When YouTube Takes Away Without Asking  ## Metadata - Author: [[TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide]] - Full Title: When YouTube Takes Away Without Asking - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/40832d39-6282-46fe-869c-f2ce48bd5f4a ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **YouTube Ends Remote Family Sharing** - YouTube now enforces household-only sharing for Premium family plans by checking IPs over a 30-day window. - This reduces perceived value for subscribers who shared across households and may prompt cancellations. Transcript: Travis Yeah, I want to get your live reaction to this because this is something that affects both creators and viewers alike. Dan If you are somebody who watches YouTube, here's what's going on. Maybe you heard recently that Amazon Prime is kind of ending their family sharing. So if you have an Amazon Prime account, you used to be able to have family members on it, and they could benefit from all those things that you have access to. And they recently came out and said, hey, we're not going to let you do that unless you're in the same household. Oh. Yeah. And so not like a couple days later after that announcement, YouTube's like, us too. Whoa. So if you have YouTube premium the family plan you have like six or eight slots i think that you can like have other accounts on and it's been the rule apparently that those accounts all Need to live in the same household and youtube is now implementing a netflix like crackdown by using your ip address to determine if you are in the same household as the people sharing Your account it's's going to have like a 30-day thing on it. This is all – I'm looking at a PCMag article about it right now. It's a little disappointing because I have a number of people in my family that are using it. I didn't know that they wanted us in the same household. It's a family plan, and the word family to me doesn't inherently mean you have to live in the same household. They should probably call it a household plan. Exactly that. Travis I agree with that. Dan So it's a pretty simple story. There's not too much to it. It's just that I think you have a little bit of time to tell your family and friends, whoever's using your family account that they're about to lose access to it. ([Time 0:01:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/877385e8-b364-4505-be10-18929ef43902)) - **Licensors May Drive Account Limits** - Licensing deals for music and movies likely motivate platforms to stop wide account sharing. - Restricting sharing can be driven by licensors seeking fairer payments for streams. Transcript: Travis And household, I think is now the new term they have to use. You can't say family anymore because family does not apply in the same house. And I think that it's bad. There must be a financial reason they're doing this rather than raising the price because that's usually what they do. They'll raise the price and that covers everything. My guess is they'll still raise the price at some point and just give you less access to things which is a bad direction to go yeah uh i so basically i'm paying i think i have an annual plan Dan But when i look at my pricing it's like 22 something a month for my family plan and spread amongst my family members that's a good value now i can only share it with my wife because we're In the same household and that's it. I can't share it with my parents, siblings, anybody else. So I'm now paying this family plan that I now can use way less of. So I was pretty upset, but then I learned, this is another article, I'll be sure to link. There is a person plan. YouTube is testing and it's not in America yet, but they're testing it in France, India, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. And basically you can have like couples or roommates or whatever, like two individuals in the same household can share a YouTube premium subscription. And that is only going to be slightly more than an individual plan. So then the value kind of comes back and I can see myself just getting that in the future. Once if we get it, they're only testing this in other countries. We don't know if we're getting that. But I will say it's very disappointing. And I would love it if not just YouTube, but companies in general would go back to those ([Time 0:03:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/467a932f-a7bd-445b-9bad-c2ce47049908)) - **Watch For A Two-Person Option** - Consider waiting for YouTube's two-person plan test in other countries before changing subscriptions. - Switch to a smaller shared plan if/when YouTube offers it in your region. Transcript: Dan YouTube is testing and it's not in America yet, but they're testing it in France, India, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. And basically you can have like couples or roommates or whatever, like two individuals in the same household can share a YouTube premium subscription. And that is only going to be slightly more than an individual plan. So then the value kind of comes back and I can see myself just getting that in the future. Once if we get it, they're only testing this in other countries. ([Time 0:04:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5f2f538-bca9-4763-80e5-6de5c21ecf88)) - **Steam Family-Share IP Workaround Test** - Travis tested Steam's family sharing by logging into his account on another computer to enable access. - He discovered Steam allowed access after an initial same-IP activation but later blocks when accounts are elsewhere. Transcript: Travis Here's um a potential workaround although i don't know that it works this way i'll tell you how i came across this steam does the same thing um so you may or may not know that steam that which Is a video game platform, PC gaming platform, allows you to have family members. And you can share your library with your family members. I'm sure you're aware of this, right, Dan? Yeah, yeah. Have you ever used it before? Dan I did. I found it to be a little clunky and confusing. I was trying to share it with my dad, and he was like, how do I do this? But it's there, yeah. Travis It's there, and it's cool. I mean, certainly once you get access to especially someone else has a larger library, cataloging everything so that it makes sense, that can be the complicated part. But it's cool to get access to someone else's games, right? And that doesn't cost anything, which is weird, because I'm like, how did they? How did they pull that off? Because that's a crazy one. But much like what we're talking about now, they only let you share with people in your house. Kind of. So the way it works is if I were to invite Dan to my family, you get like five family members. I could send him an invite. He would get it. And if he tried to sign in, it would tell him that it doesn't appear. I forget the exact wording, but essentially it's saying you're not in the same household. It says it without saying it, but it's very obvious what they mean, right? So I found this out on accident by doing, so I built a PC for my best friend's son a couple of months back, which kind of got me into building PCs again. And I wanted to, I forget, I wanted to test like one of my games on his system. He didn't really have anything in Steam so I signed into my steam account on his computer to um test the games make sure that the drivers were installed everything was good right then I signed myself I signed myself out and put him on and then I I invited him to my family thing because he lives right down the street from me I'm like you know he's like my he's like my uh little Kid but he's not even you know he's like my best friend's grandson so he's family to me uh and he had access to my games I thought that was cool and then i tried to invite um because i didn't I didn't put together the connection of what had happened there so i just invited another friend and it didn't work then i realized oh when i built his pc i logged in on my network on his Computer and then i logged him in so it put the same ip address on that account and when i sent it back to him he had access to my games so when i went to utah recently to hang out with a friend I wanted to test the theory i'm like hey buddy i'm gonna have you i'm gonna invite you to my little family thing let's see if it works and when i got there of course it didn't work so i had him Sign out of his computer i signed into my steam account on his computer quickly like loaded up a game turned it off invited him all of a sudden boom now we're family now he's still in utah And i'm here in seattle and we have access to all the games so in that particular case and i don't know if youtube is going to work the same way very possible it will though that the initial Connection of the account has to be in the same IP address. And then after that, it might not keep checking. ([Time 0:09:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d28eb7dd-2b50-4c80-887d-f5d5a480d363)) - **Don't Reset Channels Over Promo Subscribers** - Don't reset a channel just because early paid subscribers don't watch; focus on consistent, targeted content. - If mindset matters, you can start a fresh tightly focused channel, but it's not necessary to fix metrics. Transcript: Dan Yeah, my first thought is, I like that at the end they use the word mindset. Because this really is a mindset. I'm a believer that if you do something with your channel and then you notice there's like a ripple effect, that doesn't necessarily mean you broke your channel. That's my belief. I don't work at YouTube, but I don't think your channel is physically broken in some irreparable way. But I do think that it looks broken because your numbers don't look like they once did. So it feels like something is off. I'm believing that if you were to just stay the course, you probably would eventually get over that hurdle. But it does feel weird to have like 2000 subscribers, for example, or whatever the number was that aren't real. Like people hit the button, but they didn't actually watch or they didn't, they don't continue to watch. So the more grounded mindset, that's where that comes in. I don't see the harm either in starting a new channel purely on mindset reasons, but I'm just trying to make it clear that I don't think you should start one just because the channel's Irreparably, you know, damaged. I don't think it is. But again, I don't work at YouTube. I don't know how their systems work. Maybe it is. I don't think it is, though. Travis I agree with this. And this is based off of, you know, working with different creators and stuff. So first of all, let's talk back to the AdWords promotion thing. We actually did a video that's on the main channel about how that thing works and why it looks like it works so well but ultimately doesn't help your channel at all what it is you'll see When you're in studio there's a button that says like promote and it says hey you get more views and subscribers with this and you go through this process you pay some money not that much And it shows your videos to to a lot of people and you might gain a whole bunch of subscribers from it but number one what you'll tend to find is if you look at the geography of those subscribers They're almost never in america uk canada any of the ones that you're probably targeting or even the country that you may be watching this this video from they tend to be from like india And certain parts of asia it's not a bad thing per se but it does let you know that the reason that it comes up as those countries is because the cheapest to make them take the most advantage Of the money you spent youtube knows this i've actually talked to youtube about this exact situation um and a lot of times in those countries they culturally use the subscribe button Differently than we do there's something that youtube called hyper subscribing which i thought was a really interesting uh term and the the term means is that they use it like a like Button. It's not even that they want to subscribe to your channel. They're just like, oh, that was cool, like. And just in, I guess, in those parts of the world, that's just kind of common. It's like whatever, and it is what it is, right? But those people aren't necessarily coming back to watch anything. So to Miles' point, it's not driving any additional traffic. Now, what that puts them in, especially as a smaller creator, although this happens to a larger creator too, you might have like 2,500 subscribers, but your videos might be getting 30 or 40 views now. Like, oh, crap, that looks really bad. Well, let me just let you know something. Most channels on YouTube look like that. Most channels on YouTube have a lot more subscribers than they get views on a video, even on the biggest channels in the world. So that's normal. Have you ruined your channel? Doubt it, especially with that little bit of data that was put into there. Will it make things a little more weird and maybe slightly difficult initially? Yeah, maybe so. Because you've got to remember how YouTube works. For the first 24 to 48 hours, your content is shown to people who've just recently watched your channel and your subscribers. If these subscribers aren't watching, that's going to be a bad signal. And if people aren't really coming to your channel, you might not get any more impressions. It doesn't mean it's over. Of course, there's a whole other section where weeks and months and years later, it gets shown to other people who've never been to your channel and people searching for things and all These other things. So there's still a chance for these videos to grow. I like the idea of asking the question about starting a new channel because i feel like that's that is something you could do as a tightly connected channel right off the bat with like I don't know how many videos this channel had initially but he says he likes the course he's on now well if you just took those last 10 or so videos you got this tightly connected video channel Then when you youtube starts putting stuff out and they start seeing connecting people to multiple videos, cause someone comes in and it's like, Oh, I liked that video. I liked that video. It's much easier to grow that channel at that point. It would still be potentially slow and it is starting over. It's not a terrible idea, but I don't, but I a hundred percent agree with Dan. Don't do it because you think it's going to fix the ills of the other, because you still can probably do the same thing with this one. It's just that if you wanted to jet start a new channel ([Time 0:16:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a13ac946-cd68-47f4-a236-cfeba6e3f45d)) - **Paid Subs Can Mislead Channel Health** - Paid promotion often yields subscribers from regions with cheaper conversions and different subscribing habits. - Those 'hyper-subscribers' may not return, making early impressions misleading. Transcript: Travis We actually did a video that's on the main channel about how that thing works and why it looks like it works so well but ultimately doesn't help your channel at all what it is you'll see When you're in studio there's a button that says like promote and it says hey you get more views and subscribers with this and you go through this process you pay some money not that much And it shows your videos to to a lot of people and you might gain a whole bunch of subscribers from it but number one what you'll tend to find is if you look at the geography of those subscribers They're almost never in america uk canada any of the ones that you're probably targeting or even the country that you may be watching this this video from they tend to be from like india And certain parts of asia it's not a bad thing per se but it does let you know that the reason that it comes up as those countries is because the cheapest to make them take the most advantage Of the money you spent youtube knows this i've actually talked to youtube about this exact situation um and a lot of times in those countries they culturally use the subscribe button Differently than we do there's something that youtube called hyper subscribing which i thought was a really interesting uh term and the the term means is that they use it like a like Button. It's not even that they want to subscribe to your channel. They're just like, oh, that was cool, like. And just in, I guess, in those parts of the world, that's just kind of common. It's like whatever, and it is what it is, right? But those people aren't necessarily coming back to watch anything. So to Miles' point, it's not driving any additional traffic. Now, what that puts them in, especially as a smaller creator, although this happens to a larger creator too, you might have like 2,500 subscribers, but your videos might be getting 30 or 40 views now. Like, oh, crap, that looks really bad. Well, let me just let you know something. Most channels on YouTube look like that. Most channels on YouTube have a lot more subscribers than they get views on a video, even on the biggest channels in the world. So that's normal. Have you ruined your channel? Doubt it, especially with that little bit of data that was put into there. Will it make things a little more weird and maybe slightly difficult initially? Yeah, maybe so. Because you've got to remember how YouTube works. For the first 24 to 48 hours, your content is shown to people who've just recently watched your channel and your subscribers. If these subscribers aren't watching, that's going to be a bad signal. And if people aren't really coming to your channel, you might not get any more impressions. It doesn't mean it's over. Of course, there's a whole other section where weeks and months and years later, it gets shown to other people who've never been to your channel and people searching for things and all These other things. ([Time 0:17:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/acebd11d-b37c-47b6-8f3b-0549fa87b79a)) - **Don’t Promote Channels With Ads** - Avoid using YouTube's Promote/AdWords for organic channel growth unless you sell a product or service. - Spend that budget on production upgrades (audio, camera) that improve long-term retention instead. Transcript: Dan I want to real quick just circle back to the promote button too, because I've noticed an escalation in YouTube's language with the promote button recently. And I'm going to say, at least on my channel, this has gotten worse, not better. So I uploaded a video recently. It was probably the most I've ever worked on a video before, right? So I was really surprised when this video, which is certainly not an ad for anything, goes up on my channel. And after a few days of it being up, it was doing okay. I was hoping it would be better. I noticed that I get a thing in my dashboard that says, you know, promote and has a little icon on it. And it's like, Hey, your video name of video, uh, could reach a lot more viewers and you can get a lot more subscribers if you promote it. Wow. I am just going to say this again and again and again, and it won't be the last time i say it please use the promote button to only actually promote ads if you have a business if you have a product That is what it's for it is for advertising purposes nobody i promote this video to that is not an ad is going to go oh my gosh i'm so glad the thing i clicked on was interrupted by this other Thing and it's so good i'm going to subscribe to this guy and watch all of this stuff. It's not going to happen. People, ads are disruptive and people need to see a lot of them before they want to even buy the thing. That's why there are still ads for Pepsi to this day, even though you know exactly what Pepsi is, because they just want you thinking about that next time you get thirsty. That's how they work. It's subliminal, subliminal. So no, don't promote videos that are not actually ads for something. It makes total sense if you have a product or a service. It's really, that is like, that's the game. It doesn't make any sense. And the fact that YouTube is using language that says you can get more subscribers and views from doing this is really awful. I don't like that. And I don't like calling you too bad on things. I like YouTube. I, I just think whatever department is in charge of the specific feature, it's a misstep. I think it gets people's hopes up. I think people do shell out money for this because they come to us all the time and say, I used it, but it didn't work. Like, of course it didn't work. It's all logic. It's just, it's the humans watching it it disrupts the thing they clicked on why would they they're not like looking upon you favorably for disrupting their other viewing experience Travis They were trying to have i think what dan said there is really important because whenever um someone asks questions about this the easy answer is to go just put yourself in the shoes of The person when's the last time you subscribed to a channel we saw an ad for it? And instantly it seems to click for people. It's like, oh, yeah, that's what you're doing. Just FYI. That's the experience you're giving. So you should not be surprised when it doesn't work the way you thought it was because it doesn't work on you. You know what I mean? Like if it doesn't work on you, what are the chances of working on someone who likes your content? It's just it's unlikely. Now, does it mean it never works? No. And of course there's always great target ads that can bear fruit, but nine times out of 10, it's for a product or a service or something. It's not really for a channel. And it's just, there's better things to use your money on. Buy a better mic, you know, instead of getting a $20 lab, get a $50 lab and don't use that $30 and promote, you know, there's, there's, you know, lots of options. Actually, mics are really cheap now. ([Time 0:20:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/edf94bb6-4002-43ee-9a1f-d7c84c15a061)) - **Promote Button Misled Dan** - Dan promoted a non-ad video and found the Promote suggestion misleading and unhelpful for subscriber growth. - He warns creators that promoting non-ad videos rarely yields loyal viewers and often disappoints expectations. Transcript: Dan So I was really surprised when this video, which is certainly not an ad for anything, goes up on my channel. And after a few days of it being up, it was doing okay. I was hoping it would be better. I noticed that I get a thing in my dashboard that says, you know, promote and has a little icon on it. And it's like, Hey, your video name of video, uh, could reach a lot more viewers and you can get a lot more subscribers if you promote it. Wow. I am just going to say this again and again and again, and it won't be the last time i say it please use the promote button to only actually promote ads if you have a business if you have a product That is what it's for it is for advertising purposes nobody i promote this video to that is not an ad is going to go oh my gosh i'm so glad the thing i clicked on was interrupted by this other Thing and it's so good i'm going to subscribe to this guy and watch all of this stuff. It's not going to happen. People, ads are disruptive and people need to see a lot of them before they want to even buy the thing. That's why there are still ads for Pepsi to this day, even though you know exactly what Pepsi is, because they just want you thinking about that next time you get thirsty. That's how they work. It's subliminal, subliminal. So no, don't promote videos that are not actually ads for something. It makes total sense if you have a product or a service. It's really, that is like, that's the game. It doesn't make any sense. And the fact that YouTube is using language that says you can get more subscribers and views from doing this is really awful. I don't like that. And I don't like calling you too bad on things. I like YouTube. I, I just think whatever department is in charge of the specific feature, it's a misstep. I think it gets people's hopes up. I think people do shell out money for this because they come to us all the time and say, I used it, but it didn't work. Like, of course it didn't work. It's all logic. ([Time 0:20:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/93884582-8798-42d0-b53a-dc86d88242b7)) - **Get To The Point For Search Traffic** - Front-load value for search-driven viewers and save personal intros or calls-to-action for the end. - Tailor openings to the traffic source: get to the point for how-to and search intent videos. Transcript: Travis Here's an interesting email. And it's by Chris. Hi, if creators didn't say let's get right into it they'd get right into it faster if i watch a video called give me 10 minutes and i'll teach you the youtube algorithm and it took nearly Two and a half minutes to waffle before he said let's get right into it uh the title got me ready for the information the fact that he's making the video suggests he knows about the youtube Algorithm just get right into it i'm ready damn it regards chris oh let's talk about this because this is so true i you know the thing is that we fall into trappings as creators sometimes And this is one of them let's get right to i'm and right after you know i used to say right after this but there was a reason that i said that and i get it he's not wrong not at all like that's Completely accurate we fall into these things, especially as newer creators that we've seen bigger creators do. And then we just do it because we're like, Oh, that must work when there might be a whole story behind why they do the thing in the first place. Maybe they don't know why they do it either. Or maybe there is a reason they do something, but let's, you know, let's get right into it or let's get right into it. After this message or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be, all these different things that are said, is when they say, only 56% of the people are watching – are unsubscribed. And I'm like, well, Rob, the reason they do that is because that works. But he doesn't like that. He hates that, right? So do you have one that you hear or see and you're like, I don't like that? Dan I think I'm just on board with the email itself because I can't think of any off the top of my head. It is just any time I click on a video and, you know, okay, I'll tell you what I hate. I hate when people tell me, like, welcome back to my channel. And that's okay. Like, okay, maybe I'm a new viewer. I'm like, okay, I get it. I haven't been here for a while. But then they proceed to tell me all this stuff about maybe their life or their last video or something like something really irrelevant to what i clicked on like they feel like they're Going to open their video with a bit of a personable like vlog and then get into it like no you could say that for the end if you want to but i like if i'm trying to get to know you as a creator Drop me the value first uh i also don't like when it's hey here's my hook and i'm like yeah i'm into this and then they're like but first by the way my name is so and so and this is my youtube Channel like i know that i know i saw your name when i clicked the video but go on dude now let's get into it no no no you don't understand you know only this many people are subscribed and I make videos like this all the time and like these are very normal assumptions that i can make myself i don't know that like just save it for later tell me later like at the end um by the way I've been dan and this has been my youtube channel subscribe because i'm trying to get to 100 000 subscribers before my my friend so and so i oh i like that cool you know and then i might i'm More likely to because you've actually given me the thing that I wanted. And I got to know your personality through watching the content. And I got to already start to decide for myself if I'm going to come back. That last punch at the end of you saying, okay, come back, it's like, you're right. I will come back. That was a fun experience. But if you front load all that stuff, I'm like, okay, so you don't take this seriously. I clicked on something that I want to know about right now. And you're trying to waste all time. Now, in reality, all I do is tap my phone to do the 10 second skips. I don't actually harbor resentment towards these folks, but since we're talking about it in my brain, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I'm tapping the, my phone. ([Time 0:23:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/04e6cee2-9afa-473c-8447-e5c7a6cb85be)) - **Viewer Skips Hurt Creators, Not Platforms** - YouTube's 'skip ahead' personalization improves viewer experience but can harm creators by bypassing sponsor segments. - Easier skipping risks reducing sponsor value and creator revenue even if ads still get paid to platforms. Transcript: Travis What's funny about this is YouTube is combating this. And this is this is a thing that i don't know how much i like even though i take advantage of it and that is the go to the place where most people skip to option that's been coming up uh on desktop I think it says skip ahead or something like that in the bottom right corner on tv when you hit fast forward one time it goes to a point in the video that most people stopped at in other words They they rewound past and 99 of the time it's the it's the baked in ad from the the sponsored part yeah but sometimes it's exactly what you're talking about it's a long intro and people And if you just hit once boom it knows it knows because it's using the data people fast-forwarding ahead this is good for the viewer bad for the creator is bad for the creator on two two Ways number one um as someone who might be telling a story or something you know you want you hope that your audience is engaged although i think most creators forget that the vast majority Of people that are watching your video have never seen your content before it's it's a very it's a smaller percentage of people who've actually watched your content that are watching A video at that so you also really have to be speaking to people who've never seen you before to to to you know to dan's point the other part is the part i'm talking about the sponsorship Thing as soon as sponsors start seeing this as soon as they realize this they might stop sponsoring people on youtube which takes money away from the creator this is bad it's bad on a couple Of reasons because number one people already skip over that stuff but youtube is now making it overly easy and because of that at some point you know a company that might be working with Creators forever might be going you know we've seen a lot less clicks on our links that we've given you you know i wonder why that is let me go watch the video and they see this thing come Up and they click of it like wait a minute that entire segment's gone like it's gone like what did i pay for and then we're back to relying on ad sense and it's like well that's not great because Youtube and i hate to say this like they'll say well then youtube is getting less money now here's the thing about ads and people forget this by the time the ad is on youtube youtube's been Paid the creator hasn't been paid yet that's why pop-ups steal from the creator not from youtube i feel like sometimes people uh pop-up blockers i should say people think the pop-up Blockers are like you're fighting against the man and all this of course i don't like ads either but i stick it to youtube no you're sticking it to the creator youtube got paid they got If you've ever advertised something on youtube you pay up front the money's gone youtube got it the creator didn't get it if you're trying to help the creator you've actually done the Opposite so i'll take a hot take you're stealing from creators you are because you're not stealing from youtube all that to be said you've ([Time 0:27:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68c5bc02-b746-47a4-8c2f-32e325d21373)) - **Block Identical Bot Comments** - Put repeated or identical suspicious comments into YouTube's held-for-review via content moderation. - Use exact phrases to block bot comments and preserve authentic engagement for real viewers. Transcript: Dan Going to say that it's cool that you're giving them the benefit of the doubt. Okay, look at the comments if they're if the words are exactly verbatim like brilliant from start to finish as like an example and you have multiple comments to say that exact thing it Used maybe in the same capitalization punctuation I want you to take that phrase copy it I want you to go into your content moderation I want you to paste it into your content moderation Thing so it can no longer be used on your channel. The amount of people, real people, actually saying that in the future, probably very low. And if you never check your held messages, you won't know about it anyway. I hold everything. Like any comments I get that are even slightly suspicious, I just don't even question it. I hold it for review because this is such a common problem on YouTube. Like nine times out of ten, you are going to be just dealing with bots. That's just – when you see this stuff happen, that's pretty much what it is because it's – if you – okay, listen. Just to be kind of funny mean for a second. If your audience just keeps saying the same exact thing over and over again to compliment you, that's on them. That's not very creative. ([Time 0:34:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/591fc2eb-ffd7-46c3-a288-f6bdd06929cb)) - **Bots Often Signal Visibility, Not Success** - Bot comments and fake accounts are common and usually reflect that a video gained visibility, not necessarily malicious targeting. - Hold suspicious comments to keep the community area authentic for real viewers. Transcript: Travis Whack-a because as they figure things out the the people who make these things make it different so they're not detected. It's very much whack-a I think at the end of the day, if it's happening to you, that's in a weird way kind of a good sign because you've been found, which means you're somewhat relevant To somebody somewhere, which is interesting. I mean, you got to look at it the positive side, right? Definitely, I think what Dan said is exactly what you should do. You know, definitely put those in the held for response because you don't want people coming in going, why does this all look the same? It's very suspicious. Dan Yeah, it ruins the commenting experience for your actual viewers. Travis Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't worry too much about it. And no, it's not making your channel nosedive. ([Time 0:36:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01978d07-d603-4709-85a0-81c97c935ae0)) - **Separate Deep Tech Content** - Split highly technical content onto a second channel (or member-only content) to protect retention on the main channel. - Promote the deep-dive channel from the main channel so each audience gets the format they prefer. Transcript: Dan So uh i i will give you an actual example uh of of a channel i watch that i'm sure has dealt with this because they have a spinoff channel uh that gets way more technical so there is a youtuber I watch i'm trying to find i actually have the second channel pulled up. I'm trying to find the main channel. And I can't. I think it's called Jake Simmons. And he mods Game Boys and GameCubes. And, you know. So he rips apart game consoles and mods them and sells them. Yeah. I'm really into this as a hobby. Like, it's just really fun. I actually just got all my parts from my GameCube. I'm about to mod it based on just having watched so many of these videos. I wanted to do it. Anyway, his main channel is called Jake Simmons. It has 75, almost 76,000 subscribers. And they are more of an overview of a cool thing that he made or found or whatever. And they are very not technical. They are more like, hey, check out this cool new Game Boy IPS kit that I installed. And it goes over like the features of the kit and things like that. And he shows a little bit of the B-roll from the installation, but it's for anybody, right? It's a very high level kind of overview for anybody who's interested in this stuff. And then he's like, by the way, on the second channel, I have the actual full breakdown of me like building this. So if you want to see that, that's down below in the description. Now the second channel is called Jake 64 and has 2,500 subscribers. So not nearly as many, but the views, it's a very much like a tutorial channel. Like the, the views on there are low, but I think there's a lot of value. The videos are longer and he's actually like going into a lot of technical detail about how to build this stuff. So they already mentioned that maybe they should put this stuff on the second channel. I kind of agree. The other thing I was going to say is that they could also give that like his members content. Like the members, you know, you can monetize them if you want to. Travis But you don't necessarily have to do that. That's an interesting take on that. I like that putting it behind a paywall because the people who are really into the technical part might actually pay for that um yeah i like what you said about the channel that you already Have seen it does this and it is it is two different audiences that could live on the same channel however um i think if you do something like that then one of them will perpetually suffer Just because the way youtube works that generally speaking one of those two buckets so to speak will work better than the other yet if the other one had its own channel it might be able To live a little bit longer and deeper and fuller and perhaps with more views um you could do either i think they will both work i just think that having the second channel gives these deeper Dives to people who are going to be interested in it and doesn't necessarily tank anything else on that channel. It's just, I know exactly what I'm going to get. This is what I want. And of course you can promote it from your main channel and go, Hey, for those of you that are wanting this deeper dive, I got it. There's a whole channel dedicated to it. Put it on your homepage. You can actually do that on your YouTube channel setup. You can actually put your channel there and even put a playlist there from the other channel on your existing channel. Some people don't know you can do that, but you can actually put a playlist from other channels on that channel. And, um, you know, send people over that are interested in that sort of thing and keep the, whichever the larger audiences for this channel for this channel. I like that. Um, I like the strategy behind that. It definitely gives you now the thing is having two channels can be a bit of a hassle. But if you're already shooting the content anyway, it's just uploading to a different account. Not that big of a deal. And you can do both under the same email YouTube account. Some people don't know that. ([Time 0:39:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/52c61ae0-fdcf-4825-ad20-932bc416d0be)) - **Take Breaks To Boost Creativity** - Take deliberate breaks from content creation to recharge and find better ideas. - Pursuing non-YouTube experiences produces stronger creative inspiration for future videos. Transcript: Travis What's the piece of advice for this week? It doesn't even have to be YouTube related. What's the thing you learned this week that's like, I wish more people knew about this? Dan Is there anything you can think of? Honestly wish more people would uh people do this but i wish more people would take a break from youtube and and find find something you can do that you're not tempted to make videos about That helps you disconnect because having experiences outside of youtube is how you can be more creative recharge the battery and get inspiration for making even better videos but If you just constantly this is a problem i deal with because i talk about all the time if you constantly force yourself to come up with your next video idea, it usually isn't as good as it Could be. I have way better ideas when I allow myself to enjoy something that is not exactly related to YouTube creation. ([Time 0:44:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8a7235b-6cb8-49e6-9f6a-5939577ff8cb))