Niche down, blow up

Your weekly YouTube education in five minutes

Author

Johnathon Eva
January 13, 2025

What to Watch:

Creator - Rule of Thumb

Rule of Thumb gives such a good breakdown of thumbnails here that it’s worth the 18 minute investment to watch the video. He breaks down some common myths and explains exactly why “Billboard” philosophy is not good Thumbnail Design.

Packaging Breakdown

It’s honestly not too hard to see why this thumbnail/title combo was received poorly. There’s a lot of chaos, there’s a lot of small lettering which makes it difficult to see on mobile, and after watching the video there’s more than one inside joke on screen.
Doing content like this for your return viewers is fine, but I might post this as unlisted, and then send the link out so that dedicated viewers can watch, but it won’t hurt your channel.

Creator - ToriTalks

Try THIS

Creator - ToriTalks

The packaging here is a night and day difference, and we see with this creator it led to 59k views. Why this one works? It’s got a clear message at the top, there’s a clear expression, and there aren’t more than four total elements. The books are also pretty popular, and there is a clear mission statement in the title. Booktube is a popular keyword - Destroyed is a powerful word - and the How I’m going to fix It creates a curiosity gap. Do you see how she asked the question in statement format. That opens a curiosity gap.

If you have questions about the concepts above, just reply with em’ I’d love to connect!

Creator’s we love

Nick Davis, CFP:
I wanted to give an example of a channel who has chosen to really niche into their target audience. For Nick it has really paid off - figuratively, and literally. Consider going all in like Nick

Nick Davis, CFP - 175 videos - 15k subscribers - started Jul 8, 2022

145k views

22k views

128k views

Key Takeaways

Niche is King: Nick has gone all in on his niche. Financial advice for those looking to retire. He doesn’t care if everyone doesn’t click his content. He offers services in the videos and I guarantee those are getting him more revenue than he ever could on adsense.
Color Theory: Look at he the Red and Green remain consistent. On the color wheel these are contrasting colors and therefore draw the eyes attention. (and they remind me of Christmas)
To Face or Not to Face: I get a lot of questions about when to start adding the face. The answer is… whatever your audience wants. But the complicated answer is you’re just going to have to test. However I can say, that without your face, it will be an uphill battle to scale your brand.

Creator News

DigiDay just dropped an article Highlighting the four trends of the creator economy, and wouldn’t you know it - we’ve already talked about all of them in this newsletter, but there’s always room for a good refresher.

Takeaways:
1.) AI is coming whether you want it to, or not. Learn how to use it now. That means becoming comfortable with at least one new tool every month or so. (Always try out the free stuff first) but here are some ideas: Suno:Music, Midjourney:AI imagery, ChatGPT: tags, titles, and SEO

2.) Creators ARE media companies - the time where brands will need to leverage creators is already upon us. It’s practically a golden ticket

3.) Long Form content is still on the rise. Tell your uncle you’re ready to start that podcast, it’s long form season baby. But also with the TikTok ban in effect, I would absolutely count on views coming to short form.

4.) Serialized short form may be a thing. Episodic content in short from. Don’t think series like television, think series like season of content that I brand could sign up to sponsor for.

Want to sign up for a 1 on 1 coaching workshop? Just reply to this email - or email me separately at [email protected]