 Hey everyone, so a fellow YouTube content creator, while I was gone on my vacation last week, made a video titled Clickbait. We need to talk about this, and this was a video from Zac at SwitchForce, and we're not here to talk about his channel specifically, but it is something that I like to address now and then, because obviously Clickbait comments are always going to be around, no matter what a YouTuber does, especially YouTubers like us, I suppose, that will cover the rumors and speculation. I think that's what really gets people more than your average video, although sometimes it could seem like real news. It can be exaggerated a bit in titles and thumbnails to make it sound a bit more exciting than it probably is to most of you. When you use a term big news in the title, and then the news ends up being, I don't know, say about a new trailer for Mario Golf or something like that, some people will view that as, well, that's obvious, Clickbait. And yeah, in the back of your mind, there is that little trigger that goes, man, is this really big news or not? Even if I'm really excited for this thing, does that mean everybody else is? And then if I'm really excited for this, and I know others might not be, is it really then big news, even if I think it's big news to me? So that's like an internal debate that happens, but the larger conversation on Clickbait is rather interesting. Now, we are on our road to 80,000 subscribers, so I would appreciate it if you would drop a like in this video, subscribe to the channel. At ADK, we're giving away a replica Breath of the Wild Master Sword, an actual steel blade. It's going to be really cool. We're also giving away a replica Deku Shield and a replica Hylian Shield. So hopefully you guys look forward to those giveaways when they happen. We're not giving them away right now. It is a goal. When we hit 80,000 subscribers, we will set up the giveaway and talk about that, maybe even talk about what's next at 90 or 100,000, obviously, you know, all the way to 100K, we're going to have quite the celebration going on for every milestone that we have. But here is something that I really, really want to talk about just truthfully and honestly with my audience, because I believe in transparency with my audience. I've always believed in it. I'm one of the few YouTubers that right there on livestream, I've literally gone to the back end of my YouTube channel and showed exactly how much money the channel made last year. And I'm always having an internal debate over things like titles and thumbnails. I want to start off this video with an apology. I know that's weird, right? And apologizing for clickbait. It's a strange feeling, right? Like admitting that you're not perfect and you have faults. Clickbait is a funny thing. So there's the dictionary definition and the definition that we all go by, which is urban dictionary, which is the cultural referencing of clickbait. The first, the dictionary version is just making something highly clickable. Of course we do that. That's the whole point. You need your thumbnail. You need your title. You need your movie title and your movie, you know, ads and all. You need all that stuff to be highly clickable, highly watchable, because that's how you're going to get people through the door. You can have the most amazing content in the world, but the title and the thumbnail or the movie title, the book title and the book cover art, like if that stuff isn't appealing, it's highly likely your amazing content could be overlooked. So absolutely, that's like the raw definition of what clickbait means in the dictionary. And yeah, everybody does that because that is like, if you're not doing that, you're probably not, you probably don't have an audience. Star Wars wouldn't have the audience it did. And it didn't have a really bad ass name with really badass art to go along with it that ended up getting people to go to the theaters for the very first movie. So yes, it really matters a hell of a lot about titles and cover art and all that. But here's the thing. That's not really what people have a problem with. You can make appealing titles and cover art and be fine. What people have an issue with are obviously the cultural way that we consider clickbait, the way that Urban Dictionary has defined it, and that is as the bait and switch. I'll give you one prime example that I know I'm guilty of, and this is why I want to apologize. Anytime I have used a switch UI, fan made picture and a thumbnail for anything that said big news or, you know, big update for Nintendo Switch. And then in the story, there was one even minor talk of updates to the Nintendo Switch UI. That's a bait and switch. I'm baiting you in by making you think there's a massive update to switch and then inferring, not lying to you directly, not being like looking you in the eye and going, there is going to be this. And then I never talk about it. But the thumbnail makes you think that big news is related to a massive UI update that either just landed on switch or is coming to Nintendo Switch. So a lot of us would like to see the UI updated. A lot of us like to see the eShop updated. And when you see those UI pictures in there, it makes you think even if that's not it, even if I have seen that UI photo before, there is something coming and I want to find out more. And then you click in and you watch the video and that's not the case. That's a lie. And you know, without having to conflate it into, you know, paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation, it's lying to the audience to get them to click on your video. And it works. That's why people do it. That's why I've done it. It works. I know anytime I put the switch UI in the video that you're going to click, you click on this video and it has switch UI in it. Granted, the video literally is called click bait. That's it. There's no subtext to it. So I do think that it's a bit more appropriate since that's one of I feel my personal worst offenses with click bait. Now this doesn't, you know, so some people get confused a little bit with click bait. And this is where I will disagree with the audience a little bit because some of you guys out there, you know, will call anytime I cover a rumor or a leak, they'll just call even covering it like the idea of covering that stuff is click bait. And I find that to be a little interesting sense. I'm very careful in how I word my titles or my thumbnails to infer that it is a rumor of some type. It is not necessarily true. There are times that the title was maybe a bit too far into making you think it was real. But you know, I can argue my video yesterday. You can kind of call that maybe pushing the envelope too far, right? The title said Nintendo Direct still coming soon. Major game revealed for it. And then in the in the thumbnail, it shows the Nintendo Direct tax, you know, little winky Mario and says big news, because I do think it's big news. But also the thumbnail, I don't think it's as big an issue as the title is, this says Nintendo Direct still coming soon. It doesn't infer that this is still technically based on rumors. This is not Nintendo announcing it or something, right? Now it's funny because people seem to generally like that video. He has got a lot of views, also got a lot of likes, we gained a bunch of subscribers from it. And I know that, you know, these rumors aren't anything new, it's sort of updating on it. It's why I felt a bit more comfortable not throwing rumor at the front of it because I'm like, hey, I think everyone at this point knows what the hell we're talking about with this stuff. So I didn't think I needed to go that far. But for some people, I can see where that pushes the envelope and goes too far. And I just want to I just want to say I'm sorry, in general, I never create content, whether it's the titles, thumbnails, or what I say in the videos, to be misleading. I do not want people clicking on my videos, expecting something that never happens. I can't apologize for words like big news or some of that because that's, you know, news is the big news or surprising news or major, you know, these huge words that people like to click on are highly subjective. You know, I can see a new trailer for Mario Golf and think that's a really, really big deal and other people might just that's nothing. But to me, that was big news. So that's partly subjective. But what's not is when you're bait and switching and basically lying to your audience. And I'm just examining my own channel right now. I have to go back a little bit here before I recognize something that that looks, you know, like, you know, massive game leaks, leaks is literally quoted suggesting that, you know, hey, this might not be real. I think that's totally fine. You know, anything that has rumor in the title, you know, rumor news switch revealed soon, like that's again, it's not a lie. I'm not bait and switching you. I'm not making things up. The title and the thumbnail are directly related to what the entire video is about that nine minutes and 51 second video is entirely about the title and the thumbnail, like that's not click bait. What that is, is a rumor properly titled. So I do feel that some of the frustration is just the rumors in general. Could we do cover a lot of them? We cover a lot of them. There is some fatigue. But I've been covered over 20 years. You guys think I'm going to get fatigued now that man, I've been covering this crap since I was in my teen teen years, man. Like this is nothing new to me. I've been covering this stuff forever. So I don't get tired by the stuff, but I understand if you do, you know, big, big breath of a lot of two features have leaked. They did. And the reason that I know they did is because they came from someone who literally works at Nintendo. Didn't really think that that was click bait. Some people might think that it is. You know, you go further down huge rumor, no problem with that. And then we're at Prime Gaming Fest. And then before before Prime Gaming Fest, you know, you'll see, you know, we had a bunch of live streams actually, because there was a whole bunch of stuff going on. But then you get back to our Prime News episode. It says big news in the title and shows Sonic and Pokemon Scotland violent title. It says big Nintendo Switch online update Sonic Frontiers and Pokemon only has 1000 views. Basically nothing click baitable in that title. And I think that's what some people don't understand is when you make a title, you know, that's a 14 minute video. That video probably took me five hours to put together between research, recording, editing, uploading, creating title, like that video probably took me five hours. And that video made a grand total of 88 cents. Whereas let's see the video made which one that rumor on the new switch revealed to that nine minute 51 second video that video took me probably an hour and a half and got, you know, 600% more viewership and also made like 50 bucks. So it's just a difficult thing when you're trying to decide what's the best way to go about having your gaming conversations and trying to create engaging content without lying to your audience, but that also interests your audience. You know, that Prime News episode had real legit news in it. Legit news, no rumors, no leaks, legit stuff. And nobody watched because the title and thumbnails weren't great because the news itself was maybe not the most clickable news out there. You know, before that we had another rumor about the blood to blow out next month. Okay, like that was a rumor for July. Okay, cool. Obviously got a lot of views because people like rumors. I'm going back to my prior Prime News episode Oracle of agencies HD coming soon, question mark. Again, that part was a bit clickable, but then the rest of the time Reggie talks about next year and switch people didn't seem to care about that. And you can see that in the comments. You get to, you know, a couple of videos before that huge leak PS5 and Xbox Series X Pro switch to, which is exactly what the leak was about. Basically that that their little systems are being worked on has less than 2000 views and it only made $2 and 21 cents. Like this is the reality of creating content is you need to create engaging titles and not just engaging content. If you, my Prime News episodes are some of the content and the podcast that I am most proud of at my channel. And it's also the content that I struggle the most with trying to find the titles that work. You know, if we go back a little bit earlier to some Prime News episodes from over a month ago, you'll see big news, Nintendo Direct, Twilight Princess HD, Silent Hill and more. Notice there's no rumor in there. There's no announcement of Twilight Princess HD. There's no whatever, but there is a rumor about Twilight Princess HD in the video. It's just not in the title. And it's got a, you know, a Nintendo Direct thing with Doug Bowser and Twilight Princess HD in the thumbnail. And guess what? It has almost 6000 views. Now you go back to the Prime News episode before that. There it is. New Switch game leaks in controller. Nintendo has a controller problem. There was a lot of legit news, 16 minutes long. And in there I'm using a new Switch UI concept. 7000 views. You see the pattern. You see the pattern that I see anyways. And that pattern is the more mystery and more interesting things you can put in your title and thumbnail. Even if that stuff's in the video, the more likely people are to click it. So if I want that click through rate, if I want those new subscribers to grow, you got to put things in the title and thumbnail and cover stories that people are interested in. And they're interested in things they don't know about. And the things they don't know about are things that haven't been announced yet. And that's why rumors and leaks are obviously a big part of the channel because of that. Now they don't make up half the channel or anything. I do cover a lot of them, but they're not everything. We cover so much, like especially with Prime News episodes, we cover so many amazing stories. But yeah, I just, I really wish that we could be a bit more understanding as a community about clickbait. That's really it. I am sorry when I've pushed the envelope too far and if I push it too far in the future, I really don't mean anything by it. I'm being honest and transparent. I mean, you guys could point out channels that do it different and don't have to clickbait. You know, you could say something like Spawn Wave and I can argue with Spawn Wave and I love Sean. He's a great content creator, great guy behind the scenes. I can literally point to his channel and go, yeah, but News Wave is the one made him a big channel. His News Wave episodes were actually struggling to get views for a long time. What he got views on was this more unique content, tearing down systems, showing the insides, buying crap from random websites like GameStop or Wish or whatever and just seeing what happens. Like those are highly clickable, unique content and so many you might go, well, Nate, then that's what you should be doing. You can have your news content, but also do this other stuff. And to that I say, sure, sure. Problem is I keep giving away all my spare money to you guys. So I got to stop the giveaway so I could afford to do some of that stuff. And I don't want to do what other people are doing. So what I've really built myself upon over the last 24 years is covering news or writing guides. I used to write a lot of video game guides back in the day, but covering news. That's what I like to do. I like gaming conversations. I'm a gaming conversationalist. That's kind of what I call myself. So I think I'm doing a pretty good job at that. I don't know. I know that there's people who love my channel and think all my stuff's awesome and you guys are great. But also it's really good to get that criticism and be honest about it. So let me know what you guys think down in the comments below, I suppose. Give me all the feedback you want. Blast my channel if you want, whatever. The floor is yours and I'll catch you guys in that next video.