Monetizing Your Social Media with a Small Following - Ep. 49

Use HypeFurry to schedule your social media: https://hypefury.com/?via=riley-harden

In this week's episode of the Digital Wrap-Up, we have content creator Nate Frederick on the show to talk all things making money through social media.

Nate is now a recurring guest, and was actually the very first guest on the Digital Wrap-Up back in episode 4.

During the interview, we discuss short-form video vs long-form video and which one he's having more success with. Which platforms is he getting more views and making more money on? Is it Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube? We talk about his strategy to adapt to which platforms are on trend and running with them.

If you're looking to grow your YouTube presence, you'll want to tune in to this interview as well. We spend quite a bit of time breaking down which YouTube analytics you should be paying the most attention to, how to create catchy thumbnails and testing out different titles until one sticks.

The main theme throughout the episode relates back to how you can start monetizing your social media presence across all the platforms. It doesn't take a huge following to start making money. There are ways you can utilize your social media accounts to drive traffic to other outlets (lead magnet, website, email sign-up, etc.) where you can then start to monetize as well.

Everything in this episode can be a resource for both content creators and businesses who are looking to be more effective and grow on social media.

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@hardendigital

Be sure to give Nate a follow on all his channels:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aroundthefiremedia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aroundthefiremedia/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aroundthefiremedia
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@aroundthefiremedia

Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

Is it possible to make money when you only have a small following on social media? Well, we're going to answer that on today's episode of the digital wrap up. I'm excited to have content creator, Nate Frederick, back on the show, he was actually the very first interview that I did on the digital rad wrap up back in November of 2021. So it's almost been two years and we spent some time catching up. He's kind of gone through a rebrand on his channel and all of his socials. And he's had a lot of success over the past two years, monetizing his social media channels, his YouTube channel, all of that. So he shares a lot of insight onto into kind of the monetization process and how he's effectively making content and how he's breaking down different content boxes and containers of content. So a lot of great information coming from Nate in this episode, if you are a content creator, or a lot of This even applies, if you're a small business, looking to step up your YouTube game, your social media, short form videos, all of that. So great interview with Nate happy to have him back on. And let's go ahead and jump into it. Welcome back to another episode of digital wrap up. My name is Riley. And I'm the host, I'm the CEO of hardened digital and design. Happy to have Nate Frederick back on the podcast for episode 49. And if you've been following from the very beginning, he was my very first interview for this podcast way back on episode four, which was back in like November, December of 2021. So we're going to spend some time catching up with Nate today. Just kind of recap everything that's changed in terms of content creation over the past year and a half, and then get into some new topics and kind of talk about some new trends and what's been working lately for him. So Nate, welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah. So in person, which is awesome. On zoom anymore. Yeah. That's one thing that we've been excited about is having this new podcast, do you have people and it just so happens, you're back in town, this weekend to do it. So pretty awesome. It changes the whole dynamic. Yeah, to actually talk to the person and not just look at the screen. Yeah, it's, it's nice. And it's nice to have the setup to do it. And you know, we're trying to get more local people to come in and do it and doing a bunch of other stuff in terms of maybe renting out the podcast studio to which we've had some couple a couple bites on that which be awesome. Yeah. So either they use our equipment will offer it up, like the mics, probably they would use and then if they want us want us to record and send them the file, we will or if they just want to come plug in their own computer. They're more than welcome to do that, too. Even I'm just going off the cuff here, we can do a whole series of you know, we'll edit for you. We'll do Yeah, that goes into your whole Yeah, we were offering that as well if they want it. But if they were like, I know, there's a couple of podcasts or people that I know who do podcasts that edit it and everything, but they're like renting out space at the Hamilton County Library and getting one of those rooms and then select they're always moving their equipment and things like that. So like they know how to do it and everything. They just don't have a space to do it. So we're lucky enough to have this kind of space. I don't know what else we would do with it. It's just a little room in the office. But that's neat. Yeah. So a lot of cool things happening here. Hopefully we get some bites on that. And but yeah, so first off, just wanted to kind of catch up last time we talked about, I guess, before we even do that. Introduce yourself and kind of what you do. There's so many different facets to what you do from a content creator to your full time job as well, where you're still, I guess, in a way a content creator and kind of managing social and some other digital marketing things. They're sort of just lay it all out for us. Sure. So I started like kind of the hobby side of it is where I got into YouTube and social just to kind of promote a hobby that I enjoy. It's called LARPing live action roleplay super nerdy, Renaissance Faire type stuff, and I love it. So I got in to doing all of the video content for that kind of grew that channel a little bit and then branched into trying to monetize my hobby, so I can then travel and do my hobby more. It's kind of how it all started, make some physical products and digital products, built up the socials from there. But then professionally, I am an executive pastor at a church and a lot of what I do, we've got like five, I think six full time employees and so kind of overseeing staff and a big Part of that is our content creation, making sure our logos and branding is all consistent. All of our video announcements are consistent. Who posts what, how's it going to get posted? And all of that, too. So kind of the content creating there, and then team management a little bit there as well. Yeah. And it's been fun, because the skills that I learned from my hobby YouTube stuff have transferred very well into my professional world, which is I didn't expect, you know, it's like, I picked up YouTube and the camera just because I wanted to promote my hobby, and kind of get my opinion out there. Yeah. And then the skills from that have transferred into like, very easily actually into doing different things for we've got the studio at the church, similar to this, you know, knowing what to do with lights and sound panels and what mics to get and how much should I actually spend on the camera, and then then you get into the Adobe stuff and all the editing as well, it's been, it's been pretty fun. So I would say, you know, you your goal was to make money off of your hobby. And in a way, your skills that you've used in your hobby has now made you money because it's part of your full time, profession as well. So a lot of things going on wide. Very big background in terms of you kind of have your your hand and all these different types of digital, from YouTube, tik, Tok, Instagram, kind of everything there. I think one thing that we talked about on the first time we had an interview to you was short form content. And that was kind of like when it was really kicking off, or tick tock had kicked off before 2021. But full suite of things. Yeah. The in terms of like Instagram had recently relaunched launched reels and kind of YouTube shorts, I think it was just getting kicked off, too. So how is that kind of continued to work well, for you? What's What do you say? Like in terms of your content breakdown? Are you more focused on short form video long form? Because obviously, YouTube now has both with shorts and obviously YouTube platform, you can post however long videos you want. What are you kind of dipping your feet in more? Or what are you finding more success with at the moment? So shorts are more successful? Short views are significantly easier to get than, like, traditional long form? Or, like short form? We call it anything under three minutes, right? Yeah, medium form is that like four minute mark to like 15. And then long forms anything above that? My brain works in long form. That's the type of content I enjoy consuming. That's the type of content I enjoy producing. Yeah, so I struggle a little bit with short form, because most of my short form is just repurposing my long form into you know, I have an hour long interview, I'm going to pull clips from that we've all seen that on social media, right, and then pulling it over. Or the short form that I have success with is I call it I call it the Mimi, like social. So it's like the one where it's like Freddie Mercury singing a song and it's too late. You know, it's like, I'll throw the, you know, my wife says, My wife says, I can't buy any more guard, we need to talk garb is the outfits for the LARPing you know, make sure that you talk to me before you buy your next piece of Renaissance Faire kit, right? And then it's just the meme of Freddie Mercury singing too late, you know? Yeah, that type of content I can do on my own. And I'm pretty I'm I'm okay at it. But the guys who go in in ladies who go in and make like the specific short form, my brain doesn't work that way. So I kind of struggle with that. Yeah, it's, it is difficult to take, especially like, a lot of that is you take a concept and you're trying to talk about a specific concept and being able to fit it in. I mean, shorts is only 60 seconds. So that one's really limited. The other ones you the other platforms, you have a little more time but being able to be that concise and really talk about something in 60 seconds. And that's a lot different than just okay, now I have five to 10 minutes on YouTube to break something down or to highlight something especially like when you're creating these videos explaining something or like talking about the outfits and the garb that you're wearing, like Yeah, that'd be hard to even like repurposing your longer form video to breaking that down into a short or Instagram reel or something like that. It's hard to do well in the thing for me in my professional life and my YouTube stuff are mainly like educational content right? I'm a pastor I preach you, I don't get up and go 60 seconds for like it's 30 minutes. And then same thing in my long form content when I'm teaching how to videos those are some of my most popular YouTube videos. How to make whatever that's a 15 minute video at minimum Yeah, you know and and you can break those down into 60 seconds short, but those are just people those are like wedding you know, wedding there the appetite just a little bit and then it's the long form stuff that you have to be able to point people to, to get to the real meat of the stuff and then from there, the How To videos which talk about this a little bit, the How To videos then have affiliate links to the stuff that I'm that the products that I'm using in the video and then it starts to you know, you get that snowball going from there you can get how do you get someone from shorts to your long form? And then from your long form to whatever you're selling. It's kind of had more success with that than we had last time. When we chatted. Yeah. And so in terms of like, we're going to talk about some monetization and everything in a second. But like, in terms of success on the platforms for short form, which one in terms of monetization, specifically, I guess, and then maybe just in terms of overall views, because I know like for a while you were getting pretty good kickback from Instagram, because their partner program, whatever it was then, but now it's kind of shifted to Tik Tok. But I think you're still having more success in terms of overall views on Instagram. So kind of break that down. Yeah, so part of what I try and do is hop on whatever bandwagon the big like the trend is at the time, right. So for a while, Instagram tried to compete with Tik Tok. And so they were throwing stupid money at even small creators. And I did that made some bank from them doing almost the same content I was making on shorts and in Tik Tok. And the cool part is, is because it's all the same content, you just make me spend the 20 minutes making it send it to all three platforms. But then what changed was when I was linking on Facebook, or Reddit, to the short platform that I'm linking to changes based on which one is paying me the most money at the time. Gotcha. And so a lot of that all of the things I was posting elsewhere was funneling people to Instagram, because that's what was paying me the most. Yeah, that's my largest following by 10x. Compared to all my other platforms. Now Instagram isn't paying as much now tick tock is, but I think it's going to change a little bit going into 2024 as well. Tick tock is trying to ramp up to become a YouTube with longer form 10 minute in longer videos. Yeah. So tick tock, I think is going to start paying a bunch. But then YouTube, we were just talking about this off air, YouTube is ramping up to do more podcast stuff. Yeah. And so they are next year, probably going to dump stupid money on that. And so like, if your goal is to make money from your social, whether it's for a hobby, or it's for full time, you got to keep, you know, keep up with what's going on, and what platforms are paying you the most. And a lot of times, they're like, kind of gimmicky, it's like, hey, for the next for December, we're gonna pay you $1,500 to make content for us. Yeah, sweet, you know, yeah, run with it. And then all of your extra stuff for me, Facebook, and Reddit, goes to whatever platform is paying me the most. And as I continue to post my stuff weekly, as it comes out, you really do have to adapt in terms of which ones you put more effort into, or which ones you're driving people more to. But I think at the same time, you don't want to just be like, all in like, so say tic TOCs. Like, yeah, we're gonna pay you X amount for this, these three months or whatever, or you're gonna get a crazy increase in payment for every 1000 views or whatever they it'd be, that doesn't just mean abandon everything. Because like you said, it shifts so much, you kind of do have to make sure you're keeping up with tick tock, Instagram, YouTube, all that in one because, well, that's something I've been, the last year I've been working on is getting my email list up and get it actually robust, and it's full. Because because everything changes so quickly on the social platforms, you could get banned on one or the algorithm could change and now you don't so something a YouTuber that I watch, he said, every, all your YouTube subscribers are rented subscribers, right? Because if something goes wrong, they YouTube changes, whatever you could lose, doesn't matter. If you have a million followers or a million subscribers on YouTube, you lose that you lose that. So trying to convert your followers into able to be monetized on their own and not having to use social media platforms to monetize them. So whether that's directing people to an Etsy store, whether that having the email list that you can direct people to future content on making it making your Patreon, right, like those type of things. Making your audience your audience and not a rented audience is something I'm still new at. But I'm working towards and it's getting there. Yeah. And that's something that's big, I guess a big philosophy outside of just content creators to but for businesses, if you're listening. Yeah, you could have 30,000 followers on your Facebook page, but the second somebody reports your page and for some stupid reason, that really isn't a reportable reason, but your account gets banned. What are you going to do then? Right, how are you going to communicate with those people down the road if all of all of a sudden the internet goes out or something and crazy like that. Where are these accounts? I mean, there was talking about tick tock being banned in the US like, and what happens if you're big on tick tock, and now it gets banned? How do you transition those followers are those that true group of people that are diehard fans of you to Instagram now, if they don't already follow you on Instagram, so everything that all of your followers are rented, like you said, the only people that you really own quote, unquote, own that phrase. But the only people that you have confidence in that, you know, you're going to be able to reach is people you have emails for, and whether that's like you do a free ebook and you collect their emails or getting the sign up for your blog and keeping them that way. Like there's multiple different ways, right? Like, if you sell them something adding to that, whether it's Shopify account or Etsy, store, whatever it may be, so you need to diversify your income, because it especially if all your money is coming from AdSense on YouTube, and then you get one copyright strike, and they pull your pull that video down in yellow flag during the review. And that review takes three weeks. Yeah, and you lose all income from your YouTube channel. And that's your main income. You gotta look, you know what I mean? And so trying, again, I don't do the content, creating full time. So it's, it's not a huge deal, something like that. But for the guys who do it full time. They're like, Okay, I've got affiliate marketing, I've got YouTube, I've got Instagram, I've got tick tock, I've got courses. I've got a physical product, like a book, right? I mean, they've got 1011 12. Like, if you if you only watch on YouTube, these guys who scan I'm making 150 $200,000 a year. Yeah, like, wow, how are you doing that through social? They're actually not they're making they have 12 Things that are each pulling $10,000? Right. And if one of those goes out, that's not the end of the world they can do and, you know, yeah, yeah, it is a kind of scary thing to think about, is that like, in an instant, you your following could be completely gone. Your if you are just all your eggs in one basket, your revenue stream could be wiped out completely. So simply diversify for sure. In terms of other monetization? How are you kind of driving? Like we've talked about you getting paid with Instagram? And Tiktok? Even? What else are you doing in terms of you mentioned that like affiliate marketing with Amazon? How is that kind of working in driving money there? Because it seems like that's kind of taken off? On a little bit of the scale there. Yeah. So the majority of my money comes from selling physical products for the game that I play. And so all of my social, inherently is just directing people to the website that sells my product. Yeah. And then from there, I have physical products. But now with with the advent of AI, I'm actually doing some digital products as well. So, you know, spend 15 minutes make the thing, a lot of like, what I am selling now is like digital files for cutouts for painting and for like, if you're trying to do like vinyl stuff on a Cricut and that type of stuff, right? And so all of my, all of my social direct people to my store, which has my physical and my digital products, nice for me. Instagram was paying, you know, $1,500 a month was their cap, which is stupid money. If you think about it, like if you actually do it to the maximum out, right? Yeah. For me, that's gravy. Right? My Amazon affiliates is gravy. And what I do with those, right, I make a video top top five tips to survive summer camping when you're LARPing. Yeah, right here are the products that I'm going to throw in there. I make $100 from that video, and then take that money, I then buy something else on Amazon. Now I'm going to do a review specifically to that thing. Because if that took off and video a video B is specifically about that, I make$150 off that one. Well, then I use that to buy the next thing to do another review video and it's, you know, those that type of snowball to get to get going. And can you talk about like when you say you make money for the people who don't know, like, it's not just he posted a video with this and you made money off of it. But like in terms of Amazon specifically talking about that process, you put the links to the items in the district description, and then they click through right yeah, in Amazon has a fairly strict affiliate program you have to have. I think it's 1000 subscribers. And then there's a limit. I don't know specifically what it is on your socials. But you have to have at least one social account that is or a blog that has so many views and followers. Yeah, so I actually got declined the first two times that I applied for Amazon affiliate because I thought I was there and I wasn't Yeah, then once I finish officially I got there. You go to the data side of the page and you find the product that you want to promote. They give you a link for it. You throw that in your blog on Reddit on you're in for me and my videos, and then when someone's watching my video, they click on that. And the cool thing about it is it doesn't matter if they buy that product or not. If they buy anything on Amazon within the next 24 hours of clicking on your link, you get anywhere between one and 3% of the of that total price depending on what it is. And if Amazon has any, you know, around Christmas time, it bumps up a little bit. Yeah together. And so for me, like all like a lot of my, like you said or how to videos. So I make a lot of belts out of paracord like weaving. And so I make a decent chunk from people just going in buying the paracord that I use. But then from there, they then click on the on the costume that they're looking at, they buy the costume, then I get money from that. But then they then go and buy their book or their whatever, the dog food, if it just is in that 24 hour count. It still counts. Yeah. And so I do this on my social media platforms anyway, I'll just be like, Hey, I'm looking at I love tents, right? Because it's a camping thing. And so I'm like, Hey, anybody have any idea on this tent? No. Is it a good one or not? pose it as a question, put the affiliate link in there. People will click on it. No, I never heard of it. Or Yeah, that's great. I love it. Boom. Three hours later, they get on Amazon to buy something, it counts for me. That's awesome that Yeah, and so affiliate marketing is pretty fun. But it is. It's up and down. It's not consistent money, just like AdSense on YouTube. It's not, I wouldn't want to build a career around like I wouldn't want to put feeding my children on my AdSense or on my marketing, because some months It's really high. And then other months, like right now we're in the dip of the summer. Summer is rough for content creators, especially this summer, there's an algorithm change for YouTube. And summer months are generally down because people are just out doing stuff, they're, you know, they're not watching their phone as much. And so my money is down in the last two months, but everybody's money is down. And so I wouldn't want I wouldn't rely on those two things that goes back to the whole world Yeah, of having to rely on that one 100% When a lot of it can be completely out of your control. No matter how hard you work, no matter how many videos you push out. At the end of the day, there is just sometimes algorithms change and platforms are just weird. People are busy. Like when you rely on other people, it can be difficult to make that your full time thing. You've mentioned Reddit a couple of times, this is something that I've kind of gone back and forth on are you seeing a lot of success getting people I guess driving traffic through Reddit, Reddit and Facebook groups are some of the best ways. But there are a couple of different trains of thought on this right for me, I'm small enough that I want to get as many eyes on my video as as I can, even if they're not good eyes. Yeah, right. Some of the really big YouTubers out there, they don't want randos watching their video because they want watch time. And so they don't post on Reddit and on Facebook, because they want it mainly to be their subscribers because they know that's going to be a better view. Yeah, for me, I'm small enough. Now I go like, to every game that I play, I go to their Reddit page, and I post my new videos that I make, right? Same thing on Facebook, I go to Facebook Group A, B, C and D, post my video on my personal page on my business page, share that to these other ones, which then gets people to like that page. Same thing. I'm also playing around with infographs, too, right? posting those on those places. And then people will come back and like my page, which means they see more videos, and it starts the snowball. So I think it's helpful. But I'm also on the lower end of like, I'm a small creator. The big big if you have 100,000 subscribers, you don't need to be on Reddit, your your audience is big enough. They're going to do that for you. Yeah, people are going to be posting and talking about it. Oh, do you see this? Yeah, but if you're like if you're if you're a small business, who's starting social media to help grow your physical product or your service? Oh, yeah, you know, if you're a carpenter go posted on carpentry your carpentry or Yeah, go on, you know, there's six or eight for every hobby, every business that are out there, that you throw it in there, you know, even if it's, it takes you 30 seconds to post the link that you've put to the video you've already made. And if you get 50 views from that, and one of those people follow back to your Instagram or to your you know, your actual page. Yeah, it's easy. Yeah, no brainer. There's so many people on Reddit too. It's kind of there is a lot of untapped potential. I mean, there's each subreddit has different rules in terms of like posting links and being too spammy and things like that. So you definitely want to check that out. But it's, it's something that I wish I did a better job of keeping up with like, all of our YouTube videos, which are just our podcasts and things like that, posting our tic TOCs and things. I feel like I could probably do that just I haven't honestly it's been back mind haven't thought about in the longest time. But also in terms of your Facebook. I know we've talked about this a couple of times. Facebook can be such a hard one to get established in terms of just doing 100% organic. Growing your Facebook business page, which is your content creation is your business page. But you You've actually found a lot of success with just organically posting on Facebook, haven't you? Yes and no. So it. It is for I have been able to grow my audience with the people who play my game in my games who enjoy my hobby. Yeah, I have had stroke. I've struggled on Facebook to go outside of that without ads, right? So if you're, if you're someone who goes to renaissance fairs every year, and you're looking forward to the Renaissance Fair, my page is going to be great for you. Yeah, right. And I can get you I'll post it on, you know, the Renaissance Fair of Ohio group, right, you'll see my product or my content, click on that you like me, great. Facebook is hard, though. If you are someone outside of the direct niche that I'm trying to target to get new people into the hobby or into whatever it is that you're doing, right, because if you're 55 year old grandma, who thinks renaissance fairs are dumb, my content could potentially show up on your page because your grandkid liked it or whatever. And you scroll away the algorithms never throwing you another one of those again. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so it's, it's good. It's hard. Facebook, for me is the hardest one to grow out of all the socials. But I think I guess I phrase that in a way, a weird way. But like your engagement rate on Facebook, compared to the like, the number of likes and followers that you have on your Facebook page, compared to the engagement rate that you're getting is like through the roof? Yeah, it is. That's my, an average, like I use a program called pipe theory, which is just a same Yeah, it's just my affiliate affiliate link in the description. There you go. It's, it's huge. And so what this does is, it's one of those things where you post your what you want to ask your question, your video, whatever it is, and you link all your socials to it. And it just throws them up on all of them at the same time. Super helpful. And it's got a bunch of questions like it gives you a maybe you would like this, or your audience would like this. And it's like, just, it's a jumping off point. Yeah. And so I'll post those things on like Twitter, on what is threads now, and like a couple of these other ones, and I'll get a little bit of response, but not a lot on Facebook, you know, I get 10x 20x What my follower account is engagement on these things on a regular basis. Yeah, the hard part on Facebook is how do you get those people that are engaging to come back? That's where I'm struggling right now. It's because I, because if I post a question, and then Riley, you go in and you comment on it, that counts as an engagement, but then all the people that see that count as engagement as well. Yeah. Right. And it's those down here that are getting them to like the page. That's the harder part. Yeah. But yeah, very much that Facebook is probably my highest percentage of like, comments and likes and those type of things, even though it's one of my smaller platforms. Yeah, I mean, it's what a couple 100 followers or something and talk for a minute. It is crazy. But I think kind of going back to what you've said about Facebook groups, and Reddit, and even your Facebook business page is, although it's not reaching a wider audience, and, you know, captivating people from like, there's not as much discoverability compared to Instagram, tik, Tok, YouTube and things like that. But I think that's where you're finding more of your loyal fans, the people that are coming back, leaving those comments and constantly engaging with you whether that's turned into sales or email signs of signups or anything like that. I'm not sure. But I think you do have that kind of speaks to the volumes of maybe what Facebook is good for is developing those loyal fans and customers. Yeah. So yeah, my page is currently a little bit over 300 follows. And my engagement rate last month in the last 28 days was about 5k. Yeah, so that's crazy. I mean, you're posting consistently too. That's another factor is I always talk about the consistency of social, organic social is showing up constantly. But it's just crazy. I think when you when we were first talking about this, and you're telling me about the crazy engagement rates, you're only 100 or something followers, but you're still getting insane. You're still reaching or getting, it's not not even that's not even like engagement is clicks, likes, comments, shares, whatever, and you know, getting 5000 reaching 5000 People there are 5000 impressions would be impressive for a page with 300. But the fact that that's not even impression and reach that's engagement, which is always lower than your reach and your impressions so it's kind of mind blowing to me the fact that it is that big, but it speaks to you're creating good content, but you're not. I mean, you are posting some videos and doing that too. But just so my and I can give you my strategy for the Facebook for So for, you know, I try and do two posts a day. One post is always a question of some sort. And what I do with those, when I post these questions, these can be like one from this week, what is your number one favorite event that you hit every single year? That is you must not miss event, right? It can be questions like because this is like a nerdy hobby. Hey, what is your favorite class that you played at the last event? Right? These are engagement building questions. I then use those if one of those takes off. That's a video idea for next month. Oh, yeah. Right. And so I have I, I try and do a video a week for long form content. And then I break that long form content up into short form content, try and post daily on short form. Once a week on YouTube is my is my goal. And so I have six to eight weeks out on my ideas for what I want to post so I can be thinking about them and get my hooks and all that. If a Facebook question blows up, I know that that's my hardcore fan group. Right? They're going to like the video if I am doing something from so like, one was what tips do you have for camping in the summer? Right? That one is going to next summer? I put it on my I missed it this year, but I'm going to put it on, you know, coming in late spring next year, that's gonna be one of my videos, right? And so throwing questions on there, if they blow up making that into long form content. My other post is generally something random, whether it's just a meme, whether it's a video of mine, whether it's one of those Amazon affiliate links, whatever it is, that one is just something that's more of just a haha, throw away, and I'll get laughs and those are the more shareable ones because we both like like those, but the engagement is down, which is like because there's not as many comments people aren't arguing in the comments or they're not. Like if I say hey, what is the best class in this video game? Yeah, right. That's not this. These are like just the Haha, that's a dog in armor. Let's share it. That's the thing. That's more of the Discover more discover Jesus discoverability. Yeah, that word. That's kind of those that are so you have that the hardcore post for the loyal fans versus you are, I think still get discovered and reaching people outside of your 300 page followers by doing it that way, too. Yeah. And so those two a day, I scheduled those out on Monday for the whole week. Call it done. Yeah. You know, and just and just let hype period do its thing. And hype period is really cool on Twitter, too. Because if you have one that is or x now sorry. Yeah. If you have one that takes off, it will auto retweet. And do li it's got a bunch of really cool tools in there that if if you're following this large on Twitter, which mine isn't, Twitter is actually probably my least engaged with one, which is fine. It is what it is right. But I'm there and I own my handle. Yeah, so if it ever does go crazy, and I mean, I don't think it's going to blow up any more than it is currently. But if for some reason if Elon does something crazy and everybody comes flocking back to it, you're you're there. Yep. Which is hugely important for anybody listening to this, even if it's a dumb social media trend that you think like tick tock, oh, that's just a dancing 12 year olds, go get your handle. You never like when something new pops up, go claim your handle, even if you never use it, just make sure you have it. So your branding is consistent because you don't want harden digital here and then harden digital and D here and then harden digital InDesign he like you can just get in as you can get them as close to your actual thing as you can get. Yeah, it's huge, which has been a huge form of frustration for me is that our Instagram is hard and underscore digital. Even three and a half years ago, whenever I first started the business. I got every single account heart, just regular at heart and digital. But there's I can't do it on Instagram. And I searched and searched and I never found that another account that was at Heartland digital. So either the username just got like banned, like whoever had that username got banned, and they're just not letting it come back. Yeah, it was it goes counter whatever it may be. I've gotten everything at hardened digital except for Instagram. And it's at harden underscore digital. And it really bugs me because I can't just throw up at heart and digital on everything. Yep, follow me on social at heart. And I don't always have to have the caveat except for Instagram. I went through recently and did a rebrand tried to pull my tube and my socials away from a brand centered around me and more of a brand centered around the brand. Because like if you're if you're Mr. Beast, right, you can do something centered around you because you're the one that is bringing people to the channel. Yeah, I'm not I'm smaller right. So I rebranded to it's now called around the fire or around the fire media. And the reason I wanted to do that is to bring more people in collaborations and do some more. It's, I'm really happy with it. But in that process, one of the biggest things was I would find a cool name that I liked. I would come up with a logo that I liked. And then I would search socials and I couldn't get all of them even this remotely the same or it would be tasted. So like, Okay, how do I find a name that I like with a theme that I like that fits the the core of what I want to do in fits me? Yeah. And has all the socials that are at least relatively close was a heart like, it was hard and it's difficult. I mean, you have so many different things so like outside of LARPing outside of Renaissance Faire I know you've talked about like, even incorporating d&d Dungeons and Dragons potentially league of legends like all this cup might fall under around the fire eventually so like, I we exchanged messages like how do you encapsulate League of Legends dungeons dragon LARPing Ren Faire into one thing? So when you think, you know, around the fire? Well, that's not necessarily LARPing. But it's kind of like nerd adjacent. Yeah. And like when you think about sitting around the fire at a Renaissance Faire LARP event, like that type of thing. I like the way you did, have you seen any? Like, I know, one of your concerns was if you changed it from St. Godrich. To around the fire all of your current followers when they see that first post of it's now around the fire? You are concerned are people still gonna follow it? Are people still gonna engage? Have you seen any drop off there? I haven't, thankfully. So what I did, I did a build up where like I posted a week beforehand with the blurred out vision or the blurred out photo of the new logo on my on all my socials. Right. And I said something big news come in. And then three days before I did a less blurred one, right. And then in YouTube, and on the videos in particular, I did a huge news announcement with the new logo. And then the next like five videos after that had my face big in the thumbnail. Sometimes I do that sometimes I don't generally, but with those in particular is strategic. Because I want people if they see the new logo, and they didn't see the social posts, which is a lot on on YouTube, yeah, the algorithm, just whatever. But my face was in the thumbnail, so they can still put two and two together. And it's been it went pretty well. I didn't see any significant drop in it good. In terms of content creation, for around the fire media now, have you added more? Have you changed a little bit? I can I guess what's has your strategy changed a little obviously, that was the goal. But have you already started implementing some of that a little bit. So I have my goal is for me to produce two pieces of content a month. And then my goal is to have six other little shows little segments by other people that are I trust that make good content that are adjacent to what I'm doing. Yeah. And so those segments, I want to be more the seven to 15 minute range, so that I can focus on my hour long content, which is what I enjoy making. But hour long content isn't for everybody. So trying to do so I've reached out and I have a few ideas with people who are going to be working on some of those segments. And we're working currently on the monetization splits. And how's that gonna work? And if I edit, then it's gonna be a little different than if they edit, but if they edit, it's got to be to a standard that I want that type of stuff. Yeah. And so that's part of it. But then the other part it's going well, because we I'm able to broaden out a little bit because my always on YouTube, they say niche down niche down niche down. I niched, way too far down and picked an audience that nationally was, you know, LARPing, specifically foam fighting LARPing. Like 25,000 people nationally. Yeah, that's not a big enough audience. And so being able to slowly take steps back to branch out to all LARPing now to renaissance fairs, and now going to be doing d&d And some of these other things. Yeah, yeah. That's good. I mean, I know, like, thinking of it. Geez, how do I say this? Do you think it's going to be hard to kind of attract new followers for those specific like, if you did d&d or something like that? Or do you think there's enough of a mix over that the people who have followed you from the very beginning from the LARPing would also be interested in the d&d, or do you think it's gonna be you think like, engagement and views and things are going to be lower on that starting out? I think it depends for me. I think it's okay, because the niches are very, very close and overlapping, right. So if I do my main hardcore group that had been with me from the beginning, is phone fighting. LARPing Yeah, right. And I make a video about renaissance fairs. 99% of my hardcore audience is still going to like the Renaissance Fair stuff. Gotcha. If I go a next step up and do nerd adjacent board games in d&d, right, that's still probably a 70% overlap. And so I think it just depends on you got to know your audience and know what your audience is like if you're doing give me an example. Okay. A portion of my audience is there because of my paracord woven tutorials. Hmm, they don't care a thing about LARPing Yeah, but they're there for my paracord woven tutorials, right by how tos. So some of them are alienated from all my stuff anyway, except for the monthly video I make about paracord. Yeah, but they stick around and they watch that one, because that's what they're there for. Yeah. Right. And so, and I just acknowledge that in some of my videos, you know what I mean? Like on my, my paracord, how to videos, I say, Hey, my name is St. Godrich. I'm, you know, I'm a LARPer. I've been doing it for 15 years. Today, I'm making a belt. And I, and then from there, I do the How to and I don't throw the larvae nerdy stuff into that particular video. Yeah, in a way that I would, Hey, are you looking for the best leg armor for your next jousting fight or whatever? Right? That one, I'll hand it up a little bit more. But it's just knowing this the audience for this specific video that you're trying to do. Gotcha. So do you see this as kind of a selfish question? Do you see an expansion into League of Legends? Potentially? I think it's a bigger stretch. It is I think it would need to go. So d&d board games first. And then once that is established, then switching to video games. Gotcha. And then I think that there are other video games that would be crossover more first, and then League. Yeah, I think I think it can get there. Yeah. But I don't know if it's not as easy as a jump as renaissance fairs to LARPing. You know what I mean, our leagues like 10 steps removed. True. And we're renaissance fairs is three. I yeah, I guess I was just moreso thinking of it as because like, you play League. You used to play a lot more league. I know. But like in terms of your just hobbies and passions. I was like, that was the next step is league for you, but doesn't necessarily make sense for your audience or for your channel? Yeah. So something like that. I've thought about doing a Twitch stream at YouTube stream and doing a separate channel for just LARPers play. Right? And it's like, Hey, I'm playing Liga legends in my garb. Yeah, right, or like, and then it because then it becomes what do you use? Once you do it, you know, and then it becomes a, but I wouldn't want that on my main channel. Because that content is so different from what the people are there for. Yeah. You don't want to drive people away from it? Yeah. And potentially doing something like that on a second channel and it blows up. And then that becomes the main focus of energy and stuff is worth trying. Yeah. But I'm scared of doing it on the main channel and alienating the people that I couldn't make sense. Yeah. Because you don't want people to, you know, you put out of the league of legends video, once a month or twice a month, and then the people who are LARPers, or go to renaissance fairs that don't play League of Legends, because you're right, I don't see a huge crossover there. There's a little there is, but it's not not. It's not that 70 to 90%, they talked about with the others. They'd be like, I Why am I still getting notifications this person, I don't want to see these type of videos. And then they either turn off video notifications, or they get subscribe or whatever it may be. So but like, I'm just thinking off the top of my head. I have no plan on doing this. But just, you know, doing movie reviews for weathering start, like those type of things would be relatively close as well. That's a content bucket. That is Yeah, somewhat adjacent. Right. Board games is another one, that that's a pretty big crossover. Like there are avenues that for any content creator in any business that you can do. If you want to get to something like what Riley said that's 12 steps down. And that's something you're passionate about and you want to get there. Don't jump straight to 12 in my opinion. Yeah. Because you could alienate your audience stairstep it step 12 is a three year plan. Right. So what are we going to do to get our audience there? Yeah. And think of the content that is adjacent to you. But that is still stretching. If you need a broader audience. Some people don't need a broader audience. Yeah, I do. Because I niche down too far. But if you're like, if you're a plumber, right, you probably don't need to go much further outside of plumbing if you're doing content, plumbing or your chiropractor. Yeah, because that's a broad enough niche. People like oh, wow, that's really cool. You know, you don't need to do that. Yeah. And I think it's something to like, from a time management standpoint, can you actually commit to expanding and doing all this stuff? Because you say, I'm going to start putting an emphasis on d&d board games and video games, but you're still trying to grow the main part of your page? Do you have time to commit to that and still keep up with what's really making you money or make getting you views and engagement you don't want to like but at the same time, you don't want to say I'm going to do League and then you post one video every three months or something of that size? Yeah, might as well not have even started that so it's it's interesting I've personally once you when we talked about this whole rebrand for you and like I've thrown out league there too before but like expanding you because you've kind of talked about having a collaboration with other content creators, but like, in terms of League of Legends, like I know Caleb's getting into streaming a lot and he It looks like he's doing well. I mean, he has a tick tock now. He on Twitch, he has over 100 followers. He has a couple of subs now. And so like he's growing. Yeah. And I, he conveniently streams at like 1230 at night, which is like when I go to sleep so like I always just laying in bed watching history and just because I watch League of Legends and fall asleep, but like getting him like him. Me you like other people and doing a I guess my thought was like, oh, around the fire, that'd be good. But like, obviously, like a separate channel of content creators there, or you just got it. So like, one of the things that I do, again, branding and all this right? Yeah, I do Friday Night Live. I'm currently doing them once a month. And this is just a live stream where I'm in my costume. Yeah, playing whatever video game I would be playing on a Friday night, right? Something like that. And they're not incredibly popular, but I don't do them on a consistent basis. Yeah. branching into, hey, we're gonna do a Friday night live five of my friends playing league for a month. Yeah, see where it goes. Right? Because if not, the branding for that segment, right. And that's something too. for content creators, a lot of the ones who make big money on this, they have segments, right, I'm going to once a month do an interview, that's a segment, I'm going to once a month do an a review. That's a segment another bit. So you get these things. And you're consistent, because people like to come back and see the consistency for it. So if you build up Friday Night Live as this smorgasbord of whatever I'm normally doing on Friday, and that's the branding of that segment. That could work. Yeah, you know what I mean? And then from there, it could branch into other like, I think there are ways to do it. You just got to be strategic about it. And so like I would want to build up Friday Night Live for three months before I did something like that. So it's a consistent week over week thing. Yeah, yada yada yada. Yeah, and I've, I've thrown out the idea. I used to stream too, so I used to stream on Twitch playing League of Legends and for like three months, and it took off like I was in a similar position as Caleb had a few 100 100 or 200 followers had a couple of subs created. I think it was before Tik Tok created an Instagram though posted some videos, I had a YouTube I don't, it's still probably out there. But like bringing that back, I've kind of explored and thought about doing that. Because I still play League of Legends and, you know, recording a game and then just clipping it all especially like if I use video AI or something just uploaded that video there and it clipped different spots. I don't know exactly what Caleb's using. But he's doing that like clipping highlights. I don't know, I thought about maybe reaching out to Caleb and see if he wanted to collaborate on something like that. Just starting another YouTube page from scratch will be difficult, but he's more consistent. And so I like would maybe want to see his goals. And Caleb, if you're listening, I'll reach out to you. But it is daunting, I guess, to get started to commit and be like, like right now our YouTube only has like 15 subscribers, we're getting 3040 50 views on videos, but only 15 subscribers. And ultimately, I think the goal is monetization. But we're 985 subscribers away or whatever it may be. So do you have any I guess, like, tips, or I don't know, words of advice for somebody who's, I guess use me as an example of like, how to really get started and like how to stay the path. And so I think for YouTube specific, it comes down to really studying thumbnails and titles. It doesn't. It doesn't matter how good your video is. Right? I think a lot of us early on, we overestimate how good our videos actually are. But theoretically, we have a million view video. Yeah, you have an awful thumbnail and an awful title. Not going anywhere. Yeah, right. And vice versa. You have an amazing thumbnail amazing title, right? And an average video. That's better than you know what I mean. And so I use on what's called vid IQ. They have a bunch of AI tools as well, where you throw in your, your, what your videos about, and the title of it, and it will spit out here's three titles that are better than what you're doing. Gotcha. They also have thumbnail builders, which I don't use their thumbnail builders, but I'll use them sometimes as inspiration. Inspiration. Yeah, I think another big one too, is consistency and branding. And you guys know this right? Same font on all your thumbnails, same colors on all your stuff if you're in I don't think that there's one particular formula for your every good thumbnail has to be this right? There's 40 ways that you can do them. Yeah, well, you just got to be consistent with it. So when people see it show up on their sub, or on their subscriber feed. They're like, Oh, yeah, I know that. That's hard. In digital, because I've watched 50 of their videos, and I understand that, you know. So I think consistently posting for me once a week is my goal. Yeah, you know, 45 videos a year is kind of what is in my mind based on, you know, Christmas and stuff. But yeah, 45 videos a year is what I want to do. I'm taking that long form, putting it in a short form that was rolled back and forth to each other, making sure my video ideas are good. I try and script out. That's something that's new to me. We'll see if I stick with that. Yeah, it kind of goes back and forth. It's tough. But then thumbnails and titles, and I spend more time on my thumbnail and my title than I do most of the time actually filming and editing my videos, getting it in, and I'll make six or eight of them, and then I'll sleep on it. thumbnails, and then I'll come back, and I'll look and I'll adjust. And I'll do this. And I'll do that, and then trying to figure out what title goes with that. And then does that work. And then I throw it up and then I wait an hour or two hours and then see what my click through rate is which click through rate, if you're not familiar with it is probably the most important thing right now on YouTube. It's more important than it. It's more important than views. By far our views don't mean anything. It's click through rate, and it is total watch time. Yeah. So click through rate is how, what percentage of people if they are presented with your thumbnail and title on anywhere on YouTube, click on it to watch your video. Yeah, right. If you can hit 5%. That's, that's making money. Like I mean, 8% is like you're going to the moon, right? Most of mine are between that three and 5%. And you post that on there. And then if it doesn't do anything, for a day, go and change it, right. Like if you really truly believe that you have a good video. Now to be honest with yourself. Like there's some videos you put out that you know, are just stinkers, but you're just throwing it's like, okay to get some views, no big deal, right. But if you're not hearing, it's a good video, and your click through rate is at 1.8%. That means your title is awful. And your thumbnail is awful. Change it up, let it sit for a day. If it goes from 1.8 to two, let it sit for another day. Yeah, stagnancy to probably change it up, go back and change thumbnail and the title, right? The big like, if you go and look at a lot, probably not the biggest not Mr. Beast doesn't need to do this anymore. But if you look at those people who are like the mid tier creators, I'll see a video, they'll post it, I'll see it on my thing. I'll watch the video. I'll come back later that afternoon when I'm scrolling through, and it's a completely different one. Now check it in the morning, it's completely different, like they're playing it to see what one is going to be the most. Because if you can get your video to take off in the first 48 hours. That's the key right there. There is what they call evergreen content. Right? Every Christmas the top five lists for gifts and what yeah, like those are evergreen tutorials are evergreen, they're always going to give you views. But if you're making content that is trying to be viral, right? If you're a news content, or if you're selling you know, something like a video game content, right, that would follow that you need to strike it, because that your YouTube highlight reel of legends in six months isn't gonna matter. Right? So you got to make your money in that first little bit. And that first two days is the most important in that. Yeah, so change that stuff up until you hit that 3%. That's kind of my goal. Gotcha. And I guess what I'm taking away from all this is focus more, I guess not focus more. But even if you don't have the highest quality camera, the highest quality mic or you know, the greatest video of all times, there's still things that you can focus on to really drive traffic to that video. And then as long as it's decent enough, and it hits in resonates with the audience, people are going to watch it, but you have to get the people there to watch it. And that's thirst video I made money on was me making one of my paracord belts. My wife was filming it vertical, which this was before vertical was good. Yeah, right? You hear me just in the video, you know, the whole time, right? That one was the first one that I ever made any money on because the content was good. My production was terrible. But the value that was provided to the person watching the video, the thumbnail was okay. The title was okay. And then the value that I provided match the expectation of the thumbnail in the title. Yeah. And that is what led it up. And now that video has more views than the super polished well done videos that I do now. Yeah. Right. Because at the time at the algorithm when it hit when it you know, you get all of those things. Yeah. Interesting. Start Recording. Yeah. Yeah, that's the big thing there. Is there a way to see so like, I have my YouTube pulled up people can't see this. But I'm looking at it here. Just a live demo. Is there a way to see click through rate on your YouTube analytics? Yep. So when you click on the video, yeah. Oh, you have to click on not just okay. Yeah, this is terrible podcasting, but let's use a good one. Hold on. Let's use the more popular ones. When I was 45 views, let me pull the mic back over. Yeah. Okay, so then click on you click on specific analytics for each video. And so good engagement. It's either engagement or reach. So your average view duration you want that ideally, over you know, this higher that you can get it. Yeah. Click on reach. Click through rate. That's a solid point three. I wasn't gonna say. I mean, I don't have huge expectations right now we only have 15 subscribers and videos are getting 30 to 45 views. So like, I know it's not. But I guess the one thing that I will take away from this for people listening is that I say yeah, you know, we only have 45 total views on this video, and only a point 3% click through rate. But we have 1.9k impressions on this video. What's your watch time? Go to watch them. Okay. 3.1 out. Yeah. 3.1 hours for a 30 minute video. Yeah, that's pretty dang good. Yeah, right. So your watch time? That's a piece of advice. Watch. Time is way more important than views. Right? If you get especially on shorts to short, yeah, but even on long form content if you have a million views, but they're only all watching for a second. You're not getting paid. Yeah. Right. And if you only have 100 views, but everybody's watching video twice, yeah, you're getting paid. So your view, don't, don't get caught up on your views. As much get caught up on your watch time and your click through rate. Those are the two things that are going to drive your success views are almost meaningless. Unless you're trying to get monetized for shorts, then you need 10 million shorts views. And that actually matters. And then you get into some, like, scummy I'm gonna play a four second video on repeat that as a bunch of like, yeah, yeah, there's some ways to cheat the system there. But I think it is encouraging. I didn't look at this specifically, you know, the point 3% click through rate, and only 45 views. But there's the potential. There's 1.9k impressions, which means for me, there is that potential to convert those impressions into that if you are doing your job well, right, if you get the thumbnail and you get the title that is interesting, right? That's 2000 People who YouTube has freely shown your content to Yeah. Which is more than more than organically posting through Buzzsprout to our podcast that goes to Apple, Spotify, all the other podcast players that's hands down more than that, that's more than Instagram more than Tik Tok, like all these different things. You know, we're driving a lot of traffic through Twitter and Facebook actually, on this video. Nice helps but, you know, views from impressions only six out of the 1.9k That's that point. 3%. Yeah. So I would recommend to anybody in your niche, go and go to YouTube and look at the other people who are doing what you want to do well, right. So figure out what their thumbnails are, what their what I have a spreadsheet and I do this about every six months, I bought the top 10 creators that are the numerically the best in my niche. And then I pull another list of my 10 like personal favorites, and sometimes those overlap but sometimes they don't. And I go through and I make notes, I'll look at their most recent videos and their most popular. They're only using and I'll make notes like they're using two different fonts but both fonts are white. Yeah, there's another other one down here what he is he does more like this one guy had Finn McEntee the punk rock NBA great if you like, like music history at all. He's a Music History podcast, right? And so his because of his audience is more neon colors. And he does kind of like the scene and the emo type stuff, right? And then it's easy to find your niche. Find the people doing, what they're doing, what they're doing well in your niche and make notes and study what they're doing. Right top three, whatever's taking off in your niche, make note of that, if you see three of the top 10 doing this on a regular basis, make note of that and do it if they're doing. Uh, they take you in your podcast, they pull you out on Canva and then you throw the black line around, you know what I'm talking about some niches that is awesome. Yeah, their niches if not do your research and then you know, yeah, that's it. I was getting ready to ask that like if you have seen a specific trend because like, I know you do that a lot. Or at least like when I was on your YouTube a year and a half ago you pulled me out and I've seen that with your some of your other videos. And I tried doing that I didn't like pull it out and put it black or anything but like I tried just doing my face and like a blown up of me in the thumbnail. But then I was like, I'm just taking like my individual podcast where I don't have a guest. It would just be a different selfie of To me, and I was like, that kind of looks weird. So now we've kind of just done done more of a bold text, big text with some type of image over it, or inside of it relating to the topic. So like, the thread one, the threads. One we just threw? No, we actually did, like, somebody had a picture of the threads app open and things like that. relating that image specifically to it instead of just having me or Kaylee face blown up. And, you know, I haven't done the research to see if that's really what the industry is doing. But podcasts are hard to. Yeah, so pull up Thorin real quick, and pull up his channel. This is we'll do this live like live guys, this is what you got to do. Right? If you're if you have a question about this type of stuff, go and look and see what the other people are doing. And I should have been maybe like screen recording, and that's all kind of, okay, so th o r i n. So he he's one of my favorite content creators. Yep. So and then go to videos. Okay, and then just scroll down a little bit. So this is a podcaster. Who does what I want to do with my big the archive, like my main segment that I do my two hour long videos. Yeah, our inspiration from this guy. He's in a completely different niche. He's a video game historian. Some people are gonna laugh at it's there. He makes bank right. So I come in here. He's doing podcasts. How do you make thumbnails that are interesting for podcasts? Right? dark background for him. bold text, face of the person that's covering up the bold text. Right? And that that's how he does his thumbnails. And you can see and then like, scroll up, and then click on popular. Right? These are some of his older ones. And you can see these are old and they're just the straight screencap of thing. Yeah, but he doesn't do that anymore. Because he learned and he developed any, you know, yeah, and these ones are popular, because this is when he really took off off. These are all like seven years ago, which I think is when he really did he take off. Yeah. But now we're still not even to most recent ones. But I think he's adapted to what doing big now because, you know, he posted a video one day ago, and it has 5.1k views another one one day ago, and it's 6.3. And then you know, five days ago, he's already at 16k views. So like, obviously, it shifted from where it was seven years ago to today. But but do your research, find the people that you want to emulate, figure out what I mean? Like literally, I went down and broke black background, big text, he had two different fonts. He took a photo of the person it wasn't outlined, he blew it up. So it's just shoulders and a butt like, yeah, and I do that with the 10 biggest. And then my 10 favorite. Yeah, every six months, and try and update what I'm doing and how and then same thing with with titles. I don't know if you can see his titles there. So if you haven't pulled up, he doesn't do the name of the Podcast, episode two. Yeah, he throws in the controversial comment that the person made in the interview, right? Like if you're doing it with me, you could say, you know, LARPer says whatever. Yeah, I mean, hardened digital, or what's the the digital wrap digital wrap up? Yeah. So for you to do that at the end, not the beginning. Yeah, like I those type of I did shift to that. So like when I first started publishing on YouTube, I did digital wrap up episode 34 was the first part is like, but then when you're looking and you're like thinking of people see that they have no idea what the digital wrap up is like I still had the title of it. The title of the episode in it, but I just had digital wrap up first and I was like, Oh, that doesn't make sense. And then I started switching to creating an online store dash digital wrap up episode 43. And so because like for this one you could do, monetizing small, monetizing small social followings. Yeah. With Nate Frederick. Digital wrap up episode. 49. Yeah, right. That is way better than digital wrap up episode. 49. Colin, Nate Frederick. Yeah, no one cares about that. No one knows me. Right. No one, you know what I mean? So yeah, whether it's the topic like I do, like, again, talking about the Thorin. He has some like he has quotes that read you everything I wouldn't forfeit. He pulls the most controversial top, that controversial line from the interview that he's doing. And that is the title. Yeah. It's interesting. So there's a lot more in terms of growing and really being successful. There's a lot more than just recording, but recording. That's how you have to get started if you just have to commit to it. Very, very interesting. Commit to make 50 videos this year, and commit to getting 1% better on every video by the end of the year. Right Get your stuff is 50% better? Yeah, next year, you're double, you know what I mean? Like you just, every video, I'm gonna pick one thing I'm, whether it's an editing thing, or my script or my intro, my hook, my, whatever it is, I watched my previous like three videos, figure out the thing that I think needs the most work. Yeah, this video I'm working on that. And then I do you know, in my prep and my writing and all of that I'm thinking about what do I need to do to get better this time in this video? Gotcha. And while we're sitting here talking, I just changed the title of the latest video, give it a try. I mean, like we'd only had nine views in the past two days, which isn't great by any means. So I like for me, it was difficult because we have the title of the podcast, which that's for the audio form that we published his Spotify and all that. And my thought process is like, I wanted it to be the exact same on YouTube. But YouTube is a whole different beast. So like, while the thumbnail other than like, we have the title, usually as the thumbnail as well. So like I wanted it to match, but I guess it's Oh, it's probably okay to be different than what the thumbnail shows. Or I will say the podcasting realm is one of my least knowledgeable areas. I'm not sure I am assuming it's similar when it comes to titles and stuff. But I have, I could be completely wrong. Yeah. And that is an area that I have not researched too terribly much. I mean, so if you look at it, though, this could just be from me watching it. But we have nine views, but we have 2.4 watch hours on it. It's pretty decent compared to that one that had 45 views and 3.1 watch hours. So like, I mean, it's the people watching it are watching a lot of it, which again, could have been me or Hannah or Kaylee watching the full episode and then so be it. But yeah, it's kind of just a lot to break down. I know, we were kind of all over the place. You know, I think we can save the we were going to talk about some other stuff too, in terms of your full time position, but maybe save that for a later date. I think everything we've talked about if you are a content creator, if you are a small business owner, or somebody who's managing social media or all things marketing for a smaller business, you can kind of take away a bunch from this, whether you're just on social, whether you're on YouTube, and social, whether you're trying to monetize stuff, or really just trying to get your product or your business out there to more people, a lot of what we've talked about today can be extremely valuable for you. Is there anything you want to wrap up with, obviously, promote, where people can find you. But anything last words of advice, anything like that last little bit? For me, when it comes to social, I got into social to try and make money, right. And if that's your goal, and you're producing a product, like you need to have one thing that you are pushing all your content towards whether that is your website, with your products, whether that is your website, with your services, whether that is if your main source of money is that affiliate link, if it whatever it is that you're all of your content needs to be driving people to one specific thing. Yeah, if your goal is to Well, I'm just making, unless you're an entertainment channel, if you're an entertainment channel, and that's completely different. But like, if you're a business, doing YouTube for the first time to make money for your business, make sure you're funneling people to your website, or to your offer or to whatever it is, and then make content around that. That pushes people towards that because if you have random stuff out there, you're wasting your time. And time is money. Right? Don't do some random thing that isn't going to direct customers to what you're doing. Yeah, I think that'd be my last little bit awesome. Where can people find you? I know we've talked about Yeah, everything you do, but throw in the socials. Excuse me, obviously put them in the description. If you want to find more about everything Nate's doing, check out the description, but Oh, working around the fire media on all of them except Facebook. Which is just around the fire. Yeah. I got him did get me. But yeah, around around the fire media is cool. Instagram, tick tock, YouTube, YouTube. Awesome. Sweet. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been good to kind of we've had conversations but for the hardcore followers and listeners who heard Nate talk, I think it was one of our most listened to episodes still today maybe. But good to catch up. See everything you're doing and glad you got to check out the studio. We're while you're in town. So thanks so much. And we'll maybe we'll catch up. Again talk about more in the next few months. So sounds good to you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, take care.