Tim: Subscriber count is important, but it is not as important as people make it out to be. But you can go on YouTube and that’s what everyone and their dog does with these products. 

Spencer: It blows my mind that some companies don’t advertise on YouTube. 

Tim: Or you can trust me that I know what I’m doing and I know how to connect with my audience and let me have the freedom to do that. 

Spencer: Welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. Super excited for another episode. Today I am joined by Tim Stevenson, whose YouTube channel is The Decent Garage. Tim, welcome to the show. 

Tim: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Spencer. 

Spencer: So we actually work together. I edit a lot of your videos. We got started. How did we get started? I think we connected at a wedding. 

Tim: At a wedding, at your sister’s wedding. Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah, which is crazy. I feel like that’s not normally the case when you connect with people. But I think I was just talking to my family and telling them what I do and you overheard me. Is that right? 

Tim: Yeah. At that point, there was about a year and a half ago, I was trying to find an editor for my videos because I was to that point on the channel and I couldn’t find anything. And we were at a wedding and I heard some guy at a table saying, yeah, I edit YouTube videos for YouTube channels. I was like, no way. So I approached you. 

Spencer: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you did. It’s been a pleasure working with you so far. Your videos are really cool. And I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve learned a lot about trucks. 

Tim: Oh, I think you have. Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah. I don’t think I’m confident enough to do a full truck build myself, but I know a lot of names of parts that I never would have known otherwise. So

Tim: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Spencer: I kind of briefly mentioned it, but tell the listeners kind of what your channel is about. 

Tim: So my channel Decent Garage is about restoring and building older trucks. And by older, I mean anywhere from 60s to 90s, that era, focusing mainly on diesel trucks. That’s just what I’m comfortable with. And anything and everything in between their performance diesel stuff, towing, fuel mileage, making stuff up as I go, fabricating, just really learning on the job is what I’m trying to do. 

Spencer: I’m curious, how did you get, I guess, comfortable with those types of trucks? Like, did you grow up working on those trucks? Or how did you get into that? 

Tim: No, so that’s a great question. I didn’t grow up doing anything automotive. I’m actually a physical therapist right now. But when I was in physical therapy school, I had to travel across the country with my family for clinical rotations. And I was talking to a buddy and we priced out U-Hauls versus buying an old diesel truck. And it was cheaper to buy an old diesel truck and borrow a trailer to take it across country. And so that’s where it started ever since then. I kind of fell in love with that truck and learned everything I could about it. I would be reading stuff on the forums and on the internet every single day about it. And it just kind of created this passion. 

Spencer: So is that the OG Crew Cab that you’re talking about? 

Tim: Yep, that’s the OG Crew Cab. When I bought it, it was not a Crew Cab. But as I had kids, I had to completely reconfigure the truck and make it have more seats and more doors to fit all my kids. 

Spencer: Gotcha. Nice. So that’s how you got into the trucks. But how did you get into the videos for the trucks? Did one day you’re just like, you know what, I’ll just film this? Or did someone provoke you to do it? Or how did you get into that? 

Tim: So a couple of things happened at the same time. This happened right before COVID. So we still didn’t know COVID was going to hit. My brother saw that I had like 1500 followers on Instagram, which he was like, wow, that’s a lot. You should do something with that. And I also noticed I was on Facebook a lot. And because I had gained so much knowledge, I was answering a lot of questions about these trucks on some of the pages dedicated to these trucks. And so I realized, okay, I have a little bit of a following. I have some knowledge. And then I knew I wanted to do more work on my truck, but I didn’t have the money to do it. So I was trying to think of what’s a way I can make a couple extra bucks or even get companies to sponsor parts. And so I figured I could share my knowledge to the small following I have and hopefully make a little bit of money to pay for the projects. And that was really the initial goal. And that was in January 2020. 

Spencer: Nice. That’s that’s cool. And so far, it seems to be working out. Does that seem to be true? 

Tim: Yeah, and I’ve I’ve learned that the term working out is different for everyone who’s in the content creation space. Some people just want to create content so their family can see and so they have a record of it. Some people want to retire off of it. And my goal eventually is to be doing it full time, obviously not for the money, but because it’s something I enjoy. And so that’s that’s my goal. I’m not quite there yet. But things I would describe it as a snowball things start building up quicker and quicker as they build up. And that seems to be happening quite a bit over the past six to 12 months. 

Spencer: Yeah, that’s awesome.So you’re in the process currently of going full time. What does that look like? Does that I guess how does your I guess current job you said you’re a physical therapist? How does your current job work with YouTube and vice versa? Are you part time physical therapy part time YouTube? Or how does that kind of work out? 

Tim: Yeah, that’s that’s a great question. I think most people aren’t in the situation I’m in. I think most people have a mediocre job that they’re they’re like, well, I’d rather transition and do YouTube because the money potentials, you know, hopefully more. But I have a good job. I won’t say it paid a ton of money, but I do well. And the other thing is I have five kids and I have really good benefits with my job. And so there’s that the transition process is going to take longer for me compared to others because I have to outweigh that and letting go of that in order to go to a period of time where I’m not making a lot of money and I don’t have benefits, which is kind of scary is with a family. And so that’s why it’s taking longer for me. It’s not necessarily that I can’t do it. I could I could do it at this point. And it would be tough. It’s just I have to think of the other things that are involved in the equation, especially with my family. So my job, I do work full time as a physical therapist. I actually teach in a university, which is luckily fairly flexible. And then I do YouTube just kind of on the side, I’ll usually do an hour or so every evening and then quite a bit on the weekends, just building building these trucks. I spend a lot of time actually even at my job doing a lot of planning, pairing videos, planning what projects are going to be next, emailing with different companies as far as sponsorships go and things like that, preparing social media content. So I do a lot of behind the scenes stuff during the week and some of it just on lunch at work and stuff. 

Spencer: That seems like a sweet gig, like being able to kind of do both at the same like while you’re at work, work on YouTube and do your job at the same time. So that’s really cool. 

Tim: You know, a lot of physical therapists are in clinic from eight to five, which I’ve done that for quite a few years, but this is different. And my I won’t go into my role at my job here, but it leads to a lot of flexibility because there’s a lot of stuff that occurs after hours that I deal with for my job. So knowing that I give myself some flexibility during the day. Because I know that night I could receive a call from a student that could take up two hours of my evening with my family. So I keep that in account. And if I have something I need to get done during the day that day, I feel justified in doing it. 

Spencer: That makes sense. Yeah. So I guess I want to jump back a little bit to you mentioned, you know, getting sponsorships to get you parts. I’ve been curious since I’ve been editing your videos, are most of your parts sponsored? Or does that kind of come out of your pocket? Or how do the parts work? Because trucks don’t seem very cheap. I mean, maybe, maybe compared to like the newer trucks, but it seems like an expensive project to build a truck from scratch. So how do you get those parts? And are most of them sponsored? 

Tim: Yeah, it’s that’s a hard question to answer. It depends on the parts, depends on the company. What I found is the companies that are really good quality have really good reputation aren’t necessarily in need of my marketing. They already have built a name for themselves. So with those companies, I’m typically okay getting some type of discount. And I tell them upfront, like, if you can’t sponsor the part, I’m still going to buy the part from you because I support your brand, your brand aligns my values. So I’m just asking, what can you do to make this easier for me? Then there’s other companies that I’m trying to think how to classify them that have kind of random stuff that I’m like, oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I’ll try that. For example, in a recent video, I did a, I installed a wall mounted vacuum, like a shop vac, and that’s nothing I would have gone out and sought out and thought, oh, I could totally use that. I’m going to pay full price for this. It’s something I saw on Instagram. And I was like, huh, that’s kind of cool. So I messaged them on Instagram. And we came up with a deal where they sent me the product. And I was, I had to do a couple, what we call deliverables, whether that’s a YouTube mention in a video, a YouTube short, an Instagram reel and Instagram story, those are deliverables. And so we came up with an agreement of what I wanted to provide for them. Sometimes it’s kind of a crap shoot, because you don’t know what the product’s going to be like. Actually, that vacuum, I thought it was going to be pretty hokey, but it turned out to be really cool. But you never know that. And so you agree to do all this stuff. So it’s hard to, you know, if you get a product that you’re like, oh, this is kind of cheap, but this isn’t something I would use. It’s hard to genuinely go out there and market for it, you know. And so there’s some nuances with that process that are a little bit difficult. But for the most part, it just depends on the product depends on, is it directly into your niche, or is it just something cool you want to try? And I kind of actually have a spreadsheet that I keep track of all the companies I work with, and I classify them into different classifications as far as what my relationship with them really is. 

Spencer: Gotcha. That makes sense. I was actually going to ask you if it was, you know, difficult to manage all of these different kind of companies that you’re talking to. But that spreadsheet sounds like it’d be really nice. Have you worked with any sponsorships or discounts, I guess, that have been difficult? Like you wouldn’t work with them again, kind of a thing? Or has it been pretty smooth sailing? 

Tim: The timing of this question is impeccable, Spencer. 

Spencer: Oh yeah?

Tim: Because the answer to that yesterday would have been, yeah, there’s companies that are difficult, but never anything I can’t handle. The answer to that question this morning is I emailed a company this warning and said, please send me an invoice for the product and consider our relationship mutually ended. I actually really like the product. It was good quality. But they were on me and on me and on me about what I was putting out as far as content goes. I was meeting what I said I would do, but they were saying, no, that’s not good enough. You need to re-edit the video, but the video was already published. Like, and on YouTube, you can’t just re-edit a video. And so they were being kind of a pain about it. And it was a $250 part, which, you know, five years ago, that would have been huge at this point where I’m at. That’s not that big of a deal. And so I will continue to use their parts. I’ll just pay for them though. It’s not worth dealing with. It seems like someone who doesn’t understand social media very well, who’s in charge of their marketing. And I try and explain companies that you can tell me to do an unboxing video and a review and a comparison to the other products. But you can go on YouTube and that’s what everyone and their dog does with these products. Or you can trust me that I know what I’m doing and I know how to connect with my audience and I know what they want to see and let me have the freedom to do that. And it will work out well for you. It’s just not going to be the textbook way that other people do it. 

Spencer: Right. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. 

Tim: Another good example is about a year ago, I had a company send me an electric scooter and they wanted the same thing. They wanted me to unbox it and show all the features and an electric scooter on a diesel truck channel will not do well. People won’t watch the video. If it shows up in the middle of the video, they’ll click off of it. And so from a marketing standpoint, that’s a dead end for them. And I told them that and I said, I won’t do a dedicated video. I won’t do like a review within the video, but give me some creative freedom and trust me, you’ll like what you get. And they took a leap of faith and let me do it. And I don’t know if you remember that, but I made kind of this meme ish segment in a video that paid homage to some pop culture memes here and there. And it did really well. The retention didn’t drop off for that segment. I was still able to show the features of the scooter. I was still able to show me using it. I was able to actually use it and be excited about it because it was really fun to film that. And so it did well and they appreciated that. 

Spencer: That’s awesome. So a lot of our listeners are either YouTubers like you or people wanting to start a YouTube channel. So do you have any advice to other people about working with, I guess, sponsorships for YouTube videos? 

Tim: Yeah, great question. My advice, so always have your email address in the description of every video. That’s where probably 90% of sponsors come from,

Spencer: Oh interesting.

Tim: is random emails from those companies. Now, starting out, it’s emails from companies across seas with broken English. It’s usually in my niche with automotive. It’s usually jump starter packs or different types of lights, things like that. So you’ll get inundated with stuff like that. But you do have to pay attention because in 20 of those emails, you’ll find one that you’re like, oh, that’s actually a legit offer. And so that’s the best advice I would say is have an email address for your channel in the description of your videos. And then the other thing is be willing to put yourself out there if you’re on Instagram or on Amazon or just on Google looking at products and you see something you like. If you have the time to wait for that negotiation process, reach out to them, send them an email and say, hey, this is what I do. I’d love to use your product and demonstrate it. Is there something we can work out that negotiation process could take days to weeks. So if you need that product soon, that’s probably not viable. But if you can be forth and have enough forethought to know you’re going to need it, you know, in the future, then you can go through that process. And so there’s a lot of things where I’m like, man, I could totally probably get this sponsored, I could reach out to the company, but I need it quicker than that. And so I’m just going to pay for it. And so it’s a hard balance to strike, but be willing to reach out to companies. You’ll get shut down a lot, but you just can’t let that get at you. And you can’t lose your confidence over getting some rejections because there’s a lot of companies that they’re like, oh, we’ve never, we don’t do anything with YouTube, but sure, we’ll give you a 10% discount. And that’s that can be significant sometimes. 

Spencer: Yeah. So it’s interesting that you mentioned that people don’t do you, or I guess companies don’t sponsor YouTube. I’ve heard that a lot from a couple of different creators. And it just blows my mind. I feel like YouTube is like the best place to advertise because there’s so many people on it. And, you know, for example, like my wife watches these makeup YouTubers, and she’s been watching them for like a decade. And it’s like, she trusts that person. And so when they recommend a product, it’s like, oh, yeah, I definitely want to try that because I trust you as a content creator. So it blows my mind that some companies don’t advertise on YouTube. 

Tim: Because as a creator, you build this core foundational audience. And fans, I guess you could call it. And so marketing to a fan is way more valuable than blanket or shotgun marketing to the whole world. You know, so these companies that pay to run ads on Facebook that are supposedly targeted based on algorithms and stuff, they can do okay. But without having someone behind that ad, who that person who sees the ad trusts saying that they use the product or they endorse the product or they like the product, not having that is huge. It is a huge misstep for those companies. So having someone that can tell people that trust them that they like the product is very valuable. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. I agree. So I want to switch gears a little bit and kind of go into, you know, talking about your specific niche. Would you say it’s like the diesel trucks or is it even more specific than that? Like diesel Cummins Dodge trucks? What kind of what’s your niche specifically? 

Tim: Yeah, I would say it’s more of the classic Cummins diesel trucks. Because when you get into diesel trucks, there’s three main diesel engines in these these light duty trucks. I don’t know anything about the other two. I know what they are. I know some of the basics, but I’ve never worked on them. So I stick to the Cummins. And then I stick to in the diesel world, there’s as regulations have come about, especially in the mid 2000s, a lot of regulations came out about emissions and And stuff like that. And I don’t deal with anything newer than that. 

Spencer: So that is your specific niche on YouTube. Do you feel like there is a benefit to being in a specific niche on YouTube, or does it come with its own challenges? How do you feel about being, I guess, in a very specific niche? 

Tim: I don’t think there’s any other way to do it and be successful, is my opinion. I think you have to narrow it down as much as possible for a few reasons. One, because you want to play in the sandbox that you’re comfortable playing in. So if you spread yourself too thin, you lose your value that you’re bringing as far as education may come. And then also, if you spread yourself too thin, you’re going to dilute who your target audience is. And so if you can be more concentrated in who your target audience is, the algorithm will do a better job at feeding that content to those people. But if it doesn’t understand who you’re trying to market to, then it’s not going to get anyone. You can’t be too niche. Like I can’t say, oh, I just focus on the tip of the injectors on this year of engine, because that’s too niche, right? So you have to find a balance. But you should try and come up with what’s the sandbox you’re going to play in. And I’ve tried to deviate from that a little bit. Like early on, I tried to do some dirt bike stuff, which you would think the diesel truck stuff would have some crossover with the dirt bike stuff. It did not. Those videos did horrible. And they were really good videos. They were really cool things I did. But it just did not resonate with my audience. And I don’t know how deep you want to go into this, but if you’re not going to be super niche, you’re kind of going for a different style of content creation. You’re probably going for the style where you’re more of an entertainment channel and you are hoping that videos go big. You’re putting stuff out there hoping that one will take off and go big. Whereas the style I’m going for is to create a fan base. So create this very consistent type of content around a consistent niche that people will come back for. And as that fan base grows, my base viewership for every video should consistently grow with that fan base. Whereas with the other style, I may be getting a thousand views on one video, 1200 on another, and just hoping for that one video to take off and hit 100,000. But that’s not really going to go towards creating a fan base. It’s just to really try and get a video to take off. 

Spencer: Yeah. No, I definitely agree that I think is the way to go when it comes to YouTube. Like you can’t be too very specific, but you do need a specific niche or else you’ll spread yourself too thin. Unless you’re someone like MrBeast. Like once you’re big enough, then you can do pretty much what I want. 

Tim: Put out anything. Exactly. 

Spencer: Yeah. But yeah, I agree with you. I guess moving on from the niche. One of the questions I was curious about is if you had an unlimited budget for a project or a video, what would that be? Like money wasn’t an issue. You could do whatever you wanted in terms of production and the project itself. Do you have like a dream project? 

Tim: A dream project. First of all, if money wasn’t an issue, time would be the resource I would take on. Because time’s my least available resource. So if money wasn’t an issue, I could quit my job and have more time to do the stuff. But if we’re not talking about time, we’re just talking about a project. I would do kind of what I’m doing, kind of these older body styles, 60s to 90s trucks, but on a very, very new chassis, which a chassis is referring to the frame, the suspension, and the axles, but still have one of these slightly older diesel engines in it. So that the body looks very classic. I would redo the interior so it’s very comfortable. The engine would be what I’m comfortable with, but then the ride quality and the steering and the braking and some of these more safety type things would not be an issue at all. It would not be an issue at all. So I would feel comfortable driving wherever. Granted, I feel comfortable driving my old beater trucks across the country if I wanted to, but it would just make it more comfortable and maybe more reliable. 

Spencer: Cool. I was just wondering. 

Tim: Which that is actually something I have in the pipeline. 

Spencer: Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing, like you have some friends that I’ve seen in your videos that kind of help you with certain things, but have you ever thought about doing like a full video or maybe you’ve done this in the past, but a full video collaborating with another YouTuber?

Tim: Good question. So I do have a few that I collaborate with a lot. The hard thing with doing a full collaborative video is our styles of how we deliver the content and produce it and edit it may be different. And so it may not resonate well with his audience or what he does may not resonate well with my audience, which for example, Kevin has been someone. If you’ve watched my channel, if you haven’t, Kevin is a friend I made over the past six months. He’s helped me on projects. I help him on projects. He has a channel that’s relatively small compared to mine, but he’s got a huge Instagram account. And so we kind of are trying to help each other grow and it’s mutually beneficial because we’re good friends. We see things very similarly, but as far as YouTube goes, his content production is different than mine. And so we haven’t got into doing a full collaboration, although last, this is funny that you ask these questions because last week we came up with an idea that I proposed to him and then I’m going to propose to another YouTuber that I talked to quite a bit. I’ve never actually collaborated with on content, but I propose a build series where it’s something along the lines of the great American build off where each of us is going to find a platform, classic truck, what we consider to be the ultimate or the great American type family truck and build it in the same timeline so that we’re delivering videos on the same day every week, covering the same topic so that you get to see how they do things different than I do. And then doing the reveal at an event where all of us are there so that the fans of all the channels can come together and see the reveal of all three trucks. 

Spencer: That’d be cool. 

Tim: Yeah, it may take a lot of coordination. I think we’re going to do it though. One thing I’ve learned about YouTube, I have a lot of ideas and they can become very transient. This good idea in the months I could have different good ideas and so this one’s a thing of the past, but I think that would be a really cool thing because we could share our audience, we could share how we approach different things on these builds similarly and differently and we could get engagement that really builds all three channels together. 

Spencer: Yeah, I think that’d be really cool. I would definitely watch that and I don’t even know that much about trucks so.

Tim: If you’re talking about collaboration and if your audience wants to know how this is done really well, I’m in Utah, you’re in Utah Spencer, but there’s some Utah, there’s some what they call Utah YouTubers, there’s a lot of channels in Utah, but there’s a group of four or five of them, Matt’s Off-Road Recovery, Fab Rats, Rudy Adventure Design, Trailmator, and then Merlin’s Old School Garage. So they all started together and they have built a fan base to where if they all put a video out on Sunday, every person who watches Matt’s Off-Road Recovery will watch Fab Rats. Their audience will watch all five videos no matter what the production quality is like. They’ve built this fan base among all five channels and that is to me the pinnacle of collaboration on YouTube. And the saying is a rising tide raises all ships. That’s what they’ve done well and that’s what I’m trying to do with a couple of my close friends. 

Spencer: Yeah, that would be really cool. I did not know that that was how dedicated their fan base was. I have heard of those channels before because I think you’ve done a video or two with one of them. 

Tim: Yeah, I’ve done videos with all of them actually and that’s kind of how I learned this. And their fan base is not the typical YouTube fan base. The demographic that watches their videos most is 50 to 70.

Spencer: Wow.

Tim: But it’s just they’ve created this friendly content that people really like and that generation has really latched on to it. 

Spencer: Yeah, and their content is similar to yours in terms of like they do builds, right? 

Tim: Yeah, so they do builds, they do off-road recovery. So they branch out a little bit but they build vehicles to work in their niche of recovering vehicles off-road. Yeah, or doing off-road racing, things like that. 

Spencer: So they have a pretty tight knit community and it seems like your community is pretty tight knit as well. I’ve seen you work with a lot of different people, whether it’s like your subscribers or other YouTubers on different parts or projects of a truck. So it seems really tight knit, which seems kind of nice. I don’t know if every YouTube community is that tight knit. Maybe it’s just the Utah truck community. 

Tim: Yeah, and I take special care toward my audience. Like I answer almost every comment, I answer almost every Instagram message, almost every email. This year actually there were I made a list of 20 people that really went out of their way to help me over the past year and I sent them a Christmas gift package. I sent them a like tool bag with my logo embroidered on it as well as a tool brand that actually helped me with this project, Knipex is the brand. It’s a very high quality brand. I put a card in there, I put one of my key chains, which is part of my merch, and then I put a brand new tool from this company in that gift bag and sent it out to these 20 people really to thank them for what they’ve done. But also it goes, it’s more far reaching than that because most of them have posted on Instagram like, Hey, thanks Decent Garage for this. And so all my fan base sees, wow, he cares about the people that help him out, which I truly do. I’m not just doing this as a marketing ploy, I truly do.

Spencer: Right.

Tim: And so I think it grows. I want to create a tight knit community. And so I think that plays into that really well. 

Spencer: Yeah, that just brought up a question in my mind. Do you use like channel subscriptions or do you have channel members? 

Tim: No, I have looked into that whether it’s channel members, Patreon, a new one that I’m actually looking into doing is called Buy, what’s called Buy Me a Cup of Coffee, I think is what it’s called. There’s pros and cons to all of them. I am going to start something like that. I just haven’t chosen what platform to do it on yet because I want to be able to do one live a month at least where I actually just work on a project live where people can be in the garage with me working on a project. Some behind the scenes stuff because you as my editor know my videos are edited and produced. They’re not super raw anymore. And so I think for my fan base or for the members, whether it’s Patreon or whatever, I would probably have you as the editor leave a video fairly unedited, probably be two or three times as long as the actual video so that they can see it. And I think the fans would like to see that. And then another thing I would do, I’ve thought about doing is basically before the video was released, I would film myself watching the video giving some behind the scenes about what I’m doing or what I run into that I didn’t actually mention in the final edited product that those people can see or maybe even a week after the video is released. So the fans have watched the video and then they see me come and say, well, this actually didn’t go as smooth as it looks on camera. I ran into this, I had to wait a week for this product even though you don’t see that. So there’s a lot of these kind of things I think fans would enjoy that I could deliver on there. So I haven’t the times the issue is making that platform. 

Spencer: Those ideas are good ideas, I think that would help make your community even tighter. Just speaking my mind, but I am curious how YouTube channel subscriptions work out. I know some channels, I’ve seen some channels use them and I don’t know if they actually are beneficial or not. I’ve gotten an email from YouTube, like the YouTube creators or whatever, and I’m probably going to butcher this statistic, but it was like this one channel got like 40% more, I guess channel members because they created member only content and you can kind of like post that on your channel and it shows up like as member only content. So I’ve always wondered how that kind of works, but your ideas seem great and definitely seems like it would be helpful for your specific fan base. 

Tim: My problem is I want to do it on that buy me a coffee site, but out of all of them that is the least known site of the extensive research I’ve done. It’s the best one for what I want to do. But you hear a channel mention Patreon and everyone knows what that is. If I mention buy me a coffee, no one knows what that is. And so I don’t know if it will be as effective as I want it to be. So I’m still looking into it and channel memberships maybe a way to go.

Spencer: Yeah. To wrap up, I want to ask you one more question. And we ask all of our guests this question, because I think it’s really fascinating because every YouTuber has different experiences, you know, different niches succeed doing different things. So the question is, are there any myths or I guess things about YouTube that you think are true or false? For example, one is quality over quantity. Some people think that quantity is better than quality. Some people think quality is better than quantity. So anything that you think from your experience on YouTube that you think is true or false, that would be helpful to our listeners. 

Tim: Great question. And I know the exact thing I’ll say for this. Subscriber count, subscriber count is important, but it is not as important as people make it out to be. And let me explain why I say that. So I have 38,000 subscribers right now. Let’s compare that to my buddy Kevin’s channel. He’s got 1200 subscribers. So people would see that and be like, wow, Decent Garage is so much more successful than Kevin’s channel with 1200. But what you have to look at when you’re analyzing the quality of a channel is average views per video in relation to the subscriber count. So if my average views or video are 1000 views per video and I have 38,000 subscribers, that means what’s that 2.5% percent? I’m getting 2.5% views of my subscriber count. And I don’t even know if those are my subscribers or not, but that’s not very good. Whereas Kevin, he’s always telling me, oh, no one watched my videos. They just don’t do really well. He gets 200 views on a video and he has 1200 subscribers. That’s almost 20%. So relatively, he’s way more successful than me if I’m only getting 1000 views per video. Does that make sense? 

Spencer: Yeah, that does. 

Tim: I shot myself in the foot in this regard. I went and filmed with those Utah YouTubers and my subscriber count exploded after I put those out. Those videos did really well, but it did not create lasting subscribers. A bunch of people came and were like, oh, I’ll subscribe to this channel, but they don’t follow my channel. They’re not fans of my channel. 

Spencer: Gotcha.

Tim: So I’ve been dealing with, to me, that’s kind of a blow to my channel. I’ve been dealing with that now for two years trying to get that. My average view count is finally coming up, but it’s still not where I would want it to be. So when I look at a channel, I look at, go look at all their videos and kind of say, what’s the average views on just a random video? Not their best. Don’t take the outliers. Don’t take their best videos. Don’t take their worst videos. Take the average of kind of the basic videos. And how does that compare to the number of subscribers they have? And that’s how I would tell if a channel is doing good. So if you’ve got a hundred subscribers and you’re getting 10 to 20 views per video, you are killing it. That is really, really good. So even if you’re not getting what you consider to be a lot of views, do it as a proportion to your subscribers and keep pushing for that number to increase to have more views, more baseline views per video. I would prefer my subscriber count not grow and my baseline view grow. That means I’m growing a fan base. That would be the ideal situation in my mind. But again, that’s a big misconception. 

Spencer: Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I could be wrong on this, but I believe YouTube sees, you know, how many, like when you publish a video, it goes out to your subscribers first. And if you’re, if all of your subscribers were to click and watch the video, then it would promote it to more and more people. But if there’s a huge, you know, discrepancy between like your subscriber count and your average view count, you know, YouTube might not publish your video as far as if all of your subscribers watched your video. So I definitely agree with what you said. And I definitely agree that it’s a misconception. I think so many people are just like, Oh, that channel has a million subscribers they’re huge, but that may not be the case with the view counts so.

Tim: I could go into a bunch of these things. I’ve learned so much. We don’t have the time for that. But the takeaway I think I’d give to your audience is do not focus on the numbers. Focus on your passion. Make sure you’re enjoying it. If you don’t enjoy it, you’re going to burn out. And then for what, like, it didn’t get you anything. So make sure you enjoy what you’re doing. I remember when I started, I saw a lot of channels that were bigger than me and I’m like, Oh, I’m never going to get to that point. Like it was kind of discouraging. And now I look back and they’re, they’re in the dust. Like I’ve far surpassed them. So just don’t compare yourself to other people. Do what makes you happy. Do what makes your passion kind of flourish. And it will organically grow and become something that you enjoy doing, because if it’s not, you’re not going to enjoy doing it. And then why do it at all? 

Spencer: Right. Very well said. Very good advice, I think. And Tim, thank you for being on the show. Really appreciate it. 

Tim: Thanks for having me. This is fun. 

Spencer: So your channel is Decent Garage on YouTube. Is there any other platforms or social medias? If our listeners wanted to connect and follow you, where would they go? 

Tim: Yeah, I’m on Instagram would probably be my next one, Decent_garage. Facebook Decent Garage is my page. And then I’m on TikTok, not a lot, but Decent_garage there. But YouTube and Instagram are probably where I play the most. 

Spencer: Awesome. Sounds good. Well, thanks again, Tim, for being on the show. Thank you to all our listeners and watchers for checking out this episode of Creators Uncut. If you want to follow us for more episodes, we’re on all the major social media platforms. And if you’re ever interested in video editing or content creation, you can check us out at creatorluxe.com. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next episode.