today i want to talk to you guys about one of the worst problems i have ever had as a
content creator a problem that became so severe i started to hate uploading videos i started to
hate streaming in fact every single time i ended a stream or uploaded the video i started to feel
terrible so terrible in fact i considered quitting and i know that sounds insane to
say but that's right i considered walking away from a 100 000 sub youtube channel
my dream for the past five years as a content creator to go back to my nine to five
so today guys i want to talk about how my obsession with analytics
numbers and putting all of my self-worth into them caused me to hate content creation and hopefully
teach you guys how to avoid going through the same thing as you grow as a content creator let's go
hey i'm Eljay from StreamScheme.com i'm also a variety streamer over at twitch.tv/eljayem_
there are links to both those in the description so i've been a streamer for about 19 months now
i actually grew to be a twitch partner in under a year and i grew this channel from zero to 100 000
youtube subs in about a year as well i wanted to give that context as to who i am because i am not
a giant streamer i'm not even a big streamer or a medium streamer i am a small streamer in the grand
scheme of things but i hope my story today will still resonate with a lot of you out there and
in fact i know it will because after talking to a lot of content creators there are people who
are feeling burnt out frustrated considering quitting and have even quit content full time
because of this issue i want to talk about all of those feelings today and how you can make content
in a healthy way that doesn't allow you to have your self-worth connected to how many views you're
getting but first i will throw it out there i want to say thank you to our sponsor own.tv you guys
should know about owned by now they're a fantastic resource for any streamer i think their shop is
one of the few out there that has something for everyone and no matter what they're looking for it
will be there sub emotes alerts overlays animated and static ones it doesn't matter they have got
it they've also got a great plugin for obs called owned pro that i really recommend you guys check
out it comes with easy install clicks for all of their alerts and their overlays but the really
cool thing about it is the fact that own pro is kind of like netflix for overlays if you're trying
to find the overlay that works for you this might be what you want to try because you can click
between them pretty easily we have a link in the description that'll take you over to own.tv if you
want to support me guys go and support them with that link in the description because without owned
we couldn't keep making these videos consistently and i really appreciate all the support they give
me and this community when you first start out as a content creator it is incredibly difficult
to not check your analytics while you're live you want to see how many viewers you have so you keep
staring at the little red number hoping for it to go up you're feeling terrible when it goes
down or when you upload a video or you finish stream you check your analytics instantly and
well everything that determines if a stream or video was good bad or successful in any way
starts to come down to those numbers did you get enough viewers did you get enough followers
did you have a high audience retention all of these things and more start to determine if you
even enjoyed the stream because as i said to you those analytics determine if it was a bad stream
or if it was a good stream and your enjoyment can't be measured in those numbers in any way
and it's the same on every single platform if you release a video you're constantly checking to see
if it's getting views maybe you go to bed and the first thing in the morning you wake up you
check your phone and you want to see did i get any views overnight there any subs overnight at
worst you haven't gotten any new subs or any new views overnight and at best well you have and then
you're looking at them going hey neat i'm growing and you're still allowing those views and subs to
determine your self-worth and whether or not what you created is good enough this is a problem that
i've had constantly over the last 19 months as a content creator hi i am ljm and i am addicted
to my analytics it used to be much worse when this channel first started picking up i would check the
analytics hourly i would have the youtube studio app on my phone and i'd be replying to comments
while i was getting groceries i'd be playing sea of thieves with my mates and rather than just
enjoying it i would have my analytics up on another monitor and i'd be telling them we only
got 500 views this hour or 600 this hour i wonder why and they would all pretend to care before
going right back to firing my pet monkey jeffrey out of a cannon i undoubtedly became an expert at
reading my channel's analytics both on youtube and on twitch but it was incredibly stressful
and toxic and even worse because my self-esteem and self-worth was so heavily connected to it
if i had a really bad stream or a really bad video upload then it would take so much effort for me to
come back out and keep making content because i didn't believe that anything i was creating was
worth it all because one analytic said i was doing badly i know that's a lot of doom and gloom for
content creation but i'm just being honest with how i felt and don't worry we have actionable
steps coming up in this video so that you never have to deal with this or if you are dealing with
this how you can get out of it so stay tuned as i said the reason this was so awful was because i
could have a really enjoyable stream i could have so much fun on a three to four hour stream with
my audience we'd be laughing having great moments and then afterwards i'd look at my analytics and
even if my average viewers was up maybe my daily subs was down maybe my daily follows was down
and i would notice that analytic and start to feel bad because as humans we notice negative
things easier we're looking for reasons to put ourselves down rather than lift ourselves up
and i'd start to question if the content was even good was it actually as fun as i remembered or did
i just enjoy myself but make a bunch of bad content because it wasn't really measurable
and again the same thing happened on youtube i would upload a video and i would spend so long
analyzing every little thing even if everything was fantastic except my viewer retention was low
i would go well i guess this video sucks i guess this is a terrible video despite it getting so
many views they're not watching it in full and while yes i did learn a lot from looking
at certain analytics and i learned how you guys absorb my content but if i'd just taken half of
the amount of time i spent looking at my analytics and put that into script writing instead i would
be a much more successful content creator because i'll tell you what it is a colossal waste of time
to look at your analytics as much as i do but i'll explain that fully in a second
when it came to twitch i did something absolutely insane i would pull up my vod and also pull up my
average viewership graph for that stream and i would watch them in real time back to back and
see exactly what caused a drop in viewership oh changing categories drops viewership okay
i'll try not to change categories midstream oh if i tell a bad joke i lose viewers if i run
an ad oh nothing happens people would rather mid roles than pre-rolls that's good to know
and so many other things and i'm not the only one guilty of being obsessed with analytics no i know
you guys are obsessed with it you keep flopping your tick picks that's analytics picks out in the
stream scheme discord asking hey why do you think this one viewer left an hour in and aggressively
criticizing and critiquing yourself just like i did okay so i know looking at analytics is
a crucial part of being a content creator i'm not trying to say it isn't so instead let's set
some ground rules and some actual tips so that you're able to look after your analytics without
overdoing it the first rule if you're going to be looking at your twitch analytics particularly
looking at specific streams and trying to analyze them please remember twitch is live
content which means sometimes it will fluctuate to be better or worse completely outside your control
sometimes your regulars can't be there sometimes people have to work pick up kids or do so many
other things that doesn't matter if your content is good or bad they just can't make it i see so
many people analyzing individual stream analytics and trying to figure out why a stream was bad and
then completely changing everything they're doing to try and make their streams successful
again and yeah it's important to make sure you're growing but it's so much more important to make
sure you are enjoying the content you produce because making content you hate isn't something
you should aim for even if it means growth so many of you misunderstand when i say to niche down and
to make discoverable content it doesn't mean to make something you dislike or something you hate
it means take the things you love and the things you want to create and adapt them
make them discoverable make it so the audience who you want to watch that who want to watch you
have a way to actually find you the second rule if you're going to check your analytics please don't
do it on random days or at random times and never do it right after a stream especially if you have
a really good stream that you feel great about if you finish a stream and you really enjoyed it you
loved it you think it was great content then enjoy that feeling spend an entire day feeling great
about it go to bed wake up the next day and rather than look at your analytics take that stream and
start turning it into more content with that great mindset create tick tocks shorts turn it into a
full video for youtube and then after you've done all of that then you can check your analytics
if you do check your analytics right after that stream and they say it was a bad stream
you're gonna start to feel kind of like garbage and you're gonna be much less motivated to take
that stream and make it into more content and that means you won't be as discoverable i don't
feel like i need to say this but obviously never check your analytics mid-stream just
focus on making the best content you can don't look at discord don't get distracted just make
good content the third rule is don't allow your stream analytics to determine if the stream was
successful set yourself a bigger goal than wanting five average viewers set yourself a
bigger goal than wanting to get 10 new followers be in full control of your own success you cannot
control getting five average viewers or ten new followers but you know what you can control
making an awesome stream and then turning it into an awesome video that can go on to get a
hundred views a thousand views or even a hundred thousand views recently myself and another content
creator were talking about how we're trying to make more content for our youtube channels but
every time we try and stream something that would actually work to be turned into a youtube video
how average viewers drop from 150 200 to 80 or 90. but you know what i don't care because i
would rather have 50 average viewers and create an amazing video that anyone can watch forever
and have a hundred average viewers that can't be turned into a video and the moment i end stream
they vanish and nobody else can find my content because i'm not live what do you think what would
you rather speaking of youtube videos there are a few rules that i do to make sure that i don't lose
my mind that i'm actually productive the first one being these days i only check my youtube analytics
once a day for 30 minutes that's it no more than that if i do more than that i'm wasting my time
the only reason i check for 30 minutes is because it's enough time for me to go cool
there are no huge dips my impressions are doing well and there's nothing i need to take action on
immediately if i do release a video then i will briefly watch it for the first two hours of its
release i'm checking the click-through rate the impressions and its overall reach to make sure
that it's actually appealing to my audience if not i can make a change to the thumbnail and the title
to hopefully make it more appealing then i'll check again at the 24-hour mark to make sure the
average viewer duration is high enough if not i need to figure out why this video is being watched
less and then i won't look at it again for three days because i don't want to know anything else
i want to focus on making the next video the thing that i review that i think is the
key factor as to why i've been successful on youtube isn't even in the analytics no every
time i release a video i will watch it back at full speed and i will constructively critique
myself so that i create something better next time and i do this for streams as well i'll watch back
a stream or a video and pick one or two things to improve before the next upload or the next stream
and i can see that progress that i'm making every single time i put out content in short i'm not
connecting my value to the number of videos i'm releasing or to the number of views i'm getting
i'm connecting it to the improvements i make to my ability to grow as a person and to create
better content next time earlier in this video i said if i take all or half of the time i spent
looking at analytics and focused on scripting instead that i'd be a more successful creator
and the reason for this is because that most of your success in life comes down to just
20 of the work you do the other 80 is important absolutely but it isn't what allows you to grow
i think if you want to sound smart this is called the pareto principle but i've always just called
it the ziggy method because when you make it a bar graph it looks a little bit like a cigarette
when i look back at all of the time i spent on useless things when i could have just spent it
script writing brainstorming or filming videos then i cringe so hard at myself and this is
someone who comes from a creative background who understands this principle and i still did it
this is why i constantly tell you guys to stop spending so much time on your logos you guys
spend hours on your offline screens your banners and so many other things and you don't even have
a content plan or a content strategy yet none of those things [ __ ] matter they matter so little
did you know that every single profile picture for stream scheme isn't centered did you know that the
start of this video where the motion graphics come up since the very first video has been off center
and i've only received one comment about it but now i've ruined it for every single one
of you and i'm so sorry i'm not fixing it it doesn't matter let me give you an example of
the ziggy method i'm recently finding out that my scripting process needs even more time than i
thought i spent three weeks scripting a video and got a hundred thousand views when i released it
when i spent a month scripting a video and also planning out the title and the thumbnails
during the scripting process it got over 250 000 views in the first month i could easily smash out
four to five videos about how twitch is dying about how streamlabs is trash about terrible
sponsorship programs that are trying to scam you or about how multi-level marketing platforms
and referral codes are apparently a thing now in this industry but i don't want to do those videos
i want to create videos that interest me and videos that i think have real value to you guys
and because i invested so much time into the scripting process for those two videos i mentioned
and because i was actually interested in them that's why they performed incredibly
this really is the massive piece of advice that i can give you the summary of the entire video is
to start focusing on the things that matter your strategy your planning making good content that is
discoverable and that you actually enjoy or in general just start actually making content and
stop being haunted by analysis paralysis or trying to make sure that the thing you make is perfect
because that's the real secret to growing stop wasting time on the unimportant [ __ ] like logos
offline screens and of course hourly analytics for [ __ ] sake please never install the youtube
studio app on your phone that's one of the biggest issues i had and when i stopped doing all these
things and just started focusing on making content that i enjoyed again well then i didn't want to
quit anymore speaking of the content that i've enjoyed making apparently youtube thinks you'll
enjoy this video and it will help you make content so why not give it a click and see whether or not
the youtube algorithm is right guys consider subscribing liking the video and comment down
below if this helped it was a bit of a different one i'll see you guys next week happy 2022