You're currently at about 33k subscribers. Would you see yourself getting more serious about selling sponsorships on your channel once it reached 100k or even more subscribers? Or does that business model not interest you very much?
Sponsorships were never the reason behind starting our channel, and they aren't currently the reason why we make videos, but if the right sponsor came along that fit very well with the interests of our audience, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea.
I noticed you have a mix of longer videos that mostly consist of podcast episodes and then shorter standalone videos that are separate from the podcast. Do you see any disadvantages of mixing these two on the same channel? I know a lot of YouTubers will actually create a separate channel for the long podcast videos.
Yes, I've actually waffled back and forth on this over the years. I've heard this sentiment from others (that it's bad to mix these video types on the same channel) and there have been many times when I've chosen to keep podcast interviews off the channel. However, I've also found that when we have posted these, they oftentimes were VERY popular and got a lot of views (more views than the number of downloads from the podcast itself)... so the jury is still out on this.
It sounds like you're not doing much to monetize your YouTube channel directly, and that it's more of an audience growth channel. What's your main way of monetizing your audience? Is it through your blog? Your podcast?
There are a lot of small ways we monetize the various REtipster channels, but we try to keep all of these efforts very unintrusive, so people don't even hear a pitch until they've already received some BIG value for free. We're probably losing money by doing it this way, honestly, but it also helps our site uphold a high reputation for quality, which matters to me a lot. We monetize through minimal ad placement on the site, and skippable ads on YouTube. We also sell some one-off digital downloads, we have a few courses available on our membership site at REtipster.club and we do occasional affiliate promotions for various software, products, and services that are useful to our audience.
Great read Seth and thank you for all that you do!
Thanks, Alicia!
You're currently at about 33k subscribers. Would you see yourself getting more serious about selling sponsorships on your channel once it reached 100k or even more subscribers? Or does that business model not interest you very much?
Sponsorships were never the reason behind starting our channel, and they aren't currently the reason why we make videos, but if the right sponsor came along that fit very well with the interests of our audience, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea.
I noticed you have a mix of longer videos that mostly consist of podcast episodes and then shorter standalone videos that are separate from the podcast. Do you see any disadvantages of mixing these two on the same channel? I know a lot of YouTubers will actually create a separate channel for the long podcast videos.
Yes, I've actually waffled back and forth on this over the years. I've heard this sentiment from others (that it's bad to mix these video types on the same channel) and there have been many times when I've chosen to keep podcast interviews off the channel. However, I've also found that when we have posted these, they oftentimes were VERY popular and got a lot of views (more views than the number of downloads from the podcast itself)... so the jury is still out on this.
It sounds like you're not doing much to monetize your YouTube channel directly, and that it's more of an audience growth channel. What's your main way of monetizing your audience? Is it through your blog? Your podcast?
There are a lot of small ways we monetize the various REtipster channels, but we try to keep all of these efforts very unintrusive, so people don't even hear a pitch until they've already received some BIG value for free. We're probably losing money by doing it this way, honestly, but it also helps our site uphold a high reputation for quality, which matters to me a lot. We monetize through minimal ad placement on the site, and skippable ads on YouTube. We also sell some one-off digital downloads, we have a few courses available on our membership site at REtipster.club and we do occasional affiliate promotions for various software, products, and services that are useful to our audience.