👀 It's not working out...

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It’s September 15, and I had just started the ball rolling on hiring a team for a new faceless YouTube channel. The idea was good, and I was ready to launch a new brand.

It was going to be in a niche that I enjoyed, but it would be more of a passion project than anything.

Once I got into the weeds of it, I realized it was quickly becoming a chore rather than an enjoyable experience.

I was faced with a decision… entertainment vs education.

So I made a decision.

The problem with the sports niche I was jumping into was that it is very hard to monetize it.

If blogging taught me anything, we need to find ways to make more money with less traffic.

Depending on JUST Google Adsense is not good enough to build a sustainable business.

Here is the graph from one of the videos that went live on October 15.

So the problem here is the video got about 3k views on a brand new channel, which is pretty good… but not good enough to really move any needles.

Since then, I’ve posted three other videos, and none of them have broken 1,000 views. But here is the kicker… I’m about $500 in the hole with the channel.

And I truly believe the video ideas and thumbnails are really good.

But honestly, the views aren’t what I’m worried about.

Views will come.

The problem is I’ve tried a handful of ways to get people to join the newsletter for the niche, and so far, with over 5000 or so views and only a handful of subscribers to the newsletter.w

For my math majors out there… The conversion rate of seeing the offer to join the newsletter for a free valuable piece of content (called in marketing, a “Lead Magnet”) is 0.06%.

ZERO POINT FREAKING 0.06%

That is terrible… TERRIBLE.

To reiterate. If I were getting subscribers to the newsletter… even if it was at a 1% clip, I’d continue with the brand. But I’m seriously considering ditching it.

I am looking at some others on the docket.

And that is where the Entertainment vs Education debate comes in.

The sports niche is purely entertainment. And it is definitely harder to promote products and services to a bunch of people who are merely looking to be entertained with a cool story.

But when people subscribe for education (with some entertainment sprinkled in) that is where you can start printing money.

So, I will most likely shut down this project and chalk it up as a loss for now. I won’t take the channel down; I’m going to let it sit and see if a video catches fire down the line.

But I just wanted to be upfront with you and show that not everything we content creators touch will turn to gold.

We have duds, too.

Chat soon,
Chris Myles