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YouTube Creators Hub
What Worked on YouTube in 2024 & How to Win in 2025
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Join Dusty Porter in this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast as he uncovers effective strategies for soaring to success on YouTube in 2024 and prepares you for the landscape of 2025. Explore crucial platform changes, the rise of YouTube...
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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.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. My name's Dusty Porter. I host this show each and every Friday, where I sit down and I interview content creators and I break down their successes, their failures, in hopes of giving you something to motivate you or a bit of strategy that maybe you haven't thought of yet that can help take your channel or content to the next level. Today is going to be a little bit of a different episode. It's going to be a solo episode with just me today, getting back to interviews starting next week. My daughter's having surgery. Nothing serious, it's just a sinus surgery. And so I decided not to do the extra work of trying to navigate getting the editor over with the interviews. And I've been wanting to record this episode for a long time. So if you want to support us, you can Support our sponsor, TubeBuddy, the main primary sponsor of the show. You can get free 30 days of using everything that they have to help you as a creator. You can connect with me. I offer one on one YouTube coaching. If you're looking to set up a podcast, I help people with that, as well as one of the largest growing YouTube creator communities on the Internet on our Discord server. For five bucks over on Patreon, you get access to that community. Plus our monthly Mastermind calls. Get in now, because our October monthly Mastermind call is next week. All right, so today the title of this episode, I think, is going to be basically what worked on YouTube in 2024 and how to win in 2025 and beyond. So today we're going to be talking about what you should be doing now that we're going into the fourth quarter. We're basically a month into Q4 now with October coming to an end. And so basically what I want to talk about is just what I've seen, what's worked for me and my clients and things of that nature and help you dissect what you should be doing to make sure you're improving. Oftentimes people get on calls with me and they say, you know, I'm not getting subscribers or why am I not growing? Or I just started on YouTube and I feel like I'm not getting any traction. Oftentimes it's because they're doing the same things over and over again. And if you never look at what you're doing as a creator and review what you've done, whether it be programming, branding, packaging, all of the above, you're never going to improve. You're never going to get better. So again, before we get started, I want to encourage you subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. That way you get notified every Friday morning when we go live. Stick around to the end. We got some other actionable things I can talk about, but let's go ahead and dive into the main meat of today's episode. All right, so 2024 in review, platform changes and algorithm shifts now we all know what's happened with vertical video YouTube shorts and the impact that they've had. Shorts have become central, they've become key in YouTube strategy driving discoverability. They're showing up in search now, and there's a ton of creators that are building audiences quickly via shorts. Should you jump into this if you haven't already? This is a big deal. This is something I've had to look at. I've had to assess whether it be the podcast channel or my tutorial channel on should I not just focus on shorts alone, but should I implement them into my programming? So if 2024 is anything to go off of, vertical video and YouTube shorts are not going anywhere. They're only going to double down on them and we're going to see them implemented even more. I do have to say, and give YouTube credit, they've done a really good job of implementing them and better categorizing them. There are ways to hide them from the feed, but I do believe we're going to see that going forward. It's going to be a very big part of their future strategy. Now, algorithm adjustments happen every year, right trends and watch time click through rate and retention. There is a very big emphasis on personalization and viewer satisfaction metrics. As far as like people staying on platform, it's always been a big deal, but it's even bigger now. I've basically I used to do this thing at the end of my videos. Again, this episode's to be behind the scenes or behind the curtain of what it's like to run my channel and my brand and my team. But I used to do this thing where I had an end card and for the last 20 seconds of all of my edits, I had this really cool thing designed by a professional designer of where I could put the end card of the video and the subscribe button as my video's ending and it had some music and I just noted that the watch time plummeted whenever that started. And I realized I was like, what's the point of this? Am I getting anything out of this? So I had to assess that and I've just completely eliminated it. Like I don't do that end card anymore. I still do an end card, but it's as I'm talking and ending the video and I've found that's really helped me and I've seen an uptick in watch time and that's helped kind of some of my newer videos take off quicker than they normally would have. Suggested video and homepage algorithm tweaks. There's a lot less reliance on search because of how YouTube is promoting. We're going to see a lot of things coming into 2025 and beyond where they're promoting new creators. I think that small creators are going to have not an advantage, but they're going to have more of an easier time if they're creating quality content because YouTube's gonna highlight those people. So I would make sure that all of your packaging looks good. Thumbnails, titles, things like that. Those things are very important. Right. All right, so next, monetization updates and success stories and just the ability to monetize in different ways. So the YouTube shorts monetization rollout had a big impact. We all know that it's basically pennies on the dollar, right? You're not getting very much for those views. I consider YouTube shorts and vertical video like snacks. If we're using the analogy of eating, those are like just snacks. You're snacking on content. Right. The long form video, or longs as I like to refer to them as, that's the real meat and potatoes. That's the actual main course. Right. But I don't believe that they're going to rest here. I think there's going to be other ways for you to monetize. Obviously people sell merch and it links people back to their long form stuff. So I do believe we're going to see a transition here and I do believe if you're hesitant because you're worried about being able to monetize in the amount of time you're putting in, especially if you already have an established channel, don't be. I think this is going to be fixed. I think we're going to see a big movement in that next year. And beyond memberships, super chats and other income sources, live streaming to me is still the one thing that I believe Creators are sleeping on the most. I do believe that being able to live stream for long amounts of time, I'm talking like an hour plus and repurposing that content as a upload later and then even clipping it with AI tools or doing it yourself with your team, whoever is doing that for you into YouTube shorts. The amount of content you can get from one live stream is tremendous. So I would like to encourage people, if you haven't already considered or thought about live streaming, this might be something that you want to look into. Because I do believe that streamers and creators have really leveraged the memberships and donations to increase revenue. Because live streaming gives you so many different avenues to monetize, whether it be through super chats, memberships and the like. And it gives you a way to basically where you used to have to go off platform to say Patreon or another crowdfunding source, you can now do it all within platform on YouTube. So I do believe that's a big deal going forward. If you're sleeping on that or haven't thought about it, maybe write that down as a side note of something you want to explore going into the new year. Next would be affiliate and sponsorship growth. I don't know about you guys specifically listening, but as I can tell you, for me and my business, I have never had a year where I have gotten more serious inquiries about sponsoring my YouTube channel. Now I've only gone through with a couple of them and you can listen to episodes here on the podcast to see that I'm very big on. I want you to say no 90% of the time and then you can say yes to the 10% that are really not just lucrative for you monetarily, but they're very important as far as the trust that you've already built with your audience. So again, I think we're going to see a lot of different niches thrive with brand sponsorships going into the new year. And maybe a lot of people are going to move to this method of. I've heard a lot of creators tell me that, and I've seen this come through my email feed or my inbox. Brands are going to come at you with a package. They're going to say, okay, $2,000 this month for one long form and four YouTube shorts. That's the packaging we're seeing. And so it's really allowing you to utilize and improve your creative chops as you're doing the long stream. And some people, and I'm working with a company right now who said, hey, we want two live streams a month, two long forms and eight YouTube shorts. And with one of my clients, he's making almost 10 grand. And I don't want to quote this, but I believe he has just over 15,000 subscribers. So that should be motivating to you. You don't have to have the big numbers metrics wise to make money. You just got to be talking to the right people, to the right audience. Very important. All right, key trends and successful formats that we saw in this year, we saw a big rise in faceless channels and automation tools. Obviously AI voiceover stock footage, that's only going to continue. This is going to be a big thing going forward until YouTube puts a clamp on the faceless stuff, which I don't believe they can do with a wide net. I think they're going to have to individualize this. But faceless channels are a thing and automation tools are allowing it to happen much easier. With AI voiceovers, I'll be honest with you, not sure about you guys. I'm not just saying this. As a voice actor, I can tell you my voice acting jobs and income have decreased tremendously. I'd say 40 to 60% depending on the month. But I still have those clients who come back to me every single day. And a lot of them are coming back after using AI voiceovers. As soon as I go to a video and I hear the voice and I can. You can clearly see or hear, not see, you can clearly hear that it's AI. I click off, I go to another video. I don't know about you, it just, it's annoying to me and it just, it bothers me. So I think we're going to seek pivot and maybe adjustment back a little bit from that. Next live streaming is making a comeback again. I've already talked about this. Gaming Q and A sessions, interactive streams, these are all things that are happening right now. And I think you're only going to see that increase into the new year and beyond. Continued growth in these specific spaces. Personal finance and how to channels, these are things that are happening and we're seeing them happen in mass because of the way AI tools have allowed us to mass create content. I believe it's the same good and bad that there's a lot of pros and cons to these, to the AI tools that are allowing growth in these areas. But with the education and specifically personal finance niche, people are going into that space because they know that the ad revenue oftentimes is super high. I was talking to a guy the Other day, he has just under a hundred thousand subscribers. He gets about, I don't know, just under 1 million views a month, which is close to what I get sometimes. I get 1.52 million on my channel every single month, very consistently. And he was making almost three times what I was making from ad revenue alone. So that's not including sponsorship deals, which are obviously way more lucrative there as well. All right, so let's go to the 2025 forecast and what to expect. Content trends and new formats. We've already mentioned AI generated content and its role in video creation, whether it be scripting, thumbnail creation, captions. Again, I don't think it's going to resonate as well as people are thinking it's going to. And then we get into the whole moral ground of things. What's ethical, what's not. Like, how are you taking your audience for granted? I don't know. I think AI generated content is only going to be on the rise. But I do believe we'll see a correction going into the late half of next year. Long form content versus Shorts. Will hybrid strategies, both long form and short form content, dominate? I believe they will. I believe the creators who are able to do. I'm not. I'm going to give you an example. I rarely do this, but there is a creator, a book creator called Hailey Pham. She is really utilizing shorts, but she's primarily known for her long form content. And the combination of the two right now and the way that she's packaging them together has really taken her channel, which was already large, and really exploded it at the later half of this year. Go check her out if you haven't already. But the short content will grab attention and the long form build community. So write that down. Short form content will grab attention, but longs build community. I do believe, I really believe in that statement. All right. Niche specialization. I believe that narrower niches are gaining way more traction. So specific lifestyle or hobby sub niches. I use the example of a guest I had on about two months ago. He is a pilot and there are a ton of pilots on YouTube. But what he did is that he now targeted his content to pilots looking to expedite their getting their pilot's license and for people getting their license later on in their life, say after 45 or 50 years old, this then took his target audience, really honed in on it and his channel exploded and he's making really good money. So narrower types of niches are gaining way more traction. That's important. Interactive content. This is the last one that I noted here, we're going to see some growth for of things like polls, quizzes and community engagement tools. We're going to see YouTube implement their new community stuff they've talked about. And I do believe that the social aspect of YouTube is going to be very, very big and it's going to grow much quicker than it has even the past five years. Platform updates to prepare for first one is YouTube's increase on YouTube's increased focus on community. The platform really seems to be rewarding deeper engagement and what does that mean for your channel and how can you optimize for this? Responding to comments, utilizing the community tab, going off platform to places like Facebook groups, subreddit a discord. All of these things are going to be important and I believe YouTube's going to increase that importance going forward. Upcoming monetization changes we obviously have the new YouTube shorts ad sharing improvements. Again, I don't think it's going to be very much as far as like the amount of money you make, but we're going to see that and then there's going to be possible changes. There's rumblings about changes to the creator membership program. I do believe we're going to see some changes there to optimize that for people who are live streaming and then we have the live shopping features. So YouTube is really hinted at a more e commerce integration. If you look at what TikTok does with TikTok Live and TikTok Shop, I do believe we're going to see some YouTube shop type style things going forward. So if you are someone in that space that would be relevant, you might want to prepare for that. And then lastly, tools and automation to watch for growth of AI video editors and script assistants tools like descript, which is one that I use. Tapwing, which is another one. I do believe that efficiency is important on YouTube, especially if you don't do this full time. And so I think that as a creator we need to be focusing on the tools that we use and not just getting overwhelmed by them, but find the tools that work for us and use them. And then there'll be automation tools for publishing and planning content, calendars. I use notion, there's stuff like Trello scheduling tools. All those things. Just know what tools you're using. Don't get overwhelmed, don't switch every other day. Stick to one and go from there. All right, next section, actionable strategies for creators that you can do to make sure how to adjust your strategy for the new year. Audit your content from 2024. Go back. One of the things I love to do is go to my analytics, sort by the last 365 days and go to all the different tabs and see where did my views ebb and flow, where did my watch time go up? Was there a specific video or specific kind of branding that I did there? Monetization. What months were good for me, which ones were not so good? Audit your content from the previous year. I do this every year at the end of the year. It's a two day thing for me. I go, I go away, go my office, whatever it may be, and I identify my top performing videos and formats and I double down on them and then I take the least performing videos and formats and I just basically chop them off the block and I don't do them anymore. And then I go and I set clear goals for the Q1 or first three months of 2025 or the upcoming year, whatever it may be. That would be goals for revenue, audience growth, engagement targets. You need to decide what you need to focus on for your channel, right? And then I decide, do I need to experiment with new formats? Maybe it's for you, it's live streaming, maybe it's for you YouTube shorts. Maybe it's for you another platform like streaming on Twitch or uploading your vertical videos now to Instagram or TikTok or what would work for you? But you need to experiment with new formats because again, how do you grow? You evolve and you change with the times and you do new things to help you improve next productivity. Tips for staying consistent. Plan on batch recording sessions and use tools like Reminders or notion to stay organized. Automate the simple tasks, scheduling posts, automated replies. Use a tool like TubeBuddy to go in there and have those automated replies ready. And then plan collaborations early. If you know you're going to collaborate with someone, do it now. Reach out, book collab, get those things set up. That way you're not scrambling. That's the thing that so many YouTubers do. They're scrambling every day and every week of oh, what am I going to upload? What are my ideas? Come on now. You need to be prepared. Preparation is the thing that will shield you from not only burnout, but just all out quitting YouTube. I see so many people quit, right? All right, so what are my conclusions of all this? My conclusion for content in General is that YouTube shorts and vertical video and AI will continue to grow, monetization options will continue to expand and niche content will win. That's my summarization of everything I want to encourage you today to apply the strategies and things we talked about today. Understand that when the new year comes, everyone's going to have New Year's resolutions. Everyone's going to have goals. The people that win, not only at YouTube but in life, are the people that stick to the things they say they're going to do. That's a big deal. Big deal. So I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. As it continues to grow, I continue to get new people, email me, find me over on X and Twitter. Your support. You listening is what makes me motivated to spend like I did on this episode, almost seven or eight hours, just preparing. I really love what I do and I hope that you love what you do. And I hope by listening to these interviews and these episodes, you're able to create the content that you love to create and you're able to impact people's lives, whether it be with entertainment, education, or both. If you want to succeed at YouTube, consistency wins. You just got to keep coming back every day and doing what you know is going to move the needle. I used to say just hit the upload button. It's really not as simple as that anymore. Yes, you got to hit upload, you got to be consistent, but you gotta get better every time. If you're not doing what we talked about in today's episode and auditing your content, figuring out how you can be better, you're really missing out. Thank you guys for listening. Don't forget to connect with me. I do offer one on one YouTube coaching. We have one of the fastest growing YouTube communities over on our Discord server. All those links will be down below. Talk to you next week. Hello everyone and thank you for listening to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I really do appreciate it. Don't forget, you can subscribe, 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.