What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Today, you guys get to see my face, not something that happens too often recently, and we’re
talking about something that has been a problem on this channel, which is of course clickbait.
Now I kind of didn’t want to make this video because Gbay made pretty much the exact same
video that Im making right now already, so shoutout to gbay he did this first, check
him out give him some love.
But with the amount of comments revolving around it, and the absolute catastrophe of
a decision I made yesterday, it was obviously something I had to personally address, and
a lot of you guys might not have seen gbay’s video on it anyway.
So first, I want to address, the idea of clickbait, because there is a little bit of a misunderstanding
among some people as to what qualifies as clickbait and what does not.
Clickbait, at least on youtube, is when the title or thumbnail of a video, set the expectation
for the video to be something different to what it actually is.
This makes the video misleading, and as a result pretty much ruins it because the viewer
gets tricked into watching something that they didn’t want to, because of the clickbait.
Now, a sensationalized or over exaggerated title is not really clickbait, it’s only
clickbait if the video itself does not deliver on what the title promises.
If you have a sensationalized or over exaggerated title, but then the video is about that exact
very thing, that’s not clickbait, because it wasn’t misleading, the video was about
exactly what you think it would be about from the title.
It does make your video a little bit more exciting, and it certainly makes it more appealing
to click on, but there is a distinction between the two.
And with that said, the video that I made about the warwick rework was absolutely clickbait,
there’s no argument there.
When I published video I didn’t think it was, and I thought the video delivered on
the topic, but it did not.
The title was misleading, and the video didn’t deliver on the topic, and that was not okay,
and I messed up big time with that, and there’s no excuse for doing that.
It wasn’t something I did on purpose, but that warwick video was a big mistake on my
part and I take full responsibility, and I will do my absolute best to make sure it never
happens again, and if it does, please call me out on it.
And I’m sorry that you guys had to deal with that.
This warwick video is a good example of a video that was legitimately clickbait, but
let’s compare it to a different video I made a while back.
This video was titled “8 unbelievable abilities that could have existed in League of Legends”,
and used a thumbnail of a graphic of what one of the 8 abilities potentially looked
like, and in that video I spent the entire duration talking about 8 abilities that could
have existed in league of legends.
Were they completely unbelievable?
No of course not, but they were pretty cool.
I could have titled that video something much less exciting, that video could easily have
had the title of “8 scrapped abilities in league of legends”.
But that title is just boring, it makes the video seem a lot less interesting on first
glance, and it certainly would have made that video a lot less successful.
My number 1 goal as a YouTuber has always been to make the best content that I possibly
can, as frequently as possible, and exaggerating a little bit on my titles and making an appealing
thumbnail is something that drastically improves the success of a video without dramatically
obscuring or ruining the content at all.
I spent probably 15 hours, maybe a bit more, and an editor spent a lot of time on that
video as well, and it came out as a really awesome video that we put a lot of time and
thought into, and the title and thumbnail doesn’t take away from that, because they
weren’t misleading.
A more exciting or more interesting title does not conflict with the content of the
video, and it doesn’t hurt the video at all, but what it does is make the content
that I already put a lot of time and effort into significantly more successful.
YouTubers sensationalize their titles because it works really well, it’s a super simple
thing to do that can as much as triple or even quadruple the amount of views and new
subscribers you get from one individual video.
And you guys watch my channel for the videos themselves, and as long as I am working hard
to make sure that there is an awesome video behind the sensationalized title, then it’s
not really something that hurts the viewing experience.
And it’s a really simple, but powerful way to bring the content that I pour my heart
and soul into to a wider audience, and at the end of the day, any extra money very much
does get reinvested into improving my production value making better videos, making more videos,
and overall doing the best job that I can as a content creator.
One thing that I don’t talk about that often, is that YouTube for me isn’t my hobby or
my job, it’s evolved into so much more, it’s my business.
I hire a lot of people to help me do stuff and invest a vast majority of the income I
get from everything into paying editors, employees, and other random projects.
And my philosophy behind this has always been that I want to hire people, I want to use
editors, not so that I have less work for myself, but so that I can do more overall.
If this channel was a solo adventure I would probably be uploading 3 or 4 times a week
instead of 7, and the videos I upload would be much lower quality as well.
And on top of that we have the Overwatch Channel that I’ve been putting a lot of time into
and taking very seriously, and I want to start more channels in the future, and finding ways
to make my already existing videos more successful helps me do all of these things.
I’m currently seeing if I want to make a Hearthstone channel, and It’s very likely
that I will have a third or even fourth channel by the end of the year.
And there’s only so many hours in the day, I do as much as I possibly can but with the
amount of stuff I want to do, it’s just flat out impossible without hiring other people.
And doing all of that stuff, to me is so much more awesome than just doing some work, collecting
a paycheck at the end of the month and putting everything in the bank account or buying a
nice car or some luxury crap that I don’t really need.
There's a lot more going on behind the scenes than it looks, and I'm really excited to see
what we can do!
However, misleading clickbait is something that is just not okay to do, because it completely
ruins the video, and if my goal is to make the absolute best content as often as I can,
misleading clickbait is something that is just flat out unacceptable.
Making an already-good video more appealing to click on is good marketing, and it’s
important to be successful, but please please call out actual clickbait when it happens,
but do try and understand the need to make titles and thumbnails a little bit more interesting
as a content creator.
So with all that said, I definitely want to say to everyone thanks for supporting me in
the work that I do, and definitely thank you for holding me to a high standard, because
that Warwick video was not okay, and you guys were super quick to make that clear, and I
appreciate you holding me to that standard, because it shows that you guys really care
about my work!
Anyway that’s gonna be it from me, hopefully this video explained things nicely, thanks
for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!