#215: How I Would Hit 100K YouTube Subscribers in 1 Year (If I Could Start Over)

Jay Clouse [00:00:00]:
Hit 100,000 subscribers in just a little over 2 years, but here's the thing. We could have done it faster. So in this video, I'm talking with my producer, Connor, about the 9 biggest mistakes we made and how we correct them, so you can grow faster than we did. Thank you to Artlist for supporting the channel. I'll jump in. I'll do the first one. Packaging is everything. I did not understand this at all in the beginning.

Jay Clouse [00:00:24]:
I didn't even think in the word in terms of the word packaging. And now I think about packaging for every plat every platform that I publish on all over the place. But packaging is everything. And another big add on to that from our episode of Patty recently, packaging improvements are not linear improvements on the outcome of a video. Packaging improvements can be exponential in terms of a title with a 10% improvement could have twice as many views, 4 times as many views, 10 times as many views as a title that is 10% less good.

Conor Conaboy [00:00:56]:
Yeah. Now you know why I fight so hard on on certain words and titles.

Artlist [00:01:00]:
And the

Jay Clouse [00:01:00]:
mistake that I make on this is I am often the one to be kind of snooty with what our titles should be. Connor comes to me and has a great title, and I say, I don't like that because here's, like, some reason that I think it's going to shine poorly on me and my integrity. I don't like clickbait blah blah blah. But that's Connor's always there to say that doesn't matter.

Conor Conaboy [00:01:25]:
Yeah. It's just a YouTube title. It's not that deep.

Jay Clouse [00:01:29]:
When when I think about it, you know, it's like our Jenny Hoyos video. I don't actually know the exact title on that video. I couldn't tell you verbatim what that title is. Yeah. I know it directionally what it is. But the point being, I am closer to that video than anybody else except for you maybe. I don't know what the exact title is, but that exact title did so well that it drove 3 and a half 1000000 views. So why would I worry so much about a word here or there if we think that this is the best package to get the most views, which is the job of the title, to get people to click and get into a video that actually backs up that title, but to get the click and get people into the video.

Conor Conaboy [00:02:08]:
Yeah. One of mine was actually, packaging is as important as everyone says. That was one of my takeaways because, like, we hear that all of the time. You're like, yeah. But, like, what if I just have a good video? Will that, like, succeed? Usually not. No. Like, usually not. You you have to get that click.

Conor Conaboy [00:02:26]:
And something Patty had mentioned on his last episode with us is hitting that core casual new fit even for a show like us where we're, you know, our our our, like, new or casuals aren't, like, pure entertainment watchers. But trying to capture a view from someone who might not be, like, a hardcore creator, but is just, like, generally interested in happening, in, like, what's happening on the platform or what's happening with certain people is, like, important. Because, again, like, those small viewers can snowball into getting more viewers that will stay on the channel. So it's, like, it's so so important. And I was just I was so bad at packaging early on, and that's just something, like, I I think you just get better with with time. Because now we'll do, like, I'll have, I don't know, 25 to, like, 40 different title variations given they're usually, like, probably, like, 7 to 10 different actual titles and then word changes within those. But, like, we take that super seriously now and have a whole whole process of narrowing down and hitting different click triggers, like, what Jake Thomas talks about and everything like that.

Jay Clouse [00:03:38]:
And the reason that it's important, and I'm gonna kinda dovetail into the second one because it's super related. Even if you think this video isn't for some people, you don't know that YouTube is not showing that person the video on their home feed. And so if YouTube is giving impressions to people who you think maybe this title is an appeal to them, well, if it doesn't, they're not gonna click it, and that's going to impact your CTR over time.

Artlist [00:04:00]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:04:01]:
So if I was starting again, and I'm trying to solve for a couple things, which is how do I get people to click on the video? That's solved by packaging. Then how do I make the video good enough people keep watching? That's average view duration. I would focus on solving the CTR question first because if you can do good packaging and get people to the video, then you're gonna get a lot of data, and you're gonna know whether that video is good enough or not. Do you agree? Would you do it in that order? Like, if I am fairly new, would you say focus on packaging a little bit more in the beginning than, a b d?

Conor Conaboy [00:04:36]:
I would say idea and then packaging, which I think those 2 kind of play into each other because it's like you can, you know, have really good packaging. But if it's not a good idea, I don't think it's going to be clickable anyway. But, yeah, I don't I think retention is something you'd worry about. Like, once you've started to get good at what you're doing, I don't think, like, looking at retention graphs is necessarily what beginners or new channels or small channels should do. 1, because there's probably not that much data. And there's, like, you're still getting better. And there are more important things to get better at first than, like, getting super nitpicky with retention graphs or anything like that.

Jay Clouse [00:05:18]:
Yeah. Idea so that you can package it in a way that people click. Look at your CTR, try to raise your CTR, then you're gonna get more data about whether people like the video, getting it more

Artlist [00:05:34]:
people seeing the video, and that's gonna tell you a whole heck of a lot more around the

Jay Clouse [00:05:34]:
quality of that video and your your retention down the road. But I see a lot of people post screenshots of their their video stats from YouTube Studio on Twitter. And the thing that I noticed a lot of times when the views are low is the CTR is just very, very low, like, sub 2% sometimes or sub 3%. So my takeaway and someone's like, what should I do? It's like, okay. Well, would focus on getting your CTR up because then you're gonna get more impressions. You're gonna get more views. You're gonna learn what else you can improve from there. But this is preventing you from even getting more impressions and more data back.

Conor Conaboy [00:06:04]:
Yeah. And do that without click baiting as well.

Jay Clouse [00:06:07]:
Yeah. Gotta pay off. Gotta pay off, whatever the title is.

Conor Conaboy [00:06:12]:
And this, actually leads me into my other one, which you said packaging is everything. Mine was preproduction is everything, which packaging is included in that. One mistake we made for probably, like, our 1st year was treating, was worrying about, like, the packaging and idea and how we are gonna frame an episode after we had already recorded it. So we were left with kind of, yeah, no idea of how the episode would go before you actually interviewed the person, which makes it really hard to make a good frame, which in in pot in podcast terms, like, you hear everybody talk about the idea for a YouTube video. In in our show terms, that comes down to the topic and the guest that are, you know, kind of play off of each other. It's not like a typical idea what you think of it as a YouTube video. So we moved from just having guests on and trying to frame the episode after the fact to prepping exactly what the episode is going to be before Jay even interviews with, all of our research is usually based around a certain topic. I'll go through and, research kind of like what topics our audience wants to hear, whether it's like, comments or, you know, what, what positions are YouTubers hiring? Because those are generally specialist things that that can be offloaded.

Conor Conaboy [00:07:43]:
So if there's someone that's owns that area, it'd be good to have them on to teach to a generalist. So then we have an entire episode that we know is going to play well with our audience before Jay even interviews, which has been such a huge help with packaging and making sure we're delivering on the promise of the channel.

Jay Clouse [00:08:03]:
I think this is an essential flip, especially for podcasters

Artlist [00:08:08]:
who

Jay Clouse [00:08:08]:
are trying to move into a video world because a lot of times, I mean, this this mindset helps with even just an audio only podcast. But if you are interviewing people right now, you're probably booking people based on their name, and you just wanna talk to that person. And, you know, I can't I can't count the number of interviews that start with. This is a wide ranging conversation with this person. And that might be interesting and fun for you as someone that's very curious, but a wide ranging conversation is extremely hard to package. And so, yeah, it was a fundamental shift to when we we realized we should guide the interview to the package rather than trying to fit the interview into some package after the fact because it was never as effective. It was never as retentive. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:08:53]:
Because I would invariably try to cover too much ground, which made it difficult then to package around an idea rather than that person's name.

Conor Conaboy [00:09:01]:
And it stopped us from trying to be, like, everything for everyone where now we can be much more differentiated. So it's like our interview with, Patty Galloway is going to be different than the interview Patty did with the editing podcast or the or the interview he did with John Yushai. And that's how we kind of approach it with all our guests is we want the experience of watching our show to be different than just watching any other of these guests' podcast. So it gives them a reason to come back or just, you know, come and watch for the first time because it's going to be new. Maybe not all new information, but at the very least, a new angle or a unique angle that

Jay Clouse [00:09:44]:
fits our audience. Alright. Next mistake. Giving people vegetables instead of candy.

Conor Conaboy [00:09:50]:
Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:09:50]:
Even if you wanna feed people vegetables, they want candy. You've gotta make them think that they're eating candy in order to take their vegetables. We actually call this, like, stuffing candy into your vegetables. The idea here is this goes back to packaging again, which just underlies the point that packaging is everything. People don't wanna click on something that seems like it's boring or it's work. Yeah. And you've gotta give somebody a package that makes them feel like this is going to feel fun. This is going to be easy.

Jay Clouse [00:10:23]:
This is going to get me these big outcomes that I'm looking for. And that's that's how you appeal to a broader broader range of people in my experience.

Conor Conaboy [00:10:33]:
Yeah. Especially early on in the video, like, and in the intro. Because it's, like, obviously, if you have if you're an educational channel or an educational podcast and you you're diving into some, like, scientific topics or anything like that, of course, you're not gonna be, super surface level the entire time, but you definitely don't wanna lead off with, you know, bright in the thick of things. You gotta ease people into it. I kind of think of it like syllabus week versus, like, actual, you know, final exam being in there where it's you're just giving the overview. In the beginning, you're keeping it light. You're kind of drawing people in. You're not just hitting them right out in front and, like, expecting them expecting them to care as much about this thing as you do, like, right off the bat and be as interested because that's just not realistic.

Conor Conaboy [00:11:24]:
You have to lead them in with, some lighter information that goes to, like, making sure, readability of your script. You don't want, like, a massive educate or, like, massive words or anything like that. I know we get a lot of comments on the Jenny video about, like, the downfall of society being writing shorts or intros at a 5th grade reading level when that's, like, the standard for journalism? That's how it's always been?

Jay Clouse [00:11:53]:
When it's probably what led people to click on that video in the first place Yeah. Was the 5th grade ring level of the title. Yeah.

Conor Conaboy [00:11:59]:
And so it's like it's like you can be mad, I guess, but no one's saying you have to make content for 5th graders. It's just like it it's a level of ease in bringing people into your content that's important. You can dive into the, you know, deep, stuff later. You you know, you don't start right right out of the gate with that.

Jay Clouse [00:12:19]:
It's the difference between a title that is, like, how to do better with monetization versus how to earn $10,000 per month. You know? Yeah. People don't like big, hard words. They don't need academic sounding ideas. They actually just want outcomes that they can wrap their mind around and feels like, yes. That is something that I that I want.

Conor Conaboy [00:12:43]:
Is a voice over generator something that you can wrap your mind around?

Jay Clouse [00:12:47]:
I don't know that I like your tone, Artlist.

Conor Conaboy [00:12:49]:
Is this better?

Artlist [00:12:50]:
Or maybe this.

Jay Clouse [00:12:52]:
Yeah. Those are better.

Conor Conaboy [00:12:53]:
Why don't you go ahead and tell the audience about our new feature?

Jay Clouse [00:12:56]:
Artlist is the 1st creative platform to offer a voice over generator created specifically for video creators, and it's so impressive. Now when you go to artlist.i0, you will see a new voice over tab with a ton of exclusive voices to choose from that are modeled from professional voice actors. Show them how it works. 1st, we'll choose a voice. Click on it to select, then go to the text box at the top and type in what we want, and then click generate.

Artlist [00:13:25]:
Jay hit 100,000 subscribers in just a little over 2 years. But here's the thing. He could have done it faster. In this video, he and producer, Connor, talk about the 11 biggest mistakes they made and how they corrected them so you can grow faster than them.

Jay Clouse [00:13:40]:
It's that easy. The voice over generator is included in an Artlist Max subscription, which we use, along with great music, sound effects, cinematic stock footage, and motion graphics templates too, which is an insane deal. If you just want the new feature, there is a standalone voice over plan as well. Get 2 free months on any annual plan using our link in the description. Thank you to Artlist for sponsoring the channel.

Conor Conaboy [00:14:02]:
This relates back to what we talked about earlier about preproduction. The idea is that guests do not impact growth in the way you think. A lot of times, you'll hear people saying, we thought this when we first started that it's like, oh, to grow a podcast, you just need to have big guests. The problem with that is if you just have a big guest and you're relying on their name, no one's gonna stick around. So you might have an influx of views, maybe even an influx of subscribers. But if you don't give them a reason to stick around and watch the next video, they're not going to, which is why we made the shift to packaging or to, to focusing more on topic than actual name guest. Because the only guests who will reliably and consistently grow your audience are people who have the same or similar audience than than you do or as you do. So for us, that'd be like Patty, Ed, John Yushai, those types of people who have that audience that's looking for the same thing as our audience.

Conor Conaboy [00:15:10]:
Of course, they're gonna those episodes are gonna do well, and they're gonna, consistently help the channel because it's a similar audience. You know, if we had, mister beast on, I'm sure we could get a ton of views. But most of those views aren't really going to do anything for us because they're not the audience we want When in fact, that episode could end up hurting a channel because if it does get, you know, millions of views and those millions of views are our audience, and then our the next video we post is gonna be showed to all of those people that aren't gonna click on it, then the YouTube thinks people don't like this video when it's just being shown to the wrong audience because we attracted the wrong people there.

Jay Clouse [00:15:52]:
When you package a video around an individual, there do seem to be more potential risks than potential upsides. You know, the the inverse of that. I was listening to Colin and Samir's most recent, audio episode, and they're talking about their episode with Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway is a well known person to a certain audience of people, which turns out is not huge in overlap with Colin and Samir's core audience. So when you package a video around a person who is well known but not to your audience, then that is not gonna perform when shown to your audience. They're not gonna know why they should listen to this person if they don't recognize him. And then like you said, if it does get out into the audience that likes Scott and brings them to your channel, if that's not your core audience, it's it's going to, at best, kinda water down the the stats and the the understanding the algorithm has of who likes your videos. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:16:49]:
Or at worst, you know, not attract people at all. Yeah. So it's it is it's a risky proposition to try to just pack package around the identity of a person.

Conor Conaboy [00:17:00]:
And it can happen accidentally too. Like, I I think we had that conversation after the success of the Jenny Hoyos video of, like, we could easily double down on making shorts content and get tons and tons of views right after that. That's not something we wanted to do. But even at VidSummit, I was talking to, our friend, Trent Hare, about, like, the the hangover of a viral video and how, like, even even in best case scenario, if you hit, like, a really good viral video and it still hits a lot of your target audience, you can still have that hangover for the next couple videos of, you know, people that are one and dones with with your channel. That it can take a little bit of time to, like, get back on track and and get get back to being shown to the audience that you want to.

Jay Clouse [00:17:46]:
And we did see that on our channel. I was just looking into our our stats here because we did see that that hangover.

Conor Conaboy [00:17:54]:
Yeah. I think the episode right after was Doddford, which is a great episode. Or it was it was the thumbnail video, which is also a really good video. You should definitely check that out. Then Doddford, the YouTuber's guide to hiring is a more niche video. We knew that wouldn't do too well even though it's probably one of the most informative videos on our channel, if that's what you're doing. Justin's Brand Deal video is another one that's, like, an incredibly, incredibly valuable video that, wasn't watched as much as we think it does. And then we started to get back on track with doctor k.

Conor Conaboy [00:18:26]:
I think that was a good one because doctor k, one, as a psychiatrist kind of applies to everybody. I think, like, mental health is a really good topic to talk about. We framed it around getting views, which I think is really interesting. Like, a psychiatrist helping people get views is like that performance coach kind of vibe. And, obviously, his name draws a lot of people, and I think the way we packaged it was a nice overlap between, like, his already audience versus people who would stick around and watch our videos as well.

Jay Clouse [00:18:57]:
And his name actually isn't in the title or the thumbnail. It's just his face. Yeah. You know? So it kinda it kinda speaks to this that this is this is one of the lessons I had. So I'll throw this Yeah. Throw this in here. Treating your guests as teachers and not celebrities. Instead of packaging around their identity, package around whatever the unique thing they can teach is so that you are basically creating workshops through a person rather than profiles of a person because profiles are inspirational.

Jay Clouse [00:19:30]:
Workshops are useful.

Conor Conaboy [00:19:33]:
Yeah. And I think workshops have a much longer shelf life and are much, much more evergreen content than like a snapshot of, of someone's life, especially because if they do interview rounds, there's going to be, you know, 10 interviews just like your profile. You might be a really good interview and it might be, like, a really great profile, but it's still there's 10 others. You know you know what I mean? If they're giving a workshop, it it holds its value. As well. I guess as long as the information is, you know, pertinent. But a lot of what we do is

Jay Clouse [00:20:05]:
on the audio side. I've interviewed a bunch of authors who are on, you know, their book tour, not a bunch, but a handful. And I've noticed that over time, those interviews have performed a little bit worse. And I think what happens is a lot of times when you interview one of these people on a tour, they're they or their team will ask, can you air this episode during this specific time period? It's usually about a week because they're trying to do it right as the 1st week of book sales are coming out. And so you literally, as a listener, get a deluge of in my feed. I have this person on these 4 podcasts I listen to. I'm gonna listen to 1, maybe 2 of those. And if you're not in the top 2 shows or channels for some viewer who is now seeing this person around everywhere, you're just not gonna get that view with that person.

Jay Clouse [00:20:55]:
I heard Tim Ferriss say the same thing on his most recent episode with Kevin Rose, that he's not gonna do book tour, interviews anymore because you really have to think, how do I frame this differently than everybody else? And even if you do, listeners don't necessarily know that you're going to be different than other shows or that the way that you're being different is what they want. So it's a it's a challenging thing to try to just capture the personality when they're coming up from their their whole of doing work and saying, I'm ready to be interviewed right now.

Conor Conaboy [00:21:27]:
And I think it adds like an a unique angle to your show when you do that too, because a lot of the draw of a typical podcaster interview show is is the audience feeling like, you know, they're a fly on the wall of this conversation, and we very much wanna take the approach of, like, you and the guest are talking to the audience. And which gives a whole unique feel of, like, I think I think is one of the reasons why our show is successful is because there's a better connection from guest to audience where you're not just listening in, you're being taught and talked to.

Jay Clouse [00:22:06]:
What do you got next?

Conor Conaboy [00:22:08]:
You need an intro, for anything, especially a podcast. Because you're making a long form video, you have to let people know what you're going to talk about. It's so, so important. Early on, we would do, you know, typical podcast intros, like what you used to do with audio j where you do, like, you know, the 3 minutes of catch up and talking, which is great in a medium, like audio where people are just kind of listening and doing whatever.

Jay Clouse [00:22:42]:
Where people already know you. Yes. Because people who don't already know you just have no patience or tolerance for that.

Conor Conaboy [00:22:48]:
Exactly. It's like the a huge difference between audio and video podcasting because YouTube's reach is so big. You're getting so many people that have never seen you and just don't give a shit about you. Like like and that's not even bad. That's just like they don't know you. You have to you have to earn their time to watch the video. And the way you do that is with a good intro. So that, like, you need you need to pay off on the packaging right away.

Conor Conaboy [00:23:13]:
So all the time, our our intro, usually, the the hook clip or the hook sentence, if I don't use a clip, is somehow related to the packaging, like, either the text on the thumbnail or just the title in general because I wanna I wanna pay off on that packaging right away and let the viewer know that this video is exactly what it said it's gonna be. And, it affirms the reason why I clicked because I want to learn that thing. And then setting up, who your guest is, which I think is important, because one, if you're interviewing, never never never never ask someone to, like, explain who they are or what they do. Please.

Jay Clouse [00:23:50]:
Please, no.

Conor Conaboy [00:23:51]:
People don't know how to talk about themselves unless they're, like, a trained speaker. That's when you're always gonna get the arms and things like that, and people are gonna stumble over because it's, like, kind of uncomfortable, and it's just a waste of your time, the guest time, and the viewers' time.

Jay Clouse [00:24:06]:
They're going to be super humble or they're going to be really off putting. There's like no in between.

Conor Conaboy [00:24:11]:
Yeah. And if you do it yourself, then you kind of control the length of that as well. So it's like you do the bare minimum of setting up who this person is, why the audience should listen to them, and then going into exactly what the episode is gonna spell out. And that's, like, the format for all of our intros. It's hook, which is, like a sucker punch clip. Your hook needs to have 0 context with no build up. I don't need any explanation. That's like that's pure candy.

Conor Conaboy [00:24:39]:
Like, we're not even trying to hide, you know, vegetables in it or anything like that. It's like pure candy because that's the hook. It has to be fast to get people's attention. Then we're gonna set up who the guest is, why they should listen to him, or them, and then explaining what's gonna happen throughout the interview generally with some more hooky sort of clips or explanations as well. And once we started doing that, I believe the first Jake Thomas episode was the first one we started to do, something similar to that. And then it didn't really kind of hone in on, like, what it is now until let me look. It was probably around John or Jenny was when I started doing, like, the the more refined format of, like, hook, set up, explain that kind of thing. And it's worked.

Conor Conaboy [00:25:35]:
That's like when our channel started to blow up. There's a lot of different factors of of why it's not just the intros, but that certainly helped a lot. And you need you just need that for people who don't know who you are. You need to set up why they should be there.

Jay Clouse [00:25:51]:
There's this classic speaking advice that is the format of tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. This is 3 part, like, here's how you get people to grasp this and be bought in. And I had this note too. I had it framed a little bit differently, but I had to note that basically the highest leverage way to increase a v d over the long length of the video is to increase a v d in the first 30 seconds.

Artlist [00:26:16]:
If you're

Jay Clouse [00:26:16]:
able to do to do that, that has, a meaningful impact across the entire video. And this is something that I remember Patty talking us talking to us about in the accelerator way back in the day. He he looked at our dashboard and was like, if you can increase retention in the first 30 to 60 seconds, then you're going to have a massive increase across the length of the video. So when you do get that point of focusing on retention, the highest leverage place to do it is right away because that's where you see the most people drop off. So if you can turn off that spigot a little bit, that's gonna be really great for your whole video.

Conor Conaboy [00:26:50]:
Yeah. It's very similar to the, like, exponential kind of tip. Same as packaging is retention as well because it's like the the people are way more fickle in the, you know, the first 5 minutes of watching a video, whether they're gonna decide to keep watching or not versus 20 minutes in. Like, if you're 20 minutes in, I don't think, like, it would take a lot for the actual video to get you to click off. But in the first minute while you're still evaluating things, you're gonna be much more likely to click off. So spending way more time and effort whether it's editing, writing, or in our case, we'll, like, reformat the episode to make sure, like, the stuff at the beginning is kind of what's related to the packaging and is, like, the really, really sweet stuff and then, goes throughout. We're just kinda taking a bet that if they like this stuff earlier on the episode, they'll stick around till the end. If not, that's fine.

Conor Conaboy [00:27:42]:
If they only came for the first thing, that's just kind of how it works. But really, really, really, really focusing on intro and the first, you know, however many minutes couple minutes of your video.

Jay Clouse [00:27:55]:
The interesting thing about this is there are 2 shows that have very different takes on this. Like, one is diary of a CEO dials us up to, like, an 11 or 12, where, like, their packaging is kind of rage baby and also, like, if we're talking about candy, this is the highest fructose corn syrup out there, I think. Like, the beginning of these clips is always super no context needed, sucker punch with some big time sound design that's heightening tension that gets you into, like, the who is this guest and why should you care? And here's a third party voice that's going to introduce the guest. It's really high on the level of, like, trailer intro. But then you have, like, Chris Williamson, who's been on the show. And a lot of his episodes, there's no intro at all. He, like, literally just jumps right into the conversation. You actually start to question, like, did I miss the intro? It happened so fast.

Jay Clouse [00:28:49]:
Yeah. But now you're, like, in the flow really quickly. I don't know which one is better. It's an interesting test to run, at some point, but they're very, very different and both finding success.

Conor Conaboy [00:28:59]:
Yeah. My my guess would be that it is harder to grow from 0 with, like, the Chris Williamson strategy. I think if you're I I still believe I know there's, like, I know you can debate this, but I do believe certain things get easier as you get bigger, especially because as we've seen, I think there is a lot of social proof factor on YouTube. Like, if your video has a bunch of views, it's more likely to get more views than, if it doesn't. And I think that's similar to certain things like retention tactics or how you do your intros is the same because you're more established. Or if your video already has more views, I think they're less likely to click off if maybe the intro isn't as good because, like, oh, all of these other people watch this or whatever. So it's like almost like a fear of missing out. Like, I I don't wanna click off because all of these other people watched it.

Conor Conaboy [00:29:57]:
So so so it has to be good or something like that.

Jay Clouse [00:30:01]:
Okay. The next one that I have on my list, fewer better videos is better than more worse videos. So in the beginning, we were trying to mirror the audio feed in that we were trying to keep up with a weekly publishing cadence on the video channel, which means you have a week to produce the episode. And there's just going to be limitations depending on your capacity for how much you can do in a certain period of time. And what we found was we got better results when we put more time into making a smaller number of videos better that we thought had high potential rather than just trying to keep up with the publishing schedule. That was kind of a a legacy artifact of the audio feed.

Conor Conaboy [00:30:50]:
Yeah. And I think that, also ties into us talking about preproduction too, because now different guests or video ideas get vetted way more rigorously. Where before, it was just, like, oh, we have this guest recording. Let's make it a video. And now, you know, there are tons of guests that are on the audio show that don't necessarily make a video, not meaning that they're not good episodes, but it's more about audience fit.

Jay Clouse [00:31:13]:
Let's play let's play a little game on the spot.

Conor Conaboy [00:31:15]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:31:16]:
What are name? Name one of your favorite YouTube channels that you watch frequently.

Conor Conaboy [00:31:23]:
Does it like the niche matter? Nope. Gift gas.

Jay Clouse [00:31:26]:
Okay. When does gift gas upload?

Conor Conaboy [00:31:31]:
Once a month. Maybe some some of his videos get taken down. But yeah, once a month, twice a month at most. But it's not a consistent schedule. It's he uploads when he uploads.

Jay Clouse [00:31:43]:
Yeah. And I would bet if we did that again for multiple channels. And the same is true for me. I can't name, like, a day of the week that I expect somebody to upload Yeah. Or a specific schedule. On YouTube, it doesn't really matter to me. In audio, I do still have, like, some rituals where I will listen to somebody on a weekly basis, but I still probably wouldn't be able to name the day of the week that that person uploads Yeah. Necessarily.

Jay Clouse [00:32:07]:
You know, it's like I I listen to this person once a week, but I think I think the schedule is far less important now than it used to be if it used to be.

Conor Conaboy [00:32:17]:
Yeah. And I the I think the counter to that could be is if you are like a daily show, something like Good Mythical Morning or whatever. Like, those are that channel, like, Rhett and Link are such a part of their audience's lives, you know, being making I don't know how long they've been making videos, like, over a decade, like, daily for the most part. So it's, like, of course, every morning, you know, or every lunchtime, you know, oh, now I'm going to watch Good Mythical Morning. That's, like, completely different than, you know, making a full scale video. So there's, like, the the, contrast of, like, daily, if if that's what your thing is, commit to that and, like, trying to be a part of people's routines. But I think, generally, it's probably better to focus on quality. Now, I don't know.

Conor Conaboy [00:33:05]:
Short term quantity probably would net you more views, but I think, like, long term business and audience building wise, taking the fewer videos higher quality would probably win out.

Jay Clouse [00:33:19]:
It's really hard to say, but I would I would actually assume the opposite in most cases.

Artlist [00:33:23]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:33:23]:
Because I think depending on the size of your channel and, like, past video success, you're gonna get some baseline of impressions, which will turn into some baseline of views per video on average. Right. That's what a baseline is. And my guess is if I posted 1 video a week in my baseline was that those videos were getting like a 1000 views, maybe 2,000 views, then in a month, that would be 8,000 views from those 4 videos. And if we think about, like, the leverage that you get in packaging that is better, that you put more time into a video, I think it would be very likely that you could move your views on a video from 2,000 to 8,000 views with a slightly better package.

Conor Conaboy [00:34:07]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:34:08]:
So it's it's dangerous. I recognize this is kind of dangerous advice to give because there's a world where you take this advice and you become so perfectionist that you don't publish enough at all. Yeah. But in general, I think if if publishing is not a problem, if you have the muscle of being able to publish something, you can probably listen to your intuition and say, I would do better and make a better video if I gave myself a little bit extra time to produce it. And that would probably have an exponential increase in views. But again, it's dangerous advice to give because you can't not publish at all.

Conor Conaboy [00:34:41]:
Yeah. The general rule of thumb, like, you have to be self aware about that and where you're at in your YouTube or journey, because I also this wasn't on my list, but I think one of the one of my, like, humbling takeaways is, like, you never know as much as you think you do. Because it's like when when we started the channel, I was like, oh, yeah. I know all this good stuff. Like, we're gonna be great. And then, like, looking at how the channel is now and how I approach things now versus when we started is such a night and day that it's like, man, I had no idea what I was doing. And, like, I don't know. Probably a year from now, I'll look back in this and be like, man, I had no idea what I was doing.

Conor Conaboy [00:35:18]:
So it's just like that constant growth where you're never quite at where you think you are.

Jay Clouse [00:35:24]:
And there are also videos that we expect to do really well that don't. There are videos that we think are gonna be average that overperform. Yeah. A lot of times I feel really good about my ability to judge, like, the trend of metrics in the first 24 hours, let's say. But then recently, that has been shot a little bit. So it is always surprising. Yeah. Sometimes in a good way.

Conor Conaboy [00:35:50]:
Yeah. You do talk, man. I feel I feel like any anybody that's telling you, like, it's easy probably doesn't know what they're talking about. Even, like, the top people in their field are, like, yeah. It's like it never gets super, super easy. There's always that, like, random variability in things that you can't account for because there's just so many factors that go into a video success that it's hard to one pinpoint, like, what was the cause or even point, like, what went wrong or anything like that. So it's a a lot of trial and error and just kind of figuring out and growing along with it.

Jay Clouse [00:36:23]:
What do you got next?

Conor Conaboy [00:36:24]:
I think this might be the biggest one that I have, that end screens are super important.

Jay Clouse [00:36:32]:
Okay.

Conor Conaboy [00:36:33]:
When we started, I did not think an end screen or, like, an end of video CTA was important at all. And I think for a lot of them I think early on, we did normal podcast outros where you would, like, kind of recap the episode. And then throughout the accelerator, we were talking to Patty and some other creators about a dip in retention at the end of a video and how much that can impact overall channel views. Because been, viewers binging your content and keeping, keeping a viewer on your channel or on the platform in general is really, really good for your videos because, obviously, YouTube wants to maximize the time people are spending there. So if you can get people to watch another one of your videos, that is a great signal for that video, the video they clicked on, and just like the channel as a whole because people are moving down, you know, your your funnel or whatever from new to casual or from casual to core if they're gonna continue to watch more videos. And the other thing is that we have noticed with, a couple videos is a successful end screen can put a video back into recommended. So we have noticed with a couple of dead video or flat lines, I shouldn't say dead, like flat lined videos where they weren't getting much impressions, we would, and, we would throw them on an end screen with a CTA. It's not just, like, throwing the video up and hoping people click.

Conor Conaboy [00:38:04]:
We we'll do, like, a you know, this is why you should watch this video that usually relates to the the content they just watched.

Jay Clouse [00:38:11]:
It's like a bridge. It's like, hey. This is video a that you've been watching for 40 minutes. If you enjoyed this, you should watch video b next. And it's literally me at the end of the video saying that. And also, that bridge kinda hits you in the face unexpectedly. Like the momentum of the interview carries right into it so that you you don't anticipate the video ending.

Conor Conaboy [00:38:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. Because as soon as as soon as people feel like the ending is near, they'll probably click off. So it's not like, you know, we're not surprising them, but we do we wanna be very direct and, with with how we're we're we're asking them to take an action afterwards, and we're very clear about that, and we're not, like, building up to the ask. The entire interview beforehand is the ask. Like, that's the reason or that's that's the reason why we're asking and why we feel like we could ask to watch another video. It's because you just spent, you know, the last 30 to 30 minutes to an hour watching this thing. And we have seen all of these flatlined videos, that were doing well on, after being put on the end card or on the end screen that started to do well in on the home page and recommended, like, increased CTR, increased AVD, all of these things because it's now being served to either a new audience or just the right audience that it wasn't getting at the time when we posted it.

Conor Conaboy [00:39:34]:
A lot of these are older videos that, you know, in turn boost the entire channel up. And if that end screen's good, maybe it brings up another video. So this whole exponential thing where worrying about that dip in retention at the end of a video could be like a huge factor in channel growth, in channel growth or older videos being put back into the algorithm.

Jay Clouse [00:39:56]:
Yeah. It's like resuscitating. Yeah. It's kind of fun because we can take some of the videos that we feel really good about that we feel like didn't get a fair shake because their CTR just tanks too early maybe.

Conor Conaboy [00:40:06]:
Or we just didn't have the audience.

Jay Clouse [00:40:08]:
Yeah. It's fun to try to bridge those and give those a second life. And it's there's there's, like, nothing more pleasing than an asset you have already created suddenly doing more for you Yeah. With no no extra work on your part.

Conor Conaboy [00:40:20]:
Yeah. It's great. I mean, that's like the the genesis of our channel growth was the the first Patty episode, which then led a bunch of views to the Hayden episode, which I forget what was on the end screen of that one. Maybe it was Jake Thomas. I think it's Jake

Jay Clouse [00:40:34]:
Thomas. Jake Thomas is the first one that, like, really

Conor Conaboy [00:40:38]:
hot. He staked out of nowhere. Yeah. So it's, like, off one video that did well. Now, we have 2 others, blowing up that contribute, like, financially contribute to channel views and and and, money, but also just, like, keeping people on your channel. And, obviously, the more people watch your content, the more likely they are to like you and move down the core casual new funnel to keep coming back.

Jay Clouse [00:41:02]:
The frustrating thing is when suddenly, like, a really old video starts doing well and you get comments about, like, why did you do this this way? This isn't very good. And it's like, well, it was one of our first videos and we didn't know what we're doing. Yeah. It wasn't very good in this in this specific way. You're right. But that's because this is 2 years old now.

Conor Conaboy [00:41:20]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:41:20]:
But if people are coming from a new video and then going to a 2 year old video, it's an interesting experience.

Conor Conaboy [00:41:26]:
Yeah. Like the first video we posted, the, the very first video episode was is a really good episode with Justin Moore. But the first 5 minutes are like a normal podcast intro where it's just talking about, like, hey, we're starting this new channel. And, like, it did decent views at the time, but I think the a v d was, like, a minute because people would just come and comment, like, oh, this is so sick. And then and then just dip. Yeah. So it's like, I don't I don't know if we could that that's a kind of one is I don't know if we could breathe life back into that video because, like, the beginning and editing is so much different than what we do now, even though it's a really good episode.

Jay Clouse [00:42:01]:
Okay. This wasn't on my list, but I wanna throw it out there anyway because this is something I believe to be true. But, again, probably comes with some caveats. In general, I think doing long form video podcasts is a hard way to do YouTube. But I do find that having longer videos might actually give you some leeway in in your, like, retention editing style. Here here's what I mean. When you have a longer video, even if the percentage of a b d is a little bit lower than your shorter videos, the actual time someone is spending watching a video on YouTube on your channel is usually higher. And I think YouTube generally is maximizing for time on platform.

Conor Conaboy [00:42:45]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:42:45]:
So I have seen I've seen screenshots of other channels, other people who have, like, 2 and 3 hour videos that have a really low CTR. The a v d as a percentage isn't super high, but those people are watching, you know, 45 minutes sometimes, which is something YouTube really wants to encourage. I remember one point you and I had a conversation where we went to we started more aggressively editing the length of videos down. Yeah. We thought let's just make it all really, really tight. And I think there's a threshold where you can actually go further than is good for your channel on that front. Yeah. Because the shorter the video is, that's less time on average someone is watching a video on your channel, unless the a b d percentage is super, super, super high.

Jay Clouse [00:43:34]:
So we've played around with that. We've gone from, like, an hour or more sometimes all the way down to, like, 30 minutes at one point. And now we've landed somewhere in the middle more times than not. But what's your take on this?

Conor Conaboy [00:43:45]:
Yeah. I agree. I think my general, philosophy when I'm cutting episodes is, like, I want to make sure it is. It achieves the purpose of what we set out to do. So, like, if there are tangents during the interviews, those will get cut. So, like, the time only factors in on, like, iffy stuff or, like, sometimes I'll leave, like, some banter or personality in because I think it's good even though, you know, we could cut, you know, 5 minutes here or 5 minutes there. But I do think YouTube optimizes for total time watch, not per I think percentage, obviously, is a factor in overall viewer satisfaction on, like, how YouTube is judging whether or not people like the video. But I definitely think, like, a 20%, average view percentage that is 20 minutes is better than, an 80% average view percentage at 4 minutes.

Jay Clouse [00:44:49]:
Totally agree. So that is an opportunity for long form videos, podcasts, obviously lend themselves well to long form videos. That is one plus of doing the style thing.

Conor Conaboy [00:45:01]:
Something that's really interesting when I was diving into our stats the other day about, like, average watch time, and I don't know I don't know what to think about this, but I think it's interesting. I was looking at device type of our viewers, and 1 half our viewers are mobile, which blew my mind when I first when I Really? Yeah. It's, like, just under 50% are mobile viewers, which is also why I started using big captions in our intros. So it's like you can see them on, if there's autoplay on your phone, so you can clearly read captions on a silent autoplay that, the those are big enough for people to, read. Also, the view duration between, between mobile and laptop and TV viewers is, like, nonexistent. Like, they all watch the same amount of time. I would have thought that mobile viewers have a lower, average watch time. The the one device that does have a higher watch time, I think, it's by, like, a minute is tablet viewers, which is weird.

Conor Conaboy [00:46:10]:
I don't know. Maybe maybe that's like maybe tablets more of a, you know, sit on your kitchen counter while you're making dinner or something. But I thought that was really interesting, and I don't know quite why.

Jay Clouse [00:46:23]:
If mobile is half our views, do you know what the breakdown is for television?

Conor Conaboy [00:46:28]:
It's I think mobile is like 48% TV and laptop are both like 20%, and then tablet was like 10%.

Jay Clouse [00:46:38]:
Super interesting. I would have expected more TV, less mobile. I wonder if people listening on mobile are, treating it as, like, an audio podcast

Artlist [00:46:47]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:46:47]:
Where it's, like, in their pocket. Interesting. If you're listening to this on mobile right now, leave a comment. Tell me how you listen. Tell us how you watch or listen to the show. Very interested to learn more.

Conor Conaboy [00:46:56]:
Okay. In the last 90 days, mobile phone, consisted of exactly 50% of views. Computer was 30%, and the view duration is only 5 seconds higher than mobile. TV was 16.5%, and the AVD was 14 seconds higher than mobile. Tablet was 3.3%, and the AVD was 3 minutes higher than mobile.

Jay Clouse [00:47:27]:
This is super interesting. It leads you to believe that people are treating the tablet as, like, a viewing background

Conor Conaboy [00:47:34]:
Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:47:35]:
Thing a little bit more, which you would expect would be TV. Because that's what we're hearing from, like, all the bigger the bigger channels on YouTube that are doing mostly in studio recordings that are, like, 2 and 3 hours. A lot of them are getting a lot more views on connected TVs right now. So that's interesting that we're a counterpoint. Everything we do is a little bit counter to what we're hearing a lot from the industry for people who are doing in studio shows. Doing remote shows is just different. That's one of the takeaways I had to remote interviews on YouTube cannot feel like Zoom recordings. Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:48:08]:
Got to be it's got to be a compelling visual experience, which, yes, takes a lot more work in postproduction.

Conor Conaboy [00:48:17]:
Yeah. I think a lot of times, not only do remote interviews just feel like Zoom recordings, they try to capture a similar fly on the wall feel to, like, in studio podcasts, which at least for more education based things, I don't think work. You can get away with it, I guess, if you're more like a comedy podcast because people, you know, treat it like they're listening in on a friend's Discord call or something like that. But, generally, it's a completely different vibe, and I think you have to lean into it and not try and pretend that you're not a remote interview. You have to lean into, like, it almost like how I I started to view it as, like, like a Twitch stream where it's, you know, you're talking to an audience, not talking, at somebody else. But, yeah, I I see a lot of people mess up even with camera positioning. When they'll, like, try and set the camera up like it's in a studio or, you know, you're filming them watching somebody else on a screen rather than just talking to a camera, I think is usually a mistake because that, like, kind of throws off the whole vibe. It's like, I can you're still remote recording.

Conor Conaboy [00:49:38]:
Why are we acting like like you're filming in person? I just wanna see the camera feed. You know what I mean? Like, I I wanna I wanna hear you talk to me. I don't wanna, like, watch you talk to another screen. Just talk to your actual screen.

Jay Clouse [00:49:50]:
This seems like a good time for me to share the workshop we're doing. Yes. So Connor and I are co hosting a video podcasting workshop. Depending on when you're watching this, you can either join us live or get the workshop and work through it on your own time afterwards. There's a link in the description. But this is going to be a 3 hour very interactive workshop where after this, you should be able to launch or improve your remote recorded video podcasts so that they get more views. That is the goal as workshop launch or improve your remote recorded video podcast to get more views. We're gonna cover 3 specific sections, pre production production and post production because those are the three aspects of producing one of these videos.

Conor Conaboy [00:50:32]:
That's right. And we will be covering everything I do from