A Year After Deleting Our 600K YouTube Channel: Here’s What I Learned

1 Year Ago

One year ago I posted this twitter thread on why we were making the decision to delete our 600,000 Subscriber YT Channel.

TLDR: We had grown the channel via shorts, when we posted our long form content it was receiving 400 views. After 6 months of trying different formats, thumbnails and working with a YT consultant, we determined we had to start from scratch.

Over the next few minutes I am going to share everything I’ve learned about YouTube as well as where our channel is headed and most importantly…how we will make $.

YouTube Learnings

1. Good content wins

   • It does not matter how many subscribers you have, the upside on YT is endless. Even with 2,000 subscribers, we had a video hit 100K+ views

2. The YT Algorithm is really really good

   • As I mentioned above, our channel was dead. Built off crappy shorts, any video we posted got about 400 views. Now our channel has a higher floor (around 10K views) but depending on how good the video is, the algorithm will serve it properly

3. YT Shorts can be good…

   • We deleted our channel because we grew exclusively off shorts that were UNRELATED to our channel. Now our supporting YT shorts are cut outs from our hero (long-form) content. Key word = Supporting

4. Packaging is Key

   • Our definition of packaging is thumbnail + title + the idea of the video. You need the full funnel to be successful or your video will not perform. They should all play off each other and most importantly the content of the video needs to match the packaging. You can only clickbait for so long

5. Create your own content or you will burn out

   • The name of the game on YT is figuring out what formats work and replicating those. Using others in your niche or outside of it is a sound way to recognize what formats work. But make sure you stop there. We were making videos going to 3 games in 48 hours which is a format that doesn’t make sense for who we are. I don’t want to leave in the 7th inning of the World Series just because that format works for other people. I actually enjoy sports.

1 Year Later

After 365 days of creating content on our new YT channel, here’s where we stand.

1. 30,000 Subscribers

   • Given all the time and energy we put into the channel, this can feel underwhelming at times but when we zoom out, it’s a major win. Year 1 is always the toughest and the compounding effects of an amazing library of content will pay dividends. By this time next year, my prediction is we’re at 123,023 subscribers.

2. Four (100K) view videos

   • The majority of your subscribers will come from your highest performers. While we try to maintain a once a week drop schedule, one thing to think about is sacrificing quantity for quality. We gained more subs from these 4 videos than the other 35 videos on the channel combined.

3. Formats that work

   • Not only do we have formats that work for us Inside _____ Stadium or I went to every ____ game and ranked them but we also figured out our style of content. Rating and ranking games based on the fans/atmosphere, uniqueness, food, and gameplay.

4. A True Vision

   • When someone lands on your YT video, they click because they are interested. When someone lands on your YT channel, they click subscribe because they like your style of content and want more of it. Our mission: Find the Best Sports Experinece in the World. This gives people an easy decision to make when deciding whether to subscribe or not. We are going to travel the world to complete this and I hope people come along for that journey.

Long Term Plan and $$$$

With 365 days in the books and a spend of many hundreds of thousands of dollars, where is the ROI?

Well, as you can see in the chart above…it’s definitely not in YT monetization (yet!)

Building our YT channel is the core of what I’m calling our 2 phased plan.

Phase 1

• Build a library of sports content and IP

• Monetize through YT adsense as well as brand partners to reinvest into creating more videos

Phase 2

• Build the Expedia for sports.

  • After building the trust as well as the content, I truly believe we can build a platform that recommends the best way to experience all the best sporting events in the world. Tickets, flights, hotels, merchandise, food all based on our top recommendations and paired with amazing content

Transparently, if we never make it to Phase 2, I’d be happy. I think Peacock, Netflix, or Amazon may want our library of content and I have a price. Or - AirBNB who has experiences built into their platform wants our content to build this out for themselves.

Building tech + software & that type of company is when we move onto ‘When Can I Invest in Snapback Sports?’