Hi everyone — this week I’ve got a brief numbers roundup on the latest Thought Liters release, plus what I learned from a big ol’ fancy Hollywood creator conference I went to yesterday (as the smallest possible fish in the largest possible pond).
Note: this is a subset of the Thought Liters newsletter where I try and open up the back end of this journey to building a content business. Let me know if you like this style.
This week’s ep: did it bang?
(Short answer, it’s going better than last week — read more in the anatomy of a flop.)
This week, I profiled Pittsburgh-based sports creator Frank Michael Smith, who has built a sports shorts empire. He’s got ~5 million followers across his pages, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice. Notably, he has amassed 1.47 billion views on YouTube — meaning, together, we have an astounding 1.47 billion views on YouTube.
This release marks a huge win for the channel because it shows I can hook a big-time creator, and that they’d be down for the shtick.
Here are the quick analytics, one day after launch:
22 views; 344 impressions; 3.2% CTR; 10:21 average view duration; 3.8 watch hours.
Here’s how it stacks up with other recent long-form eps:
Video | Views | Impressions | CTR | AVD | Watch Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
22 | 344 | 3.2% | 10:21 | 3.8 hrs | |
26 | 274 | 4.2% | 3:52 | 1.7 hrs | |
195 | 713 | 6.7% | 9:34 | 31.0 hrs | |
205 | 2808 | 1.6% | 9:16 | 31.7 hrs | |
139 | 1257 | 5.3% | 8:46 | 20.3 hrs | |
92 | 1503 | 1.9% | 5:47 | 8.9 hrs |
I’m encouraged by the AVD. CTR ain’t bad. Maybe that means I’m packaging videos better, and more closely aligning the core content with the package. Still need to figure out how to make the broader message congruent.
Did it bang? No. Does it show improvement? I think it might.
Once Upon a Thursday in Hollywood
This week, I attended Press Publish LA, a creator economy conference put on by Colin & Samir. Held on the Fox lot in Los Angeles, the event hosted hundreds of creators boasting a combined audience of 1.4 billion followers.
Naturally, as a creator with 249 subscribers on YouTube, I felt I belonged.
dorky ass photo but it’s what you get
PPLA slapped me silly with something I’ve resisted ever since starting this show: I have to just niche down and build in Pittsburgh. It feels opposite to everything I should do — limiting to a small market (we can admit it, we’re small), limiting to a certain type of subject, etc. In the desperate search for growth, I feel extreme pressure to broaden focus. I even think the structure of the show can handle it.
But I sat in that Hollywood soundstage, as the smallest possible fish, in the largest pond in existence…and felt swallowed up. Lost. Amidst the largest digital communities in the world, I felt alone.
PPLA was a good show. Big names, important topics. A true nexus of Hollywood and the creator economy. I’m a repeat customer of Colin & Samir, having attended the NYC show last year. But it was built for the creator elite: those with a few hundred thousand followers or more, looking up at the top creators in the world to learn how to scale teams, build premium content, and capture blue-chip brand partnership. I sat with envy at the me in 10 years who would likely benefit more from the programming than the me today.
But the final session of Press Publish was with the creators of TBPN, who famously sold their show to OpenAI for hundreds of millions of dollars in April despite averaging daily live viewership in the low hundreds to low thousands. They stood by the notion that, if they had too many viewers, they were doing it wrong. They went after a “small” niche in B2B tech and Silicon Valley news, committed to a differentiated format, and dominated. Had they broadened focus, they would have failed. Instead, they’re the most dazzling niche content exit in history. It’s an outlier, but a lesson.
Folks, Thought Liters isn’t gonna sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, it’s tens of thousands of dollars in the red. I’ve struggled to grow. But it took a longing look up the mountain at the creator elite to be told the obvious: I just have to settle for setting a solid base camp before I can climb.
That’s what I commit to — maybe re-commit to — now, by doing the best I can to tell stories within the confines of Pittsburgh. I appreciate you sticking with me as I keep learning. And: there’s a few more interesting content efforts coming through the summer that I hope you’ll enjoy.
The number one thing you can do to help me and the show is to watch, like, and comment on the show on YouTube. If you scrolled all the way to bottom of this thing first, that’s the tl;dr. Consider subscribing as well.
If there are specific aspects of the content creation or business side you wished more small creators talked about, let me know and I’ll try and layer it in to future newsletters.
I read everything, and respond to everything.
Cheers.
Adam
