YouTube Tips Help Finding Niche

[Jeff Goober]

Hello everyone, I need some advice that I'm having a hard time with... So when I originally started my channel it was a vlog channel that nobody watched lol, I did youtube as a video Diary for myself to see how much I have changed down the road and what's happening in life, but now I want to treat my channel more like a business and create videos for my audience and from the looks of it the vlogs were not getting any views.

After not doing vlogs I started doing a few comedy sketches that I would just randomly think of on my channel and had 1 video take-off with 100k views but it took off way later ...the video is 4 years old now but still gets views and I never took advantage of doing a duplicate video on that because I randomly checked one day and it took off. I am JUST NOW!!! starting to learn about analytics =( I wish I paid more attention to my analytics back when I first started my channel but I guess it's better now than later.

I like to look up reviews on youtube of stuff before I buy so I started doing unboxing videos which seem to be doing very well. Most of the unboxing videos get a few thousand views which are good, Also ended up leaving a job after 8 years where I wasn't allowed to have a beard and I started growing out my beard and doing videos on growing out my beard and those are working pretty well to my surprise lol and I love Retro Games so I started doing retro games stuff..and kinda want to post more gaming videos I even changed my channel art to look more retro. My channel is all over the place now.

My audience is people that look up stuff before they buy, people that like beards, and people that are into retro video games.

I separated my vlogs, unboxings, Retro games, and beard videos in a playlist to keep them organized... Should I just do a separate Beard channel, Retro game channel, and unboxing channel and delete all of my vlogs that got low views...I have had my channel for a while now and my subscribers seem to be going up more than before although I'm only at 1,420 subscribers which is not a lot it took me a while to get here and I got monetized in October 2020 an average of about $50 a month for now...Should I just make separate channels for the stuff I have on my channel or stick to what I am doing and keep them in the playlist. I enjoy making the videos I make but It would just suck to start from the beginning making a separate channel for each I would appreciate everyone's advice.

 

[SILTHW]

Hey Jeff, I've used this analogy before and I think it is helpful to think about it this way.

Let's take your example. Let's assume you are currently creating content for 3 niches - Retro Games, Unboxing, and Beards. There is a high probability you now have 3 audiences (not subscribers) masquerading as one. And for the ultimate in simplicity, let's assume your audience is evenly split across your niches. Let's also assume that there is some crossover, but not a lot of crossover. The crossover comes from people who just like you and don't care about the topic.

Now let's switch seats. I'm an advertiser. I want to reach the retro games market. I have the following choices:
- Channel A - A Retro Gaming channel with 2000 subs and an estimated audience of 10000
- Channel B - A gaming channel that occasionally does retro games. Has 10000 subs and an audience of 25000. By view count I can see that about 50% of the audience likes retro games
- Channel C - A VLOG channel that does unboxing, retro games, and beard stuff. Has 1000 subs and an audience of 5000. By view count I can see that about 33% of the audience likes retro games.

If I have to pick one channel to place my ads with, which do I choose? Channel A will likely have the highest number of impressions because of the focus. Channel B may end up with more impressions than A, but it isn't guaranteed. But I can tell that Channel C won't be in the running.

If you want to make content creation (note I didn't say YouTube) your job, you need to understand that you must build an audience and deliver it to advertisers. I don't want that to sound crass, but that is the very simple way that content creator make a living They have to have a deep understanding of a niche audience that advertisers want to reach.

I think in your case, much as you mentioned, some intentional experiments while obsessing over analytics will help you identify what niche the majority of your audience is in today. Once you know that, double down there for a bit and see if you can grow it.

 

[Jeff Goober]

Hey Jeff, I've used this analogy before and I think it is helpful to think about it this way.

Let's take your example. Let's assume you are currently creating content for 3 niches - Retro Games, Unboxing, and Beards. There is a high probability you now have 3 audiences (not subscribers) masquerading as one. And for the ultimate in simplicity, let's assume your audience is evenly split across your niches. Let's also assume that there is some crossover, but not a lot of crossover. The crossover comes from people who just like you and don't care about the topic.

Now let's switch seats. I'm an advertiser. I want to reach the repo games market. I have the following choices:
- Channel A - A Retro Gaming channel with 2000 subs and an estimated audience of 10000
- Channel B - A gaming channel that occasionally does retro games. Has 10000 subs and an audience of 25000. By view count I can see that about 50% of the audience likes retro games
- Channel C - A VLOG channel that does unboxing, retro games, and beard stuff. Has 1000 subs and an audience of 5000. By view count I can see that about 33% of the audience likes retro games.

If I have to pick one channel to place my ads with, which do I choose? Channel A will likely have the highest number of impressions because of the focus. Channel B may end up with more impressions than A, but it isn't guaranteed. But I can tell that Channel C won't be in the running.

If you want to make content creation (note I didn't say YouTube) your job, you need to understand that you must build an audience and deliver it to advertisers. I don't want that to sound crass, but that is the very simple way that content creator make a living They have to have a deep understanding of a niche audience that advertisers want to reach.

I think in your case, much as you mentioned, some intentional experiments while obsessing over analytics will help you identify what niche the majority of your audience is in today. Once you know that, double down there for a bit and see if you can grow it.

Thanks so much for the reply... IΓÇÖm still new at trying to understand my analytics... whatΓÇÖs the best way to figure what percentage my audience likes likes better? Just by my popular videos? hoping my audience will like my personality in the future .. even though IΓÇÖm not a bubble person at all

 

[SILTHW]

Thanks so much for the reply... IΓÇÖm still new at trying to understand my analytics... whatΓÇÖs the best way to figure what percentage my audience likes likes better? Just by my popular videos? hoping my audience will like my personality in the future .. even though IΓÇÖm not a bubble person at all

You gave me a genuine chuckle with the "bubble person" comment

You will need to do a small amount of "hand math" but a way to think about it is a combination of views and average view duration for a given niche. High view-count is great, but high-view count and a high AVD is a good indication you have an audience for that content type. A good test is to find a video that meets that criteria and put out another similar video and test its performance. If it is also high, you are beginning to know your audience.

I think we all get caught up in the production side of things, but there are great books out there on understanding your audience and I think it is worth spending some time understanding how to structure tests to determine what your audience wants. Most of that comes from Agile and Lean methods, not from the traditional "how to succeed on YouTube" content.

 

[Jeff Goober]

You gave me a genuine chuckle with the "bubble person" comment

You will need to do a small amount of "hand math" but a way to think about it is a combination of views and average view duration for a given niche. High view-count is great, but high-view count and a high AVD is a good indication you have an audience for that content type. A good test is to find a video that meets that criteria and put out another similar video and test its performance. If it is also high, you are beginning to know your audience.

I think we all get caught up in the production side of things, but there are great books out there on understanding your audience and I think it is worth spending some time understanding how to structure tests to determine what your audience wants. Most of that comes from Agile and Lean methods, not from the traditional "how to succeed on YouTube" content.

Ahhh okay I see... I think my audience likes my beard videos I have this new thing in my Analytics that say My channel is up by 31%
Never thought IΓÇÖd be a beard channel lol