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YouTube Creators Hub
Inside The Marsh Family's Viral Musical Journey On YouTube
00:37:46
In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub Podcast, host Dusty Porter sits down with Ben and Alfie Marsh of the musical Marsh Family. They delve into their journey from a viral lockdown video to managing a successful YouTube channel with 160,000...
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- [00:02]
Dusty Porter
Welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where we help you conquer the Internet one video at a time. We cover everything from how to start a YouTube channel to how to make a video go viral. And now here's your host, the one and only Dusty Porter. Hello and welcome to episode 418 of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where each and every Friday I sit down with a content creator and I chat with them about their journey as a creator, as someone on YouTube and someone who makes a living sometimes or does it as a hobby. And this week is an awesome interview with a father and son duo from a family, the Marsh family on YouTube. And just their journey through just growing their channel and who has what responsibility and just the strategies that they've put into place and sometimes even the lack of strategy is really interesting to hear about. So this week's a great, great interview. If you'd like to connect with us, you can look at all the links in the show notes. I offer one on one coaching for YouTube content creators, podcasters, entrepreneurs. We also have a primary sponsor which is TubeBuddy. It's the one tool that I recommend all creators try at least once. So if you haven't already use our link, you can get a free 30 day trial. I promise you will not regret it. And then probably the best bang for your buck is going to be our creator community where basically we have over 130 some odd creators in there right now. Always talking about YouTube on our Discord server. And just yesterday we had our monthly mastermind call that I host on Zoom every single month where we cover a specific topic. Like yesterday was packaging. So we talked about thumbnails and titles and things like that. And then some months we do hot seats where we put certain creators on the hot seat and we do a deep dive into their channel and offer constructive criticism. I think it's one of the best communities around creators on the Internet. So definitely check that out in the link below if you haven't already. Really appreciate everyone listening would really appreciate it if you would leave us a review. It really does help the podcast grow. Share the show with other people who are interested in YouTube and content creation. And without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation.
- [02:11]
Ben Marsh
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I'm super excited to be joined by two of the Marsh family crew. This is Alfie and Ben. I want to tell you a little bit about them. The Marsh family is a musical family group based in Faversham Kent, vocalist, lyricist and multi instrumentalist. The family consists of parents Ben, who is with us today, He's a history lecturer, 48, and Danielle, his wife, who's an administrator, and their children, Alfie, who's with us today, Thomas, Ella and Tess. They've sung together since the kids were born in Scotland. Now living in England, they have grown as fast in fan base as they have in size. They have 160,000 subscribers and over 28 million views on YouTube. You've probably watched some of their viral songs during the Pandemic. I might play one towards the end of this episode if they are okay with me adding that to the end of the episode. But they're not only great musicians and talented artists, but they're also funny, which to me is a great combination. Alfie, Ben, how are you doing today?
- [03:16]
Alfie Marsh
Really good. Yeah. It's evening time in the uk, but we've had a good day and yeah, excited to meet you, Dusty, and to chat about the projects.
- [03:23]
Ben Marsh
Absolutely. Today, the first question I want to ask both of you is if you want to know, if you're listening to this, the name of their YouTube channel is the Marsh family over on YouTube. So definitely go check them out if you haven't already. And I'm going to open it up and go ahead and direct this one to Ben. Ben, give us the origin story of the channel. Like, when did it start, how did it start? And just tell us the whole story.
- [03:46]
Alfie Marsh
It started because we'd gone viral on a different platform and we didn't have a YouTube profile and we'd never thought about sharing anything that we do. Particularly originally a song that we did right at the start of the Pandemic went crazy viral. It was a well known song because it was from the musical Les Mis and we'd put it on an open Facebook page. It was basically for friends and family. And when that went absolutely ballistic viral and there was messages coming from all over the world and we ended up on like the Jimmy Kimmel Show. And it was a moment where everyone was very stressed and also like dysfunctional. So none of the systems that we were all using around the world for tv, for entertainment, for anything was like working properly. And so on the back of all of that, when things had finally calmed down, we thought we need to. We really enjoyed sharing what we were doing and having that engagement around the world and reaching people in a way that we never imagined doing. But we thought we needed to actually sit down and rationalize it a little bit and make sure that what often happens online and on certain platforms, which is stuff gets ripped and circulates and you're not really in control of your own output. And that can be a little bit frustrating, especially that the more that you invest in that output, the more frustrating it is when it disappears off onto someone else's as someone else's feedback. Yeah. So we decided at that point, when we sat down as a family and said, do we want to carry on doing this? Is everyone up for it? Is everyone interested and happy? And that was the point at which we said, okay, let's create a YouTube channel and put everything in one place.
- [05:13]
Danielle Marsh
I think it was also more accessible for us, us four at the time. We were all quite a lot younger, obviously, and the original things that we're putting out on Twitter, Facebook, I think we weren't. None of us were old enough to use, but it was something that you want to watch, you know, when you're going back over it. So YouTube was a good option because everyone can use it and it's easily understandable and accessible, I think.
- [05:36]
Ben Marsh
So what was going on in the family when you guys started realizing that song was taking off and you realized that, okay, maybe we have something here? Ben, you obviously have to know that your kids were talented, that you guys had something there. And with that being the case, what was going on at family supper? And when you guys. What were you guys talking about when this whole thing was blowing up? What was that time like? Alfie, we start with you, and then, Ben, you can follow up.
- [06:03]
Danielle Marsh
Yeah, it was just so bizarre. It was obviously heightened by the fact that it was the middle of. For England anyway. It was the first pandemic lockdown, so we were all completely bamboozled anyway, and we could only go outside once a day. So even though the video itself had gone really crazy, it was quite hard to tell unless you were on some sort of. Like, we were sat on a tiny little setup. We didn't know how to do anything. So unless we were in those weird little moments, everything else seemed eerily quiet, except when we were all together or on a dog walk or something, and you check your phone and there'd be a huge amount of comments or whatever. So it was something that felt really strangely detached for quite a lot of the time. And then when you went to look at it, you almost couldn't take your eyes off it and you couldn't move. Almost.
- [06:52]
Ben Marsh
Yeah. There's a lot of dopamine. With those notifications with growing on Internet platform, there's some excitement. Ben. What? As the father and the head of the household. Obviously, for you, you're worried about all different kind of things, about, okay, how do I manage this? How do I make sure that my kids are protected? And then we've already talked about. And we'll talk about more about just protecting the IP and the content itself with the songs. But for you, what was going through your mind?
- [07:19]
Alfie Marsh
It was. There was a kind of. It was at a point, obviously right at the start of Pandemic, where everything else was super stressful, like workplaces had collapsed. Everyone was genuinely really worried about what was going on. So it wasn't like, if everything else was fine and everything else was, like, steady, you could enjoy the moment. Luckily, we've had other songs that have gone viral since then and you can cut this, but the rest of your life is working fine. So in this situation, as you say, there was a lot of stress and there was a lot of kind of anxiety and this was all a bit of a distraction in some ways. It was like a welcome distraction. But, yeah, we were worried about press. We had some people at the door that we didn't particularly want and we hadn't got any. Anything in place to cope with the messages we did. We couldn't differentiate between shows that you might want to engage with and be on and that might spread the message in a positive way and to allow you to be in control of it and share what was intended originally, which was, this was just a fun song to try and pick people up. It was like joking about online deliveries and the kids, grandparents not being able to use Skype, which was what everybody used back then. Not Zoom or, you know, obviously other platforms are available. But it was. Yeah, so it was a moment in time. And then I think if we'd had our time again, we would have done so much differently in terms of how we responded and what we'd set up. But we did effectively, we just created a firewall for the kids and said, like, we'll have the conversations as a family about what people want to share and what they don't and who wants to be on, you know, giving an interview or whatever. You could tell our youngest, Tess, who was only, what, seven or eight then, I think, yeah, like, there's only so many times she can sit in front of a. A TV interview on Zoom or whatever and cope with that. So eventually, yeah, we decided after about three or four weeks, enough. Enough was enough and we were going to close the bonnet, close the front door and feel like that had been worth doing and it had been exciting. But that was it. But as you say, there's the weird dopamine thing, and there's also the sense in which. I think you can look at it two ways. I think you can look at it cynically and say, we all want that kick and the likes and the attention. And that's. Yeah, that's exciting. I think the positive spin that we try and put on it is that we feel that we cheered a lot of people up and we reached. We did something that we didn't imagine we would ever be able to do. Right. The important people were the nurses and the doctors and all the incredible scientists and. But we'd managed to do something that we'd never thought thought of before. So it opened up a little world of engagement. And so I guess that's what we've been doing since is just like having conversations about do we want to keep. Every now and then we have that same conversation. Is everybody. Is everybody okay with this? Do you want to keep going? Do you want to change what we're doing as the kids get older or we get busier or what, you know, whatever it may be?
- [09:49]
Ben Marsh
So we've talked a little bit about how it started, and I certainly want to talk about after that about once you all decided, okay, we're going to dive into this thing. We're going to start The Marsh Family YouTube channel. We're going to upload songs. We're going to continue doing this as long as you guys are up for it. And I think. Think that, Ben, you handled it so responsibly. I've talked to a lot of creators, and there's. There's some very big kid creators that are growing up, and we watch them grow up on. On YouTube. And a lot of them, some of them are not even wanting to do it anymore. And so now they're having this imbalance with their parents. And it seems like you guys have a very healthy way of handling that. So I want to talk about the back end of the YouTube channel now. Who does what? Who runs what, who films? Who edits who? You guys got a family of six, and that's not including the animal friends that you guys might have. So with that being the case, who's doing what? Alfie, give me the full rundown of. Just like, if you were to give positions in a YouTube, in the Yalls YouTube channel, what does everyone do?
- [10:44]
Danielle Marsh
I think a lot of the hard work still goes to dad. That's something that, to be honest, probably should be changed now that a couple of us are growing up and as recently, in the last six months, maybe a bit more, my brother Thomas and I have started moving more and more into the area of filming background content or setting things up. Mum's also usually very important for setting up the lights and the camera. At the start of lockdown, we didn't do any of that. We just stuck up an iPhone and filmed it on that. But now as time's gone on and we've got better microphones and got slightly better tech to set up, that generally is a job that falls to Mum, Thomas and myself. And then as for the editing and the actual music writing, a lot of that is dad. And then Tess and Ella are often questionable moral support and obviously very talented musicians as well. So they focus, I would say, more on the actual content creation than the behind the scenes stuff.
- [11:50]
Ben Marsh
Sure, yeah. I know I play bass and guitar and have since I was a young kid. And I know musicians can be a bit like divas, so I completely understand that. We joke about that.
- [12:01]
Danielle Marsh
From a glass house, to be honest.
- [12:03]
Alfie Marsh
There's six of them in this family.
- [12:06]
Ben Marsh
I love it. Now, as far as the music goes and writing the songs that you guys perform and the parody songs that I think you guys are known for. Ben, are you writing most of these yourself? Are you coming up with them and then doing and sitting down with the family as far as. Okay, here's your part. And then how does that whole thing work?
- [12:24]
Alfie Marsh
Yeah, we haven't fully unpicked the recipe, which I guess this conversation is useful. It's therapy in a way to help us think through what the actual dynamics are. Because that. Because what works for us is things sometimes to be a bit improvisational. And so sometimes it comes from. Literally, there's a story on the news and it grabs us. And maybe it's a happy story or silly story, or maybe it's a political story, but there's some. There's something in that we feel is worth, like, talking about or engaging with. And we'll have a chat about it and then if we think it's worthwhile, I'll go away and think of some lyrics. At other points, it comes from a song that we all just really love and that we want to cover. And so we find an excuse and a way to fit even some niche songs. Like what did We Do? We did Stacy's mom.
- [13:06]
Danielle Marsh
Yeah.
- [13:07]
Alfie Marsh
Which isn't like a natural, obvious song for a family band to cover. Like, you get into quite weird territory, but because we're changing the words and we keep moving things around, it work fine. So yeah. And then lastly, and this is something we've been doing more recently, especially with a couple of singles that we're really excited that we managed to get some crowdfunding for this summer. And Alfie and Tom and everyone in the family is involved in this is writing original material so that we've. We feel like we're not just treading the same old territory. Because I think on. In some channels, in some fields, in some areas, it's really easy to just get stuck into a kind of content circle. And it's fine if that's your thing and it's your niche and it's working. But this has never been like our major preoccupation. They're all at school or doing or going to university or whatever. We've got jobs. So it's always been something that's a little bit extra. And so it's important to keep it fresh. I guess the one you at, the one area that we haven't yet thought about moving into is non music form content. Because at the moment that's a kind of line that we've set ourselves, which is like hardly any of anything that we've ever uploaded to YouTube is a conversation or is. Is promotional. It's like it's. This is about this in the title of the channel. Right. Marsh Family songs. It's about songs. And so so far we've stuck to that. But it's what you get with six people involved. And I don't know if that's different for some creators or not. Maybe you can tell us, Dusty, is that people have got different experiences of the platform. And so the boys will be watching like Tom was watching last night. Two guys.
- [14:34]
Danielle Marsh
Terrible.
- [14:34]
Alfie Marsh
I don't know, two guys playing like a game, a horror game. Like an hour walk through of just them having fun playing this game. I would never sit down and watch that, but I'll watch other stuff and the girls will watch other stuff. And so when you put it together, you get little ideas from different weird corners of YouTube that you can maybe take advantage of.
- [14:51]
Danielle Marsh
Yeah. And I think the other kind of role that we play, although dad is playing down his own role and writing the parody like he does all of the lyrics for any of the parodies that we do. But he sometimes goes above and beyond. And one of our main roles in the rest of the family is gating a lot of the parody ideas that. And he has to get it past each of us individually almost. So there have been plenty of parody ideas. He's come down with some lyrics and everyone's was nope.
- [15:17]
Alfie Marsh
Was the latest veto was we wanted to do one about Elon Musk because there's this been this big controversy in the UK because he's waded into British politics. And then obviously there's the controversy to do with the platform generally. So without getting any into anything too heavy and political, we want to do something about X. And so I was thinking X go and give it to you. But the boys vetoed us doing gangsta rap. There was a heart, it was a hard note.
- [15:40]
Ben Marsh
It was a hard no.
- [15:41]
Alfie Marsh
We've dipped our toe into reggae or other things. But like you were quite persistent.
- [15:47]
Ben Marsh
This is amazing because I was going to ask you what has been something that you guys vetoed. So that. That's really interesting. I love the one that you did. One of your probably your most popular video right now is Totally fixed where we are during the pandemic of you guys singing that song. And then I've watched a whole bunch of them. You. You had one the buy in eats tonight from the Lion King song. And I'm looking at a couple more that I really enjoyed. I just. I love that. And you're right. When you have so many cooks in the kitchen, when you have five, six people and they're all different personalities and opinions and even though you're family, you might have difference of opinions and being able to stay in the same path and going down the same path is very important. Let's talk about some technical side of things. As far as the YouTube goes. What do you think that you've done? Ben, I might direct this to you first. What do you think that you guys have done that has helped the channel grow? Like things that you said early on that you wish you would have done differently. And you can maybe even mention some of those. But just on the. Just the YouTube channel itself. Because if I go to the channel, I go to your latest videos and your more popular videos. It doesn't look like you guys do much editing on the thumbnail thumbnails. It's like a screenshot of whatever it may be. Some thumbnails are edited more than others. So take us behind the scenes of just getting a video out there and what you do with the packaging on the channel.
- [17:04]
Alfie Marsh
Yeah, I think that there's quite a few bells and whistles that are probably the things that other content creators start with that we either never get to in the process or kind of that we leave so late. I mean if you're going to be like strategic about this or frame it as something intentional which it isn't. Often it's just lazy or, like, slow to pick things up or whatever. But if you're gonna. If you're gonna frame it as strategic, I guess one of our usps, which explains people's interest in us, in our lives, is that, yeah, we are an ordinary family and we are an authentic family. And it's. There's been the Partridge Family. Like, people like fake families. There's lots of musical families that kind of get pushed hard and it doesn't necessarily always work out. And I'm sure we can think of plenty of them. One of our USPs, basically, I think, is just being down to earth and being who we are. And so the more. So the danger for us is like, how do you look a bit more professional? How do you be a bit sleeker and more effective with who you reach and how you use algorithms or the text or visuals at your disposal without undermining that sort of fundamental. And I think we'd felt that some of those features are probably like that. Weirdly, we've never. I think this has become like an unnecessary and daft badge of honor that I don't think we've ever yet asked anyone to like and subscribe, unless you've dropped that in without me noticing somewhere. And so we can maintain the fiction that this is all, like, this is organic somehow.
- [18:27]
Dusty Porter
All right, I interrupt the conversation to bring a message from our sponsor this.
- [18:32]
Ben Marsh
Week, which is a new tool called Delights.
- [18:35]
Dusty Porter
Delights AI is a tool specifically designed for YouTube creators that's launching very soon. Delights automatically converts YouTube videos into eBooks using AI, making it easy and quick to repurpose and monetize existing content. The global ebook market is projected to reach $20 billion by 2026, and that's billion with a B. Creators could earn 5 to 20 bucks per sale, depending on the niche they're in. It's simple, it's a very easy process, and it removes the barrier of entry to ebook creation, which previously would cost thousands of dollars to produce a single one. Sign up today for early access at Delights AI and be among the first to tap into this new revenue stream. All right, back to the show.
- [19:22]
Ben Marsh
I think that is something that is really working on YouTube specifically right now. I think that we're seeing a lot of underedited and more kind of less produced type content really take off. I think people are resonating with it, and I think it's how we're consuming content now. There are the channels that are very highly produced like Mr. Beast and the channels that are doing so well, and that's fine, they're their own things. But for the most part, I think what really resonates with your content, with me specifically as someone with two young daughters, is that you're just a dad doing something that you enjoy with your kids and you're capturing it and it happened to make money for you and allowed you to grow a little bit of a side business. Right. So you're very authentic with that and you're very real with that. And I think that is what might endure people to your family. So maybe speak on that a little more, Alfie, if you want to. Or Ben, whoever.
- [20:18]
Danielle Marsh
Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that has allowed us. I don't know whether you say get away with not editing or whether you're describing it as a kind of new technique, but one of the reasons why I think that's probably worked quite well for us is something you touched upon, which is if you look at our demographic and our channel settings, our demographic is very much towards older generations. I think our highest is 46% of our viewers are 65 plus or something, or our returning viewers are 65 plus. And we have a very high proportion that are above the 40 in and appearance or whatever. So, as you say, I think you're right in the sense that the reason why it works is because it resonates with a lot of people. And I think in a similar way to how part of the reason our first few videos did very well and went viral was because it was as much about how the things that we got wrong and where we looked unprofessional as it was about the bits that we got right. Because it made us more like a genuine family. It made us feel real and like other people could do it, which they absolutely can. So I think that's probably one of the main reasons why that kind of still works for us. Where otherwise you might have thought of shifting towards more produced content.
- [21:32]
Ben Marsh
Yeah. And I think that's what's impressive about kind of what you guys have built and have done. You've really stayed true to your original mission of spreading positivity, bringing a little bit of relief, a little bit of entertainment. And although now we're not going through the throes of the pandemic, people still are dealing with mental health issues. They're dealing with things in their life and you guys are giving them a little bit of a reprieve of. You can go and watch this really funny song based on a song that, you know, and I want to transition by saying that how hard is it for you guys dealing with copyright on YouTube of okay, we're covering a Lion King song, but it's our own words, but it's their instruments, but we're playing it maybe a little different. Ben, speak on how you're dealing and handling that.
- [22:19]
Alfie Marsh
This is where it feels like having a couple of university degrees has been, even though they're not in copyright or law or anything like that. But fairly early in the process, getting my head round the realities of that world because when you're just doing user uploaded content or if it's all private, it's for family and friends, you don't need to bother with it. And so first of all, it was educating about the different forms of rights and understanding them. I think what's fantastic about YouTube compared to other platforms and it still feels like even though it wasn't the first one that we use, as I said, we started off on Meta or Facebook, the triggers and the mechanisms to understand where you're at in a complicated copyright journey are really great on YouTube. And so it allows you to know whether something's been identified by the system. So Content ID looks for. And in a weird way, it's good to test your musicality because if you've got somewhere near that. I doubt that the buy in Eats tonight, which is the. Yeah, as you say from the. Either from the Lion King or originally a calypso song, is probably so far from the original that Content ID wouldn't even have figured out that that's actually what the song is because it's so badly sung or whatever. And there are other ones, if they're really tight and they're in the same tempo in the same key that straight away it correctly identifies what the song is. In a strange way, that's nice. And obviously that affects the options that you have for monetization. But for any of the songs you upload, the due process, the expected process, the legal process is to contact the original rights holder. If it's something that's for parody, if you're changing the lyrics of something in particular, the difficulty that you have if you're. If you don't have a massive label, if you're not Taylor Swift or whoever is, you just, you can't get replies from, from publishers and labels. So you went. You can end up stuck in this really awkward limbo where you haven't had authorization, even though you've asked for authorization sometimes months in advance. And then there are different national and international rules on copyright as well. So in the States, there's actually much looser kind of rules on fair use than there is in the uk. And it changed in the UK after Brexit, where we left the eu. So without getting into, like, into the weeds, what's great about YouTube is it shows you where your content and your output is and it allows you to act accordingly. So there have been one or two times where we've eventually had a reply from an artist and they've asked us to take something down and we've been able. And we've instantly taken it down because under no circumstances would we ever want to, A, get into legal trouble and B, not go with the wishes of an artist who created the copyright originally. And conversely, there have been times actually, for instance, in the pandemic where we covered Hallelujah and it had been paused or frozen by Sony, I think, who held the content ID on it. But we were singing a song that was during the vaccination, the height of the need for vaccinations in the uk, the first time this had been created. And I know people have got strong feelings on vaccinations, like they have on lots of things, but there was a public interest and actually the scientific and even the political community in the UK were great at helping us reach Sony and have that temporarily restored to visibility, so it's still possible for people to see. So, yeah, there's no easy solution other than writing and making all your own songs. But the. But people, it's a legitimate form of satire. It's a legitimate form of parody and comedy. So what's great about YouTube, I think, is just being able to take the time. My advice to anyone trying to do it, take the time to understand where you are on that journey. Be ready to pivot if you need to, according to the wishes of the people that own it, but otherwise, follow your instincts and hopefully people get the chance to enjoy the output.
- [25:44]
Ben Marsh
Yeah, if you're coming at it and you don't understand the copyright system on YouTube and you don't understand it, you can get into a lot of trouble. But it sounds like to me, you guys did the research and once you started getting those things, you started really diving into, what rights do we have, what rights did they have? And understanding that fair use is a thing and being able to do that the right way. And I think that really leads to my next question, talking about monetization. And it sounds like none of you are doing this full time. The kids, obviously, they don't have jobs or whatever. But for you, Ben and Danielle, you guys are not doing this full time. So how are you making money? What are the different monetization buckets on the channel? Either one of you can answer this.
- [26:23]
Danielle Marsh
I think one of the things, as we've previously mentioned, is that because so many of our videos are copyrighted, a lot of the time we're still allowed to put them up and they're still allowed to be viewed. But obviously the monetization goes to the original creator. So that means that aside from kind of a couple of exceptions, most of the videos that we have actually don't get monetized. And the money that we get per month, or last time I checked, the money that we get mostly per month comes from re watches of our old original videos. Like we've done a couple of outtakes videos, I think, or a couple of original videos. And they're never the ones almost that get it directly from a YouTube perspective. But if we do a copyrighted video that does very well, then often people will go back through and watch a couple of other videos. And it's in those instances that we make the bit of money from YouTube. But aside from YouTube, we actually probably make most of our money from the Marsh family perspective, from our wonderful patrons. We. That's something that we realized was a thing pretty. I can't remember exactly what was it? 2021, I want to say. And very quickly a load of supporters who are absolutely amazing came on and gave us a lot of support. So it's that as much as anything else that has enabled us to step forward with the Marsh family business, providing a more consistent income, I'd say, than YouTube does.
- [27:50]
Ben Marsh
Yeah, it's the beauty of kind of crowdfunding and having a membership and offering you offer the freebies and then you. You build up that relationship or trust with the audience and then they provide you some money. I also do that here with this podcast is I have a Patreon and people are able to join a mastermind group where they can talk with other creators and other entrepreneurs. And we've got a really fast growing community over there. And I'm not getting rich because I've set the funds to get in glow, but it's. It definitely makes a difference and it's so fun to interact with the people who are invested enough to cross that pay barrier. And I'm at your Patreon page right now and you guys have looks like almost 600 members, 560 members, and your tiers are $4, $10 and 50 cents. And $46 a month. How surprised were you when you launched that that there were people willing to give you guys a little bit of financial support from just these fun songs that you guys were doing?
- [28:46]
Alfie Marsh
Yeah, we were very surprised. We had no idea what to expect. But that was at a moment because we were just coming out of the pandemic and we were thinking, are we get. Do we have the energy, do we have the appetite? Is there interest in kind of carrying this project on or. There's plenty of school concerts and local open mic nights. Right. And there's a great kind of local music ecosystem. And it doesn't. We don't have to go down that route. But we were bowled over by the. The support that kind of came our way and that allowed us to think differently, I think, about the bigger project. And so, yeah, we started to build a sort of little ecosystem. It's exhausting because each of these platforms from a user, so from a creator point of view, has slightly different demands on you. And I think that's where to come back to the. Like, what do the different people in the family do? That's where, for instance, Danielle's really great at handling the patron because they really do for us, they feel like an extended part of the family and that's how we treat them. And we, you know, as I said before on YouTube, it's really, we'll deliver a song, there'll be a couple of outtakes or something, but that's. It's about the, it's about the music videos or the parodies. And on Patreon, there's a slightly different kind of vibe. So, yeah, we, I mean, it varies as well from country to country, which is something that we found. We've been really. It's been lovely. And one of the reasons I've been, I think, felt empowered to carry on being an American historian and us having international followers to. Is that to have that interest in Australia and America and Germany, to feel connected at a point in the world more broadly where we've got conflicts that we haven't had for decades, where there's a sense of kind of things coming apart and the threat of climate change and everything like that, to feel connected to all those people and for them to being allow us to steal some time from our jobs or lives, to share music together and share it with them, I think is really special. So when we're at. Yeah, we always feel we're at a kind of inflection point and we're not sure which way it's going to go. But the longer we have an archive of videos on YouTube, like we don't. Most normal families probably have huge like photo albums or something or we don't have any of that. We've just got us messing around like doing covers of weird music, of doing ok, Corona or Oklahoma. But we're going to. We know that we're going to look back on this and it'll bring back all those sort of memories.
- [30:54]
Ben Marsh
I think that's the probably the most interesting thing about what you guys are doing, is that your kids are going to be able to look one day when they have kids and possibly be able to see the documentation of just these fun things that you got to do as a family. And as a dad myself, I just know that kids remember the time you spent with them. It's not about the money or the things like that. And you guys being able to run and grow a YouTube channel is thing that you guys, it's your thing, it's something that you guys have together and you're able to make some money from it and you're able to see these relationships and the positive impact that you're having. And so I want to take that and transition into how do you guys have the time? What systems have you put in place? How do you get teenage boys and teenage girls to come together and work together and do these things? But Ben, maybe you can talk about this or Alfie or both of you, but what have you put in place to make sure that you're not spending too much time on the YouTube stuff? Because sometimes it can become addicting and it can become overwhelming. And so how do you balance it all? And what are some time management skills that you guys have put in place to begin with?
- [32:05]
Danielle Marsh
We were forced to. With the lockdown obviously kicked us on a bit.
- [32:09]
Alfie Marsh
You're going to make like parentally forced.
- [32:11]
Danielle Marsh
Is anyone watching? No, we weren't forced to, but I think one of the most important techniques that anyone can take down as a note if they want to inspire a teenage child is bribery. That was something that was very much a tactic. Hughes takeaway was. We alluded to it in one of our videos. But yeah, getting a takeaway was often a good way to inspire a little bit more energy because as you say, obviously Dad's got a job, Mum's got a job. This year I've taken off time, I've just finished my A levels and that's. I'm in the gap between university and it's called college, which is. So I've decided to Take a bit of a gap to do some more stuff to keep Marsh family flowing a bit because otherwise it all goes on dad's shoulders. The logistics side. But we always I, we've never struggled to find a little bit of time. And it's not always filming a video. Like a lot of the time it's rehearsing or it might be filming a video for Patreon in which case it's a lot more laid back and we're just being muppets for 15 minutes. Or there's plenty of other things that we do that's involved with Marsh Framley, but it doesn't necessarily always. It isn't always the same thing, which is what gives a bit of variability and I think allows as much as anything else that sense that we're not always doing the same thing and we're not always just going to get bored of it.
- [33:30]
Alfie Marsh
And again, I think it's just about making those trade offs like we were talking before about for me to spend or anyone to spend an extra hour making a really jazzy thumbnail for that video. That's an hour that I'm not, you know, having fun or playing another game or going for a dog walk with everyone or whatever it might be. So I think we've probably taken a hit. Like if we were going to do it intensively and follow all the rule books and the sort of advice about things like releasing content more frequently then including one every three days or one every five days and then we'd be triggering the algorithm more. We'd probably be picking up more followers and subscribers. But we have to, you have to make that priority call somewhere. And actually, weirdly probably the quality of the songs would have gone down. Like the lyrics would have been slightly less funny. Do you know what I mean? We take the hit on what we get out of the machinery because we're confident that when we put in everyone is like emotionally and invested.
- [34:25]
Ben Marsh
I love that and it's so cool that you guys are going to have that to look back on one day and the memories that you've made. To do something creative together is such a cool thing and I think it's really neat. As we close the interview out, I want to ask both of you, we'll start with Ben and then we can end with Alfie. But if you had one tip that you could give creators or one piece of advice, whatever you want to call it, what would that piece?
- [34:49]
Alfie Marsh
I would say probably end roles like the favorite, I think keeping people interested towards the end of a video or the end of a segment of content. And oftentimes it's improvised and it's literally us. We've reached the end of a song. Sometimes it's a live performance, sometimes it's pre recorded, but we leave the camera rolling for that extra bit and there's just a spark of conversation. If the song's gone, you get a really positive little bit of energy. And on so many of our videos there's like a little exchange with test the youngest or someone gives a high five and it just bit like people have commented either in the YouTube comments or on Twitter and I'd never thought about it or X to say we what? Sometimes we forward wind the videos to get the little bit at the end to hear your weird English accents or to see the kind of the family interactions. And there's a part of you that again thinks why not make a massive long family interaction. But then it's a different channel and it's a different thing. So, yeah, think about the random stuff at the end and how that you can use that as both a teaser and an effective positive way to close out a piece of content.
- [35:45]
Danielle Marsh
Yeah, I think mine would relate slightly, but it's regardless of what you're doing and how you're managing and how intensive you're producing something, I think it's always important to make sure that your personality and your kind of niche almost shines through in your content because otherwise you can feel like people aren't there watching because they enjoy watching for you. And it might mean perhaps that you're going to get less people coming in the short term. But you know that a lot of those people are there for you and they'll be there for a very long time because they're there for your personality and not for one spectacular video that you did. And so it builds a more consistent following, I think. And that's something that's really helped us.
- [36:32]
Ben Marsh
Interesting. I want to encourage everyone listening to this to go watch the Marsh family over on YouTube. It's Marsh family songs and just the Marsh family over on YouTube. If you Google that name, it'll come up automatically. But there's some really funny bits in some of those videos and some of those songs. Very clever. And you guys are doing a great job. Ben, you and Danielle as parents and as a whole family creating stuff together. Just a positive vibe. It's. It's awesome. So thank you guys for giving us a peek behind the curtain a little bit. And Ben and Alfie, we appreciate you guys being on the show today.
- [37:04]
Dusty Porter
Hello everyone and thank you for listening.
- [37:06]
Ben Marsh
To this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast.
- [37:10]
Dusty Porter
I really do appreciate it. Don't forget you can subscribe to the show for absolutely free and your podcast player of choice. 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 our creator Discord community. 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.