Paul: I think it’s more important now to really work on building a following, building a community, because then it makes your live streaming impactful. 

Paul: Who knows how fast technology will change? I mean, to me, it seems like the short form rise was super fast. 

Paul: I know a lot of people that get millions of views, but it’s not their audience, so they don’t convert, they don’t stay. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. Today I am joined by Paul from the YouTube channel Powwows.com. Paul, thanks for being on the show. Oh, thanks man. I’m excited. Looking forward to talking YouTube with you. 

Yeah, it’ll be good. So like we always do, we like to get to know our guests a little bit. So if you don’t mind telling us a little bit about yourself, maybe where you’re from, what you like to do, and then also about your channel, kind of what it’s about and what it does. 

Paul: Yeah, I appreciate it. So Paul Gatter, I am from Lexington, South Carolina, grew up in Carolina. I started in Sumter, came over to Columbia area, the capital of the state to go to school, and just never left that area. I’m father and husband, my daughter, she turns 21 in just a few weeks. She’s moved down to Florida to work for Disney World, which, and that’s our, we are big Disney fans, and we travel quite a bit. 

Been very blessed to be able to travel and do some really amazing trips with her and now just the two of us, my wife and I continue to travel. But on the business side of things, I started powwows.com way back in 1996 as just something to do in college, never really intended it for to be a business. I say, I tell people I’m an accidental entrepreneur, it turned into something after some time, right? 

It wasn’t, that’s not what I built it for. But yeah, our YouTube channel is one of the key things that we do and really a big focus of, especially what people kind of know us for. There’s a few things that really people come to us for and one of them is our live streams and our YouTube videos. 

Spencer: Gotcha, cool. So it was a website before it was a YouTube channel. 

Paul: So yeah, started building web pages about powwows in 96. We quickly grew to having a forum for a few years and then in 2004, we streamed our first powwow live. And back then I didn’t even think about archiving the footage, right? Or recording it. I recorded some some tapes because I was using camcorders. So I recorded some clips on that, but it was a few years later that we actually started recording and preserving the live streams and taking clips from the live streams and turning them into videos. 

Spencer: Gotcha, that’s cool. I feel like a lot of people don’t start out as a website and then become a YouTube channel. So that’s kind of cool. But it’s also cool that you use it as like a way to archive stuff. So when did you start to, I guess, put it on to YouTube? Did you do that when YouTube first came out or was it a couple years after that? 

Paul: It was a few years after that. So I am a big proponent of trying to maintain control, maintain ownership of as much of your assets as you can. So I actually thought going to YouTube for a long time, we had our own video. I built my own video platform and was using some, you know, video software, was hosting all the videos myself. Eventually, of course, that gets to the point where storage and archiving was just complicated. Keeping up with players and making it easy for people to use was becoming difficult. And at some point, it was just easier to move to YouTube. 

And at some point, you realize that YouTube is the default video storage player, a discovery platform. And you kind of had, you know, it was, the writing was on the wall, I kind of had to move over to it. And it did make it a lot simpler. But those early days, it was one of, you know, I tried to maintain as much control as I could. 

Spencer: That makes sense. So I actually want to jump back a little bit. So how did you get into Powwows? Was it just something you were passionate about? Or did you have a friend or a connection that was into it? 

Paul: Yeah, like I said, in college, I built web pages about the stuff I knew, right? And that was when I was first going to Powwows. I had some friends that were showing me how to make outfits, learning the songs, going to the first Powwows. 

First Powwows I went to was probably in like 91, 92. And then, you know, I was slowly learning more and starting to participate, helping out organize them, things like that. And so I just built pages about what I knew. I built two web pages back then. I built one about Star Wars toys, which I’m sure it’s on today, right? Yeah, I still love my Star Wars toys. But at the time, nobody, nobody visited Star Wars websites. That was in 96. There wasn’t much out there. It was a very, very, very, very niche website. And it’s still out there. And it’s 1996 state. 

Spencer: I’ll have to check that out later. 

Paul: Yeah, on on Powwows, I do a show, like just a social media show on Thursday nights. And that was one of the topics last night we were talking about my old Star Wars site. So yeah, but that’s really it was just building it as I was learning. 

Again, it wasn’t I wasn’t trying to build a business or anything. I was just writing web pages about like, hey, I just learned about this. And so I wanted to write something about it. 

It was really just, I didn’t know what else to put out on the web. And for me, it was tinkering with the technology, not really the content at first. And so I was like, okay, well, I know about Powwows, and I know about Star Wars toys. 

So it’s easy for me to put out content about those things. It was community from the beginning, which made the Powwows website grow. And there just wasn’t community for the other side. Now, if I was starting today, maybe it would be a different story. And maybe I’d deal on a different path. But that’s not, you know, in 96, that’s not where we were. 

So and it was moving into the forum and, and really kind of catering to that community and helping the community grow and foster that is what really started us growing. 

Spencer: Gotcha. That’s cool. That makes sense. So just for our listeners who may not know what a powwow is, what, what exactly is a powwow? 

Paul: Yeah, great question. So how are our Native American celebrations? They’re held for all types of reasons that I like to tell people, you know, I lived down in the South, right? In the South, we have a festival for everything. We have a Chitlin Festival. We have my hometown where I grew up. We had the Orchid Festival, Iris Festival, sorry, something is known for the Iris Festival. 

Sorry. But yeah, there’s a festival for everything, right? And you if you go to these, you know, it’s a full like immersion into the foods, the arts, the crafts, whatever that cultural thing is. And so powwows are very similar. They started off a different way, but now lots of tribes have adopted them. So they’re, they may be organized by tribe, but people from all over will come. So some tribes, some tribes will host them as like an annual homecoming. 

Sometimes you’ll have families just do it in memorials, somebody who passed or maybe it’s in celebration of a high school graduation, or, you know, a family member getting an honor. There’s ones that are just contests, powwows and the dancers and singers compete at these and they’re held every year. Some of them aren’t even associated with tribes. 

There’s a lot of groups that put these together. Now, of course, there are casinos and resorts that sponsor powwows. So, but when you go to one, you’re going to see singing, you’re going to see dancing, you’re going to have arts and crafts and food, and you’re going to be completely immersed in that culture. They’re open to the public and I highly encourage if you’re in the U.S. or Canada, there’s one near you within probably an hour or two drive because they have, there are thousands of them happening every year. Our calendar, we try to list as many as we can and we’ll list as many as 1200 in a year and we’re not getting them all. 

So they really are, they’re, they’re happening everywhere. If anybody is interested and wants to know more about powwows, please go check out powwows.com. I do have a special link powwows.com slash poww101 that for new people who’ve never been, that’s the link you go to and it kind of gets you into the powwow world. 

Spencer: Awesome. That was a perfect explanation and yeah, definitely check out that website for for more information. So that’s cool. So you started tinkering with websites made powwows.com, then you decided to eventually make the switch to going to YouTube. When you went to YouTube, when did you decide to really focus in and, you know, put a lot of effort into the YouTube content? 

Paul: I always knew that video was a very important part of what we would do at powwows.com because it is such a visual thing with the dancers and the moves, the outfits and the regalia. So I knew that it was photos and videos that had to be a centerpiece of our content. So, you know, from early on, I was trying to figure out ways to incorporate content, incorporate video and, you know, even in the early 90s, I would go to powwows and record video, like I said, on camcorders and stuff and try to digitize those tapes. And so video was always there and it was always something I wanted to do. 

And so when I finally did stop being hardheaded and move off of the platform we were hosting ourselves, YouTube just made it so much more accessible and so much easier for us to create videos and share videos. So we just went all in on it and we just started posting. Even at the time we had hundreds of videos and so now we’ve just continued to keep posting. I think we’re up over 15,000 videos now. 

Spencer: Wow, 15,000 videos. That’s a lot. Something I was interested in is you do a lot of live streams as well, not just posting videos. So tell me a little bit more about the live stream. Like what are the pros and cons to live streaming versus, you know, doing YouTube videos separately? 

Paul: So here’s our strategy is we go to powwows and we live stream. We’re probably going to be in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 live streams this year and we have a few teams that really help it out. I go to a few but then I have some other folks who go to a lot more. They live out in the Midwest and they travel to powwows and are able to do a bunch of them and having some teams that really help really, you know, it’s exploded how many powwows we’re able to go to and he’s done a fantastic job. 

Mike Gavard is kind of heads that side up. He’s done a fantastic job of really growing that but our strategy is we live stream the powwows the entire event. We try to go as much as possible without cutting. Now sometimes we have to cut because of internet or, you know, technical issues or whatever and we, YouTube, we try to keep it under 12 hours so it will archive the footage but so we’ll stream like I was in Albuquerque two weeks ago and we streamed Friday and Saturday of their powwows. 

We started streaming at 10 a.m. and didn’t end till like 1 a.m. both days so really, really long streams. Now during that there’s all kinds of events that happen whether it’s a category of dancing competing against each other. This one they have the crowning of what they call Miss Indian World. 

So they have a kind of a pageant there and they get a crown of a young lady. There was also some other special things that happened so we record those clips even though we’re live streaming. We’ll take recordings of those and then we’ll put those up on our YouTube channel later as small, you know, smaller five seven-minute clips that kind of it’s the same footage you saw in the live stream but we then take all of that and put it out so that you wanted to just go and watch the crowning of Miss Indian World. You can go find that one little clip instead of having to kind of scrub through the entire live stream. So that’s kind of our strategy is you know yeah we do take the entire archive and you can watch live and you can participate the chat and kind of get that community feel but then afterwards whatever you wanted to see you can kind of go and watch the clips on it. 

Spencer: Gotcha cool that makes sense and you mentioned you keep it under 12 hours is that right? Yes. That seems like a really long time so what happens if you you go over 12 hours? 

Paul: So YouTube won’t archive the footage if you go over 12. You can keep streaming, they don’t cut the stream off but they won’t save the recording or they won’t save the archive. 

Spencer: So does that mean it won’t be on YouTube anymore? 

Paul: Right you’ll lose the live stream, the video itself once you end it won’t be available. Same thing with Facebook if you go over eight hours they don’t keep after eight hours they don’t keep any more additional video on that recording or that stream. So we have to we do have to cut during the day which sucks sometimes you know you get a big audience going and then you but you have to make that cut or you’ll lose that footage and so we know people like to watch the day after or the week after so we make sure that we have all of that archived but yeah and that’s how we end up with 15,000 videos. So the one I was at Albuquerque it was just a two-day powwow but I think I ended up with around 250 clips from that weekend so that’s just one powwow so that’s how we end up with just hundreds and hundreds of videos. 

Spencer: Gotcha that’s that’s crazy that’s a lot of videos. It’s a lot of videos. You probably gotta be one of the the channels with the most videos uploaded. Yeah I don’t know we’re up there yeah. So I’m curious do you have like an average number of viewers that you get per live stream? 

Paul: It really does append on the powwow. This one in Albuquerque it’s the biggest powwow of the year you know on YouTube concurrent users we were up over 2,500 for most of the weekend which is a lot of people on Facebook we were we would I don’t even remember what we were hitting on the video itself but Facebook has a nice little graph that will show you you know over the last 28 days what was your total views and we’re up over 30 million for the last 28 days on Facebook so the audience was huge for that weekend. 

Now other powwows will you know we’ll get a few hundred thousand to maybe you know eight nine hundred thousand we have some powwows that that are a little bit bigger a little bit more known that may hit the one or two million views in a weekend but that’s kind of where we average in that five to eight hundred thousand views for a weekend and then of course like I said we have all the clips afterwards so they continue to get views and they continue to to see um people are watching that powwow so like the powwows themselves they love it because you know it’s some of the best marketing they can do because you’re actually showing the world hey here’s this powwow you need to go go check this out and attend in person so 

Spencer: yeah that’s that’s fascinating so do does each like powwow like try to hire you to come live stream it or yes you uh kind of coordinate that I guess how does that work 

Paul: yeah so the way it works is the powwow committee there’s usually a powwow committee that kind of organizes the event and so they’ll they’ll work with us they’ll contract us to come in and do that depending on the some some are more advanced than others like gathering nations that’s a big event there’s a hundred thousand people in person at the event they contract their entire their camera crew and sound people in addition to us so we just for that one we just come in and they give us a cable and it’s the feed and we stream it and so they have a full crew they have a producer who’s you know sitting like you see on tv is sitting the headphone you know with the thing and telling the camera people what to do there’s seven or eight camera people spread throughout the arena so that’s a super super highly professional enterprise kind of event others that we do on our own we provide our own cameras so we’ll do anywhere from three to five cameras we use mostly ppz cameras now at this point so that we can kind of get more angles and then so we do it that way so you know but yeah the powwow committee is higher us and bringing in again it’s the best marketing they can do for their event it really does highlight what they’re doing but not only that the thing we hear the most even from powwow committees but people out there is one of the big benefits is that they’re able to show the world their event not just for marketing but say they have tribal members or family members that aren’t able to travel or they’re maybe you know we have a lot of people that are serving overseas or serving in another state whether it’s job or military and so it’s they’re able to show it like you know so maybe we if we contract with um uh the seminars down in florida we do their powwow they know that they are they’re able to make sure that all the seminal people can see the event now the rest of the world’s watching it too but they know that they’re able to serve it to their folks and the people who can’t travel or maybe are not home that weekend or whatever they know that they’re they can still feel connected to their home tribe then that’s that’s a big plus too and one of the things we love hearing from people that they’re able to watch a family member through our live 

Spencer: streams that sounds awesome that’s that’s fascinating i could probably ask a bajillion questions about this because it’s it’s super fascinating um but before we move on i had one more question about live streams and because you’ve done so many of them and taking clips from your live streams do you have any advice for our viewers who may be interested in doing a live stream that that you think would be helpful for them 

Paul: yeah of course nowadays the technology makes live streaming easy we can do it from our phones uh and you know there’s there’s tons of people streaming on tiktok or youtube shorts or uh facebook whatever it’s easy in 2004 when we started this it was difficult we actually built our own windows media servers to to do the streaming it was really hard um there’s a lot of figuring things out and trying to make it work but to like i said anybody can live stream and there’s so many live streams out there so many people going live and you see you see they’re they’re streaming there’s one or two people watching i think it’s more important now to really work on building a following building a community if you because that then it makes your live stream impactful it’s the community for us it’s that community it’s the community part of it it’s having the people that are watching talking with each other but also they’re they’re at the same time they’re texting people that are at the powwow so people know that there’s there’s people watching they they have that feeling because people are talking people are are engaging with it they’re sharing it so without a following it’s just you’re just streaming out there on youtube with without anybody watching so i really think that’s important to to concentrate on is figure out you know who you want to stream to build that community work on developing content whether it’s on your website or your social media find ways to build that up and then when you go live then it then it’s impactful then it’s meaningful because you have people watching 

Spencer: yeah i totally agree that that is some good advice so thanks for sharing that yeah and i i said i had one more question before we move on but i have another question because you reminded me of something so you mentioned anybody can like do a live stream and there’s a lot of people out there there’s people who stream like just lifestyle stuff there’s right video game streamers stuff like that and i feel like most of those i see it’s just like one person behind a camera and they kind of interact with a chat do you have someone that’s like an mc or like someone that interacts with the chat and is like on a microphone kind of talking to the online viewers 

Paul: so we’ve tried that a couple of times over the years at powwows there’s there’s powwow mcs that are actually talking to the crowd and because we’re hooked into the sound system the viewers at home can hear that too and so they’re kind of keeping things rolling making announcement of what’s coming next of who’s who’s performing right now and so when we have done our viewers haven’t really liked it because we’re talking over the mcs and so they feel like they’re missing something to powwow so anytime we we cut away from what’s going on at the powwow there’s there’s resistance to that because our viewers want to see the entire powwow and it’s you know without breaks without missing it so we haven’t done a whole lot of that i we always make sure there’s people in the chat like you know i’ll be in there this one at albuquerque my wife was there so we make sure we’re in there we got some moderators too that are in there engaging in the chat and talking to them you know text wise instead of trying to talk over the live stream that and that’s just what we found out there again there’s other people that are doing powwow live streams too and i’ve seen some of them there they have people that are talking on the mic and they even have like cutaways and they’ll do interviews we’ve tried all that and our viewers aren’t as receptive to it like now if we if we do record an interview at a powwow instead of playing on the live stream i’ll just wait until afterwards and put it up as a video maybe mention on the live stream oh by the way we just interviewed so-and-so and we’ll have that available for you tomorrow that kind of thing because people do want they want to see what’s happening and not missing anything. 

Spencer: Got you. That makes sense. I was just curious, but yeah, it makes it makes sense to follow what your audience wants. And if they don’t like that, then you totally understand. So I guess changing gears a little bit, looking to the future of your channel. How do you see it evolving or do you see it evolving? Do you kind of see it just continuing doing live streams and taking clips of videos? Or do you see you doing any type of other content? How do you see your channel in the future? 

Paul: So I do, I think I mentioned I do a live show on Thursday nights and most of those are with guests and I’ll have people on. So I’d really like to do more of that and like to incorporate more of that. 

I’m not always the best at being consistent with that. So that’s one of the goals. I really want to do more of that. I also know that right now the trend and what people are engaging with is vertical short form videos. So we’re trying to do more of that and take parts of our live stream and convert them over to short form clips. And we’re probably going to have some of our short form videos, you know, be explainer videos or be, you know, here’s what kind of summary videos of maybe if we went to a powwow kind of like here’s what happened videos doing more voiceover type or, you know, captioned videos. I kind of see that is one of the areas we can get into as well as instead of just putting up 250 clips from a powwow maybe doing some highlights and some wrap ups those kind of things, especially in the short form vertical video format. 

So I kind of see more of that happening as well. Our live streaming is still going strong. We, I mean, just this week we’ve picked up two more powwows that we’re going to be live streaming this year. So I still really see that growing because so many more powwows want us to come and want us to do that for them. So I see that being strong for at least the next year or so. But I mean, who don’t I mean, this this plate the whole online world changes so fast. I don’t know after a year who knows where we’ll be. Yeah, I heard some influencers talk about the other day is like, as social media people, like, what happens when we aren’t consuming content on our phones? 

And how does that impact our content? Yeah, I mean, that’s going to be for video and everything, right? When we when our phones are no longer our major point of consumption, what does that mean? And how are we, you know, we all wearing glasses at this point? I don’t know. But yeah, for now, that’s kind of where I see us going. 

Spencer: Yeah, who knows how fast technology will change. I mean, to me, it seems like the the short form rise was super fast. Yes. So who knows in like a year or two. But you know, you mentioned there’s like 1200 powwows a year or something. So right, it seems like a pretty good space to do live streams in. So it seems like you’re safe for at least a little bit. Yeah. So you mentioned you’re you’re pretty big on Facebook as well. Like, I think you said you had 30 million views for like the last 28 days or something like that. 

So we said, yeah. So how did you, I guess, grow on on Facebook? Did you kind of do it in tandem with YouTube? Or I guess, how did you expand your your platform to Facebook as well? 

Paul: Facebook came before YouTube. But, you know, we had our forms, right? That was always kind of our our thing was our forms for people watching it, or can go back to the 90s. 

V Bulletin, early 2000s, V Bulletin was the thing that everybody used for forms. And that’s kind of where where we really came into our own as powwows.com and as that community. It was when Facebook was first coming on, and people were shifting from our forms to Facebook. I remember getting emails from people going, Hey, man, it was a nice ride at powwows.com, but you guys are dead because we’re all going to Facebook. 

Okay, it was again, it was one of those things. Yeah, the online world shifted to social media away from kind of website community driven things. And so it took us a little while to figure out that transition. And but eventually when you know, Facebook gave us the ability to have a page and a group, our community eventually did come and we grew beyond where we were on V Bulletin. Obviously, I mean, our V Bulletin, we had maybe a couple hundred thousand members where now we have 1.2 million followers on our page and another 130,000 or a group. So yeah, it was it was a for me, it was a hard transition and, you know, seeing the thing I knew forever, seeing that V Bulletin shrink and shrink and shrink and have less traffic and then trying to figure out what works on Facebook and how you engage differently. Because again, like I always said, I like to be bulletin because I had control, I had ownership of it, I managed every aspect of it. Whereas in Facebook, we had to let some control go. It eventually works and it’s okay. But yeah, that was a tough transition. But that’s kind of how we made that happen. 

Spencer: Gotcha. Okay, cool. So do you see are there like pros and cons to Facebook versus YouTube? And if so, what are they? 

Paul: So first thing, I think you should, I mean, you definitely should stream to multiple places because you there are people that engage in content in different ways. Here’s what I see. We have the most followers and the most engagement on Facebook. So when we live stream there, yes, it gets a lot more views. However, on YouTube, because the people there are there for video consumption, we have longer engagement and longer watch time. 

Facebook people maybe, yeah, they may watch the powwow for a few minutes. And then they’re onto something else because they’re just doom scrolling, right? They’re just they’re just going and maybe they come back to it if the algorithm brings them brings them back. 

So that’s kind of how we see it. Yes, there’s a lot more people on the platform. So our videos get more views, but we have people on YouTube that will sit there and watch us for six, eight hours and just stay with it the whole time. And, you know, I think people also they’re used to consuming video on on YouTube. So we have a lot of people that put it up on their TV or they’re watching it on a tablet while they’re doing something on their phone. You can do all that with Facebook, but I don’t think people think about it that way. People think more Facebook as mass consumption, as they’re kind of just scrolling through everything. 

So that’s kind of where I see. And then then there’s also the fact that, you know, Facebook, yes, for a long time they prioritize live video, but now they’re going to delete your video file after 30 days. They don’t let you stream into groups anymore. 

natively, it’s weird how you have to stream in the group. So I think Facebook is more volatile and changes quick more quickly. And that causes issues, whereas YouTube has been pretty stable for a long time. Now, we used to say that about Google Search too. 

So I don’t want to I’m scared to say that out loud. Yeah, YouTube is stable because who knows what they’re going to roll out next. Yeah, for us, I feel like Facebook is more of where our community lives and engages and is where people can discover us for the first time. But I would love to my goal with Facebook is always to move them back to our website and our email address, our email list, and then have them from there consume the content, the video content over on YouTube. Like on our website, when when I embed the YouTube video on our website to kind of promote it there, not the Facebook, you know, because YouTube is our video, I kind of call that’s our place of record, that’s our official like where the video is going to be. 

Yes, we’ll put them on Facebook, but that’s not where that’s not where we are going to promote our video, we’re going to promote it, go to YouTube to find it. 

Spencer: Gotcha. So I’m not on Facebook, all that often. So to find a live stream, are you just like scrolling through the short form videos and it pops up or is there like a separate page or tab? How do you, I guess, I don’t need I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen a live stream on Facebook. 

Paul: All of the above and other ways. That’s, and so that’s one of the problems with Facebook because there are so many, I mean, you could be scrolling through your friends feed, you could be scrolling through your main feed, you could be looking at short form videos. You never know how the Facebook algorithm is going to surface a piece of content to you. Now, if you are a fan or follower of our page and maybe the algorithm will will pop up a notification and tell you we’re live. Unfortunately, with 1.2 million followers, it doesn’t happen to everybody who follows our page because we don’t get all of a sudden we don’t have all 1.2 million watching or even 50% watching us when we start a live video. 

So that’s the challenge, right? With Facebook, it there is so much content other than video. When you do go live, people don’t always see it. And it may be again, it may be as you’re scrolling other content, our video may pop up and say, oh, by the way, powwows.com is live. And so that’s people, oh, oh, look, oh, that’s cool. And then they’re onto something else. So now Facebook has some new tools. 

At least, we just started using them over the last few months. We have a broadcast channel where we actually can push out notifications to people who choose to get our broadcast messages. So that’s another way we can kind of promote it. We’ll promote it in our stories and things like that, too, to try to get more people to watch on Facebook. But the algorithm definitely makes that more challenging. Interesting. 

Spencer: I was just curious, because yeah, I’m not on Facebook all the time. And then earlier, when you mentioned how your YouTube watchers watch for longer periods of time, I’m curious how monetization works with live streams. Do you get revenue from live stream watch time or is live stream revenue only from like donations? Because I know long form videos get revenue based off of like watch time and stuff like that. But I’m not sure how live stream works. So if you want to elaborate on that, that would be, I think, helpful to our listeners. 

Paul: Right. So yes, you can turn on the super chats and things like that on YouTube. On Facebook, they’re stars. And so some of our viewers will send those in, and that’s always really appreciated. Our community was really active on this past Paloal in Albuquerque, and we had several really big donations on, I mean, big for us on super chats. So that was really cool. And they did it to actually interact with us and say things. 

So that was cool. But yes, so on YouTube, we are in the content monetization program. So we do, it’s the same as a long form video. They do insert ads. You can kind of pick whether you insert them or Facebook or, sorry, YouTube will automatically insert them. I’ll let Facebook take care of that. I’ll let YouTube take care of that. So they automatically insert the ads. One of the challenges for us is that because these are live events, we’re not in control of who’s on the microphone or who’s running the sound. 

So a lot of times, if there’s downtime, sometimes they will turn on a CD or play some music off Spotify. So after we broke it with that, that does cause us issues. So we’re trying to get better about muting the video when that does happen. So we’ve had videos blocked. And in Albuquerque, they also had a music festival along with it. That actually got us a content strike this year, which has not happened before, but we got a full content strike and got blocked from streaming that one. 

So yeah, we have to be careful of that. For live streams, the content monetization is not great. That’s not going to be a main source of revenue. 

I wish it was. We were asking me about where I see my channel going. I mean, our ultimate goal is that we can show up at a powwow or we can call a powwow ahead of time and be like, Hey, we want to stream your event. And it’d be no cost to the event, right? Instead of them trying to have to contract with us. I’d love it if these platforms paid enough that we could just show up and it would pay all of our expenses, but it’s not there yet. But yeah, you do get some revenue from it, just like you do on a regular video. And it’s the same kind of CPMs and RPMs as you get on your regular videos. 

Spencer: Oh, okay. That was going to be my next question. So it’s roughly about the same revenue as a regular video versus a live stream. Yes. Okay. Gotcha. Cool. That’s super interesting to me. You’re the first YouTube creator that I feel like really focuses on live streams. So that’s really interesting. 

So moving on to the next question I have for you. How have you worked with sponsors with a live stream? And if so, how does that work? Do you insert like, like you mentioned YouTube can insert ads, but if you’re sponsored by a specific brand, like maybe you’re showing you’re using a camera or something, I don’t know if you get sponsored by that. But do you like insert a segment into the live stream mentioning that product? Or how does your sponsors work? 

Paul: So what we’d like to do is when we go to work with the powwow, we’ll tell them, Hey, look, we have the ability to play commercials or to display graphics. So a lot of these powwows, of course, selling sponsorships to help fund their event. And so that’s a service we’ll provide to them is like, Hey, if you have a set of sponsors already, just send us the files and we’ll play them. Now we have had a few sponsors that buy directly from us and sponsor a live stream. 

And so yeah, we’ll just whatever software we’re using, we’ll, yeah, insert the videos, try to do them just lower thirds or like this one in Albuquerque, we played the, played the sponsors message and then put the powwow down in a picture in picture, again, so we never cut away. And so they, we did that. So the first day we didn’t do that. And people got upset because we cut away. So that’s what we started doing is just putting it down in the side. 

But yeah, we’ve done all the above, right? Preferred is to work with the powwow and let them show their sponsors because that gives them added value to their sponsors. And maybe they can charge a little bit more and offset what they’re paying us to be there. But then yeah, we’ve had a few sponsors that want to come directly to us and, and, you know, have an ad or something on the channel. So we’ll do that. But we’ll also, you know, I like to put it in the description or put it in our email and some other ways to kind of help, you know, having a sponsor on video is good and it’s really good exposure, but trying to get somebody to click or to go off the video and then visit a website, that’s, that’s difficult. It’s really good for awareness, but it’s not as good for driving traffic. So we try to, we do have sponsors to put it in other places to make that conversion a little easier. 

Spencer: Cool. Yeah, I was just wondering, and have you had any interesting or rough experiences working with sponsors or have they all been pretty smooth sailing? 

Paul: Yeah, they’ve all been pretty smooth sailing. We’ve had a couple, we’ve had a couple sponsors, I won’t mention names, but that the company themselves maybe didn’t have a great relationship with the native community. I’ve had maybe two companies like that and it was difficult for us to take the sponsorship, but like one was like the big corporation themselves did some things not so good, but then we worked with a local branch of that company that was doing good things in the local native community. So I thought it was a good thing to work with them. The viewers didn’t always see it that way because they only know the big corporate side, maybe not the local side. 

So it takes a little bit of education and, you know, we’re in the chat telling people, hey, this is what’s going on. That’s only happened twice that we’ve had one of those. We’ve had some that we’ve just said no to because of issues like that or messaging that just doesn’t fit with what we do. But yeah, that’s probably the worst thing we’ve had. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Okay, I was just wondering. Yeah. So I’ve got a couple more questions for you. More, I guess, focused on the YouTube experience and your kind of journey working with YouTube. The first one is because you’ve been doing it for so long, I’m hoping you have maybe some good advice, but is there anything that you feel like you made a mistake with when doing YouTube that you would have done differently had you unknown? And if so, could you share that so our listeners can kind of learn as they’re doing their own YouTube? 

Paul: Me not going to YouTube sooner. As I mentioned before, being hardheaded and staying with our video platform, I think that was a mistake. I’m kind of also building my own personal coaching side of another channel. And for me, the mistake there is not being consistent, not doing it enough. I think if you’re going to go into doing what however, whether you’re going to be a talking head video or an event based video channel that you really have to commit and be consistent and put out content. And it’s tough. 

That’s probably the hardest thing is being consistent with it. I wish in the beginning and even now, I think we’re so big, there’s things that we could do better and should be doing better as far as like organization discovery. For a long time, we didn’t do custom thumbnails. So we’re doing that now. It used to be that we would just show a clip of the dance. In the beginning, it was like, so Powerwall people know if they see this picture, they know what they’re looking at. But after we grow so big, you know that it’s not just Powerwall people that are watching your videos. So we’re now trying to make sure we put what you’re actually seeing in the thumbnail as well as making better titles, those kind of things. So when you’re a new channel or for me an old channel, I think thumbnails, titling descriptions are all really important, something you should spend more time on. And that’s something we’re going back and learning better now. 

Spencer: Gotcha. I think that that is great advice. I agree about the thumbnails, you know, the whole package, thumbnail and title are really, really important for discoverability. I’ve got one more question for you. And this kind of goes hand in hand with that one. But there’s a lot of people that have misconceptions about YouTube, whether it’s like the algorithm or something specific. But do you feel like you know of any myths about YouTube that you think need to be busted? Like, hey, this, this isn’t true from my experience or anything like that. There’s a lot of people that 

Paul: have misconceptions on how their channel is going to grow, how they’re going to get views, especially when you’re starting out. And they’re trying to do whether it’s clickbait titles or things like that. I I think, and just to dispel whatever myth you think about growth, I think the key really is consistent quality. And go in making sure you produce content that you would want to consume and just letting the right audience find your video, whether that’s a little slower than you won’t. 

Instead of trying to take these quick kits and get a ton of traffic because you had some kind of catchy clickbait thumbnail or title. I think it’s more important that you focus on who your audience is and get real growth instead of some of these vanity metrics. I know a lot of people that get millions of views, but it’s not their audience and they don’t convert, they don’t stay. So yeah, that would be ignore some of those myths about growing your channel and just focus on growing the right way. 

Spencer: Yeah, I couldn’t have said it better myself. That is a really good point. And I like what you said about making content that you would consume. I think a lot of creators make the mistake of trying to be someone that they’re not when they’re making making content. 

And so making something that they would consume and enjoy, I think is a good way to think. I think there is a fine balance that you need to also take into account what your audience wants and what they want to see, but also make good quality stuff that you would watch. 

Paul: And listen to your audience, right? Yeah, listen to your audience. They’re going to tell you what they want. So read the comments, read your emails and take that and then build content and build videos from what they’re asking for. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. Well, Paul, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. So you’re on Facebook and YouTube. Is there any other platform that if our listeners wanted to follow you that they should go to? 

Paul: And we’re on all of, we’re on Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, we’re on all the places really where I consider the heart of the powwows.community is our email list. That’s where I feel like I can really engage with people the best. 

And I know that people are going to to see it. So I’m a big proponent of email. So please come over, subscribe to our email. If you do want to follow us, that’s the best place to make sure you don’t miss anything because like we were talking about, all these platforms have algorithms. So join our email list and you’ll never miss anything we do. 

Spencer: Awesome. Cool. Well, make sure to check out powwows.com on YouTube and go to their website and check out their email list and all of that good stuff. So thank you to our listeners and watchers for checking out this episode. Make sure to like and subscribe for more content. And if you need help with content creation, make sure to check us out at creatorluxe.com. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one.