 In this episode we take a look at a kid who gained 16,000 subscribers and how he's right there on the cusp of success but needs to do some pretty hard work to actually make it happen. Let's take a look. But first, a featured YouTube tip from one of you. Spend more time making amazing thumbnails. If you're not spending at least 10 minutes crafting that son of a bitch, the new viewers are probably not going to want to click it. Hello everyone, my name's Adam Riepelz-Vox. Welcome back to another channel review episode. This week we're taking a look at Justin the Oreo. I don't know. So Justin the Oreo is a freedom channel that has 16,000 subscribers but it's a really interesting position because not to be rude per se but I'm not sure how he got there yet and we're going to kind of find out together and have some pointers if he's able to have some pointers based on the fact that he was able to amass this amount of subscribers doing his own thing so so to speak which kind of contradicts what I say in these videos sometimes. We're going to take that and give him some tips to essentially go really really far if he wants. If we take a look at his channel litics here via TubeBuddy, he started picking up subscribers around January 2015. That's when his channel really started taking off and then he's been getting a lot of subscribers ever since then. I guess just been a constant up curve for basically a year and eight months now and that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool to see. He's got 523 videos, 1.68 million views. He's clearly doing something right. Let's take a look at what it is. Now Justin is also a fairly young fella. I don't know how old he exactly he is but you can tell by watching his videos that he is fairly young compared to a lot of other channels in that subscriber range which is good news for a lot of you younger people out there. I know there's quite a bit of you whom think that you're not going to be able to do it because of your age or that people frankly tell you you can't do it because of your age that people don't want to watch kids. That's not true. This guy is doing it and there are lots of others that are doing it as well and I'm quite impressed with his channel size based on that and I'm also impressed with his thumbnails as of late. If you go back they're not quite as good like they're still good. They're still better than most youtubers thumbnails but they're not quite as good as they are now. He's doing a good job other than his couple videos where they're like aren't thumbnails which I would go back and fix because that can still make your channel look better and viewers going back and looking at your channel will still be more likely to click those videos but thumbnail and banner on point seems to work great and his little I love that little background for his avatar even if it's a little cliche. Now he actually has a little bit of a variety channel and this is where it comes in what I meant by I'm not 100% sure why he got as many subscribers as he did based on the kind of randomness of his content and this is something I usually preach against. This may be an example of it working for him or I may show an alternate perspective of why he might need to cut a few things if he really wants to grow. So his channel is focused on gaming videos, tutorials and more. More is just kind of these random vlogs and things like that which is fine. It's a personal presence on his channel. He posts some gameplay videos and some tutorials and some stuff about computers. His tutorials seem to by just to be by far his best content in terms of actually the performance of the content of it doing well getting a lot of views and frankly just the production value of the content seems to be the best. What seems to hinder his channel in my opinion is some of the randomness of the thing like vlog updates relating to the channel a-okay with go right ahead. The tournament vlogs and the baseball involvement might kind of turn some people away or attract people you don't want on the channel or just kind of create a confusion as to what viewers can expect from your channel. I always talk about locking down severely on your niche nowadays and this is something that I very much agree with and even with the tutorials versus the gameplay. A lot of your gameplay these days or not a lot but at least a few of the gameplay videos that I took a look at it seems to be based around you just want to record a game just for the sake of recording it but you're not necessarily good at the game or have anything specific to show about the game or a point to the video and again don't say it to be mean I'm just trying to give the constructive feedback that I can give but for example the plain minecraft at five fps funtage here first of all anything that's considered a speed art speed design speed whatever or a montage or funtage should not be more than five minutes not be more than four minutes in most cases like especially when it's put to music should not be longer than one song and that song should not be longer than like four minutes the attention spans aren't there and it takes too long to find the actual core of the content and it can be cut down a lot more so you have this where you're trying to play minecraft on a laptop obviously it's not going to go very well you even say it's five fps not going to go well I know what the video is going to be like just by looking at the title and thumbnail I know I know what it is why would I watch it I know it's going to be crap but it's not possible it's not possible for it to be good that's the point and then in one of your overwatch videos recently you you literally uh I don't I don't remember which one I watch actually oh it's the to be a ninja here it says watched I wonder why that feature is there uh in that you even say I'm not very good at overwatch and something about you know just trying to make a fun video for you but it's one of those things where there's no point in making the video if you're not if you don't have a bigger point to the video other than I just want to make a video like the it's it's hard to explain this I always have such a difficult time to explain it but I used to be in that very position the early stages of my first channel and even my main channel like the very early stages it was purely I'm going to play whatever I want just because and since I am playing a video game I need to record it and make some sort of video I was rarely happy with the videos I produced but I was making them just because and you got to get out of that mindset because putting up poop content just because you want to post content on a game or something is is not a valid excuse to viewers viewers are still going to get turned away by the content and not enjoy it and I don't know even even the battlefield one beta gameplay funny moments again another thing that should not be 10 minutes long with mr cool guy fire there were a couple funny moments but for the most part like half the video could be cut out and lose nothing it way too long and again it's just your first impressions and experience with it but as many gamers will come to find out at some point in their lives your first impressions to a game means nothing to no one and is rarely all that entertaining it it's just not and so I feel like really cutting back on your content and making it a lot more brief a lot quicker a lot faster paced a lot shorter would help you a lot and this is especially prevalent in a couple videos here the best screen recorder murlis action review and your five fps funtage all right so this is a five fps funtage of you trying minecraft on a laptop at most that should be all you have to say maybe a little bit more explanation but watching the video you don't actually get to playing the game until three minutes into the video if you expect anyone to stick around for three minutes before the video actually starts you you you oh no no no no no no no the video needs to start at the start of the video you spent literally three minutes explaining what's going on reacting to your channel and reacting to the menu just kind of running at five minutes no one really wants to watch through that cut it off cut it all off now you don't need to keep any of that just because you recorded it does not mean it needs to go in the video and spending three entire minutes before you even connect to a server to try to play on it's just unacceptable and it's that kind of pacing that you get stuck with that you get in a rut with that you don't know how to break free of that can really trap you and keep you from growing and same thing with the Morillus action review you spend a lot of time like explaining why you're reviewing it and then saying that it's not a review it's a tutorial even though it's titled a review but we're supposed to already know your opinions on it just because you said it's the best like all of that needs chopped off just completely cut it like no reason for it to be in there hey everyone my name is Justin the Oreo I'm gonna be reviewing Morillus action here's why it's great something like that you seem to be fairly entertaining when you are actually like saying things and being entertaining but past that point it's just kind of dull empty content which is what a lot of beginning gaming youtubers struggle with and it affects everyone it's just not something you can do a whole lot about you like it's not something you can convince people to care about until you just chop it off entirely I would try to integrate some sort of schedule into your channel's about section one thing as well in your about section here you have your email flat out listed in text form YouTube actually gives you a complete separate text or like link esk field to put in your business email that hides it behind a capture so that way bots can't scam it because otherwise bots just can scour the web and pick up this from the text and send you a lot of spam or try to break into your account please remove this ASAP and put it in the actual email form box it's there for a reason please use it thank you and your like I said your thumbnails are pretty good I would go back and fill in thumbnails on videos you don't have thumbnails before it's just good practice and will help keep those videos standing out and make them watchable for people going back that is a big thing that people don't take it off advantage of is viewers want to be able to go back and watch your other content but you need to continue to make it accessible to them and then lastly I have a problem with your use of facecam and I want to address that just as a general lighting lesson and then we're pretty much done with this review he's got a pretty good channel I just think he needs to narrow down on his niche a bit more and make his content quite a bit more brief but look at this look look at the face camera actually let's play the video from the start okay take a look at the facecam right here so we have the typical minecrafter font and facecam frame which I'm tired of seeing but I'm cool I'm cool with but we can't see your face what we're looking at is basically a silhouette of a head and your wall the lighting is totally screwed up here and you don't need any fancy setup to do the lighting right for this you just need some sort of light that's going to bounce to your face whether it's pointed at the wall whether it's pointing at the wall that's in front of your face if you're sitting up against the wall that's something I struggled with for a long time pop a couple like a table lamp or something pointed at that wall or generally pointed like across the front of your face kick the light off behind you you're good to go having a big bright light behind you and nothing really in front of you means we get this we can't see your face we can't even see your mouth moving in most of these videos for you talking it's just like hey guys how's it going I'm just gonna go oh my god our minecraft like we just see the silhouette with like no mouth moving because you're like just completely darked out and it take take out that backlight see if your monitor lights you enough if not get a table lamp and shine some light in the general direction of in front of your face like honestly otherwise to me there is no point to including a facecam because the point of the facecam is to see your face and your reactions and you talking and we can't see that thus it's just wasting screen space and probably taking up more time in editing and rendering but overall pretty good channel like I said do just want you to narrow down just a little bit more this this is a good example of a channel that is on the edge of success on the edge there they're at the point where they could succeed or they could get stuck where they're at for a long time I want them to succeed and I fully believe he's capable of it he just needs to crank down find find exactly what he wants to do and how to convey it and he could probably succeed quite a bit this has been my a little bit more lengthy I do apologize I'm trying to come back on these channel review of Justin the Oreo channel review will be in the YouTube card icon I don't know which side and the comment section description section you know where it is there's a channel link you can click on it and there will be another submission form and yeah hope you enjoyed thank you for watching see you next time