The Swyx Mixtape

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 i guess i will never really know um 
if i did the right thing or not like 
truly but yeah i don't know so far i 
feel like i'm happy with my decision but 
it's definitely 
it was definitely not an easy 
one to make and like as the episodes 
have been going live for the new series 
and they get like um 
a few hundred views in the first few 
days compared to 
a few thousand that i might get on my 
main channel 
um but that i definitely didn't get last 
year when i uploaded the interview 
series there so it's kind of like i 
don't know yeah is it true nathan and i 
were actually talking about this 
yesterday we went to uh we were at a 
coffee shop uh having a remote work i 
don't know like work with co-workers 
kind of not even that i don't even know 
it was more of like a nathan goes to 
this coffee shop on and then you 
followed him yeah and i went i went too 
so you know but um 
for his uh podcast he has i want to say 
two different youtube channels for each 
of them one of them is like the full 
episodes and then the other one he has 
set up as only the clips 
and but we were talking about how the 
one with the clips has 
almost no views almost 
virtually never see views and so it's 
really interesting 
um to think about kind of what you were 
just saying is you're looking at this 
these videos and you're used to being a 
prolific creator that's getting 
thousands of views on your videos and 
you're seeing 
zero 
zero views ten views a hundred views you 
know 
um a small number in red you know yeah 
yeah yeah you're obviously you're a 
larger um larger audience but um and i 
asked him why i think it was sean uh 
mccabe that recommended do that and i 
didn't get an answer for that either so 
well i think the the algorithm is 
probably a similar response there you 
know 
um but that's actually from the same 
content so it's it's yeah 
it's his podcast and he has full length 
episodes as one channel and then he has 
clips as a totally separate channel 
yeah and i think it's because the 
like the format is so different you know 
like the type of person who just wants 
to watch like a 30 second one minute um 
snippet of advice might be different 
from a person wanting to watch the 
longer um 
yeah i don't know i i personally have 
been doing clips for my interview series 
and i have been uploading them to the 
same channel so now i'm like oh [ __ ] 
have i screwed up there again um 
but i feel happy with this approach so 
far um 
because my hope is that 
if someone sees the short the youtube 
short 
then they might get interested in seeing 
the full episode and then it's easy to 
access because it's on the same channel 
if that makes sense right right yeah 
and charlie i imagine that you are 
cross-promoting um 
and telling your audience hey by the way 
i'm doing this other thing 
um so i guess two questions one are you 
doing that i mean i imagine that you are 
and two 
um is there a way that you would 
recommend doing that um that is you know 
like not quite as 
you don't want to seem annoying or you 
don't want to like you don't want to 
harp on it too much and 
you know you know what i mean like how 
do you do that in a like 
you know non non annoying way to your 
audience that you're cross-promoting 
there's other things yeah you're doing 
that you're not here for this but hey go 
check this out you know totally 
um okay so 
when i when i created this channel 
there's a thing that youtube does where 
you have to have i believe it's 100 
subscribers 
and the channel has to have existed for 
like a certain number of days before you 
can claim a url 
um 
and so what i did was i sort of like 
invited my audience to 
to help me out on this like channel 
transition thing you know um so many 
months before the second season actually 
launched i on twitter was saying hey i'm 
moving inside marketing design to its 
own channel 
please go and subscribe if you like the 
content um and if i get to 100 then i 
get to set the url you know like i 
actually said that and 
yeah people 
maybe it was too i don't recall what it 
is whatever it is i got to it fairly 
quickly because i made that ask right 
and because my audience knew why i was 
asking and they like wanted to support 
me 
in um being able to make that transition 
so that's right no i feel like that's 
one of the biggest mistakes that 
creators don't do is make explicit asks 
yeah yeah and 
quite honestly be transparent behind why 
they're doing it so i just let take that 
as a lesson um that that that works 
really well um is when you you know i 
was thinking about it in the format of 
deliverability when you ask somebody to 
do something and then you give them the 
transparent reason why you're doing that 
whether that's like to whitelist right 
you know the email address or whatever 
that is um but sometimes making that 
explicit ask people are 
happy to help 
because they want to support you in 
doing that 
totally yeah agreed um so where we're at 
right now is i've launched 
four episodes so far of the latest 
season on the new channel the channel 
has 922 subscribers something like that 
um so obviously like way less than the 
203 thousand on the other channel um 
but the videos are like the difference 
in in the numbers between views on the 
main channel and views on the separate 
channel are not as different as i was 
expecting which is really good so for 
example the currently the like most 
watched episode on youtube um the second 
youtube channel has 807 views 
and that was the episode from a couple 
weeks ago so it's had like a couple of 
weeks um but if i look at last year's 
season 
um 
they were they had all like around 2 000 
views i would say was about the average 
for an episode to have so i'm like 
almost 50 there in just a couple of 
weeks and those episodes were up for a 
whole year you know 
um 
so that gives me confidence that i feel 
like it it went well um and that making 
the ask of like telling people on 
twitter and also via email i send an 
email out to people saying the same 
thing like subscribe to this channel if 
you like inside marketing design 
means that the subscribers on that 
channel although there are very few of 
them they are the people who are 
actually fans of that content 
specifically which was the goal right to 
have the people who are fans of that um 
on over there i feel like i went off on 
a tangent didn't answer your question 
miguel 
was there 
anything else that you wanted me to 
answer no i don't even remember what my 
question was i'm just kidding oh great 
see that lauren's asked a question here 
in the chat um 
lauren says have you ever thought about 
taking snippets of the podcast when it 
launches and put those on the main 
channel as a way to let people know the 
new one is available um this is a good 
point so i think i can do more basically 
to try and be getting people over from 
this main audience to the to the 
separate side project what i have been 
doing 
is for each episode i've been making 
kind of like a companion video on my 
main channel where i take a clip from 
the episode and i sort of put some 
context around it 
so for example um i'm trying to like 
remember what the latest one was oh yeah 
i interviewed um one of the designers at 
stripe you know you know stripe we use 
stripe at convertkit um 
about how they get their web design 
stuff done and stripe is well known for 
creating designs that then get copied 
across the internet like they set the 
design trends essentially so i took a 
clip from that interview with tatiana 
from stripe and i talked about design 
trends um and then i sort of was like 
this is what tatiana had to say and then 
like rolled the clip you know um and 
made it like sort of like a less than 10 
minute video um 
so that's what i've been doing um so far 
to try and get people from the main 
audience over but it is like a bigger 
leap right to watch one video and then 
click through to watch another one so i 
think i should do a lauren suggested and 
like just like i don't know maybe make a 
community post putting a link to the 
new video or something like that um yeah 
that is the goal to get people from the 
main channel over to the second one 
are you plugging it in your current like 
in your other videos still or like your 
videos um your other playlist your other 
content are you still asking people to 
move over i have not uploaded any other 
content so far like so far like since 
the season two launched i have just been 
uploading these um sort of like you know 
i'm calling them trailers in a way but 
really they're their own separate video 
with a clip embedded in them 
and that's the only content i've been 
uploading but but i think when you're i 
mean more on your like your how do i 
feel about design trends videos right 
like anything else are you plugging that 
content are you plugging in 
yes that content the purpose of it is to 
plug inside marketing design essentially 
i would say that also i aim to make them 
valuable on their own if you only want 
to watch that but the purpose is like i 
mentioned it at the start that this 
comes from a full interview you can 
click here to watch it and then at the 
end i like have it on the screen and i'm 
like click here to go watch the full 
episode so i am trying to get people 
over from it yeah 
yeah 
what advice do you have for uh creators 
with an existing audience as far as like 
starting a new channel what like you're 
trying to narrow it down into kind of 
like three takeaways on whether or not 
they should do it you know how to like 
you how do you put together that 
decision tree 
yep okay 
um 
first of all know your reasons maybe for 
why you're starting a second channel um 
i i think be sure that you've tried what 
you can to make it work on the main 
channel first because it is hard to like 
start from scratch like it's kind of 
depressing honestly to open up 
a channel that gets like it has zero 
subscribers compared to one that has 
multiple thousands um like it i don't 
know it just feels weird um as a crater 
to be honest and 
no numbers shouldn't matter in that way 
but it just does so 
be sure you know why you're doing it um 
ask your audience to head on over to it 
tell them about it wherever you can 
because if you say it once doesn't mean 
that every single person in the audience 
saw it right i have done many tweets 
i've mentioned it in multiple emails 
i've mentioned an instagram on stories i 
did a community post on the main youtube 
channel you know trying all these things 
and like more and more come over each 
time 
i've found that since the new content 
has been going out more so it's getting 
more subscribers if that makes sense 
which is understandable because like now 
they're seeing fresh new content 
that's a reason to subscribe 
but yeah like don't be afraid of asking 
more than once essentially um 
i think that if you're gonna have a 
second channel it should be a very 
clearly different content format to 
what's going on your main channel 
so that there is that reason to be doing 
it and that's gonna be clear to your 
audience as well right like it can't 
just be clear to you it has to be clear 
to your audience why it's separate so my 
second channel has its own brand 
um it's still using all my colors like 
my purple and things like that but 
that's so signature you could not use it 
imagine if i did something and it wasn't 
purple that would just be weird 
yeah 
that couldn't be charlie 
it looks like her but the color is red 
and she doesn't use red never yeah 
[Laughter] 
yeah i don't know if that was three 
takeaways specifically but those are the 
main things i would say to look out for 
um is the the reason for doing it having 
it look and feel different making the 
ask and also just like being prepared 
for it to feel disappointing when you 
launch something and like um 
if i'm looking in my analytics right now 
youtube does this thing where it shows 
how the your latest video is performing 
compared to others and it's showing me 
that this latest clip i've published is 
like doing best out of the last 10 
videos and what's best is that it's had 
like 43 views since it was published a 
couple of hours ago 
and that on my main channel is like 
would be at least several hundred you 
know in a couple of hours so just be 
prepared for that difference and like 
try not to judge one against the other 
yeah 
























curious though do you charlie do you 
have oh sorry miguel damn uh do you have 
a timeline of like evaluating it or 
goals centered around different time 
like no i feel like i'm pretty committed 
to this second channel now i'm like 
something would have to go terribly 
wrong for me to be like okay well now 
i'm putting it all back again 
so i feel like i'm just gonna like make 
it work whatever and i'm trying to in 
general have the approach of 
maybe decentralizing a bit my content in 
that um this podcast for example people 
can watch it on youtube they could go to 
the website 
insidemarketingdesign.co they could get 
it in their podcast app if they want and 
that is like you know a totally 
different format to just listen to the 
audio and obviously downloads there 
don't count towards the youtube view 
count um so i'm just trying to like 
embrace that and take the approach of 
like 
let the people find the content wherever 
it suits them best 
and i will try my best to get it in 
front of the right people however that 
needs to happen 
i love that i think 
i think the only other question i have 
uh for you charlie is 
i'm trying to put myself in the shoes of 
somebody maybe considering this or that 
has considered this in the past and 
is this something that is a 
they would you say 
is it a lot more time consuming to do it 
this way 
or is it just logistically in a 
different place but maybe about the same 
amount of work or 
i mean what what am 
what sort of sacrifice goes into doing 
it this way as opposed to having it all 
in one place is what i'm trying to get 
at i guess yeah i guess the like time it 
takes to upload a video or whatever is 
the same on from one channel to another 
but what you're losing and having two 
channels is that um 
when 
when someone when you're fueling and 
like pushing promotion towards a video 
on one channel it's not necessarily 
helping the other you know 
um 
so that's like 
the time consuming part is like i have 
to put energy into fueling both channels 
and like promoting both channels because 
one doesn't automatically lead the other 
there's obviously things i'm doing to 
try and make that connection and um 
you know i have them both linked on on 
all the all the places or whatever but 
yeah that's the reality of it um so that 
maybe i would say i wouldn't recommend 
people even start thinking about this 
um unless their content is very 
different like a completely different 
niche um or they have like over 100 000 
subscribers already i think under that 
you're better to put all your fuel into 
the one place to like fan the flames and 
yeah keep the fire going 
that is my stake in the ground