How I accidentally start a collabo with a YouTuber (4)
How I accidentally start a collabo with a YouTuber
Today I want to tell you a funny story that happened to me recently.
It shows pretty good that sometimes very good opportunities randomly arise that you never thought of before.
Prologue
It all started about 2 weeks ago.
I saw a video on Youtube about an old Sega game that I also played about 20 years ago.
The video is from one of the few Youtubers (let´s call him Mr. X) that I follow and his channel is all about video games, he uploads lots of content about video games and consoles but he is also an avid video game collector.
Right now the channel has tens of thousands of subscribers so a good foundation is already given.
I posted in the comments under the video that I played the game myself long time ago and never finished it but the video got me excited to play it again.
Then we chatted a bit, Mr. X told me that he just started to rebuild a Sega Dreamcast collection and I said that I still have many original DC games that are just lying around for 20 years or so.
I told him if he´s looking for specific titles he shall let me know and I check if I have these games.
I don´t play them anymore and few weeks ago I though about selling all that stuff anyway so if he needs some of the games I can make a good price for him.
We continued the discussion on Facebook because there you can chat better than in the Youtube comment section 
I send him a list of all my Dreamcast games and he send me a list back with 15 titles that he´s interested in but he said that he probably can´t afford these games anyway at this moment.
My initial plan from few weeks ago was to sell the games on Ebay for €10 a pop but when he said that he probably can´t afford these 15 games I got curious about their worth.
I told him that I will check their prices on Ebay and I´ll make him a good price then.
Some of the games are listed on Ebay for €80-€150, there I understood what he meant
For me it´s not important to get as much money as possible for these games because here they are lying around anyway and when I can help Mr. X to grow his collection then this is worth more for me than few additional Euros.
In the end he produces and publishes good content that entertains me so I am happy when I can support this dude a bit.
After I checked the games on Ebay I made him a very good price already and he said he definitely wants to buy at least some of the games but he needs to check how much money he has available.
And here the real story starts
He told me that he´s financing his hobby (video games) with the revenue from his Youtube channel and that the price I charge for my games is easily a whole months budget for such things.
I said that I know a bit about marketing and in my opinion it should be possible to generate more revenue from his channel because his content is good and he should have a financially strong audience.
He then jokingly said that I could coach him because he really would like to make more from his Youtube channel.
I told him that I really coached people some time ago in affiliate marketing and then my fingers were basically writing more and more from alone.
I didn´t even have to think about it but suddenly I had so many ideas in my mind how the marketing on the channel could be improved.
Eventually I sent him a VERY long text with rough ideas and offered him to continue talking on Skype so that we can check if we could start a collab - He knows how to make good content, I have knowlegde about marketing.
Mr. X was excited about the collabo idea and so we started to talk on Skype.
There he told me that he often thought about making more with the Youtube channel but that he probably won´t get it right without help.
Few years ago he already came to the point where he thought about stopping/deleting the channel because he didn´t believe that the channel has potential to grow any further.
Then at one point he suddenly saw more growth so that he didn´t give up with the channel and today he could even imagine to run such stuff fulltime, the huge issue is just that he doesn´t know how to monetize the channel properly.
I send him a long text again with some thoughts, he liked my ideas and now we are checking how to best start.
For me it´s also something completely new and I never did anything like that before but I really see huge potential in his channel for various reasons.
Mr. X has a very interesting background that gives him a huge advantage over others already and he knows how to produce good content.
My basic plan is to start as a loose collabo with no financial risk involved so that we can first check if it has potential at all and if makes sense to continue or not.
In the first stage he can conitnue with his channel 99.9% exactly the way he´s doing it now, there´s no financial investment needed and also next to no extra time that he has to spend.
If we see that it´s worth it I already have plans what we can do next.
Then it would continue with basically 2 things:
- To grow the channel and increase number of subscribers
- To monetize these subscribers better than he´s doing it now
I have no idea how it will work or not but right now we are at a point where we agreed to start the collabo and then we´ll see what happens.
I am excited to see how it goes because it´s something new for me so it doesn´t really matter what outcome it has, it´s nonetheless very interesting for me to learn something new in that direction.
Even when the whole story eventually comes to nothing I still wanted to post about it because it´s a good example to show that sometimes it happens that suddenly and out of nowhere new oppotunities arise that could have potential to become something really good
@twinaxe
I studied YouTube a TON before I went back to AM and here are a few things that could help you.
1: VidIQ (it is an investment yes) Which is here There is no affiliate link to be found. I think it's $60 a month.
It is worth ALL of the money it asks for. Use Boost. It is the best YouTube keywords, optimization tool, competitive analysis tool and general research tool available for YouTube.
2. Video frequency is YouTubes primary objective. Posting at least 1 a day (which is VERY difficult part time with no editor) is a fast growth "hack" so to speak. Although quality over quantity is also important. If the thumbnails aren't optimized I would HIGHLY suggest watching VidIQs tutorials in their education section about thumbnail selection, competition tracking, etc to see how to pick titles and topics that are trending amongst similar channels. Thumbnails are VITAL on YouTube now.
3. Monetization on YouTube is a funny thing. Most people get ads revenue, some people promote their twitch channel where they play those games real time and post the VODs "video on demand" to their YouTube automatically after a play session. Remember on twitch live donations and paid subs are a thing. Other obvious opportunities are CPA offers for game sign ups etc and small ads which you make yourself at video starts or end. If it fits.
Another is a website that has weekly game recommendations which are amazon or ebay affiliate links to get cuts of games he gets people to buy. Same with consoles, blah blah.
Some other points:
In the modern era YouTube is focusing their algorithm on human like titles over obvious keyword titles. Examples is a video on your channel where you play a hard game...
1. "Castlevania for Sega is super hard! Let's play"
2. "This difficult game made me question life itself..."
(side note post game image in the THUMBNAIL in item 2)
Here is the deal. You may not come up in SEARCH RESULTS as often but you will come up in RECOMMENDED VIDEOS way more often with human titles. Alright that's enough for now I could go for miles on YouTube info. I just stopped doing it myself because I never got an editor and got tired of editing. Funny enough however I am considering doing it again as well and my son wants to make MineCraft videos (which is still immensely popular) so I may start there.
Good luck my friend. If you need/want any other collaborative info on YouTube I am always lurking around somewhere.
This is really interesting. I will be following this closely.
@quintyfresh Thanks alot for the tips.
Is it only for English content or will it work for other languages as well?
Will also try to read a bit about thumbnails
Another is a website that has weekly game recommendations which are amazon or ebay affiliate links to get cuts of games he gets people to buy. Same with consoles, blah blah.
We will have a phone call the next days to talk in more detail and I hope that we will start the collabo then soon.
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