Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Developers Hangouts podcast.
Speaker: My name is James, and today I have a special guest.
Speaker: Why don't you introduce yourself, let everybody know who you are, and then we can hang out.
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: My name is Haris Ibtikhar.
Speaker: I'm a developer here from Lahore, Pakistan, originally based from the New Jersey.
Speaker: And I'm actually a software engineering major student.
Speaker: I'm the final year.
Speaker: I do have a channel on YouTube technically about programming, and I do...
Speaker: Other things like freelancing, I can actually build communities as well on multiple channels like Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, and I would say Microsoft Ambassadors.
Speaker: So I've done a lot of that and just interested in coding.
Speaker: And my passion is to teach people how to program.
Speaker: So if someone was going to look for your channel today, what is the channel name?
Speaker: And then what is your like, what's your channel about?
Speaker: Like, what do you do on your channel?
Speaker: Like there's like so much, I would say, saturation on YouTube now, like everyone's providing content about programming and everything.
Speaker: And that's the same thing on my case where I was I started back in 2020 when the pandemic hit and I felt like
Speaker: Everyone has locked in their homes and there was actually just the internet that was available for us.
Speaker: And I thought that that was the only tool that we could use to communicate or, you know, rely on and educate ourselves.
Speaker: So I had this idea from the beginning that I wanted to
Speaker: Actually, I love teaching from the beginning and I just wanted to create videos, but I had no practice or never did this stuff before in my life.
Speaker: So I first time ever, I just downloaded the video editor.
Speaker: I just started recording and I just had the laptop mic.
Speaker: And whenever I learned from Codecademy path that I recently had that time, it was LearnPath and T++.
Speaker: Whatever I learned, I tried to just explain the concepts in a quick tutorial, and I just published it on my channel officially.
Speaker: It wasn't even announced like the name was Coding Cleverly, which is the channel right now.
Speaker: But that time, it was just a blank channel, and I didn't expect...
Speaker: It was actually just used as a video that I wanted to share to my uncle who was interested in programming.
Speaker: So I just recorded that and I didn't say anything explicitly about him in the video.
Speaker: I just said it randomly and then I just I sent it to him.
Speaker: And then after that, I just continuously made more videos.
Speaker: And from there, I thought that this was pretty neat.
Speaker: I was learning as well because I love when I teach something, I think I solidify my own concept as well.
Speaker: So I just enjoy doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I'm the same way.
Speaker: So my channel started during the pandemic.
Speaker: Same kind of style.
Speaker: It was 2020.
Speaker: I was very like, oh, what can I do?
Speaker: I want to teach or do something.
Speaker: We're all stuck in our house.
Speaker: Maybe try a YouTube channel.
Speaker: If it goes well, I'll continue.
Speaker: If it doesn't, that's fine.
Speaker: And I recorded mine same kind of way on a laptop mic in my kitchen in my old house.
Speaker: And just it was like how to be, no, how to interview for Java developers or something like that.
Speaker: I think that's the first video that's no longer on the channel, but it was something similar.
Speaker: And yeah, I just kind of went for it and I was just like, see what happens and
Speaker: You know, it's been, what, two years now, two and a half years, I think, something like that.
Speaker: And now my channel is completely different in the style and the videos and what I'm teaching.
Speaker: But overall, I really like YouTube.
Speaker: It's been fun to make over the last couple of years, and I hope to do it for many, many more years.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So, like, who was the one who pushed you to make more videos after that first one?
Speaker: It was just me.
Speaker: It was me.
Speaker: It was just something I was like, well, I'm just going to see what happens.
Speaker: I gave myself three months.
Speaker: That was the goal.
Speaker: And I'll see if there's any traffic or if anyone's actually interested in what I'm teaching.
Speaker: And three months in, I think I hit like 500 subscribers, I think, after three months.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, cool.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: I must be doing something right.
Speaker: So I just continued to do that from there.
Speaker: And then, you know, it slowly got better.
Speaker: Like I got to a thousand subscribers and I was like, wow, like get into the first thousand.
Speaker: Then it was 2000.
Speaker: And now it's just like, I just want to keep doing it because people want to watch my videos.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it will get to the only time I will.
Speaker: will ever consider stopping would be if it just didn't become enjoyable for myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like if I didn't enjoy doing it week in, week out, I would just stop making videos.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: Really nice to hear.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I find it fun.
Speaker: Like I like the editing experience.
Speaker: I like teaching.
Speaker: I like doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker: It's like similar to me.
Speaker: Like ever since I was small, I always wanted to know how to learn.
Speaker: I mean, how to earn online.
Speaker: This is one of the goals that I always wanted to earn money online.
Speaker: And whenever you Google search something like this,
Speaker: Something like that pops up.
Speaker: They start a YouTube channel or write a blog article.
Speaker: I did all these things.
Speaker: The other ones that write a blog page, but not that much success came from there.
Speaker: I went and did a blogger page.
Speaker: It was the start of 2020 and I tried to do these goals.
Speaker: I wanted to find some ways to earn some kind of money and and I wanted to be a little bit financially independent for myself.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I started a blogging channel, a personal one where I was just just talking about my day to day life.
Speaker: It's currently still there present, but I don't have that much following.
Speaker: I know it was like it wasn't it wasn't more catered to something like specific.
Speaker: It was just random.
Speaker: And I had no idea how YouTube worked that time.
Speaker: I was just like brand new.
Speaker: I had no idea like you're supposed to do a specific niche.
Speaker: You have to keep it specific or the content has to be.
Speaker: So I was like one day doing a scientific experiment.
Speaker: And the other day I was writing a book review.
Speaker: I mean, making a book review of a certain book.
Speaker: And then the other day I was just making a vlog of my university or something.
Speaker: So it was just completely scattered and my audience didn't know what I was doing here and there.
Speaker: So then when I started coding cleverly, I kept it specific to just coding programming.
Speaker: So my audience knows that I just generally post about this certain topic.
Speaker: So that's one of the things that I learned in the pandemic.
Speaker: And I think that was very valuable.
Speaker: Yeah, it's hard to get that niche down to some level where you like...
Speaker: It's not too niched, especially with programming.
Speaker: So developer YouTube is really hard because if you niche down too hard, like, oh, I'm just going to be, I'm just a Python channel.
Speaker: That's the only content I do is Python.
Speaker: It's really hard to be like, cool, I've done so much stuff on Python.
Speaker: Now I want to do something on...
Speaker: like, I don't know, Node.js.
Speaker: Your audience is so used to you doing Python that you may end up pushing some of your old audience away because you're trying to branch out to something else.
Speaker: I kept mine very specific of modern web, like modern web as in TypeScript and Next.js and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And then this year I've been experimenting with less...
Speaker: tutorial-based stuff and more talking head content.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And that seems to actually be doing quite well, surprisingly.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Considering that my audience is used to tutorials.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm actually also feeling that kind of, I would say that kind of problem right now, currently, right before, I mean, right after I took a small gap and I felt like when I created that gap, I mean, I got now lesser and lesser amount of views before I had, I would say like I had maximum of 13K views on my one project based video.
Speaker: I created a tic-tac-toe game in C++ and I thought that was really neat.
Speaker: After that, I created a hangman game and a lot of people said to me to make more project-based videos.
Speaker: I thought that was good and I created a GUI-based application using Java.
Speaker: After that, I was actually into tutorials as well because a large amount of my audience wants data structure style videos because of their technical interviews.
Speaker: I was also learning that same thing at that same time.
Speaker: So I thought it would be really cool if I also learned the same thing at my own place and just recorded.
Speaker: And it's just a benefit for me, you know, a win-win situation.
Speaker: So that's why I adopted that strategy.
Speaker: Unfortunately, it's not going pretty well at the moment, but I'm thinking
Speaker: I'm thinking of maybe limiting my videos, maybe just more into basic stuff and not that advanced because I went into hash maps and I don't know, extra stuff.
Speaker: And I'm just getting like 100 views and all that effort put into just something like that is not satisfactory.
Speaker: So I'm thinking of, you know, beginner style videos and maybe shorter and more
Speaker: engaging and maybe the advanced videos, maybe on a course on Udemy or Skillshare.
Speaker: I guess that was a good tip.
Speaker: I actually saw someone option, maybe someone recommended and I felt that this was a good thing to do.
Speaker: Yeah, like doing so that we can kind of get behind the scenes here for some people that are listening right now that maybe you're thinking about YouTube channel in the future.
Speaker: What's really good for search is beginner topics, right?
Speaker: So
Speaker: If you want to build a following pretty quickly or you want your views to be retained over time.
Speaker: So, for example, I have a video that's like how to get started with next or that's like I think it's two years old now.
Speaker: So it's completely out of date.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: And it is, I believe, my most popular video of all time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a 40-minute long video that's very specific about this one topic.
Speaker: It's beginner-friendly.
Speaker: It's very beginner.
Speaker: And it just crested 90,000 views.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Which it sounds insane if you think about like the fact that it's two years old, it's out of date.
Speaker: Oh no, it's yeah.
Speaker: It's two years old.
Speaker: It's out of date.
Speaker: Um, and then the followup video is creating a custom page with the same tech.
Speaker: And again, it's that one's like a 18 months old.
Speaker: It's out of date.
Speaker: Uh, and still people search for it.
Speaker: People still watch it.
Speaker: It's like one of my highest, most retained videos.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: And then like, if you look at other videos that may be a bit more advanced topics or things that people don't actually search for, they do really well in the beginning because people that are subscribed watch it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and maybe some people from the browse feature see it and click it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and then the rest of the time, you know, those, those videos died down pretty quickly because, um,
Speaker: People don't, you know, they're not searching for that topic, so it's less likely to get views over time.
Speaker: I guess more people should focus on the evergreen style videos, right?
Speaker: That could remain for a long period of time.
Speaker: Right, and...
Speaker: Even if the video is slightly out of date, maybe it's not 100% true anymore or maybe there's some stuff that's changed.
Speaker: For the most part, those evergreen videos will still get that person 90% of the way there.
Speaker: Yeah, and I also saw that if my most viewed video was about the tic-tac-toe, maybe start the same strategy that I used on that video and just keep making those style videos now because I think that style worked and people are just liking that kind of unique style that I had.
Speaker: So just continuing that same kind of style, I think, also will make and attract more people.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And your channel isn't exactly small.
Speaker: You have a reasonably large subscriber base in comparison to some other people I've had on the channel.
Speaker: And you have over 5,000 subscribers, which is a pretty decent following to even get to, to think that 5,000 people at some point have clicked that subscribe button.
Speaker: is impressive.
Speaker: So outside of making content and going to school, what other things do you do for fun?
Speaker: Like what do you do when you're not making content and or doing your schoolwork or your college work or anything like that or sleeping, I guess?
Speaker: What other stuff do you have left to do?
Speaker: I like to travel a lot and I like to explore places and go out to eat with friends.
Speaker: We like doing that stuff here locally.
Speaker: Basically, I like to read books as well.
Speaker: You know, an interesting book.
Speaker: about something or watch a movie.
Speaker: You know, currently it was just rewatching The Maze Runner and the other parts.
Speaker: But yeah, these style of videos, I like science fiction a lot.
Speaker: Interstellar is one of my favorites of all time.
Speaker: I really like that movie.
Speaker: And yeah, I like watching movies and Avengers and all that stuff.
Speaker: I'm into this kind of stuff.
Speaker: I also, like based on where my background is now from software development.
Speaker: So I like to watch software development related stuff.
Speaker: Maybe, you know, topics like about chat GPT, experiment with them.
Speaker: Maybe my friends are also like tech nerds.
Speaker: And we all, when we just meet each other, we just start talking about, you know, new trends or whatever, what's going on.
Speaker: Or is chat GPT going to replace us or stuff like that.
Speaker: And we just all make, have a good laugh out of it.
Speaker: And yeah, we do stuff like that.
Speaker: And I enjoy my time with them.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I do something similar, although I don't meet many friends in person anymore.
Speaker: But outside of that, you know, like I do an online one, which is fairly similar where we all meet and we have a chat about trends and all the other stuff that's happening in the tech space or what we may have seen in Twitter or what drama is happening this week or whatever, like all those kinds of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's nice to have friends that have the same passions or the same
Speaker: interests.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And yeah, and this is a thing like we like sharing memes to each other and tech related memes and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I guess, well, also even sharing memes, you learn something from from the meme about programming.
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Speaker: And that's also one neat thing I saw.
Speaker: That time, there was a meme about X++ and X plus equal to one and how the incrementer works.
Speaker: There's that Spider-Man meme where there's three Spider-Men.
Speaker: That actually teaches that there are three different ways to increment a variable in programming.
Speaker: That's pretty funny and neat at the same way.
Speaker: I really thought that was cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I think memes get a bad rap, but memes be teaching, everybody.
Speaker: Memes do teach occasionally.
Speaker: Yeah, I found, at least recently, I've been appreciating the fact that there's a few creators out there that post a lot of memes about the tech community in general, which has been really nice to see and enjoy.
Speaker: So let's kind of go back to what are your plans?
Speaker: Because it's the beginning of 2023.
Speaker: So here's a curtain behind the scene.
Speaker: When you listen to this, it'll probably be closer to February.
Speaker: But what are your goals and plans for 2023?
Speaker: Like, what do you want to do by, let's say, December 31st, 2023?
Speaker: Like, what are the goals for this year?
Speaker: Well, like I introduced myself and I told that I was a developer and I told that I'm actually a background and I have a community and I do this and I'm freelancing.
Speaker: But one of the things that I have in my heart is that I want to say to people that I'm a tech YouTuber and I would like to, you know, say that kind of thing.
Speaker: Once I establish that amount of following or maybe get that monetization or get my earnings started, and then I could comfortably say to people that I do have a channel and you could support me or check me out.
Speaker: But that's one of my big goals that I want to build this channel.
Speaker: Definitely increase the amount of audience I have and the user base and the community overall.
Speaker: I'm going to try to make the content more appealing and
Speaker: And I'm thinking I'm making more project style videos for my viewers.
Speaker: And definitely, I'm actually have this Discord server on and people are there just interacting with each other.
Speaker: They're solving their own queries or problems related to any specific video.
Speaker: And I think that's a pretty cool community that we built together and just helping out for free.
Speaker: And I guess that's just amazing how the internet provides this kind of facility to just start interacting with people from all these places.
Speaker: Yeah, so if you were to give, what would be your moonshot subscriber count?
Speaker: Just out of interest, like if you were to have a successful year, would it be 10K subscribers?
Speaker: Would it be 20K subscribers?
Speaker: Like where would you like to be?
Speaker: Okay, now after reaching like 5K subscribers or so, like first, you know, every YouTuber's goal is to have that 1K milestone and then get that 2K, 3K.
Speaker: But now I'm not looking at the subscriber count anymore.
Speaker: I'm not I'm more focused on the views and more focused on the the style of my content and and the watch time.
Speaker: I'm now just focusing on these metrics instead of my subscriber count because I've seen subscribers don't pay you money.
Speaker: The thing that's paying or generating revenue is the views, the watch time and the traffic.
Speaker: And so that's that's the more concern that I'm focusing on now and maybe more engaging thumbnails or
Speaker: titles I try to work on with the recent videos.
Speaker: But unfortunately, I basically, I guess, made this certain mistake.
Speaker: Now I see that that I actually created this Patreon thing that I said, go and check my Patreon out.
Speaker: Like in all those 20 plus videos that I created in the first like five slots, like I had this music intro that I normally do in all my videos.
Speaker: But I'm thinking of stopping that because I want to retain the watch time.
Speaker: Like, just start clicking on the video and then it just goes from there.
Speaker: Just goes from there.
Speaker: You don't pause or you don't say introduction or don't introduce anything.
Speaker: Just go straight to the point.
Speaker: So I'm thinking of going straight to the point and diving.
Speaker: Just stop wasting people's time.
Speaker: And or maybe I had this Patreon thing that was like, you know, check my Patreon out.
Speaker: And I guess that was pretty repetitive.
Speaker: And I guess now it feels to me as annoying as well.
Speaker: So I'm trying to leave these as well and trying to just more focus on the content style.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that's how my subscribe... Yeah, I don't blame you for that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't blame you for that.
Speaker: Like, yeah, I've kind of done that on my videos too.
Speaker: Like, my videos now, like, there's less of an intro.
Speaker: It's like, my intro is less than 10 seconds and then we're right into whatever the content might be about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because, yeah, I found, like, if you...
Speaker: if you look at the analytic graph, like the first 30 seconds, the most important.
Speaker: And if you haven't got to the point in those first 30 seconds, like you pretty much lose a lot of retention.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, I've been really working on that in the last six months too, is like, how can I get, um,
Speaker: How can I get to that ASAP and then, you know, continue the video on?
Speaker: And it's done really well for my retention.
Speaker: My retention is up, you know, like an additional 10%, which is pretty hefty.
Speaker: And that's because, yeah, like my last sort of,
Speaker: five six seven videos have all been like boom here's to the point maybe they're shorter than they people are used to but it it really does seem to help yeah i really like that that kind of approach i guess is a number one approach that we should adopt now uh and i've learned from my mistakes and i guess this is this is the thing what you do on youtube you basically make mistakes and then you improve from those mistakes and i guess you can never be 100 successful i mean you always have mistakes and you're always improving from them
Speaker: It's like an ongoing process.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's definitely a growing thing.
Speaker: Like even people that we know that are in the discord that we have with all the other YouTubers, like there are people in there that have, you know, 100K subscribers that are still trying new things or learning new things or trying to adapt to this new world or whatever it is.
Speaker: Like, especially with things like TikTok and YouTube Shorts where that
Speaker: Attention span is now a minute.
Speaker: It used to be like you could watch a 20 minute video and you'd be like, oh, this is a good 20 minute video.
Speaker: Now it's like, oh, I've watched a thousand TikToks and I only have an attention span of about 30 seconds and then I get bored.
Speaker: There seems to be a lot of that now.
Speaker: Even in our space, it seems the attention span has slowly kind of gone down over the last year or so since TikTok became so popular.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Speaking of TikTok, I just remembered my first ever YouTube short that went viral.
Speaker: It had like 39K views and it was just growing crazy.
Speaker: It was about it was just a YouTube short that I was trying out.
Speaker: My brother recommended me.
Speaker: He said, hey, just try YouTube shorts.
Speaker: And I said, OK, let me just try it out.
Speaker: I made this TikTok, I mean, YouTube short where I use the command prompt on Windows and showed how you could check your passwords.
Speaker: I thought it was pretty cool.
Speaker: And I typed in some commands.
Speaker: I read some articles.
Speaker: And then after that, I made that video.
Speaker: It was for one minute.
Speaker: I uploaded it.
Speaker: It got so many views.
Speaker: And it was engaging.
Speaker: And people liked it.
Speaker: There was like 5K of likes.
Speaker: And it was growing so much.
Speaker: And I saw that people started appreciating it.
Speaker: One day when I was just a...
Speaker: Outside, I just looked at my phone.
Speaker: I mean, I was on my laptop and I got an email from YouTube that they took down that video.
Speaker: And I was disappointed.
Speaker: I appealed for it.
Speaker: I said, what did I do wrong on that?
Speaker: I didn't see any fault.
Speaker: I was showing how to check your own Wi-Fi password.
Speaker: And I guess I showed my own Wi-Fi password.
Speaker: So I think that was wrong in terms for YouTube's customer.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Because of me showing my own password, I think maybe because of that, I just now have this assumption because I didn't get a solid reason why this was wrong.
Speaker: Because there's already, if you go on Google right now or YouTube and search for these same style videos, there's people have these same type of videos eight years ago, nine years ago, and they never got banned.
Speaker: They have millions of views.
Speaker: So why is it just the new people?
Speaker: Why isn't the old ones?
Speaker: Like people are trying to grow here.
Speaker: Pretty tough.
Speaker: But yeah, we're still going.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's a weird thing about YouTube in general is there's like it's a black box.
Speaker: There's no actual especially with things like copyright strikes or takedowns or whatever.
Speaker: Like there's no real like you don't get a straight answer.
Speaker: You get this kind of like
Speaker: just, you know, generic YouTube answer of like, hey, we took it down for whatever reason and we're not going to actually give you the reason.
Speaker: And it's very hard to like get an answer from somebody unless you're a reasonably big, you know, content creator.
Speaker: If you're big enough, you can certainly do those kinds of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you're a smaller YouTuber, it's very hard to get the right answer, get...
Speaker: you know, can I get this video back up?
Speaker: Uh, can I not?
Speaker: But we, I've seen that in the past where like a YouTuber has uploaded a video that's very similar to something else that was posted maybe two or three years ago and their video gets taken down or whatever, but the original video gets to stay up.
Speaker: Um, you're definitely not the only person that's done that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Which, you know, it sucks that everyone has their own different rules, but they do their best, I guess.
Speaker: They do their best with millions of videos getting uploaded every day.
Speaker: I guess they can't always be right, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I could say that.
Speaker: So yeah, that was the story of my first YouTube short that was going viral.
Speaker: But then, yeah, then there was another YouTube short.
Speaker: Now there is one that's like above 170K or something and still there.
Speaker: And it's like a clickbait.
Speaker: I would say it's a total clickbait.
Speaker: It's just a one line Python code to write a calculator.
Speaker: So having that kind of title just creates that interest for people and you start clicking on it.
Speaker: And I guess shorts are creating so much traffic now.
Speaker: So I guess that's pretty neat to do with these kind of shorts.
Speaker: I've done it now.
Speaker: It's been a long time.
Speaker: I didn't do any other shorts.
Speaker: I was just using my phone.
Speaker: And I guess that wasn't pretty professional.
Speaker: I had a lot of comments that were saying to me, you could have just used a desktop or something like that to create the short.
Speaker: And I just used my phone and I was pretty lazy.
Speaker: I was getting views of it.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think it matters.
Speaker: In my opinion, I don't think it matters if you use your phone or use the desktop microphone or you use like your full setup like this that I have right now or you have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I've done shorts like on my phone and it's done really well.
Speaker: And I've done a short with my, you know, $800 camera with my $300 microphone and it's done really poorly.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: It doesn't really matter.
Speaker: It's just sometimes they're all about luck as well.
Speaker: And I just had my phone.
Speaker: I barely edited that video and it just went like 170K and it's pretty cool.
Speaker: So I've seen like there's also like professional channels like Visual Studio Code.
Speaker: They also do shorts and they do it right on their phone.
Speaker: And I like that style of video.
Speaker: And I just try to, you know, I had this idea at the same time.
Speaker: So me and that person were doing shorts at the same time.
Speaker: So once that copyright strike came, I felt a little disappointed.
Speaker: So my quantity for shorts went down.
Speaker: But then I was still going.
Speaker: But I mean, I wasn't really focusing on the shorts because one, they don't give that much watch time, just 10 hours, even if you reach like a billion views.
Speaker: Just 10 hours of watch time and it's not that productive for a YouTube channel.
Speaker: So I had to go on to the long form videos because my ultimate goal was to, you know, cross the milestone to a watch time.
Speaker: So still there, still going and still making.
Speaker: So I'm still having more ideas and I'll see how much videos I should upload.
Speaker: So I had some questions, just questions about YouTube that I would like to ask.
Speaker: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker: So like speaking about creating audiences, like we had this mailing list, like a lot of people make mailing lists and they introduce their people or audiences to subscribe and they send their weekly updates or newsletters.
Speaker: and i thought the same and um i just wanted to ask that i have i created an account using octopus i guess it's called octopus email or email octopus and i have this mailing list i created and i have this free cheat sheet that i'm giving away whoever subscribes it just just creates that interest and people you know love free stuff so
Speaker: I did that, but I don't know how to promote it anyways.
Speaker: And how do you promote your mailing list or do you even do this?
Speaker: Because I think if you have more people, I think it's a really good advantage.
Speaker: Yeah, so promotion is a tough game.
Speaker: I think marketing in general is a tough game.
Speaker: So I always tell people to like, if you genuinely believe that the cheat sheet is good and you want people to get it for free, um...
Speaker: in your next like two or three videos, give it a shout out and be like, Hey, I have this free cheat sheet that you can find somewhere in the video.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be in the beginning.
Speaker: It could be in the middle or the end.
Speaker: Uh, Hey, I have this free cheat sheet that will teach you X, uh, links in the description.
Speaker: Click here.
Speaker: putting it on like Twitter, all those kinds of things really make it, you know, like sending out on Twitter, posting it in discords.
Speaker: If you, you know, you're like, Hey, I've created this cool free cheat sheet in discords where you're allowed to post, obviously don't go around spamming it.
Speaker: All of those places will lead to, to somebody clicking it and always leave it in the description.
Speaker: Uh huh.
Speaker: Even if you don't promote it, always leave it in your YouTube descriptions because someone could click on it to be like, oh, I'm looking for X. And then they end up being like, oh, this is a neat, like free cheat sheet.
Speaker: Let me try that out.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That's a really good approach.
Speaker: But now, is there a way to just automatically change all the descriptions at once?
Speaker: Now we have so many videos uploaded.
Speaker: There's no automation where we could just have that one style of a template that we have a description and I just update it to every single video that you ever uploaded on YouTube.
Speaker: I wish that was a tool there or something available.
Speaker: So you can't... Yeah, you can't...
Speaker: So YouTube does have that.
Speaker: It's called Bulk Update, but it will remove everything that's there right now.
Speaker: So if you have any links to GitHub repos or anything like that, all of that gets replaced.
Speaker: If you're okay with that, yeah, in the YouTube studio, it's called Bulk Update.
Speaker: You have to go to the content tab.
Speaker: Yeah, it removes everything inside the description and puts in the new description.
Speaker: You go to your content, you select all, and then you click edit and click description, I think.
Speaker: And then you can edit everything in the description.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But doesn't that harm the video or anything?
Speaker: It doesn't do anything bad to the video or something.
Speaker: No, yeah, it doesn't make any change to the video, but it does make those changes.
Speaker: I think they may have updated it now to allow you to insert it at the bottom or at the top and keep everything that's already there in the description.
Speaker: But yeah, that's the way you can bulk update it.
Speaker: They do have that ability in the studio.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So it's not, there's changes.
Speaker: And I felt like one time, like, suppose, like I'm a freelancer as well.
Speaker: And when you create a gig or something, you'll, you create it and then it gets ranked.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then it gets on the purse page or something.
Speaker: Just like a YouTube video, it gets ranked and goes on the first page and people see the video, they click on it.
Speaker: But once you edit something and then you re-upload it, I feel like the ranking goes down or something or the algorithm makes changes and then the ranking seems to be a little bit off than the original.
Speaker: That happens a lot in freelancing.
Speaker: And I've seen an experience to myself having a gig that was promoting very well.
Speaker: And then I changed a bit of the pricing and then I re-uploaded it.
Speaker: And then I felt like no one was actually attracting and no one was asking questions after that.
Speaker: So I felt that happening in Fiverr.
Speaker: But also, I think I felt that happening on YouTube, but I'm not sure if it's
Speaker: If it's true or not, you could tell anything about that?
Speaker: I don't really have anything about, like, I know that, you know, the algorithm is complex and, like,
Speaker: Basically, the way that YouTube figures it out is based upon what niche you're in and does the video fit in that niche or is it adjacent to that niche.
Speaker: But if you edit anything and re-upload, yeah, you start from scratch again.
Speaker: If you use their editor, I think everything stays the same, but then their editor sucks.
Speaker: But outside of that, like changing anything in the video that's like a title or tags or keywords and descriptions will affect search results, but it won't affect the algorithm itself.
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: It is complex, though.
Speaker: Yeah, it is pretty complex.
Speaker: And also, is there a way to like if you have a video already uploaded and you could trim a bit of the video, is that even possible or like it's there and it's there?
Speaker: Yeah, you can use that.
Speaker: You can use their YouTube editor to trim pieces out of videos.
Speaker: So if you, like, accidentally made a mistake or something, you can go to the video and click editor, and then you can just trim bits out of the video that you need to, either at the beginning, the end, the middle.
Speaker: You can do that.
Speaker: Oh, so it also is available in the, I could say, YouTube studio?
Speaker: Yeah, yep.
Speaker: Oh, okay, nice.
Speaker: Then these kind of stuff, I guess... So we're coming to...
Speaker: I was going to say, we're coming to the end of the episode of the podcast.
Speaker: Why don't you tell people where they can find you?
Speaker: YouTube, Twitter, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Go ahead and self-promote.
Speaker: We'll end the podcast here.
Speaker: And then, yeah, thanks for coming on.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
Speaker: Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker: Like, I just wanted to add in at the end was, like, I was thinking this year I would do, like, live streams monthly.
Speaker: I usually do this stuff on my Codecademy because I'm a chapter leader there.
Speaker: My job there is to actually have an event online and teach about something for free.
Speaker: I do that using a platform like what they have called Nevi.
Speaker: Sometimes I use a Lighthall or sometimes I use Microsoft Teams.
Speaker: But now,
Speaker: Now, since the year is 2023 and I'm thinking, let's start something fresh new.
Speaker: I was thinking like, why not the monthly live streams that I've done previously that I've done 12 in a row last year, every single month.
Speaker: Now I'm doing, do them on my YouTube channel and do the live streams here and about a different, any type of topic.
Speaker: But I don't know if it counts as something for the views or is it beneficial or is it something that we should do or any take you could put over there.
Speaker: Yeah, so like YouTube in general, like if you're going to do live streams once a month, that's perfectly fine.
Speaker: Like it does add to your view count and hours watched and everything else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just, yeah, it's just a lot of, you know, once you've done the live stream, then you've got to decide whether or not you're going to keep the video up there or if you're going to edit it or whatever.
Speaker: Like I live stream twice a week on my YouTube channel and I take the video down and then I edit it and then I re-upload it so that if someone's missed it, they don't have to watch like anything that's probably not as important anymore because...
Speaker: it was in the moment kind of stuff gets removed so that the video is more, uh, so, you know, like quick and easy to watch.
Speaker: And it actually brings the content that I was live streaming versus like talking to chat for 20 minutes.
Speaker: Or, you know, if I have to go to the bathroom and all those kinds of things get, get removed.
Speaker: OK, nice.
Speaker: Really nice, man.
Speaker: I really like your takes on here.
Speaker: Pretty cool.
Speaker: It was really great talking to you.
Speaker: Speaking of everything like descriptions and all that stuff, affiliate links also really matter, I guess.
Speaker: Putting those in the descriptions, you have no idea what if some some day someone just randomly clicks on your affiliate links and you just get a monetization from there.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So having that as well on the description just because or maybe your mailing list there as well.
Speaker: So I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah, so it was amazing.
Speaker: I really enjoyed this time, you know, having this podcast with you.
Speaker: It was a new experience for me and I felt really enjoyable.
Speaker: It was really nice.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: I'm glad you had a good time.
Speaker: Yeah, so I have to like, you could check me out on different channels like Twitter, YouTube, Coding Cleverly, Instagram, Coding Cleverly, like everywhere.
Speaker: Just type in Coding Cleverly and you'll find me mostly on YouTube.
Speaker: If you go on the channel main page, you could see the Discord server.
Speaker: You could join that free community.
Speaker: And then there is places like Gumroad where I'm giving away my cheat sheets.
Speaker: I did recently create data science cheat sheets.
Speaker: So I'm actually giving away free cheat sheets this whole month, January.
Speaker: So anyone who was interested, just, you know, avail that opportunity.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
Speaker: Thank you, man.
Speaker: Have a great day, man.
Speaker: You too.
