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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where each and every Friday I sit down with a wonderful content creator and I break down what makes them successful, how they've grown their creator business, and the ins and outs of what it takes to succeed as a creator. And so today is no different. I'm joined by Clayton Morris, a wonderful guest, someone with huge experience as a creator. But before we get started, I just want to say really quickly, you will not hear any sponsors or ad reads here on the podcast. I'm just going to tell you briefly about about the things and services we offer to creators. Number one, I offer one on one coaching. Number two, we have a creator mastermind group which is five to ten bucks to get in and I believe one of the best bangs for your buck in the creator space. Next we have our YouTube channel review and audit service where I record a screencast video showcasing your channel, where I believe you should be spending your time. And then lastly, a couple other free things. We have an email newsletter where you can keep up with my business and what I have going on. And then lastly, the Entrepreneurs Toolbox, which is just a running spreadsheet of every link, tool or resource mentioned here on the podcast. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the Creators Hub podcast. I'm joined today by Clayton Morris, who is a former Fox News anchor turned independent journalist. He owns multiple YouTube channels, including his nearly 3 million subscriber channel known as redacted news, that is r e d a c cted news. He also has a another channel affiliated with the Redacted brand. And then he also has a hobbyist gaming channel that has almost, I think it's a hundred thousand subscribers if not very soon. And so Clayton obviously has had his fingertips in the creator space for a long time and has done very well. So Clayton, how are you doing today?
- [01:54]
B
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, I don't usually do a lot of interviews. I almost do none of them. But when you reached out, I said I love talking to YouTube and I think it's an interesting shift that's happening right now on YouTube. So if I can help creators out there and just have a discussion about it, I'm happy to do it. So thanks for inviting me.
- [02:11]
A
I'll be honest, when I sent you the email, I wasn't nothing against you, I wasn't expecting a response. I try never to get excited or try to get ahead of myself. But when I saw the response and that you had scheduled the date to have the conversation, I'm really excited. I know we only have got a little short window here, so I'm just going to dive into it, if that's okay with you.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah.
- [02:28]
A
So Redact is the name. Redacted News is the name of your main YouTube channel. 2.85 million subscribers as of recording this podcast, almost 5,500 uploaded videos. You do multiple video uploads a day. Can you let my audience know the story behind that channel? How did that channel come to be?
- [02:45]
B
Well, it kind of got rebranded because I had it for a number of years and then Covid hit and then I was living in Europe at the time and had about a five hour jump on the east coast, you know, to do a morning show. And I come from the morning television business. And I said, you know, I'm seeing so many lies that are being perpetrated on people about what's happening. Just all sorts of fake information that was coming out of Italy, just, you know, around the COVID vaccine, all of these things, right? And I started doing a morning show, focused at the time, I just called it Morning Invest and realized that all of the stories I was covering on that show are. A lot of them were largely redacted content. Meaning there was one day I said, you know, I did, I just did a story here about Pfizer and their, their court case, and most of their documents were totally redacted because they were trying to hide the truth about their, you know, their phony COVID vaccine from people. Right? That all that information has now come out. And the only reason it came out is because of a court case. At least at the time. They were trying to hide it for 75 years. And so I was literally like looking at their documents all redacted. And then we did another story about something regarding UFOs and that was redacted. I was like, that's the name of the show. We need to change it. It's not about investing in the morning. It's about, like, this is really what it's about. It's about getting. And I, I spent, you know, nearly 20 years in the mainstream media and they lie by omission. You know, it's what they don't tell you that's also a lie. It's their convenient propaganda and narrative. So now I don't work for anybody. I work for myself. And I can tell you, you know, I don't have to answer to anybody. And that's What I cover on the show, we don't, we're, you know, we're not Democrats, we're not Republicans. We think the unit party is evil and that's what we cover on our show. And so there's, you know, 100 million Americans that just, that don't vote at all because they're, they think of all of these parties as corrupt and they are. And so I think that's, that's kind of our sweet spot. That's what we focus on is the news that the mainstream media really won't cover. And then, and then my wife joined the show. She's a journalist and I said, you know, you've got to join this. Like you've, you've got to be a part of the show because she's a great journalist. She started as a newspaper reporter back in the day. She's a great researcher, an excellent researcher. She's been, you know, researcher on multiple books for some big name professors and stuff. So you got to join the show and she did. And then that's when that's kind of been the way we've been for the past, I guess five years now really for unredacted.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah, I just, I'm so impressed at just the consistency and just how you guys upload multiple videos a day. You're staying ahead of the game and talking about really hard topics and sometimes controversial topics. And obviously that's one of the things that probably makes it tick. Now when you decided to make the transition to take this show to, to be redacted, was there a moment early on where you said to yourself, okay, this thing probably has legs and this thing is going to take off and it's going to, this can be my full time gig.
- [05:41]
B
Yeah, I just knew we were hitting on something. So many people, they swallow CNN or Fox News or any of the other fake like corporate media that feeds them a spoon fed narra every day. And there's a lot of people who have awakened. I think Covid was really a tipping point for a lot of people that they had been lied to big time by their governments, by their mainstream media. The collusion. When you See like Anderson Cooper360 brought to you by Pfizer, it's like, wait a second, okay, are you giving me the truth? So I, I knew and then once we really started and it was really the start of the Russian war in Ukraine when you just saw all of these like Ukrainian flags being put up all over Portugal and Europe and in bus stops and train stations and stuff, you know, who's paying for that? And you real, oh, there's so much more to the story. And once we really started diving deep and covering that was really at the beginning of the war. We're covering all of the lies and the CIA backed coup that led to this war from 2014 in Ukraine and all of it. And once we started putting out this information and you have, you know, bot attacks and you get like banned and blocked by YouTube, I mean they come after you big time. But we knew we were hitting on something because people were saying thank you for doing this, we can't get this from our mainstream media. And then we just got flooded and then that's when we exploded is because honestly the truth works. So it was really the truth that like changed everything for us.
- [07:03]
A
What do you think has changed the most in five years when you started seriously taking on redacted up until now in 2026 and beyond on YouTube? What do you think has been some of the biggest changes?
- [07:15]
B
There's obviously. Well, a couple of things. It's a great question because for one that we sit here at the beginning of 2026 and I can tell you just, I'm going to go through a couple things. Number one, just at a granular level, the YouTube's terms of service has, has shifted. So we back. It's amazing, they've done 180 degree turn on certain things like the COVID vaccine. So when we were reporting on all of the adverse events and all of these things that were happening with this, it's not even a vaccine but you know, you know what I mean? This fake COVID vaccine, we were reporting on this and we had to be very careful about YouTube's terms of service. Even the day we were reading Pfizer's own documents, we got banned. YouTube said medical misinformation and we got banned for like two weeks and we weren't able to upload, we weren't able to make a community post, we weren't able to do anything. And then a few months later YouTube, after all of the information started coming out about the publicly, more publicly, they reversed their terms of service. 180% as you probably know. So you couldn't say before that the. I forget they reversed it. I'm trying to remember exactly. But initially it was you couldn't say that the COVID vaccine wouldn't stop the spread. Right? And then they switched it and said you couldn't say that the COVID vaccine could stop the spread of COVID Like they literally did a 180 degree flip. And it was amazing. They did it overnight. And we asked them, we're basically like, hey, you guys banned us for two weeks. So you guys want to give us, you know, our channel monetization that you want to give us these things back that you took away from us for two weeks by the way. Like, so a lot of things shifted on YouTube from like a terms of service perspective. They've now like, they were bland, they were blocking a lot of people who were telling the truth about the government and now they've rolled that back. A lot of channels that were blocked and banned have now been allowed to come back for telling, telling the truth. We've had doctor friends, some of the top cardiologists in the world who were banned. These people have like more peer reviewed published articles, medical articles in medical journals. And so they were allowed to come back. So just from like a granular like terms of service thing that has changed. The other big change I've noticed in the past like five years is oh, and I should mention, you know, we've hit millions of subscribers. They should have sent us a gold play button and because we got banned, they refused to send us a gold play button. If you've ever had a community strike on your channel, they won't send us a gold play button. So I'm stuck with this back here which is their, you know, the Silver Play. A hundred thousand subscribers. So hey, YouTube, send, you know, you reversed your terms of service. Send me my gold play buttons on my multiple channels. It's ridiculous. Anyway, another big thing that's changed is shorts. And you know, we do a daily live show every day at 4pm Eastern time. So I've seen shorts now they're really pushing shorts as like top content on the homepage and I can't stand it. I mean I, I can't tell you how many times I go on there and I click do not show me shorts. And then like the next day the shorts are back. I'm like, I told you, don't show it to me on my homepage. I don't want to see shorts. So we've personally shifted. I noticed they're during the holidays. Maybe creators can use this to their benefit. During the holidays we pre recorded a bunch of really long form deep dive conversation interviews and like hour and a half long conversations. And during the, during the holiday season we published one per day and range of topics like how LED lights are incredibly damaging to the human body and like all so interview with an expert on that. You know, an Interview on whatever. So. But those did really well during the holidays. Then we come back and start doing our live show again and what we do is we chop up our four segments in our live show and we release them. They're usually like 10, 15 minutes long and we publish them every day and they, they just have not done as well. So that like 15 minute range for. I think there's a real salivation right now or a real, like salivation is the wrong word but like a real desire for long form conversations and content. And more and more of our audience is sitting there at a TV and they want to sit and watch an hour to two hours of content in an interview on their television, on their couch and then they have the big push for shorts. So I think that middle ground is being squeezed in my opinion. I've noticed that definitely over the past few years for sure.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah, I think I agree with everything that you just said about the formats and how it's shifted over time. I was always against shorts, I just has. Have always been against consuming them because I know the doom scroll and you're just swiping endlessly and are you really getting anything out of it other than a quick dopamine hit? But I have shifted more towards them as I realized the benefits of them. But I love what you mentioned about doing the live stream, chopping it up. And I do know as a podcaster, people love to hop on YouTube and pull up an hour long video and listen to it as they're doing other things. They're using it as people used to listen to podcasts back in the day. And so I completely agree with that now as far as YouTube itself and the platform, what is working on YouTube right now? You just mentioned a bit about formats and shorts and vertical video, but from your perspective at a very high level. And you have obviously folks working with you and working for you, helping you curate this content strategically. What are you guys doing in 2026 and going forward to optimize the channel and to grow it as, as best you can.
- [12:55]
B
One of the things that I. It's been on my mind so much and I'm really, it's. I struggle with it, but I'm really trying in 2026. I've talked with my team, David on my team and Philip on my team about how we can push, how we can really do longer form evergreen content interviews. Yeah, we know we've been flying individuals here to the studio. You know, it's expensive, but okay. I want to have that face to face personal connection in our studio, two hour long interviews and I really think that that's what we're focused on. It's the evergreen content because you know, we're news of the day, right? Like yesterday, I don't know when people are going to listen to this show, but like yesterday on our show, Reuters is reporting that within 24 hours President Trump is going to launch an attack against Iran. And then last night as we're going to bed, it seems like that got stopped. Putin backchannel discussions, you know, like all of this, like last minute stoppage of it maybe. Well, you know that won't happen. Maybe 48 hours, who knows. But then, so two weeks from now, someone's probably not going to want to watch that, right? It's out of date. So the long form evergreen content has done really, really well for us. If I look at our analytics and I see the content that over the past couple of months has done really well. It's interviews about topics that have nothing to do with like time and date right now, an interview I did about or a discussion or a segment that I did about how damaging Lasik, Lasik eye surgery is and how the industry has gone to great lengths to hide all of the adverse events as it relates to Lasik eye surgery. Like that video, it's not ever. It's evergreen. So it's just it continues to do well or deep, you know, long form interviews. I did a deep dive interview with jp who's who came forward as a whistleblower in the US Air, US army whistleblower, part of the secret space program, been to the moon base like might be mind blowing to some people, but when you go through and see his documents and understand that he's been in the dark and trying to come forward for a long, long time. So I did an interview, a two part interview with him right before the holidays and that's Evergreen. That'll continue to do really, really well. So yeah, Evergreen long form content has been my focus and maybe I'm wrong, but I think, I think people want that.
- [15:07]
A
I interrupt the conversation for just 30 seconds to tell you about two things that we're offering creators right now. Number one is our YouTube channel review and audit service. If you'd like another set of eyes to take a look at your channel, I'll do this personally and record a screencast video telling you where I think you should be spending your time. That way you make the most of the time you're spending on your creator business. And then lastly, our creator mastermind group, it is over 150 creators strong. It is a place where you can discuss and talk YouTube all throughout the day. We have Mastermind calls that I host on Zoom every month, exclusive podcast recordings weekly. It is one of the best bangs for your buck in the YouTube space. So just take a look at the show notes and you'll see everything that we offer to creators. And now back to the show. Yeah, I love Evergreen content. My main channel, one of my main channels is a tutorial based channel where I do technology tutorials and reviews and I have videos that, that get views for 5, 6, 7, 8 years down the line just because of just the helpfulness of them and the educational nature. I love podcasts like what we do here. This can be very much Evergreen is where it continues to work for you over time. Whereas what you're doing mainly on the redacted channel up to this point is just really reacting to what's happening, what's coming down the pipeline, which is kind of what you cover in the live show. Now, as far as monetization, how are you able to, to make money from what you're doing? Can you talk about the different buckets and avenues you're able to make money with your YouTube channel? I would assume talking about some of the topics that you talk about, it can get a little bit. You kind of have to tiptoe around certain things, I would assume. But what are ways that you are able to monetize and make money as a creator of at your scale?
- [16:48]
B
Mostly, you know, obviously YouTube monetization, YouTube ads. Of course, we do not turn on those live ads during the live stream. I find them invasive. In fact, YouTube yesterday just sent a survey to me asking like, why don't you, you use YouTube Live ads during your show? And I said, I find them intrusive. Our audience finds them intrusive. And it asked, you know, are you worried about losing viewers during that? Yes. So. So we don't. So, you know, and I would say our live stream from a monetization perspective probably, you know, is like a fr. A very, like a smaller fraction of our overall revenue. Most of our revenue comes from just publishing our actual videos to the channel. We also are partners with Rumble. So we're on Rumble. We live stream to Rumble every day. And so we have, you know, we have that, that additional monetization, which has been great. And I would actually say a large portion of our audience is now live on Rumble with us rather than even on YouTube during the show like we on during our live streams. We'll have anywhere from like 10 to 20, 20, 15,000 live with us on YouTube and then on rumble, we'll have like 15 to 20, sometimes 25,000 on rumble. That's simultaneously, you know, so 40, 40ish live. Thousand live with us every day. So the live stream is a piece of it. The other. And then of course the. Yeah, and in fact, my, my producer David saying 10 or 15%. So 15 of us, 15 of the. Of the revenue comes from our live streams. And then we also stream live on X every day as well, simultaneously. And we have about 10,000 people that, you know, give or take, watch us live there. So it's kind of like monetization buckets all around. But then we bring in, we have an advertiser, we have a couple of different advertising agencies that we work with who sell, you know, like three to four ads live during our show that align with our brand, that align with who we are, natural brands.
- [18:44]
A
And those are just reads like you're just reading those like you would on a podcast, as throughout the show.
- [18:49]
B
And it's mostly ad libbing, but in my own voice or Natalie's own voice, my wife who does the show with me, we split the ad reads throughout the show. We usually try to do it in between guests. So if we've got like, let's say we've got like a senator on the show at the top of the show, like Senator Rand Paul or something after about 15 minutes with him. Thanks, Senator. Great having you on the show. Hey, coming up, we're gonna do this, talk about this, but first we're gonna tell you about this, you know, this sponsor.
- [19:14]
A
Yeah.
- [19:15]
B
And we try to keep it to like 45 seconds and then we go to the next story. So, yeah, ad reads and just YouTube and rumble monetization and X monetization. We just got, you know, monetized on X as well. So, you know, you have to be diverse. I mean, because, you know, you're up against the behemoths, you know, you're up against like the, the mainstream media money and all this. And so it's hard. It's hard out there for independent creators, for sure.
- [19:38]
A
Yeah, you have to diversify it in a way. And I was going to ask you about X if you're able to monetize over there. And so obviously you answered my question there. So I would assume with close to 40,50,000 cumulative views on a live stream on a show, which, you know, you guys are doing daily, those ad reads in those sponsors, do you normally sell those slots out monthly or weekly or quarterly. And what would you say on average one of those spots could pay you for a show that has that large of a reach?
- [20:07]
B
That's a great question. I'd have to dive more deeply into the numbers. But some, some of them we sell yearly. We'll have a, you know, assigned a couple of. But we have for the year I know at least two of them were lined up for the, or like three or so were lined up for the year. A lot of the agencies, the few of the agencies that we work with, they love selling stuff for, for the year or six months, you know, in, in, in large batches. It's never very, almost never do we do like a one off kind of an ad read. Because you need to build brand loyalty. And I can see just from like one of our sponsors and they're, they'll pay like a few thousand dollars per spot. From what I think I have to go through the numbers but, but they want to build brand loyalty and then you'll start to see in the comments. For instance like one of our sponsors, Bearskin, they make like awesome hoodies and stuff and they're you know, they support veterans groups as well and I'm a huge fan of them. And so we've been, we've been talking about them since like October. Their hoodies are fantastic. And now I see in the comments people are like I got one for my grandson for Christmas. He loves it. You know, and you just see people. So you can't just do a one off ad. I just don't find that that really works for companies. Like I think you need to if they become part of your favorite show every day, like hey that, that brand supports my favorite show. I'm going to buy the dog food that they like, you know, the natural dog food that they use because they support my favorite creator. So the builds that kind of brand loyalty.
- [21:30]
A
If you were starting a YouTube channel today, what would be your strategy from scratch?
- [21:38]
B
You know, I think evergreen content and I, I, you know another big shift I've been seeing is I think the, they're going YouTube. Yes, they're pushing shorts big time but they're also pushing longer form you content putting the you back in YouTube which is no editing. I'm just an old, I'm an old guy in a rocking chair telling you why you need to be a man.
- [22:03]
A
You know, like yeah, I saw a video just like that came up in my for you page or my home feed, whatever you want to call it. And it was a guy and I went Down. We all have gone down these rabbit holes right where we watch a video and then it leads us to another video, whatever it may be. And this guy's really into pipe smoking and reading old literature and it's got millions of views and he's sitting there talking about his favorite pipe and his favorite tobacco to put in his pipe. And it's the most raw footage. There's no bells and whistles, there's no quick cuts. It's just him in this grimy chair with old books behind him, smoke going up in the air. It is just the most intriguing thing. But I completely agree. This unedited, more transparent look is where we're seeing a lot of things go.
- [22:49]
B
I think that has to be intentional on YouTube's part. Like not, not everyone can be a Mr. Beast with like 3 second edit edits with graphics and craziness. And you see all these, you can go that direction, right? There's a, you know, gaming channel, Beat Em Ups guy named Wood host that show. He went, he went in the direction of like the Mr. Beast style, like really quick edits. And then you have my friend who also has a video, Johnny. Channel Johnny, yeah, A happy console gamer. You know, he and I talk like every day and I was saying to him, you know, try some of these long form videos where no editing, you're just out talking about life and video games, you know. And so he, because normally he'd be in a studio and it'd be quick edits and stuff and his editor would do a lot of quick edits and quick cuts in 15 minutes and you're out. So he filmed one that was like an hour just kind of walking in the woods talking about life and video games and things like that. And I, I had been doing that over the past couple of years as well. And that video for him ended up doing like bonkers crazy. And he got so many emails and messages from people. No editing, just out in the woods kind of talking. So I think there is something to that. I mean look, people watch ASMR of people building log cabins in the woods, you know. So I, I think if I had to start something over again, I would. I just have to be yourself. People can see right through fakery and I think like really limiting the, the editing and speaking. You know, my friend, pretty famous guy, Tucker Carlson likes to say when he gives a speech, only speak about what you know. That's it. Get up on stage to give a speech, only speak about what you know for sure. And I think whether you're an electrician or a guy with a pipe or a video game fan. You know, you're a walking encyclopedia of video games. Speak about what you know and do it from the heart, truthfully, because people can see right through the fakery. Oh, I'm going to start a, I'm going to start a Russian politics podcast. And you don't know anything about Russian politics. You know, it's like, it's, people can see right through it and it comes across as phony. So that's how I would start a new channel.
- [24:53]
A
As far as packaging goes and thumbnails and titles and descriptions, you may not have that much to do with it. Now, you may have folks on your team that do it, but what is the strategy that you see working now as far as just putting together packaging that gets good click through rate? And I'm sure you guys are looking or somebody on your team is looking at those numbers.
- [25:15]
B
Yeah, I mean, I look at those numbers mostly. That's kind of my, my weakness because I'm constantly in there. We have one of our team members, Derek, he does all of our thumbnails and he and I collaborate. I'll say, hey, I want to put Trump on the thumbnail looking straight at the camera and the US Dollar on fire next to him because it's about Trump's move. Could tank the US Dollar, whatever, you know, but then I really, I have to sit and think about what is going to get people to click. I don't want to give away the story in the thumbnail. Why watch the video if they already can get the full story in a title in the thumbnail? You know, Oh, I don't need to watch that because they just. What's going on? Trump's tariffs tank dollar. That's. And I'm not saying that that's the case. I'm just saying that's just an example, right? Fed just cut interest rates. Like, I would never put that as a title. Fed just cut interest rates. Great, thanks. Now I don't need to watch your video. Fed just cut the interest rates. You know, so I try to think of things that are intriguing. Maybe if there's a long form conversation, I try to pull a quote sometimes. And I think that works. So for instance, I just did a deep dive segment on how we used directed energy weapons in Venezuela during this most recent attack. And this tech has been kind of around for about 20 years. It's kind of been kept hidden. These sort of sonic attacks where people's brains feel like they're frying inside their skull. And this Venezuelan soldier was like, we've never seen this before. All of my men just collapsed. I thought my head was going to explode. So that was literally the title quote. I thought my head was going to explode. End quote. Venezuelan soldiers shocked by what they saw. You know, something like that. But I try to pull quotes out that are intriguing and then I deliver on that quote because I'm literally pulling an exact quote. So it's not clickbait, but you have to. To me, like, clickbait is you gotta get people to click. You're in a sea of so much noise now. Then you have to deliver on it. So clickbait. I like the term clickbait, actually. It's like you're fishing. Here's, you know, we want, we're baiting you. We want you to watch the video because we did a lot of hard work on this video in this interview. We want you to see it. Do we deliver on the title? That's. I kind of how I come down to it. At the end of the day, I don't want to, I don't want to say something in the title that's not true in the video or it doesn't pay off in the video, if that makes any sense.
- [27:37]
A
It makes a lot of sense. And just a follow up question, in the day and time that we're in now in the world of AI, are you using any tools to help you that you maybe weren't a few years back just knowing kind of where we are with artificial intelligence? Or is that something that you'd rather not do?
- [27:54]
B
Oh, for sure. I'm not one of these people. I think you have to.
- [27:58]
A
It's a tool.
- [27:58]
B
It's a tool in your tool belt. And so what I'll do is I'll take our whole segment. If I've written a whole thousand word script, I'll put it into AI and say, hey, give me 10 usable YouTube titles based on my channel's history and what we've done in the past in our own voice. And then it'll spit out like 10 examples. And I'm like, and most of the time I don't use any of them. But what I'll do.
- [28:21]
A
Starting point.
- [28:21]
B
It's a great starting point. And I think, and like, I know, like even Russ over at Retro Game Corps, one of my favorite gaming YouTube channels, he does a lot of handheld gaming stuff. And he former military guy, he's like, I don't crap on AI. He's like, I use it as a starting point. Most of the time they're garbage. I don't use them. But it's a good starting point. Or I can take an amalgamation of like one or two or three of the titles and kind of maybe combine them and tweak them a little bit and then go from there. So that's how I've been using AI. It helps me as like a starting point, as a. Oh, I haven't thought about that, but most of the time they're pretty bland and. Or I'll do the split test. You know, I do the A, B and yes, a B split test and the one that I've come up with almost always is the winner. Almost always. It's almost never one that I got with the help of AI so I'll just put that out there. We've done a lot of split tests over the past few months, hundreds of them. And I can tell you almost overwhelmingly from the data. The one that I came up with, the human, was the one that worked.
- [29:20]
A
What do you think? My friend, a good friend, Nick Nimmin and I have a podcast episode we do at the end of every year for the past five, six years where we talk about and project where we think YouTube and the content creation space is going forward and looking forward, knowing what you know and looking back at what's worked and what hasn't. What do you foresee in regards to things happening in the YouTube, in the Creator space, moving forward?
- [29:46]
B
Oh boy, that's a great question. I think you're going to see a lot more you in YouTube and more reality and truth and you know, grittiness and groundedness and not over polished editing. I think you're gonna see more of that. I think you're gonna see more of a lean back experience too. The numbers just continue to grow on couches. People aren't going to sit there and watch YouTube shorts on their Apple TV above their fireplace. Maybe some kids will, but for the most part people are going to want to sit there and watch a long form interview. That's why we rolled out something called the Redacted Files on our channel. It's a more of a historical documentary style, 45 minutes to an hour long segments. So I don't know that we'll see this shift but you can see what YouTube is doing. They're actively pushing shorts on the homepage. They want to compete with TikTok. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just a few weeks ago in an interview said his biggest competition for Xbox is not PlayStation, it's not Nintendo. It is TikTok. It is short form little dopamine hits that kids are getting and I think, I mean I think it's really terrible for kids. Absolutely. I think it's, I think it's terrible for all of us to be honest with you. We use it, we use it and put out little chunks from our interviews as short form content with the hopes that people will come over and watch our long form content. I haven't looked at the data to see if that's working or not and it's a good question actually to see if we've been doing it over the past few months. If it's then causing people to go to long form content or they're just staying in the short form and they don't care about long form at all. Yeah, I think more grounded in reality truth, less editing, more you and YouTube and more lean back experiences are going to be what we're going to see maybe going forward in the coming years.
- [31:46]
A
As I know you got to, you got to get out here shortly. Last question for you. Live streaming. Many people are afraid of doing it. They're afraid of putting themselves out there, which I think is funny. I guess the difference in recording and uploading a video is you can edit out all the things that you want edited out but when you're live, you know, all of your flubs and things get left in. What would you say in regards to live streaming? Would you recommend it to creators? And if so, how would you recommend get started and being able to stream to zero viewers and how to get practice?
- [32:17]
B
I wish I was better at super chats, honestly. I know some creators push it and they get hundreds of super chats. It could really be a really strong source of revenue for us. We just, we have such a jam packed to show every day that it's hard to, you know, to do that. So I think to me live streaming is a audience, it's a community nurturing tool. So I brought up my friend Johnny over at the Happy Console Gamer. He does a weekly show every week he publishes an episode but when he does like maybe once a month live stream, he gets hundreds of people in there and he just interacts with them for two hours and he just gets like flooded with super chats, you know. And it can be a great way to nurture your community. People are like, I've been watching your show for 15 years. I'd love, you know, what do you think about this? And it's a great way to have this community. I think, you know, for people who are nervous about doing it just set up a nice background, set up a simple background that's well lit. Have a few things that you want to talk about right off the top. Tell people that you're going to open it up for super chats a little bit later or chat room. You're going to hang out with your audience a little bit later and get through the things that you want to talk about and interact with your audience. And the good news is later in the YouTube editor you can cut off the first part of it if you're like stumbling over your words when you first start. You know, find a good starting point where you feel like the show kicks on and then hang out with your audience for an hour at the end. Maybe do it once a month to see how you like it. So yeah, I don't know, I don't know if it's for everybody and I don't know how YouTube treats it. You know, like, does YouTube care? That's the, I guess that's a big question. Like does YouTube really care about people live streaming? I don't know. I don't know where they see it in their, their cornucopia of products right now compared to shorts and long form videos and advertising. So, you know, it, it may not have all the benefits that we think it does, but I think it has a great audience nurturing espec. If you can interact with your audience that's powerful, people who live stream and don't interact with their audience, then why are you going live?
- [34:23]
A
Yeah, I think also what I like about it is just the ability to repurpose it like what you guys are doing and do the short 15 to 20 minute snippet clips as long form, then you can snip the short form vertical. And so you really get a great grasp of just everything from that one big chunk of content that you're, that you're creating with live stream and people can really optimize it. You mentioned that you don't put on the YouTube ads throughout the stream, but one of the ways to monetize a live stream is once you hit stop or stop stop stream. That video then becomes a VOD or a video on your channel that people can go and search. And optimizing it as a creator is probably one of the better things you can do as a streamer.
- [35:03]
B
Yeah, I mean our audience, you know, like I said, we have the tens of thousands of people that watch us live at that time at 4pm Eastern. But a lot of people are at work, but they can't. So they Watch it later. You know, we have inter. We have international viewers who watch it the next day. And so, you know, people can go and watch it, find it, and, and, and watch it on their own time and on their own. And we also repurpose it on podcasts. So we publish it. We cut the audio and publish it as an audio podcast. And we get about 300,000 people that listen on the audio podcast. So people, you know, maybe don't want to watch the live video. You're right about the repurposing. I think it's great. Yeah. And it also allows you to just kind of be a little stream of consciousness. Like, hey, I do it on my gaming channel. I like to do a live stream on Fridays if I can, when I'm not live streaming on my main redacted channel. So I'll, I'll just do. I have a few topics I want to talk about on a Friday. Talk about some games, talk about what's going on in the industry, Nintendo or whatever, you know, and then I'll live stream to that audience, and it'll be far fewer people watching. You know, it might be like 500 or 400 compared to the thousands I get on my other channel. But it's fun, you know, and I can interact with people and, and have a good time. And if I wanted to repurpose something, I can use it and push it out there as a separate video too.
- [36:16]
A
It's awesome. Clayton, thank you so much for joining me today again, go check out what Clayton has going on over on his redacted news or redacted channel, and then tell everyone the name of your gaming channel as well.
- [36:29]
B
Yeah, it's just my personal name. So it's just Clayton Morris. That's just nothing. Even though I call it kind of Clayton plays. But it's just Clayton Morris is the channel on YouTube. Yeah.
- [36:38]
A
And I'll link all of that in the show notes. As you can tell, Clayton has such a great breadth of knowledge in regards to the creator space. Been doing it for so long. So you had a good look at what was working way back then and now, what's working now, and the change of the landscape. And so I really appreciate your insight. It has been great. And we'll talk to you next time. And that's a wrap on this week's conversation on the Creator sub podcast. Clayton was so generous with his time. He is a very large creator who has influences in a lot of different areas and spaces, and he decided to dedicate 30 to 45 minutes with us today and I'm so thankful for that. What a great episode this was. Don't forget, forget to check out all of our offerings for you, the creator, down below in the show notes and subscribe to the show if you haven't already, so you'll be notified every Friday when we go live with a new recording. I hope you guys have a great day whenever you're listening to this, and we'll talk to you next week.