The Delusion of YouTube Success  ## Metadata - Author: [[TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide]] - Full Title: The Delusion of YouTube Success - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/994ff167-d29b-4f55-9676-ae30d4130ca3 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Total Addressable Market Matters** - Total Addressable Market (TAM) defines how many people can potentially care about your topic. - Picking topics with larger TAM increases growth potential even if niche content can be lucrative for specific monetization. Transcript: Travis They talked about that they just had a video about different places they could take their dog, dog-friendly places, which is only going to be interest to people that lives near you. Right? Right. Like if I'm not in your state, what do I care? Right. Then she did a vlog style video about reasons to get a springer spaniel, which now all of a sudden can talk to a lot of different people. What would you tell this creator if they came to you with this? Say, I want to pivot my channel, but I'm not sure if this is going to work or not. What would you say? Well the thing is you're tapping into a bigger market so naturally not to say that therefore it always means you're going to have more views but you have a potential for more views and So in terms of a pivot i was afraid sometimes when you say pivot um and your channel's about something totally different, let's say dogs, and then now you want to do a food channel, that's Different. There's something called TAM, or Total Addressable Market, which I think over the last year or so, you've started to hear it more on YouTube. For people who don't know what that means, that in a very simple way means the amount of total people you can reach based off the topic and kind of videos you do. So for example, what we talked about before, you were talking about dog places that had, you know, in your area that were dog friendly, the total adjustable market are the only people That live there and that have dogs. So it's very kind of minute, doesn't mean matter what city you're in, at some point, you're going to hit that cap. But talking about a specific breed of dog, as Sina said, really has a larger total addressable market. A lot more people that can actually be interested in that subject and then watch more of it. So whenever you're creating content, it's not bad to have a small total addressable market. ([Time 0:03:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f78babb-d016-4641-95d1-7a89ee6b47c7)) - **Add Adjacent Content Buckets** - Try a bucket system: keep breed-focused content but add adjacent buckets like product reviews. - Use affiliate links for toy/treat reviews to earn revenue beyond fluctuating AdSense. Transcript: Travis I wonder if they could do like a bucket system. So they have their breed. But what would be like another bucket that would make sense for that dog? I would think something like dog toy reviews or something like that or dog product reviews their own personality i think is what you're trying to say i don't know about your dog but uh I don't know what your dog's into compared to other dogs but we group specific so small yes and then on the side of uh like making money um reviewing products and or services are pretty Easy for affiliates, right? Like you can make affiliate sales, especially if you're reviewing like dog treats or dog, you know, toys, and you have an affiliate link for like Amazon or whatever. That's pretty easy money because people are going to look up reviews of things before they go and buy them. ([Time 0:05:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1fbc7562-f68d-4868-9c4d-75c52ed43265)) - **Small Channels Still Land Sponsorships** - A creator reached YPP after heavy work and worried they were 'not big enough' for sponsorships despite 100K channel views. - Tina noted companies often hire small creators because they lack in-house video production skills. Transcript: Travis Talk about having lost a day's worth of recording. Oh, those are the worst. Yeah. Those are the worst. I've had that. You have? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's brutal. I now have 500 subs, 5,300 hours of content in the last year three videos in the last 90 days and officially been added to the ypp all right let's yes congrats i'm trying to work out what To do next i love that youtube never stops like i did this thing i was trying to do now what next? Well, the channel, the gaming facility is also the first channel to come up when I search for that term on YouTube. I designed a logo, channel banner, formulated branding for merch through a storefront. I'm also looking at buying a better $400 microphone instead of my headset. Now let me, let me stop. Let me stop reading the email here for a second. First of all, getting a good microphone is great. I don't think you need to go $400. Unless you're doing audio, very audio specific content where people are going to criticize you over it. I don't know if you need a $400 headphone or a microphone. Nice to have. Nice to have, but don't feel like that's a necessity. I'm wondering how to progress in these areas as I'm kind of winging it. By the way, a lot of people winging it. That's YouTube. Whilst trying to navigate sponsorships, I have 100K views on my channel and a small but growing active community supporting me. But I can't get past the I'm not big enough to get sponsored thought process. ([Time 0:08:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/040b7575-a89a-40be-acf4-940b35b8fc2b)) - **Approach Sponsors As A Content Producer** - Pitch sponsors by offering to produce content and show you've already reviewed their product. - Use your analytics and YouTube media kit to demonstrate audience fit, not just subscriber count. Transcript: Travis They don't know how to produce a video, edit a video, shoot a video, upload a video. They just want to market their product or their service, right? If you can help them do that, then it's easy to approach them with a, hey, I have, you know, a viewership that is in the age group that you, that you're interested in, which by the way, that Those metrics are available to you in your, your statistics, right? And your analytics backend. And even, um, I think YouTube still does the media kit thing where it does an automatic media kit for you so you can send that along. It tells advertisers what type of things your viewers are into as far as buying and selling stuff or buying stuff. And I feel like if you take an opportunity to review a person's product or service that you want to be associated with and lead with that and say, hey, look, I reviewed one of your products. I really love your line. I really would love to work together with you. Is there something we can do? You'd be surprised at who will say yes. ([Time 0:10:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/052c27b5-fad8-44cf-9192-b237617fe2a8)) - **A Few Videos Drive Most Growth** - A few videos often drive most channel growth: roughly 20% of videos generate ~80% of views. - That small set can open big doors like sponsorships and media opportunities. Transcript: Travis Do it. Nice, good number. Good number. Yeah. And the no thing is a really good. I'm glad you brought that up because definitely get used to and be okay with no's in your creation journey, even if it isn't about sponsorships. It could be collabs with another creator. It could be the big no from the algorithm. Like this is not getting any views. Like that's the worst no, right? Right. Be any of those things, but that's the kind of the point. A lot of YouTube channels, I would say most get 80 percent of the reviews from 20 percent of their content so you get a whole bunch of views from just a couple of your videos and most stuff You put out there perform okay but not not the best not going to kill it not going to crush it not going to get you in front of things but you'd be surprised at what that 20 the doors that that Can open i mean personally it's opened up tons of sponsorship deals and being on TV and all the other things. And it can totally be the same for you. ([Time 0:11:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0becac2e-9282-46ff-959d-0184dc776f9d)) - **Persistence Needs Strategy** - Persistence alone doesn't guarantee YouTube success because algorithm and execution matter. - Repeating the same poor approach won't improve results without deliberate learning and tools like vidIQ. Transcript: Travis Here's where I, you know, I like encouraging creators. But more than that, I like the truth. Yes. I like facts. And the answer to this is no. It is not true that just because you keep working at this, that it will work, you will succeed. Because some of y'all are not good at this. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just playing. No, I'm just playing. Everyone, the savage came out for a second. What it is. So it's hard to explain. Some of it, I will thoroughly say that sometimes YouTube algorithm doesn't help us. It's there to do its thing, but there's so many videos at the same, over 500 hours, 500 hours are uploaded every minute, actually substantially more now that was an old statistic. So it's very possible that your thing just gets lost in the shuffle. Totally possible. However, there are a lot of people that come to the platform to think this is just easy. They just watch a video and go, I can do that. And don't really learn anything else about the process of doing the thing. And it'll be things like thumbnails or titles or even the topic, or sometimes you just won't get to the point in the video. And just by doing more videos, doing more of the same doesn't mean you're necessarily going to get better at it. ([Time 0:15:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e5ed987-082f-4cd2-9202-6d78f2d1bcbe)) - **Acting As If You Already Have An Audience** - Tina remembered feeling delusional speaking to a camera with 20 subscribers and imagining thousands watching. - That 'act as if' standard helped her critique and improve content faster when things failed. Transcript: Travis You know, I'm talking to a wall pretty much. And I remember when I first started, I'm looking at the camera and I'm talking and it's weird to have the, at first, it's not anymore. Like I'm totally used to it now. It's weird talking to an inanimate object and there's no one else in the room. And you're supposed to be having like a conversation with them. It's just so weird at first it's strange and it takes a while to get used to so eduardo's saying is that delusional i don't know if that's the right word but i understand what he's saying I get what he's saying to a certain degree you're not wrong maybe you're more of a sociopath than uh than being delusional um i mean i don't know like what what do you think tina what is this Yeah yeah yeah yeah very fair wow right i love that i love it i think you're right like um yeah because you are talking to no one at first and you have to i remember very distinctly also i now That i knew we're talking about this i'm getting some flashbacks to my early days and i remember very distinctly when i was setting up my camera stuff in my living room because that's Where i used to shoot thinking all right i'm i'm doing this for a lot of people i gotta put my this light on because all these people are gonna care like i remember just thinking i was deluding Myself really thinking that these videos were going to be seen by thousands of people. Eventually they did. They were seen by thousands. But at the time, I had like 20 subscribers. Ain't no one going to watch this. But I did in the moment. I was walking the walk of a, quote, bigger YouTuber. Looking back, did that help me? Maybe. It certainly helped me look at my content in a way, maybe a little more critically so that I can make changes faster when I would find things that weren't working. ([Time 0:21:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f92576b2-b1ca-458f-a7db-55a2d0940c66)) - **Use Old Videos As Blueprints** - Reuse past successful videos as blueprints when making updated versions. - Analyze retention dips in the old video and shoot/edit the new one to tighten those weak points. Transcript: Travis It's actually really good. So hearing it from your side too, the fact that you didn't hear from John and you're repeating it because it does work on, you know, separate from what he said. I think it's more proof that it's just optimizing for the things that work for that. And I think you can do almost the same thing with long form, except for where else would you post long form? I use that. I say the same thing. I have been saying for years that when you have, if you're going to remake a video, so for example, if you have like the top 10 tools of 2024 and you're about to do it for 2025, you go back to The 2024 one and you do exactly what you were talking about. Look at the dips and things, figure out where you can tighten things up, maybe more B-roll, maybe less B-roll. And then when you're making the new video, shoot it with that in mind and edit it with that in mind. Look at, you have the literal blueprint of your previous video to kind of help forward you to make a successful second video. So same exact idea, except for not re-uploading. This is like a newer video. Same idea though. And it does work. So thank you for that. ([Time 0:25:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ae5ac6b6-9887-4b03-a92a-30e5717e7f4a))