Why We Stopped. — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00I grew this channel from zero
2. 0:02subscribers to [music] 23 million
3. 0:05subscribers in under 3 years. It was
4. 0:08getting close to 1 billion views every
5. 0:11single month. It was one of the fastest
6. 0:14growing channels on the platform. We
7. 0:16were growing this channel almost at the
8. 0:18same pace as Mr. Beast. Mhm. Then half
9. 0:22year ago completely stopped. A lot of
10. 0:24people have asked me why did you stop
11. 0:27this channel when it was doing so well?
12. 0:29A lot of people have begged me to come
13. 0:31back to this channel and start making
14. 0:33videos again. But why did we stop? Well,
15. 0:35to explain that, we have to go back to
16. 0:37December 2020. So, at the end of 2020,
17. 0:41YouTube was rolling out something which
18. 0:44was called YouTube Shorts. And I found
19. 0:48this very quickly when it was in the
20. 0:50beta. And I thought this could be
21. 0:52something big because other platforms
22. 0:55was rolling out vertical video format.
23. 0:57Then I knew this this can be big. So I
24. 0:59very quickly made a channel called Panda
25. 1:02Clips which is now this channel called
26. 1:04Panda Shorts. I changed the name after a
27. 1:06while. But me being a PUBG YouTuber
28. 1:09having these two channels making content
29. 1:11on mobile and only PUBG on this one. I
30. 1:14made this channel to simply make shorts
31. 1:17for PUBG. And that's what I did. That's
32. 1:19what I did in the beginning. If you
33. 1:21scroll back to the first videos, the
34. 1:23first shorts on this channel, it is only
35. 1:25PUBG Mobile is nothing else because that
36. 1:27was the whole point. I just wanted to
37. 1:28upload the shorts for the game I was
38. 1:31playing and I did that. And some of them
39. 1:32did do really well like getting millions
40. 1:34of views. So that was the entire plan.
41. 1:36And another reason was in the beginning
42. 1:38of YouTube shorts, shorts was a mess. It
43. 1:42was a mess. You did not want to post
44. 1:44shorts to your main channel because it
45. 1:46would affect your channel. So you kind
46. 1:48of had to make a separate channel that
47. 1:50if I have any OGs watching this, maybe
48. 1:52you remember this. A lot of YouTubers
49. 1:54made separate channels for shorts
50. 1:56because it messed with the algorithm. So
51. 1:58you pretty much had to make a separate
52. 1:59channel. So that is also one reason why
53. 2:01I made this channel because I didn't
54. 2:03want to post the shorts on my main
55. 2:04channel being this one. But everything
56. 2:07changed in early 2021. So on this
57. 2:09channel, I sometimes made some reaction
58. 2:11videos for long for and I did a video on
59. 2:15me reacting to Indian clips and after
60. 2:18recording it, I wasn't really happy with
61. 2:20all the content I saw. So I decided to,
62. 2:22you know what, maybe I can try to make
63. 2:25shorts out of this instead. During that
64. 2:27time, no one did reaction shorts. It
65. 2:29didn't exist. But I thought maybe that
66. 2:32could work. I was like, why not make a
67. 2:34long form into a short? I mean reaction
68. 2:37videos, they perform pretty good. Why
69. 2:39wouldn't a short perform pretty good? So
70. 2:41I tried that. I uploaded four shorts uh
71. 2:44which I just made from this long form
72. 2:46video. Nothing happened. Nothing
73. 2:49happened. I had so high expectations but
74. 2:51nothing happened until 2 weeks later. 2
75. 2:53weeks later these four shorts started
76. 2:56getting views. A lot of views. I was in
77. 2:59shock because the videos before this
78. 3:01they performed well but not even close
79. 3:03to this. Some of them were getting
80. 3:05hundreds of thousands of views every
81. 3:07single day. And I've been doing YouTube
82. 3:09for a very long time, but I've never
83. 3:11seen anything like this. Also, because
84. 3:12shorts was new. So, I mean, this was
85. 3:14something new. But one of them 11
86. 3:16million views, 5.5 million views, 19
87. 3:19million views. What was going on? I was
88. 3:21in shock. But I knew one thing. I found
89. 3:24something here and I have to keep going.
90. 3:26And like I said, at the time, there was
91. 3:28no short reaction channels. They didn't
92. 3:31exist. So, I saw an opportunity to be
93. 3:33one of the first ones would probably be
94. 3:35a really good thing. But, however, I
95. 3:38thought they looked kind of effortless.
96. 3:40I thought they looked lazy. Even if some
97. 3:42of the shorts took a very long time, it
98. 3:45looked lazy. It looked like you were
99. 3:46just sitting there and reacting to
100. 3:48random videos. Even though maybe it took
101. 3:50a very long time to find these videos
102. 3:52and make a short out of it, it looks
103. 3:54lazy. It just does. But, I wanted the
104. 3:56shorts to feel more alive. So I got an
105. 3:58office which were editing for one of my
106. 4:00other channels to start being in the
107. 4:01background so more things would happen
108. 4:03to make these shorts more alive and feel
109. 4:06less lazy I guess. So we started doing
110. 4:08that keep doing a bit of the reaction
111. 4:10videos and also him doing things in the
112. 4:12background making these shorts more fun
113. 4:14to watch. But keep in mind at the time I
114. 4:16had these two channels as well which was
115. 4:18I was uploading daily on this one almost
116. 4:20daily on this one. And because shorts
117. 4:22early 2021 started doing better you
118. 4:25could start posting it to your main
119. 4:26channel. So, I started posting on this
120. 4:28one and this one. And now I have this
121. 4:30channel which I'm also posting daily. It
122. 4:32was a lot of work. And I was like, how
123. 4:35in the world am I going to keep up with
124. 4:37three channels, posting daily on every
125. 4:40single one, even posting long form on
126. 4:42this one and this one and shorts on all
127. 4:45three channels. Well, I got another
128. 4:46friend to help me with this channel and
129. 4:48also be in the background. And now this
130. 4:50channel started for real. And now we
131. 4:52started getting some real views on this
132. 4:54channel. The channel started getting
133. 4:56millions and millions of views and we
134. 4:59just kept going and we started posting
135. 5:02even more and we came up with all
136. 5:04different types of ideas for videos. We
137. 5:07were doing reaction on workers. We were
138. 5:10doing reaction on satisfying things. We
139. 5:11were doing reaction on everything
140. 5:13imaginable and always trying to make the
141. 5:16background fit the video. And it was
142. 5:19working so well. And I also wanted this
143. 5:21channel to be more than just reaction
144. 5:24videos. So we started doing a lot of
145. 5:25challenges and that type of stuff. And
146. 5:27it also worked getting some of the most
147. 5:30viewed shorts ever on YouTube. And I
148. 5:33also quickly realized that people really
149. 5:35loved when we were doing laugh types of
150. 5:37shorts like try not to laugh in a short
151. 5:40form. So we're starting doing more of
152. 5:41those as well. And I always wanted to
153. 5:44make the shorts feel more professional
154. 5:47and feel less lazy. So, we tried
155. 5:51multiple different things happening in
156. 5:53the background. We played around with
157. 5:55green screens. We reenacted a few
158. 5:58things. We we put so much effort in only
159. 6:01the background and also the videos we
160. 6:03were reacting to. We were like, we're
161. 6:04going to be the number one reaction
162. 6:07short channel ever. And I think we made
163. 6:10that for some time at least. I mean,
164. 6:12this video right here, we spent an
165. 6:14entire day recording and editing this
166. 6:16video because we put so much effort into
167. 6:18the background playing, reenacting some
168. 6:21kind of a Star Wars scene. So, it was a
169. 6:23lot of after effects, a lot of green
170. 6:25screen. And it was really fun. It was
171. 6:27really fun putting a lot of effort and
172. 6:29all of that and just making a funny
173. 6:31video. Even though this one probably
174. 6:33took way too long, but it was fun. We
175. 6:35even played around when we were
176. 6:36recording for laugh videos. We were
177. 6:39recording with three cameras [music] for
178. 6:41short. Try not to lag. Looking back in
179. 6:43it, that was very strange, but it felt
180. 6:45right at the time. Like I said, trying
181. 6:47to push the boundaries as far as
182. 6:50possible, going as far as recording with
183. 6:52three cameras.
184. 6:54It felt right and it kind of worked, but
185. 6:56maybe too many cameras. So, late 2021
186. 7:00and early 2022, this channel was one of
187. 7:02the most viewed channels on the platform
188. 7:05worldwide, even getting close to Mr.
189. 7:07beast numbers, which felt really crazy
190. 7:10and climbing all of the different
191. 7:12YouTube ladders in [music] views and
192. 7:16subscribers. But this channel was
193. 7:18consuming my time because it was doing
194. 7:21so well. Like I mentioned, I always
195. 7:23wanted to keep pushing the boundaries
196. 7:25and make better and better videos. So,
197. 7:27it really consumed my time, especially
198. 7:29having three separate channels. And for
199. 7:31this channel, we even posted three
200. 7:33shorts every single day. So it took a
201. 7:36[music] lot of time. So after realizing
202. 7:38this, I kind of had to stop posting on
203. 7:40this channel. And after a few months, my
204. 7:42main channel, I kind of almost stopped
205. 7:46completely. I posted a few videos here
206. 7:47and there, but close to almost nothing
207. 7:50because like I mentioned, this channel
208. 7:52was doing so well, I just had to keep
209. 7:54focusing on this channel. So when I
210. 7:56stopped these channels and focused all
211. 7:58my effort into this, it started doing
212. 8:00even more. And it wasn't as stressful
213. 8:02because now the focus was only on this
214. 8:03channel and I didn't have to keep up
215. 8:05with these channels at the same time. It
216. 8:07it really worked. But this is the
217. 8:09turning point in this [music] story.
218. 8:11Even on this channel, even if we were
219. 8:13getting a lot of views and subscribers
220. 8:16and all of that, YouTube shorts in the
221. 8:18early days did not pay well. I mean, in
222. 8:21the beginning, it didn't even pay at
223. 8:22all. So, we were now three full-time
224. 8:25employees with an office, buying a lot
225. 8:28of cameras and all this gear and
226. 8:30computers and all that to make these
227. 8:32shorts. It was costing a lot and it was
228. 8:35kind of hard to keep up with. We
229. 8:36desperately tried to get sponsors for
230. 8:39this channel. We thought it would be
231. 8:40easy because the channel was pulling in
232. 8:43600
233. 8:44700 million views, may even over 800
234. 8:47million views in a month. We thought we
235. 8:50should find a sponsor, right? But
236. 8:52without any luck, we just kept going. We
237. 8:54thought maybe eventually YouTube Shorts
238. 8:57will be able to pay more so we can keep
239. 9:00going with this. But YouTube Shorts paid
240. 9:02enough because like I said, we were
241. 9:04getting 700 million views. It paid
242. 9:06enough, but we knew 700 million views is
243. 9:09not going to last forever. So, we kind
244. 9:11of needed a sponsor, but we were just
245. 9:13hoping for in the future the ads and
246. 9:15sponsor would sponsors would come. But
247. 9:17we had a lot of fun doing all these
248. 9:19shorts. So we thought why stop let's
249. 9:21just keep going and during this time
250. 9:23getting close to late 2023 a lot of
251. 9:26other channels was popping up seeing our
252. 9:29success on these videos channels popped
253. 9:32up started doing the same thing started
254. 9:34doing the laugh videos and reaction
255. 9:35videos so I thought well this is no fun
256. 9:38if you guys are just going to copy us
257. 9:39then let's start making something which
258. 9:41is very hard to copy so we started doing
259. 9:43a lot of challenges a lot of challenges
260. 9:45using after effects doing a lot of
261. 9:48stunts
262. 9:49a lot of different things which I knew
263. 9:51this is not going to be easy to copy and
264. 9:53I think they will perform pretty good
265. 9:55and they did a few of them performed
266. 9:57extremely well few of them being one of
267. 9:59the most views videos on the platform
268. 10:02and it was a breath of fresh air for us
269. 10:03doing something else especially only
270. 10:05focusing on challenges and no reaction
271. 10:09videos at all we actually stopped doing
272. 10:11reaction videos completely during this
273. 10:13time sadly they didn't do well enough
274. 10:16the problem with doing this these type
275. 10:18of short was that one of them could take
276. 10:20almost every single one could take close
277. 10:22to a day to make, [music] record, and
278. 10:25edit. And we knew having this channel
279. 10:28paying for three full-time employees is
280. 10:30like that's not really going to work. We
281. 10:32need to post more shorts. Uh because the
282. 10:35reaction shorts were still doing the
283. 10:37same numbers. So eventually we went back
284. 10:39to that. And while doing the channel
285. 10:40short, a few of them, like I mentioned,
286. 10:42did really well, but a few of them
287. 10:43didn't. And that was a big hit mentally
288. 10:46putting a lot of effort into a few of
289. 10:48these shorts and then performing really
290. 10:50bad was like ah that's no fun. So that
291. 10:53was a mental hit and we knew it was
292. 10:55going to be a gamble because a few of
293. 10:57them did really well but it was kind of
294. 10:59hard to tell which of them would do
295. 11:00really well and which of them would not
296. 11:02perform at all. But so we slowly started
297. 11:05implementing uh the reaction videos back
298. 11:07again and focusing a lot on the the
299. 11:09laugh videos because people was just
300. 11:11asking for the laugh videos non-stop. So
301. 11:13we thought let's give it to them. We
302. 11:15went back to doing reaction and
303. 11:17challenges at the same time. Not doing
304. 11:19too many challenges because it was very
305. 11:20timeconuming. But we were getting close
306. 11:22to 2024 right now and in the beginning
307. 11:25of 2024 we still hadn't found a single
308. 11:28sponsor. And YouTube shorts started
309. 11:30paying better but we were starting to
310. 11:32get less views because now shorts on
311. 11:34YouTube had existed for 3 years even
312. 11:37more. So it was getting harder and
313. 11:39harder to get the views because there
314. 11:41was more competition of course. But at
315. 11:43this time the channel was not making
316. 11:45enough to support all of us three. So I
317. 11:48started going back and started posting a
318. 11:50bit on these channels again which I
319. 11:52missed a lot though to be fair. I was
320. 11:54happy started posting on these channels
321. 11:56again because on these channels I was
322. 11:58still able to get sponsors but we just
323. 12:00kept going and uh eventually we realized
324. 12:04that this is not going to work out long
325. 12:06term and then we just stopped pretty
326. 12:08much. We knew that keep going with this
327. 12:11is just going to keep digging us digging
328. 12:14a hole for ourel because this is not
329. 12:15going to be able to pay for all of our
330. 12:17salaries and uh the office and so on
331. 12:21without a sponsor and we were never able
332. 12:23to find a sponsor for the channel which
333. 12:25was sad. Uh but we had a lot of fun and
334. 12:28I guess we knew doing life shorts would
335. 12:31wouldn't last forever. Uh but we had a
336. 12:33good time though. We had a really good
337. 12:35time. I started focusing again on my own
338. 12:37on my old channels and honestly it's
339. 12:39been so fun going back to those
340. 12:41channels. But I want to do something on
341. 12:43this channel again. This is my most
342. 12:45successful channel ever. It got 23
343. 12:49million subscribers and 12 billion
344. 12:52views, I think, which is insane. That's
345. 12:54crazy. That's absolutely crazy. So, I'm
346. 12:56thinking of maybe going back a bit to
347. 12:58the roots of this channel, like the old
348. 13:00old days, 2020, 2021. I want to start
349. 13:03posting again, but don't expect me to
350. 13:06post three times a day. That's not going
351. 13:08to happen. At a at a time, we I think we
352. 13:10even posted four times a day on this
353. 13:11channel. We was just crazy. [music] I
354. 13:14mean, you can't laugh that much. Like,
355. 13:16after a while, nothing becomes funny
356. 13:18anymore. Like, we did so many laugh
357. 13:22videos that it took us every time longer
358. 13:25and longer and longer to record these
359. 13:28live videos because we needed more
360. 13:29material because we just didn't laugh
361. 13:31after a while.
362. 13:32>> [laughter]
363. 13:33>> Yeah. So, that's also one of the reasons
364. 13:35why because everything was just taking
365. 13:37longer to do. It just felt right
366. 13:39stopping it. But yeah, but I have a
367. 13:42video coming up soon hopefully on this
368. 13:44channel and actually there is a few
369. 13:47shorts and a long form video which I
370. 13:49never uploaded to this channel. It was
371. 13:52finished just a few days before we
372. 13:53stopped and then I just never uploaded
373. 13:55it. So, if you guys want I can upload
374. 13:57it. It's the last compilation we ever
375. 13:59did and it I guess it will be kind of
376. 14:02sad to upload it but it just feels right
377. 14:04to upload it and um yeah because you
378. 14:07guys been asking so much for it. So but
379. 14:09yeah that's the story how and why we
380. 14:12ended this channel but I think it's time
381. 14:13to come back. I will slowly come back to
382. 14:15this channel. [music] Thank you for
383. 14:17watching. Thank you for subscribing.
384. 14:19Thank you for all the support uh
385. 14:20throughout the years on this channel.
386. 14:22Uh, it's been a crazy ride for sure and
387. 14:24I hope to start doing something in the
388. 14:27future. Have a good one.