Your Subscribers Don't Matter, but Your Enjoyment Does  ## Metadata - Author: [[TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide]] - Full Title: Your Subscribers Don't Matter, but Your Enjoyment Does - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5e64b6d0-cf54-45e7-97e4-1e02a54a05fb ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Enjoyment Trumps Vanity Metrics** - Enjoyment in creation sustains long-term YouTube work and beats short-term metric chasing. - If a format succeeds, loving it positions you to capitalize sustainably when it grows. Transcript: Travis No, it doesn't. Finding something you just really enjoy doing is always going to be better for you in the long term because A, you're just going to have fun. Rob Wilson And B, if it turns out to be successful, you're in a great spot. That is worth more than, you know, a thousand views in an hour. Travis We are creators, but we're also directors, ([Time 0:00:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11888264-8bbb-4a81-848b-513906dfd61b)) - **Don't Overfixate On Video Category** - Leave the YouTube category on the obvious choice (e.g., Gaming) and focus elsewhere. - YouTube mostly finds audiences despite your category choice, so prioritize storytelling and community. Transcript: Rob Wilson I know the answer. Travis I figured you'd do. Hold on. Let me finish reading this. For some context, I have a gaming channel called Single Player Lounge. First of all, I like that name. Where I do game pickups, unboxings, and reviews. Recently, my wife got married and plays video games. Is this how is this a world i want this world i went out game hunting on our anniversary wait and she didn't divorce what's going on so most of the played well played this guy's this guy's Beat the final boss and everything no kidding do not let her go uh so most of the video is around what we find and pick up but there's a little bit of what also we do as well which makes it feel Like a vlog yeah would it be better to leave it as the gaming category of people vlog and how would changing affect the right audience thanks for all you do keep us motivated okay i think This goes into that youtube frequently will label things and either they used to mean something or they're just trying to make it clear and they've actually made it more muddy. Rob Wilson They seem to do this a lot. So if you load up the YouTube homepage or you tap on YouTube app, you'll see these little chips at the top of the feed that are more granular than YouTube categories. And so I think that proves that YouTube is being more selective with how they define content other than those categories. There's also a new tool that's come out called the hype feature, where you would, and these hype, and how it works is that you hype videos and then they're ranked on different leaderboards. And these leaderboards are divided by categories. None of those categories in those leaderboards relate to the categories that you set on your video i think at this point it's safe to say that the categories drop down in the youtube studio Is about as useful as video tags in that maybe they do something maybe they don't but it probably has a 0.1 percent impact on the video in my opinion there used to be and i'm looking for it Travis Um there used to be a help page about this and they were very clear that it didn't do anything um they actually said that it was more helpful for like ads and stuff yeah that's the legacy Understanding of it i have but the question now is like does it even do that now because a lot of these things change over time like they'll make these changes to the way youtube works and Then the old stuff doesn't work the way and here as a software company vidiq like that happens all the time we got stuff doesn't work the way it was supposed to at the beginning and i do remember Specifically reading that help page a long time ago where it was like this is just for that it doesn't have anything to do with where your video will show up um there's a ton of videos out There that are just set to the what is the generic thing when you first put out this entertainment or or something um when you very first set up on youtube channel isn't that the top of the Categories but you have to pick one to begin with yeah i can't even remember but it's like it's something non-specific it's not going to keep you from getting views let's just say that Just say the thing you really want to know not going to help keep you from getting views it's not going to help you find the right audience youtube is set up in a way that it will try to find The right audience in spite of anything you do to mess it up like it's trying to find the audience regardless so in a lot of ways i could say you can't mess it up i don't want to say that because I feel like i could be proven wrong but it'd be very difficult to mess up a video to make it not work because um i told this story a while back uh i might have even told it to you rob but um years Ago when ksi had a boxing match um and he was streaming it they were people were streaming it on youtube and they kept getting taken down in real time yeah what i thought was interesting Is at one point it was a cat and mouse game the uploaders and restreamers of this live stream were naming it things that had nothing to do with ksl as a human you kind of wink wink nudge nudge Right and thumbnails that had nothing to do with the fight but they would continue to get served and people kept finding them and that's that's even more of a interesting thing than what This category thing is because you're putting videos out there that say they're not anything to do with it but youtube's algorithm knows what it is and still serves it so even in spite Rob Wilson Of all of those things it still found the right audience so yeah if i was to give like a final answer on this if your category is usually gaming if you leave it there i think you're perfectly Fine if you decide to put it on people and blogs or whatever you think they've changed it to, you're not wrong. You should be fine. And what I think is cool is that this creator is exploring more things and kind of expanding, I guess, the law of their channel in that they're doing something with their wife. Do they usually do that on a channel? If not, that's cool to introduce someone else to your community. And the fact that you're having these kind of storytelling moments in the video, which I think is cool. Cause it sounds like you're not going to package the video in a way of, you're not packaging it as a vlog, but it's going to have vlog elements in it. So you're testing new storytelling techniques within your videos and i commend you for doing that and i hope it performs well i would also say that if your wife is is up for it i would actually Travis Make her more part of the channel if that's something that you'd ([Time 0:06:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3195fe57-f77b-4009-963c-86896c0d1d29)) - **Persist Through Shorts Volatility** - Expect volatile Shorts performance and keep publishing rather than obsessing over early results. - Treat early impressions as noisy; build many Shorts and learn storytelling and editing instead. Transcript: Travis Hey, guys. Hope all is well with all of you. I'm relatively a new subscriber, but I've been watching your videos like crazy. I've already picked up a couple of really solid tips. I repurposed an old YouTube channel that I was using to watch daily content into a shorts channel. First of all, I think most of us have done it. I repurposed my channel from just a watching channel. My first upload was August 7th, and it performed well, hitting the shorts feed and getting over 1,000 views. We can always talk about what that actually means because, of course, views now versus views a year ago, two different things, but okay yeah it has good impression rate and good retention As well but it just kind of died no more impressions and no more views the next seven uploads have garnered under 25 views and minimal impressions no short speed looking at other channels In my niche i believe that my content is much more appealing and stands out some people have posted four times and had two 800 videos and two duds where it feels like i've hatched seven Duds now also i know my videos are gradually getting better terms of editing stickers titles and descriptions i went through chat gpt meta checklist and there's no issues chat gpt said After 10 uploads i should get more impressions might need to stay consistent is this permanent why do some questions break out of the face sooner do you have any tips so this and while This is specific to shorts really to be honest this could be talked about for long form because it's all about getting an audience and then being like we don't know anything about your Specific channel um we don't know whether or not of course everyone feels like they're getting better as they do more content we'll take your word for it we don't know that to be true but We'll take your word for it but also we don't know um what your content is because what if we watch it and we're like i don't understand that. But it makes sense to you. Like you made it so everything in the video makes sense to you. But when someone else on the other side of the screen looks at it, they go, I don't understand. I don't get the point. It's not as entertaining. That's where the rubber meets the road. Rob, let's talk a little bit about the Shorts Views. And since this is a newer creator, may not know this that the shorts view numbers changed uh in the last year or so right when was it like last year when was that or this year six months ago Rob Wilson Uh it was like march time they went from you having to watch a short for a certain period of time depending on how long the short was for example let's say the short was 30 seconds you might Have to watch that short for actually five or six seconds for it to count as a view. Now that's not relevant. Like you can just, it's not very good for an audio podcast, is it? Just swiping through shots as fast as you can, they count as a view. So does that actually mean it's a view these days? Could be argued. The value of an engaged view versus a view, look in your analytics for that to see how many views you're actually getting. And just to be honest, a thousand views on a single shop is still a teeny tiny sample size of data for YouTube to work with. It is curious that you had one shot that did well and then the rest have been duds. It goes back to your question, Travis, of like, what's the topic and what's the nature of the content? Because what I have seen, and I'm not saying this is necessarily what you've done, but what I have seen is when people are repurposing content from elsewhere, downloading clips, football Highlights, that type of stuff, one video may really take off, but then it's kind of, it may be suppressed. And again, I'm kind of speculating here. It may be suppressed by YouTube's discovery because it's seen and treated as repurposed repetitious content. If that is not the case, like you're fully making it 100%, it's authentically you, then we have to go into the typical questions of, are the topics related? You think your video is awesome, but the other channels that you're comparing yourself to might have a bit of background and history and a built up a community uh it's incomplete information Travis As always unfortunately yeah i mean short form versus long form kind of same thing um and yeah you will see some videos pop off while others don't and quite frankly um the fact that you Got a thousand views very early on is actually the opposite what you should see is what you're seeing now especially as a new channel very few impressions very few views and then over Time you get like a pop-off and that's kind of the thing with shorts is uh it sometimes sets an unrealistic expectation of what you should expect to see um the reality is 99 of people that Upload you know their first couple of videos or shorts are going to see almost nothing for quite a while. Even this podcast channel itself, I remember we talked about very early on that for the first like almost week, even though we uploaded two or three videos right off the bat, it had two Impressions, period. Two impressions, not views, impressions for a long time. And it just takes a while for it to find the right audience. Now, if it doesn't find the right audience, there might be a reason for that. And it is hard to take yourself out of your own shoes and go is that video really better than mine you might be right your email might you know you said you're very confident that your content Is better you might actually be right you might actually be right but they also probably have a larger audience in which case it's easy for them to find it's easier for youtube to find An audience to watch their content versus you who are brand new and just coming out. And it's not to say that these videos won't get views later. We actually have shorts to get views to this very day. They were put out how long ago? A year, two years, whatever. You said a large portion, I think, Rob, of our shorts get search views, which means they're not. They didn't get them right off the bat. They're getting them over time. Rob Wilson Yeah. Travis So just because you didn't get views now doesn't mean you won't get them later. Rob Wilson Uh so just keep pressing on and can keep continuing to be better every time out we often encourage creators with long-form content to you know make 25 videos over a six-month period without Looking at the analytics too much like don't download the youtube studio at this point because if you're refreshing your video three hours after it's gone live and it's got seven views That can be a bit demoralizing and we all i always want to find out first from the creator do you love youtube do you do you love waking up in the morning with a new idea and making a video, Regardless of how many people watch it? I feel as if like, get through that stage of, you know, that rite of passage. And if after six months, you're still saying to yourselves, I guess in your case, maybe after you've made a hundred shots, I still love making shots. I know they're not performing that well, but I'm getting better with every single one that I make and I'm learning new techniques and skills and I feel as if I'm becoming a better storyteller. ([Time 0:12:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/85878a62-7c4b-4808-8e33-da974d9d4e36)) - **Shorts Views Became Less Meaningful** - YouTube now counts very short swipes as Shorts views, making raw view counts less meaningful. - Measure engaged watch time and retention rather than headline view numbers. Transcript: Rob Wilson Or this year six months ago uh it was like march time they went from you having to watch a short for a certain period of time depending on how long the short was for example let's say the short Was 30 seconds you might have to watch that short for actually five or six seconds for it to count as a view. Now that's not relevant. Like you can just, it's not very good for an audio podcast, is it? Just swiping through shots as fast as you can, they count as a view. So does that actually mean it's a view these days? Could be argued. The value of an engaged view versus a view, look in your analytics for that to see how many views you're actually getting. And just to be honest, a thousand views on a single shop is still a teeny tiny sample size of data for YouTube to work with. It is curious that you had one shot ([Time 0:14:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/25d670ff-b5fe-4d01-aad5-dd8a3706d29a)) - **Use The Learning Window Strategically** - Make many videos (e.g., 25 over six months) without obsessing over analytics early. - Use that period to learn craft and confirm you love making content independent of metrics. Transcript: Rob Wilson We often encourage creators with long-form content to you know make 25 videos over a six-month period without looking at the analytics too much like don't download the youtube studio At this point because if you're refreshing your video three hours after it's gone live and it's got seven views that can be a bit demoralizing and we all i always want to find out first From the creator do you love youtube do you do you love waking up in the morning with a new idea and making a video, regardless of how many people watch it? I feel as if like, get through that stage of, you know, that rite of passage. And if after six months, you're still saying to yourselves, I guess in your case, maybe after you've made a hundred shots, I still love making shots. I know they're not performing that well, but I'm getting better with every single one that I make and I'm learning new techniques and skills and I feel as if I'm becoming a better storyteller. Just enjoy that period of innocence before you then have the pressure of all these people hoping and expecting that your next video is as good as the previous one. ([Time 0:17:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b813707a-bb0c-4c97-b722-037208428e4f)) - **Subscribers ≠ Immediate Views** - Bigger subscriber counts don't guarantee per-video viewership; subs and views are distinct metrics. - Reframe success by human connections in comments rather than anonymous numbers. Transcript: Travis Just never ends it's it's the human nature of of youtube that no one ever really tells you when you're trying to grow your channel that like this is the thing you need to keep in check as Best you can uh because it's a it's a thing that doesn't go away and it's not even anything that youtube specifically the thing is i feel like youtube contributes to this in a accidentally Because we just see numbers going up we know a bigger number quote equals good right but we don't actually attach humans to those numbers even though we should imagine if 50 of those people Were in the room with you saying i love your videos you probably would never you probably think you're the most amazing person in the world. Like you wouldn't even think, oh, I only got 50 views. You'd be like, holy crap, I got 50, 50 people in here and they love me. And it just, it anonymizes the connections. That's why I talked about a couple episodes back where some of the comments people have left me were so impactful because you start to put the connection with the fact you're connecting With people it's not just a number if it's a number you can go ah i want that number to be bigger if it's like people it's it's harder to to downplay that i think that's really important in ([Time 0:20:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f9b285a-8912-4832-a09f-ffbed4887fca)) - **Use Thumbnail/Title Scores As Guides** - Treat thumbnail and title scores as directional tools, not absolute truth. - Aim for high scores, but validate with real viewer response and niche fit. Transcript: Travis Know a thousand views in an hour all right next one hi vidi crew i've been taking advantage of vidiq's uh free thumbnail and title reading tool my scores have been 82 for title and 87 for Thumbnail can you help me interpret how good or average scores these are i've only posted two videos on my channel, and both have got practically identical scores. I'm curious to know how I'm doing it with rates of how other people are doing. Thank you for doing a great job. So, you know, every once in a while I want to talk a little bit about the vidIQ software. You can get access to it for free, vidIQ.com. That is something that we do here, and we love to help people out. And the score thing is very interesting because I think you have to understand the, what the tool is trying to do. The tool is trying to point you in a direction. It's not necessarily trying to say good, bad and different. It's pointing you in a direction. And we do spend our, our engineer spend a lot of time tweaking that thing to make it even better and better and look, kind of look at what your, what your thumbnail is doing, your title is Doing. But ultimately the real arbiter of all that is the viewer. So these tools are great for people who just have no idea. Like, I don't know what my title should be at all. And it will definitely point you in the right direction. Same thing with the thumbnail. Like, we're going to help you move in the proper direction. There is no, like, quote, good average number. Because you remember, in a vacuum, these numbers don't exist at all on YouTube. It's something that GoodIQ came up with to kind of help put you in the right direction. So I think when you're in the 80s and 90s, you're in the right direction. You just need to look at does that thumbnail now make sense in the niche that you're in? What would you say? This is always difficult for us because we don't directly work with the software. We have to explain the software after the fact. What are the things that you think of when you when you come across stuff like this i mirror what you say travis in that whether it's our tools somebody else's tools or youtube itself judging Rob Wilson The success of a video by a an individual or isolated score is just gonna drive you crazy. In the same sense that you could look at your YouTube analytics and say, well, this video got 20% click-through rate. Why is it not doing better than it should be? And then I go back to, again, what you said, Travis. If you're getting higher scores on our tools, then what it's pointing towards is hey you're not doing something completely stupid here like you've used a custom thumbnail first of All thumbs up uh it probably isn't cluttered with too many elements that's probably a good thing as well it's using colors that combine with each other nicely you're probably doing Something there as well but it it can't read mind read your viewers and your target audience and exactly what they're looking for and what they need. Hopefully, as our tools become more sophisticated and we have more data, we'll be able to continue to improve on them. But, yeah, as you say, Travis, these are tools. These are not on and off buttons, like right and wrong. This definitely means something's going to work. But we appreciate you using our tools. ([Time 0:22:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c4b98554-3a1c-43e7-864b-3919230dd640)) - **Niche Split Led To Brand Opportunities** - Travis shared success after splitting his channel into two niches following coach Antonio's advice. - That change brought unsolicited offers to produce custom videos from two companies. Transcript: Travis Antonio was amazing, by the way. Antonio, incredible guy, who I worked with for the first part of 2025. He convinced me to separate my channel to two and niche down on both. Because of this painful but needed change, I was recently approached by two different companies, each asking me to produce some custom videos for them. I'm an educator. That's amazing. One for each of my niches totally out of the blue thank you antonio this would have never happened without his advice and encouragement we need to get that message over to antonio i've Just screenshotted it i'm sending it into the select channel right now that's amazing now for my question how do i negotiate make sure i'm getting paid what i deserved what are the important Things to keep in mind when i'm entering the contracts like this chat gbt has been incredibly helpful reviewing contracts and giving me talking points it's all new to me. I'm small, but growing creator with 6,400 subs on one channel and a thousand on my newest would love any advice. Angie, if you've watched all the episodes, I have to imagine you watch the one with, um, uh, with Justin Moore, which is going to be your North star for this conversation. I will also talk about my experience and, and Rob, you can give me your advice too, but sure when it comes to this this type of thing 100 watch the the justin more episode it will it will be A great place he's also got a book and some other things he's an incredible guy that wants people to make more money wants creators to make more money and tells you how to kind of do that Having said that first of all congratulations and it really just proves something that i want to i want to actually um i want to do in a future episode about smaller creators doing big Things and this is a channel this is a person with a channel under 10 000 subscribers is being approached by companies to do things like sponsorship stuff that's incredible um that also Just goes to show the power of what we do. We are creators, but we're also directors, writers, actors, editors. We're all these things that these companies have to pay individual people for, but we're in one package. So we actually have a lot to offer. I would also say that once you figure out where it is you want to be on like the money side of things, which could be an affiliate deal. It could be something simple like that, like, you know, I'll get you this many sales and you give me this back or whatever it is. The rule of thumb is this. And I've told this story before. You probably heard it. You tell them a number and they say yes, right away. You just undershot yourself. I've done this many times. I gave one time I shot up a number and I'm like, there's no way they're going to pay it. And they immediately said yes. I'm like don't because that means i probably could have got double um so that's number one like if you put out a number and they immediately accepted it you you shot too low uh secondarily I think you kind of look at like what's realistic if you want them to be an ongoing thing or if you just want it to be one off if it's ongoing i always try to snag them and i think justin talked About this for more than one engagement. So more than one video. Because there's two reasons for this. Number one, you should be able to get more money out of it if you, like, instead of doing one for, like, $500, and I'm not saying that's how much you charge, let's say one for $500, you could Do three for, like, $1,000. And while that's not $500 each, they were probably never going to give you $1,000, but if you give them a value, then they might actually give you $1,000. You just do three videos rather than one for 500. So look to make a deal for them so that they want to come back to you and also gives you a chance to succeed because ultimately they will come back to you if they see value in what they paid For. If you do a one-off and it doesn't go well, you may never hear from them again. You want to hear from them if they're a good company and you enjoy dealing with them. Do you want to give them a deal so that they want to come back and you have a constant flow of money? I've done this with multiple sponsors that I've worked with for years. Could I have gotten a lot more money up front the first time? Probably, but I may never have worked with them again. But over the aggregate, over the years, I've definitely made more money by not being too greedy up front. Justin might tell you a different way to do it, but that's been my experience. ([Time 0:27:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1cab2e1d-ea9a-4779-8773-4034878f7d0d)) - **Metadata Tweaks Can Spike Impressions** - Small metadata tweaks (e.g., adding recognizable keywords) can dramatically change impressions. - But marginal metadata gains can't fix weak video ideas or hooks. Transcript: Speaker 3 Tren or trob or tran or treesa whoever you've got co-hosting i just wanted to i just wanted to um basically say i've jumped on youtube coaching it's taken me three years to make the plunge And i just wanted to sort of talk about what your viewers probably experienced over the years that you start off like I did it was like Minecraft content and you know the title was Minecraft My World Part One Description Me Playing Minecraft that was it post see what happens expect world domination it doesn't go like that and over time i realized that the every little thing You put on the youtube upload sheet is crucial the other day i had a short about ttapigy role-playing game that isn't out yet so it had no name recognition and it sat for 15 hours with 12 Impressions and then I put dnd in brackets dungeons and dragons because that's kind of roughly what it is and suddenly I had a thousand impressions it kicked it off it's like every little Bit of data that you choose to put on your video matters like you say the click you try to get you get try to get someone to put their finger on the phone to click and it's all psychology and It's, in one way, terribly, terribly hard. There are loads of people you can hear about on other podcasts with, you know, 50 titles for one video, 50 thumbnails for one video. And it really can make the difference. It does make the difference. And yet, there's a midpoint, isn't there? And I think that's where I am. Trying with multiple thumbnails, three thumbnails, trying with maybe one or two titles, and having enough success where I'm happy. I know a dozen of the names who comment regular. I'm making some money every month. And yeah, it's like subscribers don't matter. It doesn't matter that I've got nearly 3,000 subscribers if I'm only getting 200 views. You should be counting by either views or by likes, you know? And I just, it's not really, this isn't really a question. This is just all those things that we listen to your podcasts, we listen to other podcasts, and it just doesn't get acted upon. It's crucial, and you have to keep testing and finding, and you have to enjoy it. You know, subscribers used to matter. Now they don't. Just like how would you make a question out of this for your podcast? What would the headline be of your podcast if you had to title this as a video? It's me rambling about YouTube. And then you go, you know, if this was my video and I had to go to YouTube, I'd have to then come up with some cunning title and cunning thumbnail trying to get people to click. It's a game, isn't it? You've got to gamify it. Anyway, I see what you do with that. ([Time 0:35:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd2f446a-9c21-4e44-a096-648ee4b6039d)) - **Fix Ideas Before Tinkering With Metadata** - If you obsess over tiny thumbnail/title gains, step back and test better video ideas. - Start improvements at the concept stage because a strong idea outperforms marginal metadata tweaks. Transcript: Rob Wilson And that might be coming up with better or testing new video ideas. Because if you're constantly tweaking the thumbnails and the titles, trying to eke out some more, you know, what you might call marginal gains, it feels like the idea in the first place Just didn't really match up to the audience's expectations. That might get you out of the funk, Chris, of like constantly playing around with titles and thumbnails. Now, we've been, Jen, Dan and myself have been wrestling with this question about how useful is the AB title testing? Because we're doing all of these changes and tests and we get these results whereby one title is 4% better than the other one. But it doesn't necessarily inform us to make sweeping changes on the channel. I'm not feeling after two years of thumbnail testing and title testing that I definitively know what thumbnails work better than others. I tend to find that if the idea is really good, then, yeah, like a slight change of a thumbnail on a title might get you a bit more traction, but it ultimately starts at the very beginning. ([Time 0:41:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/72fd5244-58db-4334-8246-c99417459f0f)) - **From Podcast To Fruit Roll-Up Experiments** - Travis described making homemade fruit roll-ups with a food dehydrator after visiting Utah. - He plans more recipes and may start making food-dehydrator content. Transcript: Travis And I just recently visited friends in Utah. And while I was there, my friend made homemade fruit roll-ups. And I never had a homemade fruit roll-up before. Have you ever had fruit roll-ups before? I don't even know what one is. You don't even know what a fruit roll-up is? They call it leather now. Maybe you've heard that phrase. Very tasty little treat. I'm sure they have them in the uk but they're i don't want to say they're a kid's treat because i think that makes it sound weird but um they're definitely very tasty anyway oh like really Savory and sweet yes yeah yeah one of the two yeah okay yeah it just kind of looks like halloween candy i might have kind of but i feel like um when you make them naturally out of fruits and Stuff, it feels kind of natural. Anyway, I was talking just the other day because I saw him the other day. He was visiting Seattle, and we were talking about that. I'm like, man, they were so good. He goes, well, you just need a food dehydrator. So I ordered one, $45 or whatever from Amazon. I wanted to make my own. So it's super simple to do. I took some applesauce. I put it on a parchment paper and I put it into the, the, um, food dehydrator overnight. And right before I came on the podcast, uh, I, I tried it so good, so good. So I'm going to go make some more with apple butter this time. And then also you can make beef jerky with it. ([Time 0:43:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b63f0f5-f94f-4c1b-9125-508ae93670c7))