MONSTER UPDATE (no actual monster)

Hello, you lot! I hope you’re all good and that the summer has not been too hot for you (apologies to my UK lot; there’s been about 6 weeks of rain, haha).

I haven’t been as active here as I want to be, especially recently, which I fully intend to change as I’ve had some life developments that will make my life mucheasier, starting Monday... My biggest boy is starting full-time education, meaning I’ll have half the number of children to contend with in the daytime. Furthermore, by Easter, my littlest boy will be starting nursery part-time, too, which will free me up even more... But for now, let’s stick to the present.

The image above this is everything we need to get through today work-wise. This is more or less what we do seven days a week. Of course, we juggle this a lot and tag-team looking after the boys. Only one of us two can work at once unless it’s late at night when they’re asleep. Essentially, as sad as it is that my biggest boy is now a schoolboy, itwill help me with my work/life balance.

I feel that most content creators complain about how hard YouTube is... Yes, that’s true, but try adding two small children into the mix,too. It’ll be good to finally have more freedom to work at the pace I’d like to.

So I guess you’re wondering why I haven’t done much in the way of Patreon updates recently... and the short answer is... Shorts.

The new YouTube CEO announced a few months back that Shorts will be a massive part of the platform’s future. So, we have dived headfirst into experimenting with them on both channels.

In fact, experimenting has been the name of the game in the last 12 months. We spent a period working with an MCN who helped us understand our analytics a little better, and Top Hat has been taking some freelance work away from YouTube to supplement our income. I’m sure we all know how the cost of living crisis has been, and my fellow Brits know precisely what I’m on about!

Top Hat has described working on the Shorts, taking on the freelance work and regular channel duties, made him feel like the guy in Fight Club who has multiple jobs and never stops. However, this overexertion seems to have paid off as his Shorts now receive 8 figure monthly views. This means he can step away from the freelance work and put more energy into running the channels with me.

If you look on SocialBlade and snoop around the retro gaming channels, you’ll see that channels (including mine), which haven’t dived headfirst into creating Shorts, have declined slowly since YouTube altered the algorithm. This is understandable for several reasons – I’m very fortunate we have two channels because it gives us room to experiment and strategise. The other issue is that, generally, you’ve got to be somewhat of a dinosaur if retro gaming is the focus of your channel, so it’s not surprising that some of the channels I’ve seen aren’t adapting.

Essentially, this quantum shift in both YouTube and our real lives has been causing me to have to pump a significant amount of our energy into working out the Shorts algorithm, which has unfortunately meant I’ve been unable to balance out everything else. It’s ended up being a waiting game for school for me to physically have more time. And now is the time!

So here is a bit of a breakdown of what we’ll try to do from now on in addition to what we usually do…

Shorts

You may have noticed that I had a go at uploading Shorts a few months ago. We saw a massive difference in Top Hat’s retention, swipe rate and view count compared to mine, so we chose to perfect the Shorts specifically on that channel before addressing the problems on mine. Now that we have a stronger idea of how it works, we will create daily Shorts for my channel again.

The fact that this week YouTube has added a new long-form link to Shorts is further evidence of the importance of this emerging media form, with them looking to link Short views to long-form views, which is much better for creators like us.

Patreon

Patreon is an interesting one for creators, including myself. A big puzzle piece is always working out the best ways to promote it in videos without dragging down watch retention to a point where it hurts the videos.

Whilst working with the MCN, they pointed out how much Patreon credit rolls and Q&A placed at the end of my videos were hurting their reach as the majority of viewers tuned out before they were finished (it makes sense, though, no one watches the credits at the end of films!). I’ve experimented with placing Q&As in the middle of videos, but the drop-off was the same… except much earlier, so I had to drop that as quick as I started.

You’ll notice that many well-produced retro gaming channels tend to grow to a certain size and stagnate at that level. This is partly because most of them use their content to heavily promote Patreon. All the time that practise is continued, YouTube’s algorithm prevents them from reaching full potential as YouTube values retention very highly. Just look at Scott The Woz, a fantastic channel, but you see nothing Patreon-related breaking the flow of the video.

But here’s the thing – if you are a medium-sized creator, around the 100k sub mark, Patreon is a necessity (for gracious living). Therefore, the balance in promotion is challenging.

So, I currently have a bit of a loose plan regarding Patreon. I’m going to update all the tiers as a matter of urgency and need to consider how to create less intrusive ways of plugging Patreon in the videos, as obviously, since I’ve stopped promoting Patreon, I’ve rarely gained many new Patrons. Rocket science, I know.

I’m considering, within specific parameters, making custom Shorts a Patreon reward. But, honestly, if any of you have ideas, I’d be grateful. I’d love to reward you more for the vast support you’ve been giving me!

Discord

This isn’t complicated. I will add links to my discord to my channel and promote it more. It’s a very quiet server, but it would be nice to make it a bit more happenin’ kids!

https://discord.gg/KHMwcQryyt - There’s the link if anyone isn’t in there yet xx

Livestreaming

Livestreaming was tough in the past for me on many levels. Geographically, I’m not in a good location as I have to stay up mega late if I want any semblance of an audience and working out the best show format has also proved tricky. Promoting external websites on YouTube, especially rival platforms like Facebook or Twitch, would cause YouTube to punish creators. Especially if it meant my audience clicking links and taking them off YouTube.

Working with the MCN last year, they claimed that YouTube channels get de-ranked for pushing Twitch, which could be another reason to explain why retro channels stagnate rather than grow when there are clearly millions of people interested in retro gaming.

But the bigger pieces of the puzzle have been working out algorithms like anything on the internet. Previously, we streamed on Top Hat’s YT channel, which killed the channel’s reach. However, now, I would think they have fixed this, as I’m told the live-streaming part of YouTube is integrated much better.

Long story short, I won’t stream on Twitch anymore and will stream on YouTube instead. It’s too hard to convert YT viewers to Twitch, and YT punishes creators for linking over there.

Expanding onto other platforms

Platforms like Twitch and Twitter are verging on redundant now as YouTube functions as an adequate hub for every type of video content creation. Want to update fans? The YT Community tab is far more effective than Twitter ever was (with the post going to people who interact with your channel or at least very similar channels rather than being shown to Twitter lunatics). YT has almost perfected targeted marketing in that regard. The same goes for live streams, and Shorts are terrific for growing new audiences. Also, YouTube pays creators much better than other well-known platforms for the same number of views.

However, we’ve heard from other creators that Facebook Video are growing in popularity and pay pretty well. What’s particularly interesting about this platform is that it’s primarily used by older people now, making it a good place for retro gaming content to flourish.

Also, since we’re already making Shorts for YouTube, I may as well place them on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat, which I hear the kids like. Believe it or not, Gen Z is also into retro games but doesn’t seem capable of watching things more than a minute long, lol.

Like most things on this post, porting content to other platforms will obviously consume a considerable amount of time as I’ll need to tailor them. As far as I can gather, Facebook long-form videos are a different form factor to YouTube. Therefore, I must determine how these all work before diving in head first. I was trying to contact a few companies to do this on my behalf, but I’ve had zero luck getting responses, driving me bonkers!

CONCLUSION

In summary, as you can see from all of this, if you want to create content at a professional level, there are a lot of layers involved you have to master to get ahead of the competition. You probably always see detractors of YouTubers who seem to lack understanding of the level of work, analysis, strategising, evolving, experimentation and dedication involved in succeeding on YouTube. YouTubers like me and Top Hat are essentially feeling our way through this, as no textbook can tell you how to win at this, but we will continue to do everything in our power to outmanoeuvre the competition. You wait; we’ll smash that glass ceiling soon enough, and all of you have been amazing enough to stick with us through thick and thin the entire way. It literally would not have been possible without you.

For now, all the lessons we have learned on our Top Hat Gaming Man channel regarding Shorts will be applied to mine, too, and then I’ll start trying to work out the ol’ Facebook and other platforms. I’m a (wo)man with a plan.

TLDR:

I’m going to conquer the world