Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is LTT Making YouTube Unfair?”.
Some smaller Tech channels have expressed in the past that they aren’t doing very well due to the size of LTT and it’s hard to compete. Do you think that’s damaging to them um? Well, what do you want? Do you want me to like not make the best content we can make? What is it about our size? That’S problematic, I guess would be my question because if anything our size has felt like Rising tide, a that we have lit. We have legitimized a lot of the forms of monetization that smaller creators take for granted, that didn’t exist or that were a source of huge audience. Blowback back when we first started doing great ground on ad spots: uh we we. We have legitimized advertising in the tech YouTuber space you’re welcome, and I don’t just mean this as like: look how out of touch and arrogant linuses, but no for real, like we.
We shifted advertising budgets from written media and forums and, like traditional Legacy, magazines tv ads um from many of the brand partners that these smaller Tech creators are working with. Today we fought through that getting it reallocated to YouTube, and everyone now gets to enjoy the fruit of that. We weren’t the only ones, not even a little bit, but we were very much the tip of the spear, I’m not going to apologize for any of that, because a lot of that that Rising Tides thing that Luke was talking about a lot of that ecosystem. Simply doesn’t exist if or would have taken longer or wouldn’t be as mature if we hadn’t taken the the been brutalized by the audience for a lot of the things that we’ve done, that are now just accepted as common practice, because no, I don’t think they were Bad, I think they were fine.
I think people just weren’t used to it, so I’m not gon na yeah, I’m not gon na apologize for, for you know, killing it um over the years um. I think that in some ways, it’s easier than ever to break out on YouTube to be discovered in some ways. It’S harder I’ve talked about how I think it’s harder to become a mega size Channel and Mr who’s. The boss is the only evidence I’ve seen in recent years that you can even still do it at all, but I absolutely did it.
But I would also like to point out that we’ve become a very big ship and we’ve become kind of difficult to steer. And that’s one of the things that we’re trying to address is because it can be a competitive disadvantage for us to be a jack of all trades master of none sometimes and when something breaking happens, who’s the first one on top of it, is it the the One person banned creators that are like I see this now and I am going to pick up my phone and go now are: are they the ones who are able to to jump on top of Highly topical uh Trends? Or is it us where we have to go and have a meeting about our production schedule and our release schedule and the availability of our shooting team or to be topical for this, show the ethics of potentially covering that topic? We also try to we our large company with people that have scheduled hours so, like people don’t work weekends. What if something happens on a weekend? We simply cannot what, if something happens, deal with it on a late night on a Wan show, we might get less coverage of that thing than other people, because those people make reaction, content yep to it, and then we don’t make anything about it until Monday, because People are off on the weekends it’s uh yeah, I don’t know sir Benny on Twitch says I believe the excuse using the excuse of look at the advantage of the competition instead of thinking.
What could I improve? Isn’T exactly productive. What are we supposed to improve? Well, no, no! I I think this is uh from the other side. Ah, okay, yeah uh, like yes, we have an advantage, but are you gon na say we didn’t fight for it? I mean, of course we did and I’m we got a little lucky right, place right time for sure yeah, but we also fought tooth and nail for every part of it so that I’m never gon na I’m never gon na apologize for succeeding um, I’m never going To I’m never gon na try to do anything other than my best. I would also argue that we absolutely feel the ups and downs of the platform as well, and I think this is specifically targeting it says in here smaller channels. So it’s possible that there’s there’s a line right of like this is the line of acceptable dip like if we dip below a certain line and stay down there. We can’t survive yep everybody’s gon na have that, if you’re at a smaller channel, that line might be a lot higher because you’re you’re, like average, it’s just it’s more difficult to survive and when those dips happen, they might feel a lot more intense, because that line Is higher and that sucks but like, but we’ve also, we’ve also taken a lot of risks along the way we’ve increased the the the the minimum threshold by hiring so many people by aggressively reinvesting in content to the point where um you know again, I’m not gon Na I’m not gon na apologize for it.
We we have to go hard because if we don’t go hard, we die and that dip is as dangerous to us as it is to you as an organization, maybe not as dangerous to me personally, because I I’ve been doing this for a really long time. Like I’ve, you know got the house in the car. You know the all right cool barbecue, but there’s a lot of other people here that still got ta still got ta get some, and so we’re not gon na.
Take our foot off the pedal like everyone inside this company is a smaller creator, so what I should prioritize an external, smaller Creator over an internal, smaller Creator. One of my problems, too, is like: how would you even do that? I don’t know yeah I mean here. Luke was talking about dips, I don’t know how well you guys can see this from there yeah not too well.
You know what here, let’s um, let’s switch to Linus cam, maybe cool. So you know this is our view chart over the entire lifetime of the channel right, and so you can see here hockey stick moment. That was when I started focusing on content after we hired Nick is our like business guy um and then it goes up.
And then it goes down that period of like four months there that, like significant dip, where we went from anywhere in the neighborhood of around three and a half to four million views a day down to a low of one and a half. No, oh just over one um. I think that was over a span of about four months yeah. It was about three months terrifying. I thought that was it. I thought that was us succumbing to the curve it was is what I call the the rise and fall of every online Creator um. Then we had a long period about a year of constant digging ourselves. Out of that, I I still remember the All Hands meeting that we had about that where I basically went, but I I think was that the one where I talked about just like being more authoritative and like um being more focused and something something anyway. We called null hands meeting and basically talked about how we need to. We need to do something we have to change and we need to start changing things immediately like for today’s upload. We need to start changing things um. I think that was um.
We we fo. I can’t remember because here’s the thing I can’t remember this meeting, because we’ve gone through this okay, here’s a big dip, then we recovered. Then we had another two-month small dip where we went from, like 4 4 million views a day down to like two in a little bit, then we came back hard.
Then we went from like four million views a day down to like two again and then now we’re on an upswing. That’S got us now in the neighborhood of around like three and a half million views a day um and you got ta like yeah views on everything, but they also kind of are because everything else is derived from how many views you can ultimately attract um. It’S yeah, it’s it’s hard for everyone.
It’S not easy and YouTube is constantly changing the rules. I mean I express frustration as well I’ll, send I’ll send emails to our rep, saying, like Hey, we’re really for sure not doing anything differently, but we’re seeing very different results. What are you guys doing over there and it goes both ways like I sent one a few months back, that I was like hey everything’s, coming real easy right now.
What’S going on, this distresses me as much as a dip, because I don’t like unpredictability in the delivery of our content, so I I don’t know, maybe I don’t I I feel like this is one of those responses. That’S going to turn into some kind of controversy, because I just I’m uncaring or like I’m some kind of jerk or something, but I don’t know what to tell you. I mean we’ve: we’ve we’ve collaborated with smaller creators. Many times we’re not trying to make it a negative space for anyone, yeah we’re very open about the way that we run our business um and – and I think that’s a benefit to creators.
Small and large. You know when we talk about things like how our revenue is broken down. If someone sees that and goes holy smokes like, I am doing basically none of this and it’s 20 of their revenue I need to. I could chase that. That’S something that’s the kind of stuff we don’t have to talk about, but we do .