Do You Have a Time Line?

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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 ...