 Post this amazing video that you put in so much work into, you try so hard and you tick all the boxes, this, you know, your subscriber base is gonna love this. It's perfect, it's you. It's the definition of your channel and you post it, but what if YouTube is punishing you for the previous deviation? And that video doesn't do well, and I have seen that. Is it because they are punishing you or is it because it just coincidentally didn't do very well? And I don't know, but again, it does kind of put you off. It's like the day you're in the schoolyard and you stand up and you say, hey, why are we doing this? Whack! And then you're like, I'm not gonna stick my head up again in that environment. So Gordon, you've achieved so much. I mean, just looking at your channel, you've uploaded 342 videos. You have a... Feels like more. I bet. You also have 160,000 subscribers, which in itself is a massive achievement. You've got 48 million views. You run camera labs, as well as this YouTube channel and a podcast. And you're an author. We can see a little delicate nod to that over your shoulder. If you're good enough to include this field of view in your edit, Neil, you will see my product. And I'm wearing my product, my merchandise. Well, I'm linked to all of those in the description. I suspect you're gonna crop me to about this shape and shift me to one side, either this side or this side, and then put you on the other side so that we're... And then scale it so that, in fact, you know what? We should about line up. We've got a bit of space above our heads down to... It's almost like we planned this. I have tried to plan this before and it doesn't work as well as you and I have done it here. We're quite well matched, even though we didn't try and match focal length or coverage. So well done, Neil. Well, thanks. That's because I watch your blooming channel. It's because you're a broadcast professional, Neil. Well, that's the weird thing. We talked about that on the other video, that your background is Prince Journalism, specifically magazine journalism. My background is comedy, entertainment formats for TV. And that's sort of why I wanted to make this show. I still don't know whether to make this as a playlist or a whole other channel. I know the answer to that. It's gonna be a playlist because I'm clinging to the... I'm just clinging to whatever statistics I can get. But I looked you up on... Are you sure though? Are you sure that's the right approach? Because I ask myself this all the time. Is it better on YouTube to put everything in one basket or to create smaller but multiple baskets? This is exactly the question. And no one knows. This is exactly the anorak-ing that I wanted to get down to. So what do you think? Nobody knows. And even if you did know, the cunning algorithm, which changes all the time anyway. By the way, when I mentioned algorithm, that's basically the software behind YouTube and every other social platform and search results would show you what you see. So when you look at YouTube, there'll be a bunch of recommended videos down the side. Sometimes from people you follow, sometimes from people that you don't follow but you watch, sometimes from people who are posting something similar to something you've liked or watched a lot of before because you don't have to like a video, although you should. I'm just gonna put a little request in here for anyone, whether you're a content creator or a consumer or a viewer. If you watch something and you think it's good, click like, you know? It's easy to think, what a great video and then walk away and do something else. Click like because not only does it make us feel better as creators, it really does make you feel better. It also gets fed back into the algorithm and YouTube will go, ah, not only did they watch it but they liked it. And therefore I'm gonna recommend it using the algorithm to other people who may not have come across this person before and that's how our channels grow and that's how we sustain a business. So always do a lie. But in terms of the question of whether to do one channel or multiple channels, I don't know, what I can tell you is what I mentioned earlier, which is if you are known for one thing, if you deviate from that thing, you probably won't do very well. Like recently I did a video on, you see I'm really into coffee and I thought, wanna be fun to do a tutorial or a video about how I make coffee, you know? Now don't be put off by the fact that there are already a million other videos doing the same thing. There were a million long exposure videos before I posted mine, right? Just do it differently or better or hopefully a bit both. Well, my coffee video wasn't different or better but I thought I'd do it anyway and of course it bombed. No one's interested. They're like, yeah, we know you're interested in that but you're the camera guy. I did one on, I'm also really into hi-fi. There's an interesting crossover between photographers and hi-fi enthusiasts. I think it's maybe the technical nuances, the details that people are into. I see a lot of that, a lot of crossover. So there'd been this thing I was trying to do on my hi-fi for ages, streaming high definition audio, blah, blah, blah. It was this really like, most of the things I tried to do, this really obscure solution that nobody else had written about or talked about and I thought, you know what? There's gotta be at least one other person who wants to know this. So I did a video about it and I got it all across and the people, all the companies involved, they were like, really liked it. That was really good. The only person that's done that, great, blah, blah, blah. And of course it got hardly any views at all, even worse than the coffee video. So you begin to think, should I do a different channel for just general interest stuff? And in fact, as a side note, this is the advantage that vloggers have because a vlogger, the thing that's consistent, so for me, the thing that's consistent on my channel is photography and specifically camera reviews. That's what people look for. If you follow a vlogger, the thing that's consistent on that channel is them. They could be doing anything. They could be cooking today. They could be doing makeup. They could be doing photography. They could be doing travel, gardening, anything because the consistent thing that people have subscribed to is them and their personality. So if you do that, then you have the flexibility to cover almost any subject. So I'm kind of frustrated I didn't go down that route because that would give you greater flexibility. I mean, is that something you might still experiment with? What, doing different videos or experimenting with a different channel? Experimenting with different videos and committing to the channel because you know that deep down that those couple of thousands who watched the coffee video are probably the die-hard fans, the ones that do actually like you doing stuff. But it's such a double dare from YouTube, isn't it? Because they feel so much at stake. The more achievement you attain, the more at stake it suddenly appears. There's also a kind of paranoid aspect to this. And again, I have no evidence for this. And like everything that happens, you can read anything into anything. But let's play, which is this. If you post a bad video or were still too badly performed, so I'll rephrase that, not a bad video, a badly performing video, a video that doesn't get that many views or likes, okay? Doesn't get as much engagement. People don't watch as much of it, blah, blah, blah. If you post a couple of those in a row, will the YouTube algorithm punish you so that when you come back and you say, oh, forget this, this strategy is not worked, I'd better go back to my core subject, whatever that is, and post this amazing video that you put in so much work into, you try so hard and you tick all the boxes, you know your subscriber base is gonna love this. It's perfect, it's you. It's the definition of your channel and you post it, but what if YouTube is punishing you for the previous deviation? And that video doesn't do well and I have seen that. Is it because they are punishing you or is it because it just coincidentally didn't do very well? And I don't know, but again, it does kind of put you off. It's like the day you're in the schoolyard and you stand up and you say, hey, why are we doing this? Whack! And then you're like, I'm not gonna stick my head up again in that environment. On a video by video basis, it's so difficult to take that leap. It's incredibly hard. There's a creator that I follow called the Everyday Dad, who I met because he did camera reviews and they were great camera reviews, but then he did an iPad review and it did like 10 times better. And he was like, oh my God, this was a bit of a shock. And then he did another iPad video and it did really well. And he thought, wait a minute. And then he did a camera review and it didn't do very well and the message was getting across. And the interesting thing about that is that his channel, while it is about technology and while it was initially about cameras, it was more about him than he perhaps realized or even that his viewers realized that it was more about him. So it was easier for him to pivot, to transition to a different subject than it was for me because mine is more about the products, so the thing as opposed to me as a personality or as a person that you might be interested in hearing or watching. So I thought that was really interesting and I know that I have tried to do videos about phones which are massively successful for other channels and just haven't done anything for me. I think my channel has been algorithmed to a point and I found this with some other creators who started in like 2006, 2007, sort of pre-2010. Basically those first three or four years worth of creators, they have weird channels with weird stats and they don't grow very fast. Like you were saying, oh, you've got 160,000 followers which is great. It's all right, but for a channel that's 14 years old, it's terrible and in my market, the people, the events that I get invited to, I'm the smallest one. Most of my contemporaries or peer group, well, I call them my peer group, you always refer to people who are better than you as your peer group. They don't refer to me as being, they're like, who's this guy, who's this loser? There are over a million and they're younger channels, younger as in then the channels aren't as old. The people may be the same age or older, generally a bit younger, always more fun. Is that a factor? I don't know, you tell me. But the more recent channels seem to experience greater growth than the older ones. So again, there's the paranoia, the grumpy older channels get together and go, why is the algorithm punishing us? Is it the algorithm or is it just that no one likes us? I don't know, but I do know that the channels that started at the beginning have surprisingly fewer followers than you'd expect. That seems to be a common theme. So should I start a new channel? I don't think so, I think you should train that algorithm. I think, honestly, I think putting in curveballs makes it more interesting for your core audience. Yeah, you can look at statistics and analytics until you go mad and they provide a ridiculous amount of detail, I mean, if you're a YouTube creator, there's an app or a page on the site, but it works better on the phone, I think called Creator, isn't it? Oh yeah, the app's called Studio, but it's for analytics, yeah? Yeah, exactly. And the information it provides is absolutely fascinating, but also disheartening as well. And I'm kind of of the, I'm of the mind that maybe the hours you spend looking at analytics might be better spent producing more content to feed the beast, but then I'm the most successful YouTubers, I know their analytics back to front. So they know their audience back to front. They know when they stop listening. I mean, typically people don't want a long video. I don't want a long video. I might get to the point and I'm the worst for it because my videos are long and surprise, surprise, the shorter ones generally do better than the longer ones. But do I pay attention to that? And there's more of my chats with Gordon Lane from Camera Labs. And that is why I gave up YouTube for three years, which is which really confused the algorithm because I was pouring my heart into these technical reviews and testing every aspect of a camera and trying to get that across to people. And then some kid doing an unboxing video gets more views and all he's done is filmed him opening a box and they were getting more views. And I was bewildered by this. I just couldn't understand why this was more popular. And please hit the subscribe button if you want to see more great British YouTubers. There's a playlist and a podcast. All the details and links are in the description. I'm Neil Mossy and I'll see you on the very next episode of Great British YouTubers.