Your Finest, Hard Learned Content Creation Tip

What tough, personally-learned tip can you provide for a new channel starting out?

Recently, I ran a thumbnail experiment. I noticed lots of folks online put their own faces in thumbnails and I always thought it was a bit tacky. So I made two very similar videos, one with a content oriented thumbnail on one and a “reaction” oriented thumbnail.

Content oriented performed significantly better (somewhat confirming a personal bias, but it is what it is).

Now, several factors may need to be considered in this. Personally I think bigger channels have more success with putting their faces in thumbs because people have grown attached to their personalities. But for newer channels like mine, I would strongly recommend NOT putting your reactionary face in a thumbnail.

Created at 11:32am, 2nd March, 2024. Page last updated at 2:44pm, 16th May, 2024.

Kings Court 3/2/2024, 12:29:09 PM

Concentrate on your OWN content, do not compare yourself to others as it will only lead to self doubt and insecurity ! Others Journeys are going to be completely different to yours, they may play different games, they may have a different audience type, there are so many variables and it isnt worth comparing and contrasting. By all means use others as a benchmark or as Inspiration but remember never to copy, you are your own creator and you should be unique, just as your content journey will be too !

Horror and Cats 3/2/2024, 12:33:17 PM

Kings Court

Definitely great advice! In fact I blocked similar channels on my YT feed so they didn’t discourage me (because sometimes they would “beat me” to something I was going to do and I didn’t want to do it after seeing that.)

It’s odd how much NOT consuming other content helps to be your own creator.

Kings Court 3/2/2024, 1:30:41 PM

Horror and Cats

very true ! sometimes it can be a help but as well it can be a hindrance !

FirestormGamingTeam 3/2/2024, 9:38:56 PM

Do not, under any circumstances, compare your content, YouTube/Twitch is about personality, it's that simple, if you simply "copy" others' content, just walk away now. You need to create your own "brand".

Lanah Tyra 3/3/2024, 2:01:49 PM

I even switched my camera off on streams, because no one wants to see a female near 40 who doesn't look like 20 playing games 😂I feel like I can be more myself if I don't have to worry about if my make-up looks right. Maybe when the channel grows and people genuinely want to meet the person behind the content, but definitely not now while I only have a handful of viewers.

Also I noticed that evergreen content like guides work a lot better for me, since even if I post them a bit later and not right on release, people will find my content and they keep getting views even a year later, while content which I worked a lot on and was a first view or first clear of a fight, no one really wanted to see it after a week.