Changing tact with the second YouTube channel…

And it ain't the first time!

There are several YouTube creators I’ve watched over the years who have gone back and forth between different content styles, approaches to their channels, and the cadence of their publishing schedule. They lose interest in what they’ve done for years and go quiet for a bit. Then, they return with a new strategy, full of beans and excitement about their new passion.

That excitement lasts for a while but starts to dissipate once more, and the gaps between their videos grow larger. Then, without warning, they disappear again, only to return out of the blue three months later to reveal that they’re burnt out, fed up with trolls, and have decided to move, lock, stock and two smoking cameras, to Canada.

This fascinates me. It also reminds me of my Creator Diary channel, which has been through no end of changes over the last couple of years. And it’s about to go through another one.

The Creator Diary channel started life as a tips-based portal for aspiring creators, under the Solo Club banner (the one from which this newsletter originates). The videos were similar to my tech reviews - yours truly sat at a desk with a couple of cameras pointing at him - and focused on one topic for each episode that was designed to help aspiring creators with a specific challenge.

I won’t lie, I got bored of this quite quickly. The videos felt formulaic and weren’t much fun to edit and publish. They generated several hundred views each, but there were very few big performers to give me any confidence that I’d hit on something that could potentially go much further. Did I give it long enough? No, not at all. But I wasn’t excited by it, and I’ve been doing this long enough now to know it’s best to quit and move on if that’s the case.

We let the channel sit for a bit after that, before deciding to rebrand it entirely and start publishing behind-the-scenes vlogs of my activity as a creator. The production workflow was drastically reduced (the videos are just me walking around, waffling into a small camera, and the edit is as linear and unfancy as they come), and the videos themselves are far more natural thanks to the fact that everything is off the cuff.

We’ve enjoyed making these videos, and they’ve built a nice, tight little audience which, unbelievably, finds my random trail of thoughts and often mundane daily movements interesting. Granted, some of it is interesting when I take to the skies and travel through other parts of the world, but the rest of it is just me wandering around the studio or walking from my parked car to the gym entrance.

There’s still an issue, though. Two, in fact. The first is that I often need to find the motivation to document my day. If I’m travelling, it’s easier, by quite a margin, but that doesn’t happen every day, therefore to maintain a positive publishing cadence, I find myself needing to film the more mundane days more frequently. No matter how lovely some of the people in the comments section are, I’m relentlessly conscious that what I’m doing and talking about may not be that interesting. Equally, filming stuff throughout the day takes time, and I am running a business that needs to remain profitable.

That’s the second problem - the Creator Diary channel needs to turn a profit at some stage. It’s monetised through YouTube’s Partner Program, but that amounts to around £30 per month if we’re lucky. The audience is also too small to attract sponsors at this stage.

However, a few weeks back, we published a vlog that featured yours truly waiting for several Apple products to be delivered on the biggest day of the year for the Mark Ellis Reviews channel - iPhone launch day. To date, that video has clocked up 3,388 views and has brought in 83 new subscribers. To put that into perspective, most of the regular vlogs on that channel will hit around 500 views and bring in one or two new subscribers if we’re lucky.

This got us thinking: the Creator Diary channel is capable of drawing in a bigger audience if it’s more tech-focused. We know this, because that Apple delivery day video isn’t a solitary case - it has happened on more than one occasion previously when tech (and, in particular, Apple) has been the central theme. This has bothered me in the past because I’ve worried that it might cannibalise the Mark Ellis Reviews channel, but then I remember that I follow several creators who have second channels which are directly linked to their main channel. They just feature longer videos that aren’t scripted, and which dive more deeply and in an entirely disorganised fashion into their chosen niche. It works. It could work for us.

I talk about this more in the most recent vlog, but we’re going to switch things up a bit. We’re still working on how that’ll look, but the channel will become slightly more tech-focused, without losing the relatability and behind-the-scenes nature that the existing audience has enjoyed. It can’t lose those elements - it’s what makes the videos so easy and low-cost to make.

I’m not sure how the vlogs are going to look, going forward, and their cadence will remain rather unpredictable - but I am excited about where they’re headed. Stay tuned.