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YouTube Creators Hub
The 5-Year Rule: How Tom Calton Hit 250K Subs After Going All In
00:37:42
In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub Podcast, host Dusty Porter interviews Tom Calton, a full-time content creator and photographer who shares his journey on YouTube. Tom discusses how he started his channel during the pandemic, his growth...
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- [00:00]
Tom Calton
So I think it all fits under the same umbrella, which is I wasn't just happy just doing one thing and just settling with it, I wasn't just making videos or I've never just made a video for the sake of making a video and just kept my fingers crossed that it will go viral. I've always studied other channels, studied other people, tried to figure out what it is that makes their videos more successful than mine.
- [00:22]
Dusty
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. This is the conversation portion of the show. I'm joined today by another wonderful creator, Tom Calton. He's a full time content creator and photographer who recently hit the five year mark on his YouTube journey. Congratulations on that. A milestone he originally set as his make or break deadline. His main channel now has over 227,000 subscribers, more than 105 million views and generated around $150,000 in revenue just last year with 4 to 5 million monthly views across both long and short form content. Tom, how you doing?
- [01:01]
Tom Calton
I'm good, thank you, Dusty, how are you doing?
- [01:04]
Dusty
Really well, really excited to have you. I've watched a good bit of your content. I just, I love your style and just the things that you cover on your channel. So before we get started, tell the audience a bit about the origin story. Five years ago, you just celebrated the five year mark on YouTube. How did this whole thing start?
- [01:23]
Tom Calton
Like most life changes, it came with a global pandemic. So literally. I used to run a wedding photography and videography company here in the UK and Covid hit, everything went completely upside down and I've always wanted to start a YouTube channel but never had the excuse to do it. So that was the perfect excuse. I had plenty of spare time. I was obviously in lockdown in my own home and I decided just to give it a go and get started. So that's how it all took off and I decided to go with the photography niche as it's something that I've been doing since I was 18. Really. I've been a freelance photographer since then. I figured that was a subject that I knew the most about that I could get started with. And yeah, it just snowballed from there really.
- [02:03]
Dusty
So the tagline on your channel says snap in pics and making flicks. I love that. That's extremely clever. I love the design of your channel. If you were to explain to the audience what your channel is a little bit deeper than just photography. What type of content do you upload on your channel?
- [02:22]
Tom Calton
Yes. So it's evolved over the years as many channels do, but currently I've settled within the niche of reviewing predominantly older cameras, secondhand cameras, used cameras, but then I'm also lucky enough to get hands on with some newer products as well, as I've established contacts with some of the bigger major brands. So that's the base I've landed in. But I also have done for a long time made a lot of short form content and I tend to review lenses as short form content for various reasons. I'm sure we'll dive in throughout this conversation.
- [02:53]
Dusty
Did you start with a. You talked about starting in the photography space. Did you know as far as once you made those first few videos that you were going to stick to that? Did you have a clear niche or were there times throughout the five years that you've ebbed and flowed as far as now you cover vintage camera reviews like you just mentioned and you cover some new products as well. But has there been a time in there where you've made a pivot or has it been pretty structured the entire time?
- [03:20]
Tom Calton
I've always remained within the photography niche right from day one, just because one of the pieces of advice that I received right at the beginning was that pick a niche, stick to it, don't tend to deviate because the people that you, if you pick one topic, gather a load of followers and then you change and go in a totally different direction, you're probably going to alienate your original fan base and then it's going to be really hard to gain that momentum. So I've always stuck within photography, but I've always tried to find, go where the views are if you like, but also try and find where the views are going, but also where my heart goes as well. Because I don't want to just make content that I really, you know, about a subject I'm really not interested in because you're just going to quickly burn out and get bored of it. To start with, I actually in lockdown, I was doing a lot of like self portrait challenges because you couldn't leave the house. And that was a fairly good start. And then an old friend of mine crawled out of the woodwork. He saw that I was posting YouTube videos on Facebook and he was like, oh, you've got a YouTube channel now? I've just started working for Sigma, who are a big lens manufacturer. And he said do you want to, do you want to try some of our stuff out and make some videos? So I did that, noticed a big jump up in views from doing that. So I was like, that's we're doing better here. So let's go over this, let's explore this route, use that as a jumping board to then contact other lens manufacturers. And it evolved into a lens testing channel for the longest time, for a good couple of years. And then I realized I wasn't making too much money and certainly not enough to make a living from. So I was still working full time for my UK media company, corporate media company. So still doing that full time and then trying to make a video every week, at least one video every week. So I decided, look, I'm not making enough to survive on this. The I was. The couple of hundred dollars that I do make is great, but I don't need to rely on that so I can have the freedom to just pivot and do something else. And I noticed that there were a number of other creators who obviously by this point shorts had evolved on YouTube because obviously that started over the pandemic, but it really evolved and got to somewhere where you could really grow, is a niche you could really grow in. So I decided, right, I'm going to scrap long form altogether. I'm not making any long form content, but I am going to make short form content every single day for as long as I can. So I made a short video every day for I think it was just over six or seven months and off the back of that the channel just exploded. It got me from. I'm going to butcher the statistics, but I know we're somewhere like 30,000 subscribers. And by the end of the year we went, I think we ticked over the 100,000 subscriber mark from doing that. So then by that point when you start getting, generating a buzz and you have subscribers and you have all the statistics that look nice and juicy to sponsors and other manufacturers who might want to work with you, that's when I then pivoted back to doing long format stuff. And again, I did my research. I figured out I was like, a lot's changed in the six to 12 months I've been doing shorts. What's hot in the photography world now? Let's figure out where we want to, what kind of content we want to make. And I noticed a load of other channels who were getting the majority of the views within the photography niche were either photography tutorials, but that's evergreen content, which is a bit of a slower burn, or cameras rather than lenses. So again, I just gave it a try and after three or four videos I noticed a massive uptick in views versus my old lens Videos. And that's where I've stuck ever since. I've been doing that for the best part of a year and a half, maybe two years now.
- [06:50]
Dusty
So a lot in that answer that I want to double down on and ask you about. The first thing I would say, just to follow up to what you just said there at the very end, is that when I'm working with a client and I look at their YouTube channel and I go to their channel and I sort by popular videos and they have one that's done very well in the recent month or two months or whatever it may be. And I asked them, I said, why didn't you do another video similar to that? Kind of like what you mentioned about doing the camera reviews or the kind of vintage camera reviews. And you kind of leaned into, we call them buckets or you can call them whatever you want to call them, programming or whatever. So it's really interesting to hear you say you found something that worked that the audience wanted, your target audience wanted, and then you enjoyed doing it. And so that combination led you down the path of just leaning into that and really being intentional about how and what content you create on the channel. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Now you mentioned in your bio that you gave yourself a five year kind of cutoff of okay, I'm gonn do this 2020, 2025 and I'm going to figure out which is something, by the way, most creators don't do, they normally give themselves a month and if they don't get what they want in a month, they're just out. Right? Which is unfortunate. But where or what was the turning point when you thought to yourself, okay, this might be more than just a hobby, this thing might actually be something that I can take and do full time.
- [08:08]
Tom Calton
I'm always one of those people where if I want to do that, I'll just do it and I'll fight. It's not a case of oh, maybe that will happen. I'm like, when that happens and I'll just go for it. But I'm also realistic in the sense that you sometimes in life can't do things forever and not make a buck from it and just expect it to one day miraculously work? You have to work on it. You have to change your tactic. Like the goal can be the same, but the route that you take will probably change. It might not be the one that you forecast for yourself. You'll probably have to find your own way. But don't be discouraged by that. So yeah, it was Very much case of just trying to find where I need to be within the photography scape to make that work. But going to, on mentioning the five year like cutoff point, that was the thing in my head I was like, I'm gonna make this work no matter how I do it. But also be, I have to be realistic myself and my family. I'm a family man, I'm reliant. Our family structure is where I'm reliant the breadwinners. So I have to be making the money. So I can't be just doing this for fun and consuming all of my time not making any money. So it has to be realistic. And the five year cutoff point I thought was a realistic point. Five years I felt was a good amount of time to try it out and learn. Because also like going off what you said, you're absolutely right. So many people just give up so early because they, I guess they see all these. You only ever hear about the viral sensations on YouTube and tick tock where they've been doing it three months and then all of a sudden they've got a million subscribers and they're millionaires. And that's the 0.1% kind of thing. The rest of us who are doing this full time had to burn slowly, had to learn, didn't stumble into the things that become or made them popular. It takes time and you have to put a lot of trial and error and research into this. It is very much a labor of love. And you I now consider myself, I love making YouTube videos. The topic really is secondary to that for me. I want to eventually have multiple channels doing multiple things that I love, love doing to just explore different niches and keep making content interesting for me. So I'm not one of those people who will just probably do this forever. There is, I appreciate there's probably going to be a shelf life to me and how many people find me interesting. They're eventually going to just find somebody new. And that's just the nature of being online. Yeah, you've got to be realistic, set a plan. But also don't get disheartened and be open to the idea of learning and evolving.
- [10:38]
Dusty
So now let's talk about a little bit about growth and strategy and kind of what you've utilized to grow your channel to such a large scale now that, that you're now five years and beyond into this thing. If there was one thing that you would say attributed, maybe it's not one thing, maybe it's a few things that you'd like to mention to the creators listening to this now, what would be those things that you would say? Okay, these are things that I can really pinpoint and say this made a difference in the growth of my channel. And you already mentioned one kind of talking about you pivoted and you started doing one short per day, which really helped fuel the channel. I talk a lot here that you know, if a channel's grow grows solely on vertical video or short form content on YouTube, it's a really hard ask as far as like monetization and there's some kind of, you're getting behind the eight ball, but you really haven't become a short only channel. You still do them, but your long forms are averaging tens, hundreds of thousands of views. And so what would you say are the few things that have propelled you to the growth that you've seen?
- [11:43]
Tom Calton
So I think it all fits under the same umbrella, which is I wasn't just happy just doing one thing and just settling with it. I wasn't just making videos or I've never just made a video for the sake of making a video and just kept my fingers crossed that it will go viral. I've always studied other channels, studied other people, try to figure out what it is that makes their videos more successful than mine and try and learn from it and then. But not carbon copy. I don't ever want to copy someone. I just want to go, those elements are working. How can I adopt those into my own style and also add my own spice to the mix as well? Because you. Which in my realm, my spice, if you like, is I try and add humor, usually quite crude humor, but that's just, that's my sense of humor. And I was trying to find an audience that I would resonate with and I noticed that was something that doesn't really exist within my space. In the photography world there are people who inject a bit of humor, but it's usually quite light hearted banter. Whereas I tried to go something a bit more bullish and a bit more risky because I saw the space and that's worked. That's the thing that's got the most attention because people immediately, I guess if you're used to the photography space when it is a bit dry and then this guy comes in and he's making rude jokes, you're like, oh, who's this guy? You stand out a bit. So that would be the first thing in a nutshell. Find something that you can add to your space, but find what's. Find a niche within your niche. That is performing well because that's a good place to start. But you also need something that you can do infinitely. So in my case it turned out to be cameras and obviously there are a lot of cameras. So whilst I might not be able to do it infinitely because eventually I'm going to run out of used cameras to review and new cameras don't come out that often, at least I've got a long term strategy that I can ride on for as long as I can and then decide to pivot to something else further on down the line. The second thing really fits the same mold, but shorts was the game changer. I, for various reasons really. Firstly, it meant that I was making content every single day. I was thinking about content every single day. I was researching content every single day. I was trying new things every single day and being willing, being willing to fail every single day. Because when you're doing a short every single day, the vast majority of them are terrible and they fail. And I still get, there are a handful of them that I made right at the start that I still, they still flash up every now and again that they're getting comments and I'm, I watch them back and I'm like, wow, that was terrible. It was terrible lighting, terrible. My, my performance on camera is really rigid or awkward and loads of that stuff and you realize how quickly you evolve. But doing it every single day allowed me to evolve really quickly. Way quicker than I' would have done if I'd have just stuck doing lens reviews every week. So like I said, the strategy really for me, the goal was to, in order for me to monetize the channel and make this a full time job, I needed to make that happen as quickly as possible. I figured out that Shorts, Daily Shorts was the, the best chance for that to happen. I did that and then I was like, when I get to the, when I get the channel to a reasonable size, like 100, 200,000 subscribers and I'm getting reasonable views. So I've got some ammunition to go to sponsors with and try and get some money from them to prop up the channel. Then I'll pivot to long format. But I didn't immediately cut off the short. So for the longest time now I've been doing one long format video a week and three shorts, which has been killer. And I am slowing that down now because I've also come to the realization that I can't do that anymore. Again, just being a family man, it's a lot of work to put in every single week without fail. And there's a lot of mental pressures on doing that. So I also would say as an advisory, just be aware of what your mental capacity is and don't feel obligated to do something forever just because you feel like you should. And also I feel like I've got the channel to a place now where growth really shouldn't be my focus. It should really be just sustainability for the channel and just improving the quality of my content and just focusing on that now.
- [15:52]
Dusty
All right, I'm going to interrupt the interview just by briefly to talk about a new service that I'm offering to creators. For 50 bucks, I will take a look at your channel. I'm calling them channel reviews or channel audits. And I will send you the full video of me talking about things that I've noticed just looking at your channel blindly. And I've done almost 50 of these now in the past month. And I'm going to say it's one of my new favorite things to do because I get to check out people's channels. And so if you're looking for a low barrier to entry to getting someone to look at your channel, give you a few tips. The 10 minute videos that I'm recording and emailing to people, one of the guys said this month that it was the best $50 he spent in the YouTube education space in over a couple of years. So definitely check that out if you haven't already. All right, now back to the interview. Is there anything that you've learned creating one short every day for such a long time and then doing three a week? What tips or tricks can you give the audience that are thinking, you know what? I'd like to implement or supplement my long form with a few shorts a week or just to d babble like you said, just to learn. I find it as a content creator, it can be a really good testing zone for maybe future long form videos and video ideas. What are some things that you learned that kind of help you and helped your short form videos get more attention or traction?
- [17:17]
Tom Calton
So first of all, I would say don't treat them as two different animals. If you go in with short format content using the same structure as your long format content, usually the biggest problem is that people are too slow. You'll lose people. The world of short form content is savage. You've got two to three seconds. Once they've swiped onto your video or clicked on your tapped on your video, you've got two to three seconds to get them. And if you don't get them, they'll be gone and then that's it. So you can make the best video in the world, but if you stutter and falter at the beginning, you're going to lose them. Yeah, that's, that would be the first thing I would say is just keep the pace sharp to the point. People do not have time to waste with shorts. They want the information and they want it now, so give it to them. Also at the early days where you're just trying to get the most traction as possible with shorts, keep them short, keep them, you don't have to fill the full 60 seconds. If you can do, say what you're going to say in 30 seconds and deliver maximum value, absolutely do that. The name of the game really is viewer retention. With shorts you want people to, you want to engage people immediately and then you want to keep them there for the entirety of the video. And if you do that a number of times in quick succession, you'll notice your channel explode. But also be prepared to fail and test new things. Don't feel like I think you can afford to be a bit more disposable with your content with shorts, which is always quite a nice thing in some ways. If you're okay with failing sometimes you can try new things and just make sure you go back and analyze like what caused that to fail. So be a bit more self critical but be, be fair on yourself, don't be too harsh on yourself. You just need to be realistic and try and analyze because what you thought may have been a good idea at the time, after a couple of weeks of doing it, doing those that many videos, you go back and go, ah, that's why that failed. It's because I was too slow with the delivery. I didn't give the people the hook that they needed to keep going and then I didn't follow up with the value. You need the hook and then the value immediately. That's if you've got those two ingredients, you've probably got a good video.
- [19:21]
Dusty
So your thumbnail style for your long form videos. One of the things that I coach with my clients oftentimes is let the image breathe, let it speak in the thumbnail. And as far as verbiage and words go, you put those more in the title. I love the way that you've grown to design your thumbnails and if people want to go, they can go to your channel. It's just om c a l t o n on YouTube and the way that you do your camera reviews is you hold the camera and you put Very little if any text on the thumbnail and it's very high quality, very high contrast, very. The colors pop and you can really sense and see what the video is going to be about before you even click into it. Can you talk about your thought process behind why your thumbnails look the way they do and why you've gone down that route?
- [20:07]
Tom Calton
Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what? That's one thing that a lot of YouTubers I've met over the years have always picked out. And I do know it's just something I fell into. I did a few videos and I did that style of thumbnail and those are. The videos seem to perform well versus the other ones that I was experimenting more and trying harder with a thumbnail. So I ended up just redoing a bunch of thumbnails so they were all consistent. I'm always wearing a white T shirt, I'm always using the same lighting, I'm always holding the camera a specific angle or a specific way. I guess I'm very fortunate in the niche that I work in where people just come. If I'm just doing camera reviews, you don't really need to try and drag people in because if people are looking for a camera view, they just want to see a nice looking camera that's well lit. Because obviously as a photographer you're drawn to nice photography. So it makes sense to keep that higher quality but also just really clean, consistent. Consistency was the thing for me. I figured that if I make my thumbnails almost religious people, if they're scrolling they don't even need to look at whose channel is. They don't need to look at the headline. They can immediately tell I've got a new video out and if they care about my videos they will click through and watch it. So yeah, that was the reasoning behind that and keeping that consistent just so that it's immediately obvious. And I have spotted another, a few other larger YouTubers who do that kind of thing. So I've just done it in the most simplistic way. Plus also because I'm originally from the uk, I'm currently in the UK now, but I actually live in Canada at the moment. So I needed something that I can replicate anywhere in the world and it almost stresses me out now if I'm somewhere else and I haven't got the ability to replicate that. It hasn't quite happened yet. I've always managed to get away with it. But yeah, that's the reasoning behind that.
- [21:46]
Dusty
I just really. The simplistic nature of them and I think that it's not just your niche that we're seeing it work in. I think we're seeing it work in a lot of different spaces. I think people love that simplistic kind of authentic feel to a thumbnail. And don't get me wrong, it's. It looks high quality, it looks clean. By me calling them simplistic, it doesn't mean that there's no to little work in them. It just means that there's not a lot going on. There's not a lot of distractions of hey, I know what that's about. And you explained that very well. Let's talk about monetization. All right, let's break it down. What are the ways that you make money? Let's start there and then you can tell us as a creator what you might average on a month in 2025 from all of your different sources of revenue.
- [22:29]
Tom Calton
Yeah, sure. Let's start with the obvious one, ad revenue. Unfortunately, in the niche that I'm in, whilst I do a good video in our niche would be tens of thousands of views after a month. A very good performer would be hundreds of thousands, but probably low hundreds of thousands. And then very rarely you'll get millions. I've only ever had one video that's surpassed a million, which I'm very grateful for, but is incredibly rare. So ad revenue obviously has a ceiling to it. And on average I'm. I'm making usually two and a half to two and a half thousand dollars on a good month, $3,000 on a very good month in terms of ad revenue. So that's the first obvious one. But I also hire an editor who happens to be my brother. So there's two mouths to feed. Two and a half to $3,000 unfortunately doesn't pay. Isn't enough to pay the bills for both of us. So we also. I'm heavily reliant on sponsors and I try and get a sponsor for every single video that I do just because it allows the stability for my company. And then sponsorships can come in various different ways. It can be a sponsored short form video which would just be a one shot where they just they want essentially turns into an ad where I'm just talking about a product. The, my personal favorite is an integrated ad into long form content. Just because I feel like most people are more accustomed to that. You're still delivering the content they want and they can skip over the bit, the sponsored bit if they not interested. And it's just the least amount of disruption to the channel. So I'm now pushing to only do that kind of sponsored integration just because it's the least disruptive. And then the other one is full long form dedicated sponsored video, which is can be anywhere from five to 10 minutes long. And that how much you get paid for that will vary depending on the customer and the length of the video and all that kind of stuff. But again, I've done a few of those recently and they always tend to. The comments are never very nice about it. You always get very judgmental comments about you're a shill or you're a sellout. And ultimately I don't want to breed that kind of resentment. I'm only here to have fun. So I am taking a direction away from that now. But they are the main three sponsorships. And in terms of sponsorships total, again, it can massively vary. Depends on who the client is and what kind of sponsorship. But broadly speaking, I can make anywhere between 6 to $12,000 a month. With sponsorships, 12,000amonth would be a very good month. And then the final ad revenue, sorry, the final source of revenue really is that I sell Lightroom presets and luts on my website. And I tend to advertise that as much as I can within the videos if people want to try, if people want to buy them and help me out. But I try and keep them as low price as possible because I don't want to be charging tens or hundreds of dollars for this kind of stuff. So they're usually like five bucks each. And then by the time you've taken off PayPal fees and taxes, you don't actually end up with that much. Usually it gets me another couple of hundred dollars, three to five hundred dollars a month on top. So, yeah, they're the main three sources of revenue for the channel.
- [25:34]
Dusty
Now that you have been working and doing this for a while, do you still find yourself trying to figure out, like, what are other ways that I can make money from this? And how do you decide where you devote your time? Because with ad revenue, like you said, it's got a cap to it. In your niche, in your space, ad revenue is dependent on views, not subscribers. So like a channel like mine, my tutorial channel averages 50 to 75,000 views every day, Monday through Sunday. It'll get, it can get here. Lately it's been getting 70 to 80,000 views per day. And so for me, I'm in a good space as far as the ad revenue goes. But oftentimes I'll have sponsored videos, I'll have Links in the description that can help me out. But are you all the time thinking, okay, I know there's a cap to that. If I upload more videos, if they're still high quality, maybe I can get more ad revenue. But what are your thoughts on branching out? Because you've talked about possibly launching new channels around new passions, but where is your focus at now that you have the luts and the things that you've released? Have you thought about merchandise or affiliate revenue for the new cameras that the affiliate links with the new cameras that you review? Like, what are your thoughts on expanding? People may hear you say, oh, 12,000, 12,000, whatever per month is great, but how can we go beyond that? Because you want to pay your brother and possibly bring other people on. So what are your thought processes there?
- [26:54]
Tom Calton
Yeah. So one thing I should touch on as well very quickly is the 150,000 on average that I mentioned. It's turnover. I think the really big distinction in all of this is that's turnover. So that's the amount of money that my company brings in. Obviously, you've got taxes, you've got. I've got to buy cameras. I'm buying cameras every single week, which are a couple of hundred dollars every, every time. And I'm usually too busy to actually sell them afterwards. I used to sell them on and get more funds, but now I'm just so busy. I've got an absolute basement full of cameras at the moment, which is very stressful. But my. That's a. That's a me problem. So you got that. You've got to pay my editor. Obviously. I. Most of the deals that we do are dealt in US dollars. My company's based in the uk. The pound versus the US dollar isn't perfect that way around. The cost of living in the UK is pretty bad. Taxes are pretty bad at the moment. So whilst my company might make $150,000, I personally do not make six. Six figures a year. So I think that's an important distinction to make. And also just to make it realistic, because I don't want to say $150,000 a year. Wow. And then somebody finds out the hard way that actually it's not. Not quite as simple as that. I still make a very modest, a good living. I'm very happy, I'm very comfortable. But, yeah, it's not quite as glitzy and glam as you might think. But also, one thing, you remind me, that's another actual revenue source that we do make is we do. I do have Affiliate links but historically I've been pretty bad at it and I came to a realization recently that I'm just not trying hard enough with that. And I was trying to figure out why I've been so reserved about affiliate links and I came to the conclusions conclusion that I've had. So I've had a serious spat over the last year or so since the channel started growing of very negative comments towards me personally. Accusations pointed towards me about being a sellout or a shill or all of that kind of stuff. And personally I try to be as morally squeaky clean as I can. I don't do things that I feel like. I try and be transparent with sponsorships and all of that kind of stuff. I think being accused of being crooked really affected me in a way where I was. It pushed me away from trying to make this into a business because I was worried about the ridicule. And then I met up with another YouTuber called Mark Wimals who I got speaking to a year ago on Instagram. He has a photography channel, he predominantly looks at lenses. We've always just really got on really well and we met in Vegas a show called NAB a few months back and for the first time we just hit it off. We spoke so much and he was just a. He is one of the smartest guys I know in this space hands down in terms of making YouTube a business. And he's just a very. I owe him a lot because he really did pick me up and shake me a bit and I came away from that revitalized. So since then I've really slapped myself around the face and started really pushing affiliate links and I've almost doubled my affiliate revenue just by doing that. The biggest thing I can tell you, the one single handed thing that I hadn't been doing and since changing has doubled my affiliate revenue is having links on the very first line of the description. I always never did that because I felt A it looks spammy and B it probably would affect SEO hasn't done either. Nobody's batted an eyelid that I've done that and I've just had more clicks from it and the SEO hasn't changed and my hasn't affected my videos negative negatively at all. And also pinning the same links in the comment section a first comment as well. It's one thing I didn't do because I schedule videos and I didn't realize that when you upload a video if you set it as unlisted, click on the video to watch it. You can comment and pin a comment and then you can go back and then set it scheduled. Didn't know that. Been doing this for almost five years. Didn't realize that every day is a school day.
- [30:39]
Dusty
Absolutely. I, I oftentimes tell my wife never to go in the comment section of one of my videos because I'm worried about what those the people are going to say. And I, early on it bothered me, but as I've grown, I've gotten older, I've matured, obviously, I realized that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what these people say. They can say all they want in the comment section. You know who you are, who you are morally, you know that you're doing the right thing. And at the end of the day, we, if people create content like what I'm doing with this podcast, in order for me to be able to devote the tens of hours, sometimes way more than I should on this show, I have to make money from it. And so I love the. I get them very rarely, but I'll get comments and reviews on the podcast that say, oh, the first minute was all about what he has to offer or the sponsorships. And then I'll listen to Tim Ferriss podcast and he'll have nine straight minutes of advertisements. And it's just, I'm just, I'm over it at this point. We have to eat too, as creators and doctors are not going to show up and work on you and do a surgery if they're not getting paid. They're just not going to do it out of the goodness of their heart. So I know content creation can look different because you're like, oh, you're just making videos or, oh, you're just recording podcasts. But, but that's not how this works. We're making a difference. We're changing lives. Yes, maybe not. I can state this. Not near as much as a doctor or a nurse or a lawyer, but still, the things that we say, the platform that we've been given, it matters. And these negative comments can really drag good people and good creators down. And I'm here to say on this podcast, don't let that happen to you. Put your blinders on, put up some guardrails and just keep trudging forward. And that's really going to help you be better, more authentic creator. The last thing I want to ask you, Tom, is tens of thousands of people listen to the show every week, and I'm very thankful for that. All the creators that listen, if you're listening today, this far into this Episode. Thank you so much for listening. I get emails and we listen every week. We're so thankful for the value that your guests bring. Because I don't bring the value. I really just facilitate it. And I understand that. I'm okay with that. So I want to ask you the final question today is for all of those listening out there, creators, whether they're aspiring to be or they are a creator currently trying to grow a channel, what would be the one piece of advice that you would give? Give them. Maybe something you wish you would have known sooner or just whatever it may be.
- [32:48]
Tom Calton
Yeah, so I could. There's two bits of advice that I've been really toying with lately. The first bit is the obvious one you've probably heard a million times, but it is true, is just start. Doesn't matter if they're terrible, doesn't matter if you know you hate them in a year's time. You can always delete them. But just start. I have been dreaming about this job since I was 14, 15, maybe 16. Always dreamed of doing this in one way or another. Originally I wanted to be on a gaming channel, so maybe that will happen in the future. But I've always wanted to start, never did. And I really wish I started it sooner. I think I would have had way more experience way sooner had I started sooner. But then everything happened for a reason. I believe maybe I wasn't meant to start sooner. But if you can start sooner, start as soon as you can. The second thing I would say is whilst I don't regret my journey so far, it's in the slightest. I have come to the realization that this niche that I'm in does have a ceiling. And I feel like I am already hitting it to a degree. I'm obviously no Pete McKinnon. There are very few people who ever skyrocket to that kind of level of success. And I don't really have any desire to be that. But the channel is what it is and I love it for what it is. But I'm very quickly exhausting all of the avenues that I wanted to explore and thrive in. As I mentioned earlier, starting a second channel has always been my dream. And I've actually. I've actually started a second channel. Started it in February. It's. If you want to check it out, it's called Bobblehead Tales. It's a completely different channel to what I'm doing now. It's a. An animated history channel where I inject as much humor as I can into it. And that has seen exponential Growth. We started February and I think we're at 18,000 subscribers now after releasing. I think we've released like one short every week for the since then. And we're now transitioning into long format content. But the reason for choosing that niche specifically is because the ceiling for that niche is millions, not tens or hundreds of thousands of views. So with that you have way more. The sky's the limit with stuff like that. It's a niche that there's not that many, not much content going into it because it's really difficult and quite hard to do. You need very specific sets of skills to be able to perform, to provide that. Luckily, I've got a friend who also works my media company here in the UK who's an insanely good animator and illustrator and he's the other driving force behind this channel. So I do all the production and stuff and he does the animation and that side of things. So that is basically the next project for me. And I do envision in the not too distant future my photography channel slowing down a bit to allow more space for that in a roundabout, in a long, long winded way of saying, what I'm saying is make sure the niche you pick has the ceiling that you're happy with. Because if photography had a higher ceiling, I probably wouldn't be looking elsewhere, my ambitions would just keep growing. But as it stands, I've outlived that a little bit. So, yeah, make sure you pick a niche that you're happy with and is a realistic and viable way of making money. That is you're going to get enough views. People are already making a living from it, if that's what you want.
- [35:52]
Dusty
Love that. And that channel again is Bobblehead Tales. 18,000 subscribers grown strictly from the YouTube shorts, only doing 23, 20 some odd videos. That's really good. So I would agree with everything that you said there. Tom, thank you so much for being our guest this week. I really do appreciate it and I do want to say, as we end this conversation, thank you to all of you that sent me, congratulations from last week. I did announce that my wife is pregnant with triplets and so we are expecting three little ones. We don't know what they are just yet. We may find out actually today as I'm recording this. But people often tell me that I do a very bad job of incorporating my life. I do, I try to separate it, but I do want to merge the two a little more because I am going to start a little, whether a TikTok or an Instagram around the journey that we're going to go through, having two girls already and then now going from two kids to five kids. And so if you'd like to follow along, definitely keep your ears open because as we get closer to their due date, I'm gonna start something because so many people around me have said you need to journal, you need to document this because there's so few people who go through this. I just want to make sure everybody's healthy. And then once that happens, we'll certainly do that. So thanks again, Tom, for joining me this week and we'll talk to you next time.
- [37:07]
Tom Calton
Thanks, Dusty.
- [37:08]
Dusty
And that's a wrap on this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening to the audio feed. Leave us a review if we've helped you out. Also, don't forget to check out all of the number of things we offer for creators. All of those will be listed down below. And don't forget, if you have a guest or you'd like to be a guest, you can email me Dusty at dustyporter.
- [37:28]
Tom Calton
Com.
- [37:28]
Dusty
I don't bring everyone on the show. It's actually I do have requirements and they're not numbers. So if you know someone or have connections, please let me know. I would greatly appreciate it. And with that said, keep hitting that upload button and we'll talk to you next week.