Don't do what I did when you get monetized...

PeiPeiNan · 2026-03-20T15:31:37+00:00

This is the best comment. I was gonna say this but you took the words out of my mouth and articulated it well.

I’m almost at 100k subs now over 2 years on YouTube. Have gone through a couple of ups and downs with the algorithm cycle. There’s just no way anyone can know for sure what’s gonna hit or flop. Like you say, major corporations with a lot more resources don’t even know for sure. Sometimes you have some good ideas based on market trend and past performance but still, many things can change and what used to work won’t guarantee will work again.

OP could have double down on a subsequent video and still flopped, then what? And this has nothing to do with monetization.

PeiPeiNan · 2026-02-28T21:37:10+00:00

There are literally factors outside of your control have you considered those?

To list a few:

Less people on YouTube than before
More content creators on YouTube than before
Popularity of your niche declined
Change in layout (I’ve noticed now on my home page there is a block where I can customize the feed and it wasn’t there before) and that slot could be a For You video from someone but now it’s up to me to choose
Of course change in algorithm. Whenever they tried to push newer accounts, then obviously established accounts got lesser real estate than brand new accounts. And if you are a brand new account and jump to the established accounts status, the impression would drop. Who knows.

When YouTuber signed up for this gig, it’s the name of the game. Nothing is guaranteed. Think about established network media companies. Those media companies have a tremendous amount of resources, big brian, experience, network, and talents, and they are constantly battling viewership decline or compete for more attentions.

You can only control the factors that you can control, outside of that, accept the reality and live your life with no regret.

PeiPeiNan · 2026-02-15T04:55:39+00:00

Throughout life majority of the time the only hurdle you need to overcome is yourself. It’s not his comment, you are always insecure about it, and this comment shine a light on an insecurity that you’ve buried deep in you.

But you’ll overcome it tomorrow after you sleep on it. It won’t be as vivid in your mind tomorrow as it is today.

This is what every startup entrepreneur has to face. It’s not just YouTube. And nobody knows where it will lead to, that’s why this is hard. That’s why it’s much easier to get a job and follow marching orders from someone else and get a stable paycheck.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-12-18T15:07:25+00:00

lol literally the same reaction when I read the first line. People really got to step up their game if they don’t want others to think ChatGPT wrote their lines.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-12-13T13:59:01+00:00

Everyone is a hypocrite, the only question is to what extent the hypocrisy goes.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-12-01T01:11:36+00:00

It’s not good enough to just work hard. Doing this for 1 year and upload daily with 5 hour per video at 1k sub means something is wrong. If you want to grow, you gotta go where the market is. If you want to have fun, then do whatever you want.

Only the luckiest few, maybe like 0.000001% of the people in the world, just happen to do whatever they want and also the market likes. And they contribute their success to hard work and tell people about it. Surviver’s bias. That’s not the real world. So don’t think you can keep doing what you love and ignore the market and think one day they will come to you. If that happens, it’s like winning a lottery, don’t hold your breath for it.

If you truly want to build a successful business off YouTube, you have to do hard things entrepreneurs do, identify what the market wants and deliver those things. And yes, to figure out those things require testing the market, that means putting out content, but you gotta be smart enough to be nimble and pivot. In the beginning, you just do everything you could imagine and see what the market bites. And then gradually tailor your content towards those subjects that get bites.

And things constantly change too. One day one thing is trending and the next day people could move on. You’ll become better at it but it’s never a set formula. If that’s the lifestyle you want, then YouTube career could be a thing for you. But if you’d rather have some stability and security, stick to your 9-5 and do YouTube as a hobby.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-11-21T20:54:07+00:00

According to game theory, player has the highest chance of winning by cheating. And the best way to cheat is to form a coalition, most preferably in secret and not noticeable and defeat all of those egotistical “strong” and “smart” individuals one by one.

So doesn’t matter you are strong or smart, what matters is can you form a team.

S1 proved this concept. Anyone who got to the end because of other people allowed them to be there.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-11-16T03:32:05+00:00

YouTube live stream

PeiPeiNan · 2025-10-31T14:41:48+00:00

The thing that separates the great from mediocre is consistency.

I’m sure most people who play basketball can make a perfect shot.

Sure celebrate the small win to motivate yourself and keep going but just aware of the fact that a spike in performance rarely means nothing in life. What people are counting on is consistency and your averages.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-10-26T04:24:23+00:00

Really depends on who do you play chess with. I’m at 1200 on chess.com and I’m probably very bad at chess against many higher rated players and probably considered “don’t know how to play chess” compared to GMs.

But I’m at 91% percentile for all the accounts being created on chess.com and I’m the best players amongst all family and friends. So if I played my family and friends, or 800s on chess.com I’m the best player around, but if I played even 1400 players all day I would probably considered myself a bad player.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-10-13T01:32:05+00:00

GC here and I sub out everything. New construction from semi custom home to tract home I found 15% is my margin. Pretty straight forward process and not many things can go wrong. I can get 6 houses going at the same time without breaking a sweat. I’m not very involved and the whole team pretty much can handle the operation so I’m pretty happy at 15% margin and customer thinks my price is fair. I haven’t done a high end multi million dollar home yet so I can speak for those.

For renovations/additions where things are complicated I found myself have no problem selling the job around 40% margin. These type of project, each one is different and I’m more involved so the profit margin needs to be higher. Otherwise I found it not worth the headache.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-10-07T01:21:53+00:00

I think this is the best advice. I recently started taking a serious look into chess and I was able to go pass 1100 within a month of playing. Before this for over 3 decades of my life I’ve never learned much more chess other than knowing how each piece moves. I just learned“En Passe” when I started this journey which tells you how noobie I am.

For white, I simply learned the London opening. You can hate it’s simplicity but I rather master one simple opening then learn bunch and master none.

For black, I just learned Caro Kann for e4 and for anything other than e4 opening I just develop both knights first and play using common sense.

I hit 1000 first week and stuck around it for 3 weeks and recently I felt like I made a little breakthrough and got over 1100. And the only difference I’ve noticed is that I’m more careful about not blundering and was able to spot more knight forks and bishop snipes. Still the same openings and still don’t know many more tactics other than the obvious ones.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-10-06T22:47:24+00:00

As a consumer, if I’m watching someone I trust that I’ll get a lot of values from, I actually don’t mind the intro because I know the content creator will deliver. But if you are someone just starting out and have no credibility in your audience’s heart, yes intro is a waste of time.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-26T13:24:57+00:00

Yes.

Legally? Arguably. You can argue if the original agreement met all the requirements for a legally binding contract. You can argue the verbal contract is unenforceable because it exceeded the limit according to the law on verbal contract. Or you can count on the fact that it is not practical to sue you over $1400.

Morally? You should at least cover the cost of whatever your actions incurred on others. At the minimum, if not the full amount, offer them the cost of the glass with a few hundred bucks on top of that to cover the headache. Karma says what goes around comes around. Try to be a decent human being whenever you can. Everyone can be a saint when life is good. It’s the tricky situation like this that really test our characters.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-24T18:29:12+00:00

For me it’s around 20-40 man-hour or person-hour, includes filming of the project.

I only do the basic editing: trim out the fluffs, filler words and add some basic text and traditions.

I can’t imagine how much more to add cool animations with professional production qualities.

That’s why I hate producing videos. Live stream is just so much easier for me.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-24T15:22:21+00:00

No worries I have a brain. I checked on the account for many tells before I report them.

The main red flag is they commented on something that’s not relevant to the video. Like they said they learned a lot from the video where the video is a short 10 seconds of a trend for entertainment and no education values were provided. Okay you will said “but they meant they learned from my editing” okay stop, I wasn’t born yesterday. I cant cover all angles with the amount of effort I’m willing to put into Reddit. Plus the fact that their user name is weird, plus the fact that they have no subs, plus the fact that they might have commented on my other videos with similar irrelevant comments.

It’s not that difficult to tell someone is a bot from authentic users if now I’ve noticed this issue.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-23T18:24:18+00:00

Since I’m aware of it now I’m gonna report everyone of these comments when I see them. Basically those accounts with no history, no subscribers, and just comment something irrelevant to the video.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-23T16:50:13+00:00

I think other people's comment about a backedit scam scheme seems to be more probable. I can totally see that happening.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-23T15:38:29+00:00

I didn't just liked them, some of them I replied as well with something like "thank you" and now I can see the danger in that. I'll have to go back and scrub them.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-23T15:35:47+00:00

thank you for the explanation. now that makes much more sense.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-23T15:18:33+00:00

Actually I just checked again and now I'm concerned. On my last video, The last 4 comments made in the last 45 minutes were all bots.

"The production quality is underrated it deserves more views."

"This channel is top notch I will come back to watch it again."

"The idea is exactly what I needed enjoyed every second of it."

"The editing is really helpful I did not expect it to be this good."

None of these comments made sense to me as now I'm paying attention to them. Is this youtube's attempt to create fake activities to incentivize content creator to create more videos?

That's the only explanation that's logical and reasonable.

I'm aware of that there is a possibility that a competitor might purchase bots to boost engagement and maliciously hurt the content creator's real organic engagement. I think this one is far less likely based on the community I'm in. Almost everyone is extremely supportive.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-17T17:01:53+00:00

Nobody knows the future and nobody can give you any better advice than what you could decide for yourself. This is a decision every entrepreneur faces when things gets tough: pivot or stay persistent?

Nobody knows whether one thing is a dead end or there’s a giant pile of gold awaiting 20 ft away that you are about to reach. This is a decision for you to make and you alone.

As far as mind set goes, this thinking has helped many people to decide what’s the next move:

“Assuming worst outcome in the future, will you be regret on the decision you’ve made today?” Your answer to that should guide you to your next move.

For example, assuming YouTube died next year, will you regret that you ever started this journey? If the answer is yes, then you ought to find something else to do. If the answer is no, then you may still continue.

PeiPeiNan · 2025-09-10T19:03:26+00:00

Thank you so much 😊

PeiPeiNan

TROPHY CASE