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YouTube Creators Hub
How Brian Turned a Passion for Pokemon Into a YouTube Success Story
00:39:04
In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast, Dusty interviews Brian from the PokeNE YouTube channel. Brian shares his journey from Omaha, Nebraska, where he started numerous side hustles before finding success with a Pokemon card business....
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- [00:02]
Dusty Porter
Welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where we help you conquer the Internet.
- [00:07]
Brian
One video at a time.
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Dusty Porter
We cover everything from how to start.
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Brian
A YouTube channel to how to make.
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Dusty Porter
A video go viral.
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Podcast Announcer
And now, here's your host, the one.
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Dusty Porter
And only Dusty Porter.
- [00:19]
Podcast Announcer
Hello and welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where each and every Friday morning I sit down with a wonderful YouTube creator and I talk with them about their strategy, the things that they've done to succeed on YouTube. We have creators of all sizes. We have creators with just a few thousand subscribers, all the way up to tens of millions subscribers. And we've done this now for over a decade. We're brought to you today by our community. We have one of the fastest growing YouTube creator communities over on our Discord server. You can support us for five bucks over on our Patreon and get access to that group. Plus our monthly mastermind calls that I host over on Zoom. Those are some of the best ways to grow your YouTube channel. Getting together with other creators and you're doing it for five bucks a month, you cannot beat that price. Also, I offer professional YouTube one on one coaching. I do that each and every week and you can check the links down below to set up a time to work with me. I would love to help you on your YouTube journey. And then lastly, I just want to remind you that wherever and however you're listening to the show, please just hit that subscribe button. It's absolutely free. Leave us a review. If we've helped you in any way that does help the show grow, share it with someone who's starting or trying to grow or monetize a YouTube channel. That's probably the best way that you can even help the podcast out. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation.
- [01:39]
Dusty Porter
Hello everyone and welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. My name is Dusty, the host of the show. In this week's conversation we are joined by Brian from the Pokeyne YouTube channel. Brian is from Omaha, Nebraska, hence the name of the YouTube channel. Married to Andrea, who's been a pivotal part of his success. He's always wanted to escape the 9 to 5 life and because of that he started a ton and failed a ton of side hustles and businesses. Flipping stuff on ebay over the years was the only thing that worked and gave him the capital to invest in his first and only true business, a Pokemon card business. And he started during COVID in 2021 and provided cards directly from their suppliers in Japan. Then he got partnered with English distributors and grew to seven figure sales per year. He quit his cushy office job, probably in a corner office somewhere in real estate, and he never looked back. Now he's selling Pokemon cards, has a YouTube channel called Pokey in. No, that's not right. Pokey ne. And he's doing some really cool things over on YouTube. So I wanted to chat with him about what does it take to basically grow a channel on YouTube, not necessarily just in the Pokemon space, but in space that is pretty crowded. So we'll talk about that and all the different things that we're going to discuss today. But first, Brian, how are you doing and how did you start this thing? How did the channel come to come to be?
- [02:58]
Brian
I'm doing good. Firstly, thank you so much for reaching out to me. I. I've been listening to your stuff for, I think like since my first weird side hustle years and years ago. So I'm very excited to be here. But how did I start? I started exactly how I'd recommend not starting at least the Pokemon channel. And that's by using YouTube as kind of just a throwaway ground for like Instagram Reels and TikToks that I uploaded to those channels. So for my first year or so I was just kind of throwing stuff up on YouTube haphazardly. And eventually some of those videos took off and I started focusing. But as far as how I started, I'd start how I would not recommend starting now.
- [03:39]
Dusty Porter
What was the hardest part as far as getting the channel off the ground? Because you were kind of balancing two different things, right? You were balancing the business and trying to grow the Pokemon card business and the, the, the flipping and the things that you were doing alongside. Okay, now I want to be a content creator and I want to capture this kind of journey that I'm going on. So explain that to us. Just kind of maybe some of the difficulties early on.
- [04:03]
Brian
Yeah, so the hard parts early on. You know, I'm in a world where Pokemon is obviously extremely saturated online. It's actually the most highest grossing media franchise of all time right now. And so as you can imagine, there is a lot of competition. So the hardest part was just getting in front of the audience. I was looking for. With Pokemon, there are a few little factions. There's the folks that open up the booster boxes. You've probably seen a couple viral videos of people getting like the big first edition Charizard and people opening really expensive packs, expensive boxes with a lot more money and disposable income than I Had. So my biggest hurdle was to basically get in front of people's faces instead of them watching that expensive stuff. And so how I got around that was basically niching down to I don't just do Pokemon content, I do Pokemon business content. And I thought that having that like that niche of a, an audience, a Pokemon business audience, I thought that would probably hinder my growth. But apparently it's worked quite well. The riches and the niches thing is very true.
- [05:12]
Dusty Porter
So you believe that when you decided to not just cover just the Pokemon industry, because you're right, that is, as I mentioned, in the open, that's a very crowded space. There's people that they call them, you know, rip and shippers where they're basically live streaming themselves, opening the packs and then they're selling them for an outrageous amount. Then there's people who are just covering the, the just general, just opening cards and just explaining the new sets and just very hype based channels. And then there are channels like yours and other channels that are kind cropping up around what you're doing where they're covering the actual business aspect of what it means from, you know, to get the cards from the distributors and how do you get them out to the, into the consumers and how do the different sets affect kind of the economy of the overall Pokemon card market? And you just cover all of that. And so you believe that niching down into not just the Pokemon space, but into the Pokemon business space really helped you grow. And I would agree with that. So can you maybe expound on that as to why you think that was the case?
- [06:11]
Brian
Yeah, it100 is responsible for my growth. And that's because there's a lot of folks who really enjoy Pokemon and who have this dream of starting a Pokemon business. And so when I ever, when I ever, whenever I have a problem, I go to YouTube and search for a solution. So if I were to start a Pokemon card business, the first place I would go would be YouTube. And I'd look up, you know, Pokemon content creators and whatnot. And all I would find a few years ago was the people pulling the viral videos and getting all hype over a certain card. So I basically was like, what would I want if I was searching for how to start a Pokemon card business? There weren't a lot of folks that I would watch. I was watching other business content creators. I was watching your pod, listening to your podcast. So I was like, I need to make something that I would want to watch if I was brand new and niching down made it so that anyone searching how to start a Pokemon card business, they would find me before all the viral content creators opening the crazy expensive cards. You know, just picking a very specific element of the Pokemon world. It puts you at the top of every search engine when someone's typing anything other than finding a charizard in the Pokemon pack, you know, if they're searching to make money opening Pokemon cards, how to make money making Pokemon content, how to make money selling cards online, I'm going to be number one in those search results. So niching down was essential.
- [07:41]
Dusty Porter
Other than that, other than the niching down of getting into the business side of things, what would you attribute the success to? As far as maybe there are multiple things, maybe there's one, two or three things that you would say. Looking back, man, doing these few things really helped me stand out or really helped me grow at a. At a decent clip.
- [08:01]
Brian
So the number one thing that's helped me stand out was just the pure transparency I brought to the channel. I was one of the only folks that would talk about exactly how much money I make on both the YouTube ad revenue and also in the business. I wasn't afraid to shy away from profit margins. I wasn't afraid to shy away from how I found a distributor. I basically gave away every marketing secret I had for free on YouTube. No paywalls, no email lists, nothing. And that was probably the main thing that had me stand out. I think another part of it was just how brutally honest I was on the channel. The Pokemon content space is very. Has in the past been very like family friendly, cutesy, a lot of hype that wasn't necessarily authentic, just kind of for the camera. And I brought a personality that a lot of folks could consider negative at times, could consider harsh, you know, tough love. And I think that that was really. I think that was a really standout thing because most people in the Pokemon YouTube space, at least according to my analytics, are actually adults. Most of our audience is between 25 and 45 years old, so they don't necessarily want to see a grown man like me screaming when I pull a good card and acting more excited than I really am. They want to hear tough love. They want to hear the truth. They want. Want to hear brutal honesty and some takes that some people would consider hot takes. So I guess just appealing to that adult side of YouTube, kind of the silent majority almost. It. It was probably my main. The main benefactor of how I hit success.
- [09:39]
Dusty Porter
So did you watch, I mean, you obviously watched the other Pokemon channels, and so you Knew what types of personalities and kind of things that they were trying to do and so did you. I wouldn't say forcibly, but you obviously did this on purpose. You decided early on that you were going to be transparent. One of the most successful types of videos on YouTube right now, not just in the Pokemon space, is guess how much YouTube paid me for six months on YouTube. Right. Like that's the. Those videos are blowing up. They've been popular for the past, I don't know, say nine to 12 months. I watch them, you know, I, I fall into that trap as well at times and I'm like, you know, I want to compare kind of what I'm doing to what they're doing as well. But when you made that decision, was it just a research and reconnaissance of just like, okay, I know what people are getting right now. I know there has to be another audience set out there that wants this type of, you know, not so screamy into the microphone. This was your differentiator?
- [10:31]
Brian
Yeah, yeah. It was very, very much planned. And I did get some inspiration from some other YouTubers. Rudy has a channel called Alpha Investments. He focuses mostly on magic gathering, but he does touch on Pokemon frequently as well. And he's another person who was very like brutally honest about how the business works. Not always to make himself look good either. Like self deprecating is a big deal that I think really touches upon a lot of audiences, especially in this space. So yeah, I think it was all, it was all very much well thought out by me. Not so much in a cunning and manipulative way, but more like I would rather watch an honest, transparent person than someone just faking it.
- [11:12]
Dusty Porter
Agreed. 100%. How much has the YouTube channel and your content creation affected your business? And what I mean by that is that the conversations that you have on your YouTube channel oftentimes are going to be talking head videos where you're kind of talking about a different set that's just releasing or you're talking about a specific topic or a specific maybe product that's either going up or down or whatever it may be. Would you say that the sales not necessarily directly correlate with how well your YouTube channel is doing, but can you just talk about just the relationship between the content and the business side of things and how the YouTube channel has helped you kind of sell more in your business?
- [11:53]
Brian
Yeah, so there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of analytics that I can directly look to. I have a website built on the WIX platform. It's a Competitor of Shopify. And there's not a ton of analytics that say these people came directly from YouTube and made a purchase. One thing I can look at to see like a business effect from YouTube is YouTube now allows products to be linked to the bottom of your video. So you'll see a lot of creators with like, you know, merch and whatnot right below the video player. So I can at least see the analytics on those sales. But ultimately my main litmus test for how is my channel affecting my growth in my store is just all the comments I get in the orders themselves. If you've ever bought something online, there's always like a coupon code section and sometimes there's a notes section. There are a lot of people that just write a little note like, love your channel, came from the channel. Been watching you for months. Making my first purchase. I see a lot of that and it's kind of a good, it's a good indicator that I'm reaching the audience I'm trying to reach. Another big indicator on how like YouTube's affected my business directly would just be the, like the emails and phone calls I've received. There's a lot of folks who do want to start a Pokemon card business who watch me and I'm kind of the first place they go to as a source. You know, I have a distributor, so I'm a vendor, but they want me to be their distributor, basically taking bulk purchases for a lower price per item. And so I've been getting dozens of those emails over the past couple months, especially since really blowing up. So those are all good indicators that what I'm Talking about on YouTube is affecting the bottom line in more ways than just building my brand.
- [13:36]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, I wish there was a better way, like with like the Facebook pixel. When you run ads on Facebook, you're able to kind of track where those kind of clicks are coming from, even down to the specific video or post. I wish YouTube. I think in the future we'll see that kind of come down the line. But as far as analytics and data go, what analytics do you look at? What, what are kind of the metrics that you're looking at? And when you do look at those metrics, what are you taking note of and how are you applying that into kind of improving the channel?
- [14:04]
Brian
Yeah, so the YouTube metrics, I'm very much obsessed with like the click through rates. If the CTR is low, which I consider low, like below 10%, I tend to go straight to the thumbnail and try to redo that a Little bit. I also change the title around so the click through rates, my number one, I look at. I also like looking at the average viewer duration. That's pretty important to me because my videos are quite long. I ramble on a lot. You're probably thinking the same thing listening to this podcast. And so if I see an audience duration rate, you know, below 10 minutes, I go, okay, was I boring? Was I like talking about one topic for too long? How can I change that for my next video? And then as far as like analytics on the website go, just look quick little tldr. I look at email open rates and I look at basically how long each person stays on the site and how long they stay on each page. So very similar to the YouTube Analytics.
- [15:03]
Dusty Porter
When you're looking at the click through rate stuff, how does that, how has that affected your packaging over the years? And by packaging, I mean your thumbnail, your title, your description, what kind of evolutions has that taken and kind of what does it look like currently?
- [15:16]
Brian
It's had quite an effect on how I do things. So the thumbnail game is definitely the biggest. In my early days of YouTube, I would basically just let YouTube pick the thumbnail for me. Very amateur stuff. Then I started getting on Canva and I'd make a little, you know, 1920 by 1080 picture and I'd put some words on the bottom, but again, very amateurish. I actually started really observing like the professional Pokemon creators. There's Leonhardt Pokerev, a couple other big ones. And I was like, okay, they have really saturated and vibrant colors. They have this font, they have, you know, just a couple things in the picture, usually their face, because their face is the most recognizable part of their brand. And then a lot of them also have like the Pokemon logo or a Pokemon that everybody knows, like Pikachu, for example. So I looked at all, all the things they were doing and I was like, I can replicate that quite easily. So I went to Canva, I did all that. And then I also started using. I don't know if everyone has it yet, but YouTube has like a thumbnail comparison tool or something where you can throw up three different thumbnails. YouTube shows each thumbnail to different segments of your audience. The one that performs the best, YouTube chooses as the default. So I have become obsessed with just creating the perfect thumbnail. And every day I'd like to think I'm improving. And the title kind of the same thing. I wish YouTube allowed you to compare different titles. You can only title the video once and then you have to change it if you don't like it. But again, I've been observing what my competitors are doing, and I try to keep it under like, eight words because that's what a lot of folks say to do. But I do try to also get all the keywords in each title. So, like Pokemon being one, the particular set that we're talking about, like right now, the set's prismatic evolution. So I try to include that in there. And then something fully capitalized like, you know, are we in trouble? You know, troubles fully cat, whatever. A little clickbaity, but also accurate to what I'm discussing.
- [17:11]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, you have to really teeter on that line because you want your thumbnail to stick out. And. And I think that I went to your channel and I looked at kind of. I sorted by oldest and what's your kind of oldest videos first and saw kind of what you were doing and see where you are now. And you can just. It's fun to watch people's progression. I love doing it on my channel, even. I'll go back and I have videos that are 13, 14, 15 years old, and I'll listen to my voice and I'll say, man, that. That doesn't even sound like me. You know, just the progression of being able to get on camera. Speaking of kind of progression and on camera stuff, what would you say? Can you just lay out your full workflow as far as when you're producing a video? Everything from scripting all the way to kind of post publishing. What does your workflow look like as a creator?
- [17:52]
Brian
So I really don't like scripts. I've tried some scripts here and there in the past, and it sounds very unnatural to my own voice. So my process really is while I'm like, packaging orders or doing something monotonous, I constantly have my competitors on YouTube in the background, usually livestreams, because people can really ramble on those. And whenever they reach some kind of talking point that I know I could either discuss better or discuss for a long time, I just pick my phone up, I jot a quick note, you know, discuss taxes in Pokemon, discuss this in Pokemon. And then I go back to my day, and usually towards the end of the night is when I get, like, my creative juices flowing. I look at my list of things and I'm like, okay, I could. I could choose this topic at that point. I don't rehearse anything. I typically don't look anything up. I usually just set my tripod up and I talk. And I know that I'm going to repeat the same thing over and over again. I know that it's probably going to be rambly as I go, but in the back of my head I know, okay, about 5ish minutes into this video I said this, you know, this line was kind of dumb. I'm going to remember that. And then after everything's said and done, I get on Adobe Premiere Pro and you know, I'll go to those timestamps I kind of remembered in my head, I'll trim those up a little bit and then I just splice out the meh. I very much do all of this in my head and I've tried more official approaches, but they come out sounding very robotic and non authentic. So I think going back to our first topic of this podcast, like my authenticity and just straightforwardness, it's definitely one of my biggest competitive advantages and I think that comes through with just winging it as I go.
- [19:35]
Dusty Porter
What's the best piece of advice you've been given by another creator or another person that are trying was trying to grow their brand or your brand as.
- [19:43]
Brian
Far as content creation goes, the best piece of advice I've gotten has been very simple and that's lighting, just putting a light in front of the camera or behind the camera. So that helped me propel quite a bit of views. As far as building the brand, my biggest advice I got, I don't even know who to really attribute this to. Folks like you and Sean Cannell and Alpha Investments, Alex Hormozi, they're all very much clear that you have to have an actual passion for the topic and you can't fake anything because people in the comments can. They can sniff that out real easily. So basically, don't talk about something that you don't actually care about and don't think about it too much. You know, if you have a passion for something, it should be easy to talk about.
- [20:29]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And you know, being someone who, you know, I grew up with Pokemon myself, my daughter, my oldest daughter is kind of into it and has been and so it's something we share together. And so it's, it's fun to watch others like you talk about, you know, the business side of things because I'm, I'm super into entrepreneurship and business. And also to kind of have those two hobbies, not hobbies, but two topics kind of, you know, come together is a really cool thing to see kind of that market on YouTube get bigger and bigger as far as the money goes, because there is money being made. There is an obscene amount of money being made in the Pokemon space, especially the card space. So with that being the case, do you mind just breaking down kind of what you make on average per month? And you can break it down as far as just like, you know, content and then the businesses here and then the different buckets and different avenues that you're able to make money through.
- [21:20]
Brian
Yeah. So there are, I'd say about three sources of income in my Pokemon business. Number one would be the YouTube ad revenue. And for the past, I think like five months, we've gone north of 2200amonth in ad revenue. Last month we did only 1800 because I went on a vacation. That kind of killed it a bit. But this month we're on, on a Track to do 3,000. So that'll be our biggest month yet in ad revenue. So that's actually like very good money that I didn't anticipate. I built this channel to essentially market my brand, not to make money on it. So that's been nice. The store itself, we, we gross about 300 to 325k per month. And after everything said and done, like the net net margins, about 10 to 11%. So every month will, you know, net about 25, $35,000 depending on if there's like a new set that comes out. And then as of, actually as of about three weeks ago today, I've been paying myself Poke any has been paying Brian $12,500 as a paycheck. And that's because me and Andrea are looking to get like a new house. And on paper, I wasn't really making a lot of money just based on how we did taxes. So. So yeah, so YouTube roughly 25 to 3,000amonth. The business 25,000 to 30,000 ish a month. And then our third thing of income would be like sponsorship deals, which I recently worked with a streaming platform and I can't disclose the exact amount per month, but it was good enough to pay for a nice car. Every month we'll say or a couple. It was a good deal and that lasted a few months and I probably will be working with them again. So those three things combined, it's, it's enough diversity where if one kind of is, is looking bad, the other two keep me balanced and allow me to pay myself.
- [23:12]
Dusty Porter
Do you use any AI tools in your business? I love having this new conversation because they've been. People are all the time asking me via email or in our, in our group on Discord, our creators community, they'll ask me, they'll say, what new tools are you using and what new kind of bells and whistles are helping you kind of make your work more efficient? Is there anything that you can think of and just maybe a couple things that you've used recently that you're just like, man, this technology is amazing.
- [23:38]
Brian
Yeah, it's pretty cool. The main thing I use AI for almost every, almost every couple days is just more video ideas. I'll just say, hey, I own a Pokemon card business. Give me some ideas to talk about in a video. And it spurts out, you know, 12 to 20 of them. And I usually pick one or two. And that goes along with what I talked about earlier on how to decide on topics. Another thing I use AI for, I've done it before with like scripts. Like I said, I don't do a lot of scripts, but I experimented with a format where I basically set a camera up on our ceiling and watch us work. It's kind of like a POV shot of like behind the scenes, us packing orders and whatnot. And then I had Chat GPT write me a script about general business tips, like give me 10 business tips on how to run a successful brand, whatever. And you know, I made that script and then of course I edited it and personalized it and then I read it kind of as with B roll of me working and that format worked okay. It's actually quite good at making scripts. So especially if you're doing some kind of B roll related video, I'd highly recommend looking into it. And then I guess technically AI too would be opus. It's like opus clips. And what that is is you upload a podcast like this one, for example, and then the AI somehow knows when to make cuts for short videos. So it might cut every question that you ask and then my answer and it'll turn that into like a one minute short and then you can title it yourself. It also writes its own titles which are decently accurate. And then you can export those short videos and post them as like YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. So that's been pretty useful in both generating more subscribers and also getting more people to discover my channel. And then click on the related video button and then seeing the full podcast. So yeah, I've you.
- [25:25]
Dusty Porter
I've used opus a lot early on. It was, I've kind of partnered with them and it was kind of one of those things to where, you know, it would, the clip would be good, but I would want to retitle it. But that's A really good way. I use Opus, I use descript, which is another kind of podcast editing, video editing type tool. But honestly, now when you talk AI, almost every tool you use is incorporating it in some way. And I always tell creators, you know, try not to get left behind. I mean, you really, I know sometimes you're, you're a little bit fearful of it or whatever it may be, but if you embrace it, it can really help you and really kind of take some time and make your workflow that much more efficient. A question I want to ask you is this, Bryant. Do you think it's possible to start and grow a YouTube channel in 2025 and beyond? I mean, what, what, what are your thoughts on that as far as just the overall space that we're in? If someone's listening to this right now and they, they have a hobby and they're like, oh man, Brian is into Pokemon. Like, I'm into gardening or whatever it may be, is it possible to start and grow a channel now? And. And if the answer to that is is yes, can you kind of just expound upon that?
- [26:24]
Brian
Yeah. So I think a fun thought experiment or, or just experiment in general would be going to YouTube and finding old videos in this space where people ask that same question, because that question's been asked for years. And, you know, you'll see an interview at Think Media or something on YouTube from like 2019 and they'll ask the same question. And then you have to think about how many creators exist between 2019 and today and go, oh, that was silly that they thought YouTube would die in 2019. The same is true now. You know, my channel, I went from, I think, like 2,000 subscribers at the beginning of 2024 to 40 something thousand today. And that was just with the help of Focus. I didn't do anything too crazy or too special. I just focused on YouTube. And so if you actually focus and put effort into whatever genre you're in, you absolutely can get quite big, quite fast. And even if you have to grind a little bit, you will reach your goals. It is absolutely not too late. If anything, it's a better time than ever where there's more people online than there ever have been before. All the Gen Alpha and Gen Z kids are, you know, they have their smartphones now and they're constantly connected. Like, there are probably more people on the Internet per hour than ever before, so absolutely not too late.
- [27:40]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. That's such a good statement because you're right. People are so Connected even to our detriment at times, I believe. And so I agree with you. I think that people just want something now. They, you know, I have coaching calls where people tell me all the time, you know, I've been doing this for six months now, Dusty, why, why am I not growing? And yes, some channels are going to grow faster than others. How did you manage the expectations and not get too down on yourself? Because I was reading a book a couple of months back and basically the premise in this book was is that the way that you grow, compound interest is, you know, 25 cents at a time. It's a consistent deposit of little bitty things that you do every day. It's not necessarily the things. The things have to be good and the systems have to be good, but it's just the depositing every day, every single day, you doing these things. And I could not agree more with that. If you want to succeed on YouTube right now in 2025, you have to record videos every week. You have to be consistent with your uploads. You have to consistently look at your data and get better at your thumbnails and your packaging and your videos. How important is that? What would you say to that statement?
- [28:49]
Brian
Yeah, it's 100% vital. And, you know, I manage my expectations by not really looking at the analytics, but by looking at my behavior. So I expected myself to make four to five videos per week, which I realize is quite extreme, but in order to, you know, if you're making that much content per week, you are going to get better and better at it. Two months in, you've already made, you know, dozens of videos. So my expectation wasn't so much looking at the analytics. The only analytics I looked at when I started was how many times did I upload this week? And that's how I stayed proud of myself. Easy as that.
- [29:28]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, that's a good, That's a good metric in that looking. I. I have a spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet where I just keep up with all of my YouTube data. I'm merging it into a notion page now because I feel like notion is kind of a better way of doing that. But for the past eight years, it's really cool. I can go and look at my data for my YouTube channel. And in the spreadsheet, one of the columns is videos uploaded. And there is a direct correlation of. There was a. Basically a whole during COVID right when Covid hit, because my. My family was home. I have kids. I mean, there were seven or eight months where I Uploaded maybe three or four videos that entire time because I was spending time with my family. The ad revenue was good because of the videos and the work that I had done prior. So in, in terms it was a sense of passive income. But then there's a correlation of that next year and almost two years after that, the impact really hit my channel and the growth really stalled. Thankfully, I've realized that and have, you know, since then I've upload like you on a very regular cadence. Same goes for this podcast. If you want to grow a podcast, you can't miss every other week you've got to upload. People want you in their ears as they're cleaning the house, as they're walking around. And so I could not agree more that that consistency of knowing, hey, making sure you're uploading, making sure you're getting better and stop looking at all the noise.
- [30:42]
Brian
Yeah, 100%.
- [30:44]
Dusty Porter
So listen, Brian, you have a really amazing channel and business. I mean, not just necessarily the monetary side of things, but just as far as the creation and videos. You know, you're really building an audience. How do you capitalize when you have a video go really well? You had one go really well about a week ago talking about a topic that was a hot topic in the space that you're in. How do you capitalize on that now that you have an influx of new people?
- [31:12]
Brian
Yeah, well, one thing I wish I would have done in that particular video to capitalize on it would be I'm trying to keep my website, pokeanie.com on like the bottom corner of a video so when I do have one blow up, they can directly visit the site. But you know, since a video as big as that one blew up, I realized I should be putting my websites in every single pinned comment. Obviously I have that in the description as well. For the new folks that have come in, I've tried to make a bunch of YouTube shorts, kind of welcoming the new members and also redoing a lot of my content from like a year or two ago where I only had like 1500, 2000 subscribers. And I've said that in disclaimers in some of my videos. Like, hey, I know I've already discussed this topic, but I've got a huge new audience and a lot of those folks haven't heard this before. So we're going to go through it again. So just trying to basically make those new people feel included, like they feel like they've been here from the start because a lot of folks don't go back to someone's channel and look back two years ago, they only listen to the new stuff. So I'm trying to use what I already have to kind of like capitalize on. On my newfound, you know, fame or whatever.
- [32:19]
Dusty Porter
Yeah, I. It's interesting. Whenever I've had a video do well, or I'll just use this podcast, for instance, we have certain episodes, depending on the guests that do better than others, we get a baseline amount of downloads, which for, in the podcasting space is. Is a really good number. But there are certain guests that it just explodes. And if. If you really are intricate about what you're doing and you're really dedicated to looking at, okay, I know this episode is going to be a really good one. We're going to have new people come in. How do we retain those people so that. Then it's a retention thing of, okay, I want to make the most out of the success that I'm having. And it happens for small creators, too. People who are trying to grow a YouTube channel, they say to me all the time, well, I don't get this many views, but then they're averaging like 30 views. But they had one that had like 200. Well, what are you doing when you had that 200 view video? Because not only can you capitalize there, but I'm sure you know this, Brian.
- [33:13]
Podcast Announcer
When you have a video do well.
- [33:15]
Dusty Porter
In the YouTube algorithm, the next successive videos that you do have a tendency to be pushed out more because of what happened in that specific video. And so taking note of that and capitalizing on that is a really big thing. And so I could not agree more with, with. With what you're saying. Last question here, and this is one that I haven't asked very many people. It's. It's a new question. I've been really doing a kind of an audit of the podcast, and I want to ask people what questions do they want me to ask creators on the show. And one of the things that people have. Have. Have connected with me and, and reached out about is what makes a good video? Like what. What types of things keep people's attention in. In 2025 going forward? You know, is it. Do you have to hook them in the first three or four seconds? Like all the YouTube gurus and experts say, what. What are the things that make a good video?
- [34:05]
Brian
So I've learned that at least in my particular niche over editing and making something fancy and complicated, absolutely does not help at all. What makes a good video to me is just being very much authentic and confident in what you're saying, I think the YouTube guru advice of the hook in the intro, I think that's also good. I again, in my genre, you can ramble on very, very easily. And so what I like to do when someone clicks on the thumbnail, the title is I like to do exactly what the gurus say. I repeat what they clicked on. If it says how to make money in Pokemon card business in 2025, I straight up say that exact sentence in the very beginning and then I introduce myself in the next sentence. There's a lot of folks who do the opposite. And the problem with that, you know, telling people who you are and then introducing the topic. Unless you're already famous, most people don't know who you are, so they want to know the topic first and then they'll listen to you for credibility, for example, and that's another big one that I think makes a good video, is, are you credible on what you're talking about? So it's kind of become a meme on my channel. But I say my little spiel, I have a seven figure Pokemon card business, blah, blah, blah. And then I show some sales charts and graphs that confirm that so they know that my business advice is actually valid. So, you know, credibility is important. Telling people that they're in the right place is super important. And just keeping them engaged in a way that doesn't necessarily take a lot of editing. I've made some very fancy vlogs over the years and all sorts of cuts and different scenes. You know, we're at the gym now, we're in the kitchen now we're driving to the post office. And those videos just don't do as well. And it's because what makes a good video isn't necessarily all the noise, it's the content itself. And that can be delivered just face to camera. What I found the best videos are for me are the long ones where I just talk. I've been told I have a calming voice. I don't know if that's true, but I noticed that's how I consume YouTube as well. Like if I'm working, if I'm doing orders, if I'm driving, whatever. I go to my favorite creators, I play their stuff, I don't even look at the video. I don't know if they're in their house, their car, their mom's basement. I just listen to them as if it's a podcast. And I don't know if that's like how YouTube is kind of leaning nowadays, but everyone I listen to very Rarely do I actually look at my phone screen. So as long as you're talking and you have a. A good topic, I think that's the most important thing.
- [36:37]
Dusty Porter
The two ways that people are consuming YouTube right now are exactly the two ways that you said. Me personally, I consume YouTube just how you do. I put on my favorite creator, I listen to it almost like a podcast on my walk around the house as I'm doing things, whatever it may be. Now there's another way which is really rising is on tv, where people are going, their favorite creators and they're watching these really highly edited vlogs or whatever it is, and they're putting it on their TV and they're actually consuming it like old school media back in the day, as if it was a TV channel. And then there's still the, you know, my channel is based off tutorials. And so there's still the how to content, which probably people wouldn't realize is probably one of the main ways that people views that come in through YouTube every day on a daily basis. I would say how to and educational stuff is still at the very top because that's the main way. And I think we're going to see that even stay consistent and rise even with AI as chat, GPT and other AI tools give you the directions of what you're asking it. They'll also start pinning those, those YouTube videos which I've seen happen recently. And I think that we're going to see that happen as well. So, Brian, you've been an amazing guest. Thank you so, so much for being willing to come on the show today. And by the way, I had no idea that Brian listened to the podcast. I just discovered him. Just when I do my research of kind of the people that I want to bring on the show. I discovered his channel, his video had a video do really well. So I reached out to him and I'm so thankful that you're willing to come on the podcast. And I cannot wait to see kind of what your channel is going to do in the future.
- [38:02]
Brian
Yeah, thanks for having me. I was super stoked when I saw the email. I was like, oh, let's do it next week. So I appreciate that, really appreciate the subscribe the views and the invite. This was great.
- [38:12]
Dusty Porter
Awesome. All right, guys, again it's Brian over at the Pokeyne YouTube channel. Definitely go check them out as you're listening to this to kind of relate what we were talking about. And Brian, we'll talk to you next time. Hello everyone and thank you for listening.
- [38:24]
Podcast Announcer
To this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I really do appreciate it.
- [38:29]
Dusty Porter
Don't forget you can subscribe to the.
- [38:31]
Podcast Announcer
Show for absolutely free and your podcast player of choice.
- [38:35]
Dusty Porter
Also, there are ways you can connect with us. You can support us by supporting our sponsor TubeBuddy, as well as supporting us over on Patreon to get access to.
- [38:44]
Podcast Announcer
Our creator Discord community.
- [38:46]
Dusty Porter
And I also offer YouTube coaching and consultation, YouTube channel reviews and just overall business coaching if that's something that you are wanting to look into. So make sure you check us out there and we'll see you next week.