Speaker 1: So some of our listeners might know this. But over
Speaker 1: the last two years, I've been hosting a mini documentary
Speaker 1: series called Next Jobs, and over the summer I noticed
Speaker 1: on YouTube that traffic on my show fell off a cliff.
Speaker 1: We published a piece in June about self driving cars
Speaker 1: and a piece in July about genetic testing that both
Speaker 1: turned out to be complete flops on the service, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea why at the time. I complained
Speaker 1: endlessly to our very patient video platform manager at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and also to my equally patient wife. And while it's
Speaker 1: complaining to them other YouTube creators around the world, we're
Speaker 1: complaining to a guy called Tim Schmoyer. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: video creators. Is great to have you guys again for
Speaker 1: another video creators at podcast episode today is a juicy topic.
Speaker 1: Tim runs an advice channel on YouTube for other YouTube creators.
Speaker 1: At the time he taped this video, a lot of
Speaker 1: creators were worried about a change YouTube had just announced.
Speaker 1: And I've already heard from some creators saying, like, of
Speaker 1: my traffic is gone and this video was doing great
Speaker 1: and now it's completely dead, and it happened overnight and this,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I understand like creators like, Hey, this
Speaker 1: is a really emotional thing for us. We put our
Speaker 1: heart and we put our time, our energy into creating
Speaker 1: something that we want the world to see. And when
Speaker 1: we put that out there and we have no control
Speaker 1: over whether or not people actually see this thing that
Speaker 1: we poured ourselves into. Yeah, it gives us. It's offensive,
Speaker 1: It kind of it kind of hurts. Let's just be
Speaker 1: honest about it. Tim's right, there's something that feels uniquely
Speaker 1: awful about being at the mercy of this constantly changing system.
Speaker 1: And if it's this anxiety inducing to me and my
Speaker 1: income doesn't depend on YouTube traffic, it's got to feel
Speaker 1: so much worse for other creators who've made YouTube their
Speaker 1: full time job. Today, in the show, reporter Mark Bergen
Speaker 1: visits YouTube whisper Tim Schmoyer, who's been advising creators on
Speaker 1: how to adapt to the video services new world order.
Speaker 1: Over the last three years, YouTube has implemented sweeping changes
Speaker 1: bound to public outrage over the spread of dangerous and
Speaker 1: misleading content on the service. But do those changes risk
Speaker 1: alienating the very people who made YouTube such a valuable
Speaker 1: service for the rest of us? Imakio, you're listening to decrypted.
Speaker 1: Stay with us. Okay, Mark, how's it going. It's going
Speaker 1: really well. Do you want to introduce yourself? Sure, I'm
Speaker 1: Mark Bergan, reporter with Bloomberg Technology, and I mostly right
Speaker 1: about Google and its parent company Alphabet. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about YouTube, which a decade ago was this fledgling weird
Speaker 1: video service and today is worth I think I've seen
Speaker 1: enough submits of more than a hundred billion dollars, is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? So the company has never shared its financials,
Speaker 1: but there are estimates, so that's worth that much. So
Speaker 1: as YouTube's gotten bigger, it's also had to make quite
Speaker 1: a few changes. Walk us through the broad contours of that. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I don't think you remember a decade ago one of
Speaker 1: the most popular YouTube videos was Charlie bit my finger.
Speaker 1: Oh oh. It was just like low low fi like
Speaker 1: home videos, hugely viral and at that point, this was
Speaker 1: like the magic of YouTube was anyone could upload a video,
Speaker 1: anyone can start making money off of it. Uh, And
Speaker 1: it went off in the huge successes before it became
Speaker 1: just a much bigger platform, before a lot of media
Speaker 1: companies were on there. Before these big stars and celebrities
Speaker 1: then turned into this like high production and expensive content
Speaker 1: UM for a long time, for a nearly decade, YouTube
Speaker 1: got away with this and Google it was this huge
Speaker 1: growth property for them. UH. Starting around twenty seventeen that
Speaker 1: growth kind of got out of hand and we saw
Speaker 1: UM there was major advertising boycott after some ads ran
Speaker 1: on extremists, jihadi videos, UM videos full of hate speech. So,
Speaker 1: starting in seen, YouTube has made a ton of changes
Speaker 1: to make it a lot more difficult for hay speech
Speaker 1: videos for disturbing extremist videos to come up UM. At
Speaker 1: the same time, for it's made it more difficult for
Speaker 1: creators to make money. So the most recent changes from
Speaker 1: YouTube are happening around kids content. Kids content on YouTube
Speaker 1: is massive right there. Some nursery rhymes are some of
Speaker 1: the biggest channels in the world. UM, toy and boxing
Speaker 1: videos are incredibly popular, and it's also this really popular
Speaker 1: world of like you call the family vlogging, where families
Speaker 1: kind of put our their home videos on YouTube. So
Speaker 1: in September, the company settled with the Federal Trade Commission
Speaker 1: for violating children's privacy because the government accused YouTube but
Speaker 1: basically tracking UM and serving ads to kids in the thirteen,
Speaker 1: which is not legal on the internet. So starting January one,
Speaker 1: the company's old creators, okay, you're not allowed to serve
Speaker 1: any of these targeted ads, which is they're basically more
Speaker 1: expensive ads, and for a lot of YouTube creators right now,
Speaker 1: they're very anxious about these changes. So a lot of
Speaker 1: changes coming to YouTube that's making creators very anxious. That's
Speaker 1: where a protagonist. Tim Schmoyer comes in. Yep. So I
Speaker 1: met him at vid Con, which is this big conference
Speaker 1: in Anaheim earlier this summer, and then I went out
Speaker 1: to his house in October. Hey man found the right place.
Speaker 1: Tim lives just outside of Cincinnati, technically in Kentucky. He
Speaker 1: and his wife live with I get this, their seven children,
Speaker 1: who they all home school. The point thing you know
Speaker 1: about the Schmier family is they live and breathe YouTube.
Speaker 1: They watch YouTube together. Tim and his wife have been
Speaker 1: making YouTube videos for about a decade with their kids.
Speaker 1: Today's a special family adventure day. We are getting pizza.
Speaker 1: We're waiting for to cook. Right here, says Mommy's little prince.
Speaker 1: Are you Mommy's prints? You know what she came out
Speaker 1: of Mommy Mommy's coming last night. I think she's really cute.
Speaker 1: Their kids now run their on YouTube channel UM. I
Speaker 1: talked to Tim's older daughter over lunch, and she's talked
Speaker 1: to me about what it's like to watch herself on
Speaker 1: YouTube videos. When whenever we watch UM, like we if
Speaker 1: we watch our channel normally, we're like watching our old, old,
Speaker 1: old old old ones from like Howling and Toby you
Speaker 1: Meet and Uzek over Babies were like watching build on
Speaker 1: the video. Us kids did a lot of funny stuff
Speaker 1: when you're a little, but you don't like watching the
Speaker 1: newer ones much. I don't watching them sometimes when's a
Speaker 1: lot to do, you were in the kids have a
Speaker 1: channel a lot. It's actually fun for us. So how
Speaker 1: did Tim and his family get to this point? So
Speaker 1: we started posting on YouTube in two dozen six is
Speaker 1: a very different era. That company just started a year before,
Speaker 1: and he was He told me he was posting videos
Speaker 1: so his family back home could see images and meet
Speaker 1: his new girlfriend a little date night. We haven't done
Speaker 1: anything for a while, like all these cupons, Like I
Speaker 1: proposed at Danta today and she said, yes, we were
Speaker 1: going to do it. So they're posting on YouTube and
Speaker 1: then they discover that not just their family was watching it,
Speaker 1: but strangers on the internet watching too, and I got
Speaker 1: a little confused. I was like, wait, who are these people?
Speaker 1: How are they finding my video? Why do they keep
Speaker 1: coming back? Who is catlic or seventy two? And why
Speaker 1: do they keep commenting on my videos? You know, there
Speaker 1: wasn't really anyone answering those questions back then, and no
Speaker 1: one really knew, and so I was like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna figure this out. And so he's talking with other
Speaker 1: people on YouTube when they're sharing tips about what does
Speaker 1: well and what doesn't work well. At this point, he
Speaker 1: was working actually as a youth pastor UM and he's
Speaker 1: the way he talks about YouTube a lot is very similar.
Speaker 1: He feels that this is a channel for sort of
Speaker 1: changing people's lives. And I had this like aha moment, like, man,
Speaker 1: if you really want to have big impact, you really
Speaker 1: want to change people's lives and reach people literally around
Speaker 1: the world, I was like, YouTube is like the perfect
Speaker 1: posess like perfect platform to do this. Um, Like on
Speaker 1: my blog, I could write about something and tell people
Speaker 1: about something, but like in a video, I could actually
Speaker 1: make them feel as if they were like experiencing it
Speaker 1: with me. I can invite them into it. And he
Speaker 1: got really passionate about it. He went and worked for
Speaker 1: a marketing agency that worked on consultancy, whether it's big
Speaker 1: companies like HBO, Disney or just small video creators how
Speaker 1: to perform well on YouTube. In I believe, he starts
Speaker 1: his channel called Video Creators and decides to go out
Speaker 1: on zone and build this consultancy where he gets people
Speaker 1: to pay him to give him advice about YouTube, how
Speaker 1: it works if you're looking to serve your audience on
Speaker 1: YouTube and earn a full time income all doing it.
Speaker 1: I am really excited to make this course available for you.
Speaker 1: So by it. And to be clear, he's an independent consultant.
Speaker 1: He's not paid by YouTube to do this. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's one of their, Like I'd say, like dozens of
Speaker 1: people right that that fit into this kind of orbiting YouTube.
Speaker 1: They don't work directly for YouTube. He certainly has a
Speaker 1: good relationship with the company, right, he's one of their
Speaker 1: kind of beta testers, which means he gets versions of
Speaker 1: products early. The company trusts him with that. Um, he's
Speaker 1: definitely talks to a lot of peop told me, talks
Speaker 1: to people the company maybe once a week or so. Um,
Speaker 1: because it's important for for YouTube to get this sort
Speaker 1: of network of trusted partners who understand how YouTube works
Speaker 1: and can explain that and basically deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of the problems that YouTube wants to keep it arms
Speaker 1: lengked with with its creators. So what does a YouTube
Speaker 1: consultant to So he spends a long time on video
Speaker 1: conference calls before we get started three minutes, but um,
Speaker 1: long hours with his clients. Uh, well, they all sort
Speaker 1: of signed in on video chat software. So he's standing
Speaker 1: in his office there and they come in. At one point,
Speaker 1: there were eighteen different sort of creators um talking at
Speaker 1: one point. Uh, They're all in their own home offices
Speaker 1: or just their living rooms, and he gives these long sessions,
Speaker 1: and that one in particular was about just about keywords.
Speaker 1: How many of you guys do keyword research for your videos?
Speaker 1: How many of your okay, hands down, can raise your
Speaker 1: hands again? How many of you have seen keyword research
Speaker 1: make a significant impact on your channel growth? A little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit. But another part of Tim's consulting business
Speaker 1: is what he calls office hours. So he just sort
Speaker 1: of us some time where any of his YouTube creator
Speaker 1: clients can come in and ask him questions. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I was there on a Wednesday. There's only one creator
Speaker 1: who called in. Her name is Lucia Olivario. She runs
Speaker 1: a cooking channel, lives outside of Sacramento, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that Tim advises her on is to identify
Speaker 1: who her target YouTube viewer is. Rich way, is your
Speaker 1: target audis? Think about it? Well, that I don't know yet. Um,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out who my target audience is,
Speaker 1: and so I'm figuring it. And and the advice of
Speaker 1: Tim gave when you talked to people, and even we
Speaker 1: talked to me, was a sort of counterintuitive. I'd always
Speaker 1: expect him. Here's someone who spends years studying YouTube. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the best way to beat the algorithm. Right, You're
Speaker 1: gonna do one, two, and three, and then your videos
Speaker 1: are just going to take off. But a lot of
Speaker 1: his response, his advice is is sort of emotional. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, build a channel, make videos that somehow
Speaker 1: appeal to this viewer that you've never met before. Right,
Speaker 1: But you want to build this sort of bond and
Speaker 1: that is going to be more important than any sort
Speaker 1: of technical tactics that you take. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So the same time, that Tim's been running this business
Speaker 1: and video creators. He's also kept this old YouTube channel
Speaker 1: that he posted from two thousand and six. And for
Speaker 1: a long time that channel was all about his family. UM.
Speaker 1: They called them schmovies. They would make these home videos
Speaker 1: UM where they're doing everything, playing with friends, visiting amusement park. Um.
Speaker 1: More recently, in the past few months, they've actually changed
Speaker 1: directions entirely. So there's new channel is called Reclaiming Motherhood
Speaker 1: and it's it's Tim's wife talking about experiences with parenting.
Speaker 1: For a typical birthday, I like to let the kids
Speaker 1: open up their gifts first thing in the morning. There
Speaker 1: are sort of applying the same lessons that he teaches
Speaker 1: in his consulting business to their own channel, and you
Speaker 1: can hear that when they record the latest video for
Speaker 1: that and sort of talk through as they're recording, is
Speaker 1: it's gonna work? Well, why doesn't this work? Well? Should
Speaker 1: we do it this way? Should we not do it
Speaker 1: that way? Any other points that you can think of, Well,
Speaker 1: what's the main point, what's the main story you're telling here?
Speaker 1: Like what's someone's about how he's but what what like
Speaker 1: give us the title of this? One's gonna click on.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we didn't talk about that before, because
Speaker 1: that's then you need to go back into your hook,
Speaker 1: like your opening hook stop recording. And is this because
Speaker 1: of the FTC crackdown on children's content. Well, they are
Speaker 1: going to face a lot of the same issues that
Speaker 1: the family creators face. So they're not going to have
Speaker 1: comments on these videos because the prior videos feature kids
Speaker 1: and they have the same sort of financial and certainty
Speaker 1: about advertising going forward. But Tim said, the main reason
Speaker 1: why they changed the channel is much more personal. My
Speaker 1: wife's been pregnant or breastfeeding for eleven years straight, and
Speaker 1: her body's like taking a toll on her. And so
Speaker 1: that now that's been almost two years since our our
Speaker 1: last one was born, Like she's coming out of that
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh man, I have a lot of encouragement
Speaker 1: I want to give to moms. You know, we started
Speaker 1: our conversation today with all of the changes that YouTube's
Speaker 1: implemented and how that's made a lot of creators pretty
Speaker 1: mad about that. What's Tim's take? Um, you know he
Speaker 1: has he's again he's sort of an optimist on this. Um.
Speaker 1: We talked about this quite quite a bit. His thought
Speaker 1: here is that, um, YouTubers think of themselves as sort
Speaker 1: of employees at the company, which may be true. Um,
Speaker 1: and and they're not right at the best, they're sort
Speaker 1: of contractors. Um. So his mantra is that YouTube creators
Speaker 1: should think of themselves as entrepreneurs, as business women and men,
Speaker 1: and that they should be able to build these sort
Speaker 1: of businesses off YouTube um where they don't need to
Speaker 1: rely on the company or even its advertising dollars. And
Speaker 1: how do you do that? Yeah? So YouTube has been
Speaker 1: trying some options for a while without much luck. Um.
Speaker 1: One of them is a membership program where you say,
Speaker 1: like a dedicated viewer will pay a monthly fee to
Speaker 1: get exclusive videos. Um. Or they have ways for you
Speaker 1: creators to sell merchandise right below the video. They can
Speaker 1: sell a T shirt or some sort of product they're selling.
Speaker 1: Tim talked a lot about how, you know, he's built
Speaker 1: a business where he has his consultancy, he sells e
Speaker 1: books and he makes more money from that than he
Speaker 1: does from ads. Right, But you can't really scale Tim's
Speaker 1: model to everyone else. I mean, then everyone would just
Speaker 1: be a YouTube consultant consulting for each other. Yeah, it'd
Speaker 1: be pretty unbearable. You can at this point a vast
Speaker 1: majority of the creators on YouTube who are making money
Speaker 1: are making money off ads and these changes that YouTube's implemented.
Speaker 1: Did you get a chance to ask Tim's kinds about that?
Speaker 1: So Tim was kind enough to let me stand in
Speaker 1: front of his he's a standing desk, and I was
Speaker 1: standing in front of these eighteen different YouTubers um on
Speaker 1: this conference call um. But I did get to ask
Speaker 1: him A question that I'd love to ask creators is
Speaker 1: if you were standing and sitting across from Susan what CHICKI,
Speaker 1: who's the CEO of YouTube, what would you ask her?
Speaker 1: But how much do they care about small time creators?
Speaker 1: The demonetization pisces off a lot of creators, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to look for other platforms. What would it take
Speaker 1: to sort of say I'm gonna I'm gonna go elsewhere? Um,
Speaker 1: I guess for another platform to start paying people. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Tim's client just told us that he would consider
Speaker 1: leaving YouTube if another platform paid him, And I guess
Speaker 1: that's what's at stake for YouTube, right. YouTube needs these
Speaker 1: smart and interesting and funny people to keep making good
Speaker 1: videos so all of us viewers keep coming back to
Speaker 1: the platform, which in turn drives advertising dollars for YouTube.
Speaker 1: But realistically, other video platforms like Netflix and Hulu aren't
Speaker 1: going to pay these small time creators to start their
Speaker 1: own shows for them. I think YouTube's their only bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the cynical take us that YouTube actually doesn't need
Speaker 1: these people that they have. They make enough money from
Speaker 1: the big creators. There is enough interest from new creators
Speaker 1: coming on, and that's why you hear from a lot
Speaker 1: of people that YouTube has left some of these smaller
Speaker 1: creators out the dry um. Typically, you know, Tim does
Speaker 1: not agree with that. He's got a much more optimistic view.
Speaker 1: Do you think do you buy the theory that there's
Speaker 1: sort of YouTube is now kind of split two And
Speaker 1: some of your clients were talking about this, like this
Speaker 1: premium world of like really high end and then sort
Speaker 1: of everybody else, and that they're the company has been
Speaker 1: sort of giving preferential treatment to the premium world and
Speaker 1: not to like the everyday creators. So I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people who work at YouTube on both a
Speaker 1: professional and a personal level, and I say with a
Speaker 1: confidence that there is no one there that I've met
Speaker 1: who is like who doesn't care about the little creator.
Speaker 1: You know, Mark, I've been thinking about this, and I
Speaker 1: think you can think of these small time creators as
Speaker 1: kind of the civilian casualties of this war that YouTube
Speaker 1: is waging now on all this toxic, gross content, even
Speaker 1: though the vast majority of them have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that stuff. Right that they're not making all the
Speaker 1: jihadi content, they're not making the fake news that we're
Speaker 1: all mad about. And there's something sad about that. That's
Speaker 1: squeezing out the little guys who made YouTube what it
Speaker 1: is today. Is the only way that YouTube can fix
Speaker 1: this mess. Yeah, But at the same time, these little
Speaker 1: guys aren't quitting, you know, They're still making a much
Speaker 1: of YouTube videos um and and YouTube is just continuing
Speaker 1: to grow um and in some ways that's that's good
Speaker 1: for for business. Like Tim's right, he is this chance
Speaker 1: to to walk people through this very confusing world. Mark Bergan,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on the show today. Thanks for helping me.
Speaker 1: Decrypted is hosted by me Akio. Sean Ween is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Ethan Brooks mix the show today. Alisair Barr
Speaker 1: was our story editor. Francesco Levy is the head of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.