Starting a Second Youtube [Charli Prangley]
The Swyx Mixtape
Introduction
This week is about high class problems of creators who ship. And to day's problem is a very high class one, which is starting a second tu channel after having a successful first tue channel. A general question of when to pivot your audience after building a successful one initial and i think this a generally applicable idea. I like this idea of rehypothecating content. Every hypotheting is a word that i like to use, but probably the better word is re using content.
Subscribe to the Convertkit Creators podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pgecyiAMks
Related episode: https://swyx.transistor.fm/episodes/why-creator-clones-fail
Transcript
as a quick recap for anyone
new who is listening i have had a
youtube channel for i think about eight
years um
and i've grown up to two thousand two
hundred and three thousand subscribers
in that time so it's been like a slow
growth but you know that's quite a
sizable audience um
and
several months ago i decided to start a
second youtube channel to split off a
portion of my content and um yeah i
don't know
there might be people out there who
think why would you start another one
when you already have one that's got all
these people why start a game from
scratch you know um and so we're gonna
talk about that today about the why
behind it
how to try and get as much of your
audience as possible over from one to
another when you start a new project
we'll talk about youtube specifically
but i guess it could apply to in general
creators like starting a new project
after already having built an audience
somewhere else you know
yeah thank you for giving me the
platform to talk about this today
youtube because i feel like it's been an
interesting experience and i have
learned a lot oh well charlie why don't
you kick us off why do you start a
second youtube channel
yeah well
so i started it because um
okay backstory i have this podcast
series called inside marketing design
quick plug inside marketingdesign.co
season two is happening right now um but
i i ran this last year and i uploaded
the episodes to my main youtube channel
because it's like me making the content
it made sense for me to put it in one
place right um
i found that my first of all those
videos didn't get as many views as my
regular like vlogs and you know or other
videos did and also the youtube
algorithm i feel like i confused it by
suddenly uploading content that was a
very different format a very different
length like these episodes were like 45
minutes long compared to like 10 minute
videos i was making
um
that all of a sudden it was like i don't
know i felt like my whole channel took a
while to recover after the season ended
but my views on my more regular videos
were then lower as well which i was like
damn this sucks because i feel like this
content is really great like i believe
in it you know
um
i had some advice from roberto blake
i'll definitely plug him he has a lot of
really useful advice for youtubers you
just search roberto blake on youtube and
you'll find him um
he was like i think you should put this
content on a second channel because it
is such a different format it's like its
own brand and like in doing that you
might have a better chance in the
youtube algorithm to to keep it separate
and also it could be a very different
audience right people wanting to watch
these
their interviews with designers who work
at other tech companies about the behind
the scenes of their work there might be
a different audience for that compared
to someone wanting to just watch me hang
out in my office with my cats and do my
work you know like
that's kind of very different content so
it made sense to me um
to put it on a separate channel and so
that is the why behind why i did it
and
oh go ahead
okay um a question that uh someone might
have um about this is is that someone
youtube allows you that someone might be
me uh
but i think someone else might have this
question so okay here we go uh
uh i know that youtube has the ability
to kind of segment things within youtube
so you can have different playlists and
you can have like sub sections of your
work there so
why would you take the extreme of
starting an entirely different channel
instead of maybe the you thinking oh the
overarching thing is this is
charlie and these are the different
things that charlie does and here are
the different playlists of the things
that i do
you know go down the rabbit hole that
you prefer choose your own adventure why
why
what's the main benefit of completely
separating because
you might also
you kind of benefit from the fact that
you're using your current audience to
do this other thing right instead of
starting all over
so you're kind of taking a hit there as
far as like possible eyes in front of
your work that's a really good point yep
yep that's a really good point um i
think that doing that like you said
having it in a playlist on the channel
that can solve the problem of there
being different audiences you know that
makes it easy for the audience who likes
interview content to find that on my
channel but it doesn't solve the problem
of the youtube algorithm and like as i'm
talking about this please listeners take
all of this with a grain of salt i'm not
saying this is the only way to go about
it if you want to do a different type of
content i just know that from my
experience um
the youtube algorithm stopped
recommending me as much and like my
previous videos weren't getting as many
views
once i was starting to put out this
interview content um
and so that's why the why like a
different playlist couldn't solve that
basically unfortunately
yeah
um as far as the youtube algorithm goes
specifically i mean is this all trial
trial and error right is there somewhere
where it says
that's the real unfortunate thing here
right because
really realistically there are so many
creators that are really diverse in the
type of things that they do so having
like one persona one youtube channel but
all the different things that they do
doesn't seem like it should be something
i i guess i don't understand why youtube
is doing this i don't understand what
the benefit is on youtube right
because i i think for us our our mission
we always talk about this is supporting
creators right so like is it is it
it it i don't know it doesn't feel like
it's um i don't understand it so i don't
understand the value of it that it
brings to youtube i guess
yeah it's more channels
yeah and that's the thing for the
youtube algorithm is it's like it is a
bit of a black box in that you don't
know for sure like i could have made a
huge freaking mistake by putting this
stuff on a different channel right um
and ...
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