I had never met a YouTuber like this before
I met a fascinating man at a Christmas party yesterday.
He is doing a great job on YouTube. 55k+ subscribers and makes makes thousands monthly on Patreon
His niche: Reaction videos
How it works: His audience submits a song, and he reacts. He’s got over 1,200 submissions to work through (and people can pay extra to fast track submissions).
When I asked about his thumbnail strategy, he looked at me confused.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Turns out, he didn’t know you could even upload custom thumbnails.
While most content creators are obsessing over thumbnail optimization, perfect lighting, and 4K quality…this guy’s been quietly building a thriving channel (and income) by focusing on one thing: Serving his audience deeply.
His audience engagement is soaring. He’s having a blast. It’s a win-win.
It got me thinking…
How many of us are stuck in optimization mode while ignoring the fundamentals?
I’m not saying ignore optimization. (I told him about Canva, and how it is likely a huge potential to skyrocket his click-through rates). But there’s a lesson here about priorities:
Knowing who your audience is
Uploading regularly
Monetizing in a way that you feel good about (it allows him to keep the whole thing going)
As you’re planning your 2025 content strategy, it might be worth asking:
What could happen if you focused more time delivering exactly what your audience wants and letting go of complexity.
-Dylan
P.S. A few other things I found interesting from our conversation that I have to pass along…
People have to subscribe to his Patreon in order to submit a song that he reacts to.
From what I’ve seen, he’s very sincere and doesn’t sensationalize his reactions to the music (contrary to what we see a lot of around “successful” YouTubers)
He said that people typically stay subscribed even after he reacts negatively to a song that he submits.
P.P.S. If you want to chat about this, come hop in The Creator Club!