How do you adapt a podcast into a growing YouTube channel? We learned the hard way how not to do it. First, don’t post your podcast audio to YouTube with a static image just to make it technically a video. We tried that for years with no success.
To gain traction on YouTube, you have to respect YouTube as a platform. You can’t just shovel your podcast audio onto it and expect good results.
I had an interesting conversation about this on the School of Podcasting hosted by Dave Jackson. Dave is a Hall of Fame podcaster, and we discussed the differences between YouTube and podcasting and how to successfully adapt a podcast to YouTube.
Most importantly, we talked about what works and what doesn’t. I really enjoyed this crosscast between the School of Podcasting and the Novel Marketing Podcast.
Dave Jackson: If you are anywhere near writing a book, thinking about writing a book, have already written one, or are trying to promote it, you need to know about Author Media and Thomas Umstattd, Jr. I love listening to your show because you pick apart what’s working and then explain why based on the results of your tests.
Thomas: I started my first podcast in 2007, which is impressive to some people but probably not to you. My current podcast, Novel Marketing, started in 2013 as an audio-only show. For years, we recorded on Skype. It’s a lot easier now using Descript.
Over the years, what tools have you used?
Dave: Tell us what worked and what didn’t.
Thomas: About five years ago, there was a lot of buzz about putting podcasts on YouTube using various automated tools. We experimented with that.
These tools would subscribe to your RSS feed, grab the MP3, add your cover art and a waveform, and generate a video. I thought, “This is a really easy way to have a YouTube show.” We did that for about a year, but it got very little traction. People don’t really want to listen to YouTube. The experience of listening is so much better in a podcast app than it is in the YouTube app unless someone has YouTube Premium, which wasn’t very popular five years ago.
Dave: But it had a squiggly line!
Thomas: The squiggly line was cool, but it doesn’t hold attention. In fact, it’s almost worse than nothing. If there’s no real visual, it gives me permission to wash the dishes or go for a walk while I listen.
I used to do radio, and in radio, there’s this concept of foreground versus background listening. Many podcasts are background listening. A four-hour show that’s published three times a week can get a lot of listeners because people fill quiet parts of their day with those friendly voices.
When I was a kid, our mechanic listened to the entire Rush Limbaugh show every morning. He was a humble car mechanic, but he could tell you, blow by blow, what was going on between Democrats and Republicans in D.C. His experience listening to talk radio is the same kind of experience some people have with podcasts.
But YouTube is more often foreground listening. It’s lean-forward listening. You’re paying close attention. You’re not doing something else.
The formats are really different. In radio, we were constantly trying to pull people back from background to foreground listening. We used little jingles and attention-grabbers to get people to pay attention again so they would hear our advertisers. The same kind of thing is happening now when you compare podcasting to YouTube.
What increased your view count?
Thomas: It’s a lot easier for a podcast to work on YouTube when there are faces on the screen. That’s what we started experimenting with about a year ago. We were already recording in tools like Descript, Riverside, SquadCast, or StreamYard. I was using Descript to edit the episodes, so I figured we might as well put the videos on YouTube.
It was still very low effort, but just that small change from audiogram to real faces made a huge difference. We started seeing two to three times the number of views per video. They were still small numbers but much better than what we had before, and it started growing from there.
Dave: Are you adding lower thirds or anything like that? Or is it just a single camera shot of you talking?
Thomas: At first, it was just a side-by-side view. It required very little effort because I was still editing with audio in mind. Then, about six months ago, we started experimenting with being more intentional. I brought on a video editor to start adding B-roll and help with transitions.
Descript has some great features, like automatic multicam switching with its Underlord feature. It can switch from full screen to full screen automatically. But if you want to go side-by-side and hide edits with a scene change, you still have to do that manually.
That kind of thing doesn’t matter much when you’re editing for audio. For an audio edit, you often cut close to the bone. We’d cut out every “um” we could find. It sounds natural in audio, but it doesn’t look natural in video. People’s faces jump all over the screen depending on how many filler words they use.
Now, we’re editing a little differently. We fork the content earlier in the process. One person edits the audio, and someone else edits the video.
What made the biggest difference on YouTube?
Thomas: The thing that increased our YouTube views by ten times was realizing that some things that matter a lot for YouTube don’t matter at all for podcasting.
That was a big realization. These things that aren’t very important in the podcast world are actually everything on YouTube. The two biggest examples are titles and thumbnails.
A lot of podcasts use simple titles like “Episode 123” or “Episode 124.” You don’t recommend that, but if someone is already committed to the School of Podcasting and subscribed to Dave Jackson, they’ll listen to the next episode anyway.
On YouTube, it’s different. You have to earn every view. Subscribers don’t matter nearly as much. What gets the click is a strong title and a compelling thumbnail.
Do subscriber counts still matter on YouTube?
Dave: I have over 3,000 subscribers, which sounds like a lot when you’re used to thinking in terms of podcast downloads. But then you look at other YouTube channels and realize, “Oh, I’m just a tiny fish.”
You post an episode and think, “I’ve got thousands of subscribers,” and after the first day, it has 78 views. That’s depressing. So don’t get too impressed when you see someone has 10,000 subscribers. Go look at their view count.
Thomas: Yeah, there’s a trend on all social media right now called the “death of the subscriber.” It started with TikTok. TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t weigh subscribers much. It looks at a ton of factors, and subscribers are just a tiny piece of it. YouTube puts a little more weight on subscribers than TikTok, but not nearly as much as platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Overcast.
Those podcast apps make subscriptions feel like a to-do list. They give you a red notification number, which adds pressure to keep up with your episodes. YouTube doesn’t create that same pressure.
Why are thumbnails more important on YouTube?
Thomas: The other thing we were completely ignoring, because it doesn’t matter in podcasting, is the thumbnail. Some advanced podcasters create custom thumbnails for each episode. Buzzsprout lets you upload one, and it’s a nice-to-have feature. But many podcast players don’t display them, and there’s no single standard. Are you going to format it the Spotify way, the Apple way, or the Podcasting 2.0 way?
The truth is, nobody decides whether to listen to a podcast episode based on the episode artwork. But on YouTube, they absolutely do.
When you’re scrolling through a wall of videos on your phone or computer, what you see is the thumbnail.
Once we started designing custom thumbnails with text, faces, and arrows, it made a huge difference in our views. We used to just repurpose our blog post images. Since we turn every podcast transcript into a blog post, we already had a stock photo to go with each one. But those blog-style images did not work as YouTube thumbnails.
Once we started following best practices by adding text, showing faces, including visual cues, we saw a big jump. Our first few videos with text got hundreds of views. Then the next ones got thousands. It was a massive shift.
That’s when I realized this is a totally different platform. It has its own rules, and you need to respect those rules. On YouTube, titles and thumbnails are everything.
Do you have to make goofy faces for the thumbnail?
Dave: Everyone looks either shocked or super sad. It feels like all the thumbnails are just extreme facial expressions.
Thomas: It helps. Big eyes help. Strong emotions matter. That’s a big difference we had to adjust for.
What is the most critical element of your video on YouTube?
Thomas: A strong opening is critical. When someone taps a YouTube video, they’re not committed to watching the whole thing. That’s very different from podcasting. When I start listening to a podcast, I’m committed. I have playlists. I start my news playlist in the morning and listen straight through. It’s like, boom, boom, boom, episode after episode.
YouTube isn’t like that. People give your video 30 seconds. I don’t think YouTube even counts the view unless they watch for at least that long.
A lot of podcasts open slowly. I skip the first five minutes of some podcasts every time because nothing interesting happens until then. But even the best practices in the podcast world don’t require delivering value in the first 30 seconds.
I’d often start with a two or three-minute intro story to provide context for the episode topic, which works great for podcasting but not for YouTube.
MrBeast is the number one YouTuber, and he says you have to start delivering on the promise of the thumbnail within the first 30 seconds. That hit me hard.
For example, he might have a video titled “I Did 7 Dangerous Things.” Ten seconds in, he’s already doing the first one. He’s in the water, sharks are swimming around him, and by 30 seconds, he’s survived the first danger.
You have to open strong. That was a big adjustment for me.
Do you introduce yourself on YouTube like you would on your podcast?
Dave: It’s odd because YouTube has more discovery, so more new people are finding you. But in the video, there’s no street cred in the intro. It just jumps right into the topic.
In podcasting, people have heard my intro a hundred times, but I still say, “I’ve been podcasting since 2000.” It feels backward. On the other hand, the nice thing about YouTube is the data. You can see what’s working and what’s not. I’ve noticed a lot of people barely say their names. Usually, there’s just a lower third with their name and website while they’re already talking about the topic.
Thomas: Another technique is to add your show intro later in the episode. You front-load the content.
In podcasting, it’s all about getting the subscriber. You introduce the show first: “This is the School of Podcasting, and we talk about all things podcasting. Today, we’ll talk about adapting your podcast for YouTube.” You sell the big show, then the individual topic.
On YouTube, it’s inverted. You sell the individual episode first: “Today, we’re talking about adapting your podcast for YouTube.” Then, later, you say, “This is the School of Podcasting.”
It seems like a minor change, but it’s a big deal. Someone might watch one episode, then another a few weeks later, and maybe after four or five videos, they finally subscribe, like, or click the bell.
How do you come up with good titles?
Thomas: We use AI for brainstorming. We’ve been experimenting with different tools. Sometimes, we use GPT or Anthropic’s Claude to generate dozens of title ideas. We’ll feed it the episode goal, the topic, or even the outline just to get ideas flowing.
We don’t always use the titles AI gives us, but it helps break us out of a creative rut. My initial title ideas are always bad. Usually, it’s just the topic, which isn’t good enough.
I’m starting to learn that sometimes I can’t even do the episode until I have a good title. There’s one episode I’ve been considering for a year. Internally, I call it “Statistics for Authors,” where I explain the Pareto distribution, the 80/20 principle, and the standard distribution. I explain why not understanding these concepts will cost you money as an author.
But “Statistics for Authors” would bomb on YouTube. Loyal listeners might stick with it, but new viewers wouldn’t. I finally came up with a more compelling way to frame the topic, and it might even make people mad enough to watch the whole thing.
What types of episodes perform best?
Thomas: One thing I’ve learned is that anything with controversy does well. Politics, controversy, and contrarian takes all perform well.
I’m not talking about political parties. I’m talking about challenging popular advice. One of my most popular episodes ever is called Stop Writing Book Series! That goes against what everyone else says.
The intro for that one is great. I say, “You shouldn’t write your book in a series, and I can prove it using math.” That’s in the first 10 seconds. Then, I dive into the formulas. By the end of the first 30 seconds, I’ve already made my first argument, and there are six or seven more to come.
Dave: It’s just a completely different platform. Different platforms, different rules.
My Saturday show has never been super serious. It’s just me offering free podcasting advice. It still bothers me that when I hit “done,” aside from occasionally trimming a few seconds at the beginning, it’s unedited. I edit the audio heavily, but the YouTube video stays as-is because I can’t replace it once it’s uploaded and already has views. I don’t want to lose those. It’s just a different ball game.
Thomas: YouTube does have an editor now that lets you trim sections out without resetting your view count.
Everything we’ve been talking about so far is about me adapting Novel Marketing for YouTube. But in the last couple of months, we launched a new show called Author Update. We record it live on YouTube, and often, the unedited live show outperforms our evergreen Novel Marketing episodes. Right now, four of our five most-viewed videos this past month are Author Update episodes. It’s a totally different kind of show.
Novel Marketing focuses on evergreen content, and people go back and re-listen to episodes from years ago. Sometimes, I re-record or update a topic, but generally, people binge it like they do with your show.
The downside of evergreen content is that I don’t cover much breaking news. If I do, it’s a major industry story or a year-end roundup. It turns out there’s a real lack of author-focused publishing news, and that’s part of why Author Update is doing so well. There’s less competition compared to writing or marketing advice, which are saturated markets.
Dave: How long have you been doing Author Update?
Thomas: We’ve been doing the show for about two months, and it’s only doing better on YouTube. We turned it into a podcast, too by uploading the audio as a new podcast using Buzzsprout. I don’t put much effort into it, and I don’t worry about ID3 tags or compression. Buzzsprout just takes the MP3 from Riverside and publishes it. Surprisingly, it’s done well, but it’s still not performing as well as Novel Marketing.
What’s interesting is that the YouTube audience is basically brand new. There’s very little overlap. It’s not like people are deciding whether to watch the video or listen to the podcast. There are folks, like my mom, who only use a few apps, and YouTube is one of them. Despite being the mom of a professional podcaster and podcast editor, she just doesn’t have room in her life for another app. But now that I’m on YouTube, she watches every episode.
Dave: That has to feel good that you’re finally getting Mom to watch. But now she can also see how many views you’re getting, which you can’t really see with audio. Was that hard to get used to?
What was the hardest part about starting a YouTube show?
Thomas: The transparent view count was intimidating. On a new platform, you start at zero. I had a bit of an unfair advantage because we already had 12,000 email subscribers. Whenever we launched a new episode, I could email everyone, which helped boost the algorithm. We weren’t really starting from nothing, but we were still starting from scratch in YouTube’s eyes.
The algorithm doesn’t really push your content until you reach the monetization threshold. I think you need 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers. Once YouTube can monetize your videos, it becomes more motivated to help you grow. I think they might put ads on your content before that, but they don’t share the revenue with you.
Also, by the time you reach those thresholds, you’ve learned how to make better videos. YouTube has its own language, rules, and expectations. It took practice to figure it all out. Most of those changes didn’t require editing the podcast differently. Nobody has complained that I’m starting episodes faster now.
What about video-specific references in your podcast?
Dave: Have you ever done the thing where you say, “You’ll see here in the corner,” and then realize it’s audio?
Thomas: I don’t do a lot of that, but I have done some video-focused episodes. We’ve had a companion blog version of our podcast for years, so our listeners are used to going there for links and visuals.
We once got a negative comment that was actually very well-deserved. We did a whole episode on book covers, interviewing one of the top cover designers, and turned it into a 3,000-word blog post. But we didn’t include a single image of a book cover. It was all words. That post has been updated since, but that was a fair critique. We learned that the blog version needs to include actual visual examples if the topic is visual.
Does emailing your list make a difference in YouTube views?
Dave: You mentioned emailing your list when a new video goes live. Does that actually help, or is it just a tiny bump?
Thomas: It makes a huge difference, and this was another big shift from the podcasting world.
In podcasting, the time you publish doesn’t matter much. I release my episodes at 2:00 a.m. on Wednesdays so that Apple, Spotify, and other platforms have time to update before the morning commute. Back in the day, updates could take hours, so I wanted to make sure our episode was live by the time people downloaded new shows every morning.
With YouTube, timing is everything. The first hour after your video goes live is the most important for whether it goes viral or not. If I post at 2:00 a.m. while my core U.S. audience is asleep, YouTube will assume the video isn’t popular.
I use a tool called TubeBuddy. If you’re serious about YouTube, paying for TubeBuddy for one year is worth it. It emails you every time you post a video and gives you feedback. It nags you about all the things I’ve mentioned and shows you what to fix. It’s annoying, but it works.
TubeBuddy analyzes your data and tells you the best times to post. For me, it says noon on Wednesdays is optimal. Most of the podcasts I follow also post at noon. We publish our videos at 11 a.m. to avoid being part of that same rush.
I try to send the weekly email as close to 11:00 a.m. as possible. That doesn’t always happen because that part is manual, and I’m the one hitting send. But when I do send it on time, the video performs much better. YouTube sees that activity and doubles or triples the number of new viewers it introduces the video to.
Dave: That’s really interesting. I’ve definitely posted videos at 1:30 a.m. just because I was going to bed and wanted it out. I could have scheduled it for a better time. Posting at 11:00 or noon makes a lot of sense. People are at lunch, checking their phones, looking for something new, and they’ll go right to YouTube.
How long did it take to monetize on YouTube?
Thomas: Technically, we launched the YouTube channel years ago with those audiograms. But those audiograms didn’t do any good. The only one that got any traffic was an episode on Goodreads. That one still performs well, partly because nobody else is talking about Goodreads, and we had a strong episode on it. YouTube smiled upon that otherwise not-so-great video, but it was just one video.
On YouTube, one video can monetize you. That’s a big shift from podcasting, where success is about faithfulness and consistently delivering value every week. In podcasting, it’s really about avoiding bad episodes. If you have two or three bad episodes in a row, people start unsubscribing. Podcast apps create pressure to listen to every episode, so if people don’t finish one, they start to feel guilty. Eventually, it becomes easier to just unsubscribe than to mark them all as completed.
But on YouTube, if you have a bad episode, it doesn’t matter. YouTube just won’t show it to anyone. Your bad episode gets buried. Lists of episodes are algorithmically generated, and one viral episode can make all the difference.
We did an episode called How to Write Novels That Men Want to Read. It was about the differences between men and women. When I was growing up, it wasn’t controversial to say men and women are different physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They like different movies and different stories. But today, that’s a bold statement.
We were advocating for fiction written for men. There was a lot of buzz on X (formerly Twitter) about how men used to read books, and now they don’t. I interviewed a guest who argued that the publishing establishment is largely run by women now and that editorial decisions are increasingly tailored to female preferences.
For example, men tend to enjoy info dumps because one of the biggest reasons men read fiction is to learn something. But women generally don’t like info dumps, and that’s become the prevailing advice: don’t do info dumps because “readers” don’t like them. But what that really means is female readers don’t like them.
Tom Clancy wrote 30 pages in Clear and Present Danger about how to build a nuclear bomb. A lot of men reading that were more excited about those pages than the rest of the adventure plot.
We broke down a lot of those differences, and that episode became one of our best-performing. It brought in hundreds of new subscribers and thousands of views. It was about 50 minutes long, which helped with watch time. When a video is longer, you don’t need as many viewers to watch the whole thing to rack up hours.
Thomas: One of the things I had to unlearn was that YouTube used to be all about short videos. My first YouTube video was in 2005, and you couldn’t upload more than ten minutes. But now YouTube favors longer videos. It’s hard to find a five-minute YouTube video anymore because it doesn’t give the platform the same value as a 15- or 20-minute video.
Dave: These days, someone with a five-minute video just turns it into a short they can record on their phone.
Now that you’re monetized, are you retiring off that sweet, sweet YouTube money? I think in one month, I made about $5.
How much does YouTube monetization really bring in?
Thomas: We’re making between $200 and $400 a month, depending on whether we have a viral hit. One video can make a big difference. The topic also plays a role. Our AI episodes tend to perform better because it’s a popular subject, and not a lot of people in the author world are talking about it. Plus, advertisers seem to be paying more for ads on AI-related content. Even though the topic of writing isn’t a highly monetized niche, AI is.
If I had a business podcast, I’d be making more per view. A video on “how to write by the seat of your pants” doesn’t monetize as well as an AI topic. But yes, the bigger hits bring in more revenue.
That said, we’re still spending more than we’re making. I hired a freelance editor who helps with editing, thumbnails, headings, and B-roll. I’m not fully convinced that B-roll helps. We don’t use it much in interviews anymore, and we’re debating whether to keep using it in solo episodes.
There’s a lot of labor behind a good YouTube video, and it’s added cost and time. I spend more time scripting now. Between that and the effort going into Author Update, we’re still losing money—at least directly. But we have seen an increase in patrons. Anecdotally, many of them are now saying things like, “I’ve been watching your podcast.” Almost all recent new listeners discovered us on YouTube.
Someone who discovered us on YouTube even flew to our Novel Marketing Conference in January. YouTube is already driving real-world results for us.
Was your goal to grow the podcast or reach a new audience?
Dave: When you started doing videos, were you trying to grow your podcast audience? A lot of people say they’re doing YouTube to get more podcast listeners. But it sounds like you weren’t trying to do that. You were playing on a new stage, not pulling people from one to the other.
Thomas: It was about audience growth and reaching a different kind of person. My podcast and blog audience skews older and more female. The typical Novel Marketing listener is a woman between 50 and 55. My core YouTube audience is a guy in his thirties. It’s a totally different demographic.
If you’ve spent time in writing circles, you know the typical writer is a woman in her fifties. That’s the core at most writers conferences. That’s not who we’re reaching on YouTube.
For a while, our YouTube audience was 80 percent male. That probably explains why our “Why Men Don’t Read” episode did so well. That topic is red meat for the Red Pill Bros and that whole segment of YouTube. They loved it.
A lot of women were offended, though. They’d say, “I like this kind of fiction too!” And that’s fine! We weren’t saying they couldn’t. I’m not going to get into the full drama of that episode. We had hundreds of comments.
But I will say that the best-performing videos rarely have more than a 92% like ratio. To do really well, you need some people to click “dislike.” That kind of engagement fuels the algorithm.
How has YouTube changed your production workflow?
Thomas: The biggest time challenge has been the learning curve. Everything we’ve talked about with lighting, camera work, and background setup is unique to the YouTube platform. There’s a whole language of video on top of the language of audio.
With audio, you worry about reducing background noise. Bookshelves, for example, help with both sound dampening and blocking, which is great for a treated room. A bookshelf full of books makes a good backdrop and improves audio. But if it’s empty, it acts like a speaker box and creates weird echo effects.
For those watching the video version of this episode, yes, the books behind me are part of the sound treatment. They also help visually. That’s part of the video learning curve.
I’ll save you from 90 % of that learning curve with two recommendations. First, just buy the Elgato Prompter (affiliate link). Don’t waste time on others. I spent a month trying to get different teleprompters to work, and they never worked reliably.
The Elgato is magic. It fixes the eye-line issue. One of the problems in our earlier videos was that I wasn’t looking into the camera because my eyes were on my screen. It’s disorienting for viewers when the speaker isn’t making eye contact. The Elgato Prompter mirrors your screen, so you can look directly at Zoom or Descript and still see everything clearly.
Most teleprompters only work with scripts, but that doesn’t help podcasters doing interviews. I mean, Dave, I derailed your script 20 seconds into this interview. A rigid script just doesn’t work in those situations. The Elgato Prompter (affiliate link)is under $200, and it’s been a great purchase.
Second, use your iPhone (even an old one) as your camera. If you’re on a Mac, use Continuity Camera. My old iPhone outperforms my mirrorless Sony DSLR. It’s easier to use, and the phone’s image processor handles everything beautifully. Modern phones are mostly cameras anyway. They adjust lighting automatically, reduce harsh shadows, and even let you shoot with a window behind you. I have Elgato key lights, but I often don’t even turn them on. The phone just handles it.
Instead of giving your old iPhone to your kids, let them enjoy a phone-free childhood a little longer. Permanently install it in your Elgato Prompter setup, and you’ll have a solid video solution.
YouTube is more work, but it’s worth it. It’s exciting to reach a new group of people and build fresh energy in the community. It does limit when and where I can record, though.
You use a portable Tascam and an old XLR mic to record quick interviews at conferences. That’s easy with audio. Video is more complicated. It involves more gear and more setup. It just adds complexity.
Thirdly, use double-ended recording for interviews like this. If you do those three things—use your phone, use the Elgato Prompter, and record double-ended—you’ll get pretty solid video quality. Assuming you’re already following Dave Jackson’s advice for good audio, of course.
What’s the best microphone setup for recording on the go?
Dave: If you’re recording in the field, Hollyland microphones are great. They’re tiny, clip onto your collar, and connect directly to your phone. I haven’t used mine yet, but I’ve seen great videos from people who have. I just need to get everything configured.
It’s a lot of work. And a lot of fun. Sounds like things are starting to move in the right direction for you.
Thomas: We’re making progress. The show is growing. Episodes are performing better. I’m glad I started the YouTube channel. I think new patrons are helping cover the extra costs, though I don’t have hard data yet. Either way, it’s nice to have a new revenue source. YouTube pays me directly in addition to what I get from Patreon.
Do YouTubers promote Patreon more than podcasters?
Dave: Even though podcasters have used Patreon for a long time, I think YouTubers mention it more often. Every YouTube video seems to have a plug for it.
Thomas: That’s probably because Patreon was created by a well-known musical couple who were already big on YouTube.
How do you deal with negative YouTube comments?
Dave: You’ve talked about getting comments on different episodes. I always warn people that YouTube viewers aren’t shy about telling you when they think you stink. Did that take some getting used to?
Thomas: That was a big adjustment. In the podcast world, a bad episode means someone unsubscribes, and that’s a loss. Negative feedback really matters. You want to keep your subscribers happy.
But it’s the opposite on YouTube. A scathing comment actually boosts your video in the algorithm. It helps you. You’re harvesting attention from the trolls. I know YouTubers who deliberately make small, obvious mistakes like saying, “6 plus 7 is 18,” just to bait people into commenting. It’s called engagement farming.
Getting people worked up encourages them to comment. And once they start, others join in. If you can get two trolls arguing with each other in the comments, that’s even better. It draws more viewers.
So yes, negative comments are good. I only delete comments if they include bad language. You can set up filtering levels on YouTube, and I keep mine strict. But some people find ways around the filters. If someone uses foul language, I’ll remove the comment. I try to keep the channel family-friendly.
I’ve had people insult my appearance and attack my religion. Nothing is out of bounds for YouTube commenters, it seems. But I remind myself that these comments help feed the algorithm. Nobody reads the comments to decide whether to watch a video.
YouTube also lets you surface positive comments at the top. You can “like” a comment, which makes it more visible. I “like” the ones about the video itself and not the ones insulting how I look.
How does an email list help you on YouTube?
Dave: We both talk about how important an email list is. How does that work on YouTube?
I know YouTube really wants viewers to keep watching the next video. If you end every video with something like, “Hey, go over here and fill out this form to join my email list,” I could see YouTube saying, “That’s enough of that.”
Thomas: Actually, YouTube is pretty good about letting you put hyperlinks in the description. That’s one of the nice things about YouTube compared to podcasting. In podcasting, you can add links, but how listeners interact with them depends on what app they’re using. Are they on Amazon Music? Spotify? Apple Podcasts? Overcast? Each one handles links and descriptions differently.
It’s hard to say in a podcast, “Check the link in the description to become a patron,” because depending on the app, that link may not work well or even appear. I think this is one reason why Patreon performs better on YouTube. You can paste a link to Patreon in the description, and people can just tap or click it. It takes them straight there.
There’s a funding tag in the Podcasting 2.0 spec, but only a couple of apps support it. I know I’m preaching to the choir because you’re all in on Podcasting 2.0, but come on—support the funding tag. It’s not hard. And it doesn’t even have to link to Patreon; it can point anywhere you want. Overcast supports it, which is great.
YouTube is strong when it comes to linking. We always include a link to the blog version of the episode and usually a link to Patreon. I’ve found that a generic “please join my newsletter” pitch doesn’t work that well. What works better is offering a specific companion guide for that episode. Then you say, “You can get the guide for this episode at this specific link,” which usually leads to the blog. That kind of pitch performs much better.
When is a good time to start a YouTube channel?
Dave: You mentioned something about January being a good time to jump into YouTube. What happened there?
Thomas: That was fortuitous. We started taking YouTube seriously in December. That’s when some of our early viral videos started to take off. I think the “Writing for Men” episode came just before that, but by January, we were really leaning in.
I didn’t realize how little new content gets posted on YouTube in January. It’s a great time to start a new show because a lot of monetized channels go quiet. In December, advertisers spend big for the holiday season. But in January, the advertising money disappears. Everyone’s recovering. It’s like when you walk into a department store in January, and half the shelves are empty.
YouTubers follow the same rhythm. They know that a video in January earns a fraction of what it would in December, so many of them take the month off. You’ll see a lot of great content in November and December but not in January.
That worked to our advantage. We were posting new content just as a lot of big channels weren’t. Even though we weren’t competing directly with them on topic, we benefited from the lack of new content overall. We got some unearned views, which helped us attract a new audience.
If you’re thinking of starting a YouTube channel, don’t wait until January to begin. Start earlier, work through the learning curve, and then do a big content push in January. You’ll be glad you did.
Are there any YouTubers you recommend for learning YouTube?
Dave: There are so many gurus out there when it comes to YouTube. You mentioned that TubeBuddy has some great educational tools. Do you have a favorite YouTuber who teaches YouTube?
Thomas: I wish I did. That is such a crowded space. There are probably 500 YouTubers who are all good at teaching YouTube. It’s not like there’s just one person you have to follow.
It’s kind of like podcasting. Dave Jackson is really good at teaching podcasting, but there are other podcasting educators out there, too. I personally like The School of Podcasting because I tend to agree with Dave’s recommendations.
YouTube is the same way. There’s no one right teacher. As you start watching YouTube tutorials, the algorithm will feed you more of them.
Look for videos featuring MrBeast. He doesn’t post these on his own channel, but he often appears as a guest on shows like Colin and Samir and other big creator-focused channels.
MrBeast is probably the most intense student of YouTube as a platform. He has devoted his life to understanding how online video works. Don’t listen to people who contradict what MrBeast says about YouTube. MrBeast may not be right on everything, but he’s put in the work, and he knows YouTube.
He’s making hundreds of millions of dollars a month and has become one of the most famous people on the planet. Now, he’s teaming up with James Patterson to write a book. The book marketer in me is thinking, “That’s a guaranteed New York Times bestseller.” It’s an absolute home run.
Should a new podcaster start with audio, video, or both?
Thomas: The medium is the message, and I don’t think that’s actually the first question to ask. First, you need to ask, “What is the format of my show?” There are many show formats, and some lend themselves better to one medium than another.
Our live news show, for example, works well as a video-first event because we have a really engaged comment section. Whether we’re using Riverside or StreamYard, we can take questions from YouTube comments and put them up on screen. That allows our live audience to participate and comment on the news.
Because there are two of us hosting, whoever isn’t talking can scroll through the comments and bring some of them into the show. It’s a great interactive experience.
On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say you’re a pastor who wants to do a daily devotional show. You read a couple of chapters from the Bible, share some thoughts, and then close with a prayer. That kind of show is meant to be part of someone’s devotional rhythm, and it absolutely needs to be an audio podcast.
Nobody wants a video version of that. There’s no added value in it. In fact, it can make the experience worse. People might be listening with their Bible open in their lap, and if they’re required to look at a screen, it disrupts that quiet, focused atmosphere.
Thomas: There’s a lot of room in the middle for shows that work in both formats. The classic interview show is one example. I personally don’t think two talking faces make for a very interesting YouTube video, but I have thousands of YouTube viewers who disagree with me.
They prefer the YouTube version, even though it interrupts them with ads. The podcast version only has a pre-roll or post-roll, so there are fewer interruptions. But still, they choose YouTube.
What is a key advantage podcasts have over YouTube?
Thomas: One big advantage of podcasting over YouTube is dynamically inserted content. Dave, you do a great job with your “Where’s Dave going to be next week?” segment. You can’t do that on YouTube. The video is frozen in time. You can’t change it once it’s published.
Now, if you’re listening to this in the future, that may have changed. YouTube has been testing some dynamic tools, but as of now, those features are still in beta, and we don’t know what access will look like.
But for my audience of authors, dynamically inserted content is magic. If you’ve got a thousand old episodes and a book on podcasting coming out, you can dynamically insert ads at the beginning or end of all those episodes to drive people to your book launch. Launches are all about generating sales in a short window of time, and dynamic content becomes incredibly useful.
Then, when your next book launches, you swap out the ads and promote the new book. That’s a huge advantage podcasting has over YouTube.
So it’s not all sunshine and roses on YouTube. It’s a lot of work. There are definitely downsides.
With YouTube, you can do live videos, show comments on screen, and point people visually to what you’re referencing. But with an audio podcast, you can clean things up, remove filler words, and avoid visual distractions like people’s heads jumping around when you cut between edits. It is really nice to have both mediums.
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