good place To be at and also not a tremendous amount of data where you're trying to override something so like the difference between pivoting and starting a new channel is one you're starting With a fresh slate where everything you're doing is actively building the proper data into the channel and pivoting is you're working against everything that you've done in the past. And you're trying to create in a new direction and rewrite the data that is already existing. So honestly, it's kind of the same thing. But retree monetization is obviously difficult. So if you're right around that, typically I say just leave your channel. If you have a lot of data that you're working against, if you're 20 to 100,000 subscribers, that's a hard decision to just start a new channel. So I think it would have to be a very – like absolutely no overlap in the audience at all. And then like you go for it. What do you think? Travis Yeah. So well talked about because some of the things you said there aren't typically mentioned when it comes to pivoting versus starting a new channel. Like the monetization idea and like smaller, you know, how much data you have really has a lot to do with whether you do it. Plus, as YouTube has always told us, same audience or similar audience, you can probably pivot. Different audience, start a new channel. And this is true because of the things that Jen just said, which is literally like you're fighting against your back catalog when you're doing something completely different so let Me give you an example you're a baking channel so we always talk about baking channel right all of a sudden you want to be a skateboarding channel that's a new ([Time 0:21:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/571e761d-0125-4391-a73c-f4ea23ca81b3)) - **Jenn’s Personal Channel Pivot Story** - Jenn pivoted her channel from an older male travel audience to a younger female lifestyle group, unlisting her top videos. - The pivot took about five months of negative growth before she gained views aligned with her new audience. Transcript: Jenn Consistent uploads until my audience had changed. Travis Okay. Now let's, let's dig into this. I want to know more specifics jen you can't just say some stuff like that and not get more specific so your what was the original niche style or the original niche was i would say a cut kind Jenn Of like kind of travel it was very vlog very like lifestyle not super focused and and what was your view average views for videos on that ish oh i would say between like 10 and 20 for like Travis A a video okay 10 to 20 views a thousand oh 10 to 20 000 views yeah yeah so over the course of five months so what did you pivot into so that channel i had for i want to say i uploaded on for six Jenn Months it was a new channel so i uploaded on for six months and then i didn't touch it for probably a year and then i went to pivot it that's a lot of elements so what did you pivot into what It was the new pivot into the pivot is a very different lifestyle audience which okay i will keep vague for that's fine just fine work-life balance but it is still a lifestyle it is a different Travis Audience but it's a different audience yeah give an example even if it is specific like what would you say like how different it would be going from like a travel channel to a cooking channel Oh oh yeah so why did you pivot rather than start a new channel be honest um to just actually pivot okay you wanted to put myself through the actual hell of pivoting and see what happened Jenn And i tried like a couple different experiments during that time like i don't know if you remember i tried like a uh 30 day shorts challenge to see if the audience data would change faster It did not it did not all right all right i probably could have looking back now done it in a more controlled way or a more planned way i remember you were going all in. I decided the day before and I was like, I'm going to see what happens if I upload shorts for 30 days and monitor the audience. Travis But you did say some stuff happened during the course of it, but in the end it didn't help you at all? Jenn It's nothing that I noticed definitively. That's the thing. I couldn't confidently say like, yes, do this. Absolutely try it. But it was a, yeah. I mean, it was part of the experiment, but yeah, it took five months and every single month I was looking at analytics and every single thing was negative. How many, how many, how many videos? I could barely break a thousand views on a video when I was pivoting. I was constantly negative at least 500 subscribers a month. Travis Yeah yeah i know that feeling so about how many videos was that over the course of five months ish um i was trying to put out a video a week and there's definitely some weeks that i probably Missed but the goal was the video a week okay so then if you do the math that's you know it's about 20 ish or so videos over the course of five or so months what where was the point where you're Like oh it's actually starting to work what was that what was that like what did you see what what indicated that that was something that was actually working finally i was tracking every Jenn Week my audience like their demographics okay on my travel channel it was it's super common to have a very old male audience so my audience was primarily like older men it's just honestly Like all of my friends are in the travel space like it's the same it's just an older and primarily like maledominated audience. Okay. And my new channel, I was going for a young female audience. So the polar opposite. Travis Yeah, no doubt. Jenn So monitoring the audience change was very easy to do in terms of just what YouTube is classifying as their age, their sex, also content suggesting my content that was what i checked For every single upload to see when i was finally going to get similar creators suggesting my content and that's where i was like holy crap i did it and what's like your your gender uh change Now like what's your demographic now now i am 97 female what in yes in um between like the 18 to 34 or whatever the holy crap like two youngest and uh did you unlist any of your old content Hell yeah i did That's what really turned that. I was stubborn. I was like every creator I ever yelled at was like, unless your content, unless your content. And for me, it probably took me. It was like one of the hardest things that I like had to do was like unlisting like all of my best performing content. And as soon as I did that, I noticed changes within a week. Travis How deep into your journey was that? Jenn Into the pit probably like halfway through the pivot like i could ([Time 0:28:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/688dfb45-d94e-42f6-9967-1be7f045d229)) - **Unlist Old Content For Pivot** - To pivot successfully, unlist or privatize old high-performing videos that attract a different audience. - This speeds up the algorithm's recognition of your new content focus and audience. Transcript: Jenn And as soon as I did that, I noticed changes within a week. Travis How deep into your journey was that? Jenn Into the pit probably like halfway through the pivot like i could not like any yeah like any other creator like i could not part with unlisting content i was like i worked so hard for those Travis Views i don't want to see him go so you unlisted them but i mean you can so again we've talked about this i had to private them actually they were still picking up views unlisted oh no so you Jenn Yeah i oh yeah so i had unlisted them finally like took the jump and i unlisted it and then in like my real-time views i was seeing like it was still somehow getting like a hundred views for One video and i was like yeah that's not a lot of views but like that shouldn't be possible and like not a lot of views in comparison to what it was regularly collecting yeah so i had i had To private it it had to be in a playlist somewhere like it had to be somewhere where obviously a playlist where it was picking up for like your your biggest ones or just like everything Everything um just my uh like your because here's the here's the reason why i think now so it was absolutely my biggest ones. I probably over the course of time unlisted other ones. Here's why I asked this question. Just like during a channel cleanup. Travis Because I feel like it's important. So if you have a lot of subscribers. Jenn Let me check actually. Travis And that's relative, right? So like a lot can mean anything. But let's say you have, you know, 60, 70,000 subscribers. And you do this thing where you're like, I got to pivot.en said to pivot so i'm gonna pivot uh and you unlist all of your videos which again is is something and if you've listened to the podcast Enough you should probably know why this works again the recommendation engine is about all of this then you have a channel with only a couple of videos but more subscribers than it makes Sense for you to have and then it looks like you just bought everything right so that's also something you want to kind of avoid so that's why i'm asking if you only did your biggest videos Or if you just there's there's some older i just looked at the channel there's some older videos on there that okay so just the ones that kept dripping and driving in content to change Jenn Your your yeah the heavy hitters are definitely gone that was a knife in the heart but there's other like random content sure and then i probably cleaned up some of them that were ([Time 0:33:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d882d096-00a4-4b7e-9bf8-3e339d513331)) - **Travis' Channel Pivot Challenge** - Travis tried pivoting his channel with adjacent content but found it painful and challenging. - Despite his experience, he struggles emotionally with analytics and believes perseverance and ego management are essential. Transcript: Travis I'm early on in what I'm doing. So I'm not even, I think I'm just a month in. Um, I think, uh, I think, I think at the end of the day, I think at the end of the day, it's humbling, but I knew that going into it. So here's what's going's going on uh and i don't really want i don't like to talk too much about my stuff uh i think we should just say like a disclaimer like when it comes to us talking about Jenn Our personal channels it's not from a place where like we're hiding information it's just a work-life balance thing and and for me it's more about the people listening than it is about Travis Me i'm not here to yeah pump myself up but i do want to share the experience which that's what we're here well i i think it's always a little bit awkward when we're talking about personal Jenn Channels and we're being a little bit more vague yes and it's more about the point not to go see the actual channel itself and a lot of times i hate sending people to channels that i know I'm actively doing stuff like this on. Yes. Like I would say creators would like that. I would coach would find like one of my channels and I'd be like, oh my God, please don't look at that channel. Like I'm running like two experiments on it right now. Please don't look at that channel for advice. Travis Yeah. I feel like the thing is that I've had success. I've been, I've been to, uh, I don't want to say the top, but I have been in a very successful place in my niche. Great time on YouTube. Not just like views and subscribers, but I was mingling with the biggest creators in my niche. Period. End of story. I was collaborating with them. They are some of the biggest creators uh in the niche period so I've done that which is cool but now I kind of want to do something different and I you know I thought I could just start a new Channel altogether or I could just try to pivot this thing which I know I'm not going to do this content anymore it's adjacent content so I'm going to try it it is painful though I will tell You it is very painful and I think you just have to get over your ego as to how this stuff works. And just believe in what you're doing. I know that I can get wherever it is I want to go because I've done it before. And I've helped other creators do it many times over. I know that. But in the moment, it's very easy to second guess yourself. Jenn Oh, my gosh. Think we're like different like oh we like know all the answers like we're the youtube experts and it's like okay at the end of the day like we're still creators taking risks and dealing With the analytics too like there's blinders that come on when it's just ([Time 0:36:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd8a7dc1-b80f-4c3d-97b7-9d2aecf849a6))