Posts by Michael

Quote from Symph

So do Tik Toks NEED to be short? I know that at first you can't even upload more than 15 seconds. Figuring out 15 second content is not something I'm too wild about unless lip syncing is an option. Suppose I could just do snippets of guitar runs or something. Don't you get to the point where you can upload up to 10 minutes or something? I wouldn't mind being able to just upload full songs.

I believe they have to be over 1 minute long to be monetisable so if you want to make money on TikTok they need to be over. As for getting videos when I began I would make shorter looping videos that were easy to watch on repeat. They done really well. Saying all this the channel never earned much at all even with 185k followers and millions of views. I think it is niche dependent. I would only make a video as long as it needs to be to keep viewers watching and deliver whatever it is you are doing.

I think snippets are a good idea, theyre easy to watch if you have a min.

Moved to new thread as its a good discussion

Quote from Symph

I have a zoom, but you have to upload it's audio through a usb which I find obnoxious. If I wanted my music to sound more professional I''d use it anyway cause having two mics capture your instruments will give you a thicker fuller sound, I'm just too lazy right now. Main mic is a Shure sm7b, (the mic in my avatar), I felt really smart snagging one of these cause I did all this research before I chose it, only to find out like every youtuber/streamer and their grandma is using the same mic lol

Nice one man wonder if its one of their older recorders, the one I have now takes an SD card and records to that, theyre so good being portable. I really need a new one soon the one I have the power port keeps getting replaced every so often and I like the idea of one that can be permanently set up and one for outside etc Shures are amazing, my brother used to a Shure mic back when he was an MC and DJ. I think was SM7 or something they were excellent and so fair priced back then. Damn lol well at least you know you chose something decent that people stand by.

I have been keeping track of my new channel here and posting milestones and I am really pleased to have hit 1000 subscribers in 4 weeks exactly and the views are doing really well too. I am glad I have stuck to my plan of giving up my old channel fully and starting fresh. The algoirthm is finding my people and they are loving what I create. Honestly I hope this inspires anyone sitting on the fence when making a new channel, if you stick to a subject and focus on it and post YouTube will find your audience for you. I am so thankful I did this. If I can do it, so can you! I am not the best in my niche and my content isnt perfect either. I obviously dont know whether the grow will still be good in 6 months or a year but the decision to stop posting to my larger channel has been a good one so far. Has anyone else started from scratch recently or thinking about it?

I am thinking of making a TikTok for WeMakeVids.com but I already know from the get go that I dont have the time a channel would actually need. I know I would want something I can make thats easily repeatable, I wouldnt have much time for making a proper creator channel like Tim Schmoyers VideoCreators on or like Derral Eves, I am just not them and no expert. I learn as I go and share as I go if that makes sense without formal training. The videos would be to drive people to visit here but surely I would need to add value to the videos to become an authority and bring people here. I aint sure if would be worth it. What do you think about this? Any way I could do this easily and offer some kind of value?

My only idea maybe would be to use members threads to make question videos and answer them but at the same time I would want it faceless as I dont have a studio space for it. Hmmm so much to ponder lol

I am loving seeing the visual TikTok video hooks shared on TikTok by social media expert creators who share these things for a living. Theres Shells Social Media Bestie who does videos sharing her visual hooks and I love watching them. Her main one is walk, walk, flip, engage where she starts walking with the phone pointed towards the ground so you can see her shoes, she then flips the phone upright and then lifts it to above eye level and then that is where she begins the video.

Shells | Social Media bestie on TikTok

@myfriendshells 59.0k Followers, 415 Following, 794.9k Likes - Watch awesome short videos created by Shells | Social Media bestie

www.tiktok.com

TikTok · Shells | Social Media bestie

TikTok | Make Your Day

www.tiktok.com

Theres a lot more visual hooks than this but I think we could all usually benefit thinking about visual hooks to give our videos a good chance, movement always seems to be a winner at the start of a video, heres some visual hooks too:

• Walk Towards the Camera
• Walk Past the Camera
• Turn Around Quickly
• Spin Into Frame
• Jump Into Frame
• Sit Down Fast
• Stand Up Suddenly
• Lean Right Into the Lens
• Back Away From the Camera
• Point Directly at the Viewer
• Throw Something Into the Air
• Catch Something One Handed
• Flip an Object
• Toss an Item Across the Frame
• Slide Into Frame
• Reach Towards the Lens
• Push the Camera Away
• Pull the Camera Towards You
• Knock on the Lens
• Cover the Lens With Your Hand
• Swipe Your Hand Across the Screen
• Snap Your Fingers for a Transition
• Clap to Change Scenes
• Click a Pen Near the Camera
• Drop an Object
• Slam Something on the Table
• Open a Door Into the Shot
• Walk Through a Doorway
• Pick Something Up Immediately
• Lift Something Heavy
• Throw a Jacket On
• Put Glasses On
• Rip Paper in Half
• Open a Laptop Quickly
• Close a Laptop Dramatically
• Spin Your Chair
• Roll Into Frame on a Chair
• Grab the Camera
• Rotate the Camera
• Shake the Camera Slightly
• Push the Camera Through an Object
• Move From Dark Into Light
• Duck Below Frame Then Pop Up
• Wave Something Across the Lens
• Hit Record While Already Moving
• Run Into Frame
• Walk Away Mid Sentence
• Step Over the Camera
• Flip the Camera From Selfie to Rear
• Walk, Stop, Point, Speak

Building a new YouTube forum (creator community), a place for creators to discuss video editing, YouTube monetisation, content strategy, making videos with AI and all other aspects of starting a new channel and growing across the platforms available to us has been a challenge. I found building this website the easy part but the challenge is content and having members sharing and stick around.

We need content in order to get members from searches on Google and without paying for ads which I dont have the budget for being a one man band we are relying on this fully. I ask of you if you have any questions to post them even if you feel silly to ask them, if you have any advice please share it too as you never know who will find it from a search and find it useful.

My promise to myself and you all is to keep posting as much as I can and sharing as much as I can of my own YouTube journey, if you post something I will reply with an answer if I have something I can add to the thread. I want to share it so others can see something from scratch grow into something. I want to inspire people who give up before they give themselves and their channels a chance. You can grow and we can grow together.

If youve read this far thank you. Whether you are brand new to creating videos or have years of experience your posts matter. Every question, answer to a question, discussion and piece of advice helps us build a solid resource that could make someone elses journey a little easier. Lets build something genuinely useful together.

My eyes have been aching so much the past few days, I have been editing a lot more than usual with my new channel, my current business and also launching another project soon which involves more editing, this week I am going to be editing around 8 videos taking 1-2 hours each as they take a bit more time than usual. How do you protect your eyes when doing editing? Think this is something we should discuss as I know we all use our eyes every day for this.

I am meant to wear glasses and couldnt find my most recent pair so made an appointment for an eye test and hopefully get new glasses too. Do you find anything helps with eye strain for you when editing?

Quote from Sephiroth

sometimes you just need a fresh start, channels already doing well in 1 month, its good that your motivated now once again!

Thank you, I am honestly so thankful I went ahead with the decision. It felt like I was giving up on something solid but doing this has proven that the channel had ran its course.

Quote from Sephiroth

yea i just started streaming on twitch, started with youtube recently, twitch people expect hours at a time forsure

How long does it take for yours to typically get a group of people watching or is it typically fast if you have a following already?

Jesus that is so dodgy lol I remember years ago I was streaming on Streamlabs a 24 hour stream in background with looped content and I had a voice call using my PC and the entire conversation was being streamed, I looked at the stream during the call and saw someone say WTH is that talking, can you hear people talking and at that point I cut the cord lol so embarrassing but god we were pissing ourselves with laughing afterwards. Was such a stupid mistake. Imagine you decided to not get dressed and were just setting things up and practicing, like one of them Zoom calls in covid with workers being on camera accidentally in the nude at work 💀

Quote from Queen P

I am thinking this is what I need to have for my salon videos that are so easy to make every time and repeat with not taking lots of time as that is something I dont have

Honestly this is what I do, I have a video released every morning that is simple for me and so I can actually manage my work and life. If I didnt make repeatable content for this channel I would not get much done at all and spend ages developing new video formats. I feel like that I do keeps the channel for the business with a light on. It isnt ideal but its better than giving up or exhaustion AND it actually is helping the channel and business grow even if slowly

I would ask them if theyre happy with them being featured or make that a part of your booking process that clients understand their "finished" nails may be displayed and ask if theyre happy with the before images shown or videos. People LOVE before and after videos, I like seeing satisfying car cleaning videos, house cleaning videos etc I think it will work well showcasing your work but what would work even better is bringing them into your salon via video, making them feel at home, showing them behind the scenes even if you think its boring like sharing your day if youre off to purchase polishes or equipment, talking about hygiene at your salon, sharing photos even real prints of clients nails off via video like come check these clients nails out and having real photo prints to show off maybe. That may work.

Quote from Symph

You know its funny because I thought of myself as the flakiest youtuber in the world and believed I was the only one who kept making schedules and not following through and over diversifying my content, so I disappeared for 10 years and got myself mentally and physically together, came back and started really looking at my friends and other youtubers and suddenly realized "wait... almost everyone is like that to some degree or another. You're telling me I was just NORMAL???!!!" lol But I think my vision for what I gotta do is starting to become clear, I'm definitely just gonna ditch the old channel. I hate that but it is what it is, the gaming content is getting zero traction and they're good highlight reels. I think by next week I should be able to be on some kind of schedule. And yes, Adhd is bitch lol

It is a very usual thing on YouTube and why so many disappear, its like school. If you stay off once it can form a pattern then you feel silly coming back and then you do and then disappear again after 10 videos and feel bad for it and it can become a horrible cycle. The best thing anyone can do is stick at it regardless of how they feel etc even when videos perform bad. Its so easily to fall off the train and feel like you cannot get on again.

Quote from Symph

Yes! Overwhelmed is definitely what I'm feeling, I really think I need to stick to this gaming/reaction thing until I get somewhere, and I may need to drop instagram, it doesn't respond to the gaming content very well but tiktok does and I just don't have a song to play every day on IG. I could get there though.

TikTok is honestly so much easier to get followers than ANY other platform. Insta is hard I reckon, YouTube isnt as hard as Insta. As for the livestream platforms really unsure. I know Sephiroth streams so he may know if its fairly simple getting followers on Twitch etc

Quote from Symph

I shoot too straight to be trolling like that haha but honestly if I wanted to step into some serious controversy, all I'd have to do is give my honest opinions on some real topics and believe me, I'd get it!

Flamephonious7 lol

Quote from Symph

That's what Eklipse.gg claims it does, but I haven't been able to see any of my clips cause when I try to it wants me to pay for premium. Copilot keeps insisting that there's a way for me to get the clips without paying but I think the dang thing is hallucinating lol

Does the free version not display you an output video at all even watermarked or something?

Has anyone heard about this? I am only just coming across this today. It appears YouTube are removing "AI Slop" channels and even ones with AI generated voice. Is this because theyre not labelling the videos as AI generated and abusing that or do they just not want AI content:

I havent finished watching this but its interesting so far.

What do you make of this?

You record, you put your files on your PC and load the software up. You tell the AI software what you want and have a style/template of your usual editing and colour grading and let it know which mood you want and intended audience and maybe a few other things I have missed. The AI then automatically edits the video placing cuts where needed, removing dead weight from the video that would make the video not perform well and makes adjustments based on its knowledge of video editing and what people consume more of. It tweaks the sound so the audio is just right and adds captions in a style you like where wanted.

I dont believe it exists just yet sadly, but this is what I see them becoming over the next few years. Just imagine how much time will be saved and how productivity will shoot through the roof, you wont need to worry as much about watching what youve created back and picking at parts of it or thinking it could have been edited better.

Quote from Symph

I'm trying to find something that will auto caption all my videos and analyze to find where all the exciting bits are and cut out the rest, if I could have an already "almost done" video when I upload it into capcut it would be amazing, unfortunately the game I'm trying to make a series of right now is Fallout New Vegas and the site I wanted to use called Eklipse does not recognize that game. I also can't stream the game as it's crashed every time I've tried. I do consult with copilot about tags, upload times, titles etc... though that's becoming less necessary as I get a feel for what kinds of things it thinks work and what it doesn't.

I think thats the AI editor we all want but doesnt exist yet as far as I know. Wonder if skimmer will know if theres a software like that. Automating these things will help speed the process up so much allowing for more time recording.

Quote from Symph

I scheduled my first tiktok today and it performed about as well as expected. Well now that I look at it, it got 3 likes at 260 views, and my other videos of the same quality had between 8 and 10 likes, so the likes do indeed seem a bit lower but I can't imagine that would be because of scheduling it. I really need to schedule with the amount of stuff I'm trying to do right now but I suppose if I notice a trend I may try to upload at the right times manually.

I am wondering if its just the time as I was releasing at 6am, maybe I should just start scheduling for 9 as a test instead. I release 8pm UK on YT at the moment

I have just been thinking this. Say my new channel was to get 20 comments and in the morning after sleeping I reply to them similar to checking morning emails. Wont this harm the channel if the viewers then come back to reply and obviously only watch 20 seconds or so of the video actually replying? What are your thoughts on this? Should we be replying to commenters during the early growth of a video? I know this is thinking deep into stats and how actions can affect growth. Really curious if this actually has an affect.

I am finding this frustrating, it must affect early channel growth to some extent. I am not monetised on my new channel but YT have automatic mid rolls enabled for all videos and I have zero control over them showing. I have commenters saying they got mid rolls during the videos and I am left unable to control these at all. I really cannot wait until I am able to access the controls for them. Until then my viewers are stuck mid video with ads showing which is something I really do not want. It is like a new music channel having song interruptions. Very frustrating for the musician and listener.