MathasGames https://www.youtube.com/user/MathasGames is a YouTube gaming channel with about 192,000 subscribers (at the time of writing this). He (Mike) has been at it for about 5 years now and was kind of enough to do an AMA on the r/letsplay subreddit.
First off, seeing these AMA’s with larger channels is really motivating to me. Everyone starts somewhere. It is nice to hear those who have obtained success speak of a time in which they didn’t have it, as well as what steps they took to reach their current level of success.
There are a couple key points I want to discuss that I took away from the AMA:
1) Mathas isn’t the first YouTube gamer I’ve seen mention that you can get stuck in a niche and eventually become miserable from it, plus find you have trouble breaking out of it.
2) Mathas states, “ I'm actually glad I knew very little going in, because I fear had I known how much actual work it was going to take to keep consistent and eventually go full time I think past me would have given up entirely too early. It's WORK. It's FUN too. But it's a huge time commitment and a whole lot of frustrations and grinding.”
The first point is of interest to me because my channel is still small enough that I feel I can shift into other types of content without losing too much of my current tiny audience (265 subscribers). First, I want to be clear that I am not dropping my current content. I just want to be able to add different types to it without being so niche.
Why do I want to do this?
- I enjoy a variety of different game types and I don’t want to be stuck in one genre.
- I started my channel because I made a Skyrim mod and wanted to release a video for it. From there, I continued to work on the channel by covering mods made by others. While I still very much enjoy making mods for Skyrim, after 5 years I am tired of playing it and need a break. There is more to this point and I’ll discuss it in another post.
- I want to enjoy the content I’m making. If I’m not happy with it then I may as well take the safe approach and get a regular 9 to 5 job where I always know a paycheck will be coming.
It is probably easier to grow an audience initially if your content is more niche, making it the safer bet for becoming successful on YouTube (by the way, my idea of successful is having enough money to pay the bills and also put a bit in the bank, not become Pewdiepie rich). The question is, is it better in the long term? Mathas and others have said that when they do make the switch that they find a decent sized chunk of their audience leaving. I wonder how their channels would have fared if they never got into a specific niche in the first place. Would it be for the better or worse? Honestly, I am leaning towards worse. Not because of the creators themselves or their content, but because I think the most difficult thing is growing that initial audience. I notice a lot of larger YouTubers also started niche and then transitioned later into various other content. It is almost like there is a set path carved by those before.
As for the second point... holy shit I never realized how much work having a gaming YouTube channel would be! I think there is a very large misconception that YouTube creators are relaxing and laying around all day, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Especially those maniacs uploading daily. How? How? I can say for myself that from start to finish (finding content to cover, recording, editing, rendering, uploading, thumbnail, metadata, etc) I have spent over 10 hours on a video that ends up being not even two minutes. Of course, this varies on the type of content you make it, how much editing you do, how OCD you might be, etc. I am actually planning a write up of exactly how I record and the amount of time it takes to get a video to the point of release.
The AMA is definitely worth a read, especially if you are considering getting into YouTube or currently have a small channel and feel you’re not growing as fast as you should be. Thanks again to Mathas for doing the AMA.
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